I knew DOTA and it's clones were popular but I thought people would be put off by the communitys horrible attitude and teamplay in general. Am I the only one who doesn't like teamgames?
What about everybody else that has posted like crazy here?
While I haven't posted much in here, I didn't know the thread existed until tonight (I zipped through the thread in about a half hour), I do play LoL quite a lot and I don't disagree with your preference. I too find team games, or certain kinds of team games, to be very frustrating. Particularly MOBAs (DOTA type games) tend to be one of the most egregious offenders to my levelheadedness. It's not that the game in and of itself is bad, it's that the environment that it fosters tends to bring out the worst in people.
It's a game you really can't achieve success by yourself, you have to rely on team mates and your team mates have to rely on you. If a team is doing poorly almost no individual, no one who is outspoken anyway, will assume it's because of his own deficiencies. It's always everyone else's fault, and thus rage ensues. Sometimes the individual is correct, and it is everyone else's fault, but that is additionally problematic because it results in a situation where you never want to be the best player on your team, because if you are, you'll always be disappointed by your team.
Furthermore, it only takes 1 player deliberately griefing to ruin a match. Given that there are 10 players per match, then if only 3% of the player base were griefers, then nearly one third of the matches would be ruined.
Also the game is difficult to play casually or "just for fun." If during the day, at work, I've been toying with ideas in my head for what I can do with my favorite AD carry build, I'm going to be pretty annoyed if, after getting home a queuing up, I can't play my AD carry because we already have one (or two) on the team already -- or my team mates will get annoyed at me if I ignore that fact and go with an AD carry anyway. This is a huge drawback to this style of game in general for me, because I am the type of person that wants to pick a champion and stick with it. To play to win you sometimes can't play the way you originally hoped when you started your queue. Well, you can try, but then people will get mad at you if what you're trying to doesn't fit well with the team. Players also aren't always very receptive to individuals experimenting around, even if it's a non-ranked game.
I'll admit though that most of these problems that I have stems from playing in pick up groups. Organized teams of friends generally don't have these same problem, at least not to the same extent. For me though, I don't have 4 other friends interested in playing a MOBA.
This is why I generally enjoy 1v1 competitive games a great deal more. If I lose I can only blame myself, chances of a griefer screwing my game up is lower, and I can do whatever build/strategy/etc. I want without worrying about anyone being upset at my choice.
For team games, I generally like them where one can achieve success independent of your team, or even be able to take pride in being the most significant part of your team. The kinds of games where there is a competition amongst the team mates to outdo one another. In such games it doesn't feel as bad to have newbie team mates, it gives you a chance to show off.
I do like LoL though, as I stated earlier. It often can overcome its shortcomings, or my personal aversion to pick up group games. Not sure if I will play DOTA II, as in my experience, HoN and DOTA had an even less forgiving community to people who didn't adhere strictly to the current metagame, to people who just want wanted to try stuff out and have fun experimenting.
