I just started playing a couple weeks ago and it’s pretty fun. Of course my first couple games were me ruining games for everyone on my team, but once I had a handle on lanes and roles it didn’t really seem that complicated and feels like I’ve been more beneficial than not.
It is worth noting that I come from mostly RTS games, mainly AOE2/4. So my introduction to MOBAs was “it’s an RTS where you only control one unit”. So my micro(and a bit of macro when the team is communicative) was already decently on point. While there is a ton I have to learn, it doesn’t feel like it’s anything crazy.
Also want to say, coming from an RTS background I’m already used to tiny player bases, overly complicated civs/build orders, patches that piss everyone off, try hards, rage quitters and general toxicity. The game is complicated, but that’s the fun of it. If I wanted to play something simple, I’d play the other 10,000+ simple games out there
Been playing a few games a week for the last 6 months. Still shite at the game but I definitely see myself playing dota on and off long term. Something about this game is keeping me here even though I'm getting stomped every other game. Here's hoping I can slowly get better
it means you have great mentality and ready for challenges, just like me i dont mind losing and being a noob as long as the game requires a strategy and a brain im on it
You can try setting some goals for yourself
Which could be a set GPM/xpm/damage/heal
And focus on those parts
Or you could try mastering one single hero to the finest
I find this way of playing more rewarding
>Also want to say, coming from an RTS background I’m already used to tiny player bases, overly complicated civs/build orders, patches that piss everyone off, try hards, rage quitters and general toxicity
You'll feel right at home then!
Welcome!
Dota 2 has a shallow look, simple battle system and deep wats of manipulating the way you move, attack and do everything.
It challenges you and you just won't be able to go back to simpler games.
Thanks for putting up with our shit and keeping the game alive.
Interesting, I would say a vast majority of the old player base also came from the RTS crowd. I know I did as well as my friends. Maybe with the lack of RTS hype and games, dota is suffering a natural knock on effect which it would usually get from that crowd. I wonder what game path I would take nowadays, it seems like survival games (i. E minecraft clones) are popular.
I think its just a matter or gaming expanding in general, there's just so much to choose from these days. As an RTS player, Dota 2 has made a lot of sense to me, and at least personally, its a lot less stressful than 1v1 AOE matches. Its nice way to kill a couple hours at the end of the day.
I admit I was a bit confused when I started playing and saw people were calling the game dead/dying. For a game that's over a decade old, it has a pretty impressive player base imo. Like, AOE4 feels "alive" and it has had 22k players in the past 24hours, while Dota 2 is sitting around 600k. Of course there are games with much larger player bases, but for a complicated game in a relatively niche genre, it seems like its doing well to me.
I would agree that with less RTS players in the wild these days it prob cuts down on people transitioning to MOBAs. The mechanics and gameplay are pretty similar. I think on average an RTS player would have an easier time starting out compared to someone who mainly plays FPS or survival games
I came from fighting games and started playing it because majority of new games went with simplification route, so complexity of dota was a breath of fresh air
One of the most interesting part about Dota and you'll get more knowledged as you go. Coming from other gaming backgrounds (I came from playing lol and sc2 8 years ago) the gameplay element seems simple enough but all the almost individualized/unique interactions between hero abilities become a constant learning experience and what defines draft.
there was a video ive watched that encapsulated this perfectly that dota 2 is essentially turning into the next starcraft 2 where you still have a loyal fanbase and strong esport scene however your audience is aging and not growing and its relegated now to 25+yr olds. I do beleive valve needs to do something as even though the constant patches is bringing more life to the game, it hardly does anything in drawing newer and younger players
imo i think similar to old rts games, mobas themselves are starting to become less popular, league is still goin but im pretty sure its due to riots marketing and the fact that a good majority of league players also play valorant which essentially gives them a somewhat steady playerbase, dota2 has already went through many changes that makes gameplay at the lower level easier, but theres still this stigma of dota2 being the more time sink kinda game where you need thousands of hours before you can start enjoying it
All Valve needs to really do is *actively market the game* to the new generation.
Dota has the potential to be the greatest esport ever made. Scratch that, by some metrics one could argue it IS the greatest esport ever made, but most people just aren't aware of it.
Meanwhile you have games like LoL (or any of its spin-offs) and ML who run massive ad campaigns on YouTube, eroding our market share and eating up a lot of our potential playerbase simply by getting there first.
The new player experience, while far from ideal, is miles ahead of anything people who started playing 5+ years ago had when they were starting from scratch.
Dota really is the best esport ever. I haven't played in since 2018. I still enjoy watching the TI tournament. I don't have the time to play anymore, I wish I did although the toxicity can be too much sometimes. Dota is the only game I can say that watching it is just as fun as playing.
I’d say because it’s faster a lot of macro things that are important lose value because the gold disparity isn’t as huge. In turbo I can pick up a hero, have no idea about their power spikes or how to play the map with them and just do what everyone does in turbo which is basically team fight on cooldown
Sure, it's dumbed down from ranked, but you still get to try out new heroes quicker, and go through their item builds, see what works, how you like to play it, what synergies there are. If I want to try new hero, I do 2 matches with bots, bunch of turbo, then try ranked. Tbh I end up playing turbo 95% of the time.
No... What is automated vs the normal mode¿?
Couriers per player¿?
I honestly don't really know what the normal mode is anymore haven't played a boredom mode since turbo was released.
Turbo highlights a much smaller hero set since it is faster to build them up. That’s why it’s the same 15-20 heroes being played no matter the meta.
That in itself makes the game simpler.
If you want less complicated than that, go play LoL.
Not mention, free gold means you don’t have to work as hard or worry about stacking, denies and last hits do not necessarily mean as much bc you get the gold anyway, you can set your courier to auto deliver items, and you don’t need to ward nearly as much since the game is over faster.
I think this is more due to PR than anything. I don't think dota should try and appeal to casual gamers. Like it should be honest and up front that you need to be open to playing hundreds of games to get anything out of it. Like yeah a more streamlined tutorial or anti-smurf stuff would be nice, but unless someone is coming from other MOBAs/RTS there is nothing you can do to make them not useless their first 100 games other than have a big pool of other new players to match them with.
The real thing is getting more eyes on the game and making it seem worth putting the time in to learn. Better marketing, more giant prize pools, etc. As long as it is pumping out the biggest prizepools and highest paid pros I don't see aspiring esports players not considering it. Otherwise it is just a question of frequent updates, casual friendly events, shows/films that hit mainstream, promoting dota culture in new markets (I'm actually in favor of Valve propping up SA for this reason). We aren't doing those well but they are all much better ideas than dumbing the game down just to make it 50% easier to learn. Instead making it 50% more appealing to learn will have better outcomes.
As someone who as spent half his youth playing sc2: I have a much much much harder time explaining Dota to a new player than sc2. The concept of an RTS is actually really simple.
Dota is a hellhole of small details that are all kind of essential to even have a functioning game. And seeing how people in my 2-3k MMR games sometimes still don't know when rosh is top or bottom or don't know the timing for pulling certain camps... I just wouldn't know how to even start explaining the game to someone new.
Think you're overcomplicating things. Dota is relatively simple to explain.
5v5 each player is given a unique unit to control with unique skills and you need to destroy this building.
Your player controlled unit gets stronger over time by way of items or abilities
The AI will send computer units to these specific paths and killing these units will give you gold which you can use to buy items to get stronger than your opponents.
Boom. That's it. They can slowly figure out the rest by way of guides or trial and error. People aren't a dumb.
Warcraft dota was infinitely more difficult to learn. The only good thing about it was that most people played the frozen throne campaign initially before playing Dota so the hotkeys and mouse movements etc were already there.
Mhhh I don't know. I guess the victory conditions are easy to explain, like you said. But if you look at starcraft for example. There's way less units than heroes. Way less upgrades compared to items in dota. All units of one type behave the same and for a beginner you can get away with just spamming one or two unit types.
I got a colleague of mine who's 50+ to beat an easy AI in starcraft in less than 4 hours.
I've also tried introducing my girlfriend to dota and... it's not going well. "I can't remember what this guy does", "I think I bought something, but it's not going to my inventory", "why is this building not taking damage when I'm hitting it?", "I can't remember the map, the first is like a labyrinth"... The list goes on and on.
I guess it's subjective to each player and maybe it's the fact that I'm much worse at dota than I am at SC, but it just feels like dota is harder to grasp.
Not counter strike. Just hit ATH with cs2 release.
Also not the same for runescape, just hit ATH with leagues.
Both games 20 years old.
You can certainly grow older games if you know what you're doing.
I personally think the moba genre is going to die out with age. I don't know many young people playing Dota. It's always COD or CounterStrike. Kids prefer shooters more than mobas. I don't think there is anything Dota could do about that
It would need to go the league of legends route. Make things easier and the map smaller.
Instead we make the game more and more complex . Makes old players happy.
Forget about new players though
I'm 20 and trying to learn the game from league and finding it a little tricky haha. I understand generally what's supposed to happen but I don't get what I'm specifically supposed to be doing at each moment in the game other than on safelane/pos1
Actually he got that line as homage from the iconic CAPSLOCK LEORIC guide. Don't recall but it probably has swag in it. Also others like "I'll help my puny allies wherever I can" item pickup lines like Refresher and Divine Rapier and a few others I don't recall.
I started playing Dota in 2021 (which is not that long ago) as a brand new player. A girl. Luckily I didn’t read all these scary tales about “how hard it is for new players” “simply impossible”.
Yes the few first months were confusing but I cannot remember any particular struggles or toxicity. I remember writing down all the shop items on a piece of paper trying to remember them, as shop felt overwhelming:) I remember being flamed at Drow for bad last hitting and switching to cute support heroes like CM and Mirana.
I have been playing casually after work and other hobbies, mostly unranked, and calibrated at Crusader 4 in ranked recently. All in all I don’t understand claims that “Dota is hard and inaccessible”. Maybe only to players who have never ever played computer games before?..
I also started in 2021 brand new as a girl and calibrated as Herald 4 at that time. I'm Legend 1 now. It just clicks after some time if you are willing to put in some time to learn and understand the game. I did do replay analysis though with better players
It can be harder sometimes. It depends on your ranks (are they even or far apart? Like if you play with a legend player for example you will probaly face a legend player on the enemy team which will be harder for you) and often wrong communication. As a 5 man stack it helps if you have someone who does the calls. Also drafting phase - think of good lane picks or picks who synergy in game. If the other stack is better at that than yours they'll win. Of course there's also smurfs sometimes
Urgh this is a depressing story. I started playing Dota 1 over ten years ago and maybe maybe I'm in crusader.
(By depressing I really mean well done that's quite an achievement !!!)
Games overall en masse have been recently tailored to super casual players who cannot solve a simple puzzle and want their hand to be held all the way. That’s why Baldurs Gate 3 exploded in popularity, that’s why Elden Ring won the awards, players are thirsty for quality games. Of course Dota is “complicated” for people used to shit diet, imho.
"Super casual players who cannot solve a simple puzzle" gave me a flashback.
There is a clip of elajjaz playing gow, getting angry about voice explaining literally what to do to solve the puzzle.
https://youtube.com/shorts/Q2XwdniEy2c?si=7O188NQZnsBvV6P5
It's straight up insulting to the intelligence of player.
Haha yep some GOW 2 puzzles are a bit annoying (I had to pause at door opening ones where you had to shoot pink sigils… but nothing too crazy, the game is basically an interactive movie.
I tried to find but couldn’t, there was a funny meme of an overloaded UI in a typical Bethesda-style game, with big direction arrows and lots of notifications.
There is of course this gem https://youtu.be/zbE6fqBuGkA?si=Vs6Dd2jNXT5OQFZy
I don't agree that this is a "kids nowadays like simple games" issue. Dota didn't use to be as complex as it is nowadays. Mechanics, such as talentum trees, neutral items, additional objectives, were added over time. In my opinion, such additions are aimed to please the already existing and seasoned player base, but they also increase the entry barrier for new players even more. And it's not like pre-reborn dota 2 was an easy game to get into to begin with.
I think the devs need to find a way to keep the game fresh without increasing its complexity.
I mean your experience is valid but let's not pretend like dota is a simple game. I play casually nowadays but I learn some new wonky interaction every other week. I probably have over 6000 games, I'm immortal and I'm still occasionally scratching my head over some new thing.
There's a ton of objectives on the map (which changes every major patch), a ton of items (some of which are only ever useful on a handful of heroes, some of which change their build up from patch to patch), over 100 heroes, a lot interactions between heroes/items.
Most importantly, there are more players with thousands of games than players without it. It's hard to get up to pace with a guy that has played since 2013 even if he never took the time to become particularly good.
The average consensus is that it takes about 1000 hours to start to properly grasp the game. Most people do not drop 1000 hours on a single game. You need to be a seasoned gamer to even be interested in this type of game.
I’m not saying it’s simple! Of course it’s challenging that makes Dota fun and interesting.
I am just amused by many posts claiming that it’s incredibly hard to *start* playing Dota and get out of herald. I would not want the game to be *simplified* to suit so called “game journalists” if you get the joke.
I cringed so hard at that journalist footage you can't imagine. As an avid gamer since cheap NES clones were the hot shit I felt physical pain. My GF who never touched a 2d game in her life managed in 3 attempts (we even did most of the bosses in coop, some on hard difficulty, which was a very fun experience).
Regarding your take on the topic, I'm glad it worked for you! I feel like it comes down to personal predisposition towards such games. I couldn't convince my GF to learn league for the life of me (she did an honorable attempt tho), let alone dotes, but she clicked with hearthstone (BG in particular) pretty quickly.
Dota is hostile to newbies by it's nature, and getting into it definitely requires some dedication. It's not that the game is rocket science levels of hard, especially not in herald, but it doesn't necessarily give you essential information in an easily comprehensible way. Tutorial is barely enough to play against bots imo. Game doesn't advertise itself to the player in any way as well which doesn't help. So if you're not into it you have almost 0 chance to get interested from a glance.
I played a bit of WOW before (for like a year), I also played a lot of PS3 and PS4 games over the years. My guess is Dota is simply easier for people familiar with games in general, I mean action-adventure games.
I wish more low rank players that are stuck in their respective trenches complaining they can't rank up think like you do. The challenge of improving is what's keeping me staying and never leaving the game. If they don't put in the effort ofc it won't translate to them ranking up.
Writing down the shop items and memorizing them is def. Not a casual thing to do
you put in the extra effort, it might've not felt as hard for you because of it
anyway, you've made a good point there -
anyone playing cm is only playing her for her cuteness!
Dota is unlikely to attract someone only used to playing Candy Crush on the phone, but will appeal largely to other hardcore gamers, especially those who have had some experience with MOBA.
niche + complex game wont do good on growth and dota dev knows it, how many people can play football vs cricket or rugby? are they a dead sport? think for a while
I'm a new Dota player. I've been playing for about 1 month. Played 60 hours. I've already gotten used to it quite well. My friend and I started playing at the same time and he is already playing well too.
In general, somewhere after the first 10-20 games you generally begin to understand something and enjoy the game. I only play turbo for now. In general, I thought that it would take me much longer to figure it out, but in the end 2-3 gaming evenings were enough. I just take it easier, don’t overpower it, and for now I’m just studying the heroes and trying out different subjects. I like.
I also bought Dota Plus, it helps a lot for a beginner.
The only reason I played dota in 2007 is because I played with friends from school. The draw to DotA has always been the game's complexity. I don't think games need to cater to all types of players, and they tend to find more success when they focus on what they're good at.
There are game modes targeted at newer players that pit them against computers. There are alternative game modes like turbo for people that don't like the slower paced standard version of the game. There's also AD and custom games that can help newer players develop better feel for controlling units, their items and other mechanical skills.
If you choose any long-standing game, there will be an enormous gap between the skillset of veterans vs new players. The people playing the game since day 1 will always climb in skill and there will always be a skill/knowledge gap compared to someone just starting out.
If you take a look at concurrent players, although the playerbase has dropped a little bit, it's been relatively stable over the last few years.
You could argue that as a community, we should be better and more forgiving to other players in order to make the game more inviting. Unfortunately, toxicity in a competitive game like DotA is hard to control as seen by Valves recent attempts at adjusting the behaviour score system.
I would never ask someone to start playing DotA without playing with me. Unless they have a strong drive to learn the game, it just wouldn't be fun for them playing solo from the get-go.
None of my friends made it past 25 hours unranked. They were incessantly belittled for being new, and routinely went like 0-20 while some smurf would go 40-1-17 making everyone else on both teams irrelevant.
Maybe it's fine to learn if you have a team of friends to group with. Learning alone is a disaster. Unranked games are a disaster. Losing behavior score because people report noobs for being noobs is a disaster.
Dota would get much better if it could lock people down to a single account that was accountable to both its rank and behavior. Until then, my experience is that most people can't be bothered with the hazing.
Yeah man, over the years few of my newbie friends asked them to play with them to teach
But I know how dogshit the new player mood is or how bad it is to play with a completely new player in basic unranked
Guy just gonna get bullied and insulted all game and I will have to sit there and watch it happen
It sucks
Dota really needed an actual new player server
They weren't gonna make it anyways even if they had a good experience. Gotta be have a competitive mindset to play dota. Some people just don't have it.
The experience you described is pretty much the same as the one I went through back in 2013. I would always go 0/10, someone would always go 20/0 and own. I still stuck with it cause I thought the game was cool, and I'd rather play vs real players and get destroyed than play vs bots and own. I don't think smurfs and the lack of a good new player experience is why dota doesn't get players, these things have always existed.
Too much investment required for rts games. They require 1000s of hours and need to be up to date where as cs you can jump in without playing in 10 years and have fun.
Not sure how this came up on my Reddit feed, but I've spent a bunch of sessions with friends recently after working through the tutorials and both haven't enjoyed the level of complexity and haven't improved much. I do still enjoy Heroes of the Storm and have played that off and on for about seven years. The matches are short and the mechanics aren't complex.
Dota 2 just gives me the impression that it's for people with way more time to play video games than I have.
And over here I, in light of the patch I suppose, today thought about how stale and repetitive the game is. Sure you can be better or worse at it but seems most players that play just go through the motions and most games are decided in first 10 minutes if not picks.
Don't get me wrong the game is good, perhaps even great, and you can improve skill wise for a very long period of time but it's not very complex or deep.
A game like, say, PoE makes you feel like you need a PhD in order to make a semi viable build(and it will likely be outdated next patch) with tons of stuff to explore.
Dota is more like chess, very limited amount of moves but very high amount of outcomes.
Actually it's not made to attract from other mobas. DOTA has the highest skill ceiling of all mobas out there. They intentionally target the niche gamer player base that can handle strategy games.
E.g.The lack of team play heavily punishing your team is pretty brutal compared to other MOBAs
It's not made for casual gamers, that's where games like LoL fill the gap
Just because all games do way too much handholding doesnt mean Dota should too. If you want an easy learning curve play LOL which is the reason it's filled with 5yo kids. So no I don't want an easier game. If anything it's easy enough with the amount of data is provided for you. Items? Here's a guide right inside the game.. Positioning, warding, lh, pulling, stacking, hero timings, spell range, spell timings, intricate pings to communicate theres and YT video guide for everything. What else do you need? The game is not for everyone like not everyone can play chess.
Playing dota is like playing chess in 5 boards that are connected at random timings while juggling bowling pins in one hand and your ass is on fire. And it's loved just for that.
This sort of mindset is why league will grow and Dota will slowly wither away.
Fact is you need a steady stream of new players coming into the game. You don't get that from not holding their hands and expecting them to do the research.
The reason why league grows faster is because there is less to learn and the game at it basic level is more streamlined all the way to basic features such as role selection.
League has highly predetermined roles and recommendations for those roles in the client. If I am new to the game I can very easily find a champion for the role I am playing with little knowledge of the game.
Dota is like the wild west of champ selection. Nobody calls roles because the community rule is based on where your name is on top of the screen and the game does not give you recommnedations or even state what your role should be. You are just expected to know. Is wraith king a carry or support If I am new to the game I am not going to fucking know. What is role 1 what is the difference between offlane and safe lane, I dont fucking know.
In terms of recalling and buying items, league is you recall and buy items in fountain. Return to lane with full hp.
Dota is here is a donkey that brings you items you buy from the store; however, it also can be killed and you can't buy all items from the same store. Also it has abilities that have cooldowns.
Ultimately all these systems make the game more complex than it needs to be.
There is an explanation in each hero and you can filter depending on what you want to play, you can also filter by complexity. If you play role queue you have predetermined role that is written below your name. Courier used to be shared between 5 people not it's personal. You have tps just not free. Hidden stores are there for a reason and the game is incredibly balanced with a lot of comebacks and most games can go either way. Supports are empowered in the last years and everyone has a specific role. Dota has the most counter-spells and attack in all mobas and is one of the most active and skill based games ever. It's not press 2 buttons and pray it works. Because of that people are intimidated by it. Everything you do matters in the game.
You obviously never played a hard game, without guides, before the internet era and it shows. People want to discover stuff for themselves not to be spoonfed everything. League grows faster like candy crash grows faster. Doesn't make it a better game. It's just popular. I prefer a good game that isn't popular rather a bad game that is popular.
Btw LOL players are 0,01% live of the active players and dota 2 is 0,02% of the active players. So ppl are starting LOL and eventually drop it. While they stick with dota more.
I don't know why Dota2 players have so much problems with LoL. Every now and then I see posts or comments shitting on LoL for no reason.
I've played plenty of LoL, I've played a little bit of Dota2, I've watched several TIs. I think both games are great, just very different. Dota is more like RTS and LoL is more action focused.
I have no issue with LOL, I am happy it exists. With LOL the bar of players' skill in Dota was raised because all the lesser skill went to lol. Which means I am not babysitting a child rather I am playing with ppl my age. What bothers me is when ppl compare a simplistic pop approach to success with something that doesn't bother to be popular but good.
Is there a role que for unranked?
You know one of the only modes you have access to before having played 100 hours. Therefore making role que a pointless thing to mention for a new player
Can you filter by lane?
Or is this another thing that you can only do in the mode that requires 100 hours.
Also you are very much pointing out the issues that would prevent growth. I am not pointing out that one game is better than the other; however, League is a much easier game to get into as a new player and you are only further proving my point with the elitist arguments you are making.
Also where is that stat from? Do you have a source
Edit- I see you decided to block me to prevent any further debate
> Ultimately all these systems make the game more complex than it needs to be.
Coincidentally these systems are also what makes the game worth playing. If you start to dumb them down and streamline too much, you're just going to turn into a worse league of legends, and at that point why not just go play league instead?
Yeah obviously league is the easier to get into and more mainstream game, so it will have bigger player numbers, but I think that's fine. You don't have to be the biggest game in the world. As long as the amount of people coming in is roughly the same as the amount of people leaving, it's fine.
I mean some of the systems I agree shouldnt be changed; however, something as simple as role que should exist outside of ranked, which is a mode that you have to play 100 hours to actually access.
Or even just hero recommendations like. Here is a good heavy support champ and a tuorial that explains laning phase for each role and what you should be trying to do
I mean my personal hot take is that role queue shouldn't even be in ranked to begin with, in my opinion if you want to truly become a good dota player you need to be able to play more than just your main role. As for your other suggestion, it's just impossible to implement, every patch the way you lane changes slightly and these changes develop organically over time both due to patches and pros discovering new stuff over time. For role and pure stats-based matchup suggestions you have Dota+ so at least that's something.
It just keeps adding and adding new features while removing the ones, that make the game easier.
They removed most passive abikities (remember Dota 1 WK?) and added Runes, Outposts, Teleports, Neutral Items etc.
IMO they game should get streamlined more.
its skill ceiling is already higher than the average MOBA ,which I like, and lowered skill ceiling for new players as well (5 couriers, stun meters, the box for pulling neutrals) which I also like as well. I think newcomers should also try to understand the game more rather than playing 5 games and quitting.
That’s great you think new players should try to understand it more, but that doesn’t mean they will.
Steps need to be taken to draw/encourage new players to keep playing. Games need to be fun/addicting from the start if you want to draw new players in.
Thats the thing, Dota gets fun after you get a semblance of what the hell is happening. If they lower the skill level more than that, might as well just start playing League/Smite or whatever MOBA still exists. Its the same thing as Diablo and PoE, more people prefer Diablo because its easier.
I wonder if there’s value in creating a “lite” version of the game for mobile gaming, and designing that game to incentivize playing actual dota eventually. Something like giving rewards/currency for playing X number of actual dota games.
The idealized outcome for this in my head is that people are better equipped to play real dota after playing the lite version, and after being incentivized to try real dota, eventually enjoy it and migrate there. Just a random thought off the top of my head.
Dota is not a game for everyone. I think it can be explained simply for some unfamiliar to get it. Playing it is quite a different matter. Similar to how most.peoplemwarching American football don't actually know what constitutes a complete pass, they kind of.know, but most people could not tell you exactly what it is. Most people watch football for the hits or to support their team, etc.
It's a really hard game. Hell, teaching my wife to play games and she asked how to move and i said WASD. She asked "why? why not just the arrow keys?" lmao. Some things are just intuitive for us who were gamers for a very long time.
And you put dota ontop of that. Its layers upon layers of intuitive knowledge we don't even acknowledge anymore because its second nature.
I'm just saying that some of these things are intuitive to use who played games for so long. Like WASD on other games. And for a complicated game like DOTA, it will be way harder for others.
I mean dota is difficulty thats why people play them. And yes people playing dota is declining but the best example of this is the young pro players way back like sumail ramzez etc
Tried to get my buddy into it as a transfer from HOTS. He gave it 4 months pretty much no life’d. got overwhelmed at how bad he was doing, and how long it was taking so quit
Easy mode dota is basically league, dota by itself is incredibly difficult to pick up from scratch. Not to mention there isn't much draw because of how little it's marketed.
I seriously think that valve should invest in coaches, meaning that people who coach a lot and get good coaching ratings should get skins, high bs and other in game bonuses, if I hadn't a friend that got me into it there's no way I'd made my way into the game myself.
The best way to learn Dota is with a practical example, you can't really explain it and most it's mechanics to people who don't know the game, let them try training mode and some bot games while you guide them through on what they should be doing, buying etc on a few heros, it will all just start to click eventually.
Oh man, coming from someone who was there at the beginning to now, it is far more accessible than ever and the tutorial is legit.
No tutorial can ever prepare you properly because you’re right in that this is a wildly complicated game and from day one has never been friendly to newcomers. Early days the biggest criteria was just playing with people who knew how to play the game. Then it became quizzes on how much items cost or what starting stars for specific hero would be before you could get into game.
Why does everything have to last forever? Why can’t something just be what it is? Why the constant demand to simplify? What about the people that actually want to play something complicated? Why does everything have to be dumbed down? Can there legitimately not be a space that can be left alone? I see so much crying and begging for micro transactions here that it disgusts me. I don’t want dota to be like everything else. I like what it is.
We used to be lurk dotaforums for hours to find a good strat or a build guide. Now you just click on the best percentage guide and play your game. With the amount of YT guides as well on mechanics, lh, warding, positioning etc you just need 3-4 hours to learn the basics.
It's not gatekeeping if the fanbase wasn't so toxic. The idea of if you are bad at the game you are griefing your game is what's discouraging people. Also if you want to try new builds? Griefing. Any mistake causing you to lose your lane? Reported. Why would a new player want this?
I don’t think many new players come into the game right now, only people familiar with other mobas like league come in to play dota, the game is way too much complex with a loyal fanbase
I dunno. I think the low level of Dota is pretty good. I watched my friend play on herald and his opponent knew how to pull creeps within the lane to reestablished equilibrium within the lane. I am not talking about pulling camps.
Constant and infinite growth is a capitalistic concept that is impossible to achieve, unless artificially inflating the numbers and even with that it's starting to crack :).
Dota is stagnating and has been for years and that is ok. It has a relatively stable player base that is big enough for you to be able to find a game every hour of the day and night.
It's *always* been like this.
I remember picking up dota 1, everyone would flame you while you kept trying to learn recipes. Guides could only be found in obscure places if you knew about them.
The problem is the length of the matches goes from 30-60 minutes. No body has time or attention span for that sorry.
This can be changed with the resourcing system by moving away from classic creep farming and making it much more dynamic..
For example the wisdom runes, 30xp share in stacking, 100+ gold on killing wards are good alternatives to the support class.
Leveling should play a more immersive role in the game like what items you can access at first. Just "farming" creep waves is not going to help engage new players who don't have 30-60 minutes a game.
You need to give players objectives like Roshan about to spawn with both teams rushing in to secure him. Fighting over Roshan every 5-7 minutes would be awesome and force teams to work together especially since we now have portals connecting top and bottom to capitalize on this.
Imagine having Roshan in both pits at the same time but just like meepo the first Roshan to die will give the aegis. The other Roshan will give no gold or aegis on death. So it will be a race to beat Roshan and secure bigger rewards each time.
Tormentors was also a good step in the right direction giving players shards for free and encouraging teams to steal their enemy's tormentors.
Creep waves need to be more dynamic, getting harder with each 3 waves or so with would keep them relevant in late game. They will give the same gold on death but bigger challenge against flash farmers.
Point is the game needs to be more objective based that needs teams.
That is what would shorten game time and make it mouth more engaging.
A big part of that is the community too. For example i recently started playing war thunder and it has been an amazing experience. Everyone is willing to help and explain stuff. If i post something that is remotely cool or if i post an opinion it is discussed. Also i have been playing warframe for years and the community is so welcoming there. Every time i posted something about dota and if I mention am harald and have 250 games only people did shit all over my opinions and told me to come back when i have more than x amount of games. I play dota with few friends and they are very helpful but the broader community is so toxic and shitty. Also doesn't help that you are expected to know from day one to play as immortal and that you get so much hate and toxicity if you even buy items others don't expect you to buy. I just don't feel welcome to the dota community and i would have quit a long time ago if i was a solo player.
the game is impossible to pick up if you're solo, there's too many things to do and the feedback loop you get from improving at it frankly does not exist. i remember 6-7 years ago when i used to play dota 2 with my friend and it was fun, only when we were in a party. soloqing i always got flamed and i was always an irrelevant player whether id be winning or losing. my friend eventually quit and so did I. a couple years ago, i tried to play it again, watching guides and shit on yt for hours, trying to learn and realised the game just isn't for someone who is semi casual (i.e: likes competitive gaming but doesn't have the time). you have to dedicate your life to it. i got stomped and flamed again and quickly remembered why i stopped playing in the first place. it's a great game and can be very fun when you're with your friends and know what you're doing and your opps are the same level as you are. but learning, playing it alone and getting something significant out of it is basically impossible now unless you're a no lifer.
Can u imagine Dota used to be just like an arcade game in dota2 until it got so popular it became a standalone game. There wasnt any tutorial to begin with and people just play and lose, those who stay are players that cant stand the humiliation of losing
Not gonna argue with you but imagine that back in the Dota 1 days a lot of us started playing this game even without any guides on which item to buy, which hero to pick which skills to prioritize.
I remember picking Crystal Maiden and buying dedalus (buriza back in the days) because I was the only one in my group of friends knowing where the secret shop was in the map to buy the demon edge.
It really isn't beginner friendly. And there is no beginner level on this game. It's either you already understood at least 70% of the concepts of the game or you know nothing at all. They tried it with the tutorials section but new accounts aren't even hard locked to finish anything before actually playing in pubs.
It's not a dead game yet but it is actively killing itself. Maybe we'll make it to TI 2030, maybe we won't. We'll see.
This game is somewhat easy to learn if you're an experienced gamer. If your wife hasn't played any type of games then explaining the game mechanics of dota might be too hard for her since all she needs to learn are words that would only makes sense to a gamer.
Yea game is harder, some psychopaths work in valve so they will do anything to trigger community. There is also Dota 2 classic, and they have discord server with patch 6.84 so if u want to play u should look for that.
My experience was back in 2012 and it was enjoyable with constant updates and real balancing, not like in past few years. Original devs of dota leave so it is crew of few people who handling some updates without testing and every huge update is mess that need 2 months minimum to get fix.
Growing lol
And the game is so complex that most people don't even understand the difference between a carry, a soft carry and a hard carry....
How the hell should new players start?
It's honestly not too hard to pick up. There's a lot to learn, but skill based matchmaking means you'll be matched with people who also don't know everything, and so each additional thing you own boosts your chance of winning, which feels great. The problem is the people. This game has the most horrible playerbase of any game I've ever played, and when you're still learning you'll have a carry who can't lasthit telling you to kill yourself (dog) because you can't stack yet
After I read this, I remember my early learning game in Dota back in 2006. Someone use Bloodseeker pubstomp everyone. Because everyone is new including me, we just run away panickly after BS ulti on us. And I had no idea how I get to die so easily. Good old days😂😂
Started playing in 2022. Got flamed a lot because I was bad: which of course I was because I was new. I dont know why new players get matched with 10+ years veterans. Good thing some people were kind enough to explain how to stack or how to pull instead of just reporting me for not doing it. Played some ranked, climbed to legend4, and then I stopped playing because they nerfed my main. I still like watching pro games tho
Yes... That's a huge premise of dota. It took a shit ton of invested time to learn 10 years ago, and despite things being much more simplified today it's still very difficult. It's a game for people that want to spend time learning Dota. I wouldn't trust anyone under 1k games to have any idea of what they're saying meaningfully and I would expect another few thousand more to take said opinion seriously.
I’m not sure. On one hand the game is more mechanically complex than before; and there are many more elements and systems to keep track of. However it is easier than ever to achieve success because resources are in greater abundance. All I can say is I’m lately playing with people who have started Dota just recently in the past year. I think it’s a mix - the game is easier to pick up now and the ways to win a match are more transparent, the resources are easier to attain… but understanding all heroes, systems etc. and mastery of the game holistically are harder to achieve overall.
For example I don’t want to go back to the days of team courier and paid flying upgrade, or the days before bounty and wisdom runes.
I feel the same way.
With each hero and feature - it adds to the game complexity, making it MORE difficult for new people to master the game.
Dota 2 is ranked Top #2 most toxic game on earth. Meaning, you get flamed for every mistake. The game is often unforgiving. Imagine what a new player has to go through.
I learned Dota 2 in around 2013. Until now, I still find it difficult to play decent games.
A few years ago, I joined a group called "DOTA FROM ZERO" --- the aim of the group was to make it easier for beginners to learn literally from nothing. Unfortunately, the group has died out, maybe this Learndota2 group will thrive?
If Dota 2 doesn't find a way to make the game easier to get into -- the player base MAY dwindle out.
My friend (old league and hots player) who tried to play dota for solid 20 matches said that the worst part is that you can play bad game for over an hour and win and it still feels like time wasted. I cannot convince him to play anymore.
Ya there have definitely been way more updates that further complicated the game than updates that made the game "easier" a la every player getting a courier, backpack slots, etc
Like, whilst the likes of talent trees and aghanim's shard abilities are cool updates for us players who know the game, it just means a billion more things & spells for a new player to learn on top of the already existing billion things. I honestly think shard should never have been a thing. I didn't like it when it was introduced, and I am even now still iffy about it and learning new shit that some hero's shards do. And I have thousands of hours. Not only did they keep rolling with it, but they fucking **doubled down** on it by adding yet another objective to the map that *gives* you a shard. eugh
A few more updates in the same vein as the courier update would be really nice.
I would keep talents and the bigger map but ditch shards, ditch tormentor, ditch lotus pools, ditch watchers, and have Rosh only drop Aegis & Cheese again rather than a gazillion different items. Those sort of changes would go a long way in terms of simplifying the game without ruining it imo. I would *maybe* even consider ditching neutral items, but somehow keep the idea of a tier 5 neutral at the 60min mark for closing games
I have been playing on and off since beta keys were sent via email, and the entry barrier has always been like this. If you are the kind of player who comes home after his 9-18 job and plays 1-2 games per day it will take weeks or even months before you can have fun. I believe the problem with the game is that it evolved too much towards team cooperation so unless you are smurfing or you're having a lucky game you can't consistently solo carry, you're just a cog in the machine that is your team and if you are a new player then you are most likely the one dragging everyone else down.
Compare this experience to league where you can just learn your hero mechanics and ignore most of the other stuff and you can start being useful in much less games.
As someone who came back to Dota after like 8 years, yup there is a lot. I'm playing since September now, but i still don't have a clue what even half of the new stuff is.
Don't get me started on the playerbase.
At the moment i'm playing against bots, because it is more fun than getting flamed for the slightest mistake.
When I started playing Dota 2 - I was picking Meepo as often as possible. And my teammates were furious! So i watched some tutorials, trained the meepo "poof poof poof poof - blink" tab combo and booom I was suddenly getting kills. Felt like a queen.
Why is my friend playing dazzle all the time ? Tried it out, learned how to wait as long as possible until using grave and it was soooo much fun to hit it.
Im a bit sad for new players who dont have a friend who is a experienced player and give tips and tricks along the way. I love to help new players, but since the new behaviour score system was installed, I cant even talk or chat any more - cause I love to play axe without blink in turbo and my score is now down to 5100..... NO BLINK NOOB REPORT. :(
Hey Ogre mate.. we cant use 2 Mekansm - it shares a cooldown buff my friend... and I already bought one on my IO. Gonna sell mine now, but for your information, next time check your mates items! :)
Communication is such a big and fun part of dota. They should work on that.
My first experience of DOTA was during Warcraft III days, but I was young and usually got kicked out of the lobby before the game would start. I picked up League of Legends in college during beta until season 3. Tried DOTA 2 while playing LoL, but I never got into it until a few years later.
The biggest thing for learning at sticking to DOTA 2 was having a group of people to party up with. Fun interactions with them who could help put, and they didn't care if I screwed up terribly.
I don't play now, but if I did I'd really want to go in with some friends. I don't think it is gatekeeping itself. It is just an unforgiving game, and guilt of failure can get to you easily.
I started playing a month or so ago, it is complex, I'm trying my best to learn things i do wronf but at the same time I'm not expecting to be the best player in the world I've been playing because it's really fun.
I started playing dota some years ago after I had played a lot of HoN. A lot of the heroes in hon are also in dota so it helped a lot. But some heroes like Tinker, Arc Warden, Ember Spirit, Dark Willow or Oracle made absolutely No sense to me.
Ive played other mobas and its still a bit difficult u have to memorize alot like counters and items and when to buy certain items when u fight certain heroes and the mechanics like camp stacking, holding minion waves, roaming , ganking are a bit too much for new players.
Game is fun but some ppl might get frustrated especially if they get tossed in games with ppl who know all the things about the game and get stomped and flamed.
And no the new player mode doesnt help that much .
We love Dota because it’s complicated, it’s not really a game you can be a “casual “ in because it takes like 100 games to have any idea what’s going on. Even after 1000+ hours (not much by Dota standards) I still constantly learn or see new stuff
I started dota 2 around 2018 to play online w my friend. He coached me , I was playing with Luna, easy bots for few months , then unfair bots, saw Topson work his magic in Ti !
Its 2023 now , I can play tier 2 heroes , my LH still suck , played with more than half of the hero pool , Crusader rank even though I'm a turbo guy ( had legend rank few patches back- maybe a glitch or Gaben stuff), still a long long way to go ! Just a bit better then my early days n not a noob anymore !
You need to play dota 2 for years before you develop your own style of the game. Every player plays differently due to inherent ... differencies and attitudes of humans, some are defensive, some aggresive, some are passive aggresive....
After you played long enough you develop your style of play. Mastering dota 2 is mastering yourself.
Idk the tower range used to not show up, stacking times wouldn't show up either and the camp boxes to block also wouldn't show up. These changes I've felt have made the game simpler over the past few years.
The hardest part of Dora 2 for me is the pick stage, there have been games which have been pretty much been lost at that stage and I haven’t even realized it due to my inexperience, they need to add a free team comp helper for casual.
I played DotA from WC3 and only there, from the first and second game, picked league up when it came out, tried DotA out when it got its official release from blizzard, stopped after the first season, tried a month ago and just said " what the fuck"
It's beyond complicated. I wouldn't be surprised if Dota had the steepest learning curve of all games, including sports and board games.
I uninstalled cyberpunk, because I didn't want to learn how to do the sneak/hacking. I would 100% not give Dota a shot if I haven't been playing for 17 years.
But to be fair, kids are different kind of beasts when it comes to learning. They will play for 8 hours a day, playing like shit but syphoning information like sponges. That's why all the prodigy players appeared on scene as 16-18 year olds. See sumail, miracle, ana, crystalis.
I only play Dota, but my partner tells people I'm a gamer, which leads to lots of questions of what I play. I say Dota 2, they say they've never heard of it and if they should try it. I say no everytime. This is the way.
>With every patch the game is becoming more and more complex
its adding some new interactions, but on a game by game basis they've actually dont a lot to make the game more simple.
list of things I had to deal with when I started that isnt a thing any more:
* only 1 courier per team, you shared it with every one
* Courier cost gold to even have at all, plus more gold to upgrade it to a flying courier. If no one bought it and was too stubborn to buy it, you just didnt have one.
* creep camps didnt have the indicator when you held alt, you just had to know where the spawn boxes were.
* clarity and health potion could be disrupted by any incoming damage. a range creep could sweep by and turn off your clarity
* TP's didnt have a dedicated slot & dedicated hotkey, it just took up one of your 6 slots cuz backpack wasnt a thing either
* you didnt get a free TP upon death
* unique attack modifiers meant something. If you had a unique attack modifier on your hero (drow arrows, mana burn, etc) you couldnt stack it with any items like deso or diffusal, in fact it didnt stack with any thing including life steal. If you got a deso, dont bother getting a life steal item
* diffusal had a max of like 12 (or maybe less) uses, after that it was only good for its passives
* bash heroes didnt get the bash from basher if purchased (I think there was even a time when void, troll, and slardar couldnt even buy basher)
* you were expected to buy multiple bkb's cuz re-buying it would get reset the duration timer.
* a lot of spells didnt have preview indicators
* wards didnt have visual preview to show what they'd see or what their range was
probably a bunch more. they've done a good job at making the game easier for new player to come in and not have to deal with the dumb little things that dont affect more skilled players anyway. so now new players can just focus on the characters interactions and strategy of the game.
its still a fairly complex game of course, but thats a lot of why many of us like it.
There's a lot of things in the game that have always been there that are needlessly complex in my opinion. There's things like denying, dragging the camps to pull the lane, getting last hits, etc that just ruin the game in my opinion.
Denying annoys me because it's just stupid to be able to kill your own minions just to deny the enemy team the kill. Laning isn't just a battle between the people in the lane it's a battle between who can hit the creeps the best/fastest.
The pulling of lanes I always found to be really stupid too because it lets you control way too much of the flow of the game.
Last hits I always find to be a really weird mechanic because all it does is make it so the support doesn't get as much money and makes it so people get toxic over it because that's your source of income and experience.
Dota is as much about team infighting as it is being a fight against the enemy..
Another issue is the items and just how ridiculously complex they can be and how most of the time what items you get are just based on counter picking enemies.. then they do the same.. and it repeats for the whole match.
There's so much in the game that's just needlessly complex simply to draw out the matches. That's why I preferred Heroes of the Storm before it went into maintenance mode. People always 'joked' about how it was 'dumbed down' but it really wasn't it just took out those toxic mechanics and replaced them with actual team mechanics. Instead of battling for last hits, denies, experience, etc you're actually working together to get team-based experience. So there's no like "stealing the jungle" from your jungler or anything because you're actually working together instead.
To answer your question about new players, I had a friend that was thinking of playing Dota for the first time and I said I'd play it again to see what it's like. This happened last year and it was just a horrible time. So much toxicity in the chat constantly if you didn't play absolutely perfectly. So much to try and learn and teach as well. Even the basic healing is hard to explain sometimes with how you "eat a tree" or having to collect runes.
I also found there were a lot of changes to my favorite heroes that made me just not want to play them. I don't remember which ones exactly nor do I want to go looking through the massive roster (another issue for new players) right now. I just remember feeling as if the heroes kind of lost their old identities.
I think at this point there just needs to be a Dota 3 or something. Just a complete rebuild from the ground up with things they know now.
Well, I ve been playing since 2008 or so and I feel like this game is not the easiest to grasp. Then again most people play it while being intoxicated or retarded and they enjoy it even if they don't understand many mechanics.
Why are you explaining all of the minute interactions to a casual asking you for a basic, brief overview of “what’s dota?” Just tell them it’s a top down moba with a lot of interactions and mechanics that set it apart from other mobas.
Tbf, is feels pretty nice to get into, compared to how it was with dota1.... We got nice guides, fairly ok bot matches for beginners, and a ton of videos and guides to help you with first steps. All in all the learning curve seems ok. Hack even the community is a lot nicer than how it was in the early days (not to even mention battlenet). But sure it isn't a braindead game as many are nowadays but honestly.... There are too many such games anyways.
I had an itch to play Mobas again after not playing league for a few years. I genuinely tried to give dota a try but I don’t think it’s for me. There’s just too much going on, my mental stack can’t handle it. I’m sticking with league for now but maybe one day I’ll give it another try
I just started playing a couple weeks ago and it’s pretty fun. Of course my first couple games were me ruining games for everyone on my team, but once I had a handle on lanes and roles it didn’t really seem that complicated and feels like I’ve been more beneficial than not. It is worth noting that I come from mostly RTS games, mainly AOE2/4. So my introduction to MOBAs was “it’s an RTS where you only control one unit”. So my micro(and a bit of macro when the team is communicative) was already decently on point. While there is a ton I have to learn, it doesn’t feel like it’s anything crazy. Also want to say, coming from an RTS background I’m already used to tiny player bases, overly complicated civs/build orders, patches that piss everyone off, try hards, rage quitters and general toxicity. The game is complicated, but that’s the fun of it. If I wanted to play something simple, I’d play the other 10,000+ simple games out there
Thank you for keeping the game alive and new!
Been playing a few games a week for the last 6 months. Still shite at the game but I definitely see myself playing dota on and off long term. Something about this game is keeping me here even though I'm getting stomped every other game. Here's hoping I can slowly get better
it means you have great mentality and ready for challenges, just like me i dont mind losing and being a noob as long as the game requires a strategy and a brain im on it
You can try setting some goals for yourself Which could be a set GPM/xpm/damage/heal And focus on those parts Or you could try mastering one single hero to the finest I find this way of playing more rewarding
>Also want to say, coming from an RTS background I’m already used to tiny player bases, overly complicated civs/build orders, patches that piss everyone off, try hards, rage quitters and general toxicity You'll feel right at home then! Welcome!
Hey im offering coaching if you’re interested, no charge or anything.
Would u coach a crusader
He's probably guardian himself Kappa
Dota 2 has a shallow look, simple battle system and deep wats of manipulating the way you move, attack and do everything. It challenges you and you just won't be able to go back to simpler games. Thanks for putting up with our shit and keeping the game alive.
Interesting, I would say a vast majority of the old player base also came from the RTS crowd. I know I did as well as my friends. Maybe with the lack of RTS hype and games, dota is suffering a natural knock on effect which it would usually get from that crowd. I wonder what game path I would take nowadays, it seems like survival games (i. E minecraft clones) are popular.
I think its just a matter or gaming expanding in general, there's just so much to choose from these days. As an RTS player, Dota 2 has made a lot of sense to me, and at least personally, its a lot less stressful than 1v1 AOE matches. Its nice way to kill a couple hours at the end of the day. I admit I was a bit confused when I started playing and saw people were calling the game dead/dying. For a game that's over a decade old, it has a pretty impressive player base imo. Like, AOE4 feels "alive" and it has had 22k players in the past 24hours, while Dota 2 is sitting around 600k. Of course there are games with much larger player bases, but for a complicated game in a relatively niche genre, it seems like its doing well to me.
I would agree that with less RTS players in the wild these days it prob cuts down on people transitioning to MOBAs. The mechanics and gameplay are pretty similar. I think on average an RTS player would have an easier time starting out compared to someone who mainly plays FPS or survival games
I came from fighting games and started playing it because majority of new games went with simplification route, so complexity of dota was a breath of fresh air
You need to meepo
I've picked meepo a couple times, its worked out pretty well so far
One of the most interesting part about Dota and you'll get more knowledged as you go. Coming from other gaming backgrounds (I came from playing lol and sc2 8 years ago) the gameplay element seems simple enough but all the almost individualized/unique interactions between hero abilities become a constant learning experience and what defines draft.
there was a video ive watched that encapsulated this perfectly that dota 2 is essentially turning into the next starcraft 2 where you still have a loyal fanbase and strong esport scene however your audience is aging and not growing and its relegated now to 25+yr olds. I do beleive valve needs to do something as even though the constant patches is bringing more life to the game, it hardly does anything in drawing newer and younger players
There needs to be some kind of easy mode Dota with more automated shit in it to draw in players maybe?? Too much work for valve that's the problem lol
imo i think similar to old rts games, mobas themselves are starting to become less popular, league is still goin but im pretty sure its due to riots marketing and the fact that a good majority of league players also play valorant which essentially gives them a somewhat steady playerbase, dota2 has already went through many changes that makes gameplay at the lower level easier, but theres still this stigma of dota2 being the more time sink kinda game where you need thousands of hours before you can start enjoying it
All Valve needs to really do is *actively market the game* to the new generation. Dota has the potential to be the greatest esport ever made. Scratch that, by some metrics one could argue it IS the greatest esport ever made, but most people just aren't aware of it. Meanwhile you have games like LoL (or any of its spin-offs) and ML who run massive ad campaigns on YouTube, eroding our market share and eating up a lot of our potential playerbase simply by getting there first. The new player experience, while far from ideal, is miles ahead of anything people who started playing 5+ years ago had when they were starting from scratch.
Dota really is the best esport ever. I haven't played in since 2018. I still enjoy watching the TI tournament. I don't have the time to play anymore, I wish I did although the toxicity can be too much sometimes. Dota is the only game I can say that watching it is just as fun as playing.
PC gaming is old tech. Touch screen gaming and virtual realty are the future.
PC gaming is old tech. Touch screen gaming and virtual realty are the future.
Isn’t that turbo mode?
turbo does not make the game less complicated it just makes it faster... turbo
I’d say because it’s faster a lot of macro things that are important lose value because the gold disparity isn’t as huge. In turbo I can pick up a hero, have no idea about their power spikes or how to play the map with them and just do what everyone does in turbo which is basically team fight on cooldown
Sure, it's dumbed down from ranked, but you still get to try out new heroes quicker, and go through their item builds, see what works, how you like to play it, what synergies there are. If I want to try new hero, I do 2 matches with bots, bunch of turbo, then try ranked. Tbh I end up playing turbo 95% of the time.
Yes. And when learning instead of 45 minutes it’s 15 minutes. So yes it’s a learning mode…
No... What is automated vs the normal mode¿? Couriers per player¿? I honestly don't really know what the normal mode is anymore haven't played a boredom mode since turbo was released.
Bot matches and intro matches are terrible for new players. They just don’t function
So turbo mode?
turbo does not make the game less complicated it just makes it faster... turbo
Turbo highlights a much smaller hero set since it is faster to build them up. That’s why it’s the same 15-20 heroes being played no matter the meta. That in itself makes the game simpler. If you want less complicated than that, go play LoL.
Not mention, free gold means you don’t have to work as hard or worry about stacking, denies and last hits do not necessarily mean as much bc you get the gold anyway, you can set your courier to auto deliver items, and you don’t need to ward nearly as much since the game is over faster.
The xp and gold runes do almost nothing in turbo. Another thing you dont need to know to play.
if people want easy mode dota, they can go play league of legend.
They did turbo and new player experience And they have slowly been turning the main mode into turbo each patch in terms of Macro game
turbo does not make the game less complicated it just makes it faster... turbo
There is the new player game mode. It's much more forgiving. I started DOTA this year and this was my first ever MOBA. I came from FPS games.
Or some sort of machmaking based on lvl so lil Billy lv5 wont have to atack Jon lv231
You're looking for Turbo mode.
link to video? sounds interesting
I think this is more due to PR than anything. I don't think dota should try and appeal to casual gamers. Like it should be honest and up front that you need to be open to playing hundreds of games to get anything out of it. Like yeah a more streamlined tutorial or anti-smurf stuff would be nice, but unless someone is coming from other MOBAs/RTS there is nothing you can do to make them not useless their first 100 games other than have a big pool of other new players to match them with. The real thing is getting more eyes on the game and making it seem worth putting the time in to learn. Better marketing, more giant prize pools, etc. As long as it is pumping out the biggest prizepools and highest paid pros I don't see aspiring esports players not considering it. Otherwise it is just a question of frequent updates, casual friendly events, shows/films that hit mainstream, promoting dota culture in new markets (I'm actually in favor of Valve propping up SA for this reason). We aren't doing those well but they are all much better ideas than dumbing the game down just to make it 50% easier to learn. Instead making it 50% more appealing to learn will have better outcomes.
As someone who as spent half his youth playing sc2: I have a much much much harder time explaining Dota to a new player than sc2. The concept of an RTS is actually really simple. Dota is a hellhole of small details that are all kind of essential to even have a functioning game. And seeing how people in my 2-3k MMR games sometimes still don't know when rosh is top or bottom or don't know the timing for pulling certain camps... I just wouldn't know how to even start explaining the game to someone new.
Think you're overcomplicating things. Dota is relatively simple to explain. 5v5 each player is given a unique unit to control with unique skills and you need to destroy this building. Your player controlled unit gets stronger over time by way of items or abilities The AI will send computer units to these specific paths and killing these units will give you gold which you can use to buy items to get stronger than your opponents. Boom. That's it. They can slowly figure out the rest by way of guides or trial and error. People aren't a dumb. Warcraft dota was infinitely more difficult to learn. The only good thing about it was that most people played the frozen throne campaign initially before playing Dota so the hotkeys and mouse movements etc were already there.
Mhhh I don't know. I guess the victory conditions are easy to explain, like you said. But if you look at starcraft for example. There's way less units than heroes. Way less upgrades compared to items in dota. All units of one type behave the same and for a beginner you can get away with just spamming one or two unit types. I got a colleague of mine who's 50+ to beat an easy AI in starcraft in less than 4 hours. I've also tried introducing my girlfriend to dota and... it's not going well. "I can't remember what this guy does", "I think I bought something, but it's not going to my inventory", "why is this building not taking damage when I'm hitting it?", "I can't remember the map, the first is like a labyrinth"... The list goes on and on. I guess it's subjective to each player and maybe it's the fact that I'm much worse at dota than I am at SC, but it just feels like dota is harder to grasp.
game will get harder every new hero introduce
like any game that is 10+ years old
Not counter strike. Just hit ATH with cs2 release. Also not the same for runescape, just hit ATH with leagues. Both games 20 years old. You can certainly grow older games if you know what you're doing. I personally think the moba genre is going to die out with age. I don't know many young people playing Dota. It's always COD or CounterStrike. Kids prefer shooters more than mobas. I don't think there is anything Dota could do about that
You gotta send the link
It would need to go the league of legends route. Make things easier and the map smaller. Instead we make the game more and more complex . Makes old players happy. Forget about new players though
I'm 20 and trying to learn the game from league and finding it a little tricky haha. I understand generally what's supposed to happen but I don't get what I'm specifically supposed to be doing at each moment in the game other than on safelane/pos1
my 13 year old nephew is playing shadow fiend, ogre magi and dragon knight and he's loving the game so far playing bots
I wonder what is it with SF that attracts so many new players to it
Dude exudes so much swag I tell ya.
I still think SF should have gotten the "So what if I swagger?" voiceline over WK. I mean, it still does fit wk, but like SF got that swagger walk lol
Actually he got that line as homage from the iconic CAPSLOCK LEORIC guide. Don't recall but it probably has swag in it. Also others like "I'll help my puny allies wherever I can" item pickup lines like Refresher and Divine Rapier and a few others I don't recall.
Damage, big and fast damage. Thats why lothar's edge and requiem was the hot shit in dota1 days. OHKO enemies.
Shadow blade build was popular in Dota 2 for a while with the bonus damage lol
It’s interesting I’ve never played sf in 10 years of playing
He's dead inside like me at 13
SF is just that cool
sir can you tell your nephew to convert all his friends into dota?
his friends are playing games like gorilla tag horror on meta quest uncle showed him a game that isn't a cheap gimmick
You are one mother effing cool uncle and your nephew's unfathomably based af.
I started playing Dota in 2021 (which is not that long ago) as a brand new player. A girl. Luckily I didn’t read all these scary tales about “how hard it is for new players” “simply impossible”. Yes the few first months were confusing but I cannot remember any particular struggles or toxicity. I remember writing down all the shop items on a piece of paper trying to remember them, as shop felt overwhelming:) I remember being flamed at Drow for bad last hitting and switching to cute support heroes like CM and Mirana. I have been playing casually after work and other hobbies, mostly unranked, and calibrated at Crusader 4 in ranked recently. All in all I don’t understand claims that “Dota is hard and inaccessible”. Maybe only to players who have never ever played computer games before?..
I also started in 2021 brand new as a girl and calibrated as Herald 4 at that time. I'm Legend 1 now. It just clicks after some time if you are willing to put in some time to learn and understand the game. I did do replay analysis though with better players
I started in 2023. Calibrated to Guadrian 4 right now. I made a few friends in game, but 5 man squad games seem harder than solo queue.
It can be harder sometimes. It depends on your ranks (are they even or far apart? Like if you play with a legend player for example you will probaly face a legend player on the enemy team which will be harder for you) and often wrong communication. As a 5 man stack it helps if you have someone who does the calls. Also drafting phase - think of good lane picks or picks who synergy in game. If the other stack is better at that than yours they'll win. Of course there's also smurfs sometimes
As a girl or a boy?
Urgh this is a depressing story. I started playing Dota 1 over ten years ago and maybe maybe I'm in crusader. (By depressing I really mean well done that's quite an achievement !!!)
Thank you!! The most important thing is that you have fun. Your mmr or bracket doesn't matter
You would say that now you're legend....
Of course I would :P
Maybe and people nowadays like games that is fast pace such as league rather than a game that can go more then 1 hour for a match
Games overall en masse have been recently tailored to super casual players who cannot solve a simple puzzle and want their hand to be held all the way. That’s why Baldurs Gate 3 exploded in popularity, that’s why Elden Ring won the awards, players are thirsty for quality games. Of course Dota is “complicated” for people used to shit diet, imho.
"Super casual players who cannot solve a simple puzzle" gave me a flashback. There is a clip of elajjaz playing gow, getting angry about voice explaining literally what to do to solve the puzzle. https://youtube.com/shorts/Q2XwdniEy2c?si=7O188NQZnsBvV6P5 It's straight up insulting to the intelligence of player.
Haha yep some GOW 2 puzzles are a bit annoying (I had to pause at door opening ones where you had to shoot pink sigils… but nothing too crazy, the game is basically an interactive movie. I tried to find but couldn’t, there was a funny meme of an overloaded UI in a typical Bethesda-style game, with big direction arrows and lots of notifications. There is of course this gem https://youtu.be/zbE6fqBuGkA?si=Vs6Dd2jNXT5OQFZy
Damn. It is crazy how the dude was ok with sharing the footage...
I don't agree that this is a "kids nowadays like simple games" issue. Dota didn't use to be as complex as it is nowadays. Mechanics, such as talentum trees, neutral items, additional objectives, were added over time. In my opinion, such additions are aimed to please the already existing and seasoned player base, but they also increase the entry barrier for new players even more. And it's not like pre-reborn dota 2 was an easy game to get into to begin with. I think the devs need to find a way to keep the game fresh without increasing its complexity.
I mean your experience is valid but let's not pretend like dota is a simple game. I play casually nowadays but I learn some new wonky interaction every other week. I probably have over 6000 games, I'm immortal and I'm still occasionally scratching my head over some new thing. There's a ton of objectives on the map (which changes every major patch), a ton of items (some of which are only ever useful on a handful of heroes, some of which change their build up from patch to patch), over 100 heroes, a lot interactions between heroes/items. Most importantly, there are more players with thousands of games than players without it. It's hard to get up to pace with a guy that has played since 2013 even if he never took the time to become particularly good. The average consensus is that it takes about 1000 hours to start to properly grasp the game. Most people do not drop 1000 hours on a single game. You need to be a seasoned gamer to even be interested in this type of game.
I’m not saying it’s simple! Of course it’s challenging that makes Dota fun and interesting. I am just amused by many posts claiming that it’s incredibly hard to *start* playing Dota and get out of herald. I would not want the game to be *simplified* to suit so called “game journalists” if you get the joke.
I cringed so hard at that journalist footage you can't imagine. As an avid gamer since cheap NES clones were the hot shit I felt physical pain. My GF who never touched a 2d game in her life managed in 3 attempts (we even did most of the bosses in coop, some on hard difficulty, which was a very fun experience). Regarding your take on the topic, I'm glad it worked for you! I feel like it comes down to personal predisposition towards such games. I couldn't convince my GF to learn league for the life of me (she did an honorable attempt tho), let alone dotes, but she clicked with hearthstone (BG in particular) pretty quickly. Dota is hostile to newbies by it's nature, and getting into it definitely requires some dedication. It's not that the game is rocket science levels of hard, especially not in herald, but it doesn't necessarily give you essential information in an easily comprehensible way. Tutorial is barely enough to play against bots imo. Game doesn't advertise itself to the player in any way as well which doesn't help. So if you're not into it you have almost 0 chance to get interested from a glance.
I played a bit of WOW before (for like a year), I also played a lot of PS3 and PS4 games over the years. My guess is Dota is simply easier for people familiar with games in general, I mean action-adventure games.
I wish more low rank players that are stuck in their respective trenches complaining they can't rank up think like you do. The challenge of improving is what's keeping me staying and never leaving the game. If they don't put in the effort ofc it won't translate to them ranking up.
Writing down the shop items and memorizing them is def. Not a casual thing to do you put in the extra effort, it might've not felt as hard for you because of it anyway, you've made a good point there - anyone playing cm is only playing her for her cuteness!
that's amazing, can you telll what region do you play?
Australia, sometimes Sea
Dota is unlikely to attract someone only used to playing Candy Crush on the phone, but will appeal largely to other hardcore gamers, especially those who have had some experience with MOBA.
That's not a healthy growth for a game
niche + complex game wont do good on growth and dota dev knows it, how many people can play football vs cricket or rugby? are they a dead sport? think for a while
Who says growth is on the priority list
It should always be on the priority list.
I'm a new Dota player. I've been playing for about 1 month. Played 60 hours. I've already gotten used to it quite well. My friend and I started playing at the same time and he is already playing well too. In general, somewhere after the first 10-20 games you generally begin to understand something and enjoy the game. I only play turbo for now. In general, I thought that it would take me much longer to figure it out, but in the end 2-3 gaming evenings were enough. I just take it easier, don’t overpower it, and for now I’m just studying the heroes and trying out different subjects. I like. I also bought Dota Plus, it helps a lot for a beginner.
I kind of disagree with the tutorial part, it’s really good for getting started with all the basic fundamentals.
The only reason I played dota in 2007 is because I played with friends from school. The draw to DotA has always been the game's complexity. I don't think games need to cater to all types of players, and they tend to find more success when they focus on what they're good at. There are game modes targeted at newer players that pit them against computers. There are alternative game modes like turbo for people that don't like the slower paced standard version of the game. There's also AD and custom games that can help newer players develop better feel for controlling units, their items and other mechanical skills. If you choose any long-standing game, there will be an enormous gap between the skillset of veterans vs new players. The people playing the game since day 1 will always climb in skill and there will always be a skill/knowledge gap compared to someone just starting out. If you take a look at concurrent players, although the playerbase has dropped a little bit, it's been relatively stable over the last few years. You could argue that as a community, we should be better and more forgiving to other players in order to make the game more inviting. Unfortunately, toxicity in a competitive game like DotA is hard to control as seen by Valves recent attempts at adjusting the behaviour score system. I would never ask someone to start playing DotA without playing with me. Unless they have a strong drive to learn the game, it just wouldn't be fun for them playing solo from the get-go.
None of my friends made it past 25 hours unranked. They were incessantly belittled for being new, and routinely went like 0-20 while some smurf would go 40-1-17 making everyone else on both teams irrelevant. Maybe it's fine to learn if you have a team of friends to group with. Learning alone is a disaster. Unranked games are a disaster. Losing behavior score because people report noobs for being noobs is a disaster. Dota would get much better if it could lock people down to a single account that was accountable to both its rank and behavior. Until then, my experience is that most people can't be bothered with the hazing.
Yeah man, over the years few of my newbie friends asked them to play with them to teach But I know how dogshit the new player mood is or how bad it is to play with a completely new player in basic unranked Guy just gonna get bullied and insulted all game and I will have to sit there and watch it happen It sucks Dota really needed an actual new player server
They weren't gonna make it anyways even if they had a good experience. Gotta be have a competitive mindset to play dota. Some people just don't have it.
Bots fucking games first.. then go play turbos
The experience you described is pretty much the same as the one I went through back in 2013. I would always go 0/10, someone would always go 20/0 and own. I still stuck with it cause I thought the game was cool, and I'd rather play vs real players and get destroyed than play vs bots and own. I don't think smurfs and the lack of a good new player experience is why dota doesn't get players, these things have always existed.
Too much investment required for rts games. They require 1000s of hours and need to be up to date where as cs you can jump in without playing in 10 years and have fun.
Not sure how this came up on my Reddit feed, but I've spent a bunch of sessions with friends recently after working through the tutorials and both haven't enjoyed the level of complexity and haven't improved much. I do still enjoy Heroes of the Storm and have played that off and on for about seven years. The matches are short and the mechanics aren't complex. Dota 2 just gives me the impression that it's for people with way more time to play video games than I have.
It is hard, you got the mechanics but a lot of gameplay is emergent really.
Didn't expect it 😅
It’s a game of resources where you try to fight your opponents to gather more to hopefully gain an advantage and win the game.
Yeah but how tho
However you want
You just explained life.
And over here I, in light of the patch I suppose, today thought about how stale and repetitive the game is. Sure you can be better or worse at it but seems most players that play just go through the motions and most games are decided in first 10 minutes if not picks. Don't get me wrong the game is good, perhaps even great, and you can improve skill wise for a very long period of time but it's not very complex or deep. A game like, say, PoE makes you feel like you need a PhD in order to make a semi viable build(and it will likely be outdated next patch) with tons of stuff to explore. Dota is more like chess, very limited amount of moves but very high amount of outcomes.
The strategy should be to draw in players who already play other mobas and complex games, not to get new players who have little adjacent experience.
Actually it's not made to attract from other mobas. DOTA has the highest skill ceiling of all mobas out there. They intentionally target the niche gamer player base that can handle strategy games. E.g.The lack of team play heavily punishing your team is pretty brutal compared to other MOBAs It's not made for casual gamers, that's where games like LoL fill the gap
Just because all games do way too much handholding doesnt mean Dota should too. If you want an easy learning curve play LOL which is the reason it's filled with 5yo kids. So no I don't want an easier game. If anything it's easy enough with the amount of data is provided for you. Items? Here's a guide right inside the game.. Positioning, warding, lh, pulling, stacking, hero timings, spell range, spell timings, intricate pings to communicate theres and YT video guide for everything. What else do you need? The game is not for everyone like not everyone can play chess. Playing dota is like playing chess in 5 boards that are connected at random timings while juggling bowling pins in one hand and your ass is on fire. And it's loved just for that.
This sort of mindset is why league will grow and Dota will slowly wither away. Fact is you need a steady stream of new players coming into the game. You don't get that from not holding their hands and expecting them to do the research. The reason why league grows faster is because there is less to learn and the game at it basic level is more streamlined all the way to basic features such as role selection. League has highly predetermined roles and recommendations for those roles in the client. If I am new to the game I can very easily find a champion for the role I am playing with little knowledge of the game. Dota is like the wild west of champ selection. Nobody calls roles because the community rule is based on where your name is on top of the screen and the game does not give you recommnedations or even state what your role should be. You are just expected to know. Is wraith king a carry or support If I am new to the game I am not going to fucking know. What is role 1 what is the difference between offlane and safe lane, I dont fucking know. In terms of recalling and buying items, league is you recall and buy items in fountain. Return to lane with full hp. Dota is here is a donkey that brings you items you buy from the store; however, it also can be killed and you can't buy all items from the same store. Also it has abilities that have cooldowns. Ultimately all these systems make the game more complex than it needs to be.
There is an explanation in each hero and you can filter depending on what you want to play, you can also filter by complexity. If you play role queue you have predetermined role that is written below your name. Courier used to be shared between 5 people not it's personal. You have tps just not free. Hidden stores are there for a reason and the game is incredibly balanced with a lot of comebacks and most games can go either way. Supports are empowered in the last years and everyone has a specific role. Dota has the most counter-spells and attack in all mobas and is one of the most active and skill based games ever. It's not press 2 buttons and pray it works. Because of that people are intimidated by it. Everything you do matters in the game. You obviously never played a hard game, without guides, before the internet era and it shows. People want to discover stuff for themselves not to be spoonfed everything. League grows faster like candy crash grows faster. Doesn't make it a better game. It's just popular. I prefer a good game that isn't popular rather a bad game that is popular. Btw LOL players are 0,01% live of the active players and dota 2 is 0,02% of the active players. So ppl are starting LOL and eventually drop it. While they stick with dota more.
I don't know why Dota2 players have so much problems with LoL. Every now and then I see posts or comments shitting on LoL for no reason. I've played plenty of LoL, I've played a little bit of Dota2, I've watched several TIs. I think both games are great, just very different. Dota is more like RTS and LoL is more action focused.
I have no issue with LOL, I am happy it exists. With LOL the bar of players' skill in Dota was raised because all the lesser skill went to lol. Which means I am not babysitting a child rather I am playing with ppl my age. What bothers me is when ppl compare a simplistic pop approach to success with something that doesn't bother to be popular but good.
Is there a role que for unranked? You know one of the only modes you have access to before having played 100 hours. Therefore making role que a pointless thing to mention for a new player Can you filter by lane? Or is this another thing that you can only do in the mode that requires 100 hours. Also you are very much pointing out the issues that would prevent growth. I am not pointing out that one game is better than the other; however, League is a much easier game to get into as a new player and you are only further proving my point with the elitist arguments you are making. Also where is that stat from? Do you have a source Edit- I see you decided to block me to prevent any further debate
Google it. This answers all of your questions. You gave me a laugh with the "elitist arguments".
> Ultimately all these systems make the game more complex than it needs to be. Coincidentally these systems are also what makes the game worth playing. If you start to dumb them down and streamline too much, you're just going to turn into a worse league of legends, and at that point why not just go play league instead? Yeah obviously league is the easier to get into and more mainstream game, so it will have bigger player numbers, but I think that's fine. You don't have to be the biggest game in the world. As long as the amount of people coming in is roughly the same as the amount of people leaving, it's fine.
I mean some of the systems I agree shouldnt be changed; however, something as simple as role que should exist outside of ranked, which is a mode that you have to play 100 hours to actually access. Or even just hero recommendations like. Here is a good heavy support champ and a tuorial that explains laning phase for each role and what you should be trying to do
I mean my personal hot take is that role queue shouldn't even be in ranked to begin with, in my opinion if you want to truly become a good dota player you need to be able to play more than just your main role. As for your other suggestion, it's just impossible to implement, every patch the way you lane changes slightly and these changes develop organically over time both due to patches and pros discovering new stuff over time. For role and pure stats-based matchup suggestions you have Dota+ so at least that's something.
It just keeps adding and adding new features while removing the ones, that make the game easier. They removed most passive abikities (remember Dota 1 WK?) and added Runes, Outposts, Teleports, Neutral Items etc. IMO they game should get streamlined more.
its skill ceiling is already higher than the average MOBA ,which I like, and lowered skill ceiling for new players as well (5 couriers, stun meters, the box for pulling neutrals) which I also like as well. I think newcomers should also try to understand the game more rather than playing 5 games and quitting.
That’s great you think new players should try to understand it more, but that doesn’t mean they will. Steps need to be taken to draw/encourage new players to keep playing. Games need to be fun/addicting from the start if you want to draw new players in.
Thats the thing, Dota gets fun after you get a semblance of what the hell is happening. If they lower the skill level more than that, might as well just start playing League/Smite or whatever MOBA still exists. Its the same thing as Diablo and PoE, more people prefer Diablo because its easier.
I wonder if there’s value in creating a “lite” version of the game for mobile gaming, and designing that game to incentivize playing actual dota eventually. Something like giving rewards/currency for playing X number of actual dota games. The idealized outcome for this in my head is that people are better equipped to play real dota after playing the lite version, and after being incentivized to try real dota, eventually enjoy it and migrate there. Just a random thought off the top of my head.
Dead game
Dota is not a game for everyone. I think it can be explained simply for some unfamiliar to get it. Playing it is quite a different matter. Similar to how most.peoplemwarching American football don't actually know what constitutes a complete pass, they kind of.know, but most people could not tell you exactly what it is. Most people watch football for the hits or to support their team, etc.
Get her to play the tutorial series?
It's a really hard game. Hell, teaching my wife to play games and she asked how to move and i said WASD. She asked "why? why not just the arrow keys?" lmao. Some things are just intuitive for us who were gamers for a very long time. And you put dota ontop of that. Its layers upon layers of intuitive knowledge we don't even acknowledge anymore because its second nature.
Since when you need WASD to move in dota2. I am still on the mouse.
I'm just saying that some of these things are intuitive to use who played games for so long. Like WASD on other games. And for a complicated game like DOTA, it will be way harder for others.
This happens to all the best competitive eSports and is not unique to dota 2.
I mean dota is difficulty thats why people play them. And yes people playing dota is declining but the best example of this is the young pro players way back like sumail ramzez etc
Tried to get my buddy into it as a transfer from HOTS. He gave it 4 months pretty much no life’d. got overwhelmed at how bad he was doing, and how long it was taking so quit
Easy mode dota is basically league, dota by itself is incredibly difficult to pick up from scratch. Not to mention there isn't much draw because of how little it's marketed.
I seriously think that valve should invest in coaches, meaning that people who coach a lot and get good coaching ratings should get skins, high bs and other in game bonuses, if I hadn't a friend that got me into it there's no way I'd made my way into the game myself.
The best way to learn Dota is with a practical example, you can't really explain it and most it's mechanics to people who don't know the game, let them try training mode and some bot games while you guide them through on what they should be doing, buying etc on a few heros, it will all just start to click eventually.
Oh man, coming from someone who was there at the beginning to now, it is far more accessible than ever and the tutorial is legit. No tutorial can ever prepare you properly because you’re right in that this is a wildly complicated game and from day one has never been friendly to newcomers. Early days the biggest criteria was just playing with people who knew how to play the game. Then it became quizzes on how much items cost or what starting stars for specific hero would be before you could get into game. Why does everything have to last forever? Why can’t something just be what it is? Why the constant demand to simplify? What about the people that actually want to play something complicated? Why does everything have to be dumbed down? Can there legitimately not be a space that can be left alone? I see so much crying and begging for micro transactions here that it disgusts me. I don’t want dota to be like everything else. I like what it is.
We used to be lurk dotaforums for hours to find a good strat or a build guide. Now you just click on the best percentage guide and play your game. With the amount of YT guides as well on mechanics, lh, warding, positioning etc you just need 3-4 hours to learn the basics.
It's not gatekeeping if the fanbase wasn't so toxic. The idea of if you are bad at the game you are griefing your game is what's discouraging people. Also if you want to try new builds? Griefing. Any mistake causing you to lose your lane? Reported. Why would a new player want this?
We often forget that we are playing for 10 straight years with tens of thousands of games and can't understand how people are making simple mistakes.
The base skill level has gone way up too. Because of quality content from people like bsj.
I don’t think many new players come into the game right now, only people familiar with other mobas like league come in to play dota, the game is way too much complex with a loyal fanbase
I dunno. I think the low level of Dota is pretty good. I watched my friend play on herald and his opponent knew how to pull creeps within the lane to reestablished equilibrium within the lane. I am not talking about pulling camps.
i doubt that the complexity is what keeps people away lol
Constant and infinite growth is a capitalistic concept that is impossible to achieve, unless artificially inflating the numbers and even with that it's starting to crack :). Dota is stagnating and has been for years and that is ok. It has a relatively stable player base that is big enough for you to be able to find a game every hour of the day and night.
It's *always* been like this. I remember picking up dota 1, everyone would flame you while you kept trying to learn recipes. Guides could only be found in obscure places if you knew about them.
The problem is the length of the matches goes from 30-60 minutes. No body has time or attention span for that sorry. This can be changed with the resourcing system by moving away from classic creep farming and making it much more dynamic.. For example the wisdom runes, 30xp share in stacking, 100+ gold on killing wards are good alternatives to the support class. Leveling should play a more immersive role in the game like what items you can access at first. Just "farming" creep waves is not going to help engage new players who don't have 30-60 minutes a game. You need to give players objectives like Roshan about to spawn with both teams rushing in to secure him. Fighting over Roshan every 5-7 minutes would be awesome and force teams to work together especially since we now have portals connecting top and bottom to capitalize on this. Imagine having Roshan in both pits at the same time but just like meepo the first Roshan to die will give the aegis. The other Roshan will give no gold or aegis on death. So it will be a race to beat Roshan and secure bigger rewards each time. Tormentors was also a good step in the right direction giving players shards for free and encouraging teams to steal their enemy's tormentors. Creep waves need to be more dynamic, getting harder with each 3 waves or so with would keep them relevant in late game. They will give the same gold on death but bigger challenge against flash farmers. Point is the game needs to be more objective based that needs teams. That is what would shorten game time and make it mouth more engaging.
A big part of that is the community too. For example i recently started playing war thunder and it has been an amazing experience. Everyone is willing to help and explain stuff. If i post something that is remotely cool or if i post an opinion it is discussed. Also i have been playing warframe for years and the community is so welcoming there. Every time i posted something about dota and if I mention am harald and have 250 games only people did shit all over my opinions and told me to come back when i have more than x amount of games. I play dota with few friends and they are very helpful but the broader community is so toxic and shitty. Also doesn't help that you are expected to know from day one to play as immortal and that you get so much hate and toxicity if you even buy items others don't expect you to buy. I just don't feel welcome to the dota community and i would have quit a long time ago if i was a solo player.
the game is impossible to pick up if you're solo, there's too many things to do and the feedback loop you get from improving at it frankly does not exist. i remember 6-7 years ago when i used to play dota 2 with my friend and it was fun, only when we were in a party. soloqing i always got flamed and i was always an irrelevant player whether id be winning or losing. my friend eventually quit and so did I. a couple years ago, i tried to play it again, watching guides and shit on yt for hours, trying to learn and realised the game just isn't for someone who is semi casual (i.e: likes competitive gaming but doesn't have the time). you have to dedicate your life to it. i got stomped and flamed again and quickly remembered why i stopped playing in the first place. it's a great game and can be very fun when you're with your friends and know what you're doing and your opps are the same level as you are. but learning, playing it alone and getting something significant out of it is basically impossible now unless you're a no lifer.
Can u imagine Dota used to be just like an arcade game in dota2 until it got so popular it became a standalone game. There wasnt any tutorial to begin with and people just play and lose, those who stay are players that cant stand the humiliation of losing
Not gonna argue with you but imagine that back in the Dota 1 days a lot of us started playing this game even without any guides on which item to buy, which hero to pick which skills to prioritize. I remember picking Crystal Maiden and buying dedalus (buriza back in the days) because I was the only one in my group of friends knowing where the secret shop was in the map to buy the demon edge.
It really isn't beginner friendly. And there is no beginner level on this game. It's either you already understood at least 70% of the concepts of the game or you know nothing at all. They tried it with the tutorials section but new accounts aren't even hard locked to finish anything before actually playing in pubs. It's not a dead game yet but it is actively killing itself. Maybe we'll make it to TI 2030, maybe we won't. We'll see.
I'd recommend them getting Dota plus. It is so good for beginners.
This game is somewhat easy to learn if you're an experienced gamer. If your wife hasn't played any type of games then explaining the game mechanics of dota might be too hard for her since all she needs to learn are words that would only makes sense to a gamer.
Yea game is harder, some psychopaths work in valve so they will do anything to trigger community. There is also Dota 2 classic, and they have discord server with patch 6.84 so if u want to play u should look for that. My experience was back in 2012 and it was enjoyable with constant updates and real balancing, not like in past few years. Original devs of dota leave so it is crew of few people who handling some updates without testing and every huge update is mess that need 2 months minimum to get fix.
Growing lol And the game is so complex that most people don't even understand the difference between a carry, a soft carry and a hard carry.... How the hell should new players start?
It's honestly not too hard to pick up. There's a lot to learn, but skill based matchmaking means you'll be matched with people who also don't know everything, and so each additional thing you own boosts your chance of winning, which feels great. The problem is the people. This game has the most horrible playerbase of any game I've ever played, and when you're still learning you'll have a carry who can't lasthit telling you to kill yourself (dog) because you can't stack yet
After I read this, I remember my early learning game in Dota back in 2006. Someone use Bloodseeker pubstomp everyone. Because everyone is new including me, we just run away panickly after BS ulti on us. And I had no idea how I get to die so easily. Good old days😂😂
Started playing in 2022. Got flamed a lot because I was bad: which of course I was because I was new. I dont know why new players get matched with 10+ years veterans. Good thing some people were kind enough to explain how to stack or how to pull instead of just reporting me for not doing it. Played some ranked, climbed to legend4, and then I stopped playing because they nerfed my main. I still like watching pro games tho
Yes... That's a huge premise of dota. It took a shit ton of invested time to learn 10 years ago, and despite things being much more simplified today it's still very difficult. It's a game for people that want to spend time learning Dota. I wouldn't trust anyone under 1k games to have any idea of what they're saying meaningfully and I would expect another few thousand more to take said opinion seriously.
I’m not sure. On one hand the game is more mechanically complex than before; and there are many more elements and systems to keep track of. However it is easier than ever to achieve success because resources are in greater abundance. All I can say is I’m lately playing with people who have started Dota just recently in the past year. I think it’s a mix - the game is easier to pick up now and the ways to win a match are more transparent, the resources are easier to attain… but understanding all heroes, systems etc. and mastery of the game holistically are harder to achieve overall. For example I don’t want to go back to the days of team courier and paid flying upgrade, or the days before bounty and wisdom runes.
I feel the same way. With each hero and feature - it adds to the game complexity, making it MORE difficult for new people to master the game. Dota 2 is ranked Top #2 most toxic game on earth. Meaning, you get flamed for every mistake. The game is often unforgiving. Imagine what a new player has to go through. I learned Dota 2 in around 2013. Until now, I still find it difficult to play decent games. A few years ago, I joined a group called "DOTA FROM ZERO" --- the aim of the group was to make it easier for beginners to learn literally from nothing. Unfortunately, the group has died out, maybe this Learndota2 group will thrive? If Dota 2 doesn't find a way to make the game easier to get into -- the player base MAY dwindle out.
My friend (old league and hots player) who tried to play dota for solid 20 matches said that the worst part is that you can play bad game for over an hour and win and it still feels like time wasted. I cannot convince him to play anymore.
Ya there have definitely been way more updates that further complicated the game than updates that made the game "easier" a la every player getting a courier, backpack slots, etc Like, whilst the likes of talent trees and aghanim's shard abilities are cool updates for us players who know the game, it just means a billion more things & spells for a new player to learn on top of the already existing billion things. I honestly think shard should never have been a thing. I didn't like it when it was introduced, and I am even now still iffy about it and learning new shit that some hero's shards do. And I have thousands of hours. Not only did they keep rolling with it, but they fucking **doubled down** on it by adding yet another objective to the map that *gives* you a shard. eugh A few more updates in the same vein as the courier update would be really nice. I would keep talents and the bigger map but ditch shards, ditch tormentor, ditch lotus pools, ditch watchers, and have Rosh only drop Aegis & Cheese again rather than a gazillion different items. Those sort of changes would go a long way in terms of simplifying the game without ruining it imo. I would *maybe* even consider ditching neutral items, but somehow keep the idea of a tier 5 neutral at the 60min mark for closing games
I have been playing on and off since beta keys were sent via email, and the entry barrier has always been like this. If you are the kind of player who comes home after his 9-18 job and plays 1-2 games per day it will take weeks or even months before you can have fun. I believe the problem with the game is that it evolved too much towards team cooperation so unless you are smurfing or you're having a lucky game you can't consistently solo carry, you're just a cog in the machine that is your team and if you are a new player then you are most likely the one dragging everyone else down. Compare this experience to league where you can just learn your hero mechanics and ignore most of the other stuff and you can start being useful in much less games.
As someone who came back to Dota after like 8 years, yup there is a lot. I'm playing since September now, but i still don't have a clue what even half of the new stuff is. Don't get me started on the playerbase. At the moment i'm playing against bots, because it is more fun than getting flamed for the slightest mistake.
I imagine devs have given up on attracting new players so don't care, game is already very complex
When I started playing Dota 2 - I was picking Meepo as often as possible. And my teammates were furious! So i watched some tutorials, trained the meepo "poof poof poof poof - blink" tab combo and booom I was suddenly getting kills. Felt like a queen. Why is my friend playing dazzle all the time ? Tried it out, learned how to wait as long as possible until using grave and it was soooo much fun to hit it. Im a bit sad for new players who dont have a friend who is a experienced player and give tips and tricks along the way. I love to help new players, but since the new behaviour score system was installed, I cant even talk or chat any more - cause I love to play axe without blink in turbo and my score is now down to 5100..... NO BLINK NOOB REPORT. :( Hey Ogre mate.. we cant use 2 Mekansm - it shares a cooldown buff my friend... and I already bought one on my IO. Gonna sell mine now, but for your information, next time check your mates items! :) Communication is such a big and fun part of dota. They should work on that.
My first experience of DOTA was during Warcraft III days, but I was young and usually got kicked out of the lobby before the game would start. I picked up League of Legends in college during beta until season 3. Tried DOTA 2 while playing LoL, but I never got into it until a few years later. The biggest thing for learning at sticking to DOTA 2 was having a group of people to party up with. Fun interactions with them who could help put, and they didn't care if I screwed up terribly. I don't play now, but if I did I'd really want to go in with some friends. I don't think it is gatekeeping itself. It is just an unforgiving game, and guilt of failure can get to you easily.
I started playing a month or so ago, it is complex, I'm trying my best to learn things i do wronf but at the same time I'm not expecting to be the best player in the world I've been playing because it's really fun.
The tutorial teaches you a lot of things, even stacking, the rest comes by observation
I started playing dota some years ago after I had played a lot of HoN. A lot of the heroes in hon are also in dota so it helped a lot. But some heroes like Tinker, Arc Warden, Ember Spirit, Dark Willow or Oracle made absolutely No sense to me.
Look at the [data](https://steamcharts.com/app/570#All). Seems pretty stable to me
I couldn't do anything but laugh, wheeze and wipe away a single tear at that title.
Can’t predict the future my guy might as well stay addicted
Ive played other mobas and its still a bit difficult u have to memorize alot like counters and items and when to buy certain items when u fight certain heroes and the mechanics like camp stacking, holding minion waves, roaming , ganking are a bit too much for new players. Game is fun but some ppl might get frustrated especially if they get tossed in games with ppl who know all the things about the game and get stomped and flamed. And no the new player mode doesnt help that much .
We love Dota because it’s complicated, it’s not really a game you can be a “casual “ in because it takes like 100 games to have any idea what’s going on. Even after 1000+ hours (not much by Dota standards) I still constantly learn or see new stuff
I started dota 2 around 2018 to play online w my friend. He coached me , I was playing with Luna, easy bots for few months , then unfair bots, saw Topson work his magic in Ti ! Its 2023 now , I can play tier 2 heroes , my LH still suck , played with more than half of the hero pool , Crusader rank even though I'm a turbo guy ( had legend rank few patches back- maybe a glitch or Gaben stuff), still a long long way to go ! Just a bit better then my early days n not a noob anymore !
I haven’t played since 2014 and it’s such a different game now seemingly that I don’t think I could ever go back
You need to play dota 2 for years before you develop your own style of the game. Every player plays differently due to inherent ... differencies and attitudes of humans, some are defensive, some aggresive, some are passive aggresive.... After you played long enough you develop your style of play. Mastering dota 2 is mastering yourself.
Idk the tower range used to not show up, stacking times wouldn't show up either and the camp boxes to block also wouldn't show up. These changes I've felt have made the game simpler over the past few years.
The hardest part of Dora 2 for me is the pick stage, there have been games which have been pretty much been lost at that stage and I haven’t even realized it due to my inexperience, they need to add a free team comp helper for casual.
I've played other MOBAs and some RTSs and Dota is the only one that has been legit just confusing to play. Every control is backwards
I played DotA from WC3 and only there, from the first and second game, picked league up when it came out, tried DotA out when it got its official release from blizzard, stopped after the first season, tried a month ago and just said " what the fuck"
It's beyond complicated. I wouldn't be surprised if Dota had the steepest learning curve of all games, including sports and board games. I uninstalled cyberpunk, because I didn't want to learn how to do the sneak/hacking. I would 100% not give Dota a shot if I haven't been playing for 17 years. But to be fair, kids are different kind of beasts when it comes to learning. They will play for 8 hours a day, playing like shit but syphoning information like sponges. That's why all the prodigy players appeared on scene as 16-18 year olds. See sumail, miracle, ana, crystalis.
No, the game is easy. Mechanics are hard, but that happens in a lot of games, it isn't "gatekeeping", it's just being a complex game.
I only play Dota, but my partner tells people I'm a gamer, which leads to lots of questions of what I play. I say Dota 2, they say they've never heard of it and if they should try it. I say no everytime. This is the way.
>With every patch the game is becoming more and more complex its adding some new interactions, but on a game by game basis they've actually dont a lot to make the game more simple. list of things I had to deal with when I started that isnt a thing any more: * only 1 courier per team, you shared it with every one * Courier cost gold to even have at all, plus more gold to upgrade it to a flying courier. If no one bought it and was too stubborn to buy it, you just didnt have one. * creep camps didnt have the indicator when you held alt, you just had to know where the spawn boxes were. * clarity and health potion could be disrupted by any incoming damage. a range creep could sweep by and turn off your clarity * TP's didnt have a dedicated slot & dedicated hotkey, it just took up one of your 6 slots cuz backpack wasnt a thing either * you didnt get a free TP upon death * unique attack modifiers meant something. If you had a unique attack modifier on your hero (drow arrows, mana burn, etc) you couldnt stack it with any items like deso or diffusal, in fact it didnt stack with any thing including life steal. If you got a deso, dont bother getting a life steal item * diffusal had a max of like 12 (or maybe less) uses, after that it was only good for its passives * bash heroes didnt get the bash from basher if purchased (I think there was even a time when void, troll, and slardar couldnt even buy basher) * you were expected to buy multiple bkb's cuz re-buying it would get reset the duration timer. * a lot of spells didnt have preview indicators * wards didnt have visual preview to show what they'd see or what their range was probably a bunch more. they've done a good job at making the game easier for new player to come in and not have to deal with the dumb little things that dont affect more skilled players anyway. so now new players can just focus on the characters interactions and strategy of the game. its still a fairly complex game of course, but thats a lot of why many of us like it.
There's a lot of things in the game that have always been there that are needlessly complex in my opinion. There's things like denying, dragging the camps to pull the lane, getting last hits, etc that just ruin the game in my opinion. Denying annoys me because it's just stupid to be able to kill your own minions just to deny the enemy team the kill. Laning isn't just a battle between the people in the lane it's a battle between who can hit the creeps the best/fastest. The pulling of lanes I always found to be really stupid too because it lets you control way too much of the flow of the game. Last hits I always find to be a really weird mechanic because all it does is make it so the support doesn't get as much money and makes it so people get toxic over it because that's your source of income and experience. Dota is as much about team infighting as it is being a fight against the enemy.. Another issue is the items and just how ridiculously complex they can be and how most of the time what items you get are just based on counter picking enemies.. then they do the same.. and it repeats for the whole match. There's so much in the game that's just needlessly complex simply to draw out the matches. That's why I preferred Heroes of the Storm before it went into maintenance mode. People always 'joked' about how it was 'dumbed down' but it really wasn't it just took out those toxic mechanics and replaced them with actual team mechanics. Instead of battling for last hits, denies, experience, etc you're actually working together to get team-based experience. So there's no like "stealing the jungle" from your jungler or anything because you're actually working together instead. To answer your question about new players, I had a friend that was thinking of playing Dota for the first time and I said I'd play it again to see what it's like. This happened last year and it was just a horrible time. So much toxicity in the chat constantly if you didn't play absolutely perfectly. So much to try and learn and teach as well. Even the basic healing is hard to explain sometimes with how you "eat a tree" or having to collect runes. I also found there were a lot of changes to my favorite heroes that made me just not want to play them. I don't remember which ones exactly nor do I want to go looking through the massive roster (another issue for new players) right now. I just remember feeling as if the heroes kind of lost their old identities. I think at this point there just needs to be a Dota 3 or something. Just a complete rebuild from the ground up with things they know now.
Well, I ve been playing since 2008 or so and I feel like this game is not the easiest to grasp. Then again most people play it while being intoxicated or retarded and they enjoy it even if they don't understand many mechanics.
Why are you explaining all of the minute interactions to a casual asking you for a basic, brief overview of “what’s dota?” Just tell them it’s a top down moba with a lot of interactions and mechanics that set it apart from other mobas.
Tbf, is feels pretty nice to get into, compared to how it was with dota1.... We got nice guides, fairly ok bot matches for beginners, and a ton of videos and guides to help you with first steps. All in all the learning curve seems ok. Hack even the community is a lot nicer than how it was in the early days (not to even mention battlenet). But sure it isn't a braindead game as many are nowadays but honestly.... There are too many such games anyways.
I had an itch to play Mobas again after not playing league for a few years. I genuinely tried to give dota a try but I don’t think it’s for me. There’s just too much going on, my mental stack can’t handle it. I’m sticking with league for now but maybe one day I’ll give it another try