Journal of a man who hates DotA

Honestly, I would go so far as to say I hate DotA, and all it's ilk.

At first I assumed it was just because I was bad at it, and had never been a big fan of any RTS or even Diablo-style games. But there was something more to it, something that was actively offensive to me about it's mechanical design. That I could put my finger on what it specifically was that I hated about the game drove me nuts, and so to-date, I have put in:

• 24 Steam hours of DotA2. That accounts for 19 games, 12 of which are full public matches, and 6 of those twelve were wins. All games were with one or two friends on voice chat. Spent around 5 bucks on cosmetic items with Steam wallet funds made from selling trading cards.
• Level 12 in League of Legends, but with reportedly 9 or 29 wins, which I think depends on whether or not you count bot matches. I've unlocked 3 champs by choice, and have also put in $10 (but to be fair that was for the Nurse Akali skin which was a donation to Haiti).
• A few hours each into Awesomenauts and Super / Monday Night Combat, and possibly some others trying to be a DotA-like without the classic interface.

*edit* I put these here for the sake of honesty. I'm not claiming to be an expert player, nor am I trying to make an argument that DotA is a bad game that everyone should stay away from. Before I began playing there was something I didn't like about the game, but I couldn't pin down what it was. It has taken this long for me to understand the game and it's system to the point where I realize and can put into words the elements of it that make it a game I don't want to play. *end edit* (Putting time into a game I don't like isn't unique to DotA for me. I have a number of Halo achievements you wouldn't expect to see from someone who has openly said they don't like the Halo games.)

I have trouble finding exact stats on how much time I've put into DotA-likes, but it's more than I ever wanted to play. But in that time, I have managed to pin down and think about how to fix the problems that I think overwhelm an otherwise tense, strategic, and fairly deep game.

The First Problem - The Mental Jump

I come from a background of largely FPS games. So when I show up, and the team kills are posted at the top of the screen, and you tell me that you win once you destroy the other team's core, it sounds like a lot of objective based TDM skills will be transferable. In actuality, they are not.

In objective TDM, cover your teammates, distract and flank opponents, and kill them so that you have time to do the objective while they rush back from wherever they spawned. DotA is deceitful, because there is a valid situation where you can follow this very pattern: the lane push. Clear the wave, kill or chase off the heroes in lane, and then hit the tower and try to take it down before the heroes come back. So the FPS'er in me says, "Alright, well we need to kill the core to win, we need to kill these towers to kill the core, and we need to kill or chase off the laning heroes to kill the towers. So let's attack, chase them off, get the towers, and get the core all before they do the same to us. This is what we need to get good at." Even now, explaining it this way makes a lot of sense to me. However, the RPG roots of DotA give it an element that makes this entire understanding of the game essentially useless.

Heroes level up. Stats go up, items are bought, abilities get better. And they stay better for the rest of the game. In traditional DM games, players spawn on the same level. Same health, same crappy gun, same possibilities laid out before them. And they get better over the course of a match through picking up new guns, getting power-ups, and controlling secure spots on the map (either through traps or just finding a good wall to put your back against). But when someone kills you in DM, you respawn just as you were when you first entered the game. The playing field is being kept even by resetting players every so often. Dota has momentum. A positive feedback loop. Once someone gets big, they stay big, and it only gets easier for them to get bigger. The only way to even the field is for other players to catch up.

So that's the unapparent truth of DotA. Kills and towers seem like an obvious measure of progress, but they're largely irrelevant when compared to team levels. DotA is about the race to get yourself (and ideally your whole team) leveled up faster than your opponents. While watching a Heroes of the Storm stream, I noticed right away and was relieved to see that they put the team level right up at the top of the screen, just as big as the team kills. The towers aren't there to be an objective to take out, they're there to buy you time to grow powerful. If you can get big enough fast enough, then you can do whatever you want, including taking those towers and rampaging straight on to the core. But before the level difference is wide enough to pull off a game winning sweep, you're likely going to use that power to harass the other team. Which leads to what I've found to be the second biggest mental plateau into understanding DotA.

The only effect you can have on another player is to deny them something - to inhibit their growth. Denying isn't unique to DotA. Not by a long shot. In the traditional FPS setting, you could deny another player by grabbing a power-up before they do. But it's a better move to just focus on killing them, because then they won't get that pick-up, AND any other progress they made this life will be reset. Killing a hero in DotA doesn't put them back any, it just denies them the time on the field earning experience. But at the same time, you can deny them that by pushing them out of lane, by tricking them into wasting time fighting you, or simply killing the unit they're about to get XP off of (this specific denial mechanic is specific to DotA, but the rest are valid almost anywhere). And all of these are generally more efficient than killing another hero, but give the same effect as a kill, so they are more important than kills. To kill or deny is the choice to waste your time and theirs, or just theirs while you continue to farm and grow.

This mechanic, and the core idea it brings of the only way to affect opponents is to get under their feet, I think leads to what most people consider the biggest problem of DotA-likes.

The Second Problem - "Stop feeding."

The part of DotA where players fight, are popping skills, trying to land combos, dodging, coordinating on lanes, and ganking and stuff is solid. But unless that goes tit-for-tat, one side of the fight gets bigger, and the game goes back to being entirely about momentum. Since the momentum race is apparently, once again, the biggest factor of a match, it means the denial and stifling of the opponents growth is the main way players fight. To get under their feet. To yank each small victory away from them. This means that the main competitive mechanic is for players to be spiteful, annoying, sadistic, vindictive, little shit-heads to each other. That's it. That's the way this versus game is played.

So when people wonder why this game is known for having a pretty vitriolic community, and Valve has had to try so much to keep players friend, I don't find myself too surprised. Personally, the problem that I feel I've run into more than anything else is players on my team yelling at me to, "Stop feeding!" I think this is a pretty good summation of the symptoms, tho.

And just so we're on the same page, if you're "feeding the enemy," that means that the enemy is killing you over and over.

...Did you catch that? The way that someone else is doing something, but you're getting yelled at for it? Strange, isn't it?

Well, let's try it again. "Stop feeding," maybe more translates into, "Stop letting the enemy kill you." Okay, there's something actionable in there. You could stop presenting yourself to the enemy. If they're killing you over and over, it means that at some point they a subtle edge over you 2 or 3 times, and it rolled and now they're straight bigger than you and you can't stand up to them anymore. So fighting - or even harassing, or maybe even just standing in sight - means dying. So don't fight. But to not be in lane means they're not going to be hindered in their farming. That's unacceptable too, though, because hindering enemies is the only thing to be done in the game. Well, the other solution is to get help from someone else on your team and gang up. But everyone else is already dealing with their own stuff, trying to deny the enemy in their own lane. Moving to rescue you means a deficit in another lane, so that hasn't really helped anything.

So really, "Stop feeding," actually means, "You've already fucked up, we're basically down a man." DotA is a game where it is arguably more harmful to your team for you to play badly than to not play at all. So don't start playing unless you're a prodigy, I guess.

It's just such a weird and kind of shitty loop. If everyone is playing optimally, then both teams stay even because both are getting so undermined that no one can rush ahead. And as soon as someone slips up, that's when the other team has a chance to get ahead. The game has no risk-reward mechanics to let you push your team forward by being skillful, nor are there any real mechanics to knock your opponents backwards. You are either playing optimally, or failing to step on your opponents foot and / or not optimally farming experience.

Actually, that's not entirely true. The Divine Rapier and the Gem of True Sight are two items with drop on death. A hero carrying these items can be regressed by killing them, because it will force them to lose an item they earned. But with the way the rest of the unfolds, it is I think more likely that the player who bought the item will be blamed purchasing it at a poor time when they couldn't hold onto it, rather than the killing player be praised for taking them out.

Getting better at a game and learning to play skillfully is inherently satisfying, but DotA has such a dismal basic game flow that it really kills any want I have to get to that high level of play. It's like a water slide but instead of a pool at the end it's just asphalt. You're likely to get hurt, you're just trying to keep it from being too much that you can't go again. And even the water slide itself, in this case, I think isn't quite worth riding on.

The Third Problem - Needless UI missteps

Some have said that the minutiae of DotA is part of the depth of it. I wouldn't call it the depth, however. Rather, I'd say the subtlitites of DotA are split between mechanical idiosyncrasies and plain poor design. The courier and TP scrolls, compared to the recall ability of League of Legends, are an idiosyncrasy. Systems that accomplish the same task, but change certain specific considerations in how to best accomplish it, but ultimately has no impact on the overall flow of the game. On the other hand, there are some specific, frustrating, and as far as I can tell pointlessly complex subtleties which I chalk up to being remnants of modding an RTS up against the very limits of its engine. Attributing these aspects to the depth of the game is bullshit, and anyone .

I already wrote a short blog post on high skill floors, and the nature of making simple tasks harder. There is difference between what I talked about liking there and what I'm haranguing against here. When raising the skill floor, it needs to be done with purpose. The difficulty and depth of DotA comes from the skill in engaging fights, the experience to know when to pressure, defend, or farm, and the knowledge to to adapt to enemy builds. There are very few issues that make up the set I'm attacking here, but they anger me most because they really have no purpose, and other games adhering to the formula have already gone on to smooth them over for what I feel is a better design.

The courier has given me much trouble in my time with the game. Not the existence of the courier, mind you. Giving you sustainability in lane while also being a vulnerability leads to tactical decisions which require mastery to use effectively. But the way it is incorporated into the interface is kind of a mess. More than once I've run into troubles with juggling items from different players on the same carrier, having it deliver items but then leaving return home with items because of a miscount of slots, being unclear with what it's holding unless you click on it, then being able to leave it adrift from a mis-click or just forgetting that it is still the unit under your control. Again, some of this is clearly left over from a game engine that expect control over multiple units, but in what it now a game which keeps a player's mind focused on control of a single unit. So I'm not saying that the courier is the problem, and being able to do interesting things with it is good and does add to the game, but there is no reason beyond stubborn expectation that there shouldn't be a better, clearer way to integrate and control it.

As much as I can complain about the integration of the courier, I have almost as big a problem with the shop itself. The layout is inscrutable unless you have everything memorized, or you search for what you want. But if every item is laid out so it's all only one click away, and you have to type out what you want, something has gone wrong with your layout. You can select guides going in that just highlight what you should go for, but as not an expert player I've found myself having to react and adapt often enough that I never get a chance to follow through on a guide. More than that, there have been times I've bought the parts to complete an item, but when they get into my slots and combine it picks unintended items that I already had and I wind up with a combined item that wasn't the combined item I clicked on to purchase the remaining parts. I don't even know what leads to that happening, but it happened from no fault of my own, and can be a setback if the unintended item you wind up with can't be reclaimed or used for something else useful. And if there's some kind of claim that juggling items in your slots to make sure the right combinations happen is some level of depth, then the person making that claim is wrong. Choosing a specific item and winding up with an entirely different one because of some unforeseen hitch in the engine coding is inexcusable.

Maybe if I had gotten into the original DotA my feelings would be different. But after hearing the extents that went into rebuilding DotA for DotA2, even to the lengths of programming in specific cases to reproduce glitches caused by the original engine that didn't occur in the new one, I found myself almost disgusted. It's that mindset of staying blindly loyal to the original, rather than trying to make major improvements and create a better game, that drives me to prefer League of Legends. Still the lesser of two evils, mind you, but the point remains.

There is one specific point that continues to stand out to me as illustrating the difference in philosophy between DotA and League. In DotA, every movement on the character requires a new click. In League, if you hold down right click and move the cursor, your hero will adjust and run towards wherever your cursor currently is. It's a subtle change, but I think it's exemplary. DotA development is tweaking, trying certain things big things to see what they can get away with that people will enjoy, but leaving everything else as is, almost to a fault. Perhaps because they're scared that if they change something as core and visceral as the controls they'll be hit by universal blow-back. Where as League feels like a product where everything was reconsidered to see if it could be made better for what the game was, unafraid to depart from the game's history. They also made a number of idiosyncratic changes along the way, but the interface alone feels like something that was created to support the game, not hacked together just to get the idea up and running.

That meta-game masteries and rune pages stuff is total bullshit, tho. Makes the momentum kick in a bit even before the match has actually started. The hero unlocks I don't mind tho, keeps the pool from being too overwhelming for new players, and by the time you figure out who you like you'll be able to unlock a couple.

In a way, I look at DotA-likes and feel like with just a bit of tinkering you could play them almost entirely with twin-stick shooter type controls. The interesting and challenging part of the game isn't the interface, it's the decisions you make mid match, trying to eek out a sliver of footing that you can snowball into a win. There is no denying that the well matched teams have a great back and forth that makes for tense and engaging games. And Heroes of the Storm looks to negate the power of momentum by unifying levels across the whole team, but my guess is that without building stats piecemeal a lot of players will feel like it's some kind of slimmed down experience. But increased evenly matched team-fights and interesting, unique maps may make up for it, while making the game into a pretty different beast. I feel League has had success with their 3 other modes / maps (Twisted Treeline's two lanes helps get rid of that "I couldn't hold my lane and now my team is a man down" feeling). But ultimately, I don't think any of these fixes would make me want to play a DotA-like, because I really don't enjoy a game where all you do is be vindictive little shits to one another.

Probably belongs in the Dota 2 forums. Also, Stop Feeding!

@mosdl: Yeah, I honestly have no idea how to find it tho. I never use the forums around here...

This paragraph does't really make sense. I don't get what you mean by denying is the only effect you can have on another player. You can kill enemies, heal allies, use spells and items on them, etc. And killing a player in DotA does set back the enemy, not only do they lose out on not being in lane to farm and get xp, but they also lose gold, and can lead to possibly losing towers or objectives like Roshan. And denying creeps or pushing the enemy out of lane certainly does not give you the same effect as getting a kill nor is it necessarily more efficient. Denying xp is pretty much all you get from denying, which is great and all, but killing completely puts them out of any xp gain for a period of time, causes them to lose gold, you to gain gold, and you to gain a large amount of experience. I don't know how you can possibly compare the two as if they get you the same thing. To say focusing on denying is more important than killing depends on so many different factors it is impossible to say doing one is always going to be better than the other, but even so killing will probably be better in almost every scenario. But in the end why not do both?

This whole thing seems very uninformed and many things you say are just outright false. For example, you go on to talk about how League of Legends teleport accomplishes the same tasks as DotA's TP scroll and how the differences have no impact on the flow of the game. It is hard to take anything seriously in this post after reading something like that. I understand if you don't like DotA, that's cool, but you clearly need to learn more about it before criticizing the game based on how it's systems and gameplay works. I understand if you don't want to take the time to learn all these things, and that itself is a fair criticism. It is a very difficult game to learn and truly understand how everything works and why it works that way. I totally get if people hate DotA for that. But some of the things you try to criticize without even knowing the basics about those things is really ridiculous.

@lcom said:

Some have said that the minutiae of DotA is part of the depth of it. I wouldn't call it the depth, however. Rather, I'd say the subtlitites of DotA are split between mechanical idiosyncrasies and plain poor design. The courier and TP scrolls, compared to the recall ability of League of Legends, are an idiosyncrasy. Systems that accomplish the same task, but change certain specific considerations in how to best accomplish it, but ultimately has no impact on the overall flow of the game.

After reading that, I can not take your argument seriously at all.

No rebuttal? Well, I'm going to take his argument infinitely more seriously than yours, and I've never played DotA 2.

This is about as far from the truth as you can get. DotA is, in fact, completely about destroying towers and getting to the enemy throne. Levels are ancillary. This is why tri-lanes exist, why supports exist and why split-pushing is a popular strategy. Tri-lanes sacrifice vast amounts of xp to keep a friendly carry safe in lane and ensure he gets sufficient farm. Support heroes exist to fulfill the role of heroes that can contribute to the team with both minimal xp and farm. Similarly, pushing heroes exist to offset the xp and farm advantage of the other team by rapidly taking towers and thus moving towards the victory conditions. Teams frequently make active choices based on their line-up to sacrifice xp and farm to group up and take early towers.

@sirpsychosexy: I mean, you're right. If killing a player is the best way to get gold, then yes you should get them, the whole thing is a race to get exp and gold faster than the other team. But that's only if you know you're more than reasonably sure you're not going to get killed in doing so, otherwise you just made them better by getting killed. It's harder to make you better than to make them better. If you can kill them, of course do it. But that is denying them time in play, time farming, time to whatever. Gold is free, you get it by staying still, and there is reliable and unreliable gold. You don't lose it in League. To me, gold just seems like a fickle thing, play well and eventually you'll find yourself with enough for an item, which is a real statistical gain. You're not more powerful if you have gold, only once you spend it on an item. You've denied them an item they weren't able to buy yet anyway. You've pushed something in front of them further away from them, but that's a subtle difference from pushing them backwards. (I'm sure a lot of people feel I'm stretching that difference to far. Maybe I am. But that's the way I see it which is why I make the point that way.)

Also I didn't say no impact, it's clearly different. TP lets you jump lanes. League also has a teleport to a similar effect. Of course it's different, you use it differently and you think about it differently and it leads to tactical openings. I was speaking specifically of the system to go from lane to shop to lane (especially if you want to go home to heal), which is something that ultimately happens in both games, in the process of leveling to take towers to get the core. If you pull out far enough, they are to accomplish the same tasks, but yes you have to go really far out before they stop making a difference.

@crysack: Yes, going after towers to push to the core is the goal condition, but going after them constantly is not how to win. This was actually the mental hurdle that I had to cross to actually start being even decent at these games. There is a proper time to go after towers, and it's basically after the point where it takes short enough time that you wouldn't get more XP in the same amount of time by hunting smaller things.

Everything you describe kind of falls under my point. Any form of pushing is either going to be an assured take (that comes from being sufficiently overpowered) towards ending the game, or in a more even match it's trying to put pressure on the enemy team to make them scramble to get off their farming to push us off. Meanwhile, we are getting creep and maybe a tower, or the carry is still farming while the push is happening, so one player is still getting bigger. Even the carry himself has a core idea of become the biggest at all costs. Even if only he gets huge, he can either pressure the enemy team by himself to let the rest of his team farm unhindered, or even just be supported by his team and make assured takes towards the core. In some form, it all supports the race to get your team somehome overpowered through levels and items so that you can control the other team and get yourself bigger so you can take without the other team being able to stop you. Sometimes it just goes back and forth and each team only has that advantage long enough to take one tower or fight.

I will admit that I have played mostly pub games, but always with at least one friend teammate, so maybe that's why I haven't seen rescue ever come, and for that matter don't feel like asking for a rescue would accomplish anything. Same with the idea of heroes being good at different points in the game. One game I had touch of death which was miraculous at the start, but then was something I quickly couldn't rely on That comes down to my failing to study every hero and their abilities. I'm sure that does make a difference, but knowing the nature of every hero and item like that is beyond how good I want to be at these games. And even if a comeback is possible, if there is a notable difference in power by 20 minutes in, I've rarely seen the outcome by the end. The skill to pull off a comeback is incredibly high, and honestly I think it's more reliable to hope the other team makes a mistake that you can take advantage of. These are things for me to reconsider, tho.

The Journal of a Man Who Never Played Dota:

Day 1

I have never played Dota.

The End.

Sorry, couldn't resist the cheap pun. Even though I have never played Dota and never intend to, I found your journal entertaining none the less.

I had an interest in it once but the general negative feedback people have said about the Dota player community made sure I will never try it. I dislike to generalize but it seems a lot of people in the Dota community come from planet taking it too seriously. Probably also because I have a general distain when something that was meant as an entertainment and enjoyment becomes this beast were people just lose all perspective.

To be brutally honest, it sounds like you don't have even close to enough experience to understand how DotA works or even what people mean when they say things like 'tri-lane' or 'split pushing'. 19 games is what I would consider absolute beginner level. That is, to say 'I understand the abilities of a small pool of heroes and the basic roles they fulfill'. If you had the same complaints after 500 games at a reasonable MMR I might take you more seriously. Low MMR pub games typically consist of two teams butting heads against each other mindlessly until one prevails. They aren't indicative of the game when played properly.

One key aspect of DotA is becoming more powerful than the other team through gold and xp gain, to be sure, but we've long moved past that as the only strategy. Once upon a time, most competitive teams ran with tri-core strategies aimed only at getting one or two heroes ludicrously farmed. These days we run variations of deathball strategies involving five-man pushes early in the game to gain map control and end the game early, split pushing to divide the other team's attention and to avoid engaging farmed carries or powerful team-fight heroes, 4-protect-1 strategies focused on getting a single hero farmed etc etc. All of these strategies are viable and comebacks are almost always possible given the correct plays. If you don't believe me, you're welcome to watch any number of high level matches.

You gotta take that mulligan and then hope for a top deck (or that you open with fetches, filter or more draw) so you can draw into gas so you can then go off on turn three or four. Obviously, playing for as much time as possible with disruption and counter.

I'm fairly new to Dota (played for about a year). And even though I understand where you come from, Dota deserves a bit of criticism in some areas, I think you've misunderstood a few things about the concept.

"DotA is about the race to get yourself (and ideally your whole team) leveled up faster than your opponents"

This is the most simplistic description you could've made (other than "it's about winning", maybe). The game is about HOW you will achieve this and hopefully push to victory later on. Stop throwing yourself at the enemy when you are easily killed (aka feeding) is a good start. If you're underleveled and want to scare of a free-farming carry from the lane, call in 1 or 2 allies when they can and deal with him. You are right to fight him off, just not alone.

If your're getting matched with players who just wants to do their own thing the whole game... I feel for you. Other players can be both the best thing about the game, or make you want to uninstall it.

But all of a sudden, you get that sweet tense game that goes back and forth and you become the hero. And it feels like taking cocaine on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. And if you keep on playing, sooner or later, you think nothing about the things that seems stupid and needlessly complicated now.

It's a brickwall at first glance, I agree. But i think you might've judged it a bit too early.

How to enjoy DotA2: Don't play with random people. It seems like the majority of your problems with the game was a result of the people you were playing with. The worst enemy you can have is a bad-tempered teammate. MOBAs are the most team-oriented video game genre imaginable, no other game requires synergy and positive communication like this. Since you're coming from an FPS background this transition is daunting since FPSs generally reward lone wolf behavior. That can't happen in DotA, you must work as a team to win. If someone's an asshole in Battlefield 3, he cannot impact your experience, in DotA you're trapped with him for the next half-hour with no way to escape it.

I'm curious to know what heroes you tried... when I first played DotA, I hated it... every "newbie" guide I read said to play Lich because you can contribute to the team as a support and not be gold dependant. Playing a support requires a deeper understanding of the game mechanics than playing a carry and you'll probably get yelled at much more. As a Lich, I would get yelled at for not warding and constantly feeding because I wanted to be involved in the team fights.

What made the game fun for me? I played a few games as Death Prophet and got hooked. Carries are surprisingly easy now that guides are implemented, so you can focus on getting gold and mashing buttons when a fight breaks out. I also met some awesome guys in the GiantBomb chat channel and now we've got a good dedicated group of friends. I've got about 400 hours now and no sign of ending.

You might like Blizzard's take on DotA. Heroes of the Storm is the same MOBA gameplay, but it "fixes" several of your complaints. There are no denies, and killing creeps or enemy heroes benefits the whole team instead of the individual who kills it. They streamlined a lot of the complexities, which can be good and bad at the same time. DotA is fun because of the depth and almost limitless skill ceiling, every game is a new challenge and it's impossible for one person to know everything. Heroes of the Storm is going to be a good gateway drug and I'd imagine most people will transition to LoL or DotA2 once they get bored of it.

But, as you said here:

I have trouble finding exact stats on how much time I've put into DotA-likes, but it's more than I ever wanted to play

If you don't like the genre, there's nothing that will convince you otherwise. Going into a game with a negative attitude is a sure way to ensure you will get no enjoyment out of it.

I don't mean to be rude, but what I read is essentially "Game is hard, and so I prefer League."

TP Scrolls too hard (?), Courier/Micro too hard, Not dying too hard, etc.

"stop feeding," as hard as it is to take, is generally a valid criticism, especially if you're a new player. Let me share something with you that might surprise you: when you have a trilane (in the safe lane, mind you), a mid, and an offlane, your goal isn't to gain gold or get kills, it is to stay alive, and to do so in any way possible, while gaining XP. This highlights a particular truth--surely if one hero can stay alive against two or even three, surely you can stay alive with a teammate near by. Be more careful. Just work on not dying. Stop trying to man-mode against other heroes, even if they appear "weak." Unless if you have excellent map awareness for a beginner, odds are that "weak solo hero," is surrounded by a sea of fog, probably harbouring enemy units.

If they're killing you over and over, it means that at some point they a subtle edge over you 2 or 3 times, and it rolled and now they're straight bigger than you and you can't stand up to them anymore. So fighting - or even harassing, or maybe even just standing in sight - means dying. So don't fight.

Yes. running face-first into enemies who already have a significant edge over you is feeding. If you can't stand up to them anymore, go do something else. Don't keep dying!

The game has no risk-reward mechanics to let you push your team forward by being skillful, nor are there any real mechanics to knock your opponents backwards.

This is DotA, not Mario Kart. The game doesn't reward you for being shitty. Your reward for being skillful is winning over the other team. Your risk-reward is making a (sometimes risky) play, and through skill, out playing the other team and ending up on top. Landing kills on heroes that are on massive killing sprees can net large amounts of bounty gold (> 1k) which can make a massive impact.

Something that isn't explained very well in game or by feedback is that dying to another hero is "costly". It is costly for you because you are no longer gaining any exp or gold (with exception). It is a boon for the enemy because they got "quick cash".

Rushing into fights is the big problem that many newbie/low rank games run into. If you can't "initiate" properly, then don't do the fight. Although it is helpful to die to help another get a kill in some cases, killing yourself just to do 90% damage to them generally isn't wise because the bounty they just got from killing you will buy something to heal them.

It is a trial-by-fire system, but the tutorial does a decent job of getting you to understand the basics. But the deeper mechanics aren't something that can be taught easily.

When you die, a message appears on the side that says "Pudge pwned Windrunner for 500 gold", so a new player should innately realize that they just gave the enemy team money by dying. It should also be obvious that dying is bad because you have to wait for a respawn, meaning you're not getting gold or experience during this downtime.

Initiation is probably the hardest one to teach or explain, because it's entirely dependent on which hero you have and what lineup you're playing against. They do put roles on each hero, and some are listed as "initiator". But without describing the role each hero has and details about every skill, how can they know which heroes are better at initiating and how to do it? This is where hands-on mentoring or helpful communication with teammates comes in handy. Optimally, you would get someone to coach you, and have them tell you when it's safe to initiate or not, and learn by doing.

This was a pretty good deconstruction of the games. You are completely and utterly correct about basically everything. The only thing I'd change is that calling the playing "being a vindictive little shit" is a lot more reductive and generalizing than it should be. But this is your blog with your perspective, so whatever. We'll just have to agree to disagree about what enjoyment can be derived out of the game itself.

The issue is that "trial by fire" is a poor excuse for "bad feedback" and a complaint I also level at other games (like Dark Souls).

If you are new to the game and they throw themselves at a fight they shouldn't, you see some number pop up over your corpse like 254. A new player doesn't realize that is equivalent to multiple creeps camps cleared simultaneously which is a big savings in time. A new player also doesn't realize how much money and exp is lost even being sidelined for as little as 10 seconds. They rush back out in the lane and die again. At that point the new player probably doesn't realize the enemy hero probably has enough for an upgrade if not buying a piece of their core equipment at that point. They come back a third time where at that point they are behind/their opponent is far enough ahead that there is starting to become a serious power gap where things have swung decisively against them in less than 10 minutes. Should they throw themselves into combat again?? Yet I suspect a new player will still try to attack them without changing their tactics.

That isn't "trial by fire" or even "trial by failure". A new player doesn't know they are digging a hole and doesn't stop digging or even suspect something is off until it is way to late. Many new players don't realize that "abandoning the lane" is sometimes the best defensive tactic to take nor is it ever suggested nor is it ever suggested to ask for a "rotation" from a player who is better geared and not struggling.

I like Dota 2 a lot but I will not fool myself into thinking there isn't a problem with conveyance of status and state in the game. Experienced Dota 2 players learn it more by a lot of experience, feeling, and observation what the value of "200 gold" because the game doesn't tell you beyond the giant list of stuff in the shop. Many new players don't realize they are losing and losing badly until it is way to late and they learn little from it.

There are two and only two problems with DoTA.

1) Games take too long. I need to be able to take my attention off the screen within the span of 45 minutes at some point.

2) Dropping out of a game that takes too long fucks my team.

You omitted both of these from your post.

@veektarius: I don't mind a long game.

Well written but I have to disagree on a lot of it. Not gonna go over every point but for example the no risk reward bit. Totally not true, I primarily play LoL and, for example, if a team is behind, they can try to make a play to take Baron Nashor. It's usually very risky but if you succeed it can give your team a huge boost to push back. Even aside from that, if you get behind in your lane you're not completely screwed. With some help from your jungler, for example, or if another lane roams to your lane, you can get some kills and pull yourself up. Or you just play defensive and farm and come back in mid or late game. As for taking victory from your opponent being a spiteful vindictive way to play...dude, EVERY competitive game you're trying to rob your opponent of victory. Do you think getting camped in CoD or getting your ass handed to you in Street Fighter is any less aggravating then getting zoned out of farm in your lane? I don't see where the distinction is.

I will agree with some of your points about DOTA's UI and mechanics though. The denying is interesting but the store layout and the way items are presented is a mess. I know DOTA players will make the claim that 'more mechanics = better' but that argument doesn't hold any water with me. It's just more. End of the day though, whatever game you're into is whatever game you're into an that's cool.

It sounds like you're missing a lot of the more nuanced intermediate strategies to DOTA2 play. The fact that you basically argue that Recall and TP scrolls are the same is evidence of this (TP scrolls are a vital resource in DOTA2 that allow you to counter ganks, save/deny towers, and immediately engage in teamfights on the other side of the map; more than that, TP scrolls take up a valuable piece of inventory space--a decision that becomes more and more relevant as the game progresses toward the vital 'midgame').

I don't think that any MOBA can be judged without 100+ games played (alongside some spectating experience).

i have over 2000 games of dota 2. i switched to it from league of legends. never played dota before. i think its one of the best made games out today. it does piss me the fuck off and i take breaks for a few days from it and do something else but i always find myself going back to it.

I've barely put any time into the game, but that's my biggest beef. The time investment is just soooo long. It seems to take forever for things to actually get going. I get why people love the game and I have friends that are devout with the game, but it just takes too much of a time/effort investment and I'm a bit of a whore who likes to play lots of different things. To be good at DOTA and LoL, you have to put in some serious time.

AMEN!!!!!!

As much I tried to be open minded and give the game a fair shot, you nailed a lot of the problems with this genre. It's noble that Valve designed a game for the hardcore tournament players and made it easier to just click and play, but I seriously feel they can just make it even more stream line. L4D, TF2, CS:Go and Portal 2 have just amazing considerations for the most novice gamer who just wants to dabble.

Fascinating read! I never played DotA, have seen tons of footage here obviously. Really interesting write up. Do you just play tons of competitive FPS or do you work in design? Reads like you have a good grasp of systems

The genre isn't open for dabbling.

You don't just decide one day you're going to "dabble in playing guitar," just like you don't one day decide you're going to "dabble in an action-rts"

Yes, they can casualize it, but there are already games that do that, so there is no need to demolish a game/genre that millions already enjoy.

That's basically what Heroes of the Storm is doing though, so I guess we'll see how that fares.

ugggghhhh.... look I'm not saying it's the end of the world if they flip everything around. And I'm not saying make it as simple as guitar hero. I'm saying that their game design philosophy goes against what they did with Dota2. There's no prone position or iron sights in L4D and no one cried about that.

And two it's not perfection. It just doesn't click with everyone even when they put in over 60 hours into it.

I'm curious about that too, but there are times where Blizzard caves into it's audience demands, so who knows if they go super hardcore with it 6 months later? Doubtful, but everyone criticizes Blizzard for anything. It'd be interesting none the less.

That's because it's a different style of game. Why would you put iron sights or prone in a game about run & gun?

DotA is a different game, and Valve is developing pragmatically. They're updating something that people loved. It's called DotA 2 because it's a sequel.

The sequel to Diary of a Madman

uggghhh, please kill me.

congrats dude, you win the internet. Everyone can't have an opinion

@lcom Just a short typo, sir:

"But to not be in lane means they're going to be hindered in their farming. That's unacceptable too, though, because hindering enemies is the only thing to be done in the game."

I think you meant to say "...they're notgoing to be hindered in their farming". It happens a lot to me, too especially when you are typing your thoughts and your mind is already ahead of what you are trying to type and you thought that you already typed it down. :)

Anyway, I enjoyed reading your post, sir. I actually still enjoy watching DOTA now since I used to play a lot of it back in college but now I really don't have as much free time to stay competitive at a level that is satisfactory for me to win games. I admit though if I haven't got into DOTA back in college via playing in net cafes with friends and going up against other people in a LAN setting (which kind of has the feel of an arcade since more often than not you'd be matching up with or against strangers) and being able to get to know people which I eventually became friends with then I think I wouldn't have enjoyed DOTA as much.

To be honest, it is just people being anonymous assholes. They are taking advantage of the fact knowing that they are just a stranger on the internet and not in the same physical space as other people and it emboldens them to be jerks. In my experience playing this game and other MP games in net cafes with or against other strangers, I'd never encountered people who were on the losing side who would openly bad mouth their own teammates (vocally or through chat) who were feeding if they were strangers, unless you were one of those arrogant, overconfident assholes who played games too much and spent too much of their college allowances (and class hours) playing games in a net cafe. Thankfully, I've never met or rather played in net cafes with these people, only heard of them through stories shared by my friends.

On another note, it is unfortunate that you had a bad experience with it though and you laid out some points that can be argued with though it is understandable from your perspective as someone who is completely new to the game/genre. Personally, I'm more drawn towards Dota than League. I've played League for some time and I do have problems with the game though I admit if I didn't have a history of playing Dota first it might be a different story.

@geraltitude: I went to school for game design, but sadly since I was neither programming nor art, I haven't managed to break into the industry. (Concentration on cognitive science, BWT. UI, AI, game-flow analysis, and generally a lot of stuff about understanding why players behave the way they do, and how to make them do what we want.) If you like the analysis, give a listen to the podcast I run. We talk about design stuff like this pretty often!

@gaspower: Thanks for the heads up on the typo! For me the bad social experience wasn't too much of a factor, but more because of that effect of anonymity causing poor experiences in any place on the internet. The reliance you have on your teammates just gives it a very direct mechanical ramification, compared to even a TDM FPS. But it really is more mechanical aspects that are keeping me away from the game. I will play with my friends, but ours isn't a "win at any cost" mindset, which really helps. And honestly, if I had my choice, I'd have us all play something else, but they like it so I come along.