I will start my post by saying that I was not aware that everyone playing last night was so new. To be honest I didn't know we were getting all this started under the Dota Noobs name again. I just figured these were all friends of friends who happened to be on. That being said I was a little impatient with the people I was playing with and I apologize because I was not aware that several people were new players and I would have been more helpful if I had known.

Anyway, we just need to work on balancing out the skill. Having players like myself, shane, gambit, etc. playing is fine we just really have to be careful about how we balance it. If you put all 3 of on radiant the dire is going to have a bad time. I know it's obvious what i'm saying but we we really need to work on it. That brings us to the obstacle of knowing exactly how "new" a player is. Obviously some people catch on quicker than others and a player with 50 wins could easily already be better than someone with 100 wins. I don't really see an easy way to accomplish this aside from just getting to know the players, except maybe establishing some sort of skill rating system. Maybe on a scale of 1 - 5.

1 - Few matchmaking games under belt, comfortable with a support hero or two. Comfortable enough to consistently win bot games.
2 - Knows the ins and outs of maybe 5 or 6 heroes. Understands how to ward, beginning to know how to farm consistently.
3 - Understands how to carry, good map awareness, consistent positioning in teamfights, etc
4 - Can effectively play a wide range of heroes, knows how to play every lane/jungle, can hard carry
5 - Can effectively play most if not all heroes, ability to coach and draft, extensive hero/item knowledge.

This is a really rough description but I'm sure you guys get the idea. It wouldn't even have to be a publicly known thing. We could just have a group of more experienced players that rates the players in order to establish more fair inhouse games, and not need to make everyone's ranking known. They would just split of the teams evenly based on the information they have at hand. Obviously it wouldn't be a perfect system but It might be useful. Let me know what your thoughts are.

Also, I think more experienced players need to support more. We all know I love to play anti mage and shane likes to play lone druid. And gambit rapes with pretty much any hero you give him, but I think we need to support. I think new players will learn a little better that way. It doesn't need to be all the time but the more experienced players tend to take up the carry role too often.

Also for the record I know I used me, shane, and gambit as an example but that doesn't mean I think I'm better than everyone else. There are several others just as good if not better

It was just rather unbalanced hence my post .

I'm thinking the "rate yourself" system is probably a good idea. The more experienced of us could agree on a solid 1-5 rating system, and when new players join, just show them the list and let them chose for themselves. It won't be perfect but it's better than nothing.

I also like the idea of the Mod. It will be easier to do that, however, if we definitely have more than 10 players. When we barely scrape together 10 people it's hard to have someone focus on being the moderator when they're trying to play as well. I think it's important for the mod to not be a player in that match to remove any bias.

Let me start by saying that I do not intend to offend anyone or their design sense.

That being said, this forum looks god awful. I'm not sure why this board, AcmlmBoard XD, or whatever was chosen because there are much better looking free ones, but can I do some design work on this? It looks like a forum from 10 years ago. Would Alverez or whoever be up for giving me admin access to try and clean up the skin a little bit? This green and black plus transparency stuff is incredibly hard on the eyes and I know i'm not the only one who thinks so.

Sounds awesome. Didn't mean to sound like an ass btw. Your coding and such has been awesome so far and believe I know how much work that is to do, especially for free. We should get together and spruce things up a bit

I'm game. I will probably more than likely only make the second game though. However if this fills up give someone a spot over me. I can play with the guest another time

I would be happy to do this as well

Don't hold me to it yet though, not positive if I can make it home for the first game...also im stupid, wtf is the time difference from CST to EST?

Welcome!

RTS's are actually a great place to come from jumping into the MOBA scene. Being good at micro/macro translates into Dota pretty well

Welcome . Hopefully we can make the server situation work. Lookin' forward to playing with ya

You've come to the right place Feel free to jump on mumble and ask any questions you have

I for one am not a fan of the random button but glad to have you anyway . I would strongly recommend getting yourself a mic, however, as it would help you out immensely to have the ability to communicate more effectively. Looking forward to seeing you around!

We will treat you as if you were of our own flesh and blood

I think Shane is in love xD...Welcome !

Seems like we really got a lot of publicity from SUNSfan Welcome to DotaNoobs!

I like you're attitude. I think i'm gonna like you Welcome!

Haha i've seen some of these before. Good stuff.

I don't actually know if we have any aussie's off the top of my head. I think one of the girls might be from australia haha. But welcome friend!

I'm from south jersey so I think you're actually the closest one to me yet Welcome!

Here's everything i've come up with so far. Everything is viable for light and dark backgrounds and I could do some really great motion graphic work with anything like this. All colors/fonts/etc are easily changed.

Soon to be an epic backdrop for me to get back into some casting