A new player’s experience

Hey, I’m posting my experience trying to get into this game. I don’t mean it to be a whining post. Rather, I hope it might dialogue about your game and how it handles new players.

I decided to try to get into DOTA over the last several days. I work and go to grad school full time, have a family, etc. and wanted to use my summer break to try to get into a game. I don’t typically have a ton of time to play, but I miss it. I remember really liking DOTA when a friend introduced it to me about 10 years ago.

I tried to do it right to not be a burden to others- I played bots until I maxed out the difficulty. I tried new player mode but it’s just populated with bots as well. When I made the jump to online games I announced I was new at the beginning of every match tried to take/welcome advice.

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like there’s any space for a new player to learn the game playing online. Of the four games I played, My team continually griefed for 3 of them. The usual stuff: telling me to quit, that I’m an idiot, blah blah.

It would be one thing to just mute the players and play on, but they’d typically abandon me in lanes, making it tough to go up against multiple experienced players at a time- players that knew I was a relatively easy target. It’s made the game fairly unplayable.

So I’m hanging my hat and trying for a different game. It’s a shame, because I really like the game of DOTA. It seems like a blast, and I had a great time playing the bots. I, like most people, just don’t have a strong desire to listen to toxicity while I try to enjoy my limited time off.

Hoping something changes with the DOTA scene and I can try it again one day. I just wanted to throw a flag up to the community because I’m sure people would like to see their favorite game grow instead of shrink, and Im guessing my experience is pretty representative of a lot of new players’.