[grhino]

You might be right that is the nature of the game. I played DotA for the thrill of having a powerful character exerting his dominance over other players. It just doesn't happen if your team isn't performing. Plus, DotA has incredible death penalties.

The fact that you are launched into a game where your fun depends on the performance of a bunch of strangers in a fast -paced, hostile environment that penalizes mistakes heavily with only short bursts of text to communicate is a recipe for vile players.

The weird thing is that the stakes are largely only whether the game will meet the player's expectations.

Also, humans are generous when judging their own abilities and are miserly when judging a stranger's abilities.

[lotyrin]

Also it's a compounding process. Having a game that's fun only when you're succeeding selects for players that like that, which creates a social component that makes it so it's only fun to succeed.

I don't find this genre fun whether I'm succeeding or not, for me it's 100% journey (casually and socially exploring the way mechanics combine into interesting gameplay - including failures as much as successes) and these games and their player base seem to be the precise opposite of that.

[BillyMaize]

The death penalties are what really turn me off to Dota. A player A killing a player B results in player B being unable to play for a short time, player A getting experience AND player A getting gold? It seems like far too many matches quickly become one sided and you either farm them or are the ones getting farmed.

[minwcnt5]

Relevant to your last point:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

[kelvie]

That's actually curious -- studies have shown that people from more collectivist cultures don't tend to make the fundamental attribution error, such as places like East Asia, and the former USSR states.

This game is massively popular in both of those regions.

[brokenparser]

If you force slaves to work harder, they'll work harder. Whoop dee effing doo.

I think MOBA games (except for the kiddie ones like LoL) are popular there because they like their games to be challenging. Most games today are rich in graphics but poor in gameplay, dumbed down for the masses to enjoy. At least in D2 and HoN even the most dedicated players still get a thrill out of sharpening their skills and being better then the other guy.