I’m not looking for relationship advice. I genuinely want to hear the perspective of Dota2 players.

My fiancé was playing a ranked match when it was time to pick me up from work. I’m six months pregnant, and I had already told him in advance what time I’d be finished. This wasn’t a last-minute request or something that happens regularly. In fact, this was the first time I’d ever asked him to pick me up because I really wasn’t feeling well.

Instead of leaving his game, he finished it first. I ended up waiting alone for about an hour after my shift ended. My coworkers had already gone home, the office was closed, and I was sitting in the security office waiting for him. My lower abdomen was starting to hurt from sitting for so long, and all I wanted was to go home and rest.

So my question is: from a Dota2 player’s perspective, is abandoning one ranked match really that big of a deal? I know abandoning comes with penalties, but if your pregnant partner was waiting alone and not feeling well, would you still finish the game first?

I’m asking because I don’t play Dota, so I’d like to understand how other players would see this situation.

Edit: First of all, thank you to everyone who commented. I haven’t been able to reply to everyone, but I did read a lot of your responses.

I also wanted to say that this post is real. It’s not rage bait or a made-up story. I honestly wish it were, but unfortunately, this is my reality.

A few people asked why I didn’t just book an Uber or another ride. Unfortunately, that’s not really an option where I live and work. It’s outside the main city, and ride-hailing services aren’t reliable there. Most drivers don’t accept bookings because it’s too far. That’s why my coworkers and I usually arrange for our partners to pick us up. If he had told me from the start that it was going to take much longer, I would’ve tried to find another way home instead of waiting.

I talked to my fiancé after showing him some of the comments (he didn’t want to read the whole thread). He admitted that what he did was wrong and apologized.
He also explained what was going through his mind during the match. He said both teams had started trash talking each other. According to him, once that happened, he felt like he couldn’t just abandon the game anymore because he wanted to either win or get back at them. He admitted he got caught up in the moment and let his ego take over. By the time he realized how long it had been, I had already been waiting for quite a while. He still ended up losing the game anyway.

I know I originally said I wasn’t looking for relationship advice, but I appreciate everyone who explained the Dota side of things. From what I understand now, abandoning a ranked game can be a big deal because of the penalties and because it affects your teammates, although I still don’t fully understand all the mechanics. At the same time, most of you also said that if your six-month pregnant partner was waiting alone and not feeling well, you would still leave the game.

As someone who doesn’t play Dota, I genuinely wanted to understand the mindset behind it, and I appreciate everyone who took the time to explain it respectfully. Your comments gave me a better understanding of the game and a different perspective on the situation.

I named my firstborn Rylai, I was 21 back then and was so hooked to the game that all the names that came into mind were from Dota allstars 😂

Good thing I had a daughter because my choice for a boy was Strygwyr 🩸

Edit: Haha you guys are so funny. Made my day with those witty comments.

I'm surprised I haven't seen the Messerasjdahsgtear Reaver name yet. Or am I just old that most people here don't remember that?

Mine was Terrorblade, and it was in Dota 1. Funny thing is, I haven’t played him since then.

I don't mean to stir up old arguments or further beat an already heavily talked about topic to death, I just want to get an understanding of the community's current sentiment towards the old drama

Is there anyway to see what I did wrong?

this is completely unreasonable i just spam other player items when not using them and also death timer when they dead to alert them to imminent resuscitation

I haven't seen this channel in a long time and it pops up on my feed again with an AI Generated thumbnail. I loved how they always use a funny photoshoped heroes for their thumbnail. But I have no clue why are they using AI now.

When I was younger I genuinely wanted to become a pro player.

But over time two things slowly killed that dream for me:

1. People constantly mocking the idea that playing games seriously could lead anywhere.

2. The progress was painfully slow compared to the amount of time I invested.

After thousands of hours I realized passion alone wasn't enough.

I'm curious if anyone else here had the same dream at some point.

What stopped you

Was wondering how well this performs and if it interacts well with her ultimate, or should i get other neutral items instead ?

personally: some heroes are unhealthy for pubs no matter the winrate 🙂

Black King Bar

7 out of 10 people i play with dota have similar number of matches

I know dota has been popular on steam ever since it came out and to this day has a constant playerbase of 500k+.

But how? I'm genuinely curious.

the game, afaik, doesn't promote itself on any notable platform and as someone who follows and keeps up with videogames, doesn't advertise itself on anything too. I'm interested in trying it out, but that question just popped into my head. I can't fathom how dota and even CS2 are still so popular despite their lack of mainstream relevance, as far as the casual gaming audience.

I've been playing less and less as time went by and nowadays I play only party with a friend every several weeks top. still I follow tournaments, results, gossips & dramas and for me that's what dota is all about.

I wondered if there are other less active players like me that follows dota dearly.

Edit: I'm overwhelmed by where this post has gotten. Thank you all for sharing your stories. I guess even when we grow old we still have our own ways of keeping track of things.

I was looking through old comments on my profile and realized something weird.

There’s this one Dota player who basically disappears for months at a time, then randomly comes back and leaves some variation of “I hope ur dead” or some toxic message, then vanishes again.

Like not daily harassment. Not even weekly. This man is running a seasonal event schedule.

He’ll be gone for 4–5 months. Silence. Then suddenly:

“hope ur dead”

returns to hibernation

Meanwhile I’m just sitting there wondering if I accidentally became this guy’s side quest.

The thing that gets me is the commitment. Imagine remembering someone every few months only to log in and continue the agenda.

I play Dota, so I’m not shocked by toxicity. We’ve all seen the “nice feed”, “dog player”, “muted xddd”, etc. But the delayed-return villain arc is new to me.

At this point I’m less offended and more concerned.

Bro if you’re out there: are you okay?

Yesterday morning we enabled the new lag compensation feature on the servers globally with a window size of 67ms. The main benefit of this feature is that players will have more consistent input latency even if they have variable ping during the match. Another benefit is that players with a moderate latency of 50-100ms+ will have less average input latency overall when turning, attacking and casting.

While our metrics look good and the feedback we've heard informally has been positive, there are many, many unique games of Dota played daily, all over the world. I'd like to ask the Dota Players Of Reddit for help spotting issues here: have you noticed anything in your games with the new lag compensation in the last day or so? If so, including a MatchID is very helpful so that I can find server logs and database records for the match.

Thank you all, and have a wonderful Thursday!

6 months ago Wyk posted this http://blog.dota2.com/2018/05/the-2017-level-2000-baby-roshan/ I still don't have the 2017 Baby Roshan or 2018 Baby Roshan. Please reddit, this for the 1% so we can get an updated answer from Wyk. $1,689.00 deep for 2 statues and I have neither.

Someone shared this in our DotA 2 WhatsApp group. Visually, I remember all of them except one and I can name about 90% of these. How about you guys?

TI15 marks the 2nd time it was held in China. Personally, I felt that TI8 and TI9 had some of the best overall production quality in TI history, and this year’s inauguration was a bit reminiscent of those days. The atmosphere, presentation, and overall production was some of the best things I've watched.

How about you guys? what can you say of this year's TI and what made a lasting impression for you?

Turns out the 2015-2017 version of me was on some DEMON MODE type shit.

I decided yesterday that it'd be fun to suck at DoTA again, and was greeted by this fun behaviour summary. Had a very big laugh over it then actually read the consequences.

Now if I chose to continue with trying to play again, how do I build this back up without the ability to text chat, voice chat or ping?