[Megathread] DotA 2

[Lysah]

The way I understand the system (which is pure speculation based on other games using MMR by the way), the search bar should work like this-

If you're a 2000 player it will start looking for 9 other 2000s, as the bar expands it's because it hits the time limit it spends on this search and opens up to 1900-2100s. After the time on that expires it expands more, and so on. A big search bar should theoretically mean a big search, that is, if you're a 1600 player and the search bar is near full the search has expanded to include 1200-2000s, at this point, you're going to get a matchup that is something like 1200/1200/1500/1600(you)/1800 vs 1300/1400/1400/1500/1500. Of course, the system will use mathematics to say that this is still a fair matchup, even though the entire enemy team is going to epicly stomp your 1200s, which could lose you two lanes by default and therefore the game. Or just as fun, one of the 1200s will instalock a jungler and the other will instalock mid, forcing you to go top against a trilane where their hard carry will free farm while your mid gets epicly stomped by their 1800 and their team raxes in 18 minutes.

So yes, a bigger search bar is indicative of a worser game.

[PizzaSHARK]

The way I understand the system (which is pure speculation based on other games using MMR by the way), the search bar should work like this-

If you're a 2000 player it will start looking for 9 other 2000s, as the bar expands it's because it hits the time limit it spends on this search and opens up to 1900-2100s. After the time on that expires it expands more, and so on. A big search bar should theoretically mean a big search, that is, if you're a 1600 player and the search bar is near full the search has expanded to include 1200-2000s, at this point, you're going to get a matchup that is something like 1200/1200/1500/1600(you)/1800 vs 1300/1400/1400/1500/1500. Of course, the system will use mathematics to say that this is still a fair matchup, even though the entire enemy team is going to epicly stomp your 1200s, which could lose you two lanes by default and therefore the game. Or just as fun, one of the 1200s will instalock a jungler and the other will instalock mid, forcing you to go top against a trilane where their hard carry will free farm while your mid gets epicly stomped by their 1800 and their team raxes in 18 minutes.

So yes, a bigger search bar is indicative of a worser game.

I don't think I've seen a successful trilane run in any of my games yet, probably because heroes like Dark Seer, Chen, Enchantress, and Enigma are never picked.

I'm wondering if they really feel the MMR system is "fixed," and if their concern is faster queues rather than better queues. I know that there are threads from about a month ago of people complaining about the MMR system not working and a post a week or two later from the devs saying the MM system was "fixed." If this is "fixed," I think they fixed something that wasn't broken :/

[Lysah]

I already wait 10 minutes in solo queue, then another 5-10 after the spam declines start happening. So...not sure if want more reservation by the system :x

[Hermanni]

Every game that works on rating-based MM will eventually put you at around 50% win rate, or at least not much above. The mechanics are fairly simple, you can keep on winning and winning until you're matched with the topmost players at which point unless you're just that much better than everyone else at the game your win ratio will even out after 100, 1000 or 5000 games. And that's why the system eventually will always work. While the system cannot account for a lot of things, after playing enough games you're right where you belong.

The "my teammates are shit" -sentiment is always stupid. The system won't and can't account for personal inconsistencies - everyone has bad and good days, or games. On a good day I might take a known player heads-on on a lane and win, on a bad one I'll lose and advantageous lane atrociously to a player I don't think much of. I'd say I'm sometimes rather inconsistent, and on a bad day I can't always point out whether it's because of lack of skill, sleep, focus or (lack of?) alcohol in my blood. You can't account for any of that in a rating, yet although I don't solo queue much, I'm usually quite satisfied with the games even if it takes 5-15 minutes to queue for one.

Even evenly matched games often turn into stomps. If you suppose every lane in a game is evenly matched and accept that a team that wins every lane will usually completely dominate the other one and simulate the chance by a coin toss, the chance of three heads or three tails and complete domination in every game sits at 25%. Sometimes your teammates don't play as well as they usually do and make mistakes and it's easy to point fingers, but often when you dominate a game you're too absorbed in your own success to realize you're just in the other end of the same situation.

When I started Dota 2, I recall having around 75-80% win ratio after my first 100-150 games, yet now after 1500 games I sit solidly at around 51%.

---------- Post added 2012-08-09 at 09:45 AM ----------

I already wait 10 minutes in solo queue, then another 5-10 after the spam declines start happening. So...not sure if want more reservation by the system :x

Honestly put, you don't. HoN was very strict about the MMR range and group size it matched you with or against. I sat at around 1900 rating and queues were 10 minutes minimum, often over 20. If you neared 2000's, queue times would go to being over 45 minutes long, and a bit beyond that you might wait for hours without getting a game. Top players and pros would constantly have to ask GM's for resets or new account to be able to play MM, and in the end while HoN might have had slightly more balanced games it suffered from low-mid games being riddled with smurfs and mid-high games taking a long time to form. Until there's a lot more players, stricter terms on MM would probably result in very long queues for some brackets or hours.

[PizzaSHARK]

The "my teammates are shit" -sentiment is always stupid. The system won't and can't account for personal inconsistencies - everyone has bad and good days, or games. On a good day I might take a known player heads-on on a lane and win, on a bad one I'll lose and advantageous lane atrociously to a player I don't think much of. I'd say I'm sometimes rather inconsistent, and on a bad day I can't always point out whether it's because of lack of skill, sleep, focus or (lack of?) alcohol in my blood. You can't account for any of that in a rating, yet although I don't solo queue much, I'm usually quite satisfied with the games even if it takes 5-15 minutes to queue for one.

I wouldn't consider not paying attention to the minimap (I bought wards for a reason you fucking idiots!), running into a 1v5 to "save" a teammate (read: we're now stuck with a 3v5 instead of a 4v5 when they come to take rax), running into rosh pit alone because ursa and enigma are missing, autoattacking creeps instead of focusing on last hits, not denying ANY creeps ever, running past river when solo vs a dual stun lane, and a dozen more things like that:

Those aren't the kinds of things I'd classify as "that's just them having a bad game." Having a bad game is going 60/8 instead of 80/20 in your lane, or dying once (and ONLY once!) to what should've been an obvious gank, or screwing up your pulls/stacks. Those are things that will vary from game to game, but overall don't mean the player sucks.

I dunno, I can understand MMR being an issue when you're at the top, but maybe it wouldn't be an issue if the system was better able to separate the shit awful players (i.e. the kind that don't care that they're bad, or are bad and insist that it's their TEAM'S fault they died because they went straight Dagon 5 Lion) from the newbies-wanting-to-learn and intermediate players.

I don't know how you'd setup such a system, though. You're right that there are a metric fuckton of variables the system has to consider in a game like Dota.

[Hermanni]

The only solution to the feeling of being mismatched I know of is: Play more games. If that doesn't help, Play more games and start observing your mistakes rather than your teammate's.

Having a bad game has no limits. A bad game can go from missing two lasthits in the first 10 minutes on a freefarm lane to going 0-10 in 12 minutes as solo mid. You can't make your teammates better by observing them, much less by flaming them. What you can do is adapt to them. If I see, for example, our solo mid dying constantly, instead of going holyfuckhowcanhebesobadhowdidheloseaspudgetobloodseekerhowthefuckdidhenotseethatguywasmiss ingholyshitthisgameissolostblablabla what I'd usually do is ask them if they could play more safely and walk my earthshaking ass to the trees behind middle and stop any further ganks. Can't always save a game but sometimes it does wonders.

[PizzaSHARK]

The only solution to the feeling of being mismatched I know of is: Play more games. If that doesn't help, Play more games and start observing your mistakes rather than your teammate's.

Pretty much what I already do, it's a holdover from when I played SC2 seriously, though that was 1v1. You can't control what your teammates do, but you CAN control what YOU do, so focus on that.

Having a bad game has no limits. A bad game can go from missing two lasthits in the first 10 minutes on a freefarm lane to going 0-10 in 12 minutes as solo mid. You can't make your teammates better by observing them, much less by flaming them. What you can do is adapt to them. If I see, for example, our solo mid dying constantly, instead of going holyfuckhowcanhebesobadhowdidheloseaspudgetobloodseekerhowthefuckdidhenotseethatguywasmiss ingholyshitthisgameissolostblablabla what I'd usually do is ask them if they could play more safely and walk my earthshaking ass to the trees behind middle and stop any further ganks. Can't always save a game but sometimes it does wonders.

And insulting people doesn't help, it just makes things worse. Last thing you want is a rank newbie that knows he or she sucks at the game and and feels guilty about ruining games for others, but wants to learn. Raging at people like that is just going to reinforce their opinion of "I'm not good enough, I shouldn't play," and chase away someone that's potentially otherwise a fun person to play with. Raging at people who can't understand you (BRs/RUs) doesn't do anything productive. Raging at the dickbags that insist you're the problem just exacerbates the problem.

Unfortunately, being polite and friendly doesn't accomplish anything since non-English speakers/asshats vastly outnumber the regular folks and even when I play support and basically force-feed my teammates kills and whatnot, they still insult me for my "bad" 0/5/9 score with 5/28 CS at 25 minutes.

I know the solution is to just play more games, and since I enjoy DotA, it's not that hard to do. It rapidly becomes frustrating and not-fun when you run into these players literally four or five games in a row, even if you played those games in sets that were played hours apart.

[Alraml]

I don't think I've seen a successful trilane run in any of my games yet, probably because heroes like Dark Seer, Chen, Enchantress, and Enigma are never picked.

I'm wondering if they really feel the MMR system is "fixed," and if their concern is faster queues rather than better queues. I know that there are threads from about a month ago of people complaining about the MMR system not working and a post a week or two later from the devs saying the MM system was "fixed." If this is "fixed," I think they fixed something that wasn't broken :/

I must be odd. They're frequent picks for me. Had a sweet game yesterday where somebody picked Enigma and Faceless Void. I just had to pick DS, oh the beautiful, beautiful combos

[Duronos]

I've had this game forever but never really tried it, I feel like a jerk for wasting such an awesome game and not playing it. It seemed slower but the map seemed much bigger than most MOBA games (Smite is 3rd person, that's different altogether) and was wondering if there will be a competitive scene to it. Also should I play it and get through that stage of getting raged at because I suck or will they devour my soul?

[Hermanni]

and was wondering if there will be a competitive scene to it.'

The competitive dota scene has been around since ~2005 and that's what the game is based on. Whether or not you can manage without overusing the mute button is up to yourself.

[Kuntantee]

Being polite helps as much as flaming. Tested and approved.

[conceit2]

I've had this game forever but never really tried it, I feel like a jerk for wasting such an awesome game and not playing it. It seemed slower but the map seemed much bigger than most MOBA games (Smite is 3rd person, that's different altogether) and was wondering if there will be a competitive scene to it. Also should I play it and get through that stage of getting raged at because I suck or will they devour my soul?

That depends... How strong is your soul?

(Also, if things get out of hand, just turn on some soothing music, and mute the whiners with the button on your scoreboard. (It mutes both text and mic.))

[PizzaSHARK]

The competitive dota scene has been around since ~2005 and that's what the game is based on. Whether or not you can manage without overusing the mute button is up to yourself.

Yeah, I get a pretty large number of stoners that apparently find spamming their mic the entire game to be hilarious. I'm glad there's a mute button.

[Duronos]

Hmm, seems like I might be able to troll over voice chat but not with my ability. I love that.

[Lysah]

Can't agree with you this time Manni. I really don't have bad games and I don't make mistakes. As arrogant as that sounds, there are a lot of people (well, maybe not a lot) like me. The number of times I have lost and it has been at all my fault can be counted on one hand in the past 1000 games...I can think of twice, and both times I randomed Necrolyte. I really hate that hero now, he's just weak as piss =/

I don't know what to tell you, I can't really convince you without knowing the MMR rating of everyone I play with. However, if you want to duo queue with me I can guarantee with almost complete certainty that we will get at least one ally who goes 0-8 on his own. Sometimes there really is nothing you can do about it, someone else's feeding might be your fault, but most of the time it is their's. Regardless, after 1000 games, I've just learned not to take DotA2 matchmaking very seriously. I very, very rarely get a "good" game, most of the time it's just a stomp on end or the other. Even my wins typically aren't all that fun.

Solo queue seems to be slightly better, but the range of games I get on literally a game to game basis (page 2 one game page 16 the next) is just absurd. It tells me that either the pages mean nothing (unlikely) or the system really does keep a huge range of MMRs in each game.


I also have about 1500 people on mute so far in DotA2. Almost every time I solo queue I get a game with 2/3 people already ignored in it.

[Alraml]

So sad there is no Bristle Back in DOTA2, hopping they will add him soon :P

It'll be fun to see him be banned again every game

[Jangri-]

Solo queue seems to be slightly better, but the range of games I get on literally a game to game basis (page 2 one game page 16 the next) is just absurd. It tells me that either the pages mean nothing (unlikely) or the system really does keep a huge range of MMRs in each game.

14 pages out of about 600 isn't that huge of a range tbh.

[Kuntantee]

14 pages out of about 600 isn't that huge of a range tbh.

The weird part is MMR puts trash(according to lysah) to page 16. Page 16 means you have more than average MMR because I hardly ever see less then 400 pages. In fact, page 16 is a very good position.

[Alraml]

Anybody else having a problem with Dota?

It thinks the game client has been updated so I can't join the game but when I close and re-open dota there's no update attempt

[Ultraviolet Harmonies]

• Added Swap Hero. This cannot be used after creeps spawn or in SD. Accessible via right click on heroes in the scoreboard.

Took them long enough. Too bad it's disabled in -sd, I'll never play that mode.