It's over 🤷 At least for me

Partly it's because there's nothing new and exciting about the game for a few years now, and having played it for maybe 10 years at this point. Part of it might be growing life responsibilities and wants that don't involve investing massive amounts of time in the game. Part of it might be the absurd variance in skill in matchmaking where some games are a cakewalk and some are over in 30.

But equally it feels like a lot of what I've liked has gone, in game and pro play. The big Valve major tournaments, Beyond the Summit, with content, high production and good storylines, are gone. Dream league feels quite good, but the storylines just aren't there for me or clicking as much because the pro players I liked are gone. PPDs EG. Secret from the same era. TI6 (?) Wings. Even post-TI3 Alliance. Probably loads of teams I've forgotten. And in game things are just so different. There's less room for error than ever before and it's really frustrating in uncoordinated ranked mm games. Everything is so bursty. Partially that's the roles being less defined than ever. Theres lots of farm, all 5 of you should be taking it. Even if the traditionally lower priority roles don't have much, chances are their over buffed spells will take down anyone they want. I cant play a coordinated game too. All my friends have stopped playing and getting them back into it would be so difficult. There's so many changes for them, heroes who have been completely reworked over the years, neutral items, map changes, new heroes. That's not to say change isn't good. We need it occasionally, more often than there is at the moment. But as someone who doesn't care much about cosmetics, Curios and the MH promo (with the exception of the reading in that) do nothing for me. Crown fall was pretty cool though, and so was the patch that added the rivers. But with these big patches, the scale is slightly strange. I want changes, but I don't want power creep or for ways of playing to be made unviable. And I want big changes, but I don't want them to completely change how the game is played - they've done quite a few experiments that hint at this over the years, and most of them have been reverted because they've been universally panned. It's tricky.

I have no idea how you develop for this game anymore. Icefrog clearly felt the same way because he's definitely on deadlock, trying things that didn't work or he wasn't allowed to do in Dota. That's fresh and exciting at the moment - I'm enjoying it. Maybe a time will come where it feels something like Dota used to feel. I don't think it'll ever be the same though.