I just got an email saying that I’ve got DOTA 2 in my Steam library–cool! I think I signed up for Beta test way back when, and then forgot.
Here’s the thing: I’ve never played DOTA at all. It just sounded like a weird lovechild of Blizzard and Valve, my two favorite gaming companies, so I couldn’t resist.
ANyone else have an invite? Shall we get some Doper games together? Any advice for a total noob who barely understands what genre the game is?
The key to victory is primarily for your teammates not to be killed by the people trying their hardest to kill them. Getting killed gives them gold and experience, which makes it easier for them to kill you next time.
More sort of a hate-child. The original DotA was a mod made for Warcraft 3 that proved to be very popular. Then Valve created a standalone game of it, that had nothing to do with Blizzard. And when Blizzard started work on an official DotA mod for Starcraft 2, Valve started complaining that they were stepping on their intellectual-property toes. There have been a lot of harsh words exchanged by the companies’ lawyers over this; I’m not sure how (if at all) it’s been resolved. Certainly, the SC2 one has been much delayed, and I think they’re also changing the name to Blizzard All-Stars.
I’ve been in the beta for about a month and have had a few more months off and on with Dota. The game is fantastic. It’s the deepest and most competitive game I’ve ever played, but it doesn’t rely on twitch reflexes or monstrous APM. It’s all about decision making.
The best summary of ths absolute basics that I know of is this guide: here
I want to be in the beta, both my friends are and I used to play HoN with them occasionally before they moved to the DotA II beta. Oddly, I never really liked DOTA that much, it wasn’t the game so much as the TERRIBLE community, worst bunch of “we wouldn’t talk to our own mother if she couldn’t recite each hero’s moveset from memory” whiners I’ve ever encountered, I preferred other AoS-type maps for that reason (also, many other AoS games had cooler looking moves). That said, I’m going to give DOTA II a chance if I ever get in.
I’m not sure that’s a fair characterization. Twitch reflexes certainly come into it, certainly not at FPS level, but if you choke (misclicking, especially with an ult, is the worst of it) during teamplay or an important gank, you absolutely could fuck the entire encounter, and possibly the entire match. Also, there’s a bunch of Super Smash Bros level bullshit, albeit at a much less intense level, I mean, animation cancelling is almost necessary (unless they mercifully removed that problem in II).
Also, the main thing I don’t like about DotA and other AOS-type games (LoL, HoN), is that even when I watch high level play, the match is often determined well before the surrender timer is up; it’s very rare for me to not see a match in which 10-20 minutes in somebody made a mistake that cost the game, even if the ramifications of the mistake aren’t readily apparent until 30 minutes later.
No game is decided in 20 minutes or over one fight. Certainly a team could start losing with one team fight and never bring it back, but that doesn’t make it decisive. A win is made up of many victories that snowball into an overwhelming advantage. I watch five to ten pro matches per week and it is stomps that’re super rare.
Also, I don’t think requiring you to press the proper buttons makes a game “twitch.” The genre isn’t for everyone though. You need to put a lot into it and it’s very hard. That’s what makes the successes to rewarding though, I think.
Hmm…this worries me, as I’ll likely be able to put an hour into it every day or so. I watched part of a match last night, and it looked like a lot of fun, but I hope there’s some sort of latter to keep me from being too much of a drain on my teammates.
With the competent matchmaking system, you don’t have to worry about dragging down your team since they’ll more or less be at your level. An hour a day is plenty of time though.
It’s true that DOTA has the absolute worst community in the history of gaming. At least PC gaming - I don’t know how xbox is, but every time I watch a video of someone playing on xbox live there are 13 year olds screaming FAGGOT NIGGER endlessly.
The DOTA community was so horrible that it chased me away from the game. They are so hostile to new players that it’s amazing that the community grew at all.
With the broad appeal of a valve game, and matchmaking, I suppose there’s a pretty good chance the core group of asshole DOTA players will be buffered by group of incoming non-assholes.
I just realized that there’s a bot setting, so I’ve spent the last 90 minutes enjoying bots kicking my ass up and down the street. High learning curve indeed! For folks familiar with Valve’s iteration, is it really similar to the original? What would be a good character for a newb?
It’s essentially a 1:1 remake. There are a few differences, but those are mostly bugs. Plus not having all of the heroes changes the flow of the game slightly, since some dynamic heroes like Lycanthrope are missing. None of that is stuff that matters at your experience level. Anything written for for a recent-ish (2010+) version of Dota is applicable to Dota 2.
There are many good starting heroes. Lich is one of the most useful heroes in the game and pretty simple to play once it’s been explained. Lion is good. Crystal Maiden is good. These are all very fragile heroes that’ll die easily, but dying often doesn’t particularly diminish their effectiveness. You basically just use your skills to assist more powerful farming heroes during their weak early/mid game period.
Don’t listen to SenorBeef’s condemnation of the Dota community. Unlike him, I actually play the game and rarely run into venomous people. Every so often someone gives you grief, but 95% of people immediately chill out if you just say “Sorry, I’m new and didn’t know what to do, but I want to learn.” If someone really is a dick, just report them as one and they’ll be kicked out of the beta eventually.
Palooka is making my case for me, for what it’s worth. The reason Palooka feels so at home in that community is because he’s the sort of person that makes a community bad.
He may not seem it from it from his posts here, but you can ask anyone who’s ever played a game with him, and they’re all in universal agreement.
Well, that was probably overly harsh, but I’m past the edit window.
I wasn’t referring to the current beta community, as I have no experience with it - I was talking about the original WC3 DOTA community, and I will absolutely stand by that they’re the worst community ever. Elitist, hostile to anyone, extremely rude, unhelpful - it’s mind boggling that the game ever took off in those conditions.
I suppose they may have even purified the dickishness of that community by basically scaring off any reasonable new players and only the assholes who liked that sort of enviornment stuck around.
Which is why I definitely want to get some dopers in DOTA 2 so we have some people together who we know aren’t going to be all pissy because someone is new, or we lost, whatever.
I play to have fun. I have fun with dopers losing and winning, so hopefully we can put a doper community together.
It’ll probably be a free to play game too!
Damn, but I’m terrible at this game. I’ve been playing bot game after bot game, trying different heroes, and I keep feeding the enemy, dying over and over and watching their levels skyrocket.
Got the beta last week but I’ve only had the chance to play two games. Didn’t come close to winning either. I doubt I’ll switch to it over LoL, but it is pretty rad. I’m not enamored by the idea of paying 135 gold per teleport or losing gold on death, but not being able to see as far when you walk into a gully makes things a lot more tense, and I like that the items you buy can do things other than make your numbers bigger. Also, if you click ‘A’ on your own guys you attack them. 
I’ve gone to the milquetoast comfort of Dark Messiah for a little bit, where I can feel confident in my ability to save the world. Once I’m ready to feel totally incompetent again, I’ll give DOTA another try.
I just got an invite! Oddly, in the subject line they said Dota instead of DotA, but whatever.
Yep. The game’s official name is Dota 2, not Defense of the Ancients. I believe it’s a copyright thing.
I got a key a couple months ago, but I haven’t played it much. My friends and I switched over to LoL after freshman year of college, when we all stopped living in the same dorm and could no longer set up 10-man lan parties at the drop of a hat. I’d like to switch back, but it’s hard. It’s true what others have said: LoL is DotA easy mode.
I’m not 100% convinced of this. Is the metagame of high level, professional LoL play less advanced than that of Dota play? Certainly Dota has a higher barrier or entry to even play competently, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to high level mechanics. After all, Super Smash Bros is comparatively simple as a fighting game, but its metagame can get as much or more complex than many traditional fighters.