Dota 2 gameplay 2015 pt brokers

How DotA 2’s UI Made the Learning Curve Steeper

A critique of the DotA 2 UI prior to the 7.00 update

The 7.00 update has made user interface of DotA 2 (Defense of the Ancients 2) feel like that of LoL (League of Legends), a similar MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game. Before major changes were made, DotA 2 had a steep learning curve even for people who had played LoL.

Both DotA 2 and LoL are MOBA games that has two teams composed usually of 5 players. The goal of each team is to destroy the central structure ( Nexus for LoL, Ancient for DotA 2) found in the opposing team’s base. Each player picks a hero or champion that has their own unique skills. Players kill creeps or minions, and anyone from the opposing team, to earn gold and buy items to get stronger.

Back in 2015, I started playing a MOBA game, DotA 2, after having played for four years a similar game, LoL. Before installing the game, my DotA-playing friend warned me that LoL players tend to quit playing DotA 2 on their first try because of the learning curve.

I ignored that warning, thinking that being gone through with LoL won’t make learning DotA 2 that hard and went on to installing DotA 2 and here is my story of how I found the learning curve to be steep.

When I started my first bot game in DotA 2 with my friend, my friend told me to pick “Traxex” because she was most newbies’ favorite pick. After connecting to the game, it was time to pick my hero (who I will play as) and I panicked at how to find that particular hero.

Where is my hero?

What I saw on my screen were cards and Abaddon was the first one. Intuition told me that pressing the arrow keys lets you see navigate through the heroes. I started pressing the right arrow key while thinking, “Okay, I could find Traxex if I keep pressing but the heroes are arranged alphabetically and ‘T’ is a long way from ‘A.’”

Then, I saw on the on the bottom right corner an instruction saying that I could press “Ctrl” to switch to a grid view. Pressing “Ctrl” showed all the heroes in icons classified to Strength, Agility, and Intelligence. The view looked similar to that of LoL but two things: (1) Hovering over an icon does not show the what my hero could do, hovering on the hero icon only shows the hero name; and, (2) The heroes were not arranged alphabetically.

I switched back to card view and asked my friend how in the world do I find Traxex. He sa >Treant Protector. I sa >Traxex and my friend told me that there’s a search box on the top right corner. It was almost unnoticeable given that it was a thin bar filled with a lighter shade of gray and a light outline. I still couldn’t find Traxex because it turned out that Traxex is just the first name of Drow Ranger.

Who is that on the mini map?

As I entered the game, I noticed that there is no loading screen displaying the heroes that of both my team and the enemy team before entering the battle. I d >how will I know if it’s an ally or an enemy?

Pressing “Alt” shows icons in different colors. I thought that I will have to remember the color of each ally and enemy for every game. Additionally, I do not know which hero each color refers to unless I press tab and look at the scoreboard. Though, it was a good thing that I could change the settings of the icons in the map but I had continued through that bot game remembering the color of each hero and whether that hero is an ally or an enemy.

Apart from the color of the outline, I had to squint and look at each hero icon for one second to recognize who the hero was. In LoL, it is cropped from the splash art of champions (or heroes in DotA 2 terms). It is used both in champion selection and in the mini map so you see the same picture for each champion. DotA 2, on the other hand, has a different set of hero icons for hero selection and the mini map. This gives the player more things to remember and with more things to remember, more work to learn the game.

I forgot to look at my level.

Part of most games is to level up. In DotA 2 and LoL, you level up to add points to your abilities to get stronger. A newbie in LoL would click the up arrow to level up the ability. In the case for DotA 2, it is different. A newbie would have to click on the “LEVEL UP +1” button and click on an ability again for that ability to gain one point. That’s one extra step to level up compared to LoL. It would be hard to learn the ultimate of the hero when you just hit level 6 while still in a team clash.

Of course, you can hold “Ctrl” and press the key of the ability to add a point to it just like that in LoL. The catch is, sometimes I do not notice that I have reached level 6 and could have learned my ultimate. In LoL, you know that you can add a point to your ultimate ability when you see a fourth arrow. DotA 2, on the other hand, faintly highlights the tiny square below the abilities that you could level up. If you didn’t take note of your level or you didn’t look closely at the boxes, you might not have noticed that you could add a point to your ultimate.

TLDR: Information overload

You know that people say, “who reads the manual?” Both LoL and DotA 2 show the description and details of the hero abilities when you hover over them. For simple abilities, especially passive ones, they are short and easy to read. However, some abilities may have a longer narrative jam-packed with numbers. That’s not a big problem when you try out the hero in a bot game first but what if, you want to spice up your gaming experience by locking in to a random hero? You wouldn’t want to spend your time reading because the battle doesn’t wait.

What made LoL champions easier to learn than DotA 2 heroes was that LoL had what I call “spell holograms.” You could visually see the area of effect of the spell or skill just by hovering over the ability. DotA 2 didn’t have the same feature before.

Additionally, you can see on the mini map the range of the ability for abilities with ranges beyond the size of the screen. This feature isn’t present in DotA 2 however. You would have to have the camera looking at your target while hovering over the ability to see if it is in range to be cast on the target.

Where do I farm?

Just like in LoL, DotA 2 also has neutral creep camps (monters that you can kill for gold). In LoL, I know where to go when I want to farm some gold by killing neutral monsters found in the map. However, in DotA 2, I started by clicking my way around the map looking for a camp. At first, I couldn’t see where the camps were by looking at the mini map until realizing that camps were represented in tiny triangles that were barely noticeable.

Make it easy for the users to obtain information. They want to spend their time playing the game instead of figuring out how to play it.

DotA 2 has other features different from that of LoL but those are on the level of gaming experience that gives DotA 2 a distinct feel from LoL. These are my comments of the old DotA 2 on the level of the user interface. Of course there is nothing wrong with letting the user learn how to play a game. Learning the game may actually be part of a game experience and gamers eventually learn the UI after a few games.

However, coming from the perspective of user experience, not making it easy for the user to learn the UI discourages the user from using the application, which could explain why some LoL players do not like DotA 2.

Thank you for reading! Feel free to share your thoughts about the UI of DotA 2. If you enjoyed this article, hit the heart below!