help in resolving an argument?

ok so me and a mate were having an argument last night about the use of certain heroes and his point was ..

" i dont like riki pudge sniper drow and those types of heroes because they are too greedy and dont contribute to the team in a more proactive way especially riki"

i agreed on the most part but i said they fell under the "player effect hero"

and by this i mean,

riki forces the enemy team the "players" to use gold for dust sentries and gem while also forcing them to hug towers and only push lanes when they have vision and or with 2 or more heroes to counter him. this is not so much a direct ability of his more an effect he has on the play style of the enemy team.
pudge is similar, by going missing pudge forces to enemy player to act more cautiously and to be in fear of a hook, thus forcing them to buy more wards and play a more defensive game.

he said that there isnt such a thing as a "player effect hero" (i know the name is horrible but i cant think of another one) and that by picking riki you are putting your team at an disadvantage from the get go. honestly i had never played riki until we had this argument and now i play him a lot (mostly trying to prove a point haha)...and i hear pro game commentators refer to some heroes having a "psychological effect" on the enemy players, is this the same thing.

what i want to know is ...

am i completely wrong and i should shut up and go back to hating all riki drow pudge players or do i have a point and is there such a thing?


cheers

I guess their is an effect to it (sort of),
basically whenever I verse them I choose a hero in which I think I can deal against them.
If they turn out to be very good at playing said character I try and get team communication up to counter along with wards, dust etc.
If they are bad then I basically don't worry such as when I versed a "bad" Pudge as Rubick, I just went around hooking the other team :3
Really all I think is that if they are good; you start running away. If they are bad; I enjoy and keep a relative 1:1 kill death ratio.

I do agree that heros especially Pudge and Riki effect the players themselves quite a bit. I have seen repeatedly that enemies react to Riki by 5 maning early. This is of course why I try to play as much Rat DOTA as I can when Riki is on my team. The enemies get very scared to counter me alone thus leading to at least two of them trying to scare me off in the off chance that Riki is near me.
I have to say though I think the best PE that Riki has is the loss of Item slots the other team has to deal with when fighting him especially in pubs where the support won't often forgo all his gold to mass ward.

Yes, certain heroes like pudge and riki have the ability to make you scared, more carefull and force you to 5man.
But Pudge does this simply by being level 7 and off the map, Riki doesnt have the damage to kill enemies that early, he needs atleast something like a diffusal blade.
So unless riki gets fed early by bad players on squishy heroes, or gets good setup though a hero like Io he isnt nearly as scary.

I would fear a well played Bounty Hunter much more. He has high early burst damage, chases really well with track and negates any juking attemps, can stop TP's and punishes you even more for feeding with track gold.
But 90% of bounty hunters are played really bad, since he is a pretty hard hero and you need to have good game knowledge so you can adapt your item and skillbuild to the situation. Most of them just get a battle fury, which is a pretty bad item already but then they finish it at 25 or even 35 minutes. -_-

hahhaha battlefury on a bounty hunter ... if i see an enemy one building it, i automatically think woohoo we have won lol, if i see a team mate building it, i think the opposite haha

and his whole point was that they don't have any team positive abilities, as in no team fight presence. i was arguing that they do but it is more a team player presence.
the main sticking point was that there is no such thing as a psychological effect hero which i argued there was.

I don't really think that the psychological effect comes from the hero itself. Instead I think that it comes from the players' own experiences against those heroes. For example, I hardly ever win when fighting a Legion Commander so I fear her as soon as she is picked. The reverse is also true, some heroes just don't have that much of an effect in the game, namely pub Io. (Keyword: pub)
So by following this logic, the reason people fear heroes like Riki and Pudge is because they do not know how to deal with them/ didn't know how to deal with them. This also explains why these heroes are so commonly picked in low-tier pubs.

Soooooo... Yeah I agree with you that there is a psychological element that is added when picking certain heroes, but as opposed to those heroes directly effecting the players, it's more that the players' prior experiences against that hero that have an effect.

Yeah, I have to agree here, decided to start playing again after a week's break yesterday and the other team picked Pudge. I then picked Queen of Pain. The guy spent the first 5 or 6 minutes cowering in fear by his Tower, giving up all hope of getting any CS against me. He didn't even try to Meat Hook me in all that time, and of the 4 times he did try in the match, only the last one was a "success" that I easily Blinked away from. I couldn't always see him (but I saw him more than he should have let me), but I always knew whenever he was near me, so there was absolutely no fear whatsoever.

So basically, if the "fear heroes" don't demonstrate that they can get you whereever and whenever, no matter what you do, they aren't the least bit scary. There's also a problem if they're up against a Hero that can ignore their killing potential. Does a Bristleback fear backstab? Does a Puck fear Meat Hook? Does a Nightstalker with Agahnim's Scepter and Gem of Truesight get surprised by anything?!

I don't like people who pick those heroes simply because they aren't very good once you get to a certain level of play.

Riki: countered by 180 gold dust. Most carries are both tankier and deal more damage. His only good ability is his cloud, but even that is easily dealt with ( Force Staff)

Pudge: Loses mid against every decent mid hero in the book. Hooks can be avoided if you know when to expect them.

Sniper and Drow aren't as bad as they used to be, but they're situational picks at best and should not be mid (which is where the bads want to play them).

The heroes that I notice cause a change in mentality/playstyle at my level of play (3800-4100 MMR currently) are Mirana ( Moonlight Shadow), Clockwerk ([[Hookshot is far more dangerous than Meat Hook) and any jungler that isn't Chen, Enchantress, Enigma or Batrider (free kills from 2-10 minutes).

so thanks to you lads, im better able to explain :)

ok here we go :) ...

Certain heroes when picked have a larger or more significant affect on how the enemy players react in game due to a variety of factors. these factors are based upon the 3 things.

1. Player history (the most important factor)
- players may have a history of playing against certain heroes and getting horribly destroyed by them, these games impact upon the players memory and affect how he/she responds to that hero in future.
i.e. being more cautious, retreating from chases and different item builds.
i.e. being repetitively pub stomped by a rampaging Bristleback will cause a player when faced with a bristle pick to alter his/her game play.

2. hero abilities
- certain hero's have abilities that affect teams as a whole, not just in team fights. These abilities cause the team/players to react differently to certain situations in game.
i.e. playing against a Riki, players will avoid solo pushing unless they have vision or are actively baiting Riki.
i.e. playing against a Mirana, players will move erratically to counter her arrow as well as when 5 man pushing keeping invisibility detection high against a Moonlight Shadow team gank.

3.Hero play style
-heroes with a certain play style's that provide an advantage illicit stronger reactions from enemy players and in effect, changing the mindset of the opposition.
i.e. a jungling Lifestealer is a threat to late game durable carries, players actively try to gank in jungle to shutdown early.
i.e. Timbersaw or Bristleback are incredibly dangerous solo off-laners, by being put in lane against a hero such as these the stronger reaction from most players is to play a bit more aggressive then normal or to play more cautiously, even to rotate lanes more frequently to try and starve them of early levels.

most of this is also just good strategy, counter Riki with vision, counter pick Brood Mother with an Earth Shaker, place a stun heavy aggressive Trilane against an Off-lane Timbersaw. But i feel confident to say that a definite psychological effect, when all three factors are considered, does change how players react to certain heroes and does give credence to the term "Player Effect Hero"


what do you guys think? sound logical?

That's a interesting conceptualization of heroes. I like it. You might extend the thought with hero role. Playing a Dragon Knight as a hard carry or as a Mid-laner are two very different things, and should be considered as such.

Very interesting...

I am totally writing an article about this on my site at some point.