Randomly received Dota 2.

[Zoop]

If you already have the Steam client, DL is smaller. Not recommended if you're not going to really play though, it updates VERY often (it's Beta, so yeah) and it becomes a little annoying.

Eh, I've got uncapped, so it doesn't really bother me.

[Toxxyc]

Same here. Though it slows down your line if you're busy with something and "BOOM" DL starts. Eh.

[CaViE]

Combined with leavers and an insanely long waiting time to join a game makes it not practical to play here. Not to mention lag like a mofo.

The fact that it's a beta makes it leavers paradise, but it at least doesn't kill the game entirely and if the rest of the players aren't complete douchebags they can play on anyway even if the game might be unfair from then on (though we know this usually isn't the case until one side starts outright dominating, and then the complaints come).

The waiting time can be a pain sometimes but it's decreased when you're in a party of five where the search parameters are more fine-tuned to your party.

And yeah as for the lag at least there's none of that damned "Waiting for players..." screen to contend with. Ever since Spectre released the lag has gotten bad at times, especially when the player uses her ultimate. But other than that I have pretty much zero lag or delay on my 384kbps (soon to be 1mbps) line, and I can't explain it either. Just really great netcode I guess. I expect Spectre's character to get pulled in a while. It breaks the game, such is the lag.

[Zoop]

The lag has actually been really manageable so far. If I had to make a guess, I wouldn't place it over 250ms, which is pretty good in a strategy game.

The biggest gripe is the leavers, and the fact that the public chat channels are basically unusable due to trade spam.

Other than that, I actually like it, and this is coming from someone who only played Dota1 when the rest of the lan party started playing it.

[Telur]

Today I played Dota 2 against easy computer AIs. I have never felt like such a failure at a game before. XD

[Zoop]

I really wish they'd either implement an AI for heroes of DCed players, or remove their heroes when they DC.

Every time some noob discovers he can use them after the other players DC, he usually sends them to the middle of the map because 'at least they can do a bit of damage'. Yeah. In a game where movement is key to survival, a hero standing still in the middle of a fight is very helpful. In feeding the other team gold.

[Toxxyc]

LOL dude that's why you have the option of locking heroes in DotA. Not quite sure if it works or not in Dota 2, but I don't really care. I've stopped playing for the most part, can't deal with the lag when someone does more than move in the game. Bleh.

[Zoop]

I don't mind the lag, as it's been pretty minimal so far. My problem is that I seem to be grouped in a 'noob' pool, and get matches with other people in that pool. I don't mind people who are still learning at all, but if I try to tell them in a friendly way why they shouldn't do something, like using a DCed hero like that, and they respond by telling me to **** off, then I want out of the noob pool.

[CaViE]

It's unfortunate, but yeah that's the case with a lot of folks on the servers currently. A lot are just new Dota 2 players but there's also the noob contingent, those who are just really bad and really bad mannered as well. Anyway I wanted to say that sometimes even when a player leaves, having their hero around is vital and wherever possible (though I'm still clumsy with this in Dota 2) I try to use their hero effectively either to push back waves of creeps or for their spells in battles. It takes a bit of getting used to but if you've played anything that requires a little micro (original Warcraft III or even StarCraft I guess) then it's not entirely difficult. So I would be opposed to locking in most circumstances for that reason.

Imagine if you would that you had a leaver with Zeus and the power of initiating with his ultimate is lost to you because the game removed his hero from play, but you weren't given the bonus gold and experience from the beginning of the game so now you're at a deficit.

[Zoop]

Yeah, if a player knows how to manage more than one hero, I'm fine with it. Except, every match so far players just send heroes to go stand still in the middle of nowhere, feeding the enemy gold. I'd much rather lose the bit of an edge the hero gives us rather than giving the enemy an edge with easy gold.

[Toxxyc]

I tend to assign hotkeys to heroes that left. My main hero is always number 1, my fountain number 5 (because the letter "F" is close to it, activating the Glyph by simply tapping "5" and "F" directly after). Other heroes (like Zeus, Silencer, Spectre) are assigned to letters 2, 3 and 4, and I learn them and their ultimate's hotkeys before playing with them. I'll use them to farm for gold (gold is distributed among remaining players anyway) and their ulties are used in team battles when they're not present (unlocking results in no items on the hero, so obviously they're useless in team battles) by simply tapping the hero's hotkey and ulti hotkey. Tap 1 again and I'm back to my hero. This can be done in fairly less than a second if timed well! :)

[Legion]

I was beta testing for quite a while.
Got a key last weekend too.

[CyniKill]

I got a key but I don't see myself playing this. I already play and enjoy League of Legends, and don't have the bandwidth to keep the both of them updated.

[Squirly]

Well, I don't know whether it's luck or not, but my lag with Dota 2 seems to be less than with League. I played just 2 games yesterday, though, so maybe that's not enough to judge things properly.

[Squirly]

Ok, so I've played 3 PvP games so far, won 2 and lost the last one. For the wins I got about 30 XP points each. For the loss I got 65.

The hell kinda scoring system is that? Granted, my first PvP was also my first Dota 2 game (whoops!) and I sucked all kinds of balls, but my 2nd one ended up with 4/0/11. ZERO DEATHS DAMMIT! Still got only 34 XP for that. Then I played the 3rd game which was pretty damn epic, dragged on for over an hour and resulted in our loss even though it could have gone the other way several times during the match. But I got 65Xp for that.

So how does the scoring system in dota 2 work?

EDIT: On an unrelated note, I realized last night that pretty much every match ever is stored on the servers and you're free to download them and watch the replays which is frigging cool. I managed to get an awesome and unexpected double-kill last night and I was all depressed that none of my housemates saw my mad skillz. Then I found the replay and showed them. They were suitably impressed.

[CyniKill]

If it's anything like League of Legends, length is the major factor in XP gain.

[Squirly]

Eugh. So it's in my interest to drag things out even if it risks me losing the game? Being awesome to the point where you annihilate the enemy team in 20 minutes counts for nothing?

[CaViE]

I sincerely believe that nobody who plays Dota 2 enough to gain levels actually cares about levelling up.

EDIT: Further, time-based levelling is fine because you could play two entire games for 30 minutes and get say, 60exp or you could play one, long, drawn-out game for 60 minutes for that 60exp. So it's not the worst thing on Earth.

[Squirly]

I sincerely believe that nobody who plays Dota 2 enough to gain levels actually cares about levelling up.

Well it's not like that's the ultimate point behind Dota. I know that much. But it is nice to be able to customize your hero with special items just to give him a unique look. For those of us who can't buy anything online levelling is just about the only chance we have of getting custom items for our heroes. You get a random item for a random hero every time you gain a level, and sometimes after matches. In the latter case it's usually a treasure chest you need to buy a key for ($2.49) which is useless for me. I have about 6-7 of them already. However, I did get a sword for Sven, a club for Tidehunter and another sword for Juggernaut (YES! YEEEESSS!) so now I'm sitting with 2 items I'm not really interested in and a bunch of potential items that I can't really trade because no-one wants a box you have to pay money for and which might not contain anything you want.

Anybody looking for some summer stashes?

[Squirly]

Holy crap I'm having fun with this. Anybody here playing regularly? Wanna be friends? My steam profile link is, like, right there! Underneath the lego predator. Go on, click on it. I need some regulars who know more than I do, who I can rely on to pick up the slack when I suck.