While I agree that calling a game bad because the playerbase is bad (public player base should be considered a given in a game where multiplayer is a MUST sorry) becaue the developers have no control over that, DoTA has both a lack of depth, and drowning amounts of depth. As a player, you get a hero, and your strategies are very limited to that hero, at most you have 4 abilities (some of which you may not even get until the game is already heavily leaning in or against your favor). And while the number of items you can shop for are extensive, again, many of those items are so pricey that by t he time you can afford more than 1 or 2 of the non-minor ones, the game is again already tipped towards one team. Plus the items you SHOULD get given your chosen hero, abilities to level, and playstyle is often very limited in terms of what's a no brainer, what's a good idea, and what's just totally not worth it.
Skill builds are as flexible as you make them out to be. Item builds are as flexible as you make them out to be. Let me cite an example of a very popular hero who is used very often both in the competitive scene and in the casual scene - Shendelzare Silkwood, the Vengeful Spirit. She has four very simple skills - a single target stun, a -armor, -damage skill in a line AoE, a +damage aura, and a single target position swapping skill. Each of these skills are very simple to understand, but the power of the skills to level up at what time, and how to use her swap skill - Nether Swap, her ultimate, can be analyzed in more depth.
Her stun, Magic Missile, is a skill most players tend to max out immediately at Level 7 (Lv4 Magic Missile does about 325 damage, stuns for 1.75 seconds, and costs 140 mana or something). I actually do this too in smaller games, because you can afford the INT items needed for mana upkeep early on. However, in a proper situation, you would never max out Magic Missile early-game, because the stun duration
is the same at all levels, that is to say, Lv1 Magic Missile and Lv4 Magic Missile both stun for 1.75 seconds. However, Lv1 Magic Missile only costs 95 mana. That's far more spammable than a MM that costs 45 more mana.
Here I will compare two Lv1-7 early-game phase skill builds I snatched from random recent guides.
| Level | Build 1 | Build 2 |
| 1 | Magic Missile (MM) | Magic Missile (MM) |
| 2 | Wave of Terror (WoT) | Wave of Terror (WoT) |
| 3 | MM | WoT |
| 4 | WoT | Command Aura (CA) |
| 5 | MM | WoT |
| 6 | Nether Swap | Nether Swap |
| 7 | MM | WoT |
Summary;
Build 1 - Magic Missile Lv4/Wave of Terror Lv2/Swap Lv1
Build 2 - Magic Missile Lv1/Wave of Terror Lv4/Command Aura Lv1/Swap Lv1
Now, the table is probably meaningless to you, so I will explain what I mean. Build 1 is more viable in smaller games, because you start out with more money to buy the necessary items that allow you to upkeep a 140 Mana stun that early. However, Build 2 is just as reliable in the same game, because Wave of Terror allows you to deal more damage to the enemy by lowering their armor. Furthermore, at Lv4, it deals 100 damage to creeps, allowing you to last hit far more easily and allows you to push faster. You can also take more punishment from the enemies' lowered damage. However, you don't get these benefits with a half-levelled WoT and the most mileage you get out of build 1 is a powerful stun that renders you with virtually no mana unless your ITEM build is compatible with it. Either way, there are many ways to build hero skills, these two builds are not the only one.
This leads me to my next point: Item builds with Shendelzare. There are MANY MANY MANY possibilities. Most competitive games delegate the VS as a pure supporter, handing her extremely minimal gear - Power Treads (STR) or Boots of Travel late-game, packed with a Magic Wand and a lot of Dusts of Appearance and/or Observer/Sentry Wards. Usually, the only item a competitive VS would buy are Boots of Speed and wards, to be able to gank straight at level 1. In public games, VS is built more as a DPSer and/or offensive tank, capitalizing on her stun and the fact she needs to survive enemy focus when she Nether Swaps with a strategic target. Either way, you can be creative with your item builds with ANYONE -
you just have to be skilful enough to pull it off.
The actual challenge of the game comes from memorizing the absolutely STAGGERING number of enemy heroes and items, yes memorize. It's not about reacting to an enemy's strategy, or using advanced logic to predict what they will do. It's simply knowing their hero, knowing what moves that hero is, and you can pretty much know their strategy right from the start. THIS is why the learning curve is so high. You don't just "twitch" your way to victory against the unknown, it just doesn't happen (unless the enemy doesn't know your hero as well). So in my opinion its learning curve is semi-"fake", because you aren't really given a whole lot of control and options to play with (outside the initial select a hero thing) that are viable, but you're simply required to memorize so much.
You HAVE to react and adapt to an enemy's strategy to win. How can you win a game if you keep failing against the enemy's strategies if you don't react to it? You'll get tossed around like a ragdoll. You also don't have to memorize how to play every single goddamn hero ever, not everyone in the goddamn world is at Yamateh's level, or Vigoss' level, and those two are like professional players or some shit (Loda's passe, man, and KuroKy's overrated). Let me cite some examples where you have to REACT:
--> Being harassed by a Demon Witch or a Slayer, or any goddamn nuker ever? Get a Hood of Defiance/Khadgar's Pipe of Insight for the team.
--> Are you a good carry and need a silence or a disable? Get an Orchid's Malevolence or a Eul's Sceptre of Divinity
--> Do you need to act as a tank against nukers, and/or save your teammates? Get a Black King Bar
--> Do you need to stop single-target spells like Finger of Death, Laguna Blade, Nether Swap, and a plethora of stuns? Get a Linken's Sphere
--> Are you facing a team that has no nukes or spells at all, and are getting killed? Get a Ghost Scepter
--> Are you facing evasion whores? Get a Monkey King Bar
--> Need to mitigate poison damage or Lucy's Doom? Get a Vanguard or some HP regen items
--> Is the game late, and you don't have enough space for teleport scrolls, and are a carry? Replace your Treads/Phase Boots with a Boots of Travel
--> Is Warlock's Infernal giving you a hard time? Get a Diffusal Blade and use Purge.
--> Do the enemy team have Linken's Spheres? Use a cheap single-target spell to stop it, or use skills like Dwarven Sniper's Shrapnel
--> Need to chase, and Blink Dagger ain't enough? Get either Phase Boots or Lothar's Edge
and the list goes on and on and on. Really, the learning curve IS high, but definitely NOT because of memorization. It is because you need to get in many games at once to learn how to REALLY play, and learn how to react to certain situations that take place in the game, and learn counters, and learn how to stop a lot of bad things from happening to you. And the general consensus here is that - LOL DOTARDS ARE ASSHOLES THEY WON'T LET ME PLAY BAWWWWWW. Seriously, I have NEVER had such an issue, maybe it's because I was "blessed" with friends who are more obsessed than I am with the game. Anyway.
DoTA actually reminds me of chess. I think that chess is a joke now. Nobody plays chess on a professional level without actually MEMORIZING EFFING PERMUTATIONS. I mean how stupid is that? Its just not a game at that point. They study a game with millions of permutations for hours into days into years, and it ends up actually being a game based on how much the other studied, and how much they can memorize. It's honestly pretty sad to me where they actually have names for certain permutations and positions and all that, it's really hard for me to see it as a game at that point. Chess as a game, wasn't originally designed so that you are required to be at this level of play to begin with. It just became so popular that it simply happened because of that silly notion that playing chess means your smart and sophisticated. DoTA on the other hand was pretty much designed to be like that.
DotA was NOT designed to be like Chess, what the fuck? You're blatantly making assumptions, assumptions that aren't even true! DotA was designed to be a hero-based, co-operative competitive game, like Counterstrike except in some sort of weird RTS format. On a professional level, the team who wins in a DotA game is not based on "how much they studied," it's based on "how much they planned," and "how well they played," and "how often they practiced." DotA wasn't designed so that you are required to be at a professional level of play EITHER,
that doesn't explain the millions and millions of public games that are being hosted every day. Kingsurf is a team that lots of players hype because they are genuinely good, but they have their bad days when Yamateh fails as a carry for some reason or whatever. CH (City Hunters) is a popular team as well, they aren't always in top form. MYM (Meet Your Makers) are also a very hyped team, mainly because of maelk, but maelk ain't always at the best either. Either way, professional games in DotA are just like professional SPORTS - it requires practice, and teams don't always perform at their best even if they are considered a very good team, just like in basketball, in football, in baseball... I don't see how you can compare DotA, a competitive game with a healthy metagame with Chess, a game that doesn't have much of a developing metagame PERIOD.
All that being said, as I said, I don't think DoTA is a bad map, and even if I think it's not worth $50 as a game, I wouldn't really make a fuss if it was priced at the doujin game level (not that it's priced at anything, but people treat it like a commercial $50 game), and it IS a doujin game pretty much (doujin map rather). So I am more critical about it than I am other warcraft 3 maps. It's DEFINITELY way better than plenty of warcraft 3 maps out there that I don't say are bad or whatever. The reason is because people like DoTA too much IMO. I mean you yourself I don't consider one of these people. You're a hardcore gamer, and you spend a lot of time playing TONS of different games, I know that a great deal of the DoTA fanbase on the other hand play DoTA for more than half their free time, and only DoTA, over and over and over, like it's some MMORPG they are hopelessly addicted to. It's just not THAT good.
HoN, which is basically a DotA rip-off, is actually priced at around $30, for what it's worth. I know for sure I'm not paying money for that game. Anyway, that aside, I think it's more that too many
people like DotA rather than people liking it too
much. I can see why you're critical of the game but ehhhhh I disagree with too much of what you're saying, I'm sorry.
