If you think you’re good at introducing Dota 2 to a newbie, you’re probably not

This isn't meant as a diss to anyone in particular. In fact, it's meant primarily for myself.

I always thought I would be pretty good at introducing Dota 2 to a completely new player. I'd written a handful of basic guides that lay out the fundamentals of the game, and made custom hero grids to make hero picking easier. But that's not actually what makes you a good teacher.

Watching Grubby's stream has made me realize what the most frustrating part of the game is. It's not the hundreds of mechanics and spells and exceptions you need to learn. It's not even the hundreds of hours you need to put in before you feel somewhat comfortable.

It's actually the average Dota player who's going to be breathing down your neck, teaching you and giving you unsolicited advice on what to do and how to do it every damn second. Granted, Grubby actually asks his chat questions, but the amount of "2k experts" that are constantly ready to tell him before he's even asked the question is absurd.

I say this because, I had to learn this about myself the hard way. I don't often type in chat and tell people what to do and how to do it. But watching a newbie make tons of mistakes makes me so easily triggered, that I'm sure if I was in a call with them, I'd be telling them why they shouldn't do it and why it's bad and what to do instead. There's a kind of expectation that you're supposed to learn a whole bunch of encyclopaedic knowledge in a matter of days.

Leaving that aside, even the responses to "hi, new player here" posts on this subreddit explains the problem. It's dozens of comments, often repeating the same thing, giving a massive list of 15-hour playlists and guides that you're supposed to go through. The best advice is probably the simplest, "play the tutorials and take your time to learn, Dota 2 is a marathon, not a sprint".

I think us Dota 2 players need to take a step back and think about what's actually drawing people away from the game. For years, people said it was the lack of proper tutorials. But now that we even have them in the game, I've noticed most new players don't bother playing them. They just want to jump head first into a match and learn as you go along.

But the expectation from players both in and out of the game that you're supposed to learn a whole fuck ton of things before even jumping into a match with real players is pretty harmful.

Let's chill out a bit, yeah?