Dota 2 –Ever again?!

Dota 2 ever again?! Ok I used to play Dota 2 for a short period of time. I know that it’s not fair to judge a game just by playing it for a short while. I just felt that the short gameplay period was sufficient enough for me to judge and share my feelings about it.

Before I go on about the game, I just want to say that I am not a Dota game hater. Dota is 3D multiplayer online game. Players usually required steam account to play the game. As far as I know, there are more than 100 heroes. When I say heroes, I mean the character the players select to battle on. All heroes begin the match from level 1 and if the players are careful, they will be able to level up until the reach the maximum. Players are allowed to choose any of the heroes but each character is built in with its own abilities. Thus, players need to know how to use heroes to its best ability. Players are given a choice to play online with other players around the world or simply practice with bots.

 Each match consists of two factions known as The Radiant and The Dire. Each faction contains 5 players. Players have to focus on keeping themselves alive; Leveling up kill other heroes/non heroes to collect gold, purchase items and most importantly to fight against their opponents in order to destroy antique looking building in order to win the game.

I believe I have covered the extreme basics of the game. There are tons of other parts to it, but I’m not going to cover all parts.  Anyway, Dota is a popular game among my school mates. One day, my classmate recommended me to play Dota. After a lot of thoughts, I decided to give the game a shot. I mean how difficult the game can be right?

Well, I installed the game and I tried playing it by myself first.  I went through the tutorial and got played my first match with bots. Guess what? I was confused and lost. I didn’t know how in the world to win. I kept dying and I just couldn’t get past after 10 minutes of the match. In the end, I gave it a break by not playing the game again.

When I told my friend this, she told me to try out a hero called Death Prophet a female character that a beginner could use to play. I trusted her and gave it a shot. I was still bad at this game, but after many matches later, I started to understand the game mechanics. I even started to play online matched with two of my classmates.

As days went by, I tried to reduce the amount of time I died during matches. Believe it or not, the number of times decreased in a very slow pace. One fine day, I played a match with random strangers and one of my own team members offended me by insulting my skills. The player felt that I was being useless and was filled with sarcasm. Of course, I was affected by this and once the match ended, I went offline.

Initially, I was pissed off with the player. However, after I gave it a lot of thoughts, I suddenly couldn’t feel the negativity on mind anymore.  There is a term called Magic circle that’s been coined around for awhile. Some articles I read believes that magic circle is not defined well or magic circle does not exist. Some articles states that magic circle exist.

Anyway, I like the concept behind magic circle and I do believe that magic circle exist in games.  I was introduced to this term during one of my lessons.  Basically, a magic circle is defined as a boundary between a reality and a game. It’s a two different world. For an example, currently, in reality I am a 20 years old female student whom is pursuing a diploma in a game design. In Dota, I am hero who fights along with the team to fight the opponent. As far as I understand the theory, people tend to enter this magic ring without themselves realising.

They tend to lose their real identity to enter the virtual world to become someone else they desire to be in the game. There are rules, regulation to follow and there’s dignity not to lose among other players.  Players tend to get overly absorb into the game to a point that they tend to get rude with one another as they want to achieve the best out of the game.

It’s perfectly fine to enter a magic circle as people tend to get engrossed in a game. I am fine with that and I am not saying that Dota is a bad game (Just in case). I just felt that I am not able to discover the magic circle and step into it. Somehow, the magic circle is yet to be visible for me.

It’s just not my kind of game. I am not able to feel comfortable while I am playing or I don’t feel the excitement when I am battling in a match.  I also thought that the community in Dota isn’t suitable for my skills or my skills are not up there yet to blend in with the crowd.  They are way better players than I am and I am a player who is not 100% willing to learn from my mistakes.

So… Will I ever play Dota 2 again? For now, I am not going to play Dota 2. However, I will definitely give Dota a shot as I do not want to miss out the fun other players have and I always felt that Dota is very detailed and balanced online game. Thus, as a small scaled gamer, I would play it Dota soon.