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I finally broke my Dota 2 addiction. Any other success stories?

G

gravitybear

Member
Every steam sale I bought new games, but I didn't play them because the free one was stealing all of my game time. Sweet, cheap, new games that I never opened once languished.

Dota 2 had a hold on me that was unparalleled. Starcraft 2 came close a few years back, but there hasn't been a game more addictive than Dota up to this point in my gaming life. Up until a month ago, I would sit down in front of my computer, stare at my 109 steam games and say to myself "I should play something else." I would then immediately start up dota 2. Hours later, I would either be elated with much victory, or raging due to an epic stomping. I think that's the draw. You either win with such a rush, or lose and want to get back at the sonsabitches that killed you.

BUT NO MORE GOOD SIRS AND MADAMS, NO MORE. For some reason, after 1400 hours played, I just don't feel the draw any more. Don't know why it happened, but thank god it did. My gaming friends and I would constantly rage at each other over this game. Some fights even escalated beyond dota to real life (not me, but 2 of my friends stopped speaking for two weeks after a fight over dota, wtf).

We've now been playing some friendly borderlands 2, and I have time to play some games that have been "sitting on the shelf." The Bioshock Infinite DLC is pretty damn good.

I thought at first this was temporary, but it's been a month and I just don't feel the draw any more. Still love it, great game, but it's not controlling my entire gaming life.

Anyone else break the addiction? I didn't even do it on purpose, it just sort of happened. I didn't even necessarily want it to happen, but I'm glad it did.
 
I'm addicted to Leauge of Legends but I still find time to play my other games. But League takes the most time hands down. I don't mind, it's fun as hell.
 
Why do you talk about an activity you enjoy doing, playing a video game moreso than others, as an addiction? It's a game, not crack cocaine.
 
CS: GO seems to be the only one I keep coming back to. There is usually a week where I get addicted to something new(Borderlands 2/Dark Souls(For the third time)/Path Of Exile/TF2/Rust) but I always end up coming back to CS. It just feels like coming home after taking a vacation with other games.
 
I put about 350 hours into Dota 2 and stopped. It got boring for me. I'll probably go back and try again if they introduce a new map or something. Switch it up.
 
jaundicejuice said:
Why do you talk about an activity you enjoy doing, playing a video game moreso than others, as an addiction? It's a game, not crack cocaine.
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Yeah, I don't get this whole attitude regarding Dota. It's not a meter filling game where progression driven design has people logging in day after day against their real desires in order to "keep up"- it's just simply so good that it keeps you coming back. I spent more time on Dota 2 than any other game last year (maybe even every other game last year combined?) but it doesn't have to be that way. The onus is on other games to actually be good enough to be worth playing over it, not on me to quit simply because I play the game more than all others.
 
I played Dota 2 for 300+ hours and realized I was pretty much as good as I was going to get at it, which was lousy. Made it easy to quit.
 
I was addicted to MW2 for a good 18 months until a hacker made me promote to Level 70 and unlocked all of my emblems, challenges etc

Lost interest after that
 
I would sit down in front of my computer, stare at my 109 steam games and say to myself "I should play something else." I would then immediately start up dota 2. Hours later, I would either be elated with much victory, or raging due to an epic stomping. I think that's the draw. You either win with such a rush, or lose and want to get back at the sonsabitches that killed you.
Click to expand...

are you me?
 
I was hopelessly obsessed with Maple Story when I was in middle school. The grinding got so unbearable that I naturally got over it. Haven't found an MMO since that has grabbed my attention the same way.
 
The Binding of Issac. Played 600hours in to it and could never get the last two achievements on Steam.

Turned out there was a glitch and I needed to complete it with Samson to get Eves Achievement and id get the Platinum god trophy...
That was what made me stop completely. Well that and the fact that when I played it after 5 minutes it went to around 5fps and was unplayable, I don't know why this was as I was using a very powerful pc.
 
Not DOTA related, but I recently broke my addiction to Xbox Live and Achievements. Before I needed to log on and play something, or at least try and get an achievement. I got upset if Live was down at all, too. I would play games just for points on my gamerscore, and would also need to play them online to others would see how many games I was beating. I used to be like that meme, "the fun part about 360 is not beating games, it's showing others that I beat them." Lol.

Well, got a gaming PC recently, and slowly started to lose interest in Xbox altogether. I still play it occasionally, but I play for different reasons than I used to last year. I only get on to chat with friends or play the games I find fun, like Forza 4, GTA 5, or PGR. PC has pulled me away and shown me what I have become in terms of gaming, it's shown me that games are for FUN first and foremost. (duh)

I feel really good about dropping that old achievement hunter attitude, because I'm enjoying games a lot more now.
 
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Making dota hats is just as fun as dota dota.
 
The emphasis on content tourism over long term meaningful skill development with fewer titles is a baffling one to me. Can you imagine if casual musicians or atheletes, with whom we share more dna than movie-goers or readers, had the same approach? Why spend so much time on the piano, when you could try out the sax and violin as well? You spend too much time playing football when you could be giving basketball a shot too! Don't worry about mastery, having a bigger list of experiences is what counts in the end.

Load of nonsense in my mind. There is no reason to feel bad about all your gaming time going to one game; on the contrary, there is reason to feel bad about playing multiple games and having less of a good experience overall all in the name of playing more games.
 
Same here for League of Legends. After Pre-Season 4 patch came out, it happened. I don't want to play it anymore. I'm playing other games and enjoying more. Looks like I didn't do anything, Riot did it.
 
I broke it ages ago. Waste of my time and it was stealing time from meaningful games I could play instead. I'm lucky I only wasted 350 hrs over 3 years instead of the thousands a lot of people have.

It was a combination of 60% losses, no real life friends to play with, toxic community, lag, Valves insistence to not include basic features like surrender, lack of maps like 3v3.
 
Also broke my dota 2 addiction OP. Played 1000 hours of it before realizing I was wasting too much time with a videogame. Now I only watch some pro matches.
 
-MD- said:
That's a bummer. It's really fun getting hooked on a game sometimes.
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Well, I love rpg games and tend to play them for a long time. It took me almost 100 hours before I got bored of Xenoblade. That's the last game I've played for a long duration of time.

But I wouldn't really count that as an addiction. Most of these games are just long.
 
I got bored of Dota 2 as well. It was fun for the 800 hours I spent with it, but I get bored after a single game now and that game isn't that much fun either, so I just stopped playing Dota. Played the original mod for a couple hundred hours, then played League of Legends for 1000++, then Dota 2 for the 800+ and I think I'm done with MOBA until Heroes of the Storm come out. Then I'll probably play that for a few hundred hours. I like the genre, but it gets old. I guess it's just the way of things :)
 
I find very easy to not be "addicted" to DOTA 2 simply because some defeats sometime can be so soul-crushing to discourage me from playing for days.
That said, victories can be exhilarating too, I still love the game and I feel no urge to get rid of it at any point.
 
I uninstalled Dota 2 a few weeks back. It wasn't so much an addiction as it was my goto when I couldn't think of what to do. The masturbation of video games. The hard part is I always had friends inviting me to play.
 
After the first defeat that made me rage against my loved one, who was responsible for the defeat, i decided to immediately quit.
 
I got bored of it. 1200+ hours into it. Now i can actually finish other games.

Tho now i spend some time in CS GO.
 
Stopped playing League a few months ago. I think I'm just completely tired of the genre now. Been playing(and finishing single player games.
 
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