If we look at sports and see how people act like a team they are very kind to one another and are very encouraging. Their teammates often do not let bad plays or errors get the best of them. They will often say "don't worry about it, you'll get it next time" or "shake it off you are doing fine". Even if you play a pick up sport with people you do not know in person, whether that's you go to a graduation party and play with your friends family members, or you invite some friends to play with other friends who don't know each other very well, you will still often seen a team dynamic in which people are encouraging and sympathetic.

DOTA 2 is a team focused game in which you have to coordinate attacks and setup ganks, and essentially make plays with your teammates. They can workout well or they can fail. If they fail then you can for the most part all take part in the fail and agree together that it was a bad choice, or that the other team played it better. But what does occur more often than not in DOTA is finger pointing out the bad players from themselves. They would often get harassed and call them a noob or even just saying that they suck. Now it is fine for the other team to do this since who doesn't like to smack talk a team they are playing to get inside their heads, but when their own teammates do it it doesn't help one bit.

When you start to harass someone who is a bad player they sometimes will do better to show them that they are not, but that is once in a blue moon and instead they will continue to do bad and even do worse. I have never played a game where someone did something bad or forgot to do a skill and someone says "just shake it off man you'll get it next time". I have played games where I am that person who does forget and I use my mic and explain to them what happened and some people were okay with it and did say "it happens", but this is more of an issue with the players who do not use their mic or do and start shit talking back to their teammate and then there is constant fighting between them the whole game. When your team starts to fight, you start to do really really bad, and before you know it the game is over. When you are nice to one another you will see yourselves do better or in the end notice what you guys did wrong as a team and move on to the next one.

Obviously I am not talking about your buddies getting together and playing a game, I am talking about the matchmaking games where you go in by yourself and hope to get lucky to have good players. The problem with this whole situation that is pretty obvious that sets itself from playing sports as a team in real life is that you aren't physically with each other so you feel obligated to say whatever you want with no repercussions. That is something that will not change as long as people can't get along.

If your team starts to harass you in a game you should leave and say I am not taking any shit from people I don't know so good luck without me. The problem with this is that people will report you for leaving the game, that is if they didn't report you for being a bad player already which is a problem within itself because those players who are good or think they are good, weren't you a bad player yourself once when you first started?

The point I am trying to make here is that just about no one who plays DOTA 2 understands what it means to be a team, even if it is just for an hour or less than that. There are rare occasions where you will land on a team who is nice and you will win a game and then party up after that to play a few more, that does happen. But there is no remorse in DOTA for the bad players, and I should mention that bad players also goes for the people who are just having a bad game or even a bad day.

Totally agree its something that is frustrating to know end i love to play dota but i burned out. I got tired of the rpg farmer game some play, the poor communication, the flaming. I just dont get it, we need to work together and yet everyone has their own plan. Heros Of the Storm I have found refreshing with the simplicity of the game. Some people due not grasp the concept yet but those who due.You easily invite to party at the score screen and continue to wreck. Games are also a lot shorter. Im not saying HOTS is better but its a needed change of pace and the simplicity of the game seems to help those which struggle with strategy look decent. Id recommend for a nice vacation from dota2.

We used to have punchups in the dressing room when someone had a bad day playing football. At like age 5 to 11 or so. The parents and trainers were very kind and understanding, the players were often not. But then kids are generally terrible people. It's not like it's their fault either, their poor little brains just haven't developed the tools needed for empathy and such yet.

As for LOMAs, the problem is partly with the games themselves, as in: they require an absurd amount of time played to get even close to mediocre, one player doing the wrong thing repeatedly can completely ruin a game for a team, and if that happens that's a 25-50 minute game in the toilet. Add that to a super competitive community that has literally no barrier to entry, so it's full of the absolute dregs of internet society. People can be horrible pricks, get banned, create a new free account and be back within hours. That's a recipe for disaster.

I hear LoL has made great strides over the last few years though, and the chance of running into a majority of horrible pricks in a pickup game is now sub 93%.

I think part of the problem is the tutorials don't teach this aspect of the game at all, or any ideas or concepts that a typical coach would train their players in in a team sport. I frequently get paired with well meaning new players, who totally approach this as a single player gamer would. And that's a losing proposition.

What's worse is they sometimes bring single player expectations too (i.e. feeling entitled to winning etc, grumbling and getting angry when things are going poorly. etc).

And ontop of that the in-game communication tools aren't the greatest, which complicates an already tough thing. Even in athletic sports communication is an art

Moved to the Dota 2 forum. When your blogs are about a specific game or platform, please associate your blog to it and then put it there instead of into General when you get to the cross posting part. It'll save the mods a ton of time if everyone takes just a few seconds to do this. Thanks!

@mb: its general discussion because it is about teammates in gaming vs. teammates in real life, so no its not about a specific game