Recommended Posts

1. any queueing system that is pairing 4 stack teams against 5 rando's each single-queueing is not super well thought out. just having pressure from knowing people you don't wanna fuck up around is worth like 1000 MMR

 

2. i'm honestly surprised games have come this far and not experimented more with a bottom-up community justice system. the GM approach is just never as good as it needs to be. wow was full of toxic nonsense as well, because the police were spread so thin only murder got investigated, so to speak (outright stealing, racism, etc.) Players will always be better at detecting something fishy or terrible going on than the most cleverly programmed wardens or bots. at the very least, what about a scarlet letter system to go with the commend system? instead of friendly, you get braggadocios or w/e

 

3. if you're doing free-to-play, you pretty much need hair trigger and brutal bans. there should be bans even for like, playing on another language regions servers when you don't know the language. there are so many quality of life bans dota is not getting. i'd ban for more than 2 disconnects in a game, or at least have some kind of lagger ghetto. i turn torrents off and have never had problems other than some 3-second ghosting, and i'm on cox cable's cheapest tier garbage internet. it's like... if someone had a cat that kept attacking the settlers of catan board. you can be shocked 1 or 2 times that the cat is so bad tempered, but after that, it's the person's fault for not spiriting the cat away for nappy time

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

"there should be bans even for like, playing on another language regions servers when you don't know the language."

What if your language isn't one of the possible options?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Nope. BAN. And you know what while we're at it, everyone who gives up first blood? BAN. Hell, if you miss a last hit as a carry? BAN.  If you forget to say "GG" at the end of the game? BAN. If the power goes out and you're unable to reconnect or even play another game in the next fifteen minutes to prove your computer is currently operational? BAN.

 

BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN 

 

Every ban message comes with an additional message: "UNINSTALL RIGHT NOW, NOOB". If you don't uninstall, it VAC bans you and then bans all of your friends who play Dota 2.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

4-5 stacks can be beaten by a group of solo players though it's likely the solo players were better on a one per one basis than the guys in the stack. But the system already boosts a groups MMR by some value, probably by more if there's more people.

 

Seriously though, throwing bans around a game where you want to get money from cosmetics won't help. A brutal system won't help make people more friendly. If your account is banned instantly it suddenly isn't worth anything but it's a f2p game so you can just make new ones.

 

 

 

About late game pro games going on with a the #1 carry farming even more I don't actually know why. Every 3.9k they earn is another 10 sec BKB which might be worth a bit. And desperation divine rapiers.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Huh, Vanaman didn't start this thread? Weird. I guess this is the unofficial official Dota Today 11 thread?

 

Anyways, I thought it was interesting that Brad expressed misgivings about having difficulty understanding the overall structure of a DoTA match, because I think that's my primary barrier to learning to actually play the game (as opposed to just clicking around randomly). For all that the tutorials are adequate at teaching the basic game interactions, they don't really explain the sequence of how a match flows from minute 1 to minute 30.

 

There's a huge gap in mid-tier guides that explain things like: How long is the laning phase? When does it end? When would you farm the jungle instead of lanes? When should you consider attacking Roshan? Obviously all of these vary significantly based on how the game is going and the team makeup, but just as the Limited Hero Pool is a simplified version of the game, there are also some basic guidelines for these questions that new players could be shown. Even basic guidelines split up by role (support, carry, etc) would be helpful.

 

The major barrier to this is that in many cases, these phases are equipment based rather than time or level based, which means that an inability to last hit could throw any kind of timeline out the window. But it would still be useful to have a sense for what everybody else is likely to be doing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There's a huge gap in mid-tier guides that explain things like: How long is the laning phase? When does it end? When would you farm the jungle instead of lanes? When should you consider attacking Roshan? Obviously all of these vary significantly based on how the game is going and the team makeup, but just as the Limited Hero Pool is a simplified version of the game, there are also some basic guidelines for these questions that new players could be shown. Even basic guidelines split up by role (support, carry, etc) would be helpful.

The problem is that none of these questions have hard and fast answers. They all require a dozen considerations.

The truest answers to your questions end up sounding like cryptic kung fu master quips: You attack Roshan when you can. You lane until the laning phase is over. You jungle if jungling is the best thing to do.

It all comes down to game sense. Your mechanics can be great, but bad game sense will lead you to overextend or not notice that the enemy is Rosh-ing. You really can't teach game sense. Even worse, once you have it, or even a little bit of it, it is impossible to remember what its like to not have it, and watching people with less sense than you do things that are so "obviously" stupid short circuits your empathy chips (unless you're Brad Muir).

I have monstrous Dota Dunning-Krugers, to the point where I constantly second guess my every action, but I'm still able to see people even worse than me doing "dumb" things.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
 


It all comes down to game sense. Your mechanics can be great, but bad game sense will lead you to overextend or not notice that the enemy is Rosh-ing. You really can't teach game sense. Even worse, once you have it, or even a little bit of it, it is impossible to remember what its like to not have it, and watching people with less sense than you do things that are so "obviously" stupid short circuits your empathy chips (unless you're Brad Muir).

I totally agree with the first part of this, but not the second part. It may be very hard to remember what it's like to not have it, but it's far from impossible. The real problem is that because it's very hard and require a lot of vicarious thinking, when you have a largely fan community writing the guides for free, that hard stuff doesn't get done.

 

It's just like play-testing. Just sit down with a newbie to learn the game and write down literally every question they ask. Then use that as your framework for writing the guide. I have a google doc with my own question framework (although I know I'm missing things). I'd write the guide I need myself, but unfortunately I still don't have any of the answers yet :P. Ideally, my goal would be to build out an entire guide, then walk through the first 50 matches with one of my game-savvy but totally non-LoMa playing friends as an editing pass.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

pausin midway though to answer a question Brad had:

 

Why continue farming on a super farmed carry when you could spread it around?

 

(this is all situational of course) but even if a carry is 6 slotted, there are important things to buy. Buyback, buying travels after buyback, buying a fresh BKB to reset the duration, even in extreme cases buying a courier for the sole purpose of flying behind you carrying BoT if you are, like, holding 3 rapiers - which has happened in a few games I've seen. Besides that there is exp to get (if the hero isn't 25), and even beyond that your carry might sweep the jungle for the sole purpose of denying gold to enemies, which a semicarry might not be able to do quickly enough before an important fight etc

 

all that said, it is a good idea to give your team farm. Part of being a good carry is the ability to judge your strength well enough to know when you can farm dangerous areas while leaving safer ones to your team.

 

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

"there should be bans even for like, playing on another language regions servers when you don't know the language."

What if your language isn't one of the possible options?

For bans I'm talking about purposely misrepresenting your language where there's the six option thing under "preference" like Russians do to play in US West/East English games. If you really don't know any of those six languages, you just won't check the boxes anyway. If you're like, some regional dialect of Bantu language or whatever, I imagine you play with other speakers if you want to enjoy the game at all

 

Nope. BAN. And you know what while we're at it, everyone who gives up first blood? BAN. Hell, if you miss a last hit as a carry? BAN.  If you forget to say "GG" at the end of the game? BAN. If the power goes out and you're unable to reconnect or even play another game in the next fifteen minutes to prove your computer is currently operational? BAN.

 

BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN BAN 

 

Every ban message comes with an additional message: "UNINSTALL RIGHT NOW, NOOB". If you don't uninstall, it VAC bans you and then bans all of your friends who play Dota 2.

 

Epic this ftw

 

Seriously though, throwing bans around a game where you want to get money from cosmetics won't help. A brutal system won't help make people more friendly. If your account is banned instantly it suddenly isn't worth anything but it's a f2p game so you can just make new ones.

Cosmetics definitely need to be harder to get to start out, I like how they say you can't find "arcana" items until a certain level, if they made it high enough for other cosmetics it would help with instant account dumping. If you make it, like, level 20 to find purples or [arbitrary tier amount here] it makes sense to want to hang onto the same account with good behavior, and also incentivizes more item purchases, if you are able to buy whatever you want from level 1

 

 

Huh, Vanaman didn't start this thread? Weird. I guess this is the unofficial official Dota Today 11 thread?

 

Anyways, I thought it was interesting that Brad expressed misgivings about having difficulty understanding the overall structure of a DoTA match, because I think that's my primary barrier to learning to actually play the game (as opposed to just clicking around randomly). For all that the tutorials are adequate at teaching the basic game interactions, they don't really explain the sequence of how a match flows from minute 1 to minute 30.

 

There's a huge gap in mid-tier guides that explain things like: How long is the laning phase? When does it end? When would you farm the jungle instead of lanes? When should you consider attacking Roshan? Obviously all of these vary significantly based on how the game is going and the team makeup, but just as the Limited Hero Pool is a simplified version of the game, there are also some basic guidelines for these questions that new players could be shown. Even basic guidelines split up by role (support, carry, etc) would be helpful.

 

The major barrier to this is that in many cases, these phases are equipment based rather than time or level based, which means that an inability to last hit could throw any kind of timeline out the window. But it would still be useful to have a sense for what everybody else is likely to be doing.

There would be so much variance it almost wouldn't be worth reading. It'd be like, magic the gathering levels of errata with 25 exceptions for every point and every time you end up against Bane/Mirana lanes like explained on the podcast, etc.

 

If there's noob advice worth a damn, it's just Don't Try To Be A Hero. All the really egregious fuckups flow from that, and if you manage that, the other things you do wrong people won't get mad at, or at least won't have any ground to mouth off about

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thoughts from this week’s episode...

1. I love Brad's rating system idea. I very rarely remember to commend people at the end of a match, even after the flood of “commend me” messages, which I hate! No, I will not commend you just because you asked for it. And even if I was going to commend you, I’m probably not going to now because it irritates me THAT badly. But anyway... :) I think it would be great if they added 5 stars next to your name on the match details screen at the end of a match, then people could fill in how many stars they thought you deserved (similar to the Rating column in your iTunes library). I think that would get a lot more use than the current commendation system. How they would use it to make the game better, I don’t know.

2. The guys mentioned Centaur being good early and mid game, but then falling off late game. I have to disagree with that. I’ve been playing Centaur a lot recently and I feel good throughout the entire game. The early game is by far the most fun, but it’s probably because we do a Tusk/Centaur combo. Super annoying for squishy enemies, super fun for us. Snowball, stomp, double edge, bye bye. Maybe it’s the early kill advantage that keeps me going into the late game. ?? I’ll have to try some solo Centaur and see if there maybe is a big difference. I just feel so beefy by the end of the game that even when they do target me, they have a hell of a time taking me down.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I do wish there was some way that MMR had more to do with basic game knowledge as opposed to Kill / Death ratio or however it is created. I dream of a day when you could pass a "meta game test" or something in game where you have to get 25 last hits in 10 mins against a bot or move the lane position back and forth in front of the tower by denying creeps. Even just having people know how not to push the lane would be nice.

 

I also loved your discussion of Centaur, he is my personal favorite right now. He is the perfect counter to glass cannon carries like drow and sniper that people get used to owning with. You can just jump on them and blow them up early on and shut them down which is way too much fun. I also like that you can play the #4 support role, buy some support items but still get enough farm from support gold to semi-carry and have a bigger impact mid game to either set up a late game carry or just push early and end it.

 

I also agree that Centaur doesn't fall off late with his "return" and ulti being based on his strength you can still dish out decent damage or send it back.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Valve is pretty open about how they determine MMR and it's a lot more nuanced than KDR.

The biggest problem is that the system takes a dozen dozen games to figure you out.

And then, once it does figure you out, it has to find other people at your level, most of whom probably don't have their own MMR properly calibrated.

And then, if you're in the upper percentile, it has to pull in people well below your skill level to fill the game out (or vice versa if you're in the lower).

And then, you have to sync up with total strangers to play one of the most demanding team games around.

Even if Valve's match making is mechanically perfect, it's a crap shoot if that game ends up being fun, a totally subjective judgement; Brad Muir getting bummed that his teammates won't end a game because they're having fun chatting and farming for example.

It's such a hard problem to solve.

I wonder if creating some kind of intramural team building system to help people find and develope a regular crew would do more to increase the average level of enjoyment people have.

Edit: I would also love to see a creep momentum tutorial. Something as simple as a zone that moves up and down the lane which gives you points when creeps are killed inside it would be perfect.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

On the subject of surprising young players, there was this 5 year old boy who frequented the tf2 server I used to play on.  He quite frankly was better and more communicative than most of the college age players.  It was super weird hearing this high pitched boy voice asking engineers to setup teleports and sentries along with calling out spies and such.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It doesn't surprise me that a 5 year old who knows the rules of a game is better at following them than teenagers and college students.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I completely agree about the magnitude of the issue and the reality is if there was a simple solution valve probably would have implemented it a long time ago. Maybe we should just be thankful that something like DOTA can organically arise at all and that we can ever have fun playing it. Then what would we complain about on the internet? 

 

To Brad's point about stomping someone, I can see both sides of that. There is something to be said for wanting to take a victory lap or enjoying the moment. Let me build a huge luxury item and stomp around a bit. If I have to be a grown up and lose with dignity then they should as well. I think it takes a good amount of self control to not rage quit when you are getting stomped and someone else has eaten the abandon. Even asking the question "how did they do so well?" or going back and watching a reply can be a learning experience. Too many people want to gg at 15 mins when they are down by 5 kills.

 

 



Even if Valve's match making is mechanically perfect, it's a crap shoot if that game ends up being fun, a totally subjective judgement; Brad Muir getting bummed that his teammates won't end a game because they're having fun chatting and farming for example.

It's such a hard problem to solve.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I agree with Brad on ending games. I have empathy to some degree, but mostly I come from the opposite side of the spectrum which is a hilarious amount of fear: If we don't end this game RIGHT NOW, we are going to throw this and lose because the last time we fucked around we threw and lost.

 

MMR isn't NECESSARILY supposed to create a game with a 50/50 chance for each side (I did read the MMR Valve article). What it should do is at least compensate you appropriately for winning and losing.

 

 

So, would you rather be carried or have to carry? I end up Lords Managing with an incredible range of players, where there are some games where I'm clearly the least experienced player and all I have to do is just hang on, and then there are other games where friends I'm playing with will volunteer with complete sincerity "No it's fine, Badfinger will carry." Man, deer in the headlights.  :blink:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I do wish there was some way that MMR had more to do with basic game knowledge as opposed to Kill / Death ratio or however it is created. I dream of a day when you could pass a "meta game test" or something in game where you have to get 25 last hits in 10 mins against a bot or move the lane position back and forth in front of the tower by denying creeps.

 

Reading between the lines it's just an elo system where how you did in game is also used early in the process when your elo is largely unknown.

 

In the end I don't think there's a better way to do MMR than just win/loss. You can give people credit for K/D/A or game knowledge or whatever, but those are all weird related measures of how good you are at winning, whereas whether or not you win is a direct measure. The goal of the game isn't K/D/A, last hitting or lane control - it's winning.

 

What I'll call "indirect measures" can reward and punish behaviors in weird ways. For example say you have a crazy strategy where you die a lot but keep pushing objectives. (This was a legit LOL strategy for a while) You aren't last hitting and you don't have a good KDA but you are winning, which is what ultimately matters. Clearly you're better at the actual goal of the game (winning) than a guy who is great at last-hitting but keeps losing.

 

TL;DR: If you reward people for things other than winning either those things correlate strongly with winning, in which case you might as well just reward winning, or they don't correlate strongly with winning, in which case they shouldn't be rewarded.

 

I think the reason matchmaking in Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas often feels bad is that things can snowball very hard, added with people behaving badly. Maybe you get stuck in a role you aren't good at or in a bad matchup or things start poorly and people start arguing, you lose very rapidly, and it feels like the other team was much better than you and that matchmaking must be broken. There are also a lot of people who are really good at certain types of play and really bad at others - people who are great at last hitting but have horrible map awareness of vice-versa. In certain matches they can look good and in others totally clueless.

 

I don't think this is true as much in something like an arena deathmatch shooter. Generally people who are good at those are good in similar ways and perform pretty consistently across matches.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

They should just make mmr based on how much marijuana you smoke. I tell everyone in all my games how much weed I blaze, but I don't think they believe me.

Edit: on my phone blaze auto-corrects to blaziken.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Not sure this answers your question Badfingers, but I think I would rather have a decent game of dota and lose honorably to superior play / item / decision making. Most often I feel like if I lose it is because someone doesn't know what they are doing or we are just less worse than they are so they win. Then they talk big about how good they are and you have to mute them all even though their item choices were junk. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Not sure this answers your question Badfingers, but I think I would rather have a decent game of dota and lose honorably to superior play / item / decision making. Most often I feel like if I lose it is because someone doesn't know what they are doing or we are just less worse than they are so they win. Then they talk big about how good they are and you have to mute them all even though their item choices were junk. 

Eh that wasn't really where I was going with it. My question is making the assumption that you're in a premade group (I guess you dont have to be), and in that circumstance would you rather be the most skilled player (have to carry) or least skilled player (have to be carried) by a non-trivial margin.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now