i think this is the main difference from other games. DotA doesn’t hold your hand – it doesn’t even try to help you. it’s not made for kids.

however, if you put real honest effort into it – you’ll get automaticly rewarded. However, you got to keep it up in every game – nothing you did before gives you any advantage later – onyl thing you bring with yourself is your skill and expierence.

i heard one person saying that – DotA is not made for nerds. and i see real basis for this – any weakness, passiviness get’s punished hard in DotA.

To add something to this article, the matchmaking works, so that’s one big step in helping the newbies meet their match before the tutorial is implemented. I know this because smurfing is only fun 3 games in, when you’re past that it’s the same level as your original account all over again ROFL. And I never have to explain stuffs at my level of matchmaking. You just have to ping here and there. Dota 2 is totally a revolution if you compare it to the original Dota.

And there’s a whole host of learning tabs in the options which are currently greyed out because they’re not implemented yet. Coaching is amongst them. This is why this is a rant about rather than a review of Dota 2; it wouldn’t be fair when such a crucial part of the game doesn’t exist yet. And who knows, Valve might yet pull off the impossible and make an effective Dota tutorial.

(Twenty-two hours in now. Enjoying it a lot more now that I know what I’m doing.)

Also, doesn’t Dota 2 have some kind of coaching system from what I heard?

Dota isn’t a bad game. It definitely has a level of depth to it that I have rarely — if ever — encountered. I can see that. I can see that I’d probably like it once I was over that initial learning curve. It desperately needs to make itself more accessible, though; this doesn’t mean tone down the complexity, because that’s what makes Dota good, but rather just find a way of teaching new players some of that complexity that doesn’t involve kicking them in the nads repeatedly.

If you keep playing that ‘one more game’ you’ll soon be hooked too. It’s kind of like Endless Space (which I bought because of your review, and loved it) except it never gets old.

The thing is, those people who spam insults and try to tell you what to do aren’t really representative of the whole community.. They are just the ones who never shut up. Most of us just shut up and play the game… and play it better than those super serious weirdos I might add.

In my opinion (which I know to be an unpopular one with the serious people), communication isn’t at all important in Dota/Dota2 and the best way to enjoy what the game has to offer is to turn off all voice chat. Honestly, it’s far more of a distraction than anything else.