This is probably going to end up being a long post - but bear with me. I think it contains an important message for the Dota noobs here.

So earlier today I was in an in house with some other folks and we got rolled. It wasn't the MOST one-sided game ever. But... it was pretty one-sided. We all got outlaned pretty hard at the start and it just went downhill from there. By the time it was over, we had only taken down 2 turrets. They had a 15 kill lead, and had each accumulated near full late game item builds where we hadn't even managed to finish our core builds.

They were very well mannered and gracious victors. We could have been better losers. Either way - we got outplayed.

A couple folks on my team (the losing one for those keeping score at home) were pretty butthurt about it. One mentioned "I bet you like stomping all over people who don't know what they're doing!". While the difference in skill level was very apparent - it was clear that none of the people on the other side had any dota 1 experience and not a single player on the other team had more than 100 wins.

Now - I'm an experienced MOBA and RTS player. I grew up with StarCraft, Warcraft, the command and conquer series, and pretty much every MOBA to come out. I even played the reviled League of Legends from closed beta up until now. For each of these games - playing a hundred games did not make you an experienced player. It took several hundred games until the average player had learned enough to speak competently about the game they were playing.

As a LOL player - I played a few hundred games and felt that I understood the game. By a THOUSAND games I realized I didn't understand the game nearly well enough. I managed to get to get myself out of what they call ELO hell to a 1300 ELO (LOL's ranked point system) and figured I wasn't a complete baddie. Recently playing with my friends who are ranked at 1600 - I was proved wrong.

My point is this: Someone with 60 wins or even a 100 wins coming into a noob inhouse is not intentionally trying to wreck your game. Experience is relative, and I can tell you right now that someone even with 300 public game wins (and little to no dota 1 experience) is still bad at this game. They are probably going to be bad at 500 wins. If you get rolled, it's only because you are more bad than they.

This isn't me trying to be demotivational, but to bring across a very important point with this genre of game:

* "Skill" is relative to your own experience

* There is always more to learn in this game, that is what keeps it challenging and fun

* Losing may not be fun, but that is how we can learn to be better gamers


So keep that in mind. When someone with 50 or 100 public game wins comes into a reddit noobs in house, and these people feel they are inexperienced: they are being realistic about their situation.

I hate it when there is all sort of hate thrown at some dude with 50 pub game wins when they roll some one with 10 wins. I wouldn't call either player experienced by any stretch of the imagination and as long as I'm not hearing folks blame their teammates for being scrubs or being bad for making mistakes, everything is okay in my book. In fact... I would prefer a couple more experienced people join or games more frequently as long as they have chill attitudes and aren't afraid to give constructive advice.

I gotta say - I got steamrolled hard a couple games today. It was from people with better game knowledge than I. Between talking to them afterwards, and my own self reflection - I can't wait to take these lessons to my next dota game and (hopefully) pwn hard.

But this is how we all are going to learn...

-PA out.

The absolute best way to learn is to get outplayed and stomped out. Not only does this give you a chance to reflect on your own mistakes/decisions/positioning, but you get a firsthand view at someone doing a better job than you. Take a chance to look at what your opponents did right and LEARN from it, instead of getting hot-headed.

There is really no single factor that can be used to determine skill level. I played LoL as well. I got into the 1450's when I first started playing ranked, and season 2 I stopped playing somewhere around 850 ELO. I was definitely a better player in Season2 then I was when I was 1450, so that really counts for nothing.

I've noticed more than a few players claiming to be "noobs" only to clearly be very advanced players. I don't mind having players of higher skill level participating but they need to do so in a honest and strait forward fashion. If they want to mentor fine but I absolutely will not tolerate them stroking their Epeens over our players. That is the number one concern for the majority of people that have joined and its something that we need to watch for every closely. I was in the game in question and while I didn't really say anything during the match I do think the player was gaming the system a bit. That being said I think its a good time to figure out some method for dealing with folks that might not be playing with their fellow gamers best intentions in mind.

Thoughts?

Look the bottom line here is we are all trying to have fun. No matter what we do there is always going to be some kind of skill-gap between a lot of our players/community. In time as we get more and more people and can have more then one or two games going on simultaneously (and a ladder!) then we can start pairing people up based on skill level somehow, to make sure everyone is somewhat equally balanced out.

On that same note, we are a league for -noob- players to the game, and while that is going to be very hard to enforce I think the general rule of thumb should be: If you are experienced enough in this game that we feel you can't be placed in our ranks anywhere without seriously disrupting balance OR if you have a attitude or are clearly just here trying to "nubstomp", we'll just have KINDLY tell that person that we're sorry but they are a detriment to the community and there are a million other places they can go to find a game.

How do we handle this? Maybe for now we can create a thread/forum that is only visible by registered board members where we can discuss these things. If you feel someone is ruining our fun, then post and get a consensus. If your claim is legit I'm sure a few other people from that game will come back and vote YES and then we have to do what we have to do.

It's not going to be fun and some people will be legitly disappointed/pissed off but it's better for the group as a whole. I can volunteer as our PR cease-and-desist man if we want haha.

I'd just like to point out that eventually we aren't going to be noobs anymore. We will have to find some way to include more skilled players, so I wouldn't outright tell them they can't play, but try to get them to be helpful and provide advice. If they are only interested in stomping noobs, then sure, kick them, but we should be careful not to offend someone that could bring something useful to the community.

You are 100% right the last thing we want to do is scare people away, and hell the pro players are the ones we want to have around teaching us. I'm talking strictly about people who come in to take advantage of our "nubishness", and those are the people who would get a majority-vote in the thread?

The issue right now is we have a relatively small player-base (don't take this wrong I'm incredibly excited at the overwhelming interest in this project) so its hard to fit everyone in to our current skill spectrum. If very talented players come to us to play and they display a good general attitude/are friendly I think we should reach out and invite them to mentor/comment on VOD's for us. Once we have enough people playing we'll find a place for everyone and we won't really be noob-only league anymore.

Shit, I tried to buy www.dotapros.com as well but it was taken haha. In time i think our name can really just be a novelty, and while we will always have a place for the "unskilled" to come and play and learn in a friendly environment there's no reason we shouldn't maybe eventually consider the top 5 of the "Doobs" ladder winning some tournaments haha

This ^^.

Also - as I was saying "noob" is very relative to your personal experience. There are going to be competitive people with 300 wins who will absolutely obliterate folks just starting out. However, when they look to the level they WANT to play at - they're going to think their terrible at this game.

You can pick out the trolls pretty quickly. Not inviting them to a game is a pretty easy affair.

You can also encourage an environment for people to learn and get better together pretty easily.

The hardest part is getting together in house games on the fly that are balanced. Sometimes it's very tough to tell who's skill is where. But I've yet to get steamrolled in a game where there winning side were bad mannered about it or trolling.

-PA

Unfortunately I have. I expect that crap out of a 4chan league, not a reddit league.

Well that's why we're creating this league! A lost game should still have been an enjoyable time, and hopefully a learning experience. There is no room for trollling/gloating or general bad-manners.

I don't learn shit when I'm in a pubstomp game unless there's broadcasters pointing out mistakes in all-chat. The majority of the in-house games that end up being more advanced players stomping newer players don't have 'casters giving advice.

If you need help finding where you could improve. Ask spectators in mumble after the game. There is usually 2-3 people spectating. When I am in mumble I am discussing critiques and strategies with other spectators. We are all here to help each other improve. Dont be afraid to ask. The first areas any player should improve on is positioning and farm. At our skill level you are going to win most of your fights because you have better items rarely will a fight be swayed by a cute trick or clever play(this is somewhat true at higher levels of play but most of the time a player utilize their heroe's abilities to efficiently counter the enemy).

All of the one sided stomp inhouse games I have seen follow the same pattern. The losing team take very few last hits and let the enemy from free farming. So when it comes time for a team fight(or 1v1) the losing side never had a chance because they let themselves build a gold deficit. This allows the other team to flat out have more effective health and damage. Next time a game ends in a stomp check the CS totals. Gold is necessary resource that too many people seem to be neglecting.

There is also the replay feature if you're not on mumble.

One of the hardest things for me in Dota 2 is lane control. Coming from LOL - which is an extremely "safe" game compared to Dota - I making a number of positioning errors that cost me CS, or sometimes worse, get me killed.

Using the replay feature from time to time is incredibly helpful for me to spot errors and such when I get horribly outplayed.

^ replays definately help
One can learn alot from taking the time to review a replay. There have been times when watching replays where I am like WTF am I doing. You will find all kinds of silly mistakes. Use what you find to set goals for your next game

I think it's awesome what a robust replay system we have to work with, especially considering this game is still in closed Beta. You really have the all the necessary tools available to you in-client, self replays and live spectating!

This is something I wish LOL had.

Dota2 is far more feature rich than LOL 2.5 years after release. This game is gonna be SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICK.

there will always be people that get butt hurt liek idra Pro but still butt hurt when he loses