Open letter to the DR.Community

[havo]

In current times in DR.Community, as well as in DR.Inhouse, I see people less and less acting like an actual community, but more like a bunch of premature teenagers who start to rage at each other when they see a game is not going in their favour. Why cannot people play with each other, without any pressure and without any unhealthy need to win, just for the sake of having fun together? Instead, you have to expect that if you do some mistakes or lose the lane to another player, you�re going to be the scapegoat of the whole team, and your fellow players will make sure that you know about that.

Why is it so hard for people to act as a real team inside the game? This constant giving the responsibility to someone else behaviour destroys any spark of team morale that might have existed. Taking apart your own captain�s lineup in every negative way possible ruins the team spirit. Results are forfeit calls at minute 7 and flamewars, which again result in worse teamplay. Back in time, DR.Community and DR.Inhouse games were by far more enjoyable than they are now. Is it the loss of 3 points that makes people behave like this? Or is it the increasing number of players?

So, the next time you encounter a small or big mistake from a fellow player, please, don�t lose your temper and rage at him, but simply tell him that this was a bad move of him if he doesn�t realise it himself. That way, you can keep the positive spirit up in your team, which leads to a more enjoyable gaming experience, which leads to more success most likely.

best regards

[my_name_is_8D]

Stats !!!
Thats the main reason imo 8D

[LaserKraft]

ofc stats. some guys have a strong need for a big virtual dick and rage if its not growing as fast as they want it too...

[Storm_of_skills]

people join communties in the hope there are less noobs/ no noobs if there are any noobs they will be raged anyways.. . even when they shouldn't be, they will

[MYHEARTISUNDEAD]

It's simple. If you want to create a community atmosphere, then stop dictating how people play and act. Punish people for the right reasons, not because you are following the rulebook.

Having a public unvouch forum is just counterproductive to everything you want to achieve. By making a public unvouch forum you are treating a highly volatile, competitive internet game like a democracy. By doing that, to coin a phrase, you give the idiots power.

By being selective with their attitudes, an idiot can rage, flame and leave 10 public games in a row, then enter a community game and lick some assholes while a more established player shouts at him for playing a terrible tidehunter.
A lightbulb then switches on above idiots head and he starts to play the victim, rolling around in agony like an Italian football player, as the insults hurt his poor self-esteem. Then he loads up the DotaRank forums and files his complaint which is legitimised by your flawed rulebook. You give it your stamp of approval because you look at the raw facts only, and do not look between the lines, and voila, someone who is completely undeservant of any respect has successfully managed to ban someone else who might have lost their cool for one game.

By doing this, you empower these people, and they grow in confidence, and spread like an infectious disease.

DotaRank is much, much bigger than it used to be. With more population comes more disease; smarter disease. So you have to adapt and evolve to be smart moderators, which you are not doing.

You have to understand that people do not like eachother. This requires you to tolerate some competitive attitudes.

You have to stop treating the captain seats like they are experienced, professional players. The vast majority of people that take up the blue and pink spots are anything but good or experienced. When you empower them with your doctrine about captains and the holy grail, they start to think way too highly of themselves, and produce the most rancid strategies that they expect the better players to follow because they saw it in some replay where 5 superior players beat 5 lesser players.

Your logic is that it's healthy to follow one voice, so that may aswell be the guy who is doing the picks. Wrong. You are giving a guy who is in the position on luck the ability to boss people around who have a high possibility of being much more skilled and knowledgeable. By doing that, you piss off the better players, and they inturn flame the idiots, or they simply do not play there anymore.

The point is, everyone plays -CM here. Blue or pink does the picks. The picks. It doesnt make him the leader by any stretch of the imagination. If you let people do what they want to do, (with some room for flexibility with people who are just genuine raging faggots) then you will find that things work out alot better. You will have 5 happy players, with 1 or 2 taking the wheel of the shitstorm. You dont ordain anyone pink or blue the messengers of God. It doesnt work like that.

For me personally, im really tired of playing triple lanes with people I know for a fact are not very good, but I have to, because if I did anything else id be flamed, submitted for unvouch, and probably banned. Im sure there are alot of people like that too.

Anyway, if you want a better community, you'll need to start being smarter. You will always have problems with idiots. That's just a side effect of growth. But if you want to make it better, you will have to take some of these things into account.

[Shabazza]

Well, the DotA community is generally one of the most retarded gaming communities out there.

You also can't expect anyone to naturally respect you. Only a few people would do that naturally and those are not playing DotA.

Btw: As long as the skill gap in Inhouse is still huge (I highly doubt you guys did something in the last 3-4 weeks) the manners will decrease.

[Are.You.Ready-]

MYHEARTISUNDEAD wall of text makes no sense except for two things. The fact that the unvouch forum should be private, I mean only moderators and admin could see posts. And, I think that the captain should always pick in last and should never reserve a hero although I do think that people should still listen to orders like lanes and stuff. There are too many caps that pick one interesting hero for themselves and let the overplayed heroes to the others.

About the topic, I think stats have an important responsibility. I also haven't seen so many stacks and so many games not remade when someone drops before 20min.

[Wendek]

Stats are retarded as long as people know their existence. It's the eternal problem of retarded teenagers who want a giant e-peen.

I didn't think I would ever have to say that, but I kinda agree with MYHEARTISUNDEAD. I have seen too many communities collapse because people blindly followed rules that were flawed from the beginning.

[my_name_is_8D]

Just ban the idiots then 8D

Oh, perfect example: http://www.mymgn.com/board/showthrea...ch-request-002

with a trilane etc

[havo]

Hah, I enjoy your language MYHEARTISUNDEAD; please do some more of your rants on your blog!
- Note that I�m not speaking in the name of the staff now, this is my own opinion.

Okay so, the rulebook does have a point. It gives the staff a guideline on how to act in standard cases. The rules are a basis for judging people, not the ultimate way, especially when it�s something as subjective as treating flamers.

Having a public unvouch forum is not counterproductive, because you cannot have 1 guy from the staff in every game. We would need like 20 game moderators just for DR.Community. This is out of the question at the moment, thus we have to believe in �the idiots� to help us out with this. Usually, it�s not �the idiots� who post unvouch requests at our forum anyway, we do know certain names that are trustworthy for the DotaRank staff.

To your next point, yes, indeed, people can fake an attitude that they usually do not show when they are not being monitored. But this only starts the discussion of how much lack of skill to tolerate. The so called �established players� should be smart enough to realise that attacking one fellow player is surely not the way to go - especially not ingame - for said reasons. These established players should simply not expect to have all their allies play a top-notch game, at least not in DR.Community. For non-terrible Tidehunters, you should simply play in DR.Inhouse, Dpl, EEDL and the likes. In their forums, you can very well report a terrible Tidehunter.
You speak of staffies as if they were bots, treating all the incoming complaints according to the book which is simply incorrect because you are guided by ancient prejudices that simply do not represent the truth.

I also don�t agree with your usage of the word �respect�. You make it sound like respect is gained through success and experience in the game itself solely. Respect, for me, is earned by overall behaviour, including conversations which are totally unrelated to DotA, or do people, who aren�t particularly good at the game, deserve no respect? Yes, of course, it is a gaming community after all, but come on, are you that superficial?

You have to understand that people do not like eachother. This requires you to tolerate some competitive attitudes.

People should at least respect each other, that�s the whole point of the community, to play with people that you know, and if you don�t know them, you can at least bet that they are people who deserve respect.
If you think you cannot tolerate people who miss out some basics of the game, don�t play in DR.Community, but in the other channels I named earlier.

The point of treating the captain seat with obedience is simple and I learned it at the army � please no prejudices. You are always to follow your direct superior�s orders, because starting a conversation at a critical point in the midst of combat creates confusion among your fellow combatants, as well as unease and might spark mutiny. Mutiny can be good if it�s obvious that the direct superior has no battle experience, whereas the inferior-by-rank veteran knows exactly what to do. -- Note: this does not apply to the lineup and the laning itself, if the captain obviously picks crap that cannot work out in any way, it's quite a lost cause. -- In most cases in DotA, the border between veteran and novice is not that clear all the time, since you don�t know each other that well. Thus, listening to the captain is the easier way to establish a fast - ingame, not picking phase - battle plan, which might be inferior if you take your time to reconsider it, but it has the big advantage that it�s fast, and in combat, you usually do not have the time to evaluate the pros and cons. Plus, usually the picks in DR.Community aren�t really bad all the time, to an approximately 80 per cent, you will encounter standard picks that work under most circumstances.

If you�re tired of playing with people who you know as not very good players, either avoid games with them, or play in the other channels that I named, where you don�t necessarily encounter just players on your level and above, but players who usually know what they do.
If you cannot live with the current situation in DR.Community because of several bad players, there are several ways of salvation for you.

best regards

e: yes shabazza, there is a skill gap in DR.Inhouse and we still have to find a way to deal with this problem in a way that is best for the Community.

[LaserKraft]

i think the problem lies deep in the mentality of dota players. in all my dota history, i was so rarely helped by better players to improve my skills. in the past, if i had bad games or played some heros the wrong way, other people didnt come with good advices on how to improve, they just flamed useless and insulted me for being retard. this doesnt help at all and that is the point i dont understand at all.

why dont the better players just try to train the worse guys?in stead of ignoring them, avoiding games with them, or pushing them to heros like cm even if they probably dont like supporters at all. this will make them grow much faster and would create a very much better atmosphere. and maybe later u have a reliable teammate at ur side.
ofc this also requires that the not so experiented guys are accepting the help, but if they wont get flamed non stop and are offered help i think they can much better accept that role. And imo that is exactly what a community should be for.

Thats also why i dont like what MYHEARTISUNDEAD was writing. He got that kind of arrogance and claims the right that good/established people should be not punished for flaming, if they do it towards noobs. When u are in a game with a bad Tidehunter insulting him for being bad wont change anything, it will just make things worse and cause a bad mood to all. And maybe in the next game this Tidehunter is playing one guy is even worse than him, he releases all the anger he stored and now flames himself. this is just creating a kind of chain of flame and this has to stop at the top if things want to be changed.
If good players can get past that attitude i think the community will be a much nicer place to play and learn dota on a nice level.

[my_name_is_8D]

Thats true but people don't listen more than they give advice u know.

[LaserKraft]

Thats true but people don't listen more than they give advice u know.

i dont think this goes for any1. ofc there are guys that think of themself as some kind of dota pro owner, even though they suck pretty hard. but i think thats just a small part.

[SuperEvil]

If they didn't think they were some sort of "pro dota owner" they would be better players already. Becoming a good player is mostly an attitude that requires you to be aware of your own playing so you can improve. If you are really trying to improve you don't need anyone to tell you what to do. It's very easy to find out how dota should be played by watching a few "pro" replays, watching the good players in your team and watching some youtube vids to learn some more tricks. After doing that though, the best way to improve is playing a lot with good players ofcourse.

I'm well aware that there are a lot of people playing in community who don't have near enough time to do this and just want to play 1 relaxed game per day. They might be bad but they usually also have a positive attitude and are fun to play with. Giving them advice is still pointless though since the chance they will improve is usually pretty small.

[Cnacnel]

i dont think this goes for any1. ofc there are guys that think of themself as some kind of dota pro owner, even though they suck pretty hard. but i think thats just a small part.

You haven't heard that poorest performers also have the poorest self-estimation? For example, paraphrasing american scientists, the bottom 25% of students said that they are better than 65% of the class. Also 80% of drivers tend to think they are about-average.
See my point?

[LaserKraft]

You haven't heard that poorest performers also have the poorest self-estimation? For example, paraphrasing american scientists, the bottom 25% of students said that they are better than 65% of the class. Also 80% of drivers tend to think they are about-average.
See my point?

hmm yeah i see it. thats pretty sad. if the bad people dont see their lack of skill and are not willing to listen my point about that "teaching" is pretty useless. then i hardly see a ways out of that misery ...

[Awsm]

Here's an example of your everyday situation. (replay included)

It's the 6th~ minute in the game - a sentinel player leaves. The sentinel have lost their ace card and all their chances of winning along with it. The remaining sentinel forces have already typed '!votermk' before scourge even realized what happened. Now, what does a sensible, decent human being do in this situation? That's right, he votes for a remake. Or at least that's what they did back in the old days.

Fortunately, the 'new and improved' RGC has given people a reason to continue those games. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you....player statistics! I can't imagine this place without stats, I mean, why else would you play DotA if there were no stats? Who cares about FUN? FUN is overrated. Real macho men play for stats, because it's important to evaluate yourself through a game, based on some numbers which are not even accurate.

Inaccurate, you say? Yes, a lot of player run into this problem - getting 'retarded faggot n00bs' in their team. However, there's a solution! Follow these 3 steps to improve your chances of getting positive score.

1. If the game lobby isn't full yet, try to jump the wagon of the team with stronger players, if you don't succeed, follow step #2.
2. Never start a game when the odds are against you.
3. If an enemy player leaves before the 10th minute, DO NOT vote for a remake, and do your best to persuade the rest of your team to not vote either.

--

Sarcasm aside, RGC has really become pathetic. Every second game takes forever to start, people come and go when they see that the enemy team is strong, there is more stacking going on now than ever before. These problems with cowards and stackers have always been around, but on a much lower scale.

And the problem with moderators blindly following the rulebook still remains. A perfect example is Nerve in my last game. He wouldn't take matters into his own hands simply because it's not by the rulebook, and he actually banned me when I left a 3v5 game at the 11th minute. However, this one wasn't following the rulebook (I hope) because even a retarded goldfish would not refer to the rulebook in a situation like this, he banned me because he got offended. Guess that makes mod(s) not only stupid but abusive also.

[MYHEARTISUNDEAD]

It's a pretty sad state of affairs if someone like Awsm is getting banned.

[JuveEy]

insulting mods isnt the way to go. as a my gamelog can prove, i played a game 4v5 today while i was in 4 players team. (i didnt want to ff and we lost). the fact that i dont care for stats is proven that i ff'd the very same moment ur 2nd player dropped (i would get - points, and u would win).

to sum it up, its every players choice to play the game they want to play. a few mins ago i wanted to give a win by ff'ing in inhouse while we were 5, and their 4th!!! player dropped. as u can see, this proves what i write.

the fact that you have to problems with stats yourself is the 2nd part of the story, if you really think what you have said, you would ff at 10th min, (3 min wait time). so please, spare us the pathetic admins abuse story next time.

p.s. you got reduced timeban, you werent warned for 7 but for 5 days cuz of the circumstances. nice try to turn this to ur favor.

cheers

[Are.You.Ready-]

Here's an example of your everyday situation. (replay included)

It's the 6th~ minute in the game - a sentinel player leaves. The sentinel have lost their ace card and all their chances of winning along with it. The remaining sentinel forces have already typed '!votermk' before scourge even realized what happened. Now, what does a sensible, decent human being do in this situation? That's right, he votes for a remake. Or at least that's what they did back in the old days.

Fortunately, the 'new and improved' RGC has given people a reason to continue those games. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you....player statistics! I can't imagine this place without stats, I mean, why else would you play DotA if there were no stats? Who cares about FUN? FUN is overrated. Real macho men play for stats, because it's important to evaluate yourself through a game, based on some numbers which are not even accurate.

Inaccurate, you say? Yes, a lot of player run into this problem - getting 'retarded faggot n00bs' in their team. However, there's a solution! Follow these 3 steps to improve your chances of getting positive score.

1. If the game lobby isn't full yet, try to jump the wagon of the team with stronger players, if you don't succeed, follow step #2.
2. Never start a game when the odds are against you.
3. If an enemy player leaves before the 10th minute, DO NOT vote for a remake, and do your best to persuade the rest of your team to not vote either.

--

Sarcasm aside, RGC has really become pathetic. Every second game takes forever to start, people come and go when they see that the enemy team is strong, there is more stacking going on now than ever before. These problems with cowards and stackers have always been around, but on a much lower scale.

And the problem with moderators blindly following the rulebook still remains. A perfect example is Nerve in my last game. He wouldn't take matters into his own hands simply because it's not by the rulebook, and he actually banned me when I left a 3v5 game at the 11th minute. However, this one wasn't following the rulebook (I hope) because even a retarded goldfish would not refer to the rulebook in a situation like this, he banned me because he got offended. Guess that makes mod(s) not only stupid but abusive also.

I can't agree more with you. This past couple of day, at least 3 games in which I was playing where not remade like that. I see lots of stacks, and people being afraid playing against these stacks (mostly good players), and I even see one people calling a low skill player "leaver" and made people kick him out of the game (I am 100% sure that he would have done the same thing if the player was in the other team).

However, I don't think it is fine to blame admins because they respect the rules. The rules have to be blamed not the persons. Maybe lower the number of !votermk necessary to actually remake the game.

To Nerve`, about ffing 3 min later, the problem is that you give these pathetic people exactly what they want, that is, an easy win. It is not about stats anymore.

So, remove stats.