Im not sure what you’re advocating then? A simplified “New Player Mode”? That already exists. Unranked mode? That exists too. SBMM? Already present. Or are you saying we need to tie accounts to people’s SSNs or something to prevent smurfing, because even ignoring account sharing, theres no way at all that that would backfire. As long as there are people to bully, someone will go out of their way to try and put others down to make themselves feel better. At least in DotA, they try and address it with fairly in-depth behaviour systems, unlike every other competitive game.
It’d be great if people stopped making up the conversation they’d rather be having. ‘These systemic problems should be balanced out in low-tier games.’ ‘So you hate high-tier play?’ Wrong. ‘You’re against tier rankings?’ Wronger. ‘You want players to submit a blood sample?’ Are you okay?
What I’m advocating is what I wrote. Twice. Namely: automatic handicaps based on the current match, using the grading the game plainly already does.
The SSN suggestion is the polar fucking opposite of what I’m on about - the game shouldn’t need to know who you are, to keep low-tier matches fair. Detecting higher-skilled play is normal. It’s how ranking works. And at low ranks, the skill ceiling is nice and low, so limiting the effectiveness of any individual player based on their performance over an entire half-hour of gameplay seems plenty tractable.
It’s not trivial - but these devs spent twenty years cranking out a metric buttload of characters, and all of those are at least roughly balanced. These people are capable. I worry they’re simply not trying to address these root causes. Possibly in part because suggestions along these lines make people ask ridiculous unrelated questions.
You’re basically suggesting that Valve turn DotA into Heroes of the Storm, a MOBA so lame it lived and died in just 7 years. Meanwhile, DotA has been going strong for nearly 20, despite the fact that anyone that’s ever heard of the game knows that it’s a toxic cesspool. Your “solution” to what you perceive as a problem is to make the game less fun, and that’s why Valve makes money by the truckload and you write sad opinion pieces and attempt to insult people on social media.
One, a game lasting “just” seven years is a fucking bizarre jab.
Two, ‘stop pretending disagreement means I hate your favorite thing’ is not an insult.
Three, if all criticism of an ongoing “toxic cesspool” lasting twenty god-damn years has you sneering in defense of the cesspool, I don’t think the details of that criticism have anything to do with your response.
But sure. How dare anyone point to a problem and say ‘they should fix that.’ I mean, where’s my billion-dollar franchise, right? It makes money so it can’t be wrong.
your meltdown is worse than my melt down. you’re spiraling harder than me. im barely even showing my ass compared to you.
I care about toxicity. So does Valve, apparently. And PC Gamer. The problems with this genre are newsworthy. And it’s been an issue for two straight decades.
But I guess ‘problems have underlying causes which change can address’ is an invitation for everyone to commit the attribution fallacy and attack whatever gurning projection they’d rather be dealing with.
Meanwhile, the game’s still a cesspool - in your own words - and treating the symptoms will not fix that. Maybe they should treat something else.
Im not sure what you’re advocating then? A simplified “New Player Mode”? That already exists. Unranked mode? That exists too. SBMM? Already present. Or are you saying we need to tie accounts to people’s SSNs or something to prevent smurfing, because even ignoring account sharing, theres no way at all that that would backfire. As long as there are people to bully, someone will go out of their way to try and put others down to make themselves feel better. At least in DotA, they try and address it with fairly in-depth behaviour systems, unlike every other competitive game.
It’d be great if people stopped making up the conversation they’d rather be having. ‘These systemic problems should be balanced out in low-tier games.’ ‘So you hate high-tier play?’ Wrong. ‘You’re against tier rankings?’ Wronger. ‘You want players to submit a blood sample?’ Are you okay?
What I’m advocating is what I wrote. Twice. Namely: automatic handicaps based on the current match, using the grading the game plainly already does.
The SSN suggestion is the polar fucking opposite of what I’m on about - the game shouldn’t need to know who you are, to keep low-tier matches fair. Detecting higher-skilled play is normal. It’s how ranking works. And at low ranks, the skill ceiling is nice and low, so limiting the effectiveness of any individual player based on their performance over an entire half-hour of gameplay seems plenty tractable.
It’s not trivial - but these devs spent twenty years cranking out a metric buttload of characters, and all of those are at least roughly balanced. These people are capable. I worry they’re simply not trying to address these root causes. Possibly in part because suggestions along these lines make people ask ridiculous unrelated questions.
You’re basically suggesting that Valve turn DotA into Heroes of the Storm, a MOBA so lame it lived and died in just 7 years. Meanwhile, DotA has been going strong for nearly 20, despite the fact that anyone that’s ever heard of the game knows that it’s a toxic cesspool. Your “solution” to what you perceive as a problem is to make the game less fun, and that’s why Valve makes money by the truckload and you write sad opinion pieces and attempt to insult people on social media.
One, a game lasting “just” seven years is a fucking bizarre jab.
Two, ‘stop pretending disagreement means I hate your favorite thing’ is not an insult.
Three, if all criticism of an ongoing “toxic cesspool” lasting twenty god-damn years has you sneering in defense of the cesspool, I don’t think the details of that criticism have anything to do with your response.
But sure. How dare anyone point to a problem and say ‘they should fix that.’ I mean, where’s my billion-dollar franchise, right? It makes money so it can’t be wrong.
gg go next
I haven’t touched DotA since 2014. I couldn’t care less what happens to it. But you clearly do. Just in a way that nobody cares about.
@dril:
I care about toxicity. So does Valve, apparently. And PC Gamer. The problems with this genre are newsworthy. And it’s been an issue for two straight decades.
But I guess ‘problems have underlying causes which change can address’ is an invitation for everyone to commit the attribution fallacy and attack whatever gurning projection they’d rather be dealing with.
Meanwhile, the game’s still a cesspool - in your own words - and treating the symptoms will not fix that. Maybe they should treat something else.