Well, my damn connection is fixed finally, getting rid of the old modem (again) finally, FINALLY did the trick, after waaaayyyyyyyyyyyy too long dealing with it. Mighta done it earlier, but... snow... so much snow... it never stops...
And about bloody time, I've barely touched any of the multiplayer stuffs in like a month and a half.
Granted, I'll still have to put up with Comcast's occaisional outages that happen entirely on their side, or the bit where the connection goes really wonky if there's big storms around, but that's much less irritating than it only working for 2 minutes at a time.
Lessee, as for this Strife game:
2. Integrated courier. Each player gets their own (invincible courier) that can deliver items to them from the base, then has a short cooldown before it can be used again.
Ahhhhh, I like this one. Dota, I dont like the courier system very much. Not because it's a bad gameplay concept, because it definitely isnt, it's a pretty good idea, but because you have to deal with the entire team having ONE of the things, and, well..... yeah, you cant always rely on your teammates to be fair about it (or logical about it) unless you're always playing with the same group of people, which many players such as myself cannot do.
5. Killing Roshan (Nashor) gives your team a giant Gorilla that goes down a lane and kills things (mostly towers).
This had me at "giant gorilla".
Last hitting still exists but gold is automatically split between any allied heroes in the lane. This makes supports vastly more relevant. Honestly it's pretty genius.
This is a good one too. I'm glad more games are doing this now, the last hitting is a bit too blasted obnoxious for my tastes, so this sounds good. Dawngate does a very similar thing, though it's dependant on the "role" you choose, but generally as a support I dont have to always be out of gold, and I dont have to last-hit anything, period. I just need to be nearby when minions/creeps/mobs/somethings are killed, wether they're last-hit properly or not. And I can get more gold by simply irritating my opponent with constant pokes, which is highly entertaining. Typically I have enough to get all the items I need, something I cant really say about Dota or LoL at all. Infinite Crisis is doing something about the last-hitting as well, in that missing a last hit doesnt cause less money to be had, it instead simply drops the money onto the ground in the form of a coin that you must pick up, instead of giving it directly to you.
2. They keep the LoL "bush" mechanic, it's almost exactly the same.
Feh. IS there a non-Dota moba that doesnt do this? I mean, I can sorta see WHY they do it, but.... bah. Never cared for it too much.
3. All heroes free to play.
About bloody time this one happened. I understand the F2P model and why they work the way they do, but still. Valve can do it in a different way, so others can too, they just havent...
1. There's some kind of mastery/crafting/item system that levels up your power outside the game. I suppose the pet is part of this as well. I obviously hate this kind of thing but I know too little about it at the moment to understand how much of an actual impact that it has.
Eeehhhh. This one I dont mind too much, in concept. My one problem with it is that players dont START with the necessary whatsits to fully use it, they must be earned, very, VERY slowly. At least the exact implementation has been different enough from one game to the next. Dawngate's is.... er..... confusing, frankly. That one's complicated and I havent fully grasped it yet, but I do like the way it works. It'd take too long to give a full explanation of it. Infinite Crisis finally added this sort of thing as well (as I knew they would) but I havent had a chance to mess with it yet so I dont know how it works. The pet thing in Strife here sounds a little weird, but no weirder than the others, I suppose. Probably.
Be sure to let us know what your impressions are as you continue further into it. I'm interested in this one. I've a feeling I'm not getting into it for awhile, but as new ones go Dawngate and Infinite Crisis will hold me over just fine for now.