this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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MOBA toxicity is a design problem. These players are like this because these games are like this.
If good players wading in among the noobs is such a huge problem, what have you done in the last twenty years to make it stop being a problem? Stopping it from happening is a naive band-aid. A kneejerk response to the symptoms of systemic issues. This game has one hundred and twenty-four characters. Don't tell me the devs are unfamiliar with tweaking complex systems for macro-scale results. Low-skill games are where you'd expect handicaps or dynamic difficulty applied to all the numbers on either team. An e-sports demigod and a fresh player using DK bongos should be made similarly effective. If that disconnect between action and results frustrates the guy pushing 400 APM... good.
If you need a whole-ass reputation system just to identify people who play badly on purpose, why the fuck do you allow bad play to matter so much? Maybe lashing strangers together for an hour, when half of them will lose, is a potent source of bitter feelings. Maybe a game that punishes people for leaving when they feel bad isn't a recipe for positivity! But hey, at least they can keep their head down and mind their business, oops nevermind it's all interdependent teamwork. Well at least four good teammates can make up for one bastard... oh, did you never fix "feeding?"
Whoops.
Fuck all of this.
Rubber banding shit to make skill mismatches still competitive is a dogshit excuse for game design that completely and utterly destroys the integrity of competition.
Evenly-matched teams won't need any.
We are not talking about evenly-matched teams. The integrity of dirt-tier matches is ruined by pros on fresh accounts. People so infatuated with a child's view of "competition" that nothing matters besides winning. Teamwork? Sportsmanship? Fun? Fuck that, just win win win win win win win.
Skill-based matchmaking is already a judgement call for how well you're supposed to do. And each long-ass match is rife with ways to judge how well a player is doing - moment to moment - relative to their teammates, their situation, and their character. Measuring and rewarding individual skill is possible even if your team gets utterly destroyed. Or carried by one cheating bastard.
Games can be fun to play for reasons besides 'did you win.' Success and growth can be about more than 'don't lose.' This is a game that takes ten people forty-five minutes to play. Reducing it to a binary outcome, as if that's the only metric for "the integrity of competition," is the root problem.
Look, I can see where you're coming from about the over-emphasis on winning; but it just sound like you're talking about an entirely different issue to what Valve is trying to address.
Your suggestion, if I understand it correctly, is to have the game automatically make a judgement about every player's individual skill during the match itself, and apply some buff or penalty if it detects a major discrepancy between players. Is that what you are suggesting?
I suspect that the existence of mechanics like that would lead to a lot of angst, regardless of whether it 'works'. People already have a tendency to blame their team and blame match-making for making them lose. Imagine if they could also blame the game itself for holding them back. ... It could be a perfect system that never gets it wrong, and it would still cause a lot of people to get upset. And I don't see how it could fix the problem of smurfing anyway unless it is a seriously over-zealous system that erases basically any skill advantage.
Also, I don't think such auto-detection would be reliable. But although we could could discuss the technicalities of what might or might not work... I just don't think it's worth pursuing in dota anyway. Perhaps it would be better suited to some other game.
... in low tiers.
I am describing an autobalance system, in low tiers. Specifically in low tiers. Only in low tiers.
And being "held back" means the game is applauding you. If some newbie genuinely achieves enlightenment and begins playing at a superhuman level, then win or lose, the game is telling them 'holy shit, well done.'
Which is how ranking already works. I cannot overstress, the game already sets people up to get their asses kicked half the time. It watches how you play, scores your performance, and pits you against people who are going to counteract whatever new tricks you've just learned.
This is only a more direct application of that value-above-replacement estimate. In low tiers. Because nobody cares if some top-percentile player wrecks a lobby full of top-decile players.