The Undisputed Truth

10 Reasons to NOT Play DotA

Of course there are many guides out there telling you how DotA is the best thing ever and some sites/communities etc, such as this Facebook group, even saying its the best game of all time.

However there are at least 10 reasons why you should stay away from defending that throne or tree for approximately 45 minutes :

1. Its addictive. In 6.60 there will be almost 100 heroes to choose from. They all can be played multiple ways using about 100 items and the combination of skills among them is almost endless. In other words, the replay value is insane, and you will always be curious about testing out new strategies etc = addicted.
2. The learning curve is very, very high With those 100 heroes, 100+ items, and 400 hero abilities to learn, its not something you can walk right into and enjoy.
3. Its elitist Because of the level of strategy required, high learning curve and the time it takes to start and complete a game, anything other than perfect understanding is not tolerated well by most online players. If you’re a beginner, be prepared to be flamed, bullied, banned and abused.
4. Its imbalanced This is a topic in discussion since the DotA concept was introduced way back with the Aeon of Strife custom map for Starcraft. Its a well-known fact that DotA is imbalanced. Certain heroes just make no sense at all and others are overpowered and with certain combinations, a win is certain unless something really out of the ordinary occurs. This also diminishes the fun for new and even veteran players. For example, how do you stop a hero who is permanently invisible, has insane damage, who can cause you to miss and silence you, when all you can do is summon a bear and hit him back??
5. Those hero sounds get to you..“Time to go”, “Shoot to kill”, “Alright, who wants some”, “Ahh, child’s play”, “You fail to amuse me”. These are just some of the phrases you’re going to hear from your hero each time you issue a command, and that’s each time you move and attack, and cast spells for some. This is almost maddening after 3 games, you’ll swear you were a Tauren warrior swinging a totem pole.
6. Time commitment Each game is different, but its a rule of thumb that the average game lasts 45 minutes, that’s a whole half of a football/soccer game. And there’s no such thing as taking breaks either. So coupled together with it being addictive, you’re going to be spending lots of time playing DotA once you start playing it.
7. Too many changes or too long between changes DotA is a community-run game edited mainly by Icefrog and his beta testers. If you start playing DotA and you grow fond of a particular hero, chances are by the next version release he will be changed to be either much weaker than he was before or just changed to be something else entirely, e.g Storm Spirit and Undying. This is annoying. If you like changes however, Icefrog sometimes takes ridiculously long to update the maps, like with 6.60 for example. This is annoying as well. The law of diminishing returns steps in here.
8. Fun factor is heavily dependent on your team You could be the best player in the world, you’re not going to have fun playing DotA if your team is retarded…and Garena and Battlenet (DotA online clients) are full of retards. Its quite common in a game for me to be doing well, getting a lot of money, having a positive score and having fun when all the sudden I see 3 team mates doing stupid stuff like orb-stacking, buying illogical items and just overall being idiots. This effectively wastes 45 minutes of your time. Its ok to lose after 45 minutes if your enemies outsmarted you and just won, but losing because of your own team’s lack of cooperation and stupidity gets to you.
9. Too many leavers/hackers/bug-abusers Especially in Ladder rooms (USA DotA Rooms 1-5), there is rampant map hacking and bug abuse as certain players apparently pride their life off their ladder statistics. I was personally told by a moderator that Garena does nothing about bug abusers, so therefore it is condoned by Garena regardless of the fact that it cheats the ladder system and other players. Map-hacking is also a problem which cannot be solved, ruining the game as well. Untop of these things are leavers who leave the game after they die too much or when their lame wireless internet acts up. This is made worse with that ladder system, as players are either forced to take a deduction in ladder points because the host or team leaves, or forced to sit and slowly lose to a team with more players. These things totally spoil the game.
10. There is no real end or objective World of Warcraft is understandably addictive, but its also very rewarding and vast. You can explore massive lands, interact with millions of players, get countless items and the gameplay is very non-linear. DotA on the other hand is rinse and repeat. You pick a hero, kill creeps, kill heroes, buy items, destroy the Frozen Throne or Tree of Life, type gg and thats it. Although you may become addicted, there is no real fulfillment from playing the game. It gets repetitive and boring…..yet you may find yourself unable to stop playing it. Its true you can say this about most games, for example all you do in Street Fighter is hadoken your enemy to death, but I highly doubt you would  spend hours upon hours playing Street Fighter as you would with DotA. Example of games where there are real ends and objectives – Final Fantasy series , God of War series, etc.

Do you have any more reasons to not play DotA?

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