If you can determine the outcome of the entire match solely on your pick before it even begins...I see that as VERY poor design.
There's a difference between determining the outcome and getting a massive advantage.
It's just a matter of the skill game starting before the picks are done. If you have way more skill at laning than your opponent in the lane then you can often translate that into a massive advantage. Similarly, if you have way more skill at hero picks than your opponents, you can translate that into a massive advantage.
Determining the outcome is beyond any of that, though. I'm guessing there have been situations out there where it wouldn't have mattered if one team somehow accidentally picked creeps to control instead of heroes, they still could have won 
I think Keith understands it.
The picking/banning phase is certainly important, and it can have a huge impact on the rest of the game, but personal and team skill is also a huge factor as well.
Like I said before, in the Sigma vs. Na'Vi game I posted which started this discussion, I thought Na'Vi was done for. I couldn't see a scenario in which they won the game because, in spite of being easily one of the best teams in the world, they were at such a disadvantage in the mid to late game.
Problem is, it never made it that far. Their completely unexpected quad lane gave them such a massive early game dominance that they secured the victory.
So while I understand Managarmr's perspective, and respect it, I personally think the picking phase of DotA adds an extra layer of strategy and complexity that the other games don't offer, or at least not to nearly the same degree. It's like an intellectual chess match happening before the game even begins.
And the sheer inflexibility of Dota's heroes compared to characters of pretty much all of the others has always seemed to me to be one of the biggest contributors to that.
I guess I don't agree with this either. I think out of all the games I've played, DotA may have the most flexible roles, unless you count Strife in which the classical roles have more or less been removed.
As an example, Mirana can lane mid, top solo, bot solo, bot support, bot carry, makes a great trilaner, or heck, she can choose not to lane at all and simply roam around the map setting up ganks with her arrow. Windrunner is similar in this regard. Heroes like Tidehunter can be played mid, solo offlane, or support. In fact there are too many examples to list of heroes that can fill so many different roles. Recently I've seen several classic "supports" such as Lion, Warlock, and even Vengeful Spirit mid, and do it well.
Compare that to a game like League of Legends where a champion really *is* stuck in their role. Literally in competitive play, you're probably never going to see a Soraka, Nami, Taric, etc. play any other role than the role they were designed for. The same goes for carries, top laners, AP mids, or junglers. Some of these champions MAY be able to fill 2 or 3 roles, but it's extremely rare. Even if they can fill multiple roles, they are typically only used in one, if they are used at all. Compare this to DotA where many different heroes are used in many different roles all the time, and it's hard for me to really understand the point you're trying to make. If anything, mechanics like AP just pigeonhole a champion even further because they're forced down a certain build path, where heroes like Invoker can build for physical damage, survivability, disables, escapes, magical damage, aoe, single target, or any combination of them all.
So I guess Valve is releasing their
"Free-to-Play" documentary soon, which can currently be pre-loaded on Steam. I'm pretty excited to see how it turns out.
