The hardest part about writing about DOTA 2 as a video game is that the game itself has changed so much as I’ve kept playing it that I can’t really levy any true criticism against it. Everything from the look, the presentation itself, the UI, loading screens, and the character models has changed dramatically since 2013. To bother trying to create some kind of post-mortem for what DOTA was when I started, as I played it and what it has become would go too far beyond my own personal experience with the game. The fact is that the moment I finish writing this I’m going to play one last game of DOTA 2, probably lose, and completely give up on the game in earnest. This comes after I returned to the game after a one year hiatus, where I just couldn’t stomach the people I was playing the game with anymore. But don’t let me get ahead of myself, that isn’t where I started with Valve’s bajillion dollar MOBA phenomenon.

It all started when I watched Johnny Chiodini (at the time he was on Gamespot UK) playing online multi-player medieval hack-and-slash game Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. He was hilarious and while the game was incredibly janky and unfinished at the time, I had to join in. The only way I could play it was to re-install Steam, a thing I hadn’t done since buying Bastion back in 2012. After about 20 hours of Chivalry, where I actually became good at playing the game, I grew bored. Well, for whatever reason Steam’s Summer Sales weren’t such a big deal to me at the time and I more or less ignored it until I saw the usual Valve pack that includes their Counter Strike and Half-Life series and offshoots. I don’t remember how this lead to me getting a Beta invited to DOTA 2 but I had some kind of instinctual hesitation towards whatever the hell a MOBA was. Whoa now, I didn’t mention that I was one of those asshole pre-teens who obsessively played Warcraft II, IIIand Starcraft to the point of actually injuring my neck. The issue I had with DOTA 2 and League of Legends (crap baby game) in 2013 was that they eschewed story and campaign for the sake of a pure team multiplayer game. Little did I know that MOBAs are totally hilarious crack made especially appealing to idiots like me. So, I did what any self-respecting fool does: Sat on my beta invite and didn’t play the game.

It wasn’t until I’d spent a few months obsessing over Giant Bomb’s premium content, after becoming a member, that I began to watch their live streams. Brad had a vested interest in DOTA 2 and once I’d watched his party burn through a few games on their short-lived “Daily Dota” series that I decided I had to give the game a try. Watching a few games was enough for me to realize that it was essentially a team-based real-time strategy game that concentrated the gameplay of Starcraft/Warcraft into a very simple set of goals. What I didn’t realize was the incredible depth of the game. Remember I’m that guy who could beat Frozen Throne on its hardest difficulty, the kind of wiener kid who put 300 hours into replaying Starcraft without even knowing there was a multi-player aspect to it. DOTA 2 is an amazing feat of balance, strategic movement, and it can be an absolutely beautiful thing to experience. So, my first 500 games were learning the skills and typical playstyles, roles and keeping up with changes made during the Beta phases. I became a good support player, was able to carry, and I really took the time to study just exactly when and where each hero was effective. Here are a handful of my favorites, though I’ve left out Razor, Dragon Knight and Crystal Maiden.

Things went to hell pretty quickly once the game was officially released and it didn’t help that I was taking a one year hiatus from college and had all of the time in the world to play DOTA even more. What happened? Upon public release of the game I began playing ranked matches. I quickly realized that I am personally very flawed in the realm of massive multiplayer online games. I am not good at making friends with other players, I am not good at cultivating those friendships within online games, and I generally do better when I am teaching rather than taking orders from others. It isn’t that I am not a team player it is that I do not fundamentally understand the impulsive non-strategic play style of most casual DOTA 2 players. The next 500 games were spent teaching other people how to play the game so that they might learn, get better, and hopefully play multiple games with me. The true issue was that I had studied the game intensely and knew several strategies to win but the public ranked solo matches I was getting into were full of people who hadn’t put in the same effort. Young men and women are resentful of being told what to do within the space of multiplayer videogames, this isn’t too much of a blanket statement and I feel comfortable generalizing. They simply cannot take direction, suggestion, nor can they learn from their mistakes when the culture of multiplayer games always, always gives room for scapegoating, harassment, and blame. I’m sure DOTA was always a toxic environment, team games played by the unskilled casual video game child often devolve this way. I’d heard about Counter Strike toxicity and absolutely had similar experiences playing solo Quake III and Unreal Tournament iterations. My expectations for MOBAs were that these were all people interested in strategic RPG gameplay, that these people would be intelligent and focused on making a team work. They weren’t, they aren’t, and they never will be.

Team play is the only proper way to play a MOBA and after a few years of trying to create friendships and teams around DOTA 2 play I finally realized that I’m not capable. I cannot find friendly people to play DOTA 2 with because of the matchmaking in the game. I was reported for abandons, for contributing to toxicity, for just being seen as the weakest link by a group of immature asshole children. I was muted several times for trying to reason with toxic players, the same thing always happened over and over where the toxic player would convince the other players that I was the worst shit ever and they would all win. Valve did nothing to help me out of this rut in fact they made it ten times worse when they started increasing the low priority matching penalties. Not only would you have to play several low priority games, full of the least skilled and most toxic players in the game, but you’d have to WIN with them. I loved DOTA 2 and I was so obsessed with the game that it crushed me to see the toxicity of others affecting my ability to just play the damn game. I decided that after so many matches I just wasn’t enjoying the people I was playing with. I had to mute everyone both their microphones and their text to enjoy the game again and that left me at a strategic disadvantage, plus I would get reported for not communicating. I just could not win the war against the fucking mean people that, one after another, were repeating the same ridiculous hate-speech to each other over and over.

The game broke me, no… The other players broke me. I became toxic, I joined in and I harassed anyone who so much as told me what to do. Like everyone else with me in the 1,000-2,000 ranked matches I became an asshole. I suggested reports, I called names, I was a fucking dickhead who yelled at anyone who did anything wrong. I became a cocksure bully idiot who was no longer having fun playing his silly fantasy multiplayer RPG garbage game. The people who loved me the most noticed it too, that my couple of hours of DOTA a night only frustrated me and at times depressed me. It was my fault, I lowered myself to a terrible place and the day that I realized it September 20th, 2016 I stopped playing DOTA altogether. It wasn’t just videogames that had pushed me into the realm of internet asshole, it was around the same time that I decided to get divorced. Somehow my own personal relationship was echoing itself into the game, not because of it but in addition to it. Almost a full year of my life had been verbal abuse from DOTA 2 players as well as from my spouse. The relentless disapproval, the constant nagging mentions that I was not good enough for the person I loved, nor the game that I loved, helped me realize that I did not belong where I was and that I could be happy.

“The casual shit-posting twenty-something who plays multi-player games to socially muscle their way through others, to push them around and piss in their face for fun, is the worst form of human being.”

Nobody has the right to verbally abuse you and it isn’t normal to exist in a culture of abject disapproval. When people fall back in their chairs and resign themselves to letting multiplayer games be negative, hateful experiences are enabling this culture. Speak out against it and if nothing improves abandon that toxic environment. It will affect you and it will eventually change the way you approach the people you should be enamored with: Other fucking video game fans! The casual shit-posting twenty-something who plays multi-player games to socially muscle their way through others, to push them around and piss in their face for fun, is the worst form of human being. I say this with salt-a-plenty but I am serious that this only bleeds into other places. Twitter wars, harassment of journalists and creators, GamerGate, etc. all of these abusive personalities have been allowed to incubate within communities of hate and feigned posturing for way, way too long. I came back to DOTA 2 during this year’s International tournament and I was nice, I kept things positive and steered players towards winning in the nicest way possible. What happened? I was harassed, repeatedly called a ‘faggot’ for being nice across 5-6 games. One player continued their harassment beyond the game across Steam chat, a first for me, and it was just too much. I do not belong to that world anymore and I never will again. If the consequence of avoiding toxic online video game communities comes at the price of isolation and single-player experiences then so be it. I quit, but before I go for good I want to be clear: I love DOTA 2, it was the deepest and most incredible experience I’ve had with a videogame since I started playing them in the late 80’s. Thanks for anyone who bothered with my salty rant, it felt good. Originally posted on www.grizzlybutts.com

I wasn't going to read this, because of the length, but I'm glad I did. I've haven't experienced much toxic multiplayer bullshit myself because I never voice/text chat in any game. I came to your conclusion years ago without having a negative experience first. I feel I'm better off for it. I hope you will be too.

This was a worthwhile read. While a little too salty for me, I appreciate the point of it was to distil your frustration into a single piece. It does make me wonder how a system could be built to rehabilitate toxic players, though. When games' solutions to dealing with toxic players is to effectively magnetise them together, they create an echo-chamber which normalises bad behaviour within them. Furthermore, the idea of redemption being dependent on the act by a whole team at once, further dissuades players from trying. However, I can't think of an objectively better system which doesn't still put first the actual aim: To filter out the horrible players from the new, casual, or positive players. On some level, the Service model doesn't care about the well-being of the players, and only acts to create environments where the largest portion of the player-base is incentivised to purchase content (cosmetic or otherwise).

@topcat88: Thanks for taking the time to read it. It's crazy that I didn't give up on multiplayer games earlier. Ah well, live and learn I guess.

I can only assume, cynically, that by grouping horrible people together the idea is to get the dedicated to stay reform themselves and the awful to leave. I dont' know what else could work. It doesn't hurt such a big game to push toxic players out, I suppose. Valve had spoken less and less about toxic players once the International compendiums became an even bigger cash cow for the game, and the focus was more on content and e$ports. It wasn't until this past tournament did I see a focus on making the in-game communication less of a wild west horror show to new players, too little too late for me though.

Sad to hear that you had so many bad experiences but to me it sounded like you weren't helping the situation either. Now I'm not gonna say I haven't had bad experiences playing Dota 2 but majority of the time it has been pretty pleasant and I've had over 1,200 hours of gaming. I think you are either in a report rut where you're reported for losing thus play more low priority matches and play with toxic people who in turn report you because either team flaming or losing the game. The best way to get out of that situation is not to engage these flamers and eventually you'll get out of these low priority matches because you are doing the objectives and not flaming chat. Then once you do get out of low priority, when you play pub matches don't tell people what to do, instead make suggestions and how it would be beneficial to the team if they do certain things. NOBODY wants to hear some guy tell them how to do something in a game where they spend their free time. It's NOT A JOB, people just want to have fun so the best way to play as a group is to make suggestions NOT ORDERS. Eventually if you hold your temper you'll start to get commends cause inevitably you will start to win games. When people win games they are happy so they give out commends like candy. When you accrue enough commends your behavior score goes up and when it's high enough you start to play with people that are friendly and cooperative. Will you rage every once in a while cause BS feeding because he didn't get mid start of game? Yes but if you generally keep a leveled head you'll play better have a better head space and eventually get better teammates. Also, remember it's a game and not something that defines if you are a success. YOU ARE NOT A PRO GAMER, YOU DO NOT GET PAID TO PLAY DOTA 2 don't take it so personally when you lose a match. Say it with me, IT'S JUST A GAME.

Not trying to be a dick here, but at 1k MMR what do you expect in a ranked game?

@themaniacsgnome: Really? Great example of how folks involved in the negative culture perpetuate negative behavior. Of course, as my mmr reached below 2000 I should expect to play the game with awful uncooperative people? The more you lose you should expect to basically stop having fun and just give up. Figures! I just wasn't having a good time because I simply needed to win more? Ridiculous.

This is the reason I don't play online multiplayer. It's not just DotA2 that players get so wrapped up with winning that they forget to just have fun.

I've contemplated the implications as to why I find Dota so addicting that I come back to it like an abused spouse over and over. There's the obvious harmful truths, like the fact you don't have control over the other 9 players on your team, so queuing for a game feels like rolling a 100-sided die. There's the things that have become fact for me, like queuing for a ranked match is akin to deleting an hour or three from my day, because if you lose there's no way you'll stop playing, and if you win there's no way you'll stop trying to win. And there's a lot of relationships I've made a hell of a lot more complicated for the fact that I play Dota.

And then there's the troubling reality behind why you keep playing. That its dopamine drip of leveling up, getting powerful, and crushing your opponents makes it so easy to forget about all the troubles of the day, because Dota is such a troubling experience by itself that it becomes all-consuming. Because the investment is too great, and even though you knew from the outset that the returns would be nothing, you keep trying because to stop now would end a veritable chapter of your life.

but then, those rare occasions where you band together with friends or strangers and work with such synchronicity to overcome such overwhelming odds that it leaves you smiling like an idiot. When you and a friend connect on a level that wouldn't be accessible otherwise. When mechanics clash and wielding that mountain of knowledge accrued over years of dedication to discern the truth and make the right move feels so good. It's like a painter making a right stroke on a canvas, the one that ties it all together, and it suddenly affirms all your hard work. It's the very definition of the recently minted phrase (bestowed on the absolute wrong game) "hobby-grade game". It's something that, despite being a very hard thing to do, and despite having more bad moments than good, still feels worth doing.

I feel like that nagging question of what else could I be doing with my life is answered within that. I could be painting in the garage, or joining a local team, or maybe try my hand at woodworking, but while these things are closer to the broadly held conception of something "worthwhile", it's a brave new world with new ways of spending your life. I think most people who play video-games can relate to that idea. I'm sure virtually every person in this forum has at least one experience of someone disliking their love of games, and trying to hold their love of some other thing as morally superior. At the end of the day, we all just want to find something fulfilling. Dota may be a perfect artifice crafted to make me think I'm being fulfilled, but even then I can't help but admire the craftsmanship.

There is absolutely a dark-side to it that most other hobbies don't come attached with. You subject yourself to the potential awfulness and negativity of internet strangers virtually every time you click the play button. But there are still plenty of good, friendly people in the game who resist being overwhelmed by the negative attitude surrounding the game. I'll admit I'm not always one of those people, but then I just put the game down, leave it for a month or two, and then when the itch comes back I play with a friend or two who I know I can count on to have a good time with.

This sounds very much like you encountered some shitty people, got frustrated at them being shitty and ended up in the shadowpool. Dota actually has systems in place that gauge how 'nice / useful' you are as a player. It's called the Behavior score and can be found with the following command:

Go to console, type:

developer 1

dota_game_account_debug

This is a score between 1 to 10.000. The higher it is, the more likely you will get matchmade with other nice folk. As of last update, this behavior score will also impact who gets to play with newcomers and who doesn't. Valve hasn't addressed how you can influence this score, but it's widely assumed that abandons, reports and commends are most important. I would say, check it out and see if your behavior score might be the cause of this all.

A friend of mine had this happen when his internet was shaky and he received a lot of reports / abandons because of it. Suddenly he found himself stuck in games where everyone was toxic and refused to cooperate. It also made him feel like Dota wasn't worth it anymore. Turned out his behavior score dropped quite a bit, during his issues, and therefore matchmaking would keep him away from the bulk of friendly players. We teamed up with him, made him regain his behavior score, to the point where he fully enjoys Dota again.

I totally understand that if you're in the midst of this, and get frustrated about it that you stop enjoying the game at that point. But always know that simply ignoring everyone / muting is always the best option in those cases. As long as you are not giving people a reason to report you, you will get out of that shadowpool. People think it lasts about 2 months for an account to get out of the shadowpool. But yeah, there are a bunch of dickheads around and since you won't know who is one and who isn't , i always make sure to start with a friendly hello and only ramp up the chatter if i notice that the other people are cool. Otherwise i'll just do my thing and stick to pings and line-drawing. I'll wait with the microphone until i'm around 5k-6k :)

Edit: Valve's least vague remarks regarding the shadow pool:

“We are making some improvements to matchmaking to put players with similar play styles together. For example, players who repeatedly abandon games before they begin, or intentionally throw the match. We want to make sure these sorts of players can more easily find each other, to increase everybody’s enjoyment of the game.”

I think you've massaged out the love-hate feeling I was trying to express. I was chasing that seemingly random convergence where a Win happens, it is akin to folk's descriptions of gambling addiction. "Hey, there's a small chance that the stars will align and you'll Win and have Fun but even when you do Win you need to Win more because it feels so good. Hours upon hours of Losing might start to feel excruciating, but you know you'll eventually roll the dice into a Win. I appreciate your words, there is always a chance I could come back to the game again someday when I'm willing to work my username back up to the friendly player bracket.

Awesome! I had no idea about this. Honestly being able to monitor this behavior score and figure out how my behavior can lead to better matchmaking is a big deal to me. I am kind of frustrated that there isn't a straightforward explanation about how these numbers can be changed rather than what they -might- represent. I'm actually itching to play games just to experiment with what/when my score can be changed. I would venture a guess that it most likely re-calculates an average per 20 games (one sequence) and in turn it would become a series of sequences in a greater average. Here is my readout:

So if I'm looking at 3462/10,000 then I'm in the lowest third behavioral pool. So basically, I need to play the game more and be nice otherwise I'll always play with people who have communication/personality problems. Something about seeing this number makes that idea more concrete to me as a player. Thanks for pointing me towards this!

Users can report 3 times a week, you're required to select a reason why, and if your report coincides with others and leads to disciplinary action on the reported player you get additional reports towards your weekly allowance. Other players will report for just about anything, and a big one is when a player doesn't communicate. The game requires constant coordination, it is more like a football game than an FPS where pushing towards a goal requires teamwork and understanding character-to-character synergies. One role gives vision to the map and heals, one role seeks out enemies and deals damage, one role disables or debuffs enemies, and in these coordinated fights require some form of communication. Knowing what the other 4 players are doing is possible without chat or microphones, but most players get pissed if you don't tell them what you're going to be doing over the course of a 45+ minute match, especially if they think they're losing because of you.

This is why Starcraft is better. You don't have to rely on anyone but yourself! (I like Dota as well but also quit playing it)

I was asking a question, what do you expect when you're at the bottom of the barrel? To try to paint me as a "negative" person in game or anywhere is just rich, there's a reason I have Relax you're doing fine on the chat wheel. You know I think your response maybe kinda illustrates what your issue is, GLHF.

@cjduke: There's certainly some truth to this, but at the same time as an ex-SC2 player, i hated how isolated it felt to be playing ranked starcraft.

You do your game, have a great win, and get booted back in the main menu and there's no one to give you that high five. You might watch the replay with a grin, look at what you could've done better and go back in the game. to repeat that. At times it felt like /r/starcraft was pretty much a place for people to get their shoulder pats for a good performance / getting a new rank. It seemed pretty much the only place where you could actually engage with others.

As more and more people left, it felt like it would get harder and harder to attain a higher rank, so i would keep hovering around silver / gold level without seeing much future in progressing past that, as the game naturally weeded out the lesser players over time. At some point, i just stopped clicking that play game button because it felt like there was no point in winning / losing and felt like the game would roughly play out in the same 3-4 ways.

In dota, even if you don't have friends, you can still have some good wombo combo moments with your teammates. And the variety of games is naturally greater. Still love the original starcraft campaign, but i don't think multiplayer starcraft is for me anymore.

I think I followed @onemanarmyy's directions correctly and if I did I had some decent numbers from what I could tell, it always helps to have teammates who understand sometimes you have a bad game and teammates who get tilted help literally nothing so if you want to dive back into the dotes @grizzlybutts, I'll play with you :D

[Developer] player_behavior_seq_num_last_report: 2357

[Developer] player_behavior_score_last_report: 9926

@ownlyuzinwonhan: i think the first number represents the behavior score of the last person that reported you. The 2nd number is indeed your behavior score.

[Developer] player_behavior_seq_num_last_report: 1969

[Developer] player_behavior_score_last_report: 9947

over here. I feel like it helps a lot that i play a lot of support. Giving a clarity to your carry early on sets the tone for the entire game i found :)

@onemanarmyy: Yeah that's true. I had/have the luck of having a lot of friends who play/played starcraft 2 so I've played a ton of 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, and a decent amount of Archon mode. DOTA is still better for the team winning experience for sure though.

My main problem in DOTA is I could never really figure out if I was getting better. Sometimes I'd have a great game but it would just feel like there was one or two players on the other team who stupidly fed me so I got overpowered. Other times I'd get crushed and not know exactly what I did wrong. A lot of times I'd have really bad teammates and lose, or really good teammates who carry me to win. I never was sure how good I personally was at any point.

When I got Diamond back in Wings of Liberty it was one of the best things I've ever felt playing a video game because I could feel myself getting better at the game, I understood what I needed to do to keep getting better, and I was clearly seeing my practice turn into me ranking up. There's a great sense of self accomplishment in Starcraft 2 that balances out well with Dota's team accomplishments.

If you haven't played Legacy of the Void, I'd give it a try. The new co-op mode is really fun and has some extremely hard weekly challenges. The multiplayer is a lot faster too because you start with more workers. The main problem with the game right now is there's way too many insta-lose units in the game, but Blizzard just announced huge balance changes today, such as removing the mothership core from the game.

And as far as the game being "dead" it's not even close (not saying you said that, but people everywhere love to say starcraft 2 is a dead game). Yes there's way less players than there used to be, but the Warchest sold really well, boosting the Blizzcon prize pool by $200k with more money going to future tournaments.

@onemanarmyy said:

If that's true, then my last report was by someone with a score of 77!

@grizzlybutts: I don't think you are being fair to @themaniacsgnome. There are uncooperative people at all skill levels, many of whom refuse to communicate. There are also people of all nationalities at all skill levels, which more often then not makes it nearly impossible to communicate. You know this. However, I agree with @themaniacsgnome's assessment - it should be simple enough to see that if you are rated at a higher skill level you should, on average, be playing with people who are more technically competent at the game.

I have had very bad streaks in my Dota career of being a toxic and inflammatory player myself. And I've definitely been one to assault people for their play, though I do think I have finally managed to taper off and halt the behavior over the past few years (not coincidentally, as I've played less and less of the game). But I know that truly, if I was to go back and be honest with myself at those times, it would be rare that I could truly call the player out on being low skill or having extremely poor understanding of mechanics and strategy. I've sat in the 3.6-4k MMR bracket since I started playing in December 2011, and I've seen it all as players have rose to, surpassed, or fallen from that tier of matchmaking. The honest truth? Everyone has bad days, bad games, bad streaks of losses. Just look at anyone's match history and it is easy to see. It's best not to get too upset and harass someone just for one bad game.

Again, I say that I have been very guilty of this myself. Like you, I've pretty much stopped playing the game over the past year because I reached a tipping point in terms of my personal enjoyment of the game. I'm sitting around 3,700 matches myself, and I bet that less than a 2/5ths of them have been the high-inducing sort of match you mentioned in your post. I don't usually enjoy "stomping" other players, and I don't usually enjoy being the victim either. When the name calling comes out and the feeding begins a "meh" game turns into a torturous 45 minutes that I will never get back. And its hard not to regurgitate the toxicity. I'm sure I'll do it again someday, if I am to ever play again. I'm sure it says a lot of bad things about me as a person, but at least I don't have the risk of "becoming the villain" if I choose not to play the game.

Just my 2¢...

@ketta: "but whadda ya expect in 1k, dummy" didn't meet my standards for a conversation. The main point of what I initially wrote is frustration with a game that basically owned me for turning into an asshole. Every time that you harm Dota 2 it keeps quiet record of it and if you keep it up you'll have to earn your karma back twice as slow as you trashed it. I'm not a victim of dota 2's toxic community, at all, I joined in and it made the game miserable. It all boils down to: I love this addictive game, it helped me learn about myself, and now I'm moving on.

Holy crap, dude. A 3k behavior score is abyssmal (I truly don't mean that in an offensive way). Most everyone I've talked to talks about the variability of anything between 9k-10k. I haven't even heard of people that low in behavior score. Lowest I've seen is mid 8k. That's 100% reason you're getting matched with toxic people.

@flashflood_29: @grizzlybutts: I didn't word it that way, but it IS 1-2k. You're playing with the lowest of the low in terms of people, and that's going to be reflected in their attitude and unfortunately as you stated that rubbed off on you. The best thing I can suggest is muscle through and be supportive of those who are trolling and you'll get out of the rut you're in and begin to be matched with better friendlier people. Kill them with kindness has always been my MO with Dota 2 and it has worked fine for me, I've cultivated a large group of people I can play Dota 2 with even people who were initially hostile. The Giantbomb chat isn't nearly as active as it once was but you can find the odd duder who wants to play some Dota 2 in there too.

What Flashflood said is kinda on the money, you have to kind of accept that YOU got yourself in this mess. No one decides for you to be toxic in a video game, you made that decision yourself even though you have a tonne of other options. Like c'mon dude, I don't want you to quit Dota 2 over this, I'll even play with you if you'd like but don't pretend it's the communities fault you're in the position you're in. Man up.

I cannot find friendly people to play DOTA 2 with because of the matchmaking in the game. I was reported for abandons, for contributing to toxicity, for just being seen as the weakest link by a group of immature asshole children. I was muted several times for trying to reason with toxic players, the same thing always happened over and over where the toxic player would convince the other players that I was the worst shit ever and they would all win. Valve did nothing to help me out of this rut in fact they made it ten times worse when they started increasing the low priority matching penalties. Not only would you have to play several low priority games, full of the least skilled and most toxic players in the game, but you’d have to WIN with them. I loved DOTA 2 and I was so obsessed with the game that it crushed me to see the toxicity of others affecting my ability to just play the damn game. I decided that after so many matches I just wasn’t enjoying the people I was playing with. I had to mute everyone both their microphones and their text to enjoy the game again and that left me at a strategic disadvantage, plus I would get reported for not communicating. I just could not win the war against the fucking mean people that, one after another, were repeating the same ridiculous hate-speech to each other over and over.

This is almost identical to how I felt when I stopped playing almost two years ago. Dota 2 is a great game but the way the community is handled and moderated is a fucking nightmare, and Valve neither acknowledge or make an effort to combat it. The fact that this is still the case two years after I quit in disgust is, if anything, further vindication that I made the right choice in walking away.

I know that feel.

Yea, you were stuck at the 2k mmr hell, but if you got calibrated at that mmr you werent a spark of sunshine either.

As for toxicity, maybe i been lucky but i havent been sent to LP for reports ever and i have been playing since 2010 back when people used to sell their invites. But chin up Dota will still be here should you change your mind.

Maybe its for the best you know, you were already flagged by Valve so all you had to do was give somebody a reason to report you and you were back into LP.

But i feel your frustration, were i live its almost the end of winter and about 2 months ago the electric company decided it was a great idea to cut the power 2 days in a row at the same time of night because of rain at the same time, and guess what... by murphy´s law it was just when i was playing dota, i knew it was a mandatory LP abandon, and i was wondering how many games it would be.... so when i fired up the game the next day to my surprise it was only 1 lp game i had to win, but that single LP game took 3 games and i saw the type of people that is sent there, to cheer you up:

1st game, a nature prophet on our team that fed 40 times besides the courier.

2nd game a huskar mid lane that decided to build midas with a lifestealer that also decided to buy midas all the while with both of them feeding and having zero items because they wanted midas.

3rd a game that we had in the bag on the first 15 min but was dragged on to 50 because 3 people wanted to complete some compendium achievements.

All that to win a single game LOL!

@grizzlybutts: I agree with what you are saying. Interestingly enough, I am looking over your first post again and I think I see what it was that caused you to have these issues in the first place.

@grizzlybutts: I quit, but before I go for good I want to be clear: I love DOTA 2, it was the deepest and most incredible experience I’ve had with a videogame since I started playing them in the late 80’s. Thanks for anyone who bothered with my salty rant, it felt good.

Game habits are undeserving of these weird and inappropriate declarations of love. Mind you the modern day people only act like this because we feel safe to emulate advertising, like NBA's "I love this game!" or McD's "I'm loving it" And casters/commentators like to use this language to rationalize the absurd habits or choices they make. But it is a lie, an exaggeration, that doesn't bear repeating.

Now there is as a strong emotional attachment and a kind of depressive episode, that follow the quitting of any pursuit, but it's not love and never was, this is the first thing to realize. I would encourage everyone to explore those feelings and motivations rather than to simplify and mislabel them.

@eurobum: Whatever problem you have with use of language is perhaps coming from too conservative a place. There's no reason to be reductive and it comes across as belittling. If you won't allow me to love a video game in a blog then perhaps you don't understand how important games are to the people who play them. I'll be as passionate as I damn well please.

@grizzlybutts: Any kind of analysis requires me to be reductive, which always carries the risk of being wrong. Following are 4 loosely connected thoughts. Suppose, people really can LOVE a game, maybe the tragedy really is that this love is unrequited. The players pour their time and effort and heart into the game and especially the team (of randoms), but in return you get at best a 'thank you' and the opportunity to buy chests and gamble skins or w/e. My suggestion was to distance yourself emotionally, which is always a good approach if you like to see things clearly. And distance from your own personality, always safely assume that there are millions of people who share a similar thought, experience and development.

Obviously peer pressure - good or bad - is the most powerful psychological means to coerce someone, which explains both the appeal of MOBAs and the frustration of co-operating with unfamiliar people. Anybody who ever got reasonably good at anything, knows this frustration. You learn to recognize what needs to be done, and you see people constantly doing the opposite. The eternal struggle against ignorance.

There are two approaches to alleviate this pain, one is to seek out people and create communities of like minded peers, the other is to exploit this ignorance of others for personal gain/ mutual benefit.

Take poker for instance, there are professional players who can break even and there is the vast majority of marks, suckers, rubes, wannabes and degenerate gamblers. Overall however, the entire poker system and promotional machine is a fraud. Perhaps playing Dota casually is just as futile and pointless and and a losing game as being a casual poker player.

Or perhaps playing casual dota can lead to moments that you truly love and won't find in other games. Maybe it's not always about 'advertising' your favorite game but an actual realization that the game itself is one of your favorite pastimes.

I had a similar thing but with League. Its such a cesspool and a certain point its like why am I putting myself through this. I also I realised that I didn't really love the game itself anymore. For me it was a lot more about competing and the social aspects, playing with a regular group etc.

Since quitting I've moved over to Gwent/Overwatch and I've been enjoying single player games again. Don't regret it at all.

This post is so old, the OP probably even quit GiantBomb.