Difficulty of heroes

[chuah]

I am aware from the B2P/F2P thread etc that most if not all people don't want restrictions on heroes played. I don't play LoL or HoN, but I understand why their system of having a few heroes works - because people pick a hero and learn them.

I propose a simple fix to this in DOTA 2 - in the same way that heroes have been labelled as Carry, Ganker, Initiator etc,
could we just have a simple "Easy, Medium, Hard" in terms of difficulty to play?

For example, it could go something like this (of course, the difficulty is debatable, but so are Valve's labels on some heroes)

Riki:
Carry, Easy Difficulty

Heroes in the Easy category would be ones that are noob friendly. Sure, any hero can feed, but when you get to be invisible every 3 seconds, it is a fair bit harder to kill you (without wards/dust etc). These heroes would be those with 1 or 2 active skills at most.

Axe:
Initiator, Medium Difficulty

Heroes in the Medium category would be ones that take a bit of skill in terms of 1. having their skills hit and 2. item build. Axe falls nicely into this category because 1. you pretty much need a blink dagger for him if you want to play initiator and 2. you need to land call properly.

Pudge:
Ganker, Hard Difficulty

Heroes in the Hard category would be the ones that take a lot of skill in landing skills - such as pudge and mirana, since their hook and arrow miss a lot.

Invoker:
(whatever he is), Very Hard Difficulty

Very Hard would be reserved for those heroes that require a lot of micro. Invoker and Chen are some good examples of this.

What do you think?

[stereodic]

Doesn't the game already tell you what heroes you should play if you pick 'Low' skill when you start out?

The difficulties in HoN are not that accurate and people will have have different preferences which further complicates it.

I'm not against the idea I just think it's a bit pointless.

[Drkirby]

No, the game doesn't yet. There does seem to be some references in a few places that it will be added soon enough.

[ehtom]

I kinda loled at Riki easy difficulty but invoker very hard difficulty.

If they did this it would have to be something like:

"Easy":- Heroes that a fundamentally bad player (as in, complete noob) can pick and still be useful with - e.g. Tide, Sven
"Medium":- Heroes that a bad player can pick and do well with - e.g. Anti-Mage, Invoker, Mirana, Pudge, Windrunner.
"Hard":- Heroes that require a decent player to not feed on and be useful - e.g. Riki, Lone Druid, Lion, Rhasta, Chen.
"Very Hard":- Heroes that even professional players find it hard to win games with - e.g. Sniper, Drow

[Florin]

All of the heroes are easy or hard, great or bad, it depends by your abilities and it matters what your opponent picks cause if you have riki and they have slardar or bounty hunter then your riki would be tracked easily. The fact that a hero has two buttons only to activate an ability(like sniper, bloodseeker etc) doesn't mean they are easy to be played. You'll have to play the game more to understand it, I think your suggestion comes from a point of view of a newbie player.

[moitoius]

I like the idea of this - telling players how complicated heroes are (HoN does this for EA heroes). Your criteria for 'easy' is completely off though: ehtom has the right idea.

Riki: Carry, Easy Difficulty

Repeat after me: "Riki is not invisible." He never is: if your opponents are not complete trash they will carry around said items (wards, gem, necro book, dust) and any experience you earned playing that hero against noobs (who do not have these items) will be entirely useless. Noobs should not play heroes like this.

"Hard":- Heroes that require a decent player to not feed on and be useful - e.g. Riki, Lone Druid, Lion, Rhasta, Chen.
"Very Hard":- Heroes that even professional players find it hard to win games with or that need good micro skills - e.g. Sniper, Drow

Some people are just not born with the required micro skills (like myself) and should avoid these heroes entirely. In fact, I would have a third category for them: "Hard, Micro Required" - because if you don't have the needed micro abilities you will land up throwing a game. Finally, a further additional category could be added "can carry" indicating that the hero has carry traits that are not usually exploited (e.g. Silencer).

This is getting a bit mad and what's actually needed is:

• Keep the current classes system - possibly add difficulty: but difficulty depends on what role you choose for the hero (in my example below).
• Add an additional tab like "Lore", possibly "Summary", that contains information about the different options for the hero: "Silencer is a relatively easy hero that is usually played in a supporting role. He can support his lane partner by using Curse of the Silent and Glaives of Wisdom to harass and restrict enemies in the lane. Intermediate players should be able to play him as a carry because Glaives of Wisdom has the potential to do a lot of damage output."

[roger]

If a hero is easy or hard to play isn't really relevant here. It also depends on personal experience/preference.
But one could label many heroes either as beginner friendly or not. Tide, Sven, Leoric, Lich for example are heroes a beginner could do well with, but of course an experienced player would play them on a complete different level.

[chuah]

I'm not stating that these are necessarily the rankings that we would give those heroes in particular. What I am saying is that there should be a system whereby people have some guidance as to how difficult the hero is to play.

I know there are obviously some counters to riki etc. But essentially, any hero with a panic button (read - blink/invis), while it does not necessarily make the hero easy to play, does make it easier for the noob to NOT DIE, which in a lot of cases, is enough.

Anyway, that discussion aside - the technicalities can of course be sorted out as to which hero is what difficulty - just that it should exist to help new players pick heroes to enjoy the game (and frustrate more skilled players a little less.)

[chuah]

Repeat after me: "Riki is not invisible." He never is: if your opponents are not complete trash they will carry around said items (wards, gem, necro book, dust) and any experience you earned playing that hero against noobs (who do not have these items) will be entirely useless. Noobs should not play heroes like this.

Okay, I agree, riki is a bad example. However, in said games where noobs play, you'll be hard pressed to find someone who does actually buy dust or wards, thus making him, at least, a character less likely to feed. Put simply - there is a lot of complete trash out there.

[chuah]

Criteria can be figured out from analysis from better players. I don't propose to be an expert in this field at all, but I would like to see first time players not pick invoker or chen and just go 0/12.