4Game

I'm writing this post because I just recently chatted with someone in the comments of a post about the new surrender mechanic, who said that Role Queue was awful for DotA…. even though they said in the same comment that they're too high MMR to even experience it. I see these comments all the time – people trashing basic matchmaking mechanics for being "too much like League" or "taking away from DotA", even when they've never even experienced those mechanics.

It just isn't the case that mechanics like role queue or a surrender option will make us less unique or hurt the game. DotA isn't unique because it lacks matchmaking mechanics that are standard in other games, it's unique because of things like active items, importance of CSing and creep aggro in lane, the entirely free hero pool, the unique hero designs that aren't reliant on skill shots, among many other things.

To every other gaming community online, these people make us seem like fanboys ravenously coping over why it's actually good that our game lacks basic mechanics. Our game is not good because we can't surrender from a 45 minute long fountain farming session, because we have a 1/10,000 to still win. Our game wasn't better when we had people fighting over mid and feeding twice as often. Our game is better because of the gameplay. I'm sure this is only a vocal minority, I love this community, but good lord the elitism is hurting us and our ability to get new players.