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Comment by fxtentacle | Hacker News Reader

Fully agree. Back in the day, I could just join a game of Dota 2 with my friends. Last time I re-installed, they first forced me to play through a tutorial so that I won't inconvenience other players. Then me and my mate got thrown into a public match with some really talented Koreans who promptly reported us for "intentional feeding" when we lost. I guess in the morning on a weekday, there just wasn't any other amateurs online. But that put a special flag on my account so then I needed to wait for a bad behavior countdown until we could try playing again.

All of that just because my Dota skills are hobbyist level. And apparently, that's not acceptable to the online community anymore.

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>> In my estimation, esports ultimately resulted in barbaric desecration of formerly-enjoyable multiplayer experiences

> All of that just because my Dota skills are hobbyist level. And apparently, that's not acceptable to the online community anymore.

In my view, the problem here is that somehow the expectation has come to be that you play your multiplayer games with strangers. (This also causes other problems such as invasive anti-cheating software.)

I see very little benefit and quite a lot of damage resulting from this idea. Who cares about playing with strangers?

I’m a bad LoL player - I find playing with strangers perfectly fine, FWIW. Can be quite fun

I play CS:go with strangers. As i am only playing casually once in awhile and being 40 with family and my friends being in the same situation it's often my friends are not able to be online (and wise versa) when i am ready to play.

Who cares? Anybody after about the 1h mark of playing with/against the same players. If there's a major skill gap, someone isn't going to be having fun.

> Who cares about playing with strangers?

It's not a job. If I want to play, I want to fire up my gaming PC, start the game, press a "Match" / "Play" button, wait 1-2 minutes and start playing.

If I have to do organized events then I might as well not have sat on the gaming PC at all.

But I'll concede that there's a class of games in which this mindset means you're basically pissing against the wind and you'll have a very bad time. Hence I am avoiding them entirely but still wanted to give you my perspective.

Wtf? Does intentional feeding mean you’re pretending to be an amateur when you’re not an amateur, or what?

>A term in team-based video games used to describe someone who is not playing with the team and/or is playing selfishly. This person will usually stray away from the team/objective in a match. The enemy team will be able to take advantage of this situation by either being able to kill the "feeder", or pushing towards the objective while the "feeder" is unable to help. The word originates from games where special abilities can be obtained through dealing damage. If a person is getting damage dealt to them constantly, they are "feeding" the enemies ultimate.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Feeding

> Does intentional feeding mean you’re pretending to be an amateur when you’re not an amateur, or what?

No, but there is a term for that too, "smurfing".

The idea behind smurfs is for high ranked players to dunk on amateurs, rather than for high ranked players to play as badly as amateurs

Yeah, but in order to smurf you have to first tank on purpose to get into the lower-tier ranks.

Not that I've ever seen. Smurfs are all just new accounts starting with no rank

Essentially means to play poorly on purpose, with the intent on making the opposing team stronger, or to give them a strategic advantage against your team. People do this to ruin games for whatever reason, it's a phenomena which persists throughout many multiplayer games online.

It's especially a problem in Dota because you are not allowed to forfeit a rated game (!). In Dota, only professionals are allowed to freely forfeit matches, so some players resort to tanking the game when they become dispirited to end the pain more quickly (or when they just have to leave).

If you suddenly quit a rated match, Valve will punish you with time-wasting purgatory. Some people pay money to have others help them leave purgatory.

Being able to forfeit doesn't stop people from purposely tanking the game. It incentivizes them to do it more to get their teammates to also throw in the towel and forfeit.

The difference is when it does happens, it drags out longer, but it is less common.

You can now forefit a game if you are a stack of 5 players

The pro players thought I was deliberately trying to harm them by playing badly. And they call it "feeding" if you get killed by the enemy team too often. But I was just honestly inexperienced, because I only play games casually.

Ugh, that is demoralizing.

Doesn't the game use "skill" based matchmaking? If so, then those were bottom of the barrel "tryhards". I had a similar experience in CS:GO YEARS ago when I bothered to play matchmaking except instead of being reported, I got repeatedly team killed for playing the objective or something.

My experiences in overwatch weren't any good either. I remember the match that made me stop playing very well too. We lost, but I had gold in every category with my two friends taking silver and bronze. Essentially, the other two people weren't playing well at all and started spouting the most toxic shit I had heard in a long while. I guess fuck us because we were just playing for fun and still managed to do better than them? Like it wasn't a blowout or anything either.

I just don't understand some people I guess. Your post managed to bring that memory and reminded me why I don't play competitive games anymore lol. There are plenty of toxic players out there, but in my experience, a lot of them are pretty bad and are most likely projecting.

Play turbo mode. It’s all I play and it’s super casual and fast paced

I’m not sure, Dota has always had this kind of community even in the Warcraft 3 days. It has gotten worse but I think that is due to the popularity rather than the competitiveness.

If you've been away from the game for a while (even 1 or 2 years) a lot has changed. Unless you've written it off, I'd recommend playing with your friends versus bots and practicing some heroes, strategies, builds, and playing from the Dire side. Depending on how many players there are, putting someone on the opposing team who can point out your mistakes can be useful too.

I had a very similar experience playing PUBG again for the first time in years recently. Got through the first game and ended up coming 3rd or 4th, then when the next round loaded they banned me.

Unless you used cheats, it was probably a temporary ban. Perhaps people revenge reported you when they got killed?

> All of that just because my Dota skills are hobbyist level. And apparently, that's not acceptable to the online community anymore.

There is a reason for MMR system, so you can land at your skill cap. Also dota is not a game you relax to. Its like saying racing is something you do when you are sleepy and high.

Flatout 2 ;) I don't know anyone who takes that game seriously. Also, the physics are way too random/arcade for that. You play it to have fun with friends and relax.

Well I actually meant physical racing.

As in example of something you wouldn't considered doing as it not fun or dangerous if you do.

>racing when you are sleepy or high.

What about drunk? https://gamerules.com/rules/beerio-kart/

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