I have been waiting years hoping for a Dota thread.
I’m happy to see that they’re finally releasing some more beta keys for Dota 2 - although, amusingly, it’s extremely evident when big waves of inexperienced players get released upon the community. With about 100 wins, I’m fairly comfortable with the new engine, and I played the original extensively. If anybody would like to get a game together, or even stomp some bots, I’d be happy to tag along and help you guys get introduced to the game.
As others have said, it’s a brutally difficult learning curve and you will take lots of abuse from other players while figuring everything out. It’s cool - everybody goes through this. Everything StP has said is really spot on - there are lots of very important but rather subtle things one needs to do while playing, as Dota is a game constantly pulling your attention between the immediate and the meta. With the big time investment (most pubs last ~35 minutes) and excruciatingly prolonged death-of-a-thousand-cuts losing process, it’s a high risk/high reward sort of experience. Losing can be enraging, but a good victory is so satisfying.
The lack of surrender, constant whining, and general shitbaggery are all very relevant points, but as you gain experience and start stacking up wins, the matchmaking system will start placing you with better players. All these issues are generally diminished as you climb the skill ladder, as players are better, more focused on the game (and not on crying,) and end things more decisively. One of the cruel ironies of the matchmaking system is that teams of friends get matched against other teams - so your relaxed four-man party might very well get stacked against five caffeinated semi-pro Koreans.
Dota definitely is not a game for everyone. It’s extremely competitive. There really are no laid-back games except for complete dominations. As mentioned, there are probably a dozen or so outright bugs which have now become official features; that’s just the way it is. If closet camping existed in Dota, everybody would be doing it all the time, and cussing you out if you weren’t.
That being said, I frigging love this game, and I’d love to grab a few games with you guys. My handle is “kessler syndrome” on steam, feel free to look me up.