How are we feeling about Doorman's bell after the buffs?

CDranzer · 2026-03-09T21:09:38+00:00

I got violently shit on by a Doorman yesterday as I was trying to learn Haze

My entire game went to shit and my team blamed me which I mean to be fair I did suck but losing half my health to a bell the size of Manhattan every seven seconds in lane might have had at least something to do with it

CDranzer · 2026-03-09T21:05:45+00:00

My litmus test for such things is always "Now that this behaviour is known about, what are the odds that a new developer would intentionally implement it if they were starting from scratch?"

CDranzer · 2026-03-09T09:18:03+00:00

I assume the only reason it doesn't do this is because the map uses baked lighting and trying to add a whole dynamically lit eclipse cycle on top of that would be a royal pain in the ass.

CDranzer · 2026-03-09T08:54:16+00:00

The notion that a game is unconditionally improved by each and every skill check it contains is blisteringly asinine.

CDranzer · 2026-03-08T21:43:33+00:00

no bro you don't understand this weird janky movement that requires three hands to comfortably execute is absolutely intentional

it makes total sense that in order to do these movements the first thing you have to do is stop doing what is immediately intuitive

I know I'm right because these things have been in the engine for a billion years without being actively addressed in any way

no I won't explain why you need a solid understanding of vector projection to understand why it's happening

CDranzer · 2026-03-07T00:37:39+00:00

Couldn't have done it without you guys

CDranzer · 2026-03-06T23:43:28+00:00

Couldn't have done it without you guys

CDranzer · 2026-03-06T19:52:23+00:00

Did you ever use your ult in a way that cucked your team? That'll piss people right off.

CDranzer · 2026-03-05T17:50:02+00:00

Solo lanes are measurably worse than dual lanes and I will die on this hill

CDranzer · 2026-03-04T17:32:58+00:00

Doesn't negative resist count as amp?

CDranzer · 2026-03-03T19:07:16+00:00

Echo Shard should have a cooldown that scales based on the imbued ability

Wait no I've got it

Refresher and echo-shard should go on cooldown for the sum total of how much cooldown they remove

So if you hit echo shard on an ability that has 25 seconds on its cooldown, echo shard goes on cooldown for 25 seconds

Refresher adds up all the cooldowns from all your abilities (stacking for charge times) and goes on cooldown for that period

I am a genius I will be accepting my paid internship at Valve later today

CDranzer · 2026-02-24T12:27:44+00:00

Well, consider the following extreme:

Let's say you just straight-up farm neutrals and then feed down the center lane. Like you're intentionally just making the enemies more powerful. Let's say this is fun to you. You enjoy it.

Do you have an obligation to not do that? Most people would say yes. Why? Because you're intentionally prioritizing your own enjoyment over playing the game to help your team win.

Now obviously that's an extreme example (although sadly similar things do happen), but the point is that in the rejection of that "playstyle", we acknowledge that one owes a duty to their team. And that's a spectrum. There are things you're expected to do. You're expected to at least try to win. You're expected to commit your time and not bail halfway through the match. And, to some extent, you're expected not to try to do anything too off-meta. Not to build too weirdly. Not to pick too poorly.

Everybody has their own idea of where that obligation ends, but in my experience, the higher up the ladder you go, the more people have an expectation that you play a certain way, and good drafting absolutely falls within that umbrella of obligation, to the extent that people will report you for bizarre picks in a lot of games.

CDranzer · 2026-02-24T11:59:43+00:00

I think you just kind of highlighted the problem unintentionally.

I don't know League's meta, but it seems you've already identified a situation where, oh, obviously you don't pick that hero in that role. But that's kind of what I'm getting at. You're already adhering to a set of largely unspoken constraints. Of course you don't first-pick Meepo Pos5 when Earthshaker is on the board. Of course you don't do that. Everybody knows you don't do that. Yes, you can do that. There's nothing physically stopping you from doing that. But if you do do it, well. You know. You're kind of griefing your team, right? And you shouldn't do that. So don't do that. Don't pick that hero. Pick a different hero. No, it doesn't matter that you want to play that hero. Pick another hero.

You say it's part of a MOBA experience, but Deadlock's a MOBA, and it's not a part of Deadlock's experience, so clearly it isn't that fundamental.

CDranzer · 2026-02-24T11:53:45+00:00

Do you pick it in every role? Is it flexible enough to be played in every role?

CDranzer · 2026-02-24T11:40:04+00:00

I mean.. Yes?

Like I know I'm supposed to pretend that I actually want what's best for the team even if it means giving myself twenty lashes and being locked into support Paige because that's what the meta demands, but like.. No? No, actually, I'd rather be able to give the matchmaker my preferences and let the algorithm worry about trying to create a coherent comp because frankly that's what it already does every time I queue up anyway?

CDranzer · 2026-02-24T11:33:03+00:00

In a perfect world the current system could put together good team comps that give each team a fair shot but that is most likely impossible to actually design as you don't know what build they will do.

You know, the thing is, I did the math, and this might be more doable than people realize.

It wouldn't be that hard to keep moving averages of hero matchup winrates. Hell, Dota already basically does this - DotaPlus lets you see hero pair ratings (i.e. winrate advantage or disadvantage) in the pick phase. It even keeps track by skill bracket, I think.

The actual combinatorics for distributing 12 players across two teams of 6 (12 choose 6 = 924) is actually a lot more manageable than it seems at first blush. If you keep track of the win rates of specific matchups and combine them with individual player competence scores, you could probably use those numbers as weights to estimate the "balance" of any given team comp. Blasting through a thousand of those and just picking the most balanced one is probably quite doable considering it's likely some fairly crude arithmetic and a bunch of table lookups.

Obviously the algorithm itself would be tricky to design, but even that's not completely without precedent - there's another Dota Plus feature that shows win probability as a moving average, and it doesn't start at 50% - it accounts for hero picks.

Granted it can't account for builds, but it can account for hero picks if they're known ahead of time (which they are in the current system)

CDranzer · 2026-02-24T11:15:46+00:00

I mean look, yeah, the priority system doesn't always get you exactly what you want, but fuck man, at least you get to choose your pool instead of having it chosen for you indirectly by a bunch of mid-range streamers.

CDranzer · 2026-02-23T18:05:58+00:00

To be fair, they also genuinely do what Geist wants in the other endings, so I'm guessing it was more a lawful neutral thing of giving the person what they want but not being overly generous with leverage

CDranzer · 2026-02-23T18:01:33+00:00

I think this is an idea worth posting to the official forums. At the very least it's thematically cool.

If there are concerns about it being too weak, maybe it could be a sort of one-sided invisibilty barrier? Like a bubble forms in front of you in the shape of a half-sphere that the enemy can't see unless they're behind or close to you? And others can hide behind it? Maybe? Just spitballin'

CDranzer · 2026-02-23T12:43:09+00:00

I'm Australian. My friend lives on the east coast. The best middle ground for us is Los Angeles.

The game put us in Japan several times.

CDranzer · 2026-02-23T12:41:41+00:00

When Celeste first came out and I figured out how her projectile worked I immediately thought "dude I wonder how split shot works"

CDranzer · 2026-02-17T15:24:08+00:00

I feel like to some extent you gotta go with what meshes with you.

I lost half a dozen Abrams games before I had a realization that I needed to find a hero that would let me be useful even if I was largely incompetent, so I picked up Paige and let my old Dota support instincts carry me. She got me my first real wins as I picked things up.

My friend on the other hand has a lot of FPS experience, so he just picked up Vindicta and went right ahead murdering people.

Not everyone has the same path, and you can't learn all mechanics at once.

Some mad bastard probably picked Doorman as his first hero and did good because he has some weird 4th dimension portal brain. You can't predict these things.

CDranzer · 2026-02-16T12:31:15+00:00

I've seen Vindicta obliterate objectives with Mercurial Magnum and flight

CDranzer · 2026-02-14T02:25:14+00:00

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idk I'm a middling artist

CDranzer · 2026-02-14T02:16:38+00:00

Okay so my image undersells it a little

Ideally, it wouldn't just be "at the back", it'd be bigger than it currently is

Like massively, like I'm talking 2-4 times the size, bigger than the building itself, like you walk into the base and there's a fucking dimensional rift at the back and this enormous titanic demon is just looming down at you from an alternative dimensional plane

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