
Valve releasing Dota2 for Linux - gnufied
http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=96878
======
gnufied
For the uninitiated:

Dota2 is a massively popular AAA game created by Valve which just came out of
beta yesterday. The game is known to be difficult to play and master.

Why Linux release is important: Valve released Steam for Linux couple of
months back but apart from TF2 and other Valve titles, Steam for Linux is
picking up pace very slowly. Even games like TF2 and L4D are more or less last
generation titles. Dota2 on the other hand is brand new, it uses all the new
features from source engine and hopefully is capable of pushing Gaming on
Linux like no other title.

~~~
jeltz
Dota2 is also the by far currently most played game on Steam, being 4 to 5
times more popular than any other. See the link below for some statistics.

[http://store.steampowered.com/stats/](http://store.steampowered.com/stats/)

~~~
shurcooL
How does it compare to League of Legends?

~~~
jpreiland
League of Legends was made with complexity/difficulty != fun in mind.

It's easier to master mechanically, but I feel it is all around a much better
made game. For one, it actually runs smoothly. This could just be my PC, but
super lowest settings and custom config on DotA2 still runs sluggishly, while
LoL is very responsive and satisfying to play.

Gameplay-wise, DotA is very cutthroat in that a single hero can go rambo and
1v5 the other team if he gets out of control, while LoL generally allows you
to come back if you play smartly with your team. The item shop in DotA is
terribly confusing, but I suppose you'll learn it if you play long enough.

The only negative things I can say about LoL is: the leveling system and
runes/masteries, while helping new players ramp up to competitive level, seem
to take a long time to fill out to get on par with a "normal" player. DotA 2
allows you to jump in straight away on the same level of play and with all
heroes available. You have to unlock champions in LoL (it takes a while if you
take the free route as most do).

TL;DR - LoL is a polished, simplified, beautiful take on the MOBA genre that
DotA popularized. Hardcore DotA fans will call it easy/noob-friendly/etc, but
in reality it's just different and in my (biased) opinion, better.

~~~
epsylon
> Gameplay-wise, DotA is very cutthroat in that a single hero can go rambo and
> 1v5 the other team if he gets out of control

Well it only happens if there's too much of a skill gap between the 1 and the
5. The same exact thing would happen between an experienced Quake 3 player vs
5 noobies.

~~~
Lapsa
Actually, same thing happens in LoL too.

It's quite fun running around with fully stacked: mob boots, infini, lich
bane, mejai, occult, rabadon Shaco

and finishing game with score something like 25/2/whatever

------
pdknsk
I won't play the game, because DOTA and its many clones probably have the most
unfriendly players in all of gaming, but it's great news for Linux.

~~~
delluminatus
It's a curious phenomenon, isn't it? As a long-time DotA player myself, I
maintain a separate "DotA Persona" which I fall into when playing. It's
basically an offensive response to assholes: also be an asshole.

I think it essentially comes from the nature of the game: as an individual,
you're suddenly stuck with a bunch of other people you have to cooperate with.
It's not like tf2 or CS. The teams are smaller and the stakes are much higher.
People care about winning games in DotA a lot more than they do in most FPS
games, where the journey is the destination. In DotA, the win is the
destination and it's the validation of your abilities (k/d ratio doesn't cut
it).

You would think having the win be so important would make it easier or better
to work together, but the fact of the matter is most DotA players suck. Even
people who consistently win public games still suck. Players hold everyone
else to incredibly high standards and get frustrated when they feel like their
team "drags them down." This is compounded by a feeling that, if you're doing
badly yourself, you should scapegoat a team member in order to shift the
blame.

DotA 2 is actually a lot better. I'm not sure why exactly, and it depends on
your level. Maybe there's hope.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I spent some time analyzing this when playing WoW. The strongest correlation
is with the "goal" aspect of the players.

Imagine that baseball games were played using a non-discriminatory matchmaking
service. So start of the "Dodgers vs Giants" game there would be a pause and
then 25 "players" would materialize. Some of them would be athletes in their
20s with strong skills, some would be 40+ year old veterans who have good
skills but aren't in shape, some would be 10 year old little leaguers who are
very knowledgeable but inexperienced and out of shape, and some would be
people who just randomly picked "play baseball" as their selected activity,
not really knowing even what the rules of the game were. Then there is a
"manager" who has to create a starting lineup, assign positions, and win the
pennant.

Extremely frustrating.

Blizzard was working on "fixing" this by segregating selection of players into
"twinks" and "non-twinks", "experienced" vs "non-experienced" and "hardcore"
vs "casual" which helped but it still made for a crappy experience a lot of
the time.

~~~
jergason
Dota 2 has fantastic matchmaking, so it avoids the problem of total newbies
playing with experienced players. Because there are over 100 different heroes
to choose from, sometimes you end up with people who are very experienced at
the game but completely new to their heroes though, which can be frustrating
for them.

~~~
StavrosK
How the hell does it end up 50% wins all the time? It frustrates me to no end
that, no matter how good I get, DOTA can still make sure I only win half the
games.

Also, I realized that I feel around ten times worse when losing than how good
I feel when winning, so the expected derived pleasure from the game is really
really negative, so I scaled my playing down a whole lot.

~~~
aetimmes
>How the hell does it end up 50% wins all the time?

Because that's what the system was designed to do. If you're winning more than
50% it means that some percentage of the time, the game can't find 5 people
who are better than you to put in a game. You'd have to compete at a semi-pro
level to get this to happen.

~~~
StavrosK
Yeah, but it has to find a whole group that, collectively, is _just a bit_
better than my entire group. That's not very easy to do, I don't think.

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Pxtl
I'm actually really sad that these take off so well, because imho the DOTA
format is the _worst_ thing to happen to online gaming. The game is feels
_deliberately_ brutal to newbies in so very many ways. The whole genre seems
utterly dysfunctional for any kind of player who doesn't have a tight,
committed clan to play with.

Long high-commitment match-ups make it bad for people with other committments,
a hyperlong list of powers and heroes makes for a tremendous amount of trivia
to learn, there's the various play mechanics that make you _hate_ the weakest
man on your team (and can examine his failings in detail), and the way DOTA2
embraces counterintuitive hardcore tweaks that were eradicated in other
iterations (like killing your own troops to deny the opponents XP).

I like the pro gaming circuit, but a truly good game is one that's
approachable, friendly, _and_ deep.

~~~
psykotic
How can the existence and relative success of this game offend you so?
Virtually all games out there nowadays are newbie friendly and watered down to
a fault. People with your preferences are drowning in choices. For those of us
who enjoy uncompromising skill-based games, the only AAA titles to come along
in recent memory have been Dota 2, Dark Souls and a handful of RTS and
fighting games.

League of Legends addresses many of your apparent concerns with Dota's game
design. But guess what? Its online community is every bit as toxic and
obnoxious. Both are skill-based team games that are played over the Internet,
require a lot of coordination, and usually take over 30 minutes per match. You
can address in-game bad manners at the margins with something like Riot's
tribunal system or Valve's reporting system, but I doubt you can do much to
eliminate the problem without also eliminating those essential features of
their game design.

~~~
Glyptodon
Unfortunately Dota is not so much skill based as it is trivia based -- you
need to know many many many combinations of item progressions to match your
hero's stats and abilities. The gameplay of Dota, creep denial or not, isn't
that deep, but the sheer complexity of items and purchase order is
overwhelming. So more about trivia, not so much skill.

Classic FPS's in minstagib mode are generally very simple to play with a total
of about 3/4 controls and are very much skill, not trivia based, and an
anathema to console gamers and noobs. Skill is not about memorizing
dictionaries of trivia.

Anyway, key word is _trivia._

~~~
Keyneston
Our office has a lot of Dota players so we regularly play five man dota. We
range in skill from very noob to ex-pro.

The difference in skill between the ex-pro, or even several of the just very
talented players and the rest of us is immense.

The trivia helps, knowing counter items and the like helps but at high level
play all sorts of things become very important. For example positioning of
your unit(s), to either miss a spell being cast or to physically block the
person you are trying to kill makes the difference between a major win or
complete loss of a fight. Or your ability to farm, last hitting creeps,
stacking/jungling and maximizing your gold per second.

So yes at low level Dota is all about the trivia. I'm a better player then a
random new player because I know the characters, their abilities and the
items. But at the end of the day despite putting in hundreds of hours I pale
in comparison to a _Excellent_ player because I don't have the reflexes, or
the split second analytical mind. In addition, and most importantly, I've not
put in the hours upon hours of purposeful practice that a pro dota player has.

Dota is a skill based game.

------
chc
Nitpick: The title is kind of misleading. They are putting Mac and Linux
support in _Dota 2 Test_ , which is a separate client with separate servers
from the real Dota 2 that they use to test new features. It's not actually
being released in the sense of being able to play Dota 2 with normal Dota 2
players. The actual release will come at some indeterminate point in the
future.

~~~
avree
Generally we see about a two to four week rollover time between DotA 2 Test
and the main DotA 2.

~~~
YellowOnion
Sorry but you're mistaken, it's generally 1-2 days rollover and only is it
stalled if bugs persist.

~~~
avree
Yeah, you're right. I meant to type "days" but for some reason typed "weeks".

------
BookPage
I just want to say, there was a time once when I was overly addicted to
playing dota. One of my workarounds whenever I felt I had binged too much was
to whipe my windows install and go with Ubuntu. It kind of worked, but
eventually I'd just go back. I even went so far as throwing my windows license
in the bin and snapping my install disc. Time and time again I'd just download
a cracked version and burn a new disc...

Eventually I overcame the addiction by replacing the habit with going to the
gym 4-5 times a week. Now I spend my time in windows playing with the directx
sdk instead of on Dota.

Not really sure what value this comment adds, but I guess soon even Linux
won't be a semi-safe-haven for Dota addicts (p.s. I have an ATI card so wine
wasn't an option for me).

------
jkw
It looks they're also releasing Dota 2 for Mac:
[http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=96877](http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=96877)

~~~
xentronium
Yeah, just checked. Test client is there, but it's entirely different shard,
almost without any players.

------
orng
For those interested in the MOBA genre but looking for a friendlier community
and a bit more casual, yet faster, gameplay, I can really recommend the
2d-platform version: Awesomenauts. It is available for all three major
platforms: Windows, OSX and Linux. It was part of a recent Humble Indie
Bundle, so you might already have it.

It has been the first online game that I've really become hooked upon since my
old days of playing Warcraft 3 custom maps.

~~~
RKoutnik
Agree 90%. I picked up Awesomenauts in the HIB, and it's been a pleasant
overall experience so far. However, their matchmaking leaves a bit to be
desired. After a half-dozen games, we were matched with a tier 3 prestige'd
player who single-handedly destroyed us.

~~~
orng
Yes the matchmaking can be incredibly frustrating. However it's a hard problem
to solve with such a small player-base. I also don't think it's enough to ruin
the game. I currently have 170 hours logged into the game according to Steam
and I plan to add many more. Hopefully more people join so that we can get
better matchmaking and have even more fun.

------
mtgx
I hear both the Cryengine and Unreal Engine 4 game engines are going to
support Linux. Hopefully this will accelerate the momentum for Linux support.

~~~
qznc
Blizzard is the big missing player for me. While their games work quite well
in Wine, native would be nice.

~~~
dubcanada
Blizzard has Mac OS support, I don't see it being too much work for Linux
native. The main problem is the massive amount of Linux distros. But they
could support ubuntu and their offsets fairly easily.

~~~
broodbucket
They've had an internal Linux build for WoW for ages, it has full OpenGL
support (which SC2/D3 do not, only GLSL)

~~~
TheMakeA
I wonder how much Sam Lantinga is responsible for the existence. As far as I
know he joined Blizzard after coming off of porting games to Linux at Loki
Software. Interestingly, he's now at Valve.

------
bdz
Also, look at the traffic!
[http://i.imgur.com/L8u15PV.png](http://i.imgur.com/L8u15PV.png) (though
that's because of the general Dota release)

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ameen
As a Dota 2 player, this is underwhelming

> Dota 2 Linux Minimum System Requirements:

> Ubuntu 12.04

> Dual core from Intel or AMD at 2.8 GHz

> 4GB RAM

> 4GB Hard Drive Space,

> nVidia GeForce 8600/9600GT, ATI/AMD Radeaon HD2600/3600 (Graphic Drivers:
> nVidia 310, AMD 12.11), OpenGL 2.1

> OpenAL Compatible Sound Card

I run Dota 2 at 720p on my Windows 7 PC with substantially lower spec hardware
- A Core 2 Duo clocked at 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, Intel IGP GMA X4500 (G41 chipset)

This proves that the Source Engine on Linux isn't exactly efficient as its
Windows counterpart as Valve claimed a few months back.

~~~
alecthomas
It may not be quite as dire as you suspect. Firstly, system specs in games are
always specced higher than you need in reality. Secondly, Linux OpenGL driver
quality varies wildly, which is why they list only the two big vendors. IIUC
Intel Linux drivers are actually quite good, so you may be in luck. I would
reserve judgement.

~~~
ameen
It's just that the hardware that I'm currently running the same game on fell
short of the minimum system requirements sort of put me off. Guess I'll have
to report back after checking it.

------
neona
To be perfectly honest, I like the basic idea of the format that DOTA games
present, I just find the execution to be quite awkward, and that's what kills
it for me. It controls like an RTS since it came about as a Warcraft III map,
and that continues to limit it.

Alternative takes on it tend to be fun for me (things like MNC), and I really
feel like the genre would work a lot better with a more action-oriented
control scheme. Something like a GW2 sPvP mode with a dota-style
objective/flow would be quite excellent, in my opinion.

~~~
larrik
Sounds like you'd like the game Smite, then. League of Legends doesn't play
like an RTS so much either, though.

------
hardwaresofton
Does anyone remember the thread where people weren't sure whether steam
releasing games for linux would be definitive in advancing linux? Pepperidge
Farm remembers

------
X4
Now I just need a Laptop with Nvidia Graphics that works on Linux. :( :( Is
there even one?

I have to use vgaswitcheroo to disable my discrete ATI 4550 card, because it
causes artefacts and crashes and consumes too much power. The proprietary
driver doesn't even work at all.

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spleeder
Oh man, this is terrific news!

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donniezazen
I would really love to see Civilization come Steam for Linux.

~~~
mtgx
Civilization VI at least.

~~~
skriticos2
This. And Elder Scrolls 6. And maybe a reasonable successor to Supreme
Commander and Homeworld 2. Planetary Annihilation looks interesting.

~~~
BillyMaize
If there even is an elder scrolls 6. As a fanatical fan my biggest fear is
they will stop producing the single player games once the MMO comes out.

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ssw1n
Now, the last reason tying me to Windows is (about to be) gone ....

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avolcano
And yet, no news on the OSX front, even though the Source Engine has worked on
Mac even longer than it has on Linux. Really was hoping they'd have at least a
Mac beta by the time they started the rolling launch of the Windows version :(

~~~
endianswap
Both OSX and Linux versions of our test client should be available today.

~~~
10098
Props to you guys for all the work you do :-)

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dmead
starcraft 2 still windows/mac only :(

