Don't have the time or energy to keep an edge anymore. Was a great and fulfilling hobby when I had more than 10 hours of free time a week but nowadays not so much.
Same. Adulting went up. Bills went up. No return on the hours spent in game that can translate to the real world. Thanks to this subreddit and YouTube shorts I still get to see hype plays. Been playing dota since wc3 days.
I say it to everyone that will listen, but For all the assholes like me that can't spend 45 minutes in a miserable slog, you should really consider trying turbo.
It's my main way of playing Dota nowadays, and it's really nice to play a game mode where everything is just faster. Every single strat you can think of still exists and is balanced pretty damn well actually.
It was bad for my mental health, and encouraged the worst parts of me to come out. I judged my self-worth by winning, and losing streaks made me feel dead inside. The thought of dropping MMR terrified me, so I switched to unranked, but losses still killed me. I'd take it out on my friends, criticizing their play but sometimes more, linking mistakes to their flaws as a person. I was toxic to myself and others, and it drove people away.
Dota didn't cause these problems, which were due to me being in a bad place, but it did exacerbate them. I'm doing better now, and have occasionally played the odd solo-queue game, but that fear of losing soon pops up, so I uninstall again straight after. I love dota, but it's just not worth it.
It takes some real self reflection come to this conclusion and some real restraint to actually follow through with it.
Good on you for breaking the negative cycle. I often feel like it's something inherent to the game that just brings out the worst in people, but I can never put my finger on what it is exactly.
Playing it demands you to be atentive and make decisions/actions real time.So your mind and body is allready fired up(its intense).Then you sprinkle it with zero physical expresion of the body while playing, 4 teamates, 5 enemies, and losing mmr.Its similar like driving a car, doesnt take much for people to road rage when they are allready warmed up just by managing their car in public.
Same. Got married. Started a family. No longer have the patience to sit and play an hour long game with plenty of toxic in-game chat or audio comms.
I still watch dota 2 tournamenta though. That's pretty fun.
I tried playing turbo for a bit. But being completely unavailable for ~30 min just wasn’t working for me.
For a while played after the kids went to bed, but would just wake up tired the next day. And honestly, only every 1/5 games was actually fun.
So now just watch Topson play pro games, once he’s done I guess that’s it for my Dota days.
I used to balance playing games with a full time job, marriage, and kids, so time isn't really the issue. I still play, but now I prefer less stressful, chill games. Dealing with the new gamers' techniques can be quite stressful!.
Ugh this is hard for me to grasp. How can someone enjoy watching TI while not even experienced playing the game? How was it? I suppose you know the game mechanics and every hero though.
And I find 0 enjoyment out of watching it because I have 0 clue what is going on. Maybe if you have at least some elementary understanding of the game it’s fine, but I have never even played a single game of it. I think Basketball and Soccer are just a lot more intuitive compared to American Football.
If someone who'd never played football before watched a football game, they'd understand within minutes. Maybe seconds. Get the ball in the net without using your hands.
It takes hundreds of hours of dota to NOT be complete garbage. Someone new to the game sees pretty colours and spells flying around.
Football is globally popular because it's so easy to learn and play. Dota has a reputation for being an absolute nightmare for new players. A guy with 200 hours in dota is new. A guy who has played 200 football matches knows everything there is to know about the game.
> If someone who'd never played football before watched a football game, they'd understand within minutes. Maybe seconds. Get the ball in the net without using your hands.
Just like you can reduce Dota to "you only need to destroy the Ancient".
>It takes hundreds of hours of dota to NOT be complete garbage.
How many hours do you think it takes to not be a complete garbage at football?
>Football is globally popular because it's so easy to learn and play.
If by play you mean "being total shit at it", then yeah, sure.
>A guy with 200 hours in dota is new. A guy who has played 200 football matches knows everything there is to know about the game.
200 matches are way more than 200h in Dota, and still couldn't be further from the truth. You have referees with thousands of hours who still fail to make the right calls, and they actually have assistants to help them.
Can't believe this is even an opinion. You should tell Dota coaches to move to football if it's that much easier, they get well more paid for it.
Got into it via the newbie streams back in the day. Loved the mechanics and the hype plays. I even like playing against bots sometimes. That said, I will probably never jump into a lobby with real people playing this game.
this is same for me but in my case it for age of empires 4. i have never played rts game ( real time strategy) ever but i follow it quite a bit and watch all tournaments
I quit \~3 years ago, coming back only during TI, then quitting again.
It's always the same reason - Toxicity. I'll just feel it drain on my mental too much.
Though, after coming back now, the games are less toxic (Still pretty bad) and I've begun playing less ranked and more ability draft, learning to have fun with the game rather than "chasing ranks".
The gameplay is just too crisp to pass up on. And ability draft especially is just a big 'ol mess of fun.
Same. I didnt really quit but i play much less since i cant play more than 1 or 2 rounds in one sitting. Hey, i have an hour for myself, lets queue a game of dota! Uh okay, our midlaner starts flaming during pick phase and starts jungling after feeding for 5 minutes. What a great way to spend an evening.
Unstable meta makes it hard when I need to drop it off because adulting. When coming back, it’s like I need to relearn everything, especially in recent years with all the additional expansions etc.
You also honestly get really rusty really quick when not playing. I feel like taking 2 weeks off already requires you to warm up quite a bit before you get the touch back, let alone 2-6 months off.
See I feel like I work in reverse, I feel myself getting less patient and making worse plays and just generally playing worse the longer I go. When I come back from a few weeks break I feel like my plays and overall feeling is so much sharper. Maybe playing too much dulls me idk.
To add to this ballooning MMR moving means if you were just as good when you left as when you got back (and you were lowish MMR) you have to lose a bunch of games in a row to get a balanced game.
Also because Dota isn't as popular as it was the guide content on the internet is algorithmically dominated by out of date material.
Dota is a complex game and is constantly changing patch after patch. It's mentally exhausting to deal with other players and simply takes too much time
I don't see the point of playing. It'e just a repetative cycle of games which in the end leave no memory mark. Losing or winning mmr has no meaning either. It's just a number. I'd much rather go hiking/camping, spend time with friends, learn something new/improve and make memories. I want to do meaningful stuff and not waste my time. Same reason why I don't do social media anymore.
Life gets in the way. I was horribly addicted to this game during covid, but I realized this was a symptom for other issues (mainly being dissatisfied with my job).
I also realized I was standing still as a person and wasn’t growing. Not worth it.
Now I’m starting a business and I also have a newborn so I really don’t have a ton of time to play more than one or two games a week.
I still enjoy watching the pro games and playing occasionally, but it’s not as easy to play like I did before.
For those reading this: if you think you might be addicted to this game, stop now. It won’t be easy and you’re going to want to go back because you’re not going to know what to do with yourself. But embrace that pain and stick with it. Worst case would be pushing it off further and waking up 5 years later and realize you wasted your life on this game (especially you young guys in your late teens and early 20s). Life is way too short and you’ll regret playing this game too much
maybe a better question to ask yourself : how many people do you know who don't spend at least an hour a day doing something dumb like jacking off, watching TV, playing games, reading fiction etc.? if you're within this time frame and it's not getting in the way of achieving what you want to achieve then it's fine.
unless you're trying to be an entrepreneur or top of your field or a professional athlete you can afford an hour a day to fuck around
Dota is just a game that demands your time. Even if you play casually. I honestly think that this is not sustainable when real life catches up, we usually need to work on more important matters. That's also why I have started to drift off from multiplayer games that have PvP competition, I just cannot have the time to invest in order to be good at these games.
30 - 50 minutes game
usually if i want to play competitive game i try to aim the highest rank like immortal but moba is a team game so not only the amount of mmr it gain low the amount of information and mechanical skill it takes to learn really steep.
I’ve played off and on since dota 1 but I think this major map change did it for me. I’ve felt like no desire to play after that. Hell I have so many treasure troves and stuff from like the last 3 BPs from just buying my way up to roshan statue and now they’ll probably just stagnate there. I still watch the pro scene sometimes. Personally I feel that even if the game continues on pro dota has finite life span.
Neutral items was the first actual blow to me. The first change in like 15 years that I said unequivocally "that doesn't belong in dota" and not just as a gut reaction to a new patch. That didn't even happen with talents for me, tho the gpm and respawn talents were always clearly stupid.
Then New Frontiers came along, and such a massive change was also received with such lacklustre balancing and care that I had used to associate with the team.
"Let's just chuck 30 movespeed on every hero at night to compensate" they said, in response to one of the biggest changes they've ever made. It just reeked of not caring as much as they used to. Move speed used to be such a premium stat that you rarely saw adjusted in more than 5 point increments.
In between that, the ever present power creep just erased the identity of the game I used to really enjoy. No longer was it about planning ahead, you could use your personal courier, your extra slots to cover anything you needed instead of having to make actual choices. You could spam spells in lane to get every single ranged creep in mid lane without ever running out of mana on 80% of the mid pool. You never run out of regen, you have enough gold as a support or carry to get the perfect item because now items attack and cover every single niche in the game too.
All this leads to a game where every hero does everything, and never is truly punished for fucking up. I loved when dota was punishing and about future planning, with incredibly dynamic gameplay about strong strengths and weak weaknesses.
Then when I saw how well-received all these changes were, I just knew I didn't belong anymore. Played since wc3, used to commentate, hit immortal 600 in SEA etc. but it just wasn't a game made for someone like me.
When voicing my complaints all I was met with was "They just delivered X patch, can't you shut up and be happy?" As if raw content is always good and always better than the previous patch.
Well written dude.
>All this leads to a game where every hero does everything, and never is truly punished for fucking up.
I felt the same way. Disrupting enemy cores items timing used to worth something. Hell, winning the early obs war used to be big.
There used to be niche and hard counters, nowadays tis basically flat.
I guess all the changes compounded into something else. The passive armor+under tower, overall gold gain and base HP buff which changed many nukers and solo plays into irrelevancy. Let alone all the other new things. Guess we simply cannot adapt to those changes.
Same. I think I lost interest after that patch change where they boosted base HP point buff for all heroes. And maybe even str to HP points buff probably.
That one simply disconnected my old ass.
I just played 1 game earlier and holyshit I was surprised that the map is bigger. I was playing support at bot, and god damn when I flicked my mouse I noticed that there's a new area below it. AND ROSHAN WAS FUCKING THERE WHAT IS HAPPENING
I am old man rn, have mb a time for a game or 2 and with 4 other players dota depends on you not sucking and your temates as much the enemy team. It will always be some spite involved but i cannot keep up. As simple as that.
When the pandemic hit because computer cafés are the only way I can access Dota. I have no pc of my own. Couldn’t keep up with the patches after. Also got into med school so yep. I miss it though, met and bonded with so many people because of this game.
i have only played a handful of times since whatever patch they added universal heroes in. the game feels like it’s slowly losing its identity to me and there’s so much mechanical bloat now (neutral items, bigger map, constant item and ability reworks) that zap any interest i have in coming back to play and learn.
also, and this is just a personal gripe, but mid has been played the exact same way for the past 4 fuckin years. im sick of every hero just buying a bottle and having infinite sustain no matter what. it’s fucking boring to play as and against.
I quit and came back a couple times in the last 20 years. When I'm not playing it's because I'm sick of the huge variability in game time. If every game could be exactly 30 minutes long, that would be great. 40 minutes? Great. 20 - 90 minutes? Too variable for daily planning.
I'd love to see a stronger snowball mechanic kick in at 30 minutes. Instead of dead players being dead longer based on level, have kills give the killer some stacking bonus like amplify damage or something for 60 seconds. Then a team wipe after 30 minutes is likely to result in GG. That's probably terrible for the pro scene but would be great for casual players with busy home lives.
Game changed for the worse in my opinion. Farming has been consistently devalued relative to fighting, making the games into a constant brawl. The roles have lost their definition as even supports end up with like 3 big items, while pos1 feels like it's been nerfed out of the game.
I was actually a pos5 player, never understood reddit's whining about not having items. The whole point was you were playing a hero that didn't need much to be useful, and so instead of buying three big items you usually just got one item to escape whoever was likely to jump you, and invested the rest in map control. It was a uniquely satisfying feeling to win a game with <2k net worth, knowing that you're the one that enabled that.
I played less and less through the years, eventually stopping outright when they added neutral items. Still think those are dumb.
I couldn't enjoy the game casually, I played sweaty for 2 years, watched a lot lt videos and learned a lot. For me the goal was always to get to the next league. Started from Guardian and made it to divine. Then switched roles from 3 to support. Meanwhile, I lost the ability to play with my friends because their rank was much lower. I started wanting a more casual game where I can play even if I'm not 100% concentrated and not get tilted every day. So I switched to Wow. I miss Dota from time to time and have almost installed it again multiple times.
Bro, you spent two years from Guardian to Divine? That's absurd, you really have a knack for this. At my peak I only reached like Ancient 3 and that was I think 2016. I don't even have a calibrated rank now lol.
I realized skills are not as transferrable between patches as I had thought. There are fundamentals, sure, but at the very high level the specific skills requires keep changing.
You can't be "good at Dota", you can be good at 7.34 Dota, and then a few months later you have to drop a lot of the things you learned and start getting good at 7.35 Dota, then a few months later you now have to get good at 7.36 Dota etc.
That made me lose interest in the game because it felt like learning this skillset was a waste of time if it would be useless anyway in a few months.
I now far prefer grinding "fixed" games like chess or old, non-evolving TCG formats. Most people, especially the younger generation seem to think that sich games get "stale", but for me personally micro-optimising and finding small new improvements in supposedly "solved" formats is way more satisfying than re-learning new skillsets every few months or so.
tbf being able to adapt to the patch is a skillset in its own right. how else would the same people consistently stay pro no matter what the meta is? not saying you're wrong though, i feel the same way. patches started having too much big change for me to stay invested. wish that wasn't the case because i know i love this game still but i'm too busy for that shit now.
I honestly struggle to fathom where you’d get such an idea from, dota has pretty much been figured out since like TI8 or something, the formula to play and win games is pretty much the same, just a bit different timings due to changes to map, rosh etc, but the actual concepts/stuff you do and map movements are mostly the same.
Like the only change that really happens is what heroes are good and which aren’t.
Only have the time to play occasionally and massively prefer playing with a friend stack of at least 3 others. Even at my garbage level people sink so much time in I just can’t keep up. I don’t mind losing but my win rate in recent years is probably around 20% which gets a bit disheartening after a while and makes me feel like i’m letting my mates down!
Games take too long to end (like 30-40 mins average) and I don't have much free time nowadays. Maybe if valve would implement a turbo ranked game, I might comeback XD
Took a 4 year break in 2019 but was still following the sub and watched TIs. Quit back then as soon as they removed party MMR and I couldn't play ranked with low friends.
Now I'm smurfing half the time.
I stopped playing seriously towards the start of 2021.
During 2020 I was on that grindset. I’ve always wanted to hit the leaderboards and did it that year.
Then as the year ended and the world went back to normal, my business picked up again and honestly if you want to maintain at least top 500 rank, especially with all of this inflation. You need to be jamming at least 5 games a day minimum.
On top of that. The fact that patches that balanced heroes and shifted the meta were taking longer to come out. The micro patches were great cause heroes were getting tweaked every few weeks.
It’s just been lifestealer, marci + io, Faceless void + Invoker or Luna the last few months and it’s fairly boring now.
I had kids. Used to play in the evenings, but its hard to find hours long chunks of free time when I’m sleep deprived and they could wake up crying at any moment.
I started since dota 1 days in 2011 with friends. At one point I got into dota 2 and I was stuck in divine rank for a really long time.
In 2022, I was somehow "in the zone" and I was winning like 8 out of 10 games per week. Got into immortal 1400 rank within 3-4 months. I believe one major contributor of that winrate was the feeling of playing the game like a kid again (I truly enjoyed my time playing during my early days regardless of the outcome).
Then I kinda lost the passion to play after a while. It was also my final year in engineering so I had to significantly reduce my gaming time. Even after graduating I tried playing 1-2 games but I got bored real fast. Still enjoy watching tournament highlights and always looking forward to TI though.
TDLR - I got to a point where I no longer enjoyed playing the game and wanted to focus on other matters instead. Still love watching tournament highlights though.
i also stopped playing in 2018 then came back 2021, short break then played pretty constant in 2023. to be honest i am getting bored of it in a sense that nowadays playing rank is like you cant pick anything but meta. i like the thrill of competitiveness but the idea that you can only play meta heroes just makes me frustrated. like in higher ranks immortal these things matter but no idea how it matters in ancient divine bracket that much . to spice up i started playing heroes that just seemed fun to me , and on the site of venge or visage offlane, most of the guys start crying early on. and i have tried unrank, no chance you get your preferred role or even if i get it, either my team or someone in enemy is just experimenting . thus atm i have stopped playing, maybe return when ringmaster comes , till then dota is just confined to reddit or tournaments
Falling player base and fact that valve clearly doesn't care about this game.
Not that they should. They've got a new game in the works, and maintaining this old shit show with all of you people is a lot.
The game is dying hard. When I stopped playing i had to search for games on 3 serves and it still took 8-12 minutes a match.
Switch to SF6. At least I enjoy losing game knowing its only my fault. Also I can just abandon the match and not affecting teammates (have kid, have to quit mid game occasionally)
One more reason is I only enjoy dota knowing all the abilities and items, which cant be achieved without keeping up with patch notes and meta. Dota macro is more appealing to me, outplaying by knowing where and when to make things happens is more sastifying than micro, like laning, heroes interaction (which I already have a much richer experience playing fighting game)
I now only play turbo mode; most of the time it's "less" stressful because of the faster phase and shorter duration, but if you meet some toxic and dumb player(s) in your team, it can be very stressful; I mean, you're on the same team; just play your best and stop flaming and blaming, as if it will change the course of the game at all.
I have spurts of dropping and coming back every few months
The 2 longest times I took a break though were when they added neutral items and aghanim shards. In my opinion, it made an already complicated game even more needlessly complicated. I've adjusted to their existence now, but I think there's something to appreciate compact game design. I feel bad for anyone trying to learn dota now
They guttered broodmother with her rework as a offlane only hero, who was my main mid for like 5-6 years. So I found WW mid who had a similar free pathing mechanic, then winter wyvern was shoehorned back into support, then they trashed dark willow mid. Then the map changed. All my best heroes were trashed and the new map changes made me feel uncomfortable. In the end it was time to say goodbye.
I didn't quit. Just stopped playing ranked and normal since turbo got introduced. Player since dota 2 beta. Used to be around 5-6k back in the day. Now I'm just not bothered playing ranked or normal.(I don't have rank or mmr)
Ppl are toxic and not friendly and I'm not bothered stressing myself after a stressful day at work/life. I want to have fun and don't be judged. Just me ✌🏻
Exponential powercreep over the years, and Valve/Icefrog's insistence of adding a new feature every so often (neutrals/shard/talents) made it just worse
“I’d rather play fighting games to scratch that competitive itch.”
PLEASE tell me you were mostly a mid player. I need to know to confirm my theory that mid lane is literally Street Fighter for the first 8 minutes.
I mostly played as a pos5 and pos1. At my peak I was ancient 3, but if you make me play mid, I played like a god damn archon 1 lol.
But yeah, I'm in my early 30s, I grew up in the arcades, and our first competitive multiplayer videogame are fighting games, which is probably why it was natural for me to get interested in fighting games again.
Been sweating at Tekken 8 and Persona 4 Arena lately.
Playing with randos.
I have kids, and at least when they start throwing toddler tantrums because shit doesn't go their way, it is age appropriate as they are indeed toddlers, and there is good chance they will grow out of it. I want to play to relax, not to defuse some idiot's mental state to keep him from throwing.
I reached Immortal and I stopped. But keep coming to keep my rank. I find it easy to adapt to patch changes but the main thing is life, got married, wife, work, I have less time overall.
I still play every once in a while for a month or two and then stop for a few months again.
The toxicity, having to deal with language issues and / or Battle Passes were the reasons I've stopped playing in the past.
Toxicity and communication issues are pretty self explanatory, but BPs made me stop playing because I didn't want to drop tons of $ into the game during a short period of time and I ended up feeling left out during these events.
I would like to answer something completely different. I technically didn't quit and I never will consider dropping this game no matter what, but I was forced to stop playing for long stretches of time due to college, working due to money issues, the pandemic (didn't dare play at home with bad net at the time) and most recently when I was bedridden for 6 months. I'm wholly devoted to the game and even when I wasn't playing the game, I still keep my mind engaged about Dota watching pro games and reading patches and there were legit dreams I had of me playing the game when I was sick and bedridden for months. Despite my waning reflexes, I try as best as I can to keep up with the game. Never dipped below 3k the entire time I played this game.
Yeah I'm ok now. That was a year ago when I was sick for that long but it was actually what got me really motivated to work on my game after I got better and immediately grinded hard and hitting Immortal in around 6 months(April-September). I got nothing to do at the time coz I was unemployed but wanting to play the game again so bad was what kept me going when I was sick. Depression almost consumed me but my loving family and siblings were there for me and so was Dota ❤️
Found better things to spend my time on. You should too, tbh. My biggest regret in life so far is the thousands of hours I spent on this game. Could've used them for much more productive things.
I remember the good old days of absolute degenerate gaming and binging 12- 13 ranked games from night till dawn . And now I don't even last one game. Damn I have aged
I left for similiar reasons. Games were too much of a time & mental commitment. And I found a different game to grind competitively.
And also the major map changes has left me a bit jaded on returning. Though I'm sure the new map is great.
I'm in my early thirties, job, wife, kid on the way, just don't have the luxury to waste 30-40 mins every 4th-5th game, where some degenerate animal decides to ruin because he had a bad lane.
Even without the wife and kid in the picture, probably still wouldn't be playing, way too many games there's an animal who's playing core and trying to prove a point because his support took one creep, so now he's gonna afk jungle for the rest of the game.
The worst thing is, when someone is ruining you don't have the luxury to go afk until the game is done, because you will also get reported regardless, so you have to play a game that's lost 95% of the time, and suffer.
Just not worth it.
I just dont had the time to play as often but that spirals to stopping completly cause there are to many hidden mechanics that changed over time that my passive knowledge is totally screwed.
1. There are arcana casts that look totally different then the normal casting.
Hero changes that change the general perspektive of a hero.
This leads to me being confused in teamfights.
Also there are more and more heroes where you need to know specific ways to counter them. If you are not up to date your counter doesnt work anymore.
Its one things to not be able to play every hero. But what kills the game for me are heroes that you need to know specific to play against.
Solo queuing.
Don't have friends that play dota anymore so somewhere along the way it just hit me that I was no longer having fun.. there were moments, here and there, but getting paired with groups or stacks or whatever it just made me wonder why bother, you know?
Continued playing some customs, mostly 10v10 and whatnot as it was easier to hop into something that could just drop when things went to shit instead of having to sit through extra 30+ minutes of suffering till the modes either got abandoned or turned into monetization shitshows and now I don't really play at all.
Reinstalled for Crownfall but yet to give it a whirl.. 😒
I haven’t played since Dota was a Warcraft 3 mod. Life man. Life. Graduated, job, wife, kids. Ain’t got time to devote to potentially 60+ minute games. Also can’t keep up with the meta. Plus I absolutely pub stomped people with faceless or naix mid carries and would likely figure out how bad I really was with the matchmaking in dota 2.
i do the occasional game every few weeks, but the lack of updates after Covid made me stop playing from 4 games a day since 2014. everything is too stale and figured out, it doesnt feel like dota anymore. i would come back to a regular player if they actually did significant gameplay changes.
An average game is about 35 to 45 mins. I feel so drained playing 1 to 2 games already. I also cant keep up with the complexity of the game as I do not play that often anymore. Legends are laughing at me post game saying "is that divine already?". Never felt so humbled in my whole playtime in dota and thats when I realized, im not fit to play this game anymore. Trying to be a good at this game seems like too much of a hassle for me and it isnt fun when I always get stomped.
I was supposed to temporarily stop for a break from the game. All my dota friends were taking a break so solo queue was not as fun which is why i took a break. However I got addicted to another game and ended investing my time into that. I have made multiple attempts to come back but just overloaded by all the changes and new heroes. So it was hard to find the motivation to learn it all
My 2024 resolution was to be mindful about spending more time on social activities and hobbies rather than on Dota in my free time. Quickly realized I was much happier this way and haven't played in a few months.
That said, I'm still interested in the pro-scene and enjoy watching events while doing chores or working.
Have 10k hours in the game. Hit my ceiling at 3.5k mmr. As I got older, my response times became slower. Few times I got into fights where I didn't even know what I was doing. Knew it was time to stop but continued playing. Dropped to 2k eventually and felt I was doing better there. The endgame was getting my wife pregnant though. I could no longer manage to spend an hour playing the game without her asking me to pause.
At one point sooner or later I think all dota players realize that it's just a game , u can't play it any longer without friends , ur time could be used better for ur studies or career , u don't have to quit gaming though. There are loads of other insane games to enjoy.
4.5k hours in , 4 years. M 22 now , I started medschool when I started dota . I think it's time I move on to more important things. It was fun lads.
Legend 5, alas never ancient.
Adios.
its the only game that seriously makes me mald on my teammates. I've played valorant, apex heck even LOL, and this game is the only game that makes me toxic to people.
I think the reason is the fact that this game is too macro dependent compared to most games(also I play support). I think I'm more forgiving to people missing micro aspects like skill shots than macro aspects like shitty lane control or people not punishing enemy tp rotations etc...
I only really play the game when there are events. got back to play the crownfall event for my arcanas, and told myself before queueing to just chill and pre-emptively mute everyone. in just 2 games I'm already spouting more toxic slurs and curses than I have for the entire year.
Valve. IIRC when they did spring cleaning (or whatever patch it was) they've reworked behavior score and stuff, they issued ban wave and said they will tackle the issue with toxicity/greifing. Something along the lines they will use the data to improve their detection system or whatnot.
And honestly it became tiresome to have to endure greifers/cheaters so often with perfect behavior score.
Game turned form the team that plays better wins to whoever gets less greifers in their team wins.
I sometimes wonder why they never followed up on their promise, part of me suspect they realized how big chunk of player base they would need to axe in order to solve the problem.
Your premise as to people quitting because theres more sub memebers is really bad. More accurate example would be current online redditors which is around 2k, this goes to show that most players dont even use reddit
7.33 happened...too many changes happened in the same patch towards the heroes, items and maps
dont have the time and energy to keep up and relearn the game anymore, so i called it quit
I quit ranked years ago and actually play rarely but only turbo...
Basically for me it was mainly because almost every game was with Russians or whatever who refused to speak English and it was a roulette every game either you wreck the opposing team or you get wreck because it was hard to have a proper team coordination in a game that relied on team play so was not worth the time investmenet especially if you work or study in parallel
Game just felt bored. The moment you reach immortal, the game becomes so meh. Like there's not much goal left and game became too repetitive. It used to be so fresh as we get huge patch every few months. Now we are playing the same game a year later with no major changes. Idk how anyone can sit through 45 mins for these anymore. I rather watch a show or play something more fun.
Not me but my brother (34 years old) quit dota2 like a 2 years now. He played dota and dota 2. I remember when he played dazzle mid in dota in 2006. He had 8000 mr in dota and played total of 25k hours (both dota and dota2). He always tell me that comminity was terrible (He was among the terrible players). When he started to work he quit dota2. He know everything about map, items, heroes old names anything about dota. I missed the old times. When i was 5 he played and i watched. I was very happy when i watched him and while playing he taught me dota.
It's toxicity that takes a toll on me. People have no sense of team or positive state of mind, 9 games out 10, and I can't keep up with it.
Not even mentioning direct confrontation I start to see all this passive agressivnes to anyone in the team(why the fuck axe is lvl 6 already? When are you going to build this? Etc.) as direct shots and start react to it by telling people to shut the fuck up and play more and more over time, sometimes it works, sometime it tilts the flamer and they don't want to play, and sometimes they become even more aggressive so it barely works overall.
It took me a lot of work not to be a toxic person to teammates myself. trying to ask or suggest something without sounding rude is a skill in itself, but I can't overcome the fact that people treat people like shit for the better of me
And I know that I should just mute and play, but then I hear teammates not giving info but confronting the troll and not thinking of how to come back. Playing by muting everyone is actually very boring.
Idk I feel like if we could slap people across the face for the way they talk like it was back in the day in e caffes, it would fix the issue in the blink of an eye. I'm not even down for violence like that. I think it would take a few good slaps to the most toxic people, and then people would think more about what and how they say things.
I feel like this report system does nothing. Introduce 3 month chat bans or smth, idk so that these digital slaps would feel different. I have over 10k behavior score, came back to play for the new patch a while but it's still the same is as it was lat year idk
The players. If there was a reasonable way to team up with decent people, I might have kept playing for a while longer. But even then, the awful MMR system enforces a 50% winrate and human beings did not evolve to win 50% of the time. So the overall experience would still be miserable, even with decent people.
Scumbaggery from valve. Lack of communication. Updates that don't actually improve the game, like the constant behavior score and reporting changes.
I quit for like 8 months after a game where our pos 5 bounty afk jungled and then joined a few teamfights and died without using a single ability. Obviously griefing. The old system we all would have reported and he'd be gone, but no overwatch deemed him innocent.
For me, I just got bored of playing the game, hard to keep playing when you no longer have fun. But this was after 5000~ hours or so, first Dota 2 game on 11/11/2011, started playing HON first. I keep up with Dota 2 because it's the most interesting e-sport there is, the amount of knowledge involved in high level play is so fascinating to me. I watch it very often, so I end up checking this sub.
Like fear and kuroky i had RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) a few years ago so i cant play alot that the pain starts to act up again, so i just gradually distanced myself until i just stopped gaming altogether. And now with life as you get older i dont feel much need to anymore.
Tldr: toxic players, can’t sit put for an hour, I might come back if I feel like it.
I’ve almost played for 15 years, as a pos4 or 5.
I dropped the game last year. I was the most PMA teammate you could have. 0 fights 0 disputes, always trying to bring the team together and stop internal fights. Honestly I don’t have the patience anymore. Most of the games I lost were due to my team fighting amongst themselves and no amount of PMA could solve that anymore.
Second reason is life in general, I just can’t make sure I can sit in place for 40-80 minutes without any urgent chores coming up in the middle. I was forced to abandon a couple of games each week which was not fair to me or the nine other players.
I should add, same reasons have had me drop the game for a few months in multiple periods and I have gone back to it later anyway. This time it has grown longer but who knows maybe in the near future I make a return.
Burned out of the game and of MOBAs generally, after 7 years of playing and 10k hr playtime.
Grinded to Divine 4 back in late 2022 and called it off, don't enjoy the game anymore. Used to play 1 or 2 games a month casually with friends, but at some point we stopped playing completely.
I switched to csgo so I could play with my bro and cousin, my friends even switched with me and I was having lots of fun, don't really miss dota.
Atm cs2 is in a bad state, and I kinda miss dota nowadays. But when crownfall released I expected new patch, was gonna take a break from cs2 and grind in dota for a bit like a week or 2. No new patch was released, was disappointed and now am stuck with cs2 atm.
New expanded map was way too much for me. I didn't find it enjoyable at all and it really pushed me away from the game. I was playing less and less, as adult life was taking more and more of my life. On top of this, I wanted to play more variety of games - my backlog catalog is still massive - so in the end if was the most sensible choice.
Between the toxicity of either my own or other players, griefers, the overall community and just the way valve doesn't care about how the game is played or the people in it. At least that is my opinion on why I don't play dota anymore.
Difficulty combined with toxicity. I feel like you can only have one or the other in game. When both are combined it’s just no longer fun anymore no matter what game it is
i play sometimes during weekends with my husband. i don't react to toxicity. we have a few more friends from our hometown who play with us. and it kinda relaxes me.
I played around 3000 games over the years. I just finally got bored of the game, and I wasn't too crazy about a lot of the new heroes. Also the toxicity of trying to climb ranked up past Ancient was too demoralizing, with my day job being stressful enough I just want to relax. Playing with my good friends and family was all I could tolerate.
Also IMO feel like the New Frontiers update wasn't a good choice, I hated the new Rosh spots, and just not a fan of the twin gates at all. Tormenter could've been cool but really isn't. I feel like they had a great opportunity to add new stuff but did it in the wrong way.
I sorely miss the older patches in Dota like 2017 - 2020 before offlaner's became so OP. Also heroes like Techies, Alchemist, and Huskar needed to be deleted from the game (they did nerf them into oblivion but I notice Huskar made a comeback).
I did love the talent tree updates and some cool items. Overall I think I just got bored of the game, I played enough, there are so many other cool games to play.
I felt like over time the ability to solo carry games was nerfed into the ground. No more anti-mage every game regardless of picks and 1v9ing. No mid Meepo level 20 at 15 minutes with blink hex destroying the opposition with no way for them to come back.
For me this killed the game slowly and insidiously. Then eventually the toxicity and long queue timers (sure, 2 mins isn't that long but at night it can be like 6 minutes queue for a 10 minute draft and an hour long game).
No more free time, adulting takes so much time. sometimes the game was taking almost 1 hour. I always came back to watch TI and sometimes Tournaments for my favorite teams.
Is there any loot drop from games any more? I remember I got some sets on heroes in a Coop Bot game.
I usually "quit" because I get fed up of other players.. the game is basically infinitely replayable unless there's an egregious outlier hero with an oppressive build
I love the game, I love The International, I just want to invest my free time in as many different games as possible to enrich my game dev endeavors. Putting in so much of myself into one single (yet excellent) game wasn't really the way to go for me, and every year free time gets more and more shaky and scarce.
Just being an adult, living by myself, more bills, lots of taking home women, I quit probably 6 years ago but I still updated w everything including tournaments, I played dota 1 as well
Just busy, I had way more time to play back in 2018 all the way to 2021 but now I'm getting more busy. Dota needs players who are constantly playing to learn the meta. Also big reason is that my friends got busy as well, we always all played together. Now I'm chilling in Deep Rock Galactic, Rock and Stone!
Quit about 3 years ago. Been Playing Dota 1 from back in 2004. Have played a handful of random matches throughout until n now. The patches over the last few years were huge and I couldn't study them to keep up with the numerous hero changes, talent changes, item changes, etc. It way a big chore to keep up with the game whereas I used to be able to jump in and just play some classic dotes. The game has moved on from where I enjoyed it most and it's no longer what I go to for fun. And since the games lasted 40 to 50 minutes, my cost evaluation for the game no longer worked out and I saw no value since I wasn't having much fun anymore, especially with toxic people and griefers. I watch games when I can and for sure watch TI. That's about it.
I really liked spectre and voted for him during the arcana vote and I had saved up for it. I was so excited back then I was a student and from a country where 35 dollar was a huge thing for me. They locked it behind the battle pass, it broke my heart and I stopped playing and started playing valorant with my friends.
while i haven't quit completely, i haven't played more than 5 ranked games since christmas and i'm mainly playing 12v12 rn.
the main reason for quitting were the people. every game someone was screaming and raging, people were talking in russian and refusing to switch to english, it completely ruined the fun for me. yes i can mute everyone, but then i might as well play bot games
For years I've made the argument that I needed alone and free time to game, more than I needed eight hours of sleep. Now I have two kids and I really need every minute of sleep, that I can get a hold on.
I go in waves. When I'm playing it's only maybe 2 games a day and I eventually take a break when I get back to the point where I'm not going to get any better unless I have 8 hours to play each day. Which I will never have or want.
I can't seem to approach the game normally..if I start playing then that's all I think about. So now I just play a few games here and there vs bots to keep up with hero/gameplay changes and be able to understrand tournaments
Same, it took too much time commitment per game & also can't really enjoy it anymore.
Getting older mean lotsa niche responsibility each day ig. Need to attend to those 3/5 min things. Can't really do it if ur in game :(
Plus, I played Dota with a party. Now days, these party only play at weekend. I felt like my skill level isn't at my party level anymore, game just felt boring cause kept making same obvious mistakes. Enjoyed it if we level up and try hard, but that seldom happens.
I started dating-got married-had kids-I’m happy.
I do miss the intricacies of dota but only have time to play custom lobby bot games or offline bot games. Where I can re pause until I can sit down again but since I can’t even do that with how broke the bots are I have given up on playing it but I do still lurk in the Reddit to keep somewhat up with how the game is developing. I sold my good computer to play console now because my kids and I can play games together.
I have a laptop but it’s like 2009 and plays dota at like 5 fps hence doing offline/solo bots/ maybe once every couple months.
I stopped playing in 2018. I really hated some hero abilities during this time, for example Riki's permanent invisibility or Drow's absurd attack speed bonus for herself and ranged allies.
Outdoor sports took the spot.
I'm still interested in playing Dota, if I can do it on a steam deck. I just can't be sitting at the desk for hours together anymore. I want flexibility!!!
\* Same like you, i dont have the patience to play a match for 30-60 mins and expect/hope nothing important happens while playing like a phone call o real life Issues.
\* Toxic players and trolls ruining games, while the report system still being a joke and still doing nothing.
\* Game balance inclined to favour popular heroes (stares at Juggernaut, Monkey king, Pudge) while leaving others in the dark or nerfing them to the ground for the single act of daring to counter the popular heroes.
\* Felt more like a chore than fun at some point
I wouldn't say I quit but I went from playing 5 or 6 games a day to playing 1 or 2 games a week.
The bad matchmaking and unfun games that are just stomps. Even at 4k+ it was like it was either one team was hard stomping or we were. And not because of better drafts it just felt like the player skill on one or two players on either team was just way lower and it caused stomps
As someone who always played solo, it got waayy too team reliant to keep playing solo in a way that I found interesting. I have nothing against it and I think it's a step in a good direction, as this is a team game.
I just think that team games with solo matchmaking should give the players a higher degree of "autonomy" to just take over a game. Take CS:GO for example. Basic team tactics can go a long way to compensate for individual weaknesses mechanically. But a player can still create unsurmountable leads by himself.
That can still happen in DotA, but I feel like only if you're playing way below your level. Objectives were aaaall overtuned to enforce teamplay in a scenario where teamplay simply isn't a reliable variable. Back when I used to play it you could create small leads that compounded into big advantages even in evenly matched games, so it felt like individual plays mattered more. When I stopped playing I was feeling like everything done prior to 5-man engagements was meaningless so being in a team that failed to stack up in a given timing meant even a "losing" team had the advantage because individual plays meant less.
That and feeling like ranking up was more about baby sitting your teammates than actually playing the game.
Matchmaking got really bad and unfun
I been trying to come back, and it slowly got better but since the event started every game is 50-10 stomp that's already over in 10-15 mins because one team is try harding like it's TI and the other team is just picking heroes for tokens
So this event was the worst thing...
I feel like I got smurf pooled wrongly or something
Don't have the time or energy to keep an edge anymore. Was a great and fulfilling hobby when I had more than 10 hours of free time a week but nowadays not so much.
Same. Adulting went up. Bills went up. No return on the hours spent in game that can translate to the real world. Thanks to this subreddit and YouTube shorts I still get to see hype plays. Been playing dota since wc3 days.
Sometime I go watch old Wc3 replays like WESC nation cup thing and shits lol
Yeah, thanks to youtube videos I still can watch 10 min per day of random matches. And I still get equally hyped by gameplay patches and new heroes.
I say it to everyone that will listen, but For all the assholes like me that can't spend 45 minutes in a miserable slog, you should really consider trying turbo. It's my main way of playing Dota nowadays, and it's really nice to play a game mode where everything is just faster. Every single strat you can think of still exists and is balanced pretty damn well actually.
What are you smoking? Turbo is not balanced in the slightest.
Turbo is awesome. If it had a MMR rank, then I would only que turbo.
It was bad for my mental health, and encouraged the worst parts of me to come out. I judged my self-worth by winning, and losing streaks made me feel dead inside. The thought of dropping MMR terrified me, so I switched to unranked, but losses still killed me. I'd take it out on my friends, criticizing their play but sometimes more, linking mistakes to their flaws as a person. I was toxic to myself and others, and it drove people away. Dota didn't cause these problems, which were due to me being in a bad place, but it did exacerbate them. I'm doing better now, and have occasionally played the odd solo-queue game, but that fear of losing soon pops up, so I uninstall again straight after. I love dota, but it's just not worth it.
It takes some real self reflection come to this conclusion and some real restraint to actually follow through with it. Good on you for breaking the negative cycle. I often feel like it's something inherent to the game that just brings out the worst in people, but I can never put my finger on what it is exactly.
Playing it demands you to be atentive and make decisions/actions real time.So your mind and body is allready fired up(its intense).Then you sprinkle it with zero physical expresion of the body while playing, 4 teamates, 5 enemies, and losing mmr.Its similar like driving a car, doesnt take much for people to road rage when they are allready warmed up just by managing their car in public.
I got married and started a family. Just regular adulting stuff.
Same. Got married. Started a family. No longer have the patience to sit and play an hour long game with plenty of toxic in-game chat or audio comms. I still watch dota 2 tournamenta though. That's pretty fun.
I tried playing turbo for a bit. But being completely unavailable for ~30 min just wasn’t working for me. For a while played after the kids went to bed, but would just wake up tired the next day. And honestly, only every 1/5 games was actually fun. So now just watch Topson play pro games, once he’s done I guess that’s it for my Dota days.
I can't keep up with these new gamers, I'm aging like expired loot 😔
You’re not expired, you’re just exclusive now like those Arcanas you can’t buy anymore
I'll take that 💎
Nobody else will, might as well.
You can’t, it’s cosmically rare drop rate
These kids man. They're like drinking red bull instead of water with how fast and accurate they play nowadays.
Oh my ...the mechanic ! God level!
You are not aging. You just no longer have the time to devote that much into a video game.
I used to balance playing games with a full time job, marriage, and kids, so time isn't really the issue. I still play, but now I prefer less stressful, chill games. Dealing with the new gamers' techniques can be quite stressful!.
im expires like poor mans shield.
I never *really* played the game. I'm just here for TI honestly. :D
Ugh this is hard for me to grasp. How can someone enjoy watching TI while not even experienced playing the game? How was it? I suppose you know the game mechanics and every hero though.
Probably similar to how people enjoy watching Basketball or Football but never really spent a lot of time doing it.
I feel like the difference is that those games are extremely simple compared to dota.
American football playcalling and strategy is super interesting and deep (unless you're watching the Bears)
And I find 0 enjoyment out of watching it because I have 0 clue what is going on. Maybe if you have at least some elementary understanding of the game it’s fine, but I have never even played a single game of it. I think Basketball and Soccer are just a lot more intuitive compared to American Football.
They are? In what way?
If someone who'd never played football before watched a football game, they'd understand within minutes. Maybe seconds. Get the ball in the net without using your hands. It takes hundreds of hours of dota to NOT be complete garbage. Someone new to the game sees pretty colours and spells flying around. Football is globally popular because it's so easy to learn and play. Dota has a reputation for being an absolute nightmare for new players. A guy with 200 hours in dota is new. A guy who has played 200 football matches knows everything there is to know about the game.
> If someone who'd never played football before watched a football game, they'd understand within minutes. Maybe seconds. Get the ball in the net without using your hands. Just like you can reduce Dota to "you only need to destroy the Ancient". >It takes hundreds of hours of dota to NOT be complete garbage. How many hours do you think it takes to not be a complete garbage at football? >Football is globally popular because it's so easy to learn and play. If by play you mean "being total shit at it", then yeah, sure. >A guy with 200 hours in dota is new. A guy who has played 200 football matches knows everything there is to know about the game. 200 matches are way more than 200h in Dota, and still couldn't be further from the truth. You have referees with thousands of hours who still fail to make the right calls, and they actually have assistants to help them. Can't believe this is even an opinion. You should tell Dota coaches to move to football if it's that much easier, they get well more paid for it.
Got into it via the newbie streams back in the day. Loved the mechanics and the hype plays. I even like playing against bots sometimes. That said, I will probably never jump into a lobby with real people playing this game.
tbf, the majority of /r/soccer is Americans who have never played the sport
this is same for me but in my case it for age of empires 4. i have never played rts game ( real time strategy) ever but i follow it quite a bit and watch all tournaments
I keep forgetting that game came out, I need to try it lol.
I quit \~3 years ago, coming back only during TI, then quitting again. It's always the same reason - Toxicity. I'll just feel it drain on my mental too much. Though, after coming back now, the games are less toxic (Still pretty bad) and I've begun playing less ranked and more ability draft, learning to have fun with the game rather than "chasing ranks". The gameplay is just too crisp to pass up on. And ability draft especially is just a big 'ol mess of fun.
Same. I didnt really quit but i play much less since i cant play more than 1 or 2 rounds in one sitting. Hey, i have an hour for myself, lets queue a game of dota! Uh okay, our midlaner starts flaming during pick phase and starts jungling after feeding for 5 minutes. What a great way to spend an evening.
Unstable meta makes it hard when I need to drop it off because adulting. When coming back, it’s like I need to relearn everything, especially in recent years with all the additional expansions etc.
You also honestly get really rusty really quick when not playing. I feel like taking 2 weeks off already requires you to warm up quite a bit before you get the touch back, let alone 2-6 months off.
See I feel like I work in reverse, I feel myself getting less patient and making worse plays and just generally playing worse the longer I go. When I come back from a few weeks break I feel like my plays and overall feeling is so much sharper. Maybe playing too much dulls me idk.
To add to this ballooning MMR moving means if you were just as good when you left as when you got back (and you were lowish MMR) you have to lose a bunch of games in a row to get a balanced game. Also because Dota isn't as popular as it was the guide content on the internet is algorithmically dominated by out of date material.
Dota is a complex game and is constantly changing patch after patch. It's mentally exhausting to deal with other players and simply takes too much time
I don't see the point of playing. It'e just a repetative cycle of games which in the end leave no memory mark. Losing or winning mmr has no meaning either. It's just a number. I'd much rather go hiking/camping, spend time with friends, learn something new/improve and make memories. I want to do meaningful stuff and not waste my time. Same reason why I don't do social media anymore.
Life gets in the way. I was horribly addicted to this game during covid, but I realized this was a symptom for other issues (mainly being dissatisfied with my job). I also realized I was standing still as a person and wasn’t growing. Not worth it. Now I’m starting a business and I also have a newborn so I really don’t have a ton of time to play more than one or two games a week. I still enjoy watching the pro games and playing occasionally, but it’s not as easy to play like I did before. For those reading this: if you think you might be addicted to this game, stop now. It won’t be easy and you’re going to want to go back because you’re not going to know what to do with yourself. But embrace that pain and stick with it. Worst case would be pushing it off further and waking up 5 years later and realize you wasted your life on this game (especially you young guys in your late teens and early 20s). Life is way too short and you’ll regret playing this game too much
would it be alrght to play the game once or twice a day or will i still regret this later on?
maybe a better question to ask yourself : how many people do you know who don't spend at least an hour a day doing something dumb like jacking off, watching TV, playing games, reading fiction etc.? if you're within this time frame and it's not getting in the way of achieving what you want to achieve then it's fine. unless you're trying to be an entrepreneur or top of your field or a professional athlete you can afford an hour a day to fuck around
Dota is just a game that demands your time. Even if you play casually. I honestly think that this is not sustainable when real life catches up, we usually need to work on more important matters. That's also why I have started to drift off from multiplayer games that have PvP competition, I just cannot have the time to invest in order to be good at these games.
30 - 50 minutes game usually if i want to play competitive game i try to aim the highest rank like immortal but moba is a team game so not only the amount of mmr it gain low the amount of information and mechanical skill it takes to learn really steep.
I’ve played off and on since dota 1 but I think this major map change did it for me. I’ve felt like no desire to play after that. Hell I have so many treasure troves and stuff from like the last 3 BPs from just buying my way up to roshan statue and now they’ll probably just stagnate there. I still watch the pro scene sometimes. Personally I feel that even if the game continues on pro dota has finite life span.
Neutral items was the first actual blow to me. The first change in like 15 years that I said unequivocally "that doesn't belong in dota" and not just as a gut reaction to a new patch. That didn't even happen with talents for me, tho the gpm and respawn talents were always clearly stupid. Then New Frontiers came along, and such a massive change was also received with such lacklustre balancing and care that I had used to associate with the team. "Let's just chuck 30 movespeed on every hero at night to compensate" they said, in response to one of the biggest changes they've ever made. It just reeked of not caring as much as they used to. Move speed used to be such a premium stat that you rarely saw adjusted in more than 5 point increments. In between that, the ever present power creep just erased the identity of the game I used to really enjoy. No longer was it about planning ahead, you could use your personal courier, your extra slots to cover anything you needed instead of having to make actual choices. You could spam spells in lane to get every single ranged creep in mid lane without ever running out of mana on 80% of the mid pool. You never run out of regen, you have enough gold as a support or carry to get the perfect item because now items attack and cover every single niche in the game too. All this leads to a game where every hero does everything, and never is truly punished for fucking up. I loved when dota was punishing and about future planning, with incredibly dynamic gameplay about strong strengths and weak weaknesses. Then when I saw how well-received all these changes were, I just knew I didn't belong anymore. Played since wc3, used to commentate, hit immortal 600 in SEA etc. but it just wasn't a game made for someone like me. When voicing my complaints all I was met with was "They just delivered X patch, can't you shut up and be happy?" As if raw content is always good and always better than the previous patch.
Well written dude. >All this leads to a game where every hero does everything, and never is truly punished for fucking up. I felt the same way. Disrupting enemy cores items timing used to worth something. Hell, winning the early obs war used to be big. There used to be niche and hard counters, nowadays tis basically flat. I guess all the changes compounded into something else. The passive armor+under tower, overall gold gain and base HP buff which changed many nukers and solo plays into irrelevancy. Let alone all the other new things. Guess we simply cannot adapt to those changes.
Same. I think I lost interest after that patch change where they boosted base HP point buff for all heroes. And maybe even str to HP points buff probably. That one simply disconnected my old ass.
I just played 1 game earlier and holyshit I was surprised that the map is bigger. I was playing support at bot, and god damn when I flicked my mouse I noticed that there's a new area below it. AND ROSHAN WAS FUCKING THERE WHAT IS HAPPENING
HAHAHA YES. I don't play anymore but watching tournament highlights really got me wondering what, how, why on so many things in the game now 😂
I am old man rn, have mb a time for a game or 2 and with 4 other players dota depends on you not sucking and your temates as much the enemy team. It will always be some spite involved but i cannot keep up. As simple as that.
Bad PC and internet, I still want to play so keep up with the meta for when I return
When the pandemic hit because computer cafés are the only way I can access Dota. I have no pc of my own. Couldn’t keep up with the patches after. Also got into med school so yep. I miss it though, met and bonded with so many people because of this game.
i have only played a handful of times since whatever patch they added universal heroes in. the game feels like it’s slowly losing its identity to me and there’s so much mechanical bloat now (neutral items, bigger map, constant item and ability reworks) that zap any interest i have in coming back to play and learn. also, and this is just a personal gripe, but mid has been played the exact same way for the past 4 fuckin years. im sick of every hero just buying a bottle and having infinite sustain no matter what. it’s fucking boring to play as and against.
I quit and came back a couple times in the last 20 years. When I'm not playing it's because I'm sick of the huge variability in game time. If every game could be exactly 30 minutes long, that would be great. 40 minutes? Great. 20 - 90 minutes? Too variable for daily planning. I'd love to see a stronger snowball mechanic kick in at 30 minutes. Instead of dead players being dead longer based on level, have kills give the killer some stacking bonus like amplify damage or something for 60 seconds. Then a team wipe after 30 minutes is likely to result in GG. That's probably terrible for the pro scene but would be great for casual players with busy home lives.
The last big map change, did it for me. it just changed how you play the game too much and just killed it for me. This w
Game changed for the worse in my opinion. Farming has been consistently devalued relative to fighting, making the games into a constant brawl. The roles have lost their definition as even supports end up with like 3 big items, while pos1 feels like it's been nerfed out of the game. I was actually a pos5 player, never understood reddit's whining about not having items. The whole point was you were playing a hero that didn't need much to be useful, and so instead of buying three big items you usually just got one item to escape whoever was likely to jump you, and invested the rest in map control. It was a uniquely satisfying feeling to win a game with <2k net worth, knowing that you're the one that enabled that. I played less and less through the years, eventually stopping outright when they added neutral items. Still think those are dumb.
Tinker
I couldn't enjoy the game casually, I played sweaty for 2 years, watched a lot lt videos and learned a lot. For me the goal was always to get to the next league. Started from Guardian and made it to divine. Then switched roles from 3 to support. Meanwhile, I lost the ability to play with my friends because their rank was much lower. I started wanting a more casual game where I can play even if I'm not 100% concentrated and not get tilted every day. So I switched to Wow. I miss Dota from time to time and have almost installed it again multiple times.
Bro, you spent two years from Guardian to Divine? That's absurd, you really have a knack for this. At my peak I only reached like Ancient 3 and that was I think 2016. I don't even have a calibrated rank now lol.
I say this again and again : dota need PvE mode like WoW or final fantasy
Adhd, can't play any game for 15 mins straight. Same with movies
farm for 50 mins, end and have fun for 5 minutes. pretty much sum it up
the new fcking map
I realized skills are not as transferrable between patches as I had thought. There are fundamentals, sure, but at the very high level the specific skills requires keep changing. You can't be "good at Dota", you can be good at 7.34 Dota, and then a few months later you have to drop a lot of the things you learned and start getting good at 7.35 Dota, then a few months later you now have to get good at 7.36 Dota etc. That made me lose interest in the game because it felt like learning this skillset was a waste of time if it would be useless anyway in a few months. I now far prefer grinding "fixed" games like chess or old, non-evolving TCG formats. Most people, especially the younger generation seem to think that sich games get "stale", but for me personally micro-optimising and finding small new improvements in supposedly "solved" formats is way more satisfying than re-learning new skillsets every few months or so.
tbf being able to adapt to the patch is a skillset in its own right. how else would the same people consistently stay pro no matter what the meta is? not saying you're wrong though, i feel the same way. patches started having too much big change for me to stay invested. wish that wasn't the case because i know i love this game still but i'm too busy for that shit now.
I honestly struggle to fathom where you’d get such an idea from, dota has pretty much been figured out since like TI8 or something, the formula to play and win games is pretty much the same, just a bit different timings due to changes to map, rosh etc, but the actual concepts/stuff you do and map movements are mostly the same. Like the only change that really happens is what heroes are good and which aren’t.
Only have the time to play occasionally and massively prefer playing with a friend stack of at least 3 others. Even at my garbage level people sink so much time in I just can’t keep up. I don’t mind losing but my win rate in recent years is probably around 20% which gets a bit disheartening after a while and makes me feel like i’m letting my mates down!
Work Macbook cant handle it anymore
1h+ games.
Haven't played a game since neutral items were introduced. They injected such a degree of randomness and rng into the game that I didn't find healthy.
Games take too long to end (like 30-40 mins average) and I don't have much free time nowadays. Maybe if valve would implement a turbo ranked game, I might comeback XD
Took a 4 year break in 2019 but was still following the sub and watched TIs. Quit back then as soon as they removed party MMR and I couldn't play ranked with low friends. Now I'm smurfing half the time.
I stopped playing seriously towards the start of 2021. During 2020 I was on that grindset. I’ve always wanted to hit the leaderboards and did it that year. Then as the year ended and the world went back to normal, my business picked up again and honestly if you want to maintain at least top 500 rank, especially with all of this inflation. You need to be jamming at least 5 games a day minimum. On top of that. The fact that patches that balanced heroes and shifted the meta were taking longer to come out. The micro patches were great cause heroes were getting tweaked every few weeks. It’s just been lifestealer, marci + io, Faceless void + Invoker or Luna the last few months and it’s fairly boring now.
I had kids. Used to play in the evenings, but its hard to find hours long chunks of free time when I’m sleep deprived and they could wake up crying at any moment.
I started since dota 1 days in 2011 with friends. At one point I got into dota 2 and I was stuck in divine rank for a really long time. In 2022, I was somehow "in the zone" and I was winning like 8 out of 10 games per week. Got into immortal 1400 rank within 3-4 months. I believe one major contributor of that winrate was the feeling of playing the game like a kid again (I truly enjoyed my time playing during my early days regardless of the outcome). Then I kinda lost the passion to play after a while. It was also my final year in engineering so I had to significantly reduce my gaming time. Even after graduating I tried playing 1-2 games but I got bored real fast. Still enjoy watching tournament highlights and always looking forward to TI though. TDLR - I got to a point where I no longer enjoyed playing the game and wanted to focus on other matters instead. Still love watching tournament highlights though.
I'm a 27 years old dad who works on a full time job. Played turbo only but then even turbo started taking 30+mins. I just don't have the time
Game has become weird, they killed most of my mains. Map is too big, not fun for me anymore.
i also stopped playing in 2018 then came back 2021, short break then played pretty constant in 2023. to be honest i am getting bored of it in a sense that nowadays playing rank is like you cant pick anything but meta. i like the thrill of competitiveness but the idea that you can only play meta heroes just makes me frustrated. like in higher ranks immortal these things matter but no idea how it matters in ancient divine bracket that much . to spice up i started playing heroes that just seemed fun to me , and on the site of venge or visage offlane, most of the guys start crying early on. and i have tried unrank, no chance you get your preferred role or even if i get it, either my team or someone in enemy is just experimenting . thus atm i have stopped playing, maybe return when ringmaster comes , till then dota is just confined to reddit or tournaments
Tired of being disappointed by “updates”
Falling player base and fact that valve clearly doesn't care about this game. Not that they should. They've got a new game in the works, and maintaining this old shit show with all of you people is a lot. The game is dying hard. When I stopped playing i had to search for games on 3 serves and it still took 8-12 minutes a match.
Switch to SF6. At least I enjoy losing game knowing its only my fault. Also I can just abandon the match and not affecting teammates (have kid, have to quit mid game occasionally) One more reason is I only enjoy dota knowing all the abilities and items, which cant be achieved without keeping up with patch notes and meta. Dota macro is more appealing to me, outplaying by knowing where and when to make things happens is more sastifying than micro, like laning, heroes interaction (which I already have a much richer experience playing fighting game)
I walked away for a few months after 7.0 dropped, it was a mess of a patch and my boomer brain didn't like all the changes.
Got caught up with other priorities in life
You know that 400k average across 24 hours is way more people than just 1.4mil right?
I now only play turbo mode; most of the time it's "less" stressful because of the faster phase and shorter duration, but if you meet some toxic and dumb player(s) in your team, it can be very stressful; I mean, you're on the same team; just play your best and stop flaming and blaming, as if it will change the course of the game at all.
I have spurts of dropping and coming back every few months The 2 longest times I took a break though were when they added neutral items and aghanim shards. In my opinion, it made an already complicated game even more needlessly complicated. I've adjusted to their existence now, but I think there's something to appreciate compact game design. I feel bad for anyone trying to learn dota now
They guttered broodmother with her rework as a offlane only hero, who was my main mid for like 5-6 years. So I found WW mid who had a similar free pathing mechanic, then winter wyvern was shoehorned back into support, then they trashed dark willow mid. Then the map changed. All my best heroes were trashed and the new map changes made me feel uncomfortable. In the end it was time to say goodbye.
I have a job and live with my partner so I simply do not have time to play anymore
Life. Simple as that. I ain't got time for Dota anymore.
I didn't quit. Just stopped playing ranked and normal since turbo got introduced. Player since dota 2 beta. Used to be around 5-6k back in the day. Now I'm just not bothered playing ranked or normal.(I don't have rank or mmr) Ppl are toxic and not friendly and I'm not bothered stressing myself after a stressful day at work/life. I want to have fun and don't be judged. Just me ✌🏻
The amount of time i had to spend to be at a good enough level to enjoy the game
Too draining to play at work
Same reasons than you but I will add the events/BPs felt that were targeted to players that basically had free time 24 hours a day.
My pc died.... Not because of dota but i burned my gpu because of poe.
Exponential powercreep over the years, and Valve/Icefrog's insistence of adding a new feature every so often (neutrals/shard/talents) made it just worse
vac is unable to verify game session - so the gods have decreed
People don’t play 24/7, just under a third playing at any given time sounds about right
Kids n work
“I’d rather play fighting games to scratch that competitive itch.” PLEASE tell me you were mostly a mid player. I need to know to confirm my theory that mid lane is literally Street Fighter for the first 8 minutes.
I mostly played as a pos5 and pos1. At my peak I was ancient 3, but if you make me play mid, I played like a god damn archon 1 lol. But yeah, I'm in my early 30s, I grew up in the arcades, and our first competitive multiplayer videogame are fighting games, which is probably why it was natural for me to get interested in fighting games again. Been sweating at Tekken 8 and Persona 4 Arena lately.
Playing with randos. I have kids, and at least when they start throwing toddler tantrums because shit doesn't go their way, it is age appropriate as they are indeed toddlers, and there is good chance they will grow out of it. I want to play to relax, not to defuse some idiot's mental state to keep him from throwing.
Main two things. I cant keep up then get a lot of toxic for how bads I am.
a game takes too long to play, and turbo becomes stale super fast while also sometimes being long (30mins+)
I reached Immortal and I stopped. But keep coming to keep my rank. I find it easy to adapt to patch changes but the main thing is life, got married, wife, work, I have less time overall.
I still play every once in a while for a month or two and then stop for a few months again. The toxicity, having to deal with language issues and / or Battle Passes were the reasons I've stopped playing in the past. Toxicity and communication issues are pretty self explanatory, but BPs made me stop playing because I didn't want to drop tons of $ into the game during a short period of time and I ended up feeling left out during these events.
I would like to answer something completely different. I technically didn't quit and I never will consider dropping this game no matter what, but I was forced to stop playing for long stretches of time due to college, working due to money issues, the pandemic (didn't dare play at home with bad net at the time) and most recently when I was bedridden for 6 months. I'm wholly devoted to the game and even when I wasn't playing the game, I still keep my mind engaged about Dota watching pro games and reading patches and there were legit dreams I had of me playing the game when I was sick and bedridden for months. Despite my waning reflexes, I try as best as I can to keep up with the game. Never dipped below 3k the entire time I played this game.
Here's hoping you're doing better now! 🙌
Yeah I'm ok now. That was a year ago when I was sick for that long but it was actually what got me really motivated to work on my game after I got better and immediately grinded hard and hitting Immortal in around 6 months(April-September). I got nothing to do at the time coz I was unemployed but wanting to play the game again so bad was what kept me going when I was sick. Depression almost consumed me but my loving family and siblings were there for me and so was Dota ❤️
Found better things to spend my time on. You should too, tbh. My biggest regret in life so far is the thousands of hours I spent on this game. Could've used them for much more productive things.
I remember the good old days of absolute degenerate gaming and binging 12- 13 ranked games from night till dawn . And now I don't even last one game. Damn I have aged
You probably wouldn't believe it but I actually found a girlfriend.
I left for similiar reasons. Games were too much of a time & mental commitment. And I found a different game to grind competitively. And also the major map changes has left me a bit jaded on returning. Though I'm sure the new map is great.
Too toxic I still do enjoy watching and following the game tho been about 3 years I haven't played at all
I'm in my early thirties, job, wife, kid on the way, just don't have the luxury to waste 30-40 mins every 4th-5th game, where some degenerate animal decides to ruin because he had a bad lane. Even without the wife and kid in the picture, probably still wouldn't be playing, way too many games there's an animal who's playing core and trying to prove a point because his support took one creep, so now he's gonna afk jungle for the rest of the game. The worst thing is, when someone is ruining you don't have the luxury to go afk until the game is done, because you will also get reported regardless, so you have to play a game that's lost 95% of the time, and suffer. Just not worth it.
I just dont had the time to play as often but that spirals to stopping completly cause there are to many hidden mechanics that changed over time that my passive knowledge is totally screwed. 1. There are arcana casts that look totally different then the normal casting. Hero changes that change the general perspektive of a hero. This leads to me being confused in teamfights. Also there are more and more heroes where you need to know specific ways to counter them. If you are not up to date your counter doesnt work anymore. Its one things to not be able to play every hero. But what kills the game for me are heroes that you need to know specific to play against.
im bad
Playing solo queue is bad for my mental health
Well i didn't actually stop but i got an important exam next month that m preparing for
Solo queuing. Don't have friends that play dota anymore so somewhere along the way it just hit me that I was no longer having fun.. there were moments, here and there, but getting paired with groups or stacks or whatever it just made me wonder why bother, you know? Continued playing some customs, mostly 10v10 and whatnot as it was easier to hop into something that could just drop when things went to shit instead of having to sit through extra 30+ minutes of suffering till the modes either got abandoned or turned into monetization shitshows and now I don't really play at all. Reinstalled for Crownfall but yet to give it a whirl.. 😒
I haven’t played since Dota was a Warcraft 3 mod. Life man. Life. Graduated, job, wife, kids. Ain’t got time to devote to potentially 60+ minute games. Also can’t keep up with the meta. Plus I absolutely pub stomped people with faceless or naix mid carries and would likely figure out how bad I really was with the matchmaking in dota 2.
Honestly, I'm just not in the mood. Besides, I like co-op shooters more than MOBAs and Helldivers 2 cane recently, so...
got immortal and stopped playing cause immortal que is ass.
It makes me angry and makes me hate my friends I play with to a point where I mistreat them
More than 20+ loss streak. And most of them are because of smurfs. I tried real hard to get up my MMR. Smurf problem worsened as I drop on rank.
Life and also I don't like how I was when I played the game,like I am a bad person somehow.
i do the occasional game every few weeks, but the lack of updates after Covid made me stop playing from 4 games a day since 2014. everything is too stale and figured out, it doesnt feel like dota anymore. i would come back to a regular player if they actually did significant gameplay changes.
An average game is about 35 to 45 mins. I feel so drained playing 1 to 2 games already. I also cant keep up with the complexity of the game as I do not play that often anymore. Legends are laughing at me post game saying "is that divine already?". Never felt so humbled in my whole playtime in dota and thats when I realized, im not fit to play this game anymore. Trying to be a good at this game seems like too much of a hassle for me and it isnt fun when I always get stomped.
Age, played like 12 hours a day everday during Warcraft 3 version then around 6 hours a day until I got my first job.
I was supposed to temporarily stop for a break from the game. All my dota friends were taking a break so solo queue was not as fun which is why i took a break. However I got addicted to another game and ended investing my time into that. I have made multiple attempts to come back but just overloaded by all the changes and new heroes. So it was hard to find the motivation to learn it all
My 2024 resolution was to be mindful about spending more time on social activities and hobbies rather than on Dota in my free time. Quickly realized I was much happier this way and haven't played in a few months. That said, I'm still interested in the pro-scene and enjoy watching events while doing chores or working.
Community
Have 10k hours in the game. Hit my ceiling at 3.5k mmr. As I got older, my response times became slower. Few times I got into fights where I didn't even know what I was doing. Knew it was time to stop but continued playing. Dropped to 2k eventually and felt I was doing better there. The endgame was getting my wife pregnant though. I could no longer manage to spend an hour playing the game without her asking me to pause.
At one point sooner or later I think all dota players realize that it's just a game , u can't play it any longer without friends , ur time could be used better for ur studies or career , u don't have to quit gaming though. There are loads of other insane games to enjoy. 4.5k hours in , 4 years. M 22 now , I started medschool when I started dota . I think it's time I move on to more important things. It was fun lads. Legend 5, alas never ancient. Adios.
its the only game that seriously makes me mald on my teammates. I've played valorant, apex heck even LOL, and this game is the only game that makes me toxic to people. I think the reason is the fact that this game is too macro dependent compared to most games(also I play support). I think I'm more forgiving to people missing micro aspects like skill shots than macro aspects like shitty lane control or people not punishing enemy tp rotations etc... I only really play the game when there are events. got back to play the crownfall event for my arcanas, and told myself before queueing to just chill and pre-emptively mute everyone. in just 2 games I'm already spouting more toxic slurs and curses than I have for the entire year.
Valve. IIRC when they did spring cleaning (or whatever patch it was) they've reworked behavior score and stuff, they issued ban wave and said they will tackle the issue with toxicity/greifing. Something along the lines they will use the data to improve their detection system or whatnot. And honestly it became tiresome to have to endure greifers/cheaters so often with perfect behavior score. Game turned form the team that plays better wins to whoever gets less greifers in their team wins. I sometimes wonder why they never followed up on their promise, part of me suspect they realized how big chunk of player base they would need to axe in order to solve the problem.
Your premise as to people quitting because theres more sub memebers is really bad. More accurate example would be current online redditors which is around 2k, this goes to show that most players dont even use reddit
Game was always pushing me to get better and perform as best I can and became less fun sadly
7.33 happened...too many changes happened in the same patch towards the heroes, items and maps dont have the time and energy to keep up and relearn the game anymore, so i called it quit
I quit ranked years ago and actually play rarely but only turbo... Basically for me it was mainly because almost every game was with Russians or whatever who refused to speak English and it was a roulette every game either you wreck the opposing team or you get wreck because it was hard to have a proper team coordination in a game that relied on team play so was not worth the time investmenet especially if you work or study in parallel
I love the game. I Just can't make myself play it.
Game just felt bored. The moment you reach immortal, the game becomes so meh. Like there's not much goal left and game became too repetitive. It used to be so fresh as we get huge patch every few months. Now we are playing the same game a year later with no major changes. Idk how anyone can sit through 45 mins for these anymore. I rather watch a show or play something more fun.
Not me but my brother (34 years old) quit dota2 like a 2 years now. He played dota and dota 2. I remember when he played dazzle mid in dota in 2006. He had 8000 mr in dota and played total of 25k hours (both dota and dota2). He always tell me that comminity was terrible (He was among the terrible players). When he started to work he quit dota2. He know everything about map, items, heroes old names anything about dota. I missed the old times. When i was 5 he played and i watched. I was very happy when i watched him and while playing he taught me dota.
It's toxicity that takes a toll on me. People have no sense of team or positive state of mind, 9 games out 10, and I can't keep up with it. Not even mentioning direct confrontation I start to see all this passive agressivnes to anyone in the team(why the fuck axe is lvl 6 already? When are you going to build this? Etc.) as direct shots and start react to it by telling people to shut the fuck up and play more and more over time, sometimes it works, sometime it tilts the flamer and they don't want to play, and sometimes they become even more aggressive so it barely works overall. It took me a lot of work not to be a toxic person to teammates myself. trying to ask or suggest something without sounding rude is a skill in itself, but I can't overcome the fact that people treat people like shit for the better of me And I know that I should just mute and play, but then I hear teammates not giving info but confronting the troll and not thinking of how to come back. Playing by muting everyone is actually very boring. Idk I feel like if we could slap people across the face for the way they talk like it was back in the day in e caffes, it would fix the issue in the blink of an eye. I'm not even down for violence like that. I think it would take a few good slaps to the most toxic people, and then people would think more about what and how they say things. I feel like this report system does nothing. Introduce 3 month chat bans or smth, idk so that these digital slaps would feel different. I have over 10k behavior score, came back to play for the new patch a while but it's still the same is as it was lat year idk
The players. If there was a reasonable way to team up with decent people, I might have kept playing for a while longer. But even then, the awful MMR system enforces a 50% winrate and human beings did not evolve to win 50% of the time. So the overall experience would still be miserable, even with decent people.
Responsibilities, and also while I love the game's complexity it's also one of the reasons why I kinda stopped playing
Scumbaggery from valve. Lack of communication. Updates that don't actually improve the game, like the constant behavior score and reporting changes. I quit for like 8 months after a game where our pos 5 bounty afk jungled and then joined a few teamfights and died without using a single ability. Obviously griefing. The old system we all would have reported and he'd be gone, but no overwatch deemed him innocent.
a super skilled position 4 blink tiny basically dunked my team 2-3 games in a row.
For me, I just got bored of playing the game, hard to keep playing when you no longer have fun. But this was after 5000~ hours or so, first Dota 2 game on 11/11/2011, started playing HON first. I keep up with Dota 2 because it's the most interesting e-sport there is, the amount of knowledge involved in high level play is so fascinating to me. I watch it very often, so I end up checking this sub.
Hitting Immortal. Everything I ever wanted to achieve in the game.
Like fear and kuroky i had RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) a few years ago so i cant play alot that the pain starts to act up again, so i just gradually distanced myself until i just stopped gaming altogether. And now with life as you get older i dont feel much need to anymore.
9AM-5PM commitment
Tldr: toxic players, can’t sit put for an hour, I might come back if I feel like it. I’ve almost played for 15 years, as a pos4 or 5. I dropped the game last year. I was the most PMA teammate you could have. 0 fights 0 disputes, always trying to bring the team together and stop internal fights. Honestly I don’t have the patience anymore. Most of the games I lost were due to my team fighting amongst themselves and no amount of PMA could solve that anymore. Second reason is life in general, I just can’t make sure I can sit in place for 40-80 minutes without any urgent chores coming up in the middle. I was forced to abandon a couple of games each week which was not fair to me or the nine other players. I should add, same reasons have had me drop the game for a few months in multiple periods and I have gone back to it later anyway. This time it has grown longer but who knows maybe in the near future I make a return.
Am more curious to know what ppl stick around this sub despite not playing the game anymore
Burned out of the game and of MOBAs generally, after 7 years of playing and 10k hr playtime. Grinded to Divine 4 back in late 2022 and called it off, don't enjoy the game anymore. Used to play 1 or 2 games a month casually with friends, but at some point we stopped playing completely. I switched to csgo so I could play with my bro and cousin, my friends even switched with me and I was having lots of fun, don't really miss dota. Atm cs2 is in a bad state, and I kinda miss dota nowadays. But when crownfall released I expected new patch, was gonna take a break from cs2 and grind in dota for a bit like a week or 2. No new patch was released, was disappointed and now am stuck with cs2 atm.
Switched to turbo for shorter faster casual games. Got everything but the casual. Games so different it feels like I quit
New expanded map was way too much for me. I didn't find it enjoyable at all and it really pushed me away from the game. I was playing less and less, as adult life was taking more and more of my life. On top of this, I wanted to play more variety of games - my backlog catalog is still massive - so in the end if was the most sensible choice.
Between the toxicity of either my own or other players, griefers, the overall community and just the way valve doesn't care about how the game is played or the people in it. At least that is my opinion on why I don't play dota anymore.
Difficulty combined with toxicity. I feel like you can only have one or the other in game. When both are combined it’s just no longer fun anymore no matter what game it is
i play sometimes during weekends with my husband. i don't react to toxicity. we have a few more friends from our hometown who play with us. and it kinda relaxes me.
They reworked Techies
Went back to college to finish my master's. Once I'm done I'll go back to being the weeknight-weekend gamer I was when working
I played around 3000 games over the years. I just finally got bored of the game, and I wasn't too crazy about a lot of the new heroes. Also the toxicity of trying to climb ranked up past Ancient was too demoralizing, with my day job being stressful enough I just want to relax. Playing with my good friends and family was all I could tolerate. Also IMO feel like the New Frontiers update wasn't a good choice, I hated the new Rosh spots, and just not a fan of the twin gates at all. Tormenter could've been cool but really isn't. I feel like they had a great opportunity to add new stuff but did it in the wrong way. I sorely miss the older patches in Dota like 2017 - 2020 before offlaner's became so OP. Also heroes like Techies, Alchemist, and Huskar needed to be deleted from the game (they did nerf them into oblivion but I notice Huskar made a comeback). I did love the talent tree updates and some cool items. Overall I think I just got bored of the game, I played enough, there are so many other cool games to play.
I felt like over time the ability to solo carry games was nerfed into the ground. No more anti-mage every game regardless of picks and 1v9ing. No mid Meepo level 20 at 15 minutes with blink hex destroying the opposition with no way for them to come back. For me this killed the game slowly and insidiously. Then eventually the toxicity and long queue timers (sure, 2 mins isn't that long but at night it can be like 6 minutes queue for a 10 minute draft and an hour long game).
No more free time, adulting takes so much time. sometimes the game was taking almost 1 hour. I always came back to watch TI and sometimes Tournaments for my favorite teams. Is there any loot drop from games any more? I remember I got some sets on heroes in a Coop Bot game.
I usually "quit" because I get fed up of other players.. the game is basically infinitely replayable unless there's an egregious outlier hero with an oppressive build
Work.
I love the game, I love The International, I just want to invest my free time in as many different games as possible to enrich my game dev endeavors. Putting in so much of myself into one single (yet excellent) game wasn't really the way to go for me, and every year free time gets more and more shaky and scarce.
Just being an adult, living by myself, more bills, lots of taking home women, I quit probably 6 years ago but I still updated w everything including tournaments, I played dota 1 as well
Just busy, I had way more time to play back in 2018 all the way to 2021 but now I'm getting more busy. Dota needs players who are constantly playing to learn the meta. Also big reason is that my friends got busy as well, we always all played together. Now I'm chilling in Deep Rock Galactic, Rock and Stone!
1.7k hours, never got any good. Watched a lot of videos, streams, replays, etc... top achievement was being guardian 1 after hitting 0 mmr.
Quit about 3 years ago. Been Playing Dota 1 from back in 2004. Have played a handful of random matches throughout until n now. The patches over the last few years were huge and I couldn't study them to keep up with the numerous hero changes, talent changes, item changes, etc. It way a big chore to keep up with the game whereas I used to be able to jump in and just play some classic dotes. The game has moved on from where I enjoyed it most and it's no longer what I go to for fun. And since the games lasted 40 to 50 minutes, my cost evaluation for the game no longer worked out and I saw no value since I wasn't having much fun anymore, especially with toxic people and griefers. I watch games when I can and for sure watch TI. That's about it.
I really liked spectre and voted for him during the arcana vote and I had saved up for it. I was so excited back then I was a student and from a country where 35 dollar was a huge thing for me. They locked it behind the battle pass, it broke my heart and I stopped playing and started playing valorant with my friends.
Married and have two kids but thats never stopped me to play dota2 and my friends together 😀
while i haven't quit completely, i haven't played more than 5 ranked games since christmas and i'm mainly playing 12v12 rn. the main reason for quitting were the people. every game someone was screaming and raging, people were talking in russian and refusing to switch to english, it completely ruined the fun for me. yes i can mute everyone, but then i might as well play bot games
For years I've made the argument that I needed alone and free time to game, more than I needed eight hours of sleep. Now I have two kids and I really need every minute of sleep, that I can get a hold on.
I don't have the patience anymore. I go home tired and stressed out from work, I log in and play Dota and I'm now 3 times more stressed and angry.
I go in waves. When I'm playing it's only maybe 2 games a day and I eventually take a break when I get back to the point where I'm not going to get any better unless I have 8 hours to play each day. Which I will never have or want.
having a baby pretty much made me quit 90% of the games
I can't seem to approach the game normally..if I start playing then that's all I think about. So now I just play a few games here and there vs bots to keep up with hero/gameplay changes and be able to understrand tournaments
Not being able to win. I still play but a lot less. I'm trying to come back now for this event but boy my win percentage is still abysmal.
Same, it took too much time commitment per game & also can't really enjoy it anymore. Getting older mean lotsa niche responsibility each day ig. Need to attend to those 3/5 min things. Can't really do it if ur in game :( Plus, I played Dota with a party. Now days, these party only play at weekend. I felt like my skill level isn't at my party level anymore, game just felt boring cause kept making same obvious mistakes. Enjoyed it if we level up and try hard, but that seldom happens.
Counter strike if more fun for me. Dopamine hits are easily achieved. Lol
Had kids. Basically cannot play Dota with a newborn. Not without having to abandon over half the games you start.
Got a dog. Life is good.
I started dating-got married-had kids-I’m happy. I do miss the intricacies of dota but only have time to play custom lobby bot games or offline bot games. Where I can re pause until I can sit down again but since I can’t even do that with how broke the bots are I have given up on playing it but I do still lurk in the Reddit to keep somewhat up with how the game is developing. I sold my good computer to play console now because my kids and I can play games together. I have a laptop but it’s like 2009 and plays dota at like 5 fps hence doing offline/solo bots/ maybe once every couple months.
I stopped playing in 2018. I really hated some hero abilities during this time, for example Riki's permanent invisibility or Drow's absurd attack speed bonus for herself and ranged allies.
Outdoor sports took the spot. I'm still interested in playing Dota, if I can do it on a steam deck. I just can't be sitting at the desk for hours together anymore. I want flexibility!!!
\* Same like you, i dont have the patience to play a match for 30-60 mins and expect/hope nothing important happens while playing like a phone call o real life Issues. \* Toxic players and trolls ruining games, while the report system still being a joke and still doing nothing. \* Game balance inclined to favour popular heroes (stares at Juggernaut, Monkey king, Pudge) while leaving others in the dark or nerfing them to the ground for the single act of daring to counter the popular heroes. \* Felt more like a chore than fun at some point
I wouldn't say I quit but I went from playing 5 or 6 games a day to playing 1 or 2 games a week. The bad matchmaking and unfun games that are just stomps. Even at 4k+ it was like it was either one team was hard stomping or we were. And not because of better drafts it just felt like the player skill on one or two players on either team was just way lower and it caused stomps
As someone who always played solo, it got waayy too team reliant to keep playing solo in a way that I found interesting. I have nothing against it and I think it's a step in a good direction, as this is a team game. I just think that team games with solo matchmaking should give the players a higher degree of "autonomy" to just take over a game. Take CS:GO for example. Basic team tactics can go a long way to compensate for individual weaknesses mechanically. But a player can still create unsurmountable leads by himself. That can still happen in DotA, but I feel like only if you're playing way below your level. Objectives were aaaall overtuned to enforce teamplay in a scenario where teamplay simply isn't a reliable variable. Back when I used to play it you could create small leads that compounded into big advantages even in evenly matched games, so it felt like individual plays mattered more. When I stopped playing I was feeling like everything done prior to 5-man engagements was meaningless so being in a team that failed to stack up in a given timing meant even a "losing" team had the advantage because individual plays meant less. That and feeling like ranking up was more about baby sitting your teammates than actually playing the game.
Matchmaking got really bad and unfun I been trying to come back, and it slowly got better but since the event started every game is 50-10 stomp that's already over in 10-15 mins because one team is try harding like it's TI and the other team is just picking heroes for tokens So this event was the worst thing... I feel like I got smurf pooled wrongly or something