Why Is Dota 2 So Hard

To understand why Dota 2 is considered one of the most complex and hard games in the industry, we need to compare it to other genres of games, like FPS, MMORPGs, and Card games. First, in FPS games, the main skill indicators are related to your aim ability and recoil control, even though they are incredibly hard skills to master the variations are few, with at most a couple of dozen weapons to adapt. Sure, there are many strategies that you need to learn, like grenades and movement, but there’s no denying that even though your skill is directly compared to other players, there’s a limit to what you can learn.

In the MMORPG genre, the variation increases by a lot, with hundreds of spells to master and many bosses fights to memorize, however, in general, this kind of game has a lower ceiling for their PVP matches, and many players only play a single or few classes, reducing his need on profound knowledge on playing different roles, but the single aspect that determines the skill level in this kind of game is related to the fact that your character doesn’t reset every single fight/game, meaning you are in similar situations almost every single time, making it possible to increase your muscle memory and get used to the conditions.

Lastly, the card games, have a huge variety of possibilities and high skill ceiling, however, they don’t require a mechanically skilled player, you have quite some time to think and decide your next play, meaning that it’s more of a strategy game and less about reaction time and click precision.

So, finally, related to these other kinds of games, why is Dota 2 so hard? That can be explained by the combination of a huge number of factors, first, there’s more than 119 heroes, each with at least 3 unique skills plus an ultimate, as well as a talent tree for each of these heroes, presenting 4 choices for the player between 2 distinct talents that upgrade his hero in a unique way. If that doesn’t sound like a lot for you there’s even more, in the shop Dota 2 has available more than 154 items that can be combined in a lot of ways, plus more than 58 neutral items that are only obtainable through killing jungles creeps.

If you want to understand just how massive the number of different games that are possible within Dota 2, accounting only for the number of heroes, the possible combination is 106.395.830.418.878, and that doesn’t take in consideration the roles of the heroes and or even their build-up.

As all your progress resets at the end of a match, you need to play through all the strengthening of your hero, and as the number of heroes is so high, there’s no guarantee that you will face the same enemies, on the contrary, you almost never will, and as such you need to adapt your strategy and play style every single match you play, taking into consideration the pace of the game and what your team needs.

Ok, so we have a lot of ways to build our hero and different matches up, is that all that makes Dota 2 hard? Of course not, team synergy and your strategies are such a crucial aspect of the game that the captains in the professional scene are no doubt the most valuable players to the organization, even more than the star players, due to their importance in making the team succeed. If that wasn’t enough, the combinations of gameplay mechanics like attributes, armor, turn rate, damage types, dispels, denies and many others add another layer of complexity to the game, and don’t forget that an unexpected patch can drastically change entire aspects of the game, meaning you have to learn from zero the interactions, counters and adapt to completely new strategies.

In summary, there’s so much more to understand and keep track of that makes Dota 2 a really hard game to master, such as:

* Understanding your enemy and teammates skills cooldowns, to create opportunities to exploit the timings and pace of the game;
* Keeping up with your enemy level, inventory, and most importantly their position on the maps;
* Fast decision making to counter plays and enemy movement;
* Prediction of your enemy and their strategies.

If I could define Dota 2 complexity on mastering it, the perfect phrase would be, it has a steep learning curve, but that’s no the worst, it theoretically has no ceiling, and mastering it 100% would be impossible as it depends on the skill level of the other players to compare you own.

How long does it take to master Dota 2?

The answer to this question can demotivate many players, but let’s face it from a purely mathematical point of view. Assuming you are a brand new player, you will need to play 100 games just to begin playing ranked matches.

If you start at 2k MMR, which is really good if you are indeed new to the game, at a 55% win rate, you would need around 1200 games to achieve 5k MMR, which represents the top 96% of the player base, by that definition I can consider 5k as “mastering Dota 2”, but let’s get back to the math, we are estimating 1300 games of Dota 2, without a single second to find matches and an average match time of 30 minutes, that would require 650 hours of playtime.

Sure, it may not seem that much, but the calculations above are basically considering a genius learning the game, you could easily double or even triple the time required and it would still be low for most people, or else 5k MMR wouldn’t represent the top 96% of players, would it?

To succeed and become a true master in a game like Dota 2, you need a lot of replay watching and development of game knowledge, and obviously, that takes a lot of time.

Why is Dota 2 so hard to learn?
Even if the basic concept of the game is simple, a 5 versus 5 war which the main objective is to destroy your enemy ancient, the amount of combination that goes into each game, as explained above, with more than a hundred different heroes, each with unique abilities, and that can be built in many ways and played in distinct roles makes learning a pattern extremely difficult, and that’s the core reason that Dota 2 is so hard to learn, you have to adapt, even if by a little, every single game, and to do that, you need so much knowledge about so many aspects that you need a couple hundred if not thousand hours into the game to even begin understanding it’s complexity as a whole.

As the skill level of the games you play increases, not only you need to understand a lot and adjust fast, your mechanical skills, like fast and precise mouse movement, map awareness and your own hero control becomes such a crucial point of your gameplay that it can and many times does become the sole reason you can’t progress in becoming better and earning more MMR.

Is Dota 2 noob-friendly?

As you can expect from all that is written above, Dota 2 is not even close to being noob-friendly, just to get your head around the basics like controls, if you are not used to playing MOBA games, can take a couple of hundred hours. Many players in fact question how new players are still getting into the game, as Valve, the game creator, doesn’t offer much to help with the steep learning curve that Dota 2 has.

In the end, Dota 2 is still a game, so even if it’s not beginner-friendly, you should aim to just have fun while playing it, if you can group a couple of friends that are on the same skill level, the learning phase can be so much fun, and if they are a bit better they can even help you improve faster.