I often hear people say they don't want to get into MOBAs because they don't want to interact with the toxic community that the genre is known for. Well... turns out you really don't have to interact with the community at all to enjoy playing dota.

First and foremost: I'm not a very competitive person. Do not take that to mean that I'm bad at playing games, it's just that I care very little about winning versus a competitor. In fact i'm very much turned off at sore winners and sore losers alike.

So you might think dota 2 is the wrong game for me to play, but that isn't the case at all. I still greatly enjoy playing it.

I've played about 140 matches in dota 2, some by myself, some with one or two friends that I've managed to rope in over time. Every single one of those matches have been against bots and I've loved every minute of the 100+ hours i've spent playing dota. Over time we have been increasing the AI's difficulty to continue providing a "fair" challenge and my skills have improved quite a bit (enough to consider myself "competent", if nothing else) but I still have no desire to play against human opponents. I've played (almost) every hero at least once and I have a well-rounded understanding of the game, at least enough to comprehend the intricacies of the game and appreciate high-level plays displayed by pro-players at tournaments.

Playing against bots by yourself also means you can treat it like any other single-player game. Need to spend 10 minutes reading your abilities and figure out what your hero need? Pause the game for 10 minutes! Need to do laundry? Pause the game! Hate the random hero you choose? Quit and start a new game without screwing other people! Friend randomly called you and want to hang out? Quit your game without any penalty or annoying anyone else!

The short of what I'm trying to say is: Don't avoid dota because of the fear of it's community (warranted or otherwise). It's entirely possible to enjoy playing vs. AI by yourself or with a friend or two.

It doesn't need to be a competition, it can just be a fun game to play.

I completely agree with you and I will only play a MOBA if I can play vs. bots. For the longest time, I never played MOBAs because of all the things I heard about the toxic community. I'm not 100% anti-social...in my early 20's I was playing Star Wars Galaxies and other early MMOs that required group play and I was completely fine with it. Not to sound like an old man, but gamers today can be really negative. Instead of pointing out what you're doing wrong and kindly offering suggestions, it seems like people would rather just tell you to kill yourself or that you should just stop playing. Point being...I decided I was done playing with assholes and most of what I play is with people I know or, in this situation, bots.

If you play with bots, it's just as fun, in my opinion. I ended up playing quite a bit of dota 2 because of this and even played a good number of matches vs bots with other friends, like you mentioned. I ended up moving on to Heroes of the Storm because I found the lack of buying items much less stressful and I was able to have a better experience overall, but I still think Dota 2 is a good game that people should give a chance, even if you're only going to play vs. bots. It can be a lot of fun! Both of these games now allow you to change bot difficulty. (Heroes of the Storm recently updated to allow this) Not only that, but it's not like it's a new idea, anyways. You could play vs. bots in Quake and Unreal Tournament, too, and while it wasn't quite as fun and challenging, it was still enjoyable!

My main point is...I agree and more games (all games?) should have bots. If you've decided to pass on MOBAs because of what you've heard about the toxic community, then try playing one with bots. You may be surprised at how much fun you can have. For free!

Ha. That's super cool. I dabble in Dota 2 every now and then (especially whenever the International swings around) versus bots, not cause I don't like being competitive, but because I know how sore of a loser I am. I'm a real asshole when I lose a game and I get all pissy. Knowing my own flaws, I just end up playing against bots. Watching competitive Dota is super fun though, even if I don't understand everything that is going on.

I play ALOT of Dota 2 and generally practice more complex heroes against bots.

Having said that, the game plays a lot different with bots is nowhere near as fun as they are predictable on the other team and do jack shit on your own.

It's awesome you're having fun but you should take the plunge against real people. Just mute everyone the second you get into the game; you can still communicate with pings. The game is far more rewarding ( and crushing ) when against real people.

I’m doing this in HoTS 100% vs bots. I don’t think I’d play this type of game if I was forced into a H v H match.

The thing that steers me away from most multiplayer games is the lack of confidence in matchmaking systems. Obviously the quality varies from game to game but I hate being matched into games where I am clearly out of my league or way overpowered. I have a limited amount of time to play games and I don't want to spend 50% of it playing in matches where the 'difficulty' isn't matched to my level.

For this reason I've dabbled in MOBA's and stuck almost exclusively to bot matches. It allows you to be confident in the level of performance from both your opponents and team mates.

Nobody would put up with a single player game where the difficulty was randomly picked from a list at the start of each level. I know matchmaking systems are supposed to put you in games to suit your skill level but in my experience they are often unreliable.

Seems a weird way to enjoy it, but that is fair!

I sometimes play against bots to just relax - 'cause relaxing is the last thing Dota is - and the problem with them is you can beat them with just about any stupid ridiculous build you want, all the way up to the highest difficulty where they cheat. Reduced cooldowns, extra gold gain, maphacks, they dodge all skill shots. But I'm glad you're having fun dude! If you do ever decide to jump in and play vs real people, take your friends with you, it'll be much better that way.

I play more bots than PVP and I have 500 hours logged. I watch more Dota than I play these days.

I get the same enjoyment out of Dota 2 - I have 4300 hours in the game and only 50 matches played (with 26 wins) and play at least several random bot matches per day. I also enjoy watching tournaments in Dota tv as well.

I do wish I could play with others sometimes, as I can see what I'm missing and the bots aren't great team players. But my experiences with people has often revealed poor inter-team behaviour, which I think should be entirely absent while playing games. I avoid those potential conflicts and make all my fun in the bot matches.

I've actually recently gotten in HotS and I'm enjoying the bot matches.

It's weird; I don't think I like MOBAs enough to deal with the toxic community that surrounds some of them (read: Dota 2 and League), but I do like them enough to boot it up for a couple hours each week and tool on some bots.