• @[email protected]
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    27 months ago

    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.

    • @mindbleach
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      27 months ago

      … 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.