Counter-picking in All Pick

This seems to have been more and more of a problem in AP (All Pick) games recently. One team picks most or all of their heroes by the time you can enter the game, and the other team picks just 1, then pauses the game immediately to give the rest of them time to counter pick.

It's pretty annoying and seems kind of cheap - the whole idea of AP is that people can start a game quickly without going through Captain's Mode, which deliberately makes picking a vital part of the pre-game.

Icefrog/Valve seem to agree as they imposed the gold penalty on very late picks, which was a welcome step forward.

It's not that I completely disagree with counter-picking or that you shouldn't respond to opponent's picks, but it seems cheap when you get 4-5 stacks deliberately waiting and pausing in order to do so against solo/2 stack players who struggle enough to make reasonable laning/role choices as it is without the benefit of existing comms.

I've even taken to occasionally making a strong but easily countered pick, waiting for them to counter-pick, and then repicked just to screw with them. Seems like the only way to punish this tactic?

What do you think would be the best way of dealing with this?

Personally, it would be kinda nice if you didn't get big stacks playing smaller groups to start with - either the big stack is TERRIBLE, or their teamwork/comms is easily enough to stomp. Personally I'd like to make it impossible to pause until say 10 seconds before the creeps start spawning - the gold loss will bite for every second you dither or consider counters, as designed.

Alternatively there seems the nuclear option of just forcing randoms on players who haven't picked by the time you can spawn? It might actually make the picking time constructive.

It's easy. Increase the gold loss per second and not allow pausing so early unless you play captain's mode / draft.

Unpausing has worked well for me. But they should increase the gold/second penalty. 1 gold per second is nothing.

I completely agree with the problem but I disagree with the solutions.

First off if you're playing against an obvious 4-stack or 5-stack in ranked and you see them pause just at the end of the picking phase then you should unpause instantly no questions asked. They are obviously discussing counterpicks so screw them. To be honest, when I see an obvious 5-stack not picking a single hero before seeing our team's 5 picks, pausing blatantly, and more than 3 counterpicks to our team's heroes popping just after, I'm hitting that report button.

Neither of the solutions given work. let me explain :

- If you force random heroes if you don't pick before the timer, it doesn't work because everybody will be picking at the very end (5 seconds before the end of the timer). The goal is not to reward people who pick last, the goal is to reward people who pick FIRST. Right now there's absolutely no reward for picking first, that's why everyone plays that game of p***y and pick last.

- Preventing pauses during picking phase is good but it doesn't solve the main problem.

No, to solve this problem you need a more in-depth / radical approach, which starts by acknowledging that *All Pick is not suitable for any kind of competitive play, even casual competitive play*. Therefore all pick has no place in ranked.

We need to create an *alternative* game mode that is *actually* suitable to competitive play, and which should gradually substitute All Pick in ranked. There are two alternatives :

- Blind pick. Somehow inspired by LoL's picking system adapted to DotA. It's like All Pick, except that *you don't see the enemy team's picks during the picking phase*, just your own team's picks. This way you can make your team's strategy but you have zero information on the enemy team's strategy. Only problem is duplicate heroes (having both teams pick the same hero), but this is easy to deal with, e.g if a hero is picked twice you can remove the hero from the pool completely and ask both players to repick until they pick 2 different heroes (and if they still pick the same hero after 3 tries then each gets a random hero).
Sometimes it makes me laugh that DotA has the reputation of being "pro" when they have such a childish picking system compared to LoL.

- All draft. It's like random draft, except that all heroes are available not just a limited pool. Each team takes turn picking, your team picks the first hero, the enemy team picks the second, your team picks the third, etc. this way you can counterpick the enemy team as much as you can get counterpicked. This balances counterpicking.

It's kinda weird - sometimes you seem to be able to unpause quickly other times not. I hate being rude and unpausing, but don't think extra time counter-picking is cricket either.

Fair point hamster, two things:

1) If we're gonna keep all pick, I agree no pausing and a bigger gold penalty would help.

2) I like the all draft idea a lot, it solves the problems without taking ages or unbalancing the game through bonus gold for picking early or something.

Tbh I still really want to see a "search by role" game, where you pick 1 (max 2) role(s) from carry/support/mid/jungler/offlane and get matched with an appropriate set of players to make a balanced team. Also means supports get games faster :). Obv major penalties if reported and playing role you didn't subscribe too.

Have you ever been to a dancing class with 2 chicks and 20 dudes? It's a bit like the problem I see here. If 60% people queue for solo mid, 35% for carry and 5% for support you're pretty screwed with that system xD


My argument is that All Pick is *inherently* flawed, and that nothing you do can fix the flaws of the mode. If you put gold penalties it essentially forces everyone to pick in the last 5 seconds of the picking stage which is also bad for other reasons. Right now there are only two competitively viable game modes : captain's mode and single draft. First step should be to put SD in ranked, next step to create all pick and blind pick modes as alternatives to AP and enable them in ranked. And then naturally these modes will replace AP for players who want a "fair" competitive mode.