Ant
01-07-2006, 07:04 PM
Last I left off, I was talking about the pooling ban in competitions these days, and to my horror I realised that I completely left out the part about just how the pooling ban is enforced.
The current popular rule is: No passing of items owned by one hero to another, no sharing of control.
Simple, absolute, complete rule to prevent pooling. No possibility of pooling is entertained, and it makes it simpler for game marshalls to catch when a player pools. Of course, there is a chance that a pooling attempt will be left uncaught, but the high chance of getting caught while sharing control or passing an item to another hero should be enough deterrent to players to prevent them from even trying.
Let's look at another rule used to control pooling before discussing this one.
HCJC DotA Competition (Real name unconfirmed): Items may be bought through another hero (through sharing of control). However, that item must be passed to the buyer without being used in combat.
I assume that items like ring of regeneration being "used" means that the hero regenerates health, and other items being "used" means the hero is either hit, casts a spell, or hits other heroes while holding that item.
Both rules prevent pooling, but differ in what else they restrict. The popular competition rule restricts you from even using your gold to buy items for yourself through a medium, whereas the HCJC DotA competition rule does none of that.
Exhibit A part 2: Sharing control.
So now we move on to a related rule, usually in the same line as the pooling rule. No sharing of control is allowed. The first use of this rule, of course, is that it makes each player be required to stand on his own two feet. Team co-ordination is essential, one cannot pass control to his teammate and have an follow-up stun be perfectly timed without any effort on his part. The lack of control sharing in this manner, I feel, is not a restriction, merely another component of gameplay. It is not imbalanced or neccessary though, since not many people can control 2 heroes at once and use them better than 2 people each controlling one hero (we're talking high level games here, not pubbies), but it does mean that a team cannot nullify a weak link in their co-ordination by having that weak link share control, not that it matters much since almost all DotA teams in competitions comprise of players which have sufficient skill to work well enough with their team without needing to share control anyway.
Next, the more important part of not being able to share control, is that items cannot be bought on another hero, or on someone else's chicken. This, like the previous part of sharing control to help in team manuevres, is not an imbalanced tactic or anything, but unlike the previous part, it affects the gameplay majorly in the early parts of the game.
In the early stages of the game, the experience and gold lost (since you are unable to farm) from returning home to buy items or heal incurs a very large loss in the near future when you return to your lane and find the enemy hero at a significantly higher level than you, and more well-farmed too. If you can buy items through another hero, two heroes in a lane can take turns to buy essential items like sapphire waters, boots, and stat boosting items, while not losing out in experience gain, and effectively "controlling" an enemy hero on your lane becomes significantly more difficult.
Is being allowed to buy items through another hero a good thing for gameplay? I feel, no. There should be some sort of penalty incurred if a hero wishes to purchase stat boosting items. Does this rule restrict a certain possible but not imbalanced tactic? Yes, I believe it sort of does, but while the tactic is not imbalanced, it is "very beneficial", and forcing heroes to go home to buy their items seems to make gameplay better. Moreover, with the introduction of the chicken, players can purchase and acquire items while they are still farming with just a small price and the risk of the chicken being killed while running to them, so to earn the benefit of being able to receive items while still in their lanes, they have to pay a small price, which seems reasonable to me. I do realise though, that most of the time I play heroes that can easily control the opponent heroes in the early game, so I might be biased on this, on I don't have as solid a justification for this rule as for the prevention of pooling.
Exhibit B: Backdooring - The act of entering your opponent's base without their knowledge with the purpose of taking out structures. "Without their knowledge" here is subjective. If your opponent is blur enough to not notice 1024 creeps pushing into his bottom lane it's not exactly considered backdooring. Usually "without their knowledge" can be redefined as "without their being able to stop you from entering their base even if they had disablers and know that you were coming long ago".
This comes in several different forms. There's:
a) Furion cannot teleport into an enemy base, and Ignis Fatuus cannot teleport into an enemy base either, without the presence of your own Scourge/Sentinel creeps in the base.
b) Heroes cannot BoT into enemy bases without the presence of their own Scourge/Sentinel creeps in the base (since you can't BoT on heroes anymore the only way to do this now is to use player-owned creeps, acquired through any means).
c) Heroes cannot blink into the enemy's base.
d) Heroes cannot enter their opponents' base without creeps first being in the base (notice, "enter" means they can stay there if they were in there when the creeps were gone).
First, I would like to say that rules c and d are not in recent competitions, and THANK GOODNESS THEY AREN'T. They basically can be exploited such that all the opponent heroes are on the top of the slope, and simply kill creeps before they enter their base, and the other side's heroes can't touch them. In fact, I wrote c and d as well as this entire paragraph just to make a point that there are competition rules that have been made which can be too easily exploited, and restrict too much just to achieve a purpose (granted, it is very difficult to backdoor if you can only enter your opponent's base when your creeps are there). These are actual competition rules which have been exploited (rule c was not actually a rule on paper but suddenly became a rule in the GXL Season 3 finals, causing disqualification of some teams). How to correct rule d would be simple. Simply add the clause "unless the creeps were prevented entry to the opponent's base by getting killed by their heroes in the first place", but it seems no one wanted to add that before the rule was abolished.
At this point it should be noted that some tournaments have completely done away with the backdooring rule, or just include rules a and b. This is because with the advent of town portal scrolls, countering a backdoor becomes much much easier. However, all this time, we still have yet to establish what exactly is wrong with backdooring that makes (or made) it banned.
So let us try to find a reason for restricting teams from backdooring. Since we have established that pooling is an imbalanced tactic that requires restriction in order to allow for better gameplay, we can compare it to backdooring to see if backdooring is an imbalanced tactic.
Pooling is imbalanced because it:
- Is unstoppable
- Has great returns
- Has extremely greater returns than costs and risks
- Can be done in every situation and be almost always beneficial
On the other hand, backdooring:
- Has great returns
- Is easy to stop (other than with teleport, will discuss this later)
- Cannot be done in every situation, and is not always beneficial
- Has great costs and risks in most situations
Other than teleporting, backdooring is easy to stop (given good and cautious play), and moreover, a proper situation is required in order to backdoor effectively (the backdooring hero must be strong, the enemy heroes have to be significantly far from the backdoor targeT), and timing is required so that the backdooring hero can return to defend a push (if the enemy is pushing) or that his team can hold off 4v5. Moreover, backdooring is not neccessary to win a backdooring team, and a backdooring team can easily lose to a team of equal skill that does not backdoor. As such, I see backdooring as a perfectly fine and balanced tactic (except for the cases where a hero teleports in), and with the advent of town portals, banning of backdooring restricts a viable and reasonable tactic that can be countered. The restriction of backdooring though, offers a form of gameplay that is more team based (instead of just one hero moving off to kill a tower), and that's about all the reason I can think of for competitions banning backdooring.
As for the issue of furion or ignis fatuus or BoT teleporting into the enemy's base, it is unstoppable, but I have no solid and simple reasons for explaining why they are imbalanced or perfectly balanced tactics, and they are also very very exclusive rules pertaining only to certain cases, so I won't elaborate on them.
Next and last up: Bug abuse and Modes of hero picking
The current popular rule is: No passing of items owned by one hero to another, no sharing of control.
Simple, absolute, complete rule to prevent pooling. No possibility of pooling is entertained, and it makes it simpler for game marshalls to catch when a player pools. Of course, there is a chance that a pooling attempt will be left uncaught, but the high chance of getting caught while sharing control or passing an item to another hero should be enough deterrent to players to prevent them from even trying.
Let's look at another rule used to control pooling before discussing this one.
HCJC DotA Competition (Real name unconfirmed): Items may be bought through another hero (through sharing of control). However, that item must be passed to the buyer without being used in combat.
I assume that items like ring of regeneration being "used" means that the hero regenerates health, and other items being "used" means the hero is either hit, casts a spell, or hits other heroes while holding that item.
Both rules prevent pooling, but differ in what else they restrict. The popular competition rule restricts you from even using your gold to buy items for yourself through a medium, whereas the HCJC DotA competition rule does none of that.
Exhibit A part 2: Sharing control.
So now we move on to a related rule, usually in the same line as the pooling rule. No sharing of control is allowed. The first use of this rule, of course, is that it makes each player be required to stand on his own two feet. Team co-ordination is essential, one cannot pass control to his teammate and have an follow-up stun be perfectly timed without any effort on his part. The lack of control sharing in this manner, I feel, is not a restriction, merely another component of gameplay. It is not imbalanced or neccessary though, since not many people can control 2 heroes at once and use them better than 2 people each controlling one hero (we're talking high level games here, not pubbies), but it does mean that a team cannot nullify a weak link in their co-ordination by having that weak link share control, not that it matters much since almost all DotA teams in competitions comprise of players which have sufficient skill to work well enough with their team without needing to share control anyway.
Next, the more important part of not being able to share control, is that items cannot be bought on another hero, or on someone else's chicken. This, like the previous part of sharing control to help in team manuevres, is not an imbalanced tactic or anything, but unlike the previous part, it affects the gameplay majorly in the early parts of the game.
In the early stages of the game, the experience and gold lost (since you are unable to farm) from returning home to buy items or heal incurs a very large loss in the near future when you return to your lane and find the enemy hero at a significantly higher level than you, and more well-farmed too. If you can buy items through another hero, two heroes in a lane can take turns to buy essential items like sapphire waters, boots, and stat boosting items, while not losing out in experience gain, and effectively "controlling" an enemy hero on your lane becomes significantly more difficult.
Is being allowed to buy items through another hero a good thing for gameplay? I feel, no. There should be some sort of penalty incurred if a hero wishes to purchase stat boosting items. Does this rule restrict a certain possible but not imbalanced tactic? Yes, I believe it sort of does, but while the tactic is not imbalanced, it is "very beneficial", and forcing heroes to go home to buy their items seems to make gameplay better. Moreover, with the introduction of the chicken, players can purchase and acquire items while they are still farming with just a small price and the risk of the chicken being killed while running to them, so to earn the benefit of being able to receive items while still in their lanes, they have to pay a small price, which seems reasonable to me. I do realise though, that most of the time I play heroes that can easily control the opponent heroes in the early game, so I might be biased on this, on I don't have as solid a justification for this rule as for the prevention of pooling.
Exhibit B: Backdooring - The act of entering your opponent's base without their knowledge with the purpose of taking out structures. "Without their knowledge" here is subjective. If your opponent is blur enough to not notice 1024 creeps pushing into his bottom lane it's not exactly considered backdooring. Usually "without their knowledge" can be redefined as "without their being able to stop you from entering their base even if they had disablers and know that you were coming long ago".
This comes in several different forms. There's:
a) Furion cannot teleport into an enemy base, and Ignis Fatuus cannot teleport into an enemy base either, without the presence of your own Scourge/Sentinel creeps in the base.
b) Heroes cannot BoT into enemy bases without the presence of their own Scourge/Sentinel creeps in the base (since you can't BoT on heroes anymore the only way to do this now is to use player-owned creeps, acquired through any means).
c) Heroes cannot blink into the enemy's base.
d) Heroes cannot enter their opponents' base without creeps first being in the base (notice, "enter" means they can stay there if they were in there when the creeps were gone).
First, I would like to say that rules c and d are not in recent competitions, and THANK GOODNESS THEY AREN'T. They basically can be exploited such that all the opponent heroes are on the top of the slope, and simply kill creeps before they enter their base, and the other side's heroes can't touch them. In fact, I wrote c and d as well as this entire paragraph just to make a point that there are competition rules that have been made which can be too easily exploited, and restrict too much just to achieve a purpose (granted, it is very difficult to backdoor if you can only enter your opponent's base when your creeps are there). These are actual competition rules which have been exploited (rule c was not actually a rule on paper but suddenly became a rule in the GXL Season 3 finals, causing disqualification of some teams). How to correct rule d would be simple. Simply add the clause "unless the creeps were prevented entry to the opponent's base by getting killed by their heroes in the first place", but it seems no one wanted to add that before the rule was abolished.
At this point it should be noted that some tournaments have completely done away with the backdooring rule, or just include rules a and b. This is because with the advent of town portal scrolls, countering a backdoor becomes much much easier. However, all this time, we still have yet to establish what exactly is wrong with backdooring that makes (or made) it banned.
So let us try to find a reason for restricting teams from backdooring. Since we have established that pooling is an imbalanced tactic that requires restriction in order to allow for better gameplay, we can compare it to backdooring to see if backdooring is an imbalanced tactic.
Pooling is imbalanced because it:
- Is unstoppable
- Has great returns
- Has extremely greater returns than costs and risks
- Can be done in every situation and be almost always beneficial
On the other hand, backdooring:
- Has great returns
- Is easy to stop (other than with teleport, will discuss this later)
- Cannot be done in every situation, and is not always beneficial
- Has great costs and risks in most situations
Other than teleporting, backdooring is easy to stop (given good and cautious play), and moreover, a proper situation is required in order to backdoor effectively (the backdooring hero must be strong, the enemy heroes have to be significantly far from the backdoor targeT), and timing is required so that the backdooring hero can return to defend a push (if the enemy is pushing) or that his team can hold off 4v5. Moreover, backdooring is not neccessary to win a backdooring team, and a backdooring team can easily lose to a team of equal skill that does not backdoor. As such, I see backdooring as a perfectly fine and balanced tactic (except for the cases where a hero teleports in), and with the advent of town portals, banning of backdooring restricts a viable and reasonable tactic that can be countered. The restriction of backdooring though, offers a form of gameplay that is more team based (instead of just one hero moving off to kill a tower), and that's about all the reason I can think of for competitions banning backdooring.
As for the issue of furion or ignis fatuus or BoT teleporting into the enemy's base, it is unstoppable, but I have no solid and simple reasons for explaining why they are imbalanced or perfectly balanced tactics, and they are also very very exclusive rules pertaining only to certain cases, so I won't elaborate on them.
Next and last up: Bug abuse and Modes of hero picking