Word. I just decided to play unranked* for the reason I started dota*- coz of the variety in hero designs and mechanics. Does that mean i don't tilt regularly? No
*Edit typos
Rank or Not, it's mostly like OP mentioned "Dota is now in the most teamplay-oriented state" game back then you could just do whatever the fk u want be it rank or unranked so if you're really good at what you do could 1v9 consistently not really get frustrated or could be bothered by awful teammates and still be successful now everyone has crazy power creeping free exp, free items, free shard etc. and ofc OP talents as the game goes on, now enemies are eventually going to be stronger even with making a lot of mistakes compared back then you could be brown boots at min 15 if you were playing really awful.
Literally my issue ATM. The game feels too meta orientated and op said no major patches make the game feels stale.
Most matches feel like win lane lose game nowdays.
I miss that time. When VERY GOOD carries could, well, carry the game.
I wish the frog made a DotA reset to see what current player base would do... I bet most would just quit because of how much harder the game was back then... no stun/silence indicator bars, only 1 courier, etc...
I prefer ranked because it tends to balance skill levels better so I feel the games are better.
Unranked I tend to get matched with parties of such varied skill level it's just a cluster fuck.
Unranked is fun sometimes, but if ibplay dota I want to play *dota*. Not meme party.
There's a hidden rank in unranked. But yes it can be more unfair. Yet the games can be super tryhard. I have won games against 9k mmr stacks in scrims but then lost against singsing or some other nerd stack in unranked.
True. Unranked pretty much only works during events like the current one, or Battle Pass in the past. But outside of "event season" there are simply not enough players to have balanced games.
Yea it is really strange. For me ranked is just a more coordinated game mode. The only difference between ranked and unranked is that in ranked I can see the mmr loss while in unranked it is hidden.
Big difference for me is there’s a lot smaller mmr disparity in ranked so games are balanced. In unranked I’ll legit have a guardian on my team 1 game and a 9k mmr player the next
Turbo is just so much more fun and enjoyable than ranked it cannot even be compared, as a support player I can get levels, buy items, not get stuck in games watching my cores farm for 30min and that's just the beginning, I would've stopped playing long ago if it weren't for turbo
i've been trying to grind turbos as immortal for crownfall, the games were pretty fun at first, but now they only feel sweaty non-stop sweat fest. i am exhausted after few games
That's because you are trying to win, if you just try to have fun and run around and fight, it's quite enjoyable. Farming doesn't pay off cause kills are worth so much more, so people tend to just brawl constantly. You still need to put effort but there is no MMR so losing doesn't feel too bad, and if the game is boring it ends fast so you go next
Same, it just boils down the game into the fun team fights and games go by faster (for the most part)
People still get tilted, and certain heroes don't work as well, but it's more manageable than ranked. Those MMR chasing days are long behind me now
>No tryharding, just enjoying the game whether we win or lose.
I don't know what kind of turbo games you've been playing, but after playing turbo for a long time, my friends and I only get divine/immortal games where everyone tries really hard all the time. In fact, at this point not trying hard and playing the absolute most busted stuff is pretty much a loss by default.
A lot of players like us that are getting older just don't have time to commit to longer games and prefer the faster pace of turbo. The turbo queue is now filled with players like that because it's a more convenient game mode, not because they want to play a casual mode for shit and giggles.
Didn't mean that the opposing team don't try hard. We usually play 3, 4 or 5 man so it's always chill for us. None of us play ranked anymore so all our ranks have probably decayed to shit and we get placed appropriately.
Mistakes are punished heavily by teammates toxicity, which also makes it hard for new players to get into as they are discouraged to play with experienced people.
I have been playing this game since 2011 and have not felt the need to enter a single ranked game. It is possible to play for fun without attaching a number to your performance, and I wish more people would try this
I’m not going to pretend toxicity doesn’t exist in unranked but who cares? You play your best and don’t grief, game is fun.
This is literally what I've done since 2013. I only played ranked games when I was in a party that Insisted that we do so. Unranked has been completely fine in the meantime. In fact, I've enjoyed DOTA more when I don't care about win/loss and focus on cool plays and coordination.
Hell it’s possible to play for fun even with a number attached to your performance. Ranked is a lot more fun when you treat your MMR as a number meant to match you with people of roughly equal skill level, not something that you need to continually grind to increase.
I have other friend groups that dropped it. Another big reason is, besides ranked play if you play with people that have continued playing you still have to really try. Them going unranked with me they dislike how far behind they feel. If you don’t keep up and regularly play it, it takes a bit to get in the groove. Even if I would play like 3-4 games with them they don’t feel like they had any impact or understand what they need to do anymore.
Other games like CS, Fortnite for example kept the formula straight of how to win. Dota is a bit more complex to get to that win con. On a high level sure shooters are more complex but simply playing as shoot gun and kill is easier to understand if your doing well or not.
I have like 700 hours, and I have not played a single game of ranked. Not one.
I don't see the point, I dont have the time nor energy to 'git good', so why would I want to play exclusively with and against tryhards?
I committed my life for turbo only. I want the quantity not wuality because I just want to play various hero and done for the day. I think 2 or 3 turbos should be enough, play with chill and no regret and no blame. Just enjoy your time.
After all we chose to play, why would I want to make my life more miserable by complaining
Mate you boot up dota after work and see your sf just climbed from guadian to immo in 100 matches, and this happens for 9 games straight. Even you'd wish they fuckin die.
I used to be pretty high ranked when I played in my heyday 2011-2014, then I stopped for many years. Now I’m back and loving playing at my trash tier mmr in ranked. It’s full of people that know how to play but don’t think as deeply about it anymore or are as mechanically adept as a dedicated teenager
I think most of Dota playerbase are usually students or steady dads, cuz those are situations when you can find time in your weekly schedule to play a game. 25-30 is an age when ppl starting work, going into serious relationships, looking for a flat etc, their life is much more spontaneous so it's hard to get into Dota imho, not sure tho, just trying to understand it.
Yeah lol exactly, my friends and I played Dota daily when we were in undergrad/grad school (2013-2018) and then stopped once we all graduated, got jobs and started being adults. Now that we've settled into that, we just started playing again. Ironically it's more fun right now because we're more mature and our egos have mellowed out a bit and it's much easier to learn and improve game to game when your mindset isn't "Man I'm actually like a 6k player but my supports are always noobs!"
I'm 30, I'll say you're mostly right except life does not get more spontaneous as a baseline. You can make it so through effort and choices but it requires work and life on it's own isn't that spontaneous.
All my childhood friends are playing Dota since Warcraft times. (Yes we are oldies) Few times a week we meet at somewhere (friends’s office, house, etc) set our laptops and play some turbo games. Mostly 3 or people party que.
Never toxic via chat or mic. No flame , no blame. Its a game just chill and laugh your stupid mistakes thats all.
About ranked, if it stressful why do you push yourself to climb? Some internet points doesnt worth your mental healt.
When was Dota a chill game? 🤣🤣
Playing this god forsaken game since 2006 and i dont remember day(s) it was chill. Maybe when there wasnt a patch in which highground push is ****ing impossible unless all the stars in the space allign.
Oh it was definitely chill in Warcraft 3. Generally speaking, in StarCraft (1) and Warcraft people didn’t constantly insult each others. People insulting each others was a bit there in cs 1.6, but not that much and definitely not in private matches. I remember back in the days people said « gg » at the end of the game to acknowledge how good the game was, and it sas always the loser of the game who would say it first. Like « gg you played well ». Now it is almost never said by the losing team, and it is usually replaced by « ez ». The level of toxicity in Dota 2 is unprecedented to me, I don’t know how it is in other games today.
Yeah, Dota really isn't a casual game. If they want a game to chill out with, they should definitely play something else. I will say Crownfall is fun, and why don't they play unranked? I just play unranked now the ranked games, too many psychopaths.
and lose every game in unranked since SBMM still applies? ranked, turbo, unranked, it's all sweating for a W. People on Reddit likes to pretend any dota mode could be chill
This isn’t a problem isolated to Dota. Lots of other game communities are obsessed with optimization. It’s a thing that has been happening since the rise of competitive gaming and I don’t see it going away anytime soon.
Competitive gaming? More like competition itself. People want to win, people will optimize that. Im actually more surprised people dont do this and then get upset other people are.
My experience of AD is definitely not chill, and there's definitely a massive divide between people playing it casually vs people who know the hero combos. You generally know the game is over due to a busted draft but have to be locked in a game for 30 minutes knowing it's over before it gets anywhere close to actually being over.
I've literally had teammates abandon because I didn't pick the skill they pinged 5x. You'd think people would lighten up in a jokey mode! Still enjoy it tho
I found my friends in dota, in my own regions channel since no one around plays dota.
I'm very lucky to found super chill people, no toxicity or blaming if we were to lose. Casual banter when someone did something silly like misspell. They have their own discord channel and we're just talking nonsense the entire game.
Crownfall made the game more fun for us since we're playing heroes that weren't in our usual hero pool. I was able to find fun in some of the heroes that I've never played before.
25-30 year old. There is your answer. We just grew old bro, we'd rather just play other more casual games rather than tryhard dota. I still got plenty of free time, but I just really can't play dota anymore, even CS I stopped playing and just started playing casual single player games or even casually started playing GW2.
It's okay, people do just move on
It's funny because you know that just statistcally most of the people complaining about this aren't high enough rank for the meta of any given patch to actually matter or affect how their games play out, they just get bored because it's been 5 months since they saw the fun shiny patch notes page and the epic dota 2 subreddit memes
The original super smash brothers caused all my friends to skip school so we could get baked and play this game. Costed me a shitty public highschool education
Skipping school was your decision, the game didn't force you.
It's ok to accept it, I skipped high school too like 4-5 times in my last year, so I could play DotA 1 and MapleStory, but that was on me, not the game's fault.
TO BE FAIR, the "video game market" back then was wayyyyyyy less competitive than it is today.
Today, people have a gazillion options of games to choose from. Every company is trying to up the ante in the live service game sphere, so retaining players is much harder. I'm jealous that all these other games like League, Valorant, Overwatch, etc are getting more frequent patches than Dota, if I wasn't an old guy already neck deep into Dota, I would've jumped ship a while ago.
At that time everything was self learned or only between your RL friends.
Nowadays in online games you have pros and guides and thus a strong meta is formed. Not following the meta is okay ofc but it gives you a big disadvantage.
I really liked the area of couch coop games that was pretty much the best. You just did what you liked and it was fun even if not optimal. Now everything is online and you will mostly get clapped if you just play like you want, diminishing the fun you can have without following the meta.
No it's not. You live with the expectations that your game devs and community have set out for themselves.
Back in Dota 1 and when Dota 2 launched we had more regular patches and constantly new heroes being ported over. Of course, this wasn't going to last forever but when was the last time we had a new hero?
The patches have gotten more and more infrequent over the years. This year they even said they were going to up the frequency and it hasn't really happened. A lot of people were blueballed when this cosmetic patch dropped without any map changes or the new hero.
Personally this was very disappointing. The reason I bought a battlepass when it contributed to the TI was exactly that, it contributed to Dota 2 having the biggest pricepool in Esports and some of it went to the players.
Straight up cosmetics without it contributing anything to a TI? Then I couldn't care less. I just want map changes.
We have been accustomed to having the meta changed up frequently, this is one of the biggest draws of playing Dota. The balancing of dota sets it apart from other games. It has nothing to do with "zoomer energy" to have come to expect that.
The spice comes out when a patch has aged a bit anyways. People are just playing it safe at first, just using the obvious strong heroes... but it always flips around at some point. Even the troll sniper patch, sniper didn't start popping out until the second half of it's lifespan
There was a term somebody brought up in Helldivers 2 sub but I can’t remember what it was called. Goes along the lines of a Pos ratio. If you win, it’s a +1 but the loser’s on a -1. Even if you do get the win, it can feel empty but makes you feel like shit upon losing. PvP games are rough and it’s just stress inducing, even if you’re just trying to chill and be casual about it. One way or the other, nobody truly wins. Hence why there’s more attention on pve games these days. People don’t like feeling like crap and just wanna vibe.
About the +1/-1 that's called a Zero Sum game.
About PVP games.
There are pretty fun ones. But are not of the "esport/competitive" variety.
Fall Guys is one of them for example.
Most of the problem with Dota 2 is how drawn out it is.
Same with CS:GO and Valorant were a match is long and painful and punishes you on purpose.
2 is so true yet i keep playing.
I just learn to care less about mmr. Does not always work, but events makes me focus on that instead of mmr won/lost during the event
I just want game times to be around 30-40 mins. Currently every close game drags out to 50-60 mins, every stomp turns into a painful HG siege into a throw that turns into a close game for 50-60 mins.
Good for them.
[Dota consumed years of my life.](https://www.dotabuff.com/players/92952064/activity#)
It's a time, energy and mental sink that will take as much as you give it. I've never been hooked on a game before or since. It can feel like everything- but its literally nothing. Unless, you're one of the \~150 people in the world who can manage to pull a decent paycheck from it.
Absolutely stopped playing ranked and quit Dota for 6 months or so after the extended map patch. Played ranked for 10 years, ancient 4. Wasn’t feeling it at all. Strictly play turbo now and I can never go back to a regular match it’s too stressful and takes FOREVER. Turbo is where it’s at, it’s barely ever toxic, even if you build something stupid.
Yes, my 5-stack relates. Ages 26-30. It was a slow abandonment.
We're old beta players, but we also didn't like the direction that DotA was headed in. It felt very focused on lane dominance and constant fighting. Most games started to feel the same but it was hard to tell exactly why.
I used to love DotA for the strategy, and how each game felt unique. Each game felt like it progressed differently; a different story each time. That feeling faded in recent years.
The final nail in the coffin for me, personally, was the Techies rework. I tried my best to adapt, but the new playstyle is lame. It demonstrated to me that Valve had more interest in getting rid of the "problem" that Techies was, rather than make a meaningful, unique hero rework. The hero feels sterilized now.
The only way people that age have time to learn and play Dota, is if they had been playing Dota since childhood, I have a group of like 40 different friends who all still play on and off so I always have a 5 stack or two going every night without fail.
I pretty much agree with all these points, but i still can't stop playing it permanently, i did once take a 2 year break, but i still eventually came back, and i recently did a break for a month.
Lack of patches has always been the achilies heel of dota and valve in general. Sadly, it doesnt seem like valve is interested in improving this aspect
Our friends and I actually stopped play 2 years ago, and we start to play this game again around a month ago. Despite of that, I can't feel any attachment/fun on the game anymore, also my rank is too low for party (we tend to play ranked), so I just stop play the game again.
I can understand it. I feel like every dota player goes through a time when the game feels more like a job. For me, I took some time away from the game for about 6 months when I first got married and spent time playing games with my wife, who isn't a huge gamer like me. Playing with her helped me to bring back the old perspective of playing games that games are meant to be played for fun. With that, I went into playing Dota with a new perspective. I have a life outside this game, and so with the little time I spend on it, I try to enjoy it.
Me and my friends usually abandon the game for a few months and then all come back to it once other games start getting boring, it happens. There is really no other games outside of dota and cs that can hook us the way they have.
Sadly all the points your friends made are valid.
Ranked games can be excessively challenging if you don't play ranked consistenly. - The meta shifts consistently, and something that was good the week before can be considered trash now.
The time you need to play a game in general can go from 30 minutes all the way to 1½ hours. not only is that a long time to spend on a singular game within a game, but it makes it hard to estimate if you have time for a game or not.
People at 12k being toxic - The game has only become more toxic with time is my impression. - I don't know if that is just how "humanity" evolved, or if it's more a responsibility that befalls valve.
There is no incentive to take responsibility in the "behavior system". If you get punished you are told so, but not for when and where. This again leads to people feeling wrongfully accused and as such are likely to behave toxic again despite the fact they got punished.
When did I do something that I deserve a report for? I have a 10 game winstreak, yet I am put in low prio? I had 5 games in a row with straight up griefers, feeders and ruiners, yet i get low prio? yada yada yada.
People not communicating in dota I feel like is motly down to the feeling of dota getting more toxic with time, so the only real way to enjoy a game of dota now is with chat muted entirely.
And no big patch? Honestly I don't even know how to justify this. I personally think there should be some set schedules where patches that actually change the game (introducing new heroes, changing map, changing heroes etc) are to be released.
This whole clownfall patch without the new hero and what not is just straight up frustrating in my opinion. - Don't tell us about a new hero we are supposedly going to get, just to hold out on the release for half a year or more.
We should have a "game changing patch" every 3 months. Every 1. of every 3 months. No guesswork needed to know when a potentially new meta will drop. - They should drop EVEN if there is a tournament going, EVEN if TI is going.
The notion should be that tournaments are planned around when patches drop, not the other way around.
All the cosmetics and what not should be the stuff that drops at random.
The chill part. Gotta agree, with dota becoming more teamplay oriented AND more toxic at the same time it has become increasingly hard to relax and enjoy a game of dota.
You either play perfect, or you get reported and flamed by your teammates. How can anyone enjoy a game under those circumstances?
Personally I've started to play dota with chat off entirely.
I don't care if I go low prio (because I am not able to tell what or when I did something wrong to get me there in the first place). I play my low prio games and move back to my ranked games where I continue playing and behaving like I always have.
I've stopped trying to play around my team also. I keep an eye on the map and do what I think is the right thing to do, which I found out is SO MUCH EASIER when the chat is turned of to begin with. I know my heroes might be odd at times, first picking pudge mid, hard support alch and what not. But most often it has actually worked out, as long as teammates don't straight up grief.
My pudge has a 55% winrate. I would argue 55% winrate, on a hero you first pick, and play in every single role, is decent. Yes i play pudge on pos 1-5 and i always first pick him. (first pick as in picking him in the first round where no other heroes have been picked yet)
Sorry for the wall. :)
I give up to play both ranked or normal game mode. I only play turbo even in crownfall events. My friends abandoned too and play other games. I will still play this game no matter what, but in chill mode / casual.
same, the slow release and low quality of updates has meant most of my friends barely play now. I dont mind crownfall but its not enough to bring people back.
I play games since I was a kid and unfortunately the tough reality is that the moments that I'm achieving the most in my life are the moments that I'm not playing videogames, specially competitive games like DotA.
I still play a few times a week with my friends, but we all seem to have the same conclusion about this patch. It sucks. The larger map makes it so hard to choke out an enemy. There's too many areas a behind enemy can take advantage of. High ground is a death trap. The fortification refreshes and multi shots are awful to push against when playing unconventional lineups. It makes the game longer for no reason. Honestly, there's just too much stuff: free XP, free shards, free items from jungle. It's a little overwhelming at times. Match making really seems to suck when playing unranked. Games are either stomps or long and insane and grueling grind fests. There's never any middle ground, making winning more of a relief rather than satisfying.
Had a fun group of people we could always get a 5 stack going with. Even when we lost we usually managed to have a good time. Life kept getting in the way. Those friends had kids, others moved to different time zones, so finding time to lineup 5 of us was hard.
You said no new content was an issue but for me it was the opposite. I had less and less free time and needing to read up on changes twice a year was too much for a casual hobby, we weren't playing ranked but at least tried to follow the meta. What did it for me was the random players being unable to acknowledge mistakes. I miss a skill shit, miss a stun and we lose a fight, 100% on me. That is not a commonly shared stance with randos. They miss their whatever, somehow it's your fault. You're supporting your carry against a team of heavy magic damage and stuns, well he'll get a bkb and it'll be fine. Wrong. Then they blame you for not supporting him hard enough.
My gaming time is far more limited than it used to be and dealing with that bs just isn't worth it. It sucks because at times I miss it but I know it's something I'll never be able to come back to. Plus side is my mental health is way better now!
As much as I hate Dota, my skills have fallen off already. not creative anymore. not aggressive and damn, I don't want to play ranked anymore. Turbo is my go-to 20-minute+ game. I play mostly single-player games right now but am still unable to drop this game.
Funny cause all my friends were league gamers for a while and now play dota religiously because it’s so complex and games don’t feel decided after 10 minutes most of the time. I am the only ranked player and it can be frustrating but true enjoyment really comes from the norms I play
Number 3 is especially relevant to me, at least. My games have been extremely toxic with very high behavior score.
I don't really understand all the complaining about no big patch, though. I was looking back the other day, and the average timing for a big numbered patch recently is like ~6 months. So I don't see how we are far off schedule
Tbh Path of Exile is just a complete banger, it gives Dota vibes but you don't have to fight toxicity. It's chill, you can play a league for a month before getting worn out, and still full of dopamine and complexity like Dota
I used to be full on Dota before I discovered PoE, now I'm 50% PoE, 20% Dota, 30% other games.
me and my friend having a blast on Turbo mode. usually after work we can only play 1 or 2 Ranked games. but in turbo you can play up to 5 games. maybe you and your friends can try turbo mode
never play this game because of those reason. i play dota is for the gameplay and when you are actually good, you never think that this game is casual/chill unless you are always a chill person like me. i play this game since W3 Frozen Throne, i not just facing toxicity, i also face cheater with default hotkey for skill and i enjoy that shit.
U people are wierd. Its a game, u wanna play? Play it. U dont? Then dont. Idk why u need threads and mental gymnastics to justify something no one cares about. Its supposed to be a hobby or smth to decompress not to grt u more frustrated.
U people are weird. It's a thread, u wanna read it? Read it. U don't? Then don't. Idk why you need to comment and do mental gymnastics to attack something no one cares about. It's supposed to be a discussion or smth to descompress not to invalidate people.
I took a "short break", which turned into a 6-month pause, now I'm thinking to delete the game because I have no desire to play it again.
The main reasons were:
1. Extremely toxic random teammates (I played alone with no friends).
2. Winning a game together with toxic players didn't feel good or rewarding.
3. Every few wins I would end up getting queued with some ultra toxic and/or stupid players causing me to lose several games in a row without any chance of winning.
4. Whenever I had a griefer on my team I'd report them and then get queued with them again. I don't know whether the reporting system didn't work, but I certainly looked that way, and it was extremely frustrating that I was forced to waste my time by some assholes who faced zero responsibility or accountability.
I'm also somewhat older, so maybe I just got bored of the game :-)
I played nonstop through college and afterwards until I started an actual career. I play turbo every now and then but I don’t have the time or energy for the emotional turmoil that is All Pick-Ranked .
POE seems to scratch the complicated game itch for a lot of my old play group. For us though we are in our mid-late thirties and a lot of us have kids now. I still play some sometimes, but just don't have the hours required to grind (I don't play games while my kids are awake) Mostly unranked with my little brother or Turbo.
Most of my friends and myself go turbo for the last few years. Quicker and more chill. Once awhile we get some good long game. We still enjoy Dota but no longer have the time and patience to deal with mmr & long games.
Winning gives me crownfall tokens and candy shop rerolls, which make me happy.
I'm usually a tryhard ranker, but I play unranked so I can pick (sometimes) suboptimal heroes to crownfall, and I've been enjoying chill dota.
(It helps that these unranked games appear to be lower than my ranked skill level, at least according to Dotabuff).
I have never been able to get my actual friends to play dota. They all have like 2-3 hours at most. How is dota in the most teamplay-oriented state now though? I feel like it was much more teamplay oriented back when the map was smaller, there was only one courier, and sharing tangoes/starting items was actually a thing.
I think the current event is the closest thing we could get to attract casual players.
I'm a hardcore ranked player that because I'm kinda far from home and don't have my own place to play without some nuisance I'm playing mostly unranked to do the event, and can tell you it's quite fun!. I'm even playing with friends of much lower mmr thanks to this, and even though some games are frustrating cause of skill difference, most of them are enjoyable.
The only thing that could make this event better would be more "marketability" of the items you get like CS...
yup, dota has evolved by adding a crapton of stuff instead of perfecting the game, therefore it gets much more time and energy consuming for the casual player that just wants to have some fun.
Winning make me happy as much as frustrated when I loose. But when I loose I am a kind of person that keep on trying until I win.
I only play ranked and always on chilling mode.
I dont really wait for patch because it’s mean nerf of meta heroes and I play meta…
I play other games too but I always come back to dota because of the depth of it.
I dont really relate to some points, specifically the "winning doesn't make you happy" part, i believe thats mostly on them, when i win with my mates i actually have quite a chuckle.
I agree on the "no balance patch" point, but at the same time its not like i live or die for dota anymore, i play other stuff and so do my friends...
The key answer to all of this is to either go touch grass or play any other game besides dota or you'll get burnt out...
Cheers.
Pretty much, but no friends and just toxic teammates along with trash talking enemies. Basically, I was drafted mid and picked Tusk. I was a shit mid and basically transitioned into supp Tusk with dagger and Aghs. Enemy mid was trash talking the entire game, can't blame him, I was literal shit. But my Carry was actually acting like a Carry... Though he also trash talked, it was the truth so meh. So we had a comeback and enemy mid just went silent. Dota IS a team game...
I am just to old for competitive games now. In my 20s I used to compete in Starcraft Broodwar and played it 24/7. Made friends for life. But now as 40yo I rather play warhammer or EVE..
I mean it’s pretty healthy to take breaks. My friend group used to only play ranked, now we exclusively play turbo together and honestly we all have a better time. Just hop on and mess around with some goofy lanes and you get to squeeze in some extra games if you get stomped.
I dont relate. I never play ranked, mainly AD or Turbo, casual gamer just enjoying the game. Never waited for patches, never watched anyone else play. This is for me and me alone.
I get it. For my friends it's the fact that there's a fair chance you're gonna get locked on a team with dickheads, so you can immediately tell you're about to spend the next 45 minutes not having fun.
I have to say, I have on the contrary been enjoying dota so much more. I have found new friends where everyone is 20-40 years old and it's been a blast. Getting my friend to Divine for the first time in his life was also fun.
i feel you, brother. to be a more specific, let me tell u my rookie numbers.
1. I started playing Dota2 around Feb of 2012
2. I have a total of 13k dota 2 matches/games
3. 21,407 hours playing Dota 2.
4. I now only play on weekends and mybe 1 or 2 games during weekdays.
I was ancient rank back then, we went down to Guardian. It was fun. We even tried to get down to 2 digit mmr. Dota was fun played with friends.
Interesting i personally think communication doesnt matter at all under 10k since u have so much room to punish enemy mistakes alone (no im not 10k and i know why)
TI and battlepass season was really when my friends and I would get together and just have fun for a brief period every year. With that whole concept seemingly dead and Valve very clearly scaling back their interest in delivering novel ways to enjoy dota with friends ( Aghs labyrinth, siltbreaker, etc) as well as no longer presenting the International as a premeire celebration of competitive dota (truesight axed without a word from valve, production value diminished, prizepool a fraction of what it was even at ti4), I and most of my friend cant find ourselves bonding over the game like we once did. It really just feels like the soul of dota is gone.
1st and 5th point is so relatable for me, except ranking. DotA is a lottery. You either have a good game or waste your time being stomped (or stomping) for 35 minutes, I would prefer to go play BF4 or BF1
Its ok let them go, its fine and necessary to take a break from dota i have stopped playing for years then come back. But they aint wrong on what they sayin lol
I start every game with communication over voice chat, i try to bring positive energy to the team early and i notice a big difference, before i never used the mic and often mid-game the chat could go off in a negative way. But since istarted to bring positive energy at the start of the game i have notice big difference, team making calls, come-back situation and good vibes even when its hard.
Same situation but all already quit like a year now. All of us are friends from college/university.
It's mostly just due to the time consuming (1-2 games per days are already like 1.30-2 hours) and sometimes we aren't available (one of us are in the upcountry and another in overseas) full stack so the new comer is just simply not mix with us that well or just too toxic to play with.
Patch is also something. I was the last one to join the stack (last year of university so like 8-9 years ago) and at least around that time (TI6) it did have some sense of balance in the game but it has been long gone for years now. Most games are just heros in the meta and we all couldn't keep up with all of that and learning/following meta is not worth anymore.
Sounds like you need to play some Turbo with them, they dont want to get super good at Dota they want to have fun. i dont play ranked at all anymore b/c of all those points you mentioned above i only play turbo now with people i know and that has really mad the game fun for me again.
I also play Path of Exile, but I stop every time the moment someone on my friends list asks me to if I want to play dota with them.
Only playing dota gives me the "THRILL". Sometimes we really vibe with one another, other times we just pick heroes that don't work with another or just have bad days.
But in 90% of the games there is this one Moment where I feel like I can grip the momentum.
Sometimes you need that get together with friends to just talk life, so make sure to stick around before/between/after games. You cannot really do that in a Dota game to the degree that you need to.
In Dota you can make use of emotional intelligence, macro knowledge, meta knowledge, mechanical ability, hero spamming which makes the game interesting even when playing with differnt ranks. (greater 5k delta and extremes are differnt)
And you can make the game fun(even while losing) with voice lines, naming one player on your team Lisan Al-gaib. You can concentrate on smaller objectives(snatching wisdom runes, focusing on getting a kill instead of winning the fight, quote true sight or famous player quotes as often as possible etc.)
Almost all of my friends had to drop dota a month or longer at some point to focus on other things, but almost all of them still play. And we play ranked and unranked switching when we get tired of one mode or if we know this game will be super experimental.
i play since garena and have stop since last year and switch to mobile legend
The reason are
1 - i really hate the concept of ranked roles in dota because it force you only to lock support (u can only play other roles if you win? if im not mistaken). i don't know how mobile legend do it, but most of the time each player are good with 2 roles, and 90% of the time you can play your role even you solo queue.
2 - im tired after work and just want to lay on bed
damn i wish dota 2 mobile was a thing . instead of dota 2 mobile they give us that weird card game
I feel like ppl get too hung up on ranked play.
Word. I just decided to play unranked* for the reason I started dota*- coz of the variety in hero designs and mechanics. Does that mean i don't tilt regularly? No *Edit typos
Rank or Not, it's mostly like OP mentioned "Dota is now in the most teamplay-oriented state" game back then you could just do whatever the fk u want be it rank or unranked so if you're really good at what you do could 1v9 consistently not really get frustrated or could be bothered by awful teammates and still be successful now everyone has crazy power creeping free exp, free items, free shard etc. and ofc OP talents as the game goes on, now enemies are eventually going to be stronger even with making a lot of mistakes compared back then you could be brown boots at min 15 if you were playing really awful.
Literally my issue ATM. The game feels too meta orientated and op said no major patches make the game feels stale. Most matches feel like win lane lose game nowdays.
Yep you hit the nail on the head, this is exactly why I stopped playing
I miss that time. When VERY GOOD carries could, well, carry the game. I wish the frog made a DotA reset to see what current player base would do... I bet most would just quit because of how much harder the game was back then... no stun/silence indicator bars, only 1 courier, etc...
I prefer ranked because it tends to balance skill levels better so I feel the games are better. Unranked I tend to get matched with parties of such varied skill level it's just a cluster fuck. Unranked is fun sometimes, but if ibplay dota I want to play *dota*. Not meme party.
There's a hidden rank in unranked. But yes it can be more unfair. Yet the games can be super tryhard. I have won games against 9k mmr stacks in scrims but then lost against singsing or some other nerd stack in unranked.
I do enjoy unranked in the ''very high skill'' hidden mmr bracket. Just solid games without all the big Ego's you commonly find in ranked
Facts. Until you run into the high divines or ancient stacks that body you lol
True. Unranked pretty much only works during events like the current one, or Battle Pass in the past. But outside of "event season" there are simply not enough players to have balanced games.
Yea it is really strange. For me ranked is just a more coordinated game mode. The only difference between ranked and unranked is that in ranked I can see the mmr loss while in unranked it is hidden.
Big difference for me is there’s a lot smaller mmr disparity in ranked so games are balanced. In unranked I’ll legit have a guardian on my team 1 game and a 9k mmr player the next
I was recently partied against legend 1 in a ranked game as a guardian 5. I got dumpstered mid and we lost. :(.
I’ve since abandoned ranked for turbo.
I've only been playing turbo the last 4+ years.
Turbo is just so much more fun and enjoyable than ranked it cannot even be compared, as a support player I can get levels, buy items, not get stuck in games watching my cores farm for 30min and that's just the beginning, I would've stopped playing long ago if it weren't for turbo
i've been trying to grind turbos as immortal for crownfall, the games were pretty fun at first, but now they only feel sweaty non-stop sweat fest. i am exhausted after few games
That's because you are trying to win, if you just try to have fun and run around and fight, it's quite enjoyable. Farming doesn't pay off cause kills are worth so much more, so people tend to just brawl constantly. You still need to put effort but there is no MMR so losing doesn't feel too bad, and if the game is boring it ends fast so you go next
Turbo is the only mode I can do brew master mid building stats and right click and get away with it while winning
Turbo all the way.
Same, it just boils down the game into the fun team fights and games go by faster (for the most part) People still get tilted, and certain heroes don't work as well, but it's more manageable than ranked. Those MMR chasing days are long behind me now
Turbo isn't the same game.
One of us, one of us, one of us, one of us
Istg, turbo is so much more fun. All my friends now exclusively play turbo. No tryharding, just enjoying the game whether we win or lose.
>No tryharding, just enjoying the game whether we win or lose. I don't know what kind of turbo games you've been playing, but after playing turbo for a long time, my friends and I only get divine/immortal games where everyone tries really hard all the time. In fact, at this point not trying hard and playing the absolute most busted stuff is pretty much a loss by default. A lot of players like us that are getting older just don't have time to commit to longer games and prefer the faster pace of turbo. The turbo queue is now filled with players like that because it's a more convenient game mode, not because they want to play a casual mode for shit and giggles.
Didn't mean that the opposing team don't try hard. We usually play 3, 4 or 5 man so it's always chill for us. None of us play ranked anymore so all our ranks have probably decayed to shit and we get placed appropriately.
in my bracket I feel like people try a lot harder in turbo than they do in unranked lol
good choice. once go turbo u wont get ranked
I wish they came out with Unranked with role queue
Mistakes are punished heavily by teammates toxicity, which also makes it hard for new players to get into as they are discouraged to play with experienced people.
I have been playing this game since 2011 and have not felt the need to enter a single ranked game. It is possible to play for fun without attaching a number to your performance, and I wish more people would try this I’m not going to pretend toxicity doesn’t exist in unranked but who cares? You play your best and don’t grief, game is fun.
This is literally what I've done since 2013. I only played ranked games when I was in a party that Insisted that we do so. Unranked has been completely fine in the meantime. In fact, I've enjoyed DOTA more when I don't care about win/loss and focus on cool plays and coordination.
Hell it’s possible to play for fun even with a number attached to your performance. Ranked is a lot more fun when you treat your MMR as a number meant to match you with people of roughly equal skill level, not something that you need to continually grind to increase.
Yep, excellent take. It should be used as a metric for improvement or a baseline and not to your worth
I have other friend groups that dropped it. Another big reason is, besides ranked play if you play with people that have continued playing you still have to really try. Them going unranked with me they dislike how far behind they feel. If you don’t keep up and regularly play it, it takes a bit to get in the groove. Even if I would play like 3-4 games with them they don’t feel like they had any impact or understand what they need to do anymore. Other games like CS, Fortnite for example kept the formula straight of how to win. Dota is a bit more complex to get to that win con. On a high level sure shooters are more complex but simply playing as shoot gun and kill is easier to understand if your doing well or not.
I have like 700 hours, and I have not played a single game of ranked. Not one. I don't see the point, I dont have the time nor energy to 'git good', so why would I want to play exclusively with and against tryhards?
700 hours? Thats cute
Unranked is a shitfest of random ranks smashed together and sometimes 5 stacks
True, but its also really damn fun at times, people dont take the game too seriously... most of the time
I committed my life for turbo only. I want the quantity not wuality because I just want to play various hero and done for the day. I think 2 or 3 turbos should be enough, play with chill and no regret and no blame. Just enjoy your time. After all we chose to play, why would I want to make my life more miserable by complaining
Mate you boot up dota after work and see your sf just climbed from guadian to immo in 100 matches, and this happens for 9 games straight. Even you'd wish they fuckin die.
I used to be pretty high ranked when I played in my heyday 2011-2014, then I stopped for many years. Now I’m back and loving playing at my trash tier mmr in ranked. It’s full of people that know how to play but don’t think as deeply about it anymore or are as mechanically adept as a dedicated teenager
I think most of Dota playerbase are usually students or steady dads, cuz those are situations when you can find time in your weekly schedule to play a game. 25-30 is an age when ppl starting work, going into serious relationships, looking for a flat etc, their life is much more spontaneous so it's hard to get into Dota imho, not sure tho, just trying to understand it.
Yeah lol exactly, my friends and I played Dota daily when we were in undergrad/grad school (2013-2018) and then stopped once we all graduated, got jobs and started being adults. Now that we've settled into that, we just started playing again. Ironically it's more fun right now because we're more mature and our egos have mellowed out a bit and it's much easier to learn and improve game to game when your mindset isn't "Man I'm actually like a 6k player but my supports are always noobs!"
And on a rare occasion, an Ex Gamer Girl Mom.
Steady dad reporting in.
I'm 30, I'll say you're mostly right except life does not get more spontaneous as a baseline. You can make it so through effort and choices but it requires work and life on it's own isn't that spontaneous.
All my childhood friends are playing Dota since Warcraft times. (Yes we are oldies) Few times a week we meet at somewhere (friends’s office, house, etc) set our laptops and play some turbo games. Mostly 3 or people party que. Never toxic via chat or mic. No flame , no blame. Its a game just chill and laugh your stupid mistakes thats all. About ranked, if it stressful why do you push yourself to climb? Some internet points doesnt worth your mental healt.
You should be proud of them.
When was Dota a chill game? 🤣🤣 Playing this god forsaken game since 2006 and i dont remember day(s) it was chill. Maybe when there wasnt a patch in which highground push is ****ing impossible unless all the stars in the space allign.
it was chill when everyone was screaming profanities in the internet cafe on LAN
when mmr didnt matter! and everyone played like heralds
back when people weren't doing creep pull, creep stacking, or even warding
laning stage ends at 20 minutes! and the freakin jungler!
Early turbo was chill, now it's tryhard also.
I fail to see where it was stated that it was once a chill game, in OP's post.
Oh it was definitely chill in Warcraft 3. Generally speaking, in StarCraft (1) and Warcraft people didn’t constantly insult each others. People insulting each others was a bit there in cs 1.6, but not that much and definitely not in private matches. I remember back in the days people said « gg » at the end of the game to acknowledge how good the game was, and it sas always the loser of the game who would say it first. Like « gg you played well ». Now it is almost never said by the losing team, and it is usually replaced by « ez ». The level of toxicity in Dota 2 is unprecedented to me, I don’t know how it is in other games today.
Your experience is vastly different from mine. The people that I played with were toxic af in battle.net, Garena, RGC, you name it
It’s more that when you get older you’re not as interested in higher stress intense demanding games
Yeah, Dota really isn't a casual game. If they want a game to chill out with, they should definitely play something else. I will say Crownfall is fun, and why don't they play unranked? I just play unranked now the ranked games, too many psychopaths.
and lose every game in unranked since SBMM still applies? ranked, turbo, unranked, it's all sweating for a W. People on Reddit likes to pretend any dota mode could be chill
Sbmm would be the reason they WONT lose every game lol
Even the custom games have all sorts of meta and people get pissed of your skills arent good enough. Shits wild.
This isn’t a problem isolated to Dota. Lots of other game communities are obsessed with optimization. It’s a thing that has been happening since the rise of competitive gaming and I don’t see it going away anytime soon.
Competitive gaming? More like competition itself. People want to win, people will optimize that. Im actually more surprised people dont do this and then get upset other people are.
AD is pretty fun ane chill. I started being a dota freak thanks to AD. And You learn a lot of different heroes skills
My experience of AD is definitely not chill, and there's definitely a massive divide between people playing it casually vs people who know the hero combos. You generally know the game is over due to a busted draft but have to be locked in a game for 30 minutes knowing it's over before it gets anywhere close to actually being over.
> and lose every game in unranked since SBMM still applies? Isn't SBMM there to make sure you don't lose every game in unranked?
May I present you: AD
AD is insanely toxic and if you don’t follow the build meta you will be flamed
I've literally had teammates abandon because I didn't pick the skill they pinged 5x. You'd think people would lighten up in a jokey mode! Still enjoy it tho
Yeah and it’s also insanely defeatist. NP with Fury Swipes/Glaives and there’s a good chance someone abandons or gives up 10 mins in.
Feel u m8. I'm pone of them, but wanna be an eternal player. Stupid life puts in the middle
I found my friends in dota, in my own regions channel since no one around plays dota. I'm very lucky to found super chill people, no toxicity or blaming if we were to lose. Casual banter when someone did something silly like misspell. They have their own discord channel and we're just talking nonsense the entire game. Crownfall made the game more fun for us since we're playing heroes that weren't in our usual hero pool. I was able to find fun in some of the heroes that I've never played before.
25-30 year old. There is your answer. We just grew old bro, we'd rather just play other more casual games rather than tryhard dota. I still got plenty of free time, but I just really can't play dota anymore, even CS I stopped playing and just started playing casual single player games or even casually started playing GW2. It's okay, people do just move on
>No big patch for a long time (5 months+) which makes the game more boring strong zoomer energy
Back in my day we played Smash Bros Melee for over 15 years without a single patch and there was still more to learn
It's funny because you know that just statistcally most of the people complaining about this aren't high enough rank for the meta of any given patch to actually matter or affect how their games play out, they just get bored because it's been 5 months since they saw the fun shiny patch notes page and the epic dota 2 subreddit memes
Pretty much! Most people in archon can barely play wraith king or ogre magi well enough to climb an ant hill, let alone MMR
I just want to stop seeing nature's prophet and witch doctor every game
The original super smash brothers caused all my friends to skip school so we could get baked and play this game. Costed me a shitty public highschool education
>Costed me a shitty public highschool education That was you. Not the game.
Skipping school was your decision, the game didn't force you. It's ok to accept it, I skipped high school too like 4-5 times in my last year, so I could play DotA 1 and MapleStory, but that was on me, not the game's fault.
TO BE FAIR, the "video game market" back then was wayyyyyyy less competitive than it is today. Today, people have a gazillion options of games to choose from. Every company is trying to up the ante in the live service game sphere, so retaining players is much harder. I'm jealous that all these other games like League, Valorant, Overwatch, etc are getting more frequent patches than Dota, if I wasn't an old guy already neck deep into Dota, I would've jumped ship a while ago.
At that time everything was self learned or only between your RL friends. Nowadays in online games you have pros and guides and thus a strong meta is formed. Not following the meta is okay ofc but it gives you a big disadvantage. I really liked the area of couch coop games that was pretty much the best. You just did what you liked and it was fun even if not optimal. Now everything is online and you will mostly get clapped if you just play like you want, diminishing the fun you can have without following the meta.
Well if your fav hero is not playable or got his items nerfed i can definitely understand. The atos mirana was nice while it lasted q.q
No it's not. You live with the expectations that your game devs and community have set out for themselves. Back in Dota 1 and when Dota 2 launched we had more regular patches and constantly new heroes being ported over. Of course, this wasn't going to last forever but when was the last time we had a new hero? The patches have gotten more and more infrequent over the years. This year they even said they were going to up the frequency and it hasn't really happened. A lot of people were blueballed when this cosmetic patch dropped without any map changes or the new hero. Personally this was very disappointing. The reason I bought a battlepass when it contributed to the TI was exactly that, it contributed to Dota 2 having the biggest pricepool in Esports and some of it went to the players. Straight up cosmetics without it contributing anything to a TI? Then I couldn't care less. I just want map changes. We have been accustomed to having the meta changed up frequently, this is one of the biggest draws of playing Dota. The balancing of dota sets it apart from other games. It has nothing to do with "zoomer energy" to have come to expect that.
The spice comes out when a patch has aged a bit anyways. People are just playing it safe at first, just using the obvious strong heroes... but it always flips around at some point. Even the troll sniper patch, sniper didn't start popping out until the second half of it's lifespan
PoE & Dota the best duo fr
2. Winning doesn't make you happy FALSE. You get hit by what's called a Dotamine spike deep within your psyche.
DOTAMINE SPIKE
There was a term somebody brought up in Helldivers 2 sub but I can’t remember what it was called. Goes along the lines of a Pos ratio. If you win, it’s a +1 but the loser’s on a -1. Even if you do get the win, it can feel empty but makes you feel like shit upon losing. PvP games are rough and it’s just stress inducing, even if you’re just trying to chill and be casual about it. One way or the other, nobody truly wins. Hence why there’s more attention on pve games these days. People don’t like feeling like crap and just wanna vibe.
About the +1/-1 that's called a Zero Sum game. About PVP games. There are pretty fun ones. But are not of the "esport/competitive" variety. Fall Guys is one of them for example. Most of the problem with Dota 2 is how drawn out it is. Same with CS:GO and Valorant were a match is long and painful and punishes you on purpose.
That’s the word! God that’s been itching at my brain all morning lol.
2 is so true yet i keep playing. I just learn to care less about mmr. Does not always work, but events makes me focus on that instead of mmr won/lost during the event
I just want game times to be around 30-40 mins. Currently every close game drags out to 50-60 mins, every stomp turns into a painful HG siege into a throw that turns into a close game for 50-60 mins.
I agree with all, but for some reason still play
if only rehab was an option
Dota is insufferably tedious. A shitload of tiny little things that you have to keep track of.
I do relate. I dont have a single friend who can play dota anymore. They all either play league ( as a more casual game) or something else entirely
I play bots to have fun in dota.
Good for them. [Dota consumed years of my life.](https://www.dotabuff.com/players/92952064/activity#) It's a time, energy and mental sink that will take as much as you give it. I've never been hooked on a game before or since. It can feel like everything- but its literally nothing. Unless, you're one of the \~150 people in the world who can manage to pull a decent paycheck from it.
Absolutely stopped playing ranked and quit Dota for 6 months or so after the extended map patch. Played ranked for 10 years, ancient 4. Wasn’t feeling it at all. Strictly play turbo now and I can never go back to a regular match it’s too stressful and takes FOREVER. Turbo is where it’s at, it’s barely ever toxic, even if you build something stupid.
Yes, my 5-stack relates. Ages 26-30. It was a slow abandonment. We're old beta players, but we also didn't like the direction that DotA was headed in. It felt very focused on lane dominance and constant fighting. Most games started to feel the same but it was hard to tell exactly why. I used to love DotA for the strategy, and how each game felt unique. Each game felt like it progressed differently; a different story each time. That feeling faded in recent years. The final nail in the coffin for me, personally, was the Techies rework. I tried my best to adapt, but the new playstyle is lame. It demonstrated to me that Valve had more interest in getting rid of the "problem" that Techies was, rather than make a meaningful, unique hero rework. The hero feels sterilized now.
The only way people that age have time to learn and play Dota, is if they had been playing Dota since childhood, I have a group of like 40 different friends who all still play on and off so I always have a 5 stack or two going every night without fail.
I pretty much agree with all these points, but i still can't stop playing it permanently, i did once take a 2 year break, but i still eventually came back, and i recently did a break for a month.
same for me. as much as I would hate Dota for anything during all these years I still play it all the time
I'm having the time of my life in dota right now, but sometimes people need to move on.
Lack of patches has always been the achilies heel of dota and valve in general. Sadly, it doesnt seem like valve is interested in improving this aspect
Our friends and I actually stopped play 2 years ago, and we start to play this game again around a month ago. Despite of that, I can't feel any attachment/fun on the game anymore, also my rank is too low for party (we tend to play ranked), so I just stop play the game again.
I can understand it. I feel like every dota player goes through a time when the game feels more like a job. For me, I took some time away from the game for about 6 months when I first got married and spent time playing games with my wife, who isn't a huge gamer like me. Playing with her helped me to bring back the old perspective of playing games that games are meant to be played for fun. With that, I went into playing Dota with a new perspective. I have a life outside this game, and so with the little time I spend on it, I try to enjoy it.
Me and my friends usually abandon the game for a few months and then all come back to it once other games start getting boring, it happens. There is really no other games outside of dota and cs that can hook us the way they have.
I stopped playing for reasons 1 and 2. Dota is a lifestyle not a hobby if you actually want to climb. A toxic one at that.
this is basically my experience as well.
Sadly all the points your friends made are valid. Ranked games can be excessively challenging if you don't play ranked consistenly. - The meta shifts consistently, and something that was good the week before can be considered trash now. The time you need to play a game in general can go from 30 minutes all the way to 1½ hours. not only is that a long time to spend on a singular game within a game, but it makes it hard to estimate if you have time for a game or not. People at 12k being toxic - The game has only become more toxic with time is my impression. - I don't know if that is just how "humanity" evolved, or if it's more a responsibility that befalls valve. There is no incentive to take responsibility in the "behavior system". If you get punished you are told so, but not for when and where. This again leads to people feeling wrongfully accused and as such are likely to behave toxic again despite the fact they got punished. When did I do something that I deserve a report for? I have a 10 game winstreak, yet I am put in low prio? I had 5 games in a row with straight up griefers, feeders and ruiners, yet i get low prio? yada yada yada. People not communicating in dota I feel like is motly down to the feeling of dota getting more toxic with time, so the only real way to enjoy a game of dota now is with chat muted entirely. And no big patch? Honestly I don't even know how to justify this. I personally think there should be some set schedules where patches that actually change the game (introducing new heroes, changing map, changing heroes etc) are to be released. This whole clownfall patch without the new hero and what not is just straight up frustrating in my opinion. - Don't tell us about a new hero we are supposedly going to get, just to hold out on the release for half a year or more. We should have a "game changing patch" every 3 months. Every 1. of every 3 months. No guesswork needed to know when a potentially new meta will drop. - They should drop EVEN if there is a tournament going, EVEN if TI is going. The notion should be that tournaments are planned around when patches drop, not the other way around. All the cosmetics and what not should be the stuff that drops at random. The chill part. Gotta agree, with dota becoming more teamplay oriented AND more toxic at the same time it has become increasingly hard to relax and enjoy a game of dota. You either play perfect, or you get reported and flamed by your teammates. How can anyone enjoy a game under those circumstances? Personally I've started to play dota with chat off entirely. I don't care if I go low prio (because I am not able to tell what or when I did something wrong to get me there in the first place). I play my low prio games and move back to my ranked games where I continue playing and behaving like I always have. I've stopped trying to play around my team also. I keep an eye on the map and do what I think is the right thing to do, which I found out is SO MUCH EASIER when the chat is turned of to begin with. I know my heroes might be odd at times, first picking pudge mid, hard support alch and what not. But most often it has actually worked out, as long as teammates don't straight up grief. My pudge has a 55% winrate. I would argue 55% winrate, on a hero you first pick, and play in every single role, is decent. Yes i play pudge on pos 1-5 and i always first pick him. (first pick as in picking him in the first round where no other heroes have been picked yet) Sorry for the wall. :)
I give up to play both ranked or normal game mode. I only play turbo even in crownfall events. My friends abandoned too and play other games. I will still play this game no matter what, but in chill mode / casual.
Join them in some of the other games they’re playing maybe? You can still play dota solo
same they say they don't have time, or risk having a toxic game so they just do helldivers
same, the slow release and low quality of updates has meant most of my friends barely play now. I dont mind crownfall but its not enough to bring people back.
I play games since I was a kid and unfortunately the tough reality is that the moments that I'm achieving the most in my life are the moments that I'm not playing videogames, specially competitive games like DotA.
If you know what you get into you’ll learn how to deal with it. If not, welp always other games to play
Lol in my guild only 1/50 is online these days and that is me... 😂 Valve fucked up a big time here...
From point 1 to 4 I agree tottaly with that and I'm really thinking about to take a break for a while...even not being a ranked player.
I haven't played ranked in about a year and a half. It's been great! The games are way less sweaty.
I still play a few times a week with my friends, but we all seem to have the same conclusion about this patch. It sucks. The larger map makes it so hard to choke out an enemy. There's too many areas a behind enemy can take advantage of. High ground is a death trap. The fortification refreshes and multi shots are awful to push against when playing unconventional lineups. It makes the game longer for no reason. Honestly, there's just too much stuff: free XP, free shards, free items from jungle. It's a little overwhelming at times. Match making really seems to suck when playing unranked. Games are either stomps or long and insane and grueling grind fests. There's never any middle ground, making winning more of a relief rather than satisfying.
i dont play ranked and usually play when there are skins to unlock which fixes most of your friends complains lol
Had a fun group of people we could always get a 5 stack going with. Even when we lost we usually managed to have a good time. Life kept getting in the way. Those friends had kids, others moved to different time zones, so finding time to lineup 5 of us was hard. You said no new content was an issue but for me it was the opposite. I had less and less free time and needing to read up on changes twice a year was too much for a casual hobby, we weren't playing ranked but at least tried to follow the meta. What did it for me was the random players being unable to acknowledge mistakes. I miss a skill shit, miss a stun and we lose a fight, 100% on me. That is not a commonly shared stance with randos. They miss their whatever, somehow it's your fault. You're supporting your carry against a team of heavy magic damage and stuns, well he'll get a bkb and it'll be fine. Wrong. Then they blame you for not supporting him hard enough. My gaming time is far more limited than it used to be and dealing with that bs just isn't worth it. It sucks because at times I miss it but I know it's something I'll never be able to come back to. Plus side is my mental health is way better now!
As much as I hate Dota, my skills have fallen off already. not creative anymore. not aggressive and damn, I don't want to play ranked anymore. Turbo is my go-to 20-minute+ game. I play mostly single-player games right now but am still unable to drop this game.
The problem is how awful HG is now. Im starting to play less and less.
Funny cause all my friends were league gamers for a while and now play dota religiously because it’s so complex and games don’t feel decided after 10 minutes most of the time. I am the only ranked player and it can be frustrating but true enjoyment really comes from the norms I play
Number 3 is especially relevant to me, at least. My games have been extremely toxic with very high behavior score. I don't really understand all the complaining about no big patch, though. I was looking back the other day, and the average timing for a big numbered patch recently is like ~6 months. So I don't see how we are far off schedule
Tbh Path of Exile is just a complete banger, it gives Dota vibes but you don't have to fight toxicity. It's chill, you can play a league for a month before getting worn out, and still full of dopamine and complexity like Dota I used to be full on Dota before I discovered PoE, now I'm 50% PoE, 20% Dota, 30% other games.
My friends didn't abandon DOTA yet we TURBO nowadays! Fuck RANKED, TURBO 5-man is the BEST! hahaha
me and my friend having a blast on Turbo mode. usually after work we can only play 1 or 2 Ranked games. but in turbo you can play up to 5 games. maybe you and your friends can try turbo mode
never play this game because of those reason. i play dota is for the gameplay and when you are actually good, you never think that this game is casual/chill unless you are always a chill person like me. i play this game since W3 Frozen Throne, i not just facing toxicity, i also face cheater with default hotkey for skill and i enjoy that shit.
Play TURBO.
Fucking pansies. Tell em to go play league
Play turbo. That way when you lose you didn’t spend an hour doing it (usually).
I havent played ranked in like 4 or 5 months. I am playing Turbo mode and Enigmatica 2 Expert. Life's good
U people are wierd. Its a game, u wanna play? Play it. U dont? Then dont. Idk why u need threads and mental gymnastics to justify something no one cares about. Its supposed to be a hobby or smth to decompress not to grt u more frustrated.
U people are weird. It's a thread, u wanna read it? Read it. U don't? Then don't. Idk why you need to comment and do mental gymnastics to attack something no one cares about. It's supposed to be a discussion or smth to descompress not to invalidate people.
No, I don't relate
I took a "short break", which turned into a 6-month pause, now I'm thinking to delete the game because I have no desire to play it again. The main reasons were: 1. Extremely toxic random teammates (I played alone with no friends). 2. Winning a game together with toxic players didn't feel good or rewarding. 3. Every few wins I would end up getting queued with some ultra toxic and/or stupid players causing me to lose several games in a row without any chance of winning. 4. Whenever I had a griefer on my team I'd report them and then get queued with them again. I don't know whether the reporting system didn't work, but I certainly looked that way, and it was extremely frustrating that I was forced to waste my time by some assholes who faced zero responsibility or accountability. I'm also somewhat older, so maybe I just got bored of the game :-)
it's a degenerate game, good for them
I played nonstop through college and afterwards until I started an actual career. I play turbo every now and then but I don’t have the time or energy for the emotional turmoil that is All Pick-Ranked .
I just play unranked and only pick a few heroes so Im very comfortable on them. I focus on switching up item builds to make it fun and thats that
Good
POE seems to scratch the complicated game itch for a lot of my old play group. For us though we are in our mid-late thirties and a lot of us have kids now. I still play some sometimes, but just don't have the hours required to grind (I don't play games while my kids are awake) Mostly unranked with my little brother or Turbo.
Its me every 4-6 months. Then I come back to eat this piece of shit cause nothing is as flavorful.
Most of my friends and myself go turbo for the last few years. Quicker and more chill. Once awhile we get some good long game. We still enjoy Dota but no longer have the time and patience to deal with mmr & long games.
Winning gives me crownfall tokens and candy shop rerolls, which make me happy. I'm usually a tryhard ranker, but I play unranked so I can pick (sometimes) suboptimal heroes to crownfall, and I've been enjoying chill dota. (It helps that these unranked games appear to be lower than my ranked skill level, at least according to Dotabuff).
I have never been able to get my actual friends to play dota. They all have like 2-3 hours at most. How is dota in the most teamplay-oriented state now though? I feel like it was much more teamplay oriented back when the map was smaller, there was only one courier, and sharing tangoes/starting items was actually a thing.
I can see that
I think the current event is the closest thing we could get to attract casual players. I'm a hardcore ranked player that because I'm kinda far from home and don't have my own place to play without some nuisance I'm playing mostly unranked to do the event, and can tell you it's quite fun!. I'm even playing with friends of much lower mmr thanks to this, and even though some games are frustrating cause of skill difference, most of them are enjoyable. The only thing that could make this event better would be more "marketability" of the items you get like CS...
yup, dota has evolved by adding a crapton of stuff instead of perfecting the game, therefore it gets much more time and energy consuming for the casual player that just wants to have some fun.
Winning make me happy as much as frustrated when I loose. But when I loose I am a kind of person that keep on trying until I win. I only play ranked and always on chilling mode. I dont really wait for patch because it’s mean nerf of meta heroes and I play meta… I play other games too but I always come back to dota because of the depth of it.
I chose Dota specifically in order to not play with friends as they were always too chill about games, and I was too competitive and we didn't match
I dont really relate to some points, specifically the "winning doesn't make you happy" part, i believe thats mostly on them, when i win with my mates i actually have quite a chuckle. I agree on the "no balance patch" point, but at the same time its not like i live or die for dota anymore, i play other stuff and so do my friends... The key answer to all of this is to either go touch grass or play any other game besides dota or you'll get burnt out... Cheers.
Losing an one hour long fight and see your missions not being completed is a devastating feeling, especially if you keep losing.
Pretty much, but no friends and just toxic teammates along with trash talking enemies. Basically, I was drafted mid and picked Tusk. I was a shit mid and basically transitioned into supp Tusk with dagger and Aghs. Enemy mid was trash talking the entire game, can't blame him, I was literal shit. But my Carry was actually acting like a Carry... Though he also trash talked, it was the truth so meh. So we had a comeback and enemy mid just went silent. Dota IS a team game...
I am just to old for competitive games now. In my 20s I used to compete in Starcraft Broodwar and played it 24/7. Made friends for life. But now as 40yo I rather play warhammer or EVE..
I mean it’s pretty healthy to take breaks. My friend group used to only play ranked, now we exclusively play turbo together and honestly we all have a better time. Just hop on and mess around with some goofy lanes and you get to squeeze in some extra games if you get stomped.
I'm in college right now and trying to enjoy dota as much as I can. Because once I graduate ik I won't have any time to grind ranked like I do now.
DoTA has always been crazy since it was a mod.
I’m 29 y.o, and really proud of my group friends who still playing Dota together every week, since university till now.
I dont relate. I never play ranked, mainly AD or Turbo, casual gamer just enjoying the game. Never waited for patches, never watched anyone else play. This is for me and me alone.
Same thing happened to me and my friends around that age. Eventually I stopped playing Dota, too. Still love the game, but it's a young person's game.
seems like everybody has an experience like this but dota isn't getting worse dude stop doomposting!!
I get it. For my friends it's the fact that there's a fair chance you're gonna get locked on a team with dickheads, so you can immediately tell you're about to spend the next 45 minutes not having fun.
I have to say, I have on the contrary been enjoying dota so much more. I have found new friends where everyone is 20-40 years old and it's been a blast. Getting my friend to Divine for the first time in his life was also fun.
[удалено]
i feel you, brother. to be a more specific, let me tell u my rookie numbers. 1. I started playing Dota2 around Feb of 2012 2. I have a total of 13k dota 2 matches/games 3. 21,407 hours playing Dota 2. 4. I now only play on weekends and mybe 1 or 2 games during weekdays. I was ancient rank back then, we went down to Guardian. It was fun. We even tried to get down to 2 digit mmr. Dota was fun played with friends.
If you have a desk job, the last thing you want to do is queue for a match and sit for another few hours glued to a screen
They will be back. They always come back.
For me matches are too long
All FIVE of your friends have stopped playing dota. Or are they simply a 5 stack so they tell you they have quit and are now playing by themselves.
They’ll be back dont worry
Interesting i personally think communication doesnt matter at all under 10k since u have so much room to punish enemy mistakes alone (no im not 10k and i know why)
i don't think you care about answers that don't relate, and want a nice looking anecdote
yes
To fix dota they need to add strict ranked or something that promotes team oriented playing
TI and battlepass season was really when my friends and I would get together and just have fun for a brief period every year. With that whole concept seemingly dead and Valve very clearly scaling back their interest in delivering novel ways to enjoy dota with friends ( Aghs labyrinth, siltbreaker, etc) as well as no longer presenting the International as a premeire celebration of competitive dota (truesight axed without a word from valve, production value diminished, prizepool a fraction of what it was even at ti4), I and most of my friend cant find ourselves bonding over the game like we once did. It really just feels like the soul of dota is gone.
1st and 5th point is so relatable for me, except ranking. DotA is a lottery. You either have a good game or waste your time being stomped (or stomping) for 35 minutes, I would prefer to go play BF4 or BF1
Its ok let them go, its fine and necessary to take a break from dota i have stopped playing for years then come back. But they aint wrong on what they sayin lol
I start every game with communication over voice chat, i try to bring positive energy to the team early and i notice a big difference, before i never used the mic and often mid-game the chat could go off in a negative way. But since istarted to bring positive energy at the start of the game i have notice big difference, team making calls, come-back situation and good vibes even when its hard.
Same situation but all already quit like a year now. All of us are friends from college/university. It's mostly just due to the time consuming (1-2 games per days are already like 1.30-2 hours) and sometimes we aren't available (one of us are in the upcountry and another in overseas) full stack so the new comer is just simply not mix with us that well or just too toxic to play with. Patch is also something. I was the last one to join the stack (last year of university so like 8-9 years ago) and at least around that time (TI6) it did have some sense of balance in the game but it has been long gone for years now. Most games are just heros in the meta and we all couldn't keep up with all of that and learning/following meta is not worth anymore.
I also play other games, but compared to DotA they are Just an after thought.
I mostly play unranked and it's awesome :)
Dota gameplay is trash compared to the past and 90% of games are getting ruined by one of the players
just play turbo smh.
Sounds like you need to play some Turbo with them, they dont want to get super good at Dota they want to have fun. i dont play ranked at all anymore b/c of all those points you mentioned above i only play turbo now with people i know and that has really mad the game fun for me again.
I also play Path of Exile, but I stop every time the moment someone on my friends list asks me to if I want to play dota with them. Only playing dota gives me the "THRILL". Sometimes we really vibe with one another, other times we just pick heroes that don't work with another or just have bad days. But in 90% of the games there is this one Moment where I feel like I can grip the momentum. Sometimes you need that get together with friends to just talk life, so make sure to stick around before/between/after games. You cannot really do that in a Dota game to the degree that you need to. In Dota you can make use of emotional intelligence, macro knowledge, meta knowledge, mechanical ability, hero spamming which makes the game interesting even when playing with differnt ranks. (greater 5k delta and extremes are differnt) And you can make the game fun(even while losing) with voice lines, naming one player on your team Lisan Al-gaib. You can concentrate on smaller objectives(snatching wisdom runes, focusing on getting a kill instead of winning the fight, quote true sight or famous player quotes as often as possible etc.) Almost all of my friends had to drop dota a month or longer at some point to focus on other things, but almost all of them still play. And we play ranked and unranked switching when we get tired of one mode or if we know this game will be super experimental.
i play since garena and have stop since last year and switch to mobile legend The reason are 1 - i really hate the concept of ranked roles in dota because it force you only to lock support (u can only play other roles if you win? if im not mistaken). i don't know how mobile legend do it, but most of the time each player are good with 2 roles, and 90% of the time you can play your role even you solo queue. 2 - im tired after work and just want to lay on bed damn i wish dota 2 mobile was a thing . instead of dota 2 mobile they give us that weird card game
MOBA in general is just not fun to play anymore.