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Hey Teamliquid,
I wanted to create a blogentry to share some of my hopes, thoughts and concerns about DOTA 2. As many others I have been looking forward to being able to play it, but at the same time I have some concerns from when I last played DOTA and was involved in the community.
So, who am I?
I am Martin, aka Nighty. I have been playing DOTA since the original Eul dota where the loading time was 12 minutes on my computer and both teams had one healer, and if you didn't have the healer on your team and the other team did, you lost, simple as that. (I think scourge healer was like furion with Death Knight heal from WC3).
Then Dota Allstars came and everything changed. The loading time got smaller, thank God, and much more players where joining in on the fun. I eventually started to look for places to play other than pubs on bnet and found clan DCE, Dota Clan Europe. Played with DCE for some time, then WoW came and like 90% of DOTA players went to WoW. At least that what it felt like. So my search for places to play continued and I found Dota-League.com which was exactly what I was looking for. Being able to just queue up and join a game where players where more serious than on bnet was great. I quickly played enough to get my VIP status so I could join VIP games. (VIP status was at the time given when you had 1200 points and 60% win if I remember correctly).
:O I was planning on going into Dota-League to check my ranking now, but I see that the site has been closed. Sad thing really. Was a great site. Hopefully there will be a site like it for DOTA 2.
Dota for me was what I did back then and I have gotten a lot of friends from it, by playing on Dota-League and on IRC. However there is one thing I did not like with DOTA at all. And sadly that was the community. When SC2 came out I stopped playing DOTA and worked my way into masters. I was amazed by the friendly atmosphere I met. People giving hints and tips if you asked for it, practicing with you if you asked them. It was great, and nothing like the community in DOTA where people would rage at you if you didn't play up to par. But when the beta was announced of course I wanted in and to prepare myself I started to play HoN with some friends of mine. Why not original DOTA? For me gaming is a social thing so if my friends play HoN I play HoN as it is close to DOTA, even though it's not DOTA.
DOTA 2 and players challenges
I have read many places that new players in the beta are already being flamed for not playing good. Players being bashed on forums when they speak about it by other people that hasn't been lucky enough to get a beta key and say that the bad players doesn't deserve their key and so on. The game is in beta! Of course the developer wants to have input from all range of players, not just the once that has played a lot of DOTA before. People needs to calm down and realize that everyone was a noob at some point. I started playing DOTA long time ago as I've said, and I remember waiting those 12 minutes for loading and then getting absolutely destroyed every game wasn't the best feeling in the world, but noone flamed you like crazy so I kept playing to get better.
I remember one incident when playing with the guys in DCE. I was playing Lina, Pyromancer for the HoN people, and missed absolutely every stun. I'm not kidding. EVERY STUN! So suddenly one guy named Grix I believe said: "you really need to practice that stun dude". And I'm like: "Well of course I do cause I ain't hitting shit." But even though he wasn't impressed by my play at the time he didn't flame the shit out of me, but said I needed to practice, so I did and thats how you get better in a game. If a player these days misses every stun some guy on his team will be like: "OMG!!! HIT YOUR ****ING STUN YOU ***ING ********* **** ******** ***!!!!" Place yourself in the flamed players spot, do you really wanna play that hero again? No, you play another one and hope not to get flamed next game.
But a big part of this game is learning. Watch what items people go for, I always copied other players's items cause I didn't know what they did, I just looked at the picture of it and bought it the next time I played that hero. Learning range of spells, positioning, map-awerness. It's al things that come with expereince and practice. People know when they play bad, you don't have to tell them, and you certainly doesn't have to flame them as hard as some people do. As an admin on Dota-League I got to see only a small part of the flaming, but yeah. It's a nasty world. Yes it's the internet, but the game DOTA does not benefit from people flaming eachother. We want a big community and that comes from people starting to play the game, and staying to play the game. I myself would not have stayed I believe if I had started to play at this time simply because the community is so bad. DOTA 2 has a great opportunity to get players from DOTA, HoN and LoL brought together, so instead of destroying the community we should try to include people so the game grows, which then attracts sponsors and we get to see some amazing play and tournaments.
Hopes and thoughts
So enough about the whining from my side about the community. I was lucky enough to recieve my beta key two days ago, and played my first games yesterday. Pugna, I've missed you! There is something about the historyi with the DOTA heroes I have missed. Even though there are new things to get used to after having a break for about a year and a half from the original and playing HoN for some time, I am really looking forward to what Valve and IceFrog will and can do about the game. The options are closed to limitless so hopefully they will get far with it. I just hope that players can take DOTA 2 for what it is. It isn't HoN. It isn't LoL. It isn't Dota Allstars. It's DOTA 2! Embrace it for what it is. Play it, practice it and some day we will all experience that awesome feeling of the comeback of your life, or a quad kill or anything that you haven't experienced before.
DOTA 2: I welcome you into my life! (As soon as my exams are over)
 
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But a big part of this game is learning. Watch what items people go for, I always copied other players's items cause I didn't know what they did, I just looked at the picture of it and bought it the next time I played that hero. Learning range of spells, positioning, map-awerness.
This is the most important thing and it's also where the community has the most negative influence. Everyone was a noob once, and to improve you need to watch, read, discuss with friends, overall, the learning curve in DotA has to be one of the longest in any competitive game, and that doesn't even get you to competitive level. You need to be constantly "studying" DotA to mantain yourself at a good level. But when a noob comes in and gets insta bullied, many just decide to ditch the learning instantly, which is really terrible. The amount of flaming you have to endure in that first stage is extreme lol. So for any new players wanting to start DotA, my advice would be to hold on there, it's gonna get better.
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Omg DCE brother!
Who are you? I'm steve_va1. You should know me if you are old enough.
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On November 26 2011 21:24 Steveling wrote:
Omg DCE brother!
Who are you? I'm steve_va1. You should know me if you are old enough.
I think I went by the name of bote_bote at that time on bnet. The name of my hamster two times in a row. :D Unfortunately I don't remember a lot of people from those days. Grix and bukkakkewarrior are the two that comes to mind. But it was good times 
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tl;dr trying to get flaming 14 year old kids to be nice, random nostalgia about heroes
Ain't happening champ.
This actually happened:
Me: you probably should have skilled your Q (to CM)
CM: DONT TRELL ME HOW 2 PLY WTF NOOB REPORTD
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The community is the only negative thing bout DOTA ;/ I try to be mannered but often loose my temper when i see a total noob flaming me for bad stats as Rylai. Hopefully there wil be some way to report BM guys to be punished with temporary mutes.
Edit: God will they need a lot of staff xD
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I don't really like DOTA2, doesn't really feel like DOTA to me when I play and instead it feels more like LoL. I guess in the end it plays pretty well but it's not going to take over the moba market.
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On November 26 2011 22:50 gullberg wrote:
I don't really like DOTA2, doesn't really feel like DOTA to me when I play and instead it feels more like LoL. I guess in the end it plays pretty well but it's not going to take over the moba market.
Give me your key than
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Yeah I agree about the community. I think a big problem is people escalate everything so much. You can ask someone an honest question sometimes and people will bite back at you for it. The best way to handle the community is just to be calm and try to avoid saying anything that someone can use to escalate into an argument.
On November 26 2011 22:50 gullberg wrote:
I don't really like DOTA2, doesn't really feel like DOTA to me when I play and instead it feels more like LoL. I guess in the end it plays pretty well but it's not going to take over the moba market.
Really? Its a direct port of dota and in my experience playing both it plays nothing like LoL.
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I played a game of dota2 the other night. First thing the CM says in allied channel is: My first time playing dota, or any type of moba style games ever.
0-3 later, a guy on our team starts yelling the shit out of him: OMG YOU'RE SUCH A NOOB RAGE RAGE RAGE
Me: STFU he fucking just said he doesn't know how to play wtf give him a chance.
we ended losing that game pretty badly, but man seriously, that guy wasn't even good and he goes bashing on a first timer....
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Canada2480 Posts
I played a game the other day where there were something along the lines of three complete newbies, a decent player(me), and a really really good player on my team. Anyways we were getting crushed pretty badly. Normally the really good player on our team would have started bashing on the rest of his teamates and we'd go on to lose terribly. what he did instead is that without an ounce of flaming he just told the other guys what to do and they listened to him and we started crushing them pretty badly. having a good attitude = wins.
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On November 27 2011 01:45 swanized wrote:
I played a game the other day where there were something along the lines of three complete newbies, a decent player(me), and a really really good player on my team. Anyways we were getting crushed pretty badly. Normally the really good player on our team would have started bashing on the rest of his teamates and we'd go on to lose terribly. what he did instead is that without an ounce of flaming he just told the other guys what to do and they listened to him and we started crushing them pretty badly. having a good attitude = wins.
Now things get really bad when newbies get arrogant(thanks god its not so common)
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On November 27 2011 01:45 swanized wrote:
I played a game the other day where there were something along the lines of three complete newbies, a decent player(me), and a really really good player on my team. Anyways we were getting crushed pretty badly. Normally the really good player on our team would have started bashing on the rest of his teamates and we'd go on to lose terribly. what he did instead is that without an ounce of flaming he just told the other guys what to do and they listened to him and we started crushing them pretty badly. having a good attitude = wins.
This is exactly the attitude I want more people to have when it comes to this game. By helping newer player understand the role of their hero and give tips about positioning and map awerness for example they get more knowledge and are able to use this in their future games. Hopefully they will then pass that knowledge on to other players and then the overall skill in the game will raise, and isn't that what we all want?
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On November 27 2011 01:45 swanized wrote:
I played a game the other day where there were something along the lines of three complete newbies, a decent player(me), and a really really good player on my team. Anyways we were getting crushed pretty badly. Normally the really good player on our team would have started bashing on the rest of his teamates and we'd go on to lose terribly. what he did instead is that without an ounce of flaming he just told the other guys what to do and they listened to him and we started crushing them pretty badly. having a good attitude = wins.
Agreed 100% Had a very similar experience yesterday. We had had 2 good players and 3 pretty bad (I was one of them.) And we were getting absolutely smashed because one of the good players just wouldn't listen to the other one and join us in team fights because we "sucked" (about 40 minutes by this stage.) It wasn't until the other good player actually called them out on it, that they started to join us.
We went from losing our mid t3 tower to pushing their t2 mid with no buybacks and going on to double rax on that one push just because that one good player put his ego aside and listened to the other one.
It's amazing the results a good attitude and being willing to listen can bring.
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EPT
