The struggle for domination

Despite the fact I've spent most of the last month in doing boring stuff like homework or more exciting ones like going out with friends, I definately managed to spend a couple of hours eating chips and drinking soda with one hand and trying to play DotA with the other one. The first thing that hit me (if I don't count the yells of the type "What the f**k are you doing? Are you masturbating while playing?") is the willingness of over 90% of the players to do what it takes to get the maximum amount of kills and the lowest possible amount of deaths. The motto of the avarage DotA gamer today is "Stay alive as long as you can, and kill as many as you can."

While this is probably a good model of behaviour for a begginner player, DotA is a way more sophisticated game and this way of playing it just doesn't apply to higher levels of gameplay. A person with avarage intelligence needs to play just a few games to realize that cooperation between the players is far more important than competition. For optimal performance of the team, each player plays a certain role in the game and this role determines his playing style, the share of gold he gets, the share of XP points he gets, the type of items he buys and even the number of times he dies. I may get into detail about some of these roles in later posts, but what I want to emphasize here is that the avarage DotA player doesn't seem to care what his role is; on the contrary - everybody plays their own game with the idea that they're the most important person in the team and so they're obligated to kill as much as they can and thus gaining as much gold as they can.

That being said, it's no wonder that a regular DotA public game (i.e. non-professional) looks like a mishmash. Everybody's running around, trying to get one or more of the enemy players. Team fights do not serve any higher purpose, but are viewed as a whorehouse - you go, you get something that's easy to get and you leave, not caring what you leave behind. No wonder that i like eating while playing such a game. I just don't ruin anything good.