Just was gifted DOTA 2. Where do I start?

[thesilentman]

Thread title reveals all. I sat in my library at school thinking 'man, I left something I need to work on at home!'. So I fired up a Remote Desktop connection and saw that my friend gifted me a copy of DOTA 2.

I'm happy and all, but I have no idea what DOTA 2 is, what the mechanics are, or how to play it. I'm going into this completely blind. Anything I need to know?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Thread title reveals all. I sat in my library at school thinking 'man, I left something I need to work on at home!'. So I fired up a Remote Desktop connection and saw that my friend gifted me a copy of DOTA 2.

I'm happy and all, but I have no idea what DOTA 2 is, what the mechanics are, or how to play it. I'm going into this completely blind. Anything I need to know?

Most basic newbie tip imaginable? You're going to want to blast into a lane and just start smashing creeps like crazy. Don't. You need to prance around like a fancy lad waiting until they're really low on health, and then try and nip in for the last shot. Just straight up murdering them is Bad. You'll end up pushing the line forward and getting eaten in the shadow of the enemy's tower. Once the game progresses and people are roaming around ganking and towers are falling, you can start murdering creeps instead of pecking off their last hit points, but in the beginning you need to be surgical about it.

 

[thesilentman]

Load it up, click 'play' at the top, create a lobby, fill all the empty slots with easy bots, start game, pick Viper and practice. Oh also look over this

http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/guide/viper-the-carry-by-lt-vllx-gt-2104

And watch this, a first time Viper play

You should REALLY read this. Yes, the whole thing.

http://www.playdota.com/guides/welcome-to-dota-you-suck

Thread title reveals all. I sat in my library at school thinking 'man, I left something I need to work on at home!'. So I fired up a Remote Desktop connection and saw that my friend gifted me a copy of DOTA 2.

I'm happy and all, but I have no idea what DOTA 2 is, what the mechanics are, or how to play it. I'm going into this completely blind. Anything I need to know?

Most basic newbie tip imaginable? You're going to want to blast into a lane and just start smashing creeps like crazy. Don't. You need to prance around like a fancy lad waiting until they're really low on health, and then try and nip in for the last shot. Just straight up murdering them is Bad. You'll end up pushing the line forward and getting eaten in the shadow of the enemy's tower. Once the game progresses and people are roaming around ganking and towers are falling, you can start murdering creeps instead of pecking off their last hit points, but in the beginning you need to be surgical about it.

Uh, could you guys speak English here? I've only just installed it.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

By not starting at all.

No matter how much preparation you do, this game and its players will eat you alive. Make one tiny little mistake in the first minute or so? Well, have fun spending the next 45 minutes unable to do a damn thing about it, while all your teammates chew you out harder than you've ever been chewed out before.

This game is nearly impossible to get into. Your time would be better spent on something else. Like Dwarf Fortress. At least you don't get constant criticism for the tiniest slip-up in Dwarf Fortress.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Uh, could you guys speak English here? I've only just installed it.

Well then you're DOOMED. DOOMED I TELLS YA.

Did you ever play a BG in an MMO? Imagine that, only top town. And you need to kill some neutral monsters to level up.

By not starting at all.

No matter how much preparation you do, this game and its players will eat you alive. Make one tiny little mistake in the first minute or so? Well, have fun spending the next 45 minutes unable to do a damn thing about it, while all your teammates chew you out harder than you've ever been chewed out before.

Oh rubbish. I've played all of 10 games against people and gone 50/50. I even carried the team in a couple. The matchmaking is pretty good about pitting you against fellow derps. And in 10 games, I only saw the notoriously ugly community rear its head once, in the form of one guy talking shit. Most everyone else has been perfectly civil.

It's like any e-sport, really. Yes, it's pretty competitive, but actual bitching and trash talking is usually the exception. Most people are busy trying to play the game. My friend went 0-8 one game that we lost badly, and no one said so much as one harsh word to him.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Oh rubbish. I've played all of 10 games against people and gone 50/50. I even carried the team in a couple. The matchmaking is pretty good about pitting you against fellow derps. And in 10 games, I only saw the notoriously ugly community rear its head once, in the form of one guy talking shit. Most everyone else has been perfectly civil.

Are you, by any chance, a leprechaun? That sounds a lot more like luck than the average experience. What I got was exactly what I described, all game, every game.

Edit: And yes, this is even if you go in with somebody else, whether or not they already know what they're doing. At least, the 'one early mistake takes you down a slippery slope of doom and sadness/rage' part.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Are you, by any chance, a leprechaun? That sounds a lot more like luck than the average experience. What I got was exactly what I described, all game, every game.

Did you play in the early beta, when most of the people playing were hardcore DOTA fanatics and the matchmaking system wasn't in yet?

There were my first ten MOBA games EVER. I'm as hapless as hell. Can't use the courier. Constantly messing up. I was 14-2 in my last game. This was due to the guy in my lane being even more hapless than me rather than any skill on my part, but OP is likely more than capable of playing a few games and having fun. The low level games tend to be a good mix of the semi-experienced and the utterly clueless.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

The low level games tend to be a good mix of the semi-experienced and the utterly clueless.

And by 'good mix' you mean 'the former is your team and the latter is theirs'?

Look. I'm advising this guy on personal experience. It's the only kind of experience I have, and my experience is 'Dota is hell'. If your experience doesn't line up with that, then please don't tell me that my experience was wrong.

 

[thesilentman]

Uh, could you guys speak English here? I've only just installed it.

Well then you're DOOMED. DOOMED I TELLS YA.

Did you ever play a BG in an MMO? Imagine that, only top town. And you need to kill some neutral monsters to level up.

Never played a pure MMO[footnote]I have played Planetside 2 and that's nowhere near the MMOs that I think you're talking about.[/footnote]. I'm just not interested in them as I have other games on my backlog at the moment, and I need something to refresh my mind. I was thinking of trying some indie titles, but my friend gifted me DOTA 2, so I have something different to try.

EDIT-

Look. I'm advising this guy on personal experience. It's the only kind of experience I have, and my experience is 'Dota is hell'. If your experience doesn't line up with that, then please don't tell me that my experience was wrong.

How'd you have a bad experience? I'm just curious.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

How'd you have a bad experience? I'm just curious.

Look up at my previous posts. Tl;dr: This game has an unreasonably low tolerance for mistakes, and so will your team. Maybe that's just me getting all the bad applies despite not being in LPQ, but you will still have to spend 45 minutes watching yourself slowly get destroyed and not being able to do anything, because you have no gold, you're four levels behind the other team and remembering what screwed you up isn't useful when the next team you go up against will be completely different.

Unless you have the patience to make a saint green with envy, Dota 2 is not the right game for you.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

If you aren't smart enough to watch a youtube video, follow the very simple instructions to play against bots or look at a webpage, don't bother with it, uninstall it, go back to solitaire.

Yeah. Bots. Pull the other one. It's got bells on.

Bots react the same way to just about everything, and they only ever pull out the same ten or so heroes. Once you get used to how bots pick, act and react, that's what you'll start to expect from players - and that's what you won't be getting, leaving you unable to do anything except just keep playing PvE for the rest of your gaming life.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Unless you have the patience to make a saint green with envy, Dota 2 is not the right game for you.

I feel like I know you well enough from the usergroup to say this. Sorry if it offends you. But have you considered that maybe, you just have absolutely zero patience and you automatically assume many others are the same? Because they're not.

You need patience to get good at DOTA, yes. But not THAT much. Average patience should be more than sufficient, providing you find the game itself fun of course.

Unfortunately, my idea of 'fun' is not 'spending 200 games being unable to do anything to stave off my inevitable demise that gets dragged out over (edit: 40) minutes because of the game's impossibly large problem with slippery slope'. Having somebody more experienced in the same game does not help, because whatever cooling effects they could exhibit would be overbalanced by the added frustation of playing against people well outside my actual skill bracket.

Or maybe I'm just the least lucky person who ever booted up the game, which honestly wouldn't surprise me. Playing at a low level is the ultimate crapshoot. And slippery slope is still inherent there - if you lose, you're going to get pushed down with the even worse players, leading to you continuing to get pushed down because you keep losing, even if it stops being your fault.

Bottom line is that Dota is probably the least noob-friendly game I've ever played. If OP really wants to play the game, then I'm just letting him know that that was my experience and it might well wind up as his, too.

 

[thesilentman]

If you aren't smart enough to watch a youtube video, follow the very simple instructions to play against bots or look at a webpage, don't bother with it, uninstall it, go back to solitaire.

Uh, could you guys speak English here? I've only just installed it.

I'm not sure what part of my post confused you. I posted a link. Click on it. After that, read the stuff that appears in your web browser.

Sorry, I was just busy at the time and my comment was directed more towards Bloated Guppy.. I'm taking a look at the link and the video right now. Thanks for the link and video, they are pretty helpful.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Oh yeah, and one other thing: There is nowhere written down, literally how to play the game. Not just how to win it, but the basic controls. There aren't even any 'basic controls' guides. If you need help, they're exactly the same as they were in Allstars. Didn't play Allstars? Sucks for you.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Sorry, I was just busy at the time and my comment was directed more towards Bloated Guppy.. I'm taking a look at the link and the video right now. Thanks for the link and video, they are pretty helpful.

Pfft. Look what I get for trying to help!

I'd look through all of Total Biscuit's Single Draft Disaster videos. I believe the first one was Windrunner. He goes over a lot more of the basic concepts in the first two videos. The "Welcome to DOTA You Suck" site is pretty informative, but more than a little intimidating, and not really representative of the pace of play at lower levels in the matchmaker. It's rather the equivalent of watching a bunch of pro replays of Starcraft 2 then shuddering at the thought of entering bronze league. Yes, you'll suck, but so will everyone else.

Oh yeah, and one other thing: There is nowhere written down, literally how to play the game. Not just how to win it, but the basic controls. There aren't even any 'basic controls' guides. If you need help, they're exactly the same as they were in Allstars. Didn't play Allstars? Sucks for you.

You really had a bad DOTA2 experience, didn't you? =(

 

[NerfedFalcon]

You really had a bad DOTA2 experience, didn't you? =(

You think?

(edits removed because it was really getting insane)

 

[DustyDrB]

You could do like me and just play bot matches with friends because we have no interest in getting too serious with the game. It's surprisingly fun, even with how sucky we are. It's casual, rage-free Dota. And we can also play the way we want, rather than having to worry about optimal builds and whether we're letting down our teammates.

Or you could be serious like some of my other friends. One likes to spec our games and laugh at us. Then he'll tell me to go watch Purge and learn.

 

[Verzin]

do what I did to get into this game:
*Read the guide that SmashlovesTitan posted. (it's by purge: purge is good to learn from. he has good youtube series too.
*Play a few bots games so you aren't completely lost
*play a real game (EDIT: you will probably lose)
*continue playing real games until you know every hero in the game and what they can do *100-200 games
*read and watch everything you can find about dota.
*Farm. FARM ALL DAY. Teamfights? np guys i come after this creep wave.

EDIT: If there is one thing you need to play ANY MOBA, it's a very resilient skin. YOU CANNOT LET PEOPLE GET TO YOU, and god knows they will try.
If your experience is like mine, you will be told to kill yourself, told to uninstall, and called every combination of bad names in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian.
DO NOT LET IT GET TO YOU. DOTA is an extremely fun game once you get into it.

 

[Tanakh]

Just go and lose. If you are godly good somewhere within a month of losing and costing your team the match you will start learning, if you are average, somewhere within the year it will happen.

Lose, learn, and develop a motherfreaking adamantium skin against what your team thinks and says. Take the good, leave the bad. And have fun, not much more you can do but that.

Also, did I mentioned you will lose and you will cost the team the match? Especially if you are not familiar with RTS controls. But we all did, so don't sweat it

Edit: If you want educative videos... well, i wouldnt reccomend them till you actually knew what you are doing in general... but if you really want i would reccomend this:

- http://www.twitch.tv/merlinidota

- http://www.twitch.tv/aui_2000

Merlini is also starting some tutorial vids, but they are not for newbies. And at any rate, watching those two and hearing what they say will make you a good player almost for sure.


Edit: Also, if you want to see the highest current level of dota, I would suggest you this VoD:

- http://www.joindota.com/en/vods/3131-g-league-semi-final-lgdcn-vs-ig-game-2

If nothing but to see how the top dogs perform.

And another Edit: I learnt a LOT of this vid, but might be a little advanced:

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXne3KrQ1Ng

Dendi (probably the most gifted DotA player) saying his toughts about solo mid, the position he plays.

 

[Greenman19]

Take advantage of the recent flood of keys and learn/play with other new players as the majority of current players are so-and-so's
Other than that just read a guide or two and play, at first with bots (You can also play with real players against bot teams) then move on to proper play. You will suck for a good while, there's no learning curve just a sheer vertical climb to the point of not sucking so much. You will feed (Die a lot, giving the enemy team a gold/experience advantage) but it really is such a fun game when you know how to play and play with the right people.


P.S You'll need a thick skin