Home Editorial Dread Of The Ancients: Why I won’t be playing DOTA 2

In my last article, I talked briefly about how a bad experience with a community can turn someone away from a game for years to come. For me, one such game was Counter-Strike due to the characteristically unfriendly community and the non-newb friendly gameplay.

There is still, however, one game that fills me with more dread that Counter-Strike. Honestly, I’d much rather go play EVE than try out this game and I really didn’t like EVE.

As you can probably guess by now, it’s DOTA 2.

The trouble is that there isn’t just one reason why I don’t want to play it, but I do kind of want to see what the fuss is about. So, on the advice of my counsellor, here are the top four reasons why I’m not looking forward to the full release of Valve’s upcoming DOTA 2.

 

Unfriendly Community

Gamers who have been playing for a while will know that some communities are just nicer than others and there doesn’t seem to be a sure way to tell if they’ll be naughty or nice.

Counter-Strike? Terrible community. Call of Duty 2? The only reason why I played that for so long was BECAUSE of the great community. With first person shooters, the mileage can vary as you can find a good set or servers or a bad set of servers.

But with MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games like LoL (League of Legends) and DOTA 2 (Don’t Ostracise That Antelope), you’re stuck with what you’re given. Maybe things have changed over the years, but the community of players on the original DOTA were not very nice people.

  • Selected the wrong Champion? Fuck you.
  • Not been there to immediately help a team mate? Fuck you.
  • Tower in your lane destroyed? Fuck you.
  • Being a new enough player to not know what any of the above means?
    FUCK YOU LONG HAIRED GINGER BASTARD NO ONE LOVES YOU KILL YOURSELF.

I heard that many of the old assholes went over to Heroes of Newerth whereas the more friendly bunch went over to League of Legends (Rabid Ferret: please confirm) but that does beg the question: who fills the population of DOTA 2? My money is on the ‘asshole’ option, so you can understand why I’m not overjoyed at the prospect of being the newbie punching bag again. All of this is alleviated somewhat by having a friend or two who I can play with, but this leads me onto my next concern.

 

I have no idea what I’m doing

New FPS? Give me five minutes and I’ll have everything mapped out in my head. Theories of infinity? I saw them as an interesting concept when the rest of my class was tearing their hair out. String Theory? I taught my physics teacher an easier way to think about it than he was presenting.

MOBA games? Not. A. Clue.

I think it’s something to do with all the different characters you can select along with all the different possible item builds but I just tend to panic and do everything apart from the things which would allow my team to win. I know it’s a Valve game, that it has a tutorial and that Valve tutorials are often pretty good, but it’s difficult to have a tutorial for all the different things in DOTA 2 (Divided Ottoman Territorial Army) when you factor in the basic gameplay, advanced gameplay, tactics, item builds and all the champions. Maybe it’s done and done well but I can’t help but think I’m going to be unprepared no matter what and I’ll be relying on my friend’s patience more than anything to win. Hell, with some games lasting up to an hour and me being a complete idiot, they’re going to HAVE to be patient. Speaking of my friends…

 

Some people have been playing for a long time

This isn’t an intrinsically bad thing, it at least means that there’s something in the game which keeps people coming back for more but there is one problem with it: I’m going to be eaten alive. Even if DOTA 2 (Data? Oh, The Android…) has a decent matchmaking system, I have a feeling that those at the entry level will have had some decent experience with the original game whereas I, well, haven’t.

If there isn’t good matchmaking or, gods forbid, I get bumped up a few skill levels due to playing with experienced friends, I’m just going to get butchered. To draw an analogy to a game I think most of you have played, I’m going to look like a Spy disguised as a Scout or Medic; a slow-motion walking disaster. The difference being that this game has magic and shit so it’s going to be a Spy disguised as a Scout or Medic with pink sparkles flying around.

And as terrible as that all sounds, there is still one last thing holding me back.

 

Missing out on the fun

With everyone who’s played it telling me how much fun it is to play and how awesome it is, I’m paralyzed with the question: where does the fun lie?

Is it in the community? The gameplay? The variety of roles and champions? The strategy? The metagame? Playing it with friends and not really giving a shit? With all the glowing impressions and devoted beta testing playerbase, something is being done right. The question is, is it the Team Fortress 2 kind of fun where you can customise your roles a bit, play how you want, win in unconventional ways and you’re playing a game which hasn’t really been made before? Or is it going to be Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4: Black Ops Harder: THE REVENGE?

140 replies to this post
  1. I think you raise a good point about the game, I’ve played some games with a few horribly elitist players in and it’s ruined the experience for me. As an example, I felt forced to drop out of a game not long ago simply because I’d died a few times and the other 4 members of my team were spamming “OMG NOOB STOP FEEDING”. The worst part about that wasn’t even necessarily that I was being told I wasn’t good, it was that I’d died due to genuine circumstances i.e. I got overwhelmed by a few players.

    I think/hope the matchmaking will redeem it somewhat though, and to be honest, a lot of the time I just type sarcastic responses or ignore the rest of the team when they’re being vocal about their opinion of me.

    It’s definitely not a game solely based on the community though, and I think the main fun would lie with getting a group of you and 4 friends and being good/pathetic at the game together.

    I disagree, however, that it’s a hard game to learn. Having googled firstly “basics of dota 2” and then “tactics for X” I feel like I have a good idea of how to play well after ~15 hours of gameplay. Of course there’s a large amount of heroes, but sticking to one has worked for me so far.

    You can always play against bots if you want too before jumping into a game.

    The main problem for me with the game currently is that when someone disconnects that team has essentially lost. I’ve been in games where someone disconnects within 30 seconds, and from that moment onward you know you’ve lost. Why they can’t let a bot or another player take over confuses me.

  2. This has always been my problem with DOTA. Personally I think the feeding mechanic just breeds team-loathing. Shouldn’t being 1 person down for a minute be penalty enough?

    The other problem is that it simply isn’t an experience you can have casually. If you’re not on top of builds, or the latest strategy, your teammates will hate you. Matchmaking might help this, but until there is a genuine reward for helping players instead of berating them, good luck!

  3. In MOBA games the community is usually bad where it “matters”, as in on max level ranked matches. Since there
    feeding or a leaver can mean a almost sure defeat for your team and the amount of trolls in those games is pretty big the community can get easily frustrated and just assume you are a troll when you do bad in a game and thus proceed to bash you.

    I have only really played LoL a significant time so while writing this I got that game in time, I have however played DOTA 2 a couple times. From what I seen DOTA 2 is a bit more complex, since LoL takes away some of the harshes elements from other MOBA games, i.e. I believe in either HoN or DOTA you can no only deny creep kills to the enemy but you also lose xp when you die not just gold.

    However they aren’t that very hard to learn, and while there may be many different champions and different ways to build them according to their possibly roles it will definitely take some more time to know the right combos/counters.

    But considering we are in the age where you can find anything on the internet you can find pretty good build for different champions online and which champions are easy to fight against and which ones can rape your face by facerolling.

    In the end whats makes it fun for me is just getting the kills.
    Pretty sure anyone will agree that since the kills are announced more spectacularly than in other games your ego gets increased much more than it would in a COD match when you get a kill. Matchmaking isn’t that terrible, but it does have it’s problems with experienced people making smurf accounts just so that they can battle against unexperienced players and increase their e-peen.

    I feel that the bad community that rarely makes you want to improve is what deters or makes people leave most MOBA
    games. If you know the basics of the game (which in LoL you can easily learn in the tutorial and I assume DOTA 2 has a similar tutorial) and can get another good friend or hell get a full team of just friend in you can have a blast, there won’t be much negativity in your teams chat since you all know each other and are more understanding when someone fucks up.

    Learning the game is part of the fun, going from god i suck and can’t aim my skillshots to awesome I predicted my enemies path while he was running away and got him with one of my skillshots. While you are more likely to find
    players who rage at you in the game, it does give a nice sense of satisfaction when you win one, since here it really is a team game, you can’t go lone wolf and single handedly win the game for your team, and the great thing is that
    even if one of your teammates leaves or is a feeder, and this would likely mean you are gonna lose, if the rest of your team is competent enough you can still turn the tables around on a 5v4.

    In the end MOBA games are about getting a bigger e-peen, and try not to break your keyboard while at it

    • I just think that the logic of “This person is doing badly, OMG THEY MUST BE TROLLING” is a ridiculous mindset and I’d be surprised if it’s one that most players have. If anything, I’ve found that a lot of the asshole players start flaming because everything has to be about THEM winning; they don’t care about the team, they just want to win. By themselves. In a team game. Then blame the team if something goes wrong. They’re idiots.

      Whether or not the game is difficult to learn or find info for isn’t the point when considering a community being harsh to new players. As someone who’s been playing games for a while and played quite a bit of LoL, I know that I just need to google “DOTA 2 Drunkard Build” and I’m fine. My friend’s fifteen year old son who has never played a MOBA before wouldn’t know that and instead would be flamed into oblivion. Why do people think that the burden of learning is on the newbie when they could be slightly less aggressive and say “Dude, you’re playing like shit, go to MobaFire and get a decent build”. It was this lack of other players helping the new guys which made me play two games of the original DOTA and then never play it again.

      I also disagree on your point that the community is volatile in higher ranked games “where it matters”. In playing LoL, at least, the amount of flaming and bullshit you get exposed to reduced the further up the ladder you got. Plus, the amount of mistakes that someone would make as a newbie wouldn’t happen further up the ladder because you’re high up on the ladder to not make newbie mistakes any more. Yes people try out new champs and mess up and yes people have bad games/days but that still isn’t an excuse to hurl abuse at a player.

      Games are about fun and online games should be about having fun with other real people. If you want to play a game to get a bigger e-peen then that’s your prerogative. Don’t make it anyone else’s/

      • Well to be fair all of my experience wasn’t that high up the ladder, I guess I should have pointed that out. In the Elo I reached around 1300 I believe (haven’t played in a while).

        For my other points I guess I could have worded them better, I was mostly talking of the people that suck but rage at others, troll, or just rage at them losing like you mentioned. But with this it comes the blaming of a single person for him, normally it isn’t a whole team raging on one guy, but one jerk harrasing a guy and then the team just fighting within itself due to that “rivalry?”( I can’t think of a better word).

        I also had a bad experience in DOTA in my very first game that made me not want to play that again, but with LoL while on the low levels people where more accepting(I tried to jungle with Morgana and people where cool with it). But when I got to max level ones they seemed to become not volatile, but easier to anger at least in the ELO range I was.

  4. I feel that I can confirm that the generally nice population along with a few unavoidable trolls traversed to the League of Legends community. When you look up professional teams like CLG, TSM, etc. they tend to have websites that are very user friendly and explain things well. There are also mobafire build guides, an absolutely enormous and extensive archive of tactics, guides, and many other things that make a League a better overall experience. While I certainly can’t say that everyone will help out a teammate who is new or having trouble, I can say there are a lot more who do. It’s a very artistic, stylish, fun community filled with very nice people. As a game, I believe League is more solid as well than DOTA. The constant patches for balance, superb number of champions, items, etc. makes it always playable but still very challenging. The matchmaking mechanics as well are fairly well done and as Bin said, the higher up the ladder you go and the more you commit to the game, the better you will become and the less flaming bullshit you’ll experience. Overall I see it as an awesome, but not quite perfect, game.

  5. I believe i’ve played a game of DOTA 2 before. The game ended with a friend screaming at me on steam for doing everything wrong, when I asked specifically what I did wrong, he responded with “everything.”

    And now the game sits in my library gathering dust.

    • LEVEL 1 NECROMANCY GOOOOOOOOOOOO

      Anywho, I’ve been playing Dota more often now, and in the games I’ve had, they’re going alright. The people aren’t really huge pricks, not most of the time, unless you do something so incredibly fucking stupid they have to yell at you, like buying a blink dagger on Antimage. And the people I know who play dota are incredibly friendly, and very skilled.

      And yeah, it’s a tad hard to learn, but doesn’t take long to get the hang of it. Now for lame dota jokes.

      Dota 2 is better than league of legends, and the LoL fans can’t deny it.

      When does antimage stop farming? 3 AM.

      A lycanthrope walks into a pub. And there was no counter.

  6. Play with your friends. Or mute and report them for bm. I have a friend who is terrible at Dota, and I’d never see people bming him. Personally I don’t think that the community is that bad. The problem with *ARTS* is that it’s a team based game that every mistake has a HUGE impact in the match. LoL’s community is MUCH much much worse than DotA’s, when you get a higher MMR rating you end up playing with people who knows that shit happens and it’s only natural to go 0/6 once in a while. Kuroky for example (my favorite comp player) went 0/9 in a casual match. Dendi (considered by most the best solo mid player) went 4/16 in a pub match. People with experience knows that you’ll feed once in a while, and just accept that and move on.

  7. My fiance introduced me to LoL a few months ago but I haven’t really been able to get into it until recently (~lev6). I don’t always like playing mmo-type games alone, especially not when they’re team based and I know I’m a noob, because I have an extreme dislike for people yelling at me over it. I’ll have fun, even losing, until that happens and then I’ll be put off the game.

    That being said, I’ve only put two people on my ignore list so far, the ones who continued being rude after I explained that I’m new (which I tend to do at the beginning of the match). Besides that it’s felt like an average community where people goof off in chat when they’re not killing things.

    I’m slowly learning item builds and what characters I like to play, but having friends to play with makes the whole thing a bit smoother in my experience.

    • I started every game with “Hi, I’m new, don’t be a dick and we’ll get on fine. LET’S GO WIN DIS SHIT”

  8. I gave up on DOTA and any similar games the same day I tried the mod on WC3. I got chewed out on newbie learning servers. How does that even happen?

  9. Sounds like you were flamed for feeding in DOTA 1 and have bitter feelings. I say either get over it and just play the game, or don’t worry about it and stop bitching about DOTA 2, because you have no idea what the community is like.

    Fact is, I know you haven’t played DOTA 2, no matter what you claim, because the DOTA 2 community is actually pretty easy going at the moment. The vast majority of angry nerds don’t yet have access to the beta, so the general feeling is one where the community seems to have more patience than your typical ARTS/DOTA-clone. I think in general, players are more mature on DOTA 2 at the moment. Will that change once it goes live? Probably, but that’s typical with all multiplayer games.

    • Or maybe the reasonable conclusion is that people should spend less time flaming and more time helping new players who are playing a game that didn’t come with a manual.

    • “the DOTA 2 community is actually pretty easy going at the moment”

      Weird, that’s not what I’ve heard at all. The best I’ve heard about the community is that I would get a lot of shit for being a new player but most of the abuse is written in Russian so it’s very easy to ignore. There is also a question of how long it’ll stay easy-going; personally I don’t have much faith in that persisting after release. There’s a possibility I can be proven wrong but there’s always going to be people who act like dicks to newbies which I just don’t understand (see the article I linked to right at the top).

      “Fact is, I know you haven’t played DOTA 2, no matter what you claim”

      You may want to re-read this article because you’ve ENTIRELY missed the point if you think I’ve claimed to have played DOTA 2 (Deal? Ok Then, Adios).

      • Hey, bro. You should email me your simplified version of string theory, I’m interested in hearing it.

    • The DOTA 2 community is shit, the people are assholes. but on some great occasion you might meet someone nice, but dont expect it. I’m saying this and I excel with most heroes. But if your looking for a friendly community dota is not where its at.

  10. you can’t play cuz you’re fucking bad and dota’s too hard for you. go play your little fps and get your fucking ass off here

    • Troll harder, bro.

      You’ll have to step up your game here; we’re in a whole different League. We’re just that little bit older to know how trolling is an art form rather than just making a quick, crass statement like you have. One could even argue that it’s Legendary.

  11. i just paid my $30 to get the early access and after 4 matches i said “fuck this shit”. Everyone on my “team” were a bunch of shit-talking fat basement dwellers and when I say “shit talking” I mean it was the dorkiest, snarkiest victorian-era commentary which was just fucking weird.
    on top of that every match , being that i’m a noob to the whole world of DOTA, naturally i’m dying a lot and everyone on my team threatened on multiple occasions to report me for “feeding”, whatever the fuck THAT is.
    i mean simply put, if this shit keeps up this shit is going to be very short-lived and is going to need to be community-funded because nobody’s going to put up with elitist dorks who still live in their parent’s basements ruining what should be a fun experience.

    • He mad.
      Also funny how you say basically the exact same thing as the article, if slightly more furious.
      Now, I’ve never even touched any kind of DOTA clone, but in such a game, I think it can be expected of you to take half an hour to read up what items and such you should be going for, plus a few bot matches. The learning curve has a slight edge to it which you need to get over on your own first, but once you get past that, it’s all down to your personal player skill (and also a lot of fun, I’m told.)

      • Why should it be expected of someone to read up on recommended builds and strategy when pretty much every other game actually helps out new players unless a defining aspect of the game (e.g. Dark Souls)? One could argue that it’s expected of new TF2 players to read up what every single item does and how it’s often utilised along with what other items to use with it but you don’t have to. Why? The community is nowhere near as volatile as DOTA 2’s and saying “Hey, I’m new, I don’t know what to do” will lead to someone helping you rather than getting bullshit responses like “stfu noob, I’m reporting you for feeding” or “well you should have learned about the game before you played it”.

        The problem with the learning curve in DOTA 2 is that there are a LOT of returning players from the original DOTA so the newbies you’re playing with may actually have a shit ton more experience than you. What it really needs is a way of matching people who have never played DOTA or a game like it before with other similar players rather than “Oh, you’re all new, it’ll work itself out”.

        The real trouble with DOTA 2 is the vitriolic community it has. If they sort that out, they’ll have a slightly more passable game.

      • Agreed. The difference between TF2 is though that every weapon is usable if you know to adjust your playstyle accordingly, which can’t be said about DOTA. There, you just need to know which items are and are not useful with a given hero.

        The learning curve starting with basically a vertical line up to half is bad, but it’s an existing and known issue, so I feel like it’s your responsibility to equalise the other players’ experience by getting to know the game yourself beforehand so that you may still lose the first games you play, but then it’s due to lack of practice, being outmatched, or that darn feeder on your team, not because you simply didn’t know what you were doing and were standing in the shop for hours trying to decide which item sounds cooler.

        When meeting elitists, don’t expect them to come down to your level, climb up to theirs.

      • The concept that I have to study the game so that I don’t let down all the people who play the game just strikes me as impossibly one-sided. Why can’t they be more open and accepting to help me out rather than dogmatically believing what I’ve seen or read online? Actually, doing that would bring me up to their level a significant amount.

        “Oh, you’re building THAT item for THIS dude? You’re a fucking noob fag gay-face for doing that, EVERYBODY knows that you need to build THIS item. Shut the fuck up and stop feeding.”

        Bringing yourself up to be like an elitist is an awful, awful idea. Not only does it stifle variations in play style (“Only noobs try that strategy” “OF COURSE you won by doing that, it’s so obviously for noob players because it’s so broken”) but it also breeds more elitist douchebags which we really, really don’t need. Not only that but the level of skill elitist douchebags have isn’t that high. They like to talk a big game, try out everything they see the pros do and make it all about them but it’s a TEAM game and, frankly, being an elitist douchebag whose real skill is closer to “dumb stupid homo noob” than “5up4h 1337 pr0” HINDERS your team effort rather than helping it.

        People respond much better to constructive advice than to counter-intuitive abuse and threats. The way to soften the incline of the difficulty curve isn’t to make all new players essentially sit a test but rather have the existing players act as teachers. Incidentally, was I tripping the last time I played DOTA 2 or does it have a coaching feature like in TF2? Do people use it? Are the coaches who use that system more or less stable than the general population? Do you get the vibe that I’m trying to put you on trial for the entire DOTA 2 community at large because HOW DARE YOU TRY TO HAVE A CONSTRUCTIVE DISCUSSION ON THE INTERNET?

      • Well, didn’t that escalate quickly.
        I’m no part of the DOTA community, as mentioned, and I certainly agree that learners should be welcomed as long as they at least try to do something instead of weakening your own minions down to 1 hp constantly. The only problem is that the community already exists as it is and it is very unlikely you’ll be able to change that, so it’s better to adapt to the mass instead of trying to change it.
        Though, you can start to change the community by doing your own part and being one in a million who doesn’t flame non-optimal players.

        It’s the same thing as Wing wants to happen in AC3. It’s even more likely to happen there since you’re not expected to do as well as possible from the start and can take the time to learn off of more experienced players SURPRISE STABBING YOU IN THE BUTT WHILE YOU RUN INTO A CHASE. I guess there’s also spectating in DOTA, but that’d also count as learning the game without playing it yourself.

      • Ok guys, you’re missing the point of reading about a hero before playing him.
        What makes dota so great is the endless number of ways to play a hero. For example, Earthshaker is a support hero, has always been played as a support hero and most likely will always be played as such, until Dendi, the best solo mid in the world played him as a carry. He would not have been able to do this if he didn’t understand the mechanics, limits, pros and cons of Earthshaker.
        My point being that the online guides are meant to. Be an aid to help new players understand a hero’s limits/possibilities better and its adviseable to put in the effort to understand a hero before trying it.
        I still have a fair share of heroes that I haven’t/can’t play, but before I do anything, I take a bit of time to read the hero’s skills (which are always given in game) so I can’t decide the most effective way to have a positive impact for my team.

        Furthermore, the point that DotA players are not willing to help is absolute rubbish. The reasons I say this:
        1. Go to playdota.com and you will find 1000’s of guide aimed at helping players improve
        2. I’ve been in more games than not where I’m not sure how to play a hero where I just type “hi guys, I’m new with this hero, any suggestions?” And everytime I get help n tips.

        I’m not saying you don’t get assholes, you get plenty of them, but you also get genuinely nice people on the game who see these guys and will stand up for you regardless of how shit you may be playing.

        Another thing about DotA is that it doesn’t matter if you haven’t played a hero before, there are certain skills that are required no matter which hero you play. For example: don’t cross the river alone, never go anywhere without a tp, don’t equip multiple orb effects/boots. These are things that will easily earn you a well deserved flaming as it means you don’t even bother to read the mini item guides or think logically.

        On a side note: someone said they get flamed quite often in Russian but its easy to ignore because its Russian… How did you know they were flaming you then?

  12. the thing is, that there is a mute function, you must i repeat you MUST use it as fast as you can when you see someone is gonna harass you ingame, be it teammate or enemy, because the longer you read/hear from them the harder it is for you to focus in your game, sure it’s nice to get a friendly person to play with, that rathers help you so you don’t die over getting a kill, that’s a rare find, just enjoy your game learn your heroes and mute the hell out of everyone who annoys you, that’s the secret to no uninstall moba games 1 week in.

  13. How can people say that Dota has such an uncooperative community and not do anything about it? The only time in my experience where I see one is when someone doesn’t even know how to play the game, buys random items and feeds etc etc. One way to remedy this surprisingly easy problem is to learn the game and practice with BOTS or AI, read guides on specific heroes and the mechanics of the game. It takes a matter of days to learn Dota. So if you start a dota game 5v5 online completely fresh, you deserve to be flamed. Oh and by the way, newbies in LoL can play with level 30 players with full masteries, runes and even champions, while the newbies are limited to 10 measly free champions. On the other hand, you can choose from over 100 heroes in Dota and you start each game on a clean slate. Please, tell me how unbalanced Dota is.

    • “So if you start a dota game 5v5 online completely fresh, you deserve to be flamed.”

      Why doesn’t the community try to help a fresh player rather than being abusive to them? Flaming and being abusive to anyone in an online game where you need to cooperate makes no sense.

      “newbies in LoL can play with level 30 players with full masteries, runes and even champions, while the newbies are limited to 10 measly free champions”

      You’re either woefully misinformed or you’re being intentionally dishonest. The only way a brand new player to LoL can be matched against people of a definite higher level (i.e. those with masteries or runes) is if they intentionally join a queue with friends who are higher level than they are. A brand new player to LoL CANNOT be matched with max level players when joining a solo queue.

      “Please, tell me how unbalanced Dota is.”

      I never said that DOTA is unbalanced. You’re either throwing out defensive arguments quicker than you can think about what you’re saying or you’re trying (and failing) to construct a strawman.

      • “Why doesn’t the community try to help a fresh player rather than being abusive to them? Flaming and being abusive to anyone in an online game where you need to cooperate makes no sense.”

        Its because the game already incoporates modes to teach new playes how everything works.
        Its extremely its already difficult to focus on your own hero and farming etc but to teach someone something that took you a week+ to learn in 5mins is impossible and a guaranteed recipe for failure.

        I’m not sure what countries you’re all from but I’m South African and internet is extremely expensive here. When I crunched the numbers it costs me roughly R25 per game which is roughly $3 or $3.50. And I’m a student so I can really only afford to play 2games per weekend. Now imagine my agony when I finally get a game and there’s a player who hasn’t even bothered to do the tutorial.

        Point being in DotA it is essential to consider other players and not just what you want in order to maximise everyones enjoyment

        As a new player, your enjoyment will not be diminished at all if you spend a day learning to play the game against the AI before joining a human game.

        By the way, I don’t advocate abusive players, I am not abusive myself but I thought it would be good to see it from the perspective of a player other than the newbie

  14. Oh yeah also if you talk about elitists, think of it this way : If you start off learning a sport, lets say swimming, you would never win versus Michael Phelps or even an average swimmer for example. So, if you are placed in a swimming relay race and it turns out you can’t even float, your team will definitely be angry with you. They tell you to go for training, and learn some new techniques and that eventually, you’ll improve. And people, should learn that in online games, being flamed for being a noob is natural and don’t take any disrespectful or intolerant remark too seriously. Instead, heed any advice they may give you and learn how to be INDEPENDENT and improve.

    • Having abuse yelled at you is not the same as someone taking to you to one side and giving you helpful advice and/or training like you would in the sporting world. If you think it’s OK to flame people just because they’re new or inexperienced, you’re a dick.

  15. You’re absolutely right. I’m not new to DOTA but I witnessed everything you described the other night when a newbie got flamed and reported because he was doing bad. After inspecting his profile he was playing a hard to play hero and it was only his second game. However, after you take the time to learn to play the community is generally forgiving when you accept the mistakes you make.

    Regardless of that, there is literally no online game community that is not like this, save for something silly like Toon Town or what have you.

    What I’m saying is, don’t be putting so much hate on the community, when you mess up in a game it sets the whole team back. What I suggest is playing bots on unfair difficulty for a few games and when you do happen to pub just don’t even respond in chat if it makes you upset, if someone tells you to lane somewhere else follow what they say because you’re probably in the wrong position etc.

    But most of all, try to have fun, dota2 is a great game. :)

  16. This is a fairly silly article. The reason Dota 2 is a frustrating game for new players is because it is inherently difficult. A lot of the ideas are counter intuitive and yes the CoD crowd with not end up playing dota.

    As a Dota veteran i know all about trash talking, being frustrated and raging out my self, however, these are parts of all games, period. You cant tell me that in CoD when you first start playing the multiplayer people wont trash talk you because they certainly do. You go out and buy the new CoD 100 and those people you are playing with have probably played all the other CoD games before this. So you making bad decisions will cause issues.

    Valve is however, taking steps to insure that newer players will continue to play their game. First they are going to implement a tutorial system. This has been talked about and is an idea that has been decided upon from the start. Second, they are rewarding community members that help out others. You know those little rewards you get for being good or working as a team, well they will actually matter when the game goes live. third, they have a match making system that works this way. It matches you against people who have the same amount of games won/played and then based on your W/L ratio meaning if some one is a veteran who just started playing and they start winning a lot they will move higher in the ranks. If some one is a newer player they will continue to play against newer players, also when you first start playing it asks you your skill, you say you are new and it will match you with people who answered the same thing. Lastly, steam is setup in such a way that no one would ever make a smurf account because they can change their names when ever they want. So if you want to hide your identity you can just swap names etc etc.

    If you really think that complicated games are a problem then you really shouldn’t be playing games like this in the first place,. Dota 2 is a very easy game at its core that has some complex mechanics built into it and once you break that initial barrier and figure this out, you wont see any of these issues.

  17. Hello

    Guys suck it up and continue to try to improve at the game cause at one point you will find the joy of playing dota solo or with friends :) best advice i could come up as a veteran at this game.
    If you want help thinking of what heros suit you and on how to improve on the game you can add me on steam wSs ♥ Veela. If you want to change something you must take the first step.

    • That’s a very kind offer!

      Personally, I just don’t like DOTA 2 all that much so you won’t be hearing from me. You may hear from other T3 readers, though.

  18. One of the main points you seem to be referring back to is that, and correct me if I’m wrong, you should not be forced into reading up on the game outside of the game itself in order to learn how to play, and because you feel you shouldn’t have to do that, you don’t, and try to learn by asking your teammates for advice.

    Now, that’s all well and good in a First Person Shooter, where, the main mechanics of the genre (Aiming, ammo management and positioning) tend to carry over from one game in the genre to the next, for the most part.

    There are several reasons why people are more willing to help out a new player in TF2 (a game you consistently make references to, and a game which I have 2000+ hours into) over a new player in Dota. One reason is the amount of game knowledge you must learn. In TF2, you need to learn the maps, then about the 9 classes, and all the weapons that each of the 9 classes has. To any outsider, this is a daunting amount of information, but to you and I (who are both veteran TF2 players) it is mere child’s play to list off and explain the intricacies of each weapon. To someone coming into the TF2 scene from a different FPS, they must learn all of these things. However, they do not need to learn all of these things in order to be minimally effective. If this same someone is an experienced player in their former FPS of choice, they already have two of the three main mechanics of the genre down-pat. They have ammo management mastered and they have aiming mastered. They must only learn proper positioning in addition to the classes and weapons before they become a very advanced player in TF2.

    In Dota, you must learn much, much more in order to become minimally effective. You must learn what items you should be aiming to purchase, and what items are most commonly purchased, so you aren’t surprised by an item’s ability. You must learn what every single ability on every single hero does, so you aren’t surprised and killed by a spell you didn’t realize the enemy hero had. You must learn what skill build (the progression of what skills you take per levelup) will benefit you in each situation. You need to learn how any team of heroes synergizes with each other so you don’t get blindsided by a one-two punch that you didn’t see coming. In addition to just base knowledge of the game, you need to learn the mechanics of the game: Health/Mana management (which includes when to use your abilities/spells and when to high-tail it back to base to restock up), Positioning, Item management (what items to build, and what items to build to tide you over until you get your end-game items), farming (making money and experience by killing enemies and neutral creeps), and Last-Hitting (getting the last hit onto an enemy or creep in order to get the money reward for killing it. This is so incredibly important to the game that it deserves it’s own spot on the list). Once you have learned the intricacies of the game and the mechanics involved in being a minimally effective player, you know need to learn what to do in what situation. In any given situation, should you be farming? Fighting with the other team? Warding? Pushing lanes? Pushing down towers?

    The game knowledge itself is the easiest to learn, simply because it is mere memorization. Learning the mechanics themselves are easy, however mastering them is another challenge. The most difficult thing to learn, by far, is what you should be doing at any given situation. And this is something that people with 1000+ hours in Dota still struggle with. Knowing what to do in each situation is what separates the highest brackets of public game players from the lowest brackets of competitive players.

    As you can plainly see, the amount of things you must learn in order to be minimally effective at Dota far surpasses what is necessary to be minimally effective at TF2, or another FPS. This should explain why some people are merely unwilling to teach the game to you: there’s a shitload to learn, and it would take far too much time to explain this all in-game.

    Allow me to preface this paragraph by saying that I do not condone flaming in any situation. With that said, let me explain the metagame surrounding a public game of TF2, as compared to a public game of Dota. In TF2, public games mean absolutely nothing. You play the game for fun, and if you win, then yay! And if you lose, then oh well, you’ll try harder next time. No meaningful stats are tracked, and you can play with any range of skill-levels merely by hopping servers. In Dota, most people play to get better, or to win. Wins and losses are tracked, as well as your performance in-game, and all of these statistics go towards your matchmaking rating (MMR) in order to more accurately place you in a game with people that are around your skill level. When you have a really bad teammate in Dota (and I mean skill-wise, not their demeanor) it really drags down the whole team. They inevitably lose their lane (meaning the opponents come out of the lane with a gold/level advantage) which means 2 people on their team come out farther ahead than two people on your team, and which can really turn the tide in their favor. And it can also shine very negatively on the player on your team that you’re laning with. A lane can be won or lost incredibly easily depending on the actions of your laning partner. Where a player would typically harass out the enemy players in your lane (thus getting a gold/level advantage and “winning” the lane) when given a competent laning buddy, that same player horribly loses the lane when given an incompetent laning buddy. This makes their MMR drop merely because of the actions of their teammate. And it could have been avoided if the laning buddy knew what to do. Thus, you can see why it can be very frustrating to play with people who don’t know what they’re doing, especially if you are on game 4 or 5 of the night and you’ve been given incompetent teammates every single time. Again, I’m not saying flaming you is the correct response here, I’m merely explaining why it is so frustrating, and why they are flaming in the first place.

    Also, let me explain why “solo-queueing” (or simply searching for a game by yourself) is a fucking nightmare. You don’t know what roles your random teammates are best at playing, so you could end up with a lopsided, unbalanced team. You don’t know how skillfull or unskilled your teammates are, and they could end up doing something that truly baffles you. They might be the most uncoordinated, uncooperative, uncommunicative teammates in the entire world, and that is highly ineffective in a team game. Now the obvious solution to this is to play with friends.

    You mentioned in the original article that you have friends that play Dota that are better than you at the game, and when you play with them, everyone expects you to know what they know, and because you don’t, they get frustrated with you. This is a problem that I, personally, faced when getting into Dota. The only friend that played Dota had about 1000 hours when I had 10. When they tried playing with me, I would drag down the whole team because I simply didn’t know what to do and the other team could easily jump on my smallest error and give themselves an advantage. After trying to play with him for at least 5 games, I decided to stop playing with him, because it ruined his experience, because we always got rolled, and it ruined mine, because I knew that I was the reason we lost so badly. I started looking into Dota community sites, like /r/Dota2 on reddit and various Dota steamgroups devoted to teaching advanced mechanics and strategies to newer players. I met friends through those sources and I now play in 3-5 man queues (where the majority or all of the team are my friends near my skill level) and my enjoyment of the game skyrocketed. First of all, we were all communicating immensely, something that random public players may or may not do. Secondly, we had a well-balanced team because we all talked about what roles we would serve for the team. Thirdly, we were all around each other’s skill level, so everyone had a fair fight, on our team and theirs. Next, you don’t have to worry about getting yelled at for messing up. Since you always play together, you know that when you make a mistake, you aren’t a horrible player, and that you merely made a mistake, and you are going to try and correct it next time so it doesn’t happen again.

    I’ve been writing this up for well over 45 minutes now. If I don’t convince you to give Dota another try, well, you know, I’m okay with that. But if Dota comes up in conversation with anyone and they ask your opinion of it, I hope that I’ve convinced you to say “Well, you know, I gave it a try, and it just isn’t for me.” instead of saying “Well, you know, I gave it a try, and it’s just an unpleasant experience; I would not recommend even trying it.”

    Also, I’ve converted some of my die-hard Dota hating friends into giving the game a try and they ended up actually enjoying it. If you want to game with them (they’re almost brand-new too, and they’re nice people) I’d love to introduce you and join in to play a game of Dota together, no stress, no pressure, just learning. Feel free to respond back to this if you’d like, and I’ll link my steam profile.

    Tl;dr I think you had an absolutely horrible first impression with the game itself and the community and I’d love to change that.

    • Just want to start out by saying that I think this is the longest comment ever left on any article of the site. Not only that, it’s not riddled with abuse, is relevant and interesting to read. It’s comments like these which is why I love writing online.

      I admit, making comparisons to TF2 probably wasn’t the best thing I could do to get my point across. As you said, the mechanics and amount of knowledge in the game is very different to MOBA games. For clarification, my point has been that I don’t feel it’s necessary to read countless pieces of text (guides, build orders etc) in order to be qualified to play a game. I’m not saying that those guides aren’t useful, they are, I just think it’s a little unreasonable to expect that everyone know where to get them, how to read them and put them into action from the moment they load up the game. After playing games for so long, it’s so easy to forget how people new to gaming or even just new to online gaming go about playing.

      For me, the most reading I do before playing a game is a little about the story of the game (who made it, what else they have done), a little teaser regarding the plot and maybe a review from a couple of trusted sources if I’m feeling a little dubious about what I’m in for. That’s it. I think that reading in-depth guides as soon as you get the game takes some of the magic away. For example, Minecraft wouldn’t have been anywhere near as much fun for me if I knew how to build everything and how every mob behaved when I first played. Again, MOBA games are different in this regard (I can’t think of an overall strategy guide for a MOBA, for example) but this is how I got into the habit of not doing extra reading.

      I want to preface the rest of this response by saying I play a lot of League of Legends. I kept this quiet in earlier comments as I was rather surprised at the attention it got and didn’t want people to think that I wrote this because I play LoL and therefore must hate every other MOBA out there because of it (or whatever other bullshit they could dream up so they could ‘win’ the discussion). I just want to touch on what my experience was in the LoL community very quickly before making my next point; When I started playing the game, everyone was quite friendly and the game had this feeling about mutual discovery and just fighting the enemy all the time. As my summoner level increased (as you play more, your account levels up giving you access to spells which can help you out and access to a talent tree of sorts which allows characters to be played in a number of different ways) I started to notice more and more smurf accounts, more people wanting to play at a pro level when they really weren’t ready and more abuse. By the time I started encountering abuse, I was already pretty digging with the game and knew it wasn’t the norm. With DOTA 2, I had my mid-level experience in LoL right away in a number of games so felt very unsettled. I may have had a string of bad games but who knows. The point is that my initial experience somewhat tarnished my view of the game.

      You mentioned how some people go on tilt after losing a string of games and having their ranking go down leading to them getting frustrated and ultimately lashing out at their team. Believe me, I understand completely how that feels. I recently played in a ranked team with some friends in LoL and we lost every single game. I got very annoyed, felt very frustrated and so I took what some may see as extremely drastic action: I took a break for a few hours and came back later after quickly and calmly telling my team mates that I was done for the night. It sucks when you lose a string of games. It sucks a lot more when you know that you can play better. What sucks the most, however, is lashing out at people who aren’t at fault or over reacting at a slight mistake. If you lose a couple of games and start to feel a little edgy, stop playing for the night. You’re so worked up that you’ll only drive your rating lower and you’ll create a shitty situation for the people on your team.

      TL;DR Impressive response, not replied in as much depth because Christmas Eve parties to get to, I’ve heard the game has made a number of improvements to the community as of late (although I’m still not a fan of some mechanics and how far zoomed in the camera feels), more than happy to play a few games with you, you can find my Steam profile through the T3 stam group or just by searching for Binerexis.

      • Okay, so, I read your article in its entirety, and I’m mildly impressed with your points. However, I personally think you’re being slightly biased towards the game. Let me give you an example: Before I had started playing Dota 2, I’d only played one MOBA beforehand, and that was LoL. Now, as you previously stated, LoL seems to have a fine community; But in that single instance, for 4 or 5 straight LoL games I was continuously bullied and harassed because of my inability to play. That instance also turned me off of LoL. After this, I saw quite a few people playing DotA, I was impressed by the graphics and gameplay so I decided to give It a try. For my first 3-4 games, I did nothing but constantly feed, sit in the jungle, and just do nothing all game. My teammates were forgiving and pointed me in the direction of DotAfire, a website that provides individual hero guides. What I’m saying Is: You can’t generalize an entire community based on a singular experience, and as Heather stated, DotA is a very complicated game. Frankly, when I was new people told me to uninstall as well. the bright side Is: I’m so glad I didn’t, I took their insults and improved myself every game, and now I’m actually quite good at It. Back to another point “How do you know LoL has a decent community even though you’ve only played 5 games?” Well, I decided to join a friend on LoL quite some time ago, I did well in my bracket with 9-0 on Udyr who was on free rotation at the time, and since then I’ve mildly enjoyed it. My opinion on LoL vs DotA gameplay wise: LoL seems to be more forgiving to those who are behind. Kills aren’t quite as important and the game isn’t necessarily lost if one of your teammates “feeds.” But because of this, and because of the ability to item-cap so easily end-game in LoL, It feels like a less fulfilling experience than DotA. When you farm all game, successfully gank, and get an end-game rampage on the enemy team, It’s an ego-high; The announcer screams “RAMPAGE!!!” and you’re like “God, I’m so amazing.”
        Anyway, I don’t expect to change your opinions with this post, just sharing my opinion.
        As a side note: I have nothing against you, but you come off to me as a little bit elitist yourself, not that you’re a bad person, and, frankly you seem like a decent guy… But… “Theories of infinity? I saw them as an interesting concept when the rest of my class was tearing their hair out.”
        Thanks for reading. Sorry for grammar mistakes, It’s 3:38 AM and I haven’t slept, school tomorrow… Thanks!

    • Well it’s Multiplayer, Online and is largely focussed around Battles in an Arena. Dota-style games have been referred to as such for a long time so I’m sticking with it.

      Of course, you could try to be pedantic by insisting they be called an Action Real Time Strategy (ARTS) but then I would insist that Starcraft 2 and the like be reclassified as such as they are Real Time Strategies based largely around Action

      -2 for improper use of ellipsis.

  19. I really hope you numb nuts understand that Dota is a very very hard game to learn. The average learning curve is several months. I’ve been playing for years and I’ve tried LoL and HoN but none are more satisfying than Dota.

    Its the unforgiving nature of Dota that makes it so exciting. I am generally a chilled guy and I usually just tell newer players what went wrong in that last team fight or how to not get caught out of position again.

    To be honest, the author of this post is quite a pussy. Dota is not a jump in and start winning game like a lot of generic crap on the market. It takes time to learn, hone your skills and get better. The real fun lies in pulling off that 5 man enigma black hole or working with your team to perform a big game breaking wombo combo.

    Don’t let a few bad players get in the way of you playing this superior MOBA

    • Wow, your abuse towards me has really shown that you’re clearly the superior, more helpful person in this scenario where I was saying why I was tentative to try out, what you report to be, one of the best games ever!

      I’m going to change my name to xXxFagsREvrywer420xXx so that when I grow up, I can be just like you!

      (In all seriousness, your comment was good until you started assuming shit.)

      • I kinda liked his comment. He was saying everything that was on his mind without holding back punches and staying true to his nature.

        I agree with him 100%. I used to suck at DotA just like eveyone else who ever touched it but I’ve been playing for 2years now and only starting to have really epic replay-worthy games recently. And that is where the fun and joy of DotA comes in, you work for so long trying to perfect your skills and you see it all pay off when you and 4 of your teammates walk up behind the enemy team, trap them in a naga siren ultimate followed by dark seer’s vacuum, enigma black-hole,tidehunters ravage and earthshakers ulti. Its a thing of beauty to watch over and over and its sad that LoL and HoN players will never experience all that hard work paying off in moments like that

  20. This is just wrong man, just wrong.
    ive been playing playing LoL a while (lvl 30 about 250 wins)
    and im telling you, it is the worlds most douchy and newb
    unfriendly game there is, not cs, not dota, not even HoN
    has more newb haters then LoL, the only haters ive met was from the LoL community whining about how sucky the game is.
    Its very well known that most LoL players are mean idiots that hates everyone but themselves. As long as you are not carrying the team of course, then they are starting to say “you should say thanks cause i got you fed” when they guy didnt get a single assist in the entire game. plain mean scrubs, thats what they are.

    • What you described is my experience with CS1.6, CS:S, DOTA and Starcraft. Almost any game, really.

      There are a lot of unnecessary newb haters in many games and I’m not trying to claim that any game is completely devoid of it. However, our experiences with League of Legends are obviously different. Maybe it’s just some form of twisted fate or that we’re on different servers but I’ve found that, especially at low levels of play, the LoL community have been quite pleasant. The only times I’ve seen players act up in LoL are in ranked games, the peak hours where school children play and when people are trolling.

  21. This article is the typical biased article written from the LoL devotee you revealed to be in the comments. I don’t see why you should play LoL either at this point since it’s got the very same flaws that seem to have driven you off DOTA so badly. The community is just as awful as it is in DOTA and the skill curve in LoL is still rather steep just because of the genre. You’re simply bashing on the ‘other’ game from a biased perspective and dressing your own bias in what resembles objectivity.

    I’d take the article more seriously if you said “why I won’t playing ARTS”.

    • 1. This is based on my subjective experience of the game

      2. I predicted that I’d be called a LoL fanboy/devotee/butt buddy as soon as I mention that I play it in the comments

      3. I honestly don’t play LoL that much

      4. Kudos for reading through the comments

      4a. Ignore the above if you just searched for LoL/League of Legends when you hit the page

      5. It’s WAY easier to make fun of me for having ginger hair and a beard, just saying

      6. I found the skill curve of LoL to be quite steady in my experience

      7. Have you played HoN? I’ve heard it’s better than DOTA and LoL combined, you should check it out

      8. Forgot to mention that it’s also pretty easy to make fun of me for not liking the same music as you either

      9. There is no number nine

      10. LIKE FAVOURITE RATE SUBSCRIBE

  22. Okay.. I admit this now: I’m a troll. I was reading through the comments because I was bored, and was trying to find something to piss my friends off with. (Several of them are hardcore Dota 2 devotees, which is as good an excuse to annoy someone as anything else, yes?)

    I was going to forward the post to them just so I could hear them shout in annoyance, but wound up reading through all the comments. Man… the amount of people who take their gaming so seriously.. it’s HYSTERICAL!

    I’m not even going to attempt to troll anyone with this. It’s fun to watch people get infuriated over someone, GASP, NOT HAVING FUN WITH THEIR PERFECT GAME! HAHAHAHA!

    Oh, sorry. It was an entertaining article, but I do have to say that I personally believe that the internet is full of jackasses, cockwits, dipshits, gobshites, fuckwits, and the like; it’s not isolated in any one community. Primarily due to the anonymity the net provides.

    Anyway. Nothing bad to say, honestly. Thanks for the read.. and yes, that includes the comments. And, finally, I apologize for my overly sardonic style of speech. It isn’t intentional; I’m just an asshole at heart. Thanks again.

    • The general consensus is usually “That person likes something different than us… FUCK THAT GUY! WE’LL NEVER CHANGE! THEY’RE A FAG! WHAT A NOOB!” which is just… ugh…

      There are those who take their gaming seriously in the same way that they take their sport seriously; professionals who get paid a lot of money and spend a lot of time practising. These people are fine. Then there are others who like to scream and shout that they’re really good at a game but they’re often below the skill level they think they are. These people are not fine and tend to be incredibly annoying. It’s these people who didn’t read the article properly and then accuse me of being biased or a fanboy. It makes me giggle.

      Glad to hear you liked the article, you should check out my other articles which have slightly more actual discussion in the comments rather than just “NOPE NOPE MY GAME IS OBJECTIVELY PERFECT NUB”.

  23. some people are assholes but you can’t just quit because they flame you first look at some things

    read a tutorial guide or 2

    watch guides on youtube

    Que for bot matches instead of accepting ass rape in pvp

    i have flamed people before but usually because i play a hard bot match to learn new characters not to learn 2 play

    so when so dipshit decides to skip passive easy or even medium difficulty’s and jump straight to hard i get a little bit pissed but welcome to the internet were retards live and trolls abundant overall if you actually put a bit of effort into learning to play you can actually learn it of course if you actually give up so easily then perhaps hard core type games based on pvp are just not for you.

    • So why don’t you help out the less skilled players rather than flaming them?

      “welcome to the internet were retards live and trolls abundant”

      So which are you: troll or asshole?

      I kid, I kid. It’s possible to be both so asking that question is a little one sided (for the record, I’m both).

      If you can tell me why you think it’s acceptable/preferable to flame new/less skilled players than helping them then I’d be very interested to hear what you say.

  24. Have you played HoN? I’ve heard it’s better than DOTA and LoL combined, you should check it out

    fair warning hon is actually harder that dota and lol and the community their is extremely butt hurt if you die or happen to ks from them so do NOT try hon first unless you like being raped constantly and flamed so bad that you are hit with walls and walls of text the game is fun it is just hard and the people their are very very hardcore dota and lol don’t track stats like k/d ratio hon does this is one of the reason for the bad community.

  25. 1. You expect 4 other people to carry you to win the game,
    while you don’t know anything and then you refuse to play
    with bots to learn the game first.

    2. You caused the other 4 people lost the game, who wanted to play and get killed for the rest of the game?

    3. After you got flamed for causing other 4 peoples in your team lost, you posted your whine here.

    4. It’s a team game, logically people prefer to win than lose, if you don’t mind losing it doesn’t mean your team does the same perspective with you.

    5. Dota/LoL/HoN are competitive team game bro, these games are not for you, go play MMORPG, where a game where you meet a lot of boy who playing as a girl character and role playing as a girl and brainless farming

    6. When people say you are noob, it doesn’t mean they are that good, i’ve seen people who said a person noob but ended up feeding just report him so he got low priority and post him to dotacineima fail of the week

    7. In LoL just use your money to buy heroes and stomp noobs who can’t play all of the heroes and there is no denying system, LoL <- easiest MOBA, try that first before trying HoN or Dota, It's "FREE" anyway

    8. You are a casual gamer and also weak-hearted, just play co-op games when you play with bots and AI, and the games that you mentioned is just for those hardcore gamers who don't really looking for "fun" in gaming.

    9. Don't know the difference? http://www.vgmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/difference-between-casual-gamers-and-hardcore-games.jpg.

    • 1. I expect my team to behave like a team rather than only looking out for themselves, obsessing about winning immediately and blaming everyone else when that doesn’t happen with zero personal responsibility.

      2. Five players on a team, dude. Unless someone is doing something on purpose to sabotage the match, it’s pretty unfair to say that it’s all down to one person.

      3. You should re-read the article, I explicitly said that, at the time of writing, I had not yet played DOTA 2.

      4. Obsessing about winning all the time will be the downfall of most teams you run into. As much as people like to think they’re as good as the pro teams who go out and pub stomp, they’re not. What these people also tend to forget is that pro teams don’t win EVERY match they play.

      5. Pretending to be a girl in MMO’s has netted me more wealth than most people want to know. For the sake of everyone’s faith in humanity, I’ll just say that I’ve made a lot of money doing this and have my dignity intact. I’m aware that MOBAs are competitive games and I am, myself, a pretty competitive guy. I’m just not a dick.

      6. When someone calls someone else a noob, there’s a sense of superiority somewhere. If being a noob is a bad thing and Dick X calls NewGuy Y a noob, there is an implication that Dick X is NOT a noob. If Dick X saw himself as a noob, he wouldn’t use it to insult other people as it would imply he is a bad thing to be.

      7. You can buy champs in LoL but it really doesn’t give players an unfair advantage. You can own every single champion and be kind of ok with most of them and get your ass handed to you by someone who owns sixteen champs and knows them inside out. The most you can buy in LoL is convenience (there’s also the thing that the meta strategy of LoL regarding runes/masteries can only be earned by playing the game so paying to win is basically impossible).

      8. You still define all games as either hardcore or casual? That’s cute. You’re imposing limits on things that don’t exist so you can get a sense of superiority over people who don’t play games ‘on your level’.

      9. See above. Make sure you finish your homework before replying back.

      • You talk about the “team” aspect of the game, but I doubt that you have helped your teammates at all in the games that you’ve played. I doubt that you’ve responded with a teleport scroll to a teammate who is getting ganked.

        As a new player to any game, you should take it easy. Lay low and see what other people are doing (including enemies). See what works and what fails. Ask your teammates about what to do and what to get.

  26. The DOTA community can be very toxic. I think it stems from some DOTA 2 players being hardcore followers of DOTA. They are the fan base that got DOTA 2 started, so they act and behave a little differently than others. Now that the game is going more mainstream, it is attracting a player base that is completely different. They are casual gamers and don’t care about stats or owning. They just want to have fun. Essentially, it’s two worlds colliding. I am all for reporting players that are abusive, regardless of what they say to try and “justify” their actions. The excuse going around is that people nowadays are just too soft and need to man up, meaning that people should be able to handle some verbal abuse. The funny thing is they don’t realize their toxic attitude is the problem. They think it’s the new players who can’t play.

  27. First of all wow that is a long post, second I’ve been playing these games for years all of them DotA, LOL , HON and more reacently DotA 2 and the author is right the communities for all these games are awful, There worst I have seen in any games ever only reason why people say LOL HON and DotA 2 are better is because they can’t understand most of the bashing, RTS are by far my favorite online game and I have no idea why even me being a power house on my server fails in games sometimes and get hounded for it, they find any excuse to acuse you of trolling “oh you’re bying dagon for furion” . They grow this mentallity which isn’t helped by my servers new rating system which rates you on kills and deaths not reliseing that the best player could be the support who has died the most . The author is right DotA 2 will never be a friendly game not for only unskilled players but everyone …..and the point is proven. With the DotA fan boy making a cocky pathetic comment to the author about being bad instead of discussing it will civility . The author has some sense and obviously is a true gamer , much love man .

    • It could become a friendly game but a LOT of changes would have to happen first. Changes that, to be honest, I don’t think a fair portion of the community would be behind.

  28. I would agree with you but I’ve played HON and LOL and they were both really disappointing. People prefer it over dota BECAUSE its so noob friendly, however dota 2 is compensating for this by giving you the chance to learn the game although you won’t learn everything it’s a good start. And the raging from other players just makes it all the sweeter when you end up carrying the team to victory. I’m currently teaching a friend to play and if they listen to my team and don’t think their a pro straight off the bat they play really well, most people get flamed at try to control the game because they ‘owned in LOL’.

    I would say give it a good chance it’s a really run game.

  29. WOW NO WONDER YOU WONT BE PLAYING DOTA 2 YOU USE STUPID TERMS TO DESCRIBE SUCH A SOPHISTICATED GAME LIKE DOTA YOU HAVE HALF AB RAIN BECAUSE U CANNOT BE BOTHERED LEARNING IT ALSO COUNTER STRIKE IS JUST POINT AND CLICK CANNOT BE ANY MORE SIMPLE THAN THAT GET A LIFE

  30. dota 2 just doesnt have the original feel of the original dota on warcraft 3/frozen throne, it might be more fun for people who are looking at a game thats just newer in design and options but to me, its just a whole different game even though people say its exactly like the first dota, to me, its not. this is kind of the same thing that happened with fable, the first one, or fable lost chapters was one of my favorite games, the 2nd one and 3rd to me are not fun because they changed the way you control the hero and gameplay/how you access item/quests. the problem is fable 2 and 3 had better graphics but lacked the same original gameplay in the first fable. now if they went exactly with the same gameplay as the first fable in fable 2 and 3 but with better graphics, then i would like it, but apparently most game designers/developers or people that construct on how the game is like, dont do that normally. if they were to design a game like fable 1/lost chapters in the same time era, i believe it was like 900 a.d – 12th century, with better graphics and more choices/options/ but kept almost the same scheme gameplay, then it would probably be the best game ever created.
    one of the games i liked was megaman legends, the made a 2nd one with exactly the same gameplay, so i liked the 2nd one too, of course graphics could have been better but thats more of a cartoon fiction game than real life so it didnt matter to me that the graphics were exactly the same as the first one.

    • You are clearly a dota fan and I would like to leave you with this Icefrog logic. In dota 1Icefrog never let us down. He constantly made changes to improve the metagame for more spectacular gameplay. How many times have u died. Because you were back at base buying items? That has been completely eliminated now. The new item system also tries to maximise the time spent farming as you aren’t back at the shops clicking through menus or microing the courier. Besides the grapichs overhaul the only change is really the shop system, all the mechanics are exactly the same (excluding rubucks ability to steall any spell – which is a good thing for the game)

      Anyway, what bothers me about these comments that “it doesn’t feel like dota 1” is that you just seem to be looking for a reason not to like it, and everyone I’ve ever heard this from has only ever played about 5 games (most likely on a friends computer) before passing this judgement.

      In conclusion, stop looking for a reason to hate the game, keep playing and you’ll realise as time goes that it is much better than dota 1

  31. Just for all LoL-fanboys: Don’t make Dota2 matchmaking worse than LoL’s (lowlvl-smurfs). You all know how much RP-hunter smurfs are underway so.

    Everyone has his own opinion about his favorite game, but I don’t like it when people talk Dota worse than LoL like this.

    Well It’s free to you, what you play. I just want to tell you that you guys should make your own picture about Dota/LoL if you never played any of these game yet. Try both out and play the game that you like more.

  32. To be honest, I love DOTA2 as a game. I feel like I’ve finally hit a level where I know what I’m doing and I can execute some flash to help my team win games. My biggest issue, however, is you never know what kind of team you’re going to get in a random pub match.

    There still are a lot of players who outright flame any noobs in their game, or blame their team for their lose regardless. Just the other day I was in game after all my friends have logged off, and there were players outright not listening to each other and flaming one another *in their own team*. I reported the one main culprit, but earlier that day I had to play a game were two players were absolute noobs and we ended up having a great match with them.

    There’s never an excuse to not teach a noob if they are asking for help, or they accept your offer of help. The only thing that’s worse than an asshole, however, is a noob who isn’t communicating with you back and seems to be completely ignoring you. Regardless, I think there should be a mentor system in place soon because I want to help noobs get the basics and I enjoy teaching them. In the meantime, any noob is welcome in my game as far as I’m concerned :)

  33. The variety of roles and champions.
    And The variety of strategy That You Can Make From/Whit That.
    It Is Not That I Never Play’d A Game Before Like That.
    Look To W.o.W. Or Battle Forge.
    All Verry Simular To DOTA 2.
    Just The Old Games Whit A New Jacked.
    Allthoug I Still Play Battle Forge, I Don’t Think Dota Will Last That Long.

    I Know What You Mean By Leaving A Game Cus The Community.
    Have Been Playing World Of Warcraft To.
    Worst Community Any Game Ever Can Have.
    Still I Think You Shouldn’t Leave A Game Cus The Community Is Sh*t.

  34. Not everyone in the community is bad.

    I’ve played both the original dota and dota 2, i’m not really skilled as a player but there are a handful of things I get to teach others about it.

    I often just report players that abuses others in-game, even trolls that feed and leavers.

    I know there are more of them than the ones like me, but I personally hate people that bash noobs just because they’re new to the game.

    The community is harsh but I’d rather be the change that I want to see.

  35. At a certain skill bracket, you just learn that flaming your team doesn’t work. It’s much better to give advice than to start cussing. If they are receptive there is a better chance of winning, if not, then on to the next game.

    Just some advice for writing: don’t try to belittle your audience. No one cares for that infinity or string theory bullshit. If you majored in physics or math, just say so. Sprinkling around pseudo facts won’t make people empathize with you being bad at some game. Instead, it makes you look egotistical and narcissistic.

    • Huh? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of my particle accelerator, flux capacitor, huge biceps, gigantic brain and tendency towards hyperbole.

  36. The fucking dota 2 community is totaly shit. Thanks to the community i cant enjoy this game anymore and im really thinking about to quit playing dota just because of that.

  37. hey bro i don’t think u understand the mechanics of intelligent match making- it creates DOTA 2 matches according to your id’s level if ur level 2-5 you are a noob so all the people you play against are 2-5 level noobs then gradually the level increases and the real skill comes into play and about the comments of the team mates you are supposed to digest that because the person saying that is most probably a pro :D

    • It’s quite easy to digest unwarranted abuse. If you think about it for a little while and really read into it, you can deduce that it’s abusive, unwarranted and also wholly unnecessary.

      By the by, you’re aware that there’s a difference between ‘noob’ and ‘newb’ right? One is an insult and the other describes someone new to the game. I’ll give you a hint: the one that’s derived from 1337 speak is the insult.

  38. Havin played both League and Dota 2 for about a year I can say that the league community is really,really worse compaired to dota’s.Yeah in dota if you’re a new player you could probably play with people from the old dota that will rage on you and ruin your experience,but the only reason that you won’t see such behavior in lol is because lot’s of the players will be new like you,they’ll now they suck and won’t make you feel bad or insult you,but that’s gone be in the first 1 or 2 months.After this the people will start thinking they are playing pretty good and better then others and they’ll start showing their true nature-insults,raging,crying,blaming everybody.I’ve tried to quit lol 3 or 4 times just because of the community.In every game you’ll have idiots,rage kids,trolls,even your so called “friends” will start behaving like litlle kids.I stopped playing lol for 5 months and decided to return and see if things had changed,sadly it was all the same.

    On the other hand you have the dota community which is full with russians (no offence not all russians suck) and rage nerds.For new players this isn’t pretty welcoming.The reason I continued playing dota 2 is because I was used to the raging from lol and played with friends.The interesting thing is that contrary to the idea that dota’s community is worse then lol’s it’s not like that.I’ve made a lot of friends in dota and the behavior is miles away from that in lol’s.In a way this is because the mechanics of dota are really more complicated,strategic and you have to work as a team if you want to achieve your goal.Rarely you’ll see someone crying about someone getting a kill or by making a mistake compared to lol.

    League’s community looks better and more welcoming then dota’s in the beginning,after that it all changes.This doesn’t mean there are no idiots in dota,frankly the weirdest things I saw in my life were from the dota forums :D , but this kind of behavior turns away people from dota and it’s not a game you learn like in a month.If you start playing dota,give it a chance, play it for at least a month or two with friends or try to make friends in the game.Believe my I’ve played League more then dota and I hate the community and the game because they could’ve been better,and dota,dota is something you either start loving or you leave it after a few games.

  39. I feel like the author of this article has a good point. For someone like me (I came over from Dota 1), I started out fairly good at the game. So I understand how people can be frustrated with lesser skilled players. At the same time, I am a fairly calm person, and it annoys me when other people flame, especially if it’s not at me. They should attempt to be teacher’s, or at least give constructive criticism (e.g. “Dude, building a mekansm on Faceless Void is terrible idea–build a Mask of Madness instead”, or the like) to new players. It is fair for the newb to ask for help on a specific thing, as there are so many different aspects of Dota. Advice in the picking stage is critical to helping newbs (newb + Meepo= >_<). I respect LOL and its players, however I never had fun the same way I do in Dota.

    Counterpoint to that, some of the appeal of Dota 1&2 (to me, at any rate) is the "trial-by-fire" method of learning. It is amazingly satisfying to have all the hard work (believe me, I have more hours of Dota 2 then I care to say) you put into learning and becoming good at the game pay off when you go 35-0 with some difficult hero. I'm not sure if this is true in LOL, but in Dota there are millions of counter strategies to any strategy, both individual and team, so no two games are ever close to the same. I play on my own the majority of the time, and possibly because of experience in the original Dota, flaming doesn't bother me that much when it's aimed at me.

    TL;DR–If you really don't have the attention span to read this, you really are a 10 year old kid.

  40. wow you played call of duty because of the great community? Are you retarded? CoD has one of the worst communities i have ever seen and if you are going to try and say they aren’t completely horrendous then you should be in a mental facility.

    • I suppose it’s to be expected that you didn’t realise I was talking about Call of Duty 2, judging by your comment it was released before you were born.

  41. The bottom line is that DOTA 2 requires taking time to learn the game and formulate strategy. Unlike most games people are used to, you cannot simply load up the game and start killing stuff. The “game” begins when the player starts learning and strategizing outside of an actual match. Joining matches not having spent any time learning yourself while expecting “the community” to spend their time spoon feeding you is what turns veteran players bitter and new players away. If learning and strategizing outside of the game doesn’t sound fun to you, I suggest giving it a try first, and if you still don’t enjoy it, then you just don’t like this kind of game. Lord knows there are lots of genres I can’t stand, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

    Cheers.

  42. pls stop dota game, our children are all stress already playing their whole life with this bullshit game. they are skipping classes in the school just to play and catch up their other friends playing. our children is our future country;s leader but what happen now, they are being fooled by this sucker game.

  43. if you cant endure getting flamed…gtfo. this game was like this from start and always will be.

    when stakes are high everybody gets more excited and anxious they may shout more and stuff.

    this is common in any type of game with alot of pressure and quick thinking. like football for exp. if you have ever played it you know what im talking about.

    • So because people have been abusive from the start, they’re allowed to keep on being abusive? I mean, by that logic absolutely no one should be playing DOTA 2 as the original mod was there from the start and will always be like that.

  44. I think you’re too sensitive to what complete strangers say on the internet. The reason people get flamed for sucking in DOTA is that teamwork and communication matters more than in other games; playing poorly is worse than playing a man down. Certainly I’ve been that guy plenty of times when learning a new hero or knocking the rust off. What is in your power is how you react. Even people that flame you can also give you valuable advise if you can swallow your pride long enough to ask for it. If you have a working knowledge of the game but not yet encyclopedic knowledge of it, a simple question like “what major item to get first?” or “what skill to max first?” can go a long way toward learning a new hero or strategy. I learned by picking specific heroes repeatedly, and later had enough of a knowledge to feel confident enough to learning new heroes by picking random ones.

    My own experience with DOTA started in 2006, at the request of a dorm-mate. My only knowledge coming in was experience playing warcraft 3 (I’m terrible at RTSs btw). The early games were painful, but unlike you I was immediately hooked by the depth of gameplay. I liked the strategy of a RTS without the micromanagement. I liked the strong RPG elements while starting every game on a level playing field. I was enraptured by the rewards I could see ahead for precise play and dominance granted by careful teamwork. Like Football (handegg), DOTA is a game where split seconds, inches, and slivers of health can make the difference between victory and defeat. And above all, every game is a unique story.

    The DOTA I’ve played over the years has been plagued by the limitations of being a warcraft addon, and some of these limitations make for a less-tolerant community. Matchmaking is picking a game out of a list. Joining a game with friends means everyone joining the right game at the same time. The average 45-minute game could be ruined by connection issues or intentional early-leaving, with no option for a bot or human to replace the leaver.

    Valve has shown every intention of addressing and remedying these issues to make a better community in DOTA2. Tutorials, extensive interface improvements, comprehensive matchmaking made possible by a huge playerbase, bots, support for new players to take over from dropped ones, better friend lists, clan support, and even a built-in mentoring/coaching system. Will people still be mad at you for doing bad? Yes of course they will, but this is a natural consequence of the game’s design, not a true indictment of the community.

    The point of this article was about the vital importance of a good community in enjoying a game. I would add to that, and say that sometimes you have to put in some effort to find the right community, because the people you meet in random matches don’t represent the people you could be playing with. I never found that “right” community in DOTA because I wasn’t hardcore, and the limitations of the WC3 platform were strict. Yet I enjoyed DOTA anyway, and I anticipate enjoying DOTA2 more once I find the right community for myself.

    You said you disliked Eve. I’ve played Eve since 2006, with some very long breaks along the way. Eve is an extremely social game, and my time in it can be tracked by whatever community I was playing with at the time. But Eve requires some effort to find the right community, and once you do, you find yourself playing an entirely different game. I’m currently taking a break from Eve to play Dust 514. Since you like FPS games, you might give this one a try. I can honestly say that among all the FPS games I’ve played, Dust is the only one where I can consistently join up with random people in a random game, and find most of them to be using microphones and communicating well. The game has its issues for sure, but this last fact, and the fact that I’ve found a community there that I enjoy playing with, will keep me from giving any serious consideration to other online shooters for a long time. I read the other “long comment” in this thread, and say that since you are an experienced FPS player, you’ve got 2 of the 3 elements down already.

  45. I can really see where you’re comming from with this. But as a “long” time player of this game (3 and something years), I think you’re “wrong”. ‘

    Shitty community.
    Oh yes, there is no sugar coating this. The DOTA2 community is extremely bad. But as you get better, and obviously get matched with more experienced players, the flame will not be there as much. Granted, people will still flame you occationally in pubs. My advice is to stack with friends, and just keep on improving. I’ve been playing with pretty much the same 10 guys since I met them on a server I was playing on like 3 years ago. Since then we’ve obviously become great friends, and we are trying to play competative now. Another thing you want is to try out the heroes which requires the least amount of micro, and then go over to playing these after a couple of months practice.

    Also, just fuck your teammates. They talk shit? Either ignore or talk shit back. Dont take things personally. The mute system is pretty big now as well, so flamers will get muted.

    I think some of the fun for me was learning dota, and improving. I always want to be the best, which is what has made me endure the slow (and sometimes painfull?) road. If you’re gonna play this game, you need to play it hardcore. DOTA2 (and DotA) is not a game for casuals, if you want to play just for the fun, I suggest LoL.

    • I find the attitude of “fuck your teammates” in a team game to be counter-productive.

      It almost sounds like you’re saying “play just for the fun” as a bad thing. Am I the only one who actually plays games for fun any more? Why do people waste their time on a game that they DON’T find fun?

  46. you need to be a strong willed player to play games like dota… it takes me like 2~3 months of ignoring shit talk and learning just to get basics of the game…

  47. LAN communities in DoTA is pretty decent. We actually just laugh about our own team players who feed the enemy team. X)

    Online is NOPE NOPE NOPE. I’m unaffected by flaming though ’cause it’s simply childish.

  48. I find this ironic on a website called ”TopTierTactics’. Where this article complains that there is too much tactic in this game. Wishing things were simpler like Call of Duty.

  49. Your article is pointless. Their is a reason you can PLAY with BOTS and play PRACTICE games and JOIN LOBBIES and play TIERED matches with other noobs. SO you enjoy the learning like everyone else. Don’t cry if you join a pub with out studying the game first. Valve has done a great job of making this game enjoyable for noobs by being able to practice first. It takes time, the game is complex. Hope you come back and try it again.

    • Why the hell would I go anywhere near this game again when every time I’ve played it, the other players have been nothing but constantly abusive? Your comment is pointless.

    • It’s a totally unrealistic expectation to play a game by yourself in order to begin enjoying it and not get abused. Would much rather spend my time hanging out with people who care and don’t treat you like shit.
      As for the other suggestions even then no one wants to go near a first timer and who can be bothered tracking down someone who would in the vast expanse of the player base. Having friends babysit you through it is probably the best thing.
      The game is complex and that’s part of what makes the learning fun but no one you play with appreciates this. If people think someone is doing bad give them hints and advice not shout abuse and complain to everyone how bad they are doing.
      It’s a team game but (atleast in pub games) few people try to play as a team.
      Personally I don’t think Valve should be allowing their community to get so elitist but I guess it pays the bills.

  50. Wow… this article is amazing. Not so much in the content, but the fact that over a year after the article was written, people are still writing comments and you are responding, still as resolute in your hatred of Dota 2 as you were when you first wrote this article. The funniest thing about all of this is that several of the comments here by Dota 2 players don’t merely disagree with you, but go out of their way to hurl personal insults, which ironically enough only reinforces your own opinion about the community. I’ll go ahead and reward your perseverance with a lengthy comment of my own.

    As for me, I honestly couldn’t agree more with the premise of your your article, though my circumstances are quite different from yours. I have never played LoL or any other MOBA out there. However I have played about 600 hours of Dota 2, which might seem like a big number relative to other games but still insufficient compared to most of the competent players. Furthermore I have been playing for about 8 months. Though I probably came to the same conclusions that you have, somehow I am still drawn to the game and continue to play it occasionally, though still not nearly enough for me to improve at a reasonable pace.

    I have played most of my games with a rotating group of friends over a skype call. Solo queues consist of about 2% of all of my games, so I don’t regularly experience trash talk from anonymous players. However, in exchange I occasionally go through something ten times worse that some of the above comments have already mentioned, which is getting verbally abused by my own friends, or worse yet friends of friends who don’t hold back on the insults because they don’t really know me. They don’t consist of things like “go die!” or “fucking noob you suck!” but raising their voice and saying “Oh my god WHY did you do that!? for making a relatively simply mistake. However that is not the worst part. What is extremely obnoxious is when my party is just one or two players short and our remaining slots get filled by randoms. Sometimes they turn out to be far better than us but most of the time we immediately dismiss them as “clowns” the moment they make one mistake. It would be one thing if they were just being uncooperative assholes, and in those instances they are truly getting what they deserve, but most of the time these guys are just innocent players who are playing solo because they have no choice and aren’t fortunate enough to have a regular group of friends that play like me. I have grown sick of hearing my teammates shouting “Man what a fucking idiot, he is going X on Y!” I am honestly surprised by the apparent lack of foresight in these types of statements because not only are they insulting, they are just plain wrong.

    Such a mentality is toxic in two ways: First it dismisses game knowledge as something to be learned through inuition rather than what it really is, which is just rote memorization as one far above mine has already discussed. The fact is that stat and item builds for most heroes aren’t blatantly obvious, the only people that set those standards are the professional players themselves, so there is no justification for acting high and mighty just because you happen to know that Aghanim’s Scepter is a really good item on Viper. In truth what too many people are perceiving to be as idiocy is just mere ignorance. The other problem I have with people talking down to random players in this way is that it conveniently hides the fact that they were just as bad and ignorant when they were starting out. This point was already summed up very nicely in the article.

    Though this article does a good job at explaining why the community in Dota 2 is I am surprised to not see a plausible reason suggested. I am a scientist by profession, so when I see an interesting phenomenon like this I try to come up with a hypothesis that could explain it, and I think mine is one that many others would agree with. To put it bluntly, it is a combination of the teamwork aspect inherent to MOBA’s as well as the competitive mechanics. I have recently moved to California, and noticed that most of the drivers here are douchebags. The public transportation here is also in an embarrassing state and so many people drive, leading to terrible traffic congestion during most times of the day. It is not hard to see why this quickly builds up road rage, so a similar comparison can be made with Dota 2. The fact is that victory often requires good teamwork, so if just one person feeds the enemy team with too many kills, it is not hard for him or her to become the subject of verbal abuse from the rest of the team. But if you want to know why it seems to be noticeably worse in Dota 2 or HoN than in LoL, it is because the game is more “competitive” and generally far more punishing in general. For example, you don’t lose gold when you die in LoL, so one can naturally see that feeding has a much lower impact in that game. If you compare this to other “competitive” but one player games like SC2, the distinction becomes even more apparent. Sure you have a few Idras out there showing constant unsportsmanlike behavior as well as some ragequits after getting cheesed, but generally you have no one else to blame but yourself for your loss, so it is only natural that the players in that community seem to be better mannered. While I do think the lack of empathy and respect of some people in the Dota 2 community is disturbing, I can’t bring myself to blame it entirely on them, other than the fact that they chose to devote their time to a game that continues to encourage their bad behavior.

    I think my own story though is an interesting example because after playing Dota 2 for a certain amount of time, each member of our group went down a somewhat different path. When we were starting out, none of us had any MOBA experience, and we had all met through playing together on a minecraft server. One person in the group then somehow stumbled on to a Dota 2 invite and got hooked immediately. Naturally, the rest of us soon joined in and we had quite a bit of fun playing against bots. Back then, we were still trying to learn the mechanics with great intensity but there was still no real pressure in any of the games, we really were just trying to have fun. Eventually though we grew tired of thrashing the bots and jumped right into our first pub game. We were destroyed, of course, but the atmosphere in our group noticeably changed that day. I soon realized that now the focus would no longer solely be on the fun but rather getting better and trying our hardest to win. To that end our group went through a pretty significant change in its composition. Some left in their frustration with the learning curve of the game and were replaced by friends of friends with much more experience, and that is when real trouble began. Don’t get me wrong, I thought some of these guys were really cool people and I still can personally call them my friends. But even now I continue to feel isolated from the group. Frankly, they are just far too crazy about Dota 2 and have , while my feelings toward it remain ambivalent at best. Even now, I still wonder why I even play it every now and then.

    Which leads me to my post important point and the one I probably agree with you on the most: Frankly, Dota 2, or personally any MOBA for that matter, is very fun in its own right. As I have exhaustively explained above, the fact that the game encourages everyone to release their inner nerd rage is one thing, but the fact that I can’t get any enjoyment out of the core gameplay is really what prevents me from getting into it. An old friend of mine who I tried to convince to play it once described it as “A competitive RTS meets an MMORPG… in the worst play possible.” The fact is that the game is just… boring and sterile most of the time and ridden with grinding, especially in the beginning where you are just trying to farm creeps for last hit gold. Sometimes interesting skirmishes happen early, but the general pacing of the game is just really slow unless you are in the middle of a big team fight, but those tend to end relatively quickly. Worse yet, some heroes, the so called “hard carries” have to suffer even more of this boredom and farm constantly for as long as 30 minutes until they are riced out. It isn’t uncommon for these types of games to approach one hour long. Once again, I’ll compare this with SC2, which can be fast paced and dynamic from the very start of the game. I hate getting cheesed as much as the next person, but it adds an interesting element to the game and a larger variety in possible play styles to be had, despite the fact that there are far fewer races to master than there are heroes in Dota 2. The only reason I see it declining while MOBA’s are thriving is because it is managed by one of the least customer friendly video game developer and publisher combination out there — Activision Blizzard. Comparatively speaking, I have to give both RIot and Valve a lot of credit here in this regard.

    So ultimately at the end of the day I really have to ask this to hardcore Dota fans out there: Do you think it is the most fun thing you have ever experienced? So much fun that you are willing to make a lot of personal sacrifices to develop the discipline needed to get good at it? Even though I am still really bad at it myself, I actually put a lot of time into it in the beginning, enough where I felt it was interfering with my quality of life for very little reward. Now that I have reached the point I am at today, I have come to realize that playing video games should never be a chore. I work hard enough during daylight hours, so there is no reason that I shouldn’t enjoy myself with a fun but relaxing game. With Dota 2, the only fun that can be had for me is when I am utterly destroying the enemy team while pulling off goofy but impressive tactics such as landing an Ancient Apparition Ice Blast from across the map. But realistically, if close friends of mine weren’t still playing Dota, I’d have no reason at all to play it myself.

  51. Forgive me for all the typos in the above comment, it is something I tend to do when they go on to long. To clarify, I meant to say that I thought Dota 2 wasn’t very fun in the second to last paragraph.

  52. players who play the game with the mindset that they want to win will definitely be disappointed and angry if there is a noob on the team who feeds. It doesn’t matter if you’re a troll or new.

    This is because moba type of games are really team based games, and if there is one person not fulfilling their role or not using their character well, It usually screws up the game for the win-orientated players.

    feeding makes people who want to win angry. that is all.

  53. and one thing i’d like to mention is that the matchmaking matches the average level of the two teams. (for Dota)

    Hence, if you are playing with an experienced friend who has played before, a lot of the time you would be much lower skilled than the rest of your team.

    Thus higher leveled/skilled players see you as a burden to the team and bad mannered players will start to flame you.

  54. Perhaps the post is too old to comment on but I think you were unlucky to be exposed to the wrong crowd.

    Play with us a couple of times and see for yourself , the community isn’t all that bad :-) To be honest I didn’t find the best people in the community either but I always started by typing that I am a noob/newbie depending on the match and I was always well received and I received good advice in game.

    I play on Russian, Chinese, South East Asian and US East servers and I’ve played Dota only for a mere 120 hours and I am still learning.

    It can be frustrating to lose towers or get the enemies fed by your team because of a newbie’s mistakes, but not everyone’s so dramatic about winning and losing a match. After all it’s a game and it should be enjoyed as such.

  55. In my personal experience, there are jerks all over the Internet, if it’s in a forum, or Youtube, or a game, they are people tapping their keyboards behind safety and anonymity and based on their negative behavior there is a good chance they may have some type of psycho-social disorder; their behavior is based on singling out a victim and then insulting then, and a repeat pattern of such behavior suggests they may be bullying those people online because IRL they could never do that. We all know the Internet is a place where social rejects enact their deluded fantasies they could never in reality ever get to live out.

    League of Legends there has been many nice people I have encountered. Sometimes, there is one guy that tries to start things, but as a team we neutralize him quickly. That’s why I like the League of Legends community better than Dota 2, because there is less tolerance for bullshit in my experience. In Dota 2, unless you’re in a party or clan, it’s every player for themselves and if people are having a bad day they will all go after you to relieve the stress of their miserable lives. The Internet is a hotbed of negativity and hate and games with large player bases, such as Dota 2, and Counter-Strike, reflect how people truly are when they become anonymous – and all the underlying mental illnesses we suffer as a society.

    Thankfully, time made me forget most of my rotten experiences with Dota 2, different versions of CS, and so forth. League of Legends indeed has jerks but in my experience they are a lot less frequent than the other games mentioned. Things could be different for people based on their experiences, but if yoi think you have a thick skin it’s pretty easy to ignore a bunch of nobodies in online game servers – if you don’t think you have a thick skin, the Internet is a huge place, and there is lots more to do.

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  57. hey man I play this game a lot. I can clear a lot of things up for you regarding the fun factor. learning to play isn’t fun you are 100% right but the reason it isn’t fun is the same reason 2 a day football practices in college aren’t fun. or learning to play chess can be frustrating but imagine if each peice was a player devoting there time to the game and you were making poor choices I bet it wouldnt be fun. BUT ! i think we could all agree playing in the NCAA championship/grand masters (chess) would likely be a lot of fun.

    TLDR learning to do something new with a time investment sucks! but once you get it the fun more obvious.

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  60. As a devoted player to the MOBA genre with shit tons of experience in LoL and DotA 1 and 2, I am here to voice my opinion:

    1. Learning the basic =/= 100% not going to feed: The major misconception throughout this whole comment box is that veterans are saying that people shouldn’t jump into queues directly without learning the basics. Okay, here’s my counterpoint: EVEN when someone had read through every FAQ/guide out there, played 10000 bot games and played through the tutorial 10000 times, there’s a CHANCE he WILL feed. Yes, doing everything a newbie can do wiill not mean he can play every game perfectly. Yes, every player feeds, even the best player in the world will have a bad game. The question remains, why instantly flame the guy if he feeds when the best of the world can feed as well? Everyone feeds once in a while, even the veteran have bad games, every player with a brain in the world should know that. The damage is already done. Shouting at him all game long isn’t going to change anything. A good teammate will spend time to cover the other’s mistake instead of wasting time on meaningless flaming. There’s a reason why pro don’t flame(yes, I have played with them. I am Plat in a relatively low population LoL server[LoL SEA] so being Plat is enough to meet the best players in the server and the pros of the SEA scene) because they know nothing good is going to come out of that. Look at sport teams for example, the star player isn’t going to rage at his team every single game because he plays better. Instead, he tries to do his very best to motivate his team to do better…and shrugs it off if it just wasn’t enough.

    2. Illusion that something is on the line/It’s competitive: Some of the above comments said that it’s a competitive game and players are going to be dick about this. Now let’s go over my example: EVERY FREAKING SPORT in the world is competitive by default but do you see people raging at others in a casual street ball session? Is that justified? Hell no. A non-ranked game in DotA has nothing on the line so a win or lose really has no majort impact. Yet, many players love to flame the bad performers like their limbs are gone if they were to lose the match. I get that it’s more intense in ranked and I can understand that since ranked has MMR so something is on the line. Although I will point out that MMR is more or less created to allow balanced and fair game, not for someone to brag about their elite 5000 MMRs and shit. Unless you are playing in a tournament for ACTUAL reward, you really aren’t playing it “competitively”.

    3. Obsessive with 1 single game: Yes, bad performers(I use performer instead of player because a good player can perform badly IN A SINGLE GAME, it doesn’t mean he’s bad) can ruin a game but even that is no reason to flame him like the world is going to end in the next 50 minutes. MMR aren’t decided or built on 1 game, 1 game decides like 0.xx% of your MMR when you have more than 100 matches. So what if you lose 1 match because of crappy teammate, how about you try to improve yourself further so you can carry harder on the other 99 matches? This is the primary differnce between a true pro and a “smartass veteran”. A true pro like Dendi analyze his OWN mistakes(not lashing out on teammate’s mistake) post-game and tries to do better next time. Last I checked, Dendi has 56% win rate and that means even being one of the best players in the world, you will have to take 44 loses every 100 games. Hence, taking loses ARE TO BE EXPECTED.

    4. F-ed up mentality: The whole MOBA(yes, I include every MOBA) genre has a weird mentality and that is “if I feed, you can flame me; if you feed, I am sure going to flame you”. Granted, it’s a fair agreement if you look at that in a way. However, I think an environment with a difference mentality: “If I feed, my teammate will help me; if you feed, I am going to help you” would be better.

    Conclusion: No matter how you justify it, flaming teammates isn’t helping the community as a whole.

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