Why do you hate MOBAs?

I play DOTA2 exclusively with my friends against bots. While I do enjoy it, the reason I claim to dislike the genre as a whole, and why I never tried to play a real match is because of the horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE community. Some people can be absolutely vile to new-comers, and it's just something I'm not willing to deal with.

I'm not sure I'd say I hate them, but I'm disappointed they (and tower defense games) just about replaced one of my favorite genres, the RTS games. The thing is, MOBA's are kinda like Divekick in that they've distilled the RTS genre into one very specific part of the competitive multiplayer gameplay, which apparently is what lots of people like about RTSes (I remember Brad Muir saying something along those lines some time ago at least, that DOTA just stripped away the parts of the genre he didn't like and was happy that genre had taken over). I understand that some people are crazy about competitive StarCraft and only play on that single map 24/7 (Lost temple for SC1, I guess, and while I don't know the map names for SC2, there seems to be one or at most two or three recurring ones there too). But I personally have never been into the overly competitive side of the RTS genre. I like the base building, resource management, building ridiculously massive armies, the total randomness of massive armies of weird constellations clashing together on a randomly generated map. I loved the random map generator in Tiberian Sun, just setting it to generate a large map and jumping in against the AI on a map you had never seen before. All that stuff I love about the genre is exactly what MOBA's and tower defense games have stripped away, and focus heavily on the stuff that I dislike - the mechanical build/upgrade orders, only ever playing one map over and over, the lone super units and the "there is only one single way to play out this encounter correctly" thing.

Had it been a side thing, like the tower defense genre was for about 15 years, when it was just StarCraft maps and flash games, I wouldn't mind, but at this point the RTS genre is just about dead, we get one release every other year or so, instead every single strategy game that isn't turn based is all about taking out or defending towers against wave after wave of creeps walking on preset lanes, and even the games that get released usually lean heavily towards the MOBA/tower defense style objectives.

That said, I really do enjoy Herzog Zwei and Airmech, which are closer to MOBA's than traditional RTSes, but, well, they have varied maps, good music and seems much less mechanical, and the Airmech community seem to be more interested in having fun than becoming world esports championship masters, or being dicks to those who really don't care the least about winning.

Also this:

@bananas said:

@giantstalker said:

Because most people take them way too seriously for it to be any fun.

I die in Battlefield, nobody cares but me. I die in League or Dota, and suddenly it's a four man rage-fueled inquisition on my playing habits.

This. Playing a round of League can be fun, but it's stressful. If you screw something up early, it snowballs like crazy.

It's not friendly to casual players or people who are just dipping their toes in. If you go in, you have to know what you're doing and how to do it. It is both complicated but overly simple.

There's too many characters. And it tends to take a long time to figure them out. Once you do figure one out, the game is the same tedious round, time and time again.

It's hard to learn but easy to master.

It also doesn't help that all the games have the same boring map. As someone who plays mutiplayer games from time to time, playing on the same map drives me crazy.

I hate DOTA 2 mostly because I fell like it's the next thing to RTS/wow arenas that I would enjoy and could also be very good at in terms of multiplayer but I can't stand it because the community developed this mentality that unless you are already "good" there is no point to have a team and thus I can't pick up the game together with 4 new player and learn as a team and have fun, instead I have to just play a for hundreds of hours alone in a game that beside the cooperation aspect is... most of the time, pretty boring.

Also, the learning aspect is not something like Starcraft where you have to learn what 8 spells and 30 units do and than learn how to control 8 types of units and 2-3 types of spell that are specific to your race and the actual learning is strategy instead most of the learning is about learning the hundreds of spells and hundreds of heroes/items so that you know how to play against them + if you want to play more than 5-10 heroes remembering all of their attack speed is a pain in the ass and it can be very annoying to try and target fire with a slow attack animation hero after you just played with a fast one.

Other MOBAs I hate because they are free to play and I can't be bothered with "leveling up" and paying money to unlock champions, If I could I would be still playing wow.

I hate MOBA but my DC Fanboyism made me play Infinite Crisis

I played 100 hours of League of Legends before realising I really dislike it.

I have a feeling I'll end up giving DOTA another go now I understand the differences better (the Quick Look was actually informative for once, if you already understood how MOBAs work)

To be honest, I've never played any other moba's besides Dota 2. I think it's good enough for me to not need to try any other kind of moba's

Here's why.

I played the hell out of League. That's not to say that I was super good at it or anything, but I was competent. My friends all played, so we'd often play together, though I would also play by myself.

The vast majority of people I encountered playing that game were fucking assholes. People who didn't understand that they were communicating with real people on the other side of their computer monitor - or worse, those who did and didn't care.

It got to the point where every game just made me angry. I tried, once or twice, to sink to their level and see if it made me feel any better - it didn't. It fucking sucked. So here I was, getting furious every time I tried to play a game with my friends, because some prick was pushing my buttons.

I finally told myself "life is too fucking hard already to be inflicting this on myself" so I quit. Haven't gone back since, and I never will. Those fucks can have their game and make their community as toxic and odious as they want, and I'm not going to be any part of that.

For me, they look way too time consuming, on top of seeming ridiculous boring. I don't really get into super addictive based games. It's why I can never stick with MMOs. They just can't maintain my interest, and I just don't have the time to mess with them.

Like the genre, hate the community.

I don't, I hate solo queue and I hate my teammates.

Because I'm shit at DOTA ;_;

I don't. Daily Dota is probably my favourite content on the site at the moment, and it got me into the game in a big way.

the time investment, learning curve, and community all are barriers to entry. i don't like spending 45mins. losing a game while getting trash talked. and after all that, i feel like i haven't really improved. and i don't have a crew to consistently play with.

Too similar to MMOs in terms of addiction and time you need to invest in them. I'd rather play a 10-20 minutes multiplayer session or a couple of hours of single-player campaign than spend days reading wikis and training.

I like MOBAs except for Dota 2. I have probably played 35 matches of Dota 2, and if the people I have encountered are any representation of the Dota 2 community then it is way worse than the League of Legends community. Also, the item drop system is terrible. I have gotten 5 items, two of which came from leveling up (I am level 3). The rest of the crap I have is either player cards (which by the looks of things can only be used with a compendium, which is $10 i think) or chests (which require keys), and I have way more chests and player cards than I do items. That means that the only reason to really play the game is for the champs. The champs are cool in Dota, but there is no reason to play new champs if I am going to be told to uninstall or go kill myself if I play poorly. Also, I have played less than 10 games where a player didnt quit or AFK on either team. Maybe that is just because I am still low level, but it makes the games absolutely terrible to play.

There are tons of MOBAs out there that I have never played and probably never will, but if I had to pick one that I enjoy playing the most besides LoL it would have to be Smite. I would suggest that anyone who wants to try a MOBA and cant really get over the isometric camera or you find that you lose yourself in fights, you should try Smite. It has a third person camera and it is a lot of fun. It is a little weird going from something like LoL to Smite, but you will get used to it. The only problem I have with the game is that the amount of favor (the ftp currency in the game) you gain from a match is kind of low. There are boosts and things that you get for not leaving matches or whatever and you get extra when you level up, but once you hit max level it gets super grindy.

I appreciate the skill required to get good at them, but don't enjoy playing them at all after many attempts and a fair bit of improvement.

However, the fact that the communities of this "genre" seem to be made up of a massive collection of elitist cunts that would make the competitive CounterStrike community weep with envy ensures I'll never express the slightest amount of interest in playing any of them ever again

That's an interesting question because I've gone over it multiple times in my head and I've played many different kinds. What makes MOBA's shitty is the communities you play with. It's great when you're on a team of people you know, but others can make it a pretty sad experience.

Essentially, I don't really like Dota 2 for that reason. It's also intimidating the Structure that Valve built to make sure that you're gonna spend money. LoL is Straight up Arena and easy to get into.

I also don't think there's enough people playing SMNC, that one is actually pretty great!

Eh.. Moba is a pretty niche thing, but there's a surprising number of ways that style is presented that might be cool to anybody.

Its not so much the game as the community, but I've never been one for games that reward kills because it can get one sided really quickly.

I haven't liked them since the Warcraft 3 days. They were the only people on the entire battle.net server that would kick you for downloading the map, having a big ping, or not having the desired IP location (BRASIL ONLY, FOOL!) Then the influx of players it brought in were usually assholes, and most clans started flooding the servers list with hosting bots that didn't know when to start a fucking game.

Because playing them is more stressful than watching Breaking Bad.

I think my biggest reason for hating it, although I'll still play, is the time commitment.

Having a full-time job, wedding to plan, moving soon...etc it's increasingly difficult to completely devote a non-stop hour to playing a game. A lot of the time I will pause, save, get back to as I'll have to get up in the middle of something.

Not only can't you do that, you're in most cases punished for it.

I love the idea of them, and watching brad play is a blast, but the barrier to entry is beyond my level of patience. I dont play games to get cursed out and have a god awful time. Im sure its cool if you hang in there, and i had a brief stint with LoL like 5 years ago where i was so-so and had a few good matches, but i play too many games to try and commit myself to a MOBA.

I've played a bit of LoL and Dota 2, and I am convinced that MOBAs probably are not for me. I appreciate the depth and competitiveness of both games, but the 40+ minute matches are simply too long for my tastes. Although I enjoy LoL and DotA 2, I would rather spend the 40+ minutes of time it would take to finish a single match in either of those games on other games. With that time I could play ten or more matches in any fighting game, or chip away at my rather large backlog of games.

Why would you hate dota clones? How casual are you? Also hate? Don't you think that's a bit much? Not like. Fine. But hate? wtf.

I thought people hated MOBAs or whatever you want to call them because of the elitism of the people playing them and the fact that LoL is the most played game in the world. I played some LoL got good enough to where I was doing average now I took a break cause I got bored and it was too stressful sometimes.

I think the only way to start playing LoL or Dota 2 is with some friends who know what they're doing so you can ask them every stupid question on your mind, like I did.

I used to really hate dota 1 because I couldn't wrap my head around it, how are people learning these item combinations and how do I make the minion give me gold and oh look I'm stunned and dead, why did that happen, I didn't have internet at home so I went to PC bangs( European equivalent) and I would just get destroyed in dota 1, I didn't know you had to read a fucking web page to learn item combination and strategies that was new (this was in like 2005-2006 and I was stupid ok?), then I played like 2 years of WoW and got really into PVP and saw LoL was becoming popular so I tried it and saw it had masteries and thought that it could never be balanced so I hated it for being popular even if it wasn't balanced and dismissed it until last year when I found some friends playing it so I got in with them and realized it was fun.

I actually started playing LoL because I was in the dota 2 beta and a friend came over who knew how to play dota 1 and taught me some shit and Total Biscuit started that dota 2 youtube series and I learned more shit then another friend said LoL is easier than dota 2 so I started playing that with him and the other friend, it's still fun to play with people you know because we just play standard game and make jokes.

Sorry for the long post.

TL;DR Hated dota 1 and LoL when it came out then friends brought me into LoL. also read the first 2 lines.

@icemael: You might like Awesomenauts, then. Side-scrolling camera and gorgeous, 2D art style, very much invoking a Saturday morning cartoon. It's not a typical MOBA, which is why I think I gravitated towards it so easily.

I might try DoTA with friends, or against bots, but I'm going to have to turn down any requests to play LoL unless it's I can only play with friends on that, too. Heard too many horror stories about the LoL community. And SMNC/MNC don't work on my computer, so that option's out, as fun as it may look.

I just don't want to play something with that narrow of a focus. It's all RTS micro gameplay with only one map, that sounds boring as hell.

Also what @icemael said. The game is still so obviously wallowing in it's mod roots that there is no cohesion to the design of anything, in it and the gameplay and controls seem super non-optimal for what they're expecting of the player.

I don't hate, the entire genre is just completely and totally irrelevant to my interests.

I absolutely get why people would play it, and I enjoy watching others -- I had a roommate that pretty much spent most of his non-working time stoned off his gourd and playing League of Legends. But through that I can tell the genre has no appeal to me whatsoever.

Sidenote: Watching a dude vacillate between grinning/chuckling stoner and caustic angry MOBA player is disturbing. Entertaining, but disturbing.

I can't say anything about DoTA but I've recently started playing LoL and honestly I've dealt with very little asshats. I don't think I've actually had any ire directed at me, I've had the occasional bit on my team and had to tell a guy to chill out but it's a far cry from the horror stories I'd heard before playing it. It might be different in Ranked matches but so far it's been a totally fine experience.

Because I don't understand them and I am afraid of things I don't understand.

No but seriously, I don't understand them, and nothing I've seen about the culture surrounding those games makes me believe I can join some games, learn the ropes, and not piss the rest of my team off in the process. So it's essentially a genre I can't play because I don't feel like anyone will let me.

Because when I missed one black whole as Enigma I was suddenly the worst human being.

Granted, this was an issue I had specific to dota 2, when I played lol a few years ago if I had missed a Nether Grasp (basically same ability) I wouldn't have people calling me trash over it.

LoL isn't fun for different reasons.

The communities are what keep me from enjoying MOBA games. So many elitist jerks which makes MOBA games more stressful then fun to play.

I tried getting into LoL but was quickly chewed out by my teammates for following a teammate cus i didnt know what to do. Like the most hateful spewing of bile I've ever seen on the internet in my life, and i play alot of shooters on XBL. So yeah....

I play Dota 2 quite a bit, but I will say that the community can be pretty incendiary, especially if you get people from Russia or South America (particularly Brazil) who only know how to speak/type English in insults and not understand anything else.

The solution is to make a party of good friends and all play together. It's pretty damned fun then.

@jimi: To be fair that's mostly low elo US games. Higher elo and other realms mix it up a bit more.

@thesoutherndandy: Mm. That is more reassuring than what I had previously heard...maybe it's just the competitive matches, then? I tend to avoid the competitive scene in gaming almost entirely (I've watched a few TF2 "celebrity" matches done for charity, that's it), because I'd heard horror stories even before LoL.

I agree.

I dislike MOBAs and I hate Fifa, big difference. But both are boring as hell and contain a rabid group of people who take them way too seriously.

EDIT: I guess it's more accurate to say I hate soccer not just Fifa. (or football where i'm from)

I hate DotA2 because Jeff hates DotA2. Actually, DotA2 is fun.

It always seems a bit weird to me to automatically (really) 'hate' something of which you don't understand the appeal. I'm fascinated by the whole MOBA community and games, but I don't think I could ever play them because they seem to demand a pretty high degree of devotion and the barrier to entry is very steep. Also, I don't have the skills.

Maybe its the over abundance of MOBA games that's leading to the backlash? I'm just speculating mind you I've never really looked into the MOBA genre.

I liked playing lol against bots but the reason I hate mobas is because a)brad won't shut up about dota and b) the community is mainly assholes who can't stand anyone new

Because "Easy to learn, difficult to master" is the mantra of pretty much every well designed competitive game ever made, while LoL and especially Dota cover for their relative shallowness with a ridiculous learning curve that's nearly impossible to climb completely (since even the pros don't have every tiny detail of the games' mechanics memorized).

Kind of surprising seeing the amount of people talking about 'hating the community' and then admitting they have never played a match without friends or pointing out that every MOBA has the same map when they don't. It's like everyone believed everything they heard without a second thought, like tales of witches and monsters.

I played a little of the original DOTA way back in the day. I quit pretty quickly because the barrier to entry is way too high. I don't play Starcraft or fighting games online for the same reason I don't play MOBAs: I'd inevitably get matched up against people who have been playing for years, and getting facerolled over and over while being called all kinds of hateful slurs is no fun.

I don't really hate MOBAs, I just would never really want to play one, given that their current fanbase contains all of the worst stereotypes of gamer culture all wrapped up into one ugly community.

Nobody likes being told what to do in a game. I play to experiment. If my teammates consider that to be a problem, they'll get a mute (or a report) out of me.

I really like Dota2 as a game. But I've had to learn where my boundaries are. I'm not going to get bullied for 45 minutes, even politely bullied, about my itemization and play style.