Shannon SUNSfan Scotten is known most for his casting prowess in Dota 2.
Thank you for taking the time for the interview.
First off, congratulations on the launch of Ability Arena!
Are you happy with the launch and how the game has been received?
Let’s get to the beginning of it all.
How and when was Ability Arena conceptualized, and who was on the core team?
I’m a big fan of other auto battlers and I was really into Atomic War at the time.
But I just kind of gave them a pass during the early stages of playing.
I thought they would address these things that I considered to be very frustrating to deal with.
After some time, however, I realized that these were purposeful design choices.
So from there, I accepted that it would never change and decided to make my own game.
Every single coder I have talked to in the past considers him an absolute legend.
From there, we continued to add modders in the community to work on our passion project.
What was estimated to take 3-4 months, ended up taking a year.
But it was a ton of fun to do and I learned a lot.
I’m really glad to see the game is doing well!
But what made the team decide on releasing it just before TI?
Wouldn’t after TI have made a bigger impact when there is a lull in the Dota 2 scene?
Last time I released a mod (POG), it basically died when the Battle Pass came out.
This time, I made sure the lifespan of the game would be unaffected by anything Valve did.
Either way, I’m happy with how it worked out.
We get five weeks to kind of beta test all our ideas and refine them for upcoming patches.
But Dota 2 Underlords didn’t do too well - what do you think happened there?
You must have taken that into consideration before starting with this project.
I think one main issue was the entire concept of Underlords as actual units.
Not many people were too fond of that.
Having said that, the main reason it died is that they stopped updating it.
Dota 2 Underlords was fun until they brought the actual Underlords into the game.
The way you have it, a bit like Hearthstone Battlegrounds, is probably the most optimum way.
Every player has something unique, but it mostly still depends on the units on the board.
Will there be a set of paid and free Gods each season, and will there be rotations?
As long as we are getting support, we will continue to come out with new Gods.
With each season will also come new spells being rotated in and out, along with a balance patch.
This has made us realize how far off we were on our calculations of giving gold and XP.
This will hopefully make things feel a little better for those that don’t want to spend any money.
I did hear about the XP and Gold issue on ‘We Say Things’.
But I guess that’s a good problem to have, people grinding a lot.
I also heard that you are planning on having a community and streamer tournament monthly!
What is the long-term goal of this project?
Are you thinking of making it a standalone game and an esport?
The goal right now is to continue to update the game and try not to let things get stale.
Was the decision to bring Artifact heroes just a tribute to the game?!
My favorite God is definitely Centaur (shocker).
I love making people tanky and using spells that are not picked very often.
The decision to bring Artifact heroes into the pool was definitely meant as a tribute of sorts.
But without revealing anything more, that is not the only universe we will be representing via our Gods.
What are hero tiers based on?
Are they based on stats?
But we have been refining it since some of the stats are not as relevant in our game mode.
There is a lot more refining left to do.
Have there been any insane combos that you saw from the community that impressed you?!
What are your favorite ones?
Having said that, I love Flesh Golem + Double Edge + Rot + magic resistance spells.
I also think the Icarus Dive + Black Hole combo is hilarious.
And I’m still quite disappointed that people haven’t really discovered the godliness that is Dark Pact.
What an awesome spell!
Haha, I think I am going to try out all these spells now!
Why was Chaotic Offering taken out?
Was it too powerful?
It was taken out because the AI was horrific.
We’re doing another pass on general AI that will fix spells similar to Chaotic Offering.
So expect to see it back soon, but with a nerf.
Quick switch of gears to Dota 2 - congrats on being invited to TI11!
I think this will finally bePSG.LGD’s year.
It seems almost poetic for it to go that way with Zhang Faith_Bian Ruida’s imminent retirement.
They have impressed me the most.
It would indeed be quite poetic if PSG.LGD win with it being Faith_Bian’s last tournament.
Thanks for the interview.
It’s always fun making games that people are enjoying.
