Low(er) Level Pub Games / InGame Tutorial

Dear Community.

As many of you know the level of play in the lower brackets is absolutely horrible. In 9 out of 10 games you will find yourself together with people that are only and only picking carry, that dont know the word ward, that are not willing to spend their precious starting gold on silly stuff like a courier or wards. Let alone blocking creeps, last hitting and denying. Needless to say in which direction these games are usually developing.

To make things a bit clearer I want to give an example from another sport, lets say soccer.
Just imagine you want to play a nice game of soccer. Now you come to the public sports ground and find 10 others who are eager and willing to play, HOWEVER they dont know the rules of the game and they all want to play as attackers. No one wants to keep the goal, no one wants to defend. How fun would this game be. Not only no fun for you but also no fun for the other team. Of course, this would never happen in reality, because you dont go and try to play soccer if you dont know the rules. But in DOTA2 its a complete different thing as we can see on a daily base.

Now, why dont I just get better and win more games or just play with my friends and thus win more games and reach higher brackets where the idiot density is lower? Well, first of all I do, but this is not about me, this is about the game. I think that a lot of new players who saw the game on steam and got into it (after all it is free) are totally gutted by how it plays. They will give it a shot or two and then go on to something else. This again cannot be in the interest of Valve. This is amongst other things why Valve implemented the wonderful game mode „training“. It is a totally silly midgame training with limited hero pool (sniper....) that DOES NOT give you the idea of this game. What really is needed is a comprehensive tutorial in game that new players have to do before they can play public games. In such a tutorial you would learn step by step different kinds of heroes (carry, support, ganker etc), how XP and gold are distributed in lanes (most people dont know this) and hence why last hitting and denying are so crucial. And why autoattacking mostly is a bad idea. You would also learn how to ward and why the 200 initial gold are really worth it (instead of buying more branches) and why a courier is a necessity. In general you would SIMPLY LEARN THE RULES of the game so you actually could play it. This has to be done IN GAME because most new players will not read into this game and go to pages like dotafire.

You're preaching to the converted mate, your best bet would probably submit a ticket to valve about your idea.

Yeah, it's not really a bad idea but it could do better at dev.dota2.com

I agree that the tutorials teach too less at this point. It's hard to make these tutorials because of how dynamic a game dota 2 is, but I would love these comprehensive tutorials to exist.

The whole point of Co-op Bot games and the Watch tab is to teach players how to play before they play with real people. That being said, the first couple of games for a beginner will always be confusing and stupid.

LoL is only better than Dota on this front because they have streamlined the game so that it takes much less time for new players to adapt because of the hero pool rotation, and then introduce a minimum 400 hours of grinding to get to ranked play. But this way you learn all the heroes at a slower pace.

Dota tries to do this through Limited Pool. While it's not perfect, I think they should set a minimum number of games on one hero (five to ten) before letting players into the other MM modes. That way players kind of know their hero and how it works.

Personally, I think there are a few other ways that Valve can improve on Accessibility, e.g.

Getting rid of their "Suggested" Item Builds and defaulting to the highest rated player created builds, e.g. Dendi's Pudge build. Most of the Suggested Builds are terrible, e.g. only sometimes suggesting Observer Wards and Animal Couriers on Supports.

Secondly, relabeling the Hero's roles. Rubick, Nyx Assassin should definitely have a "Support" tag, but due to the lack of one, most new Players will try to call Mid with him, since they don't understand that he is a Support. This is how they're played in Top-Tier play, so it's not a bad way to label them.

Thirdly, bringing back the Compendium Matches (although they could use more recent matches). Players can play in lineups that are guaranteed to be well thought out. Unfamiliar with the Heroes? Not sure what you should be building? just watch the related match.