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Comment by errantspark | Hacker News Reader

I think the approach that Valve takes to this in DotA 2 is pretty phenomenal. If you get reported you are put into a 'low priority' pool, since the people who play in this pool are generally there for a reason it makes a very effective punishment. If you play a day's worth of games with people who are total assholes you see how much it sucks to be on the receiving end. I'm consistently impressed with how the community in DotA 2 will permit long pauses, be courteous, and in general nicer than any other game I've played. Also the pace of this talk is infuriatingly slow.

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I thought the idea was really great as well, on the flipside I love Dota2's ability to "commend" as it makes people try harder to be friendly and lead in order to earn those points positively. (Though in reality I've only gotten those points when I do really well and basically win the game for my team)

You must be playing a different DotA 2 than me then. To me this is by far the worst community of players I've ever been in, but then I've only played in public games. I really want to like the game, but there are so many players with terrible attitudes that there is a huge change you'll get one of those in your team that will ruin the game. I've reported quite a number of people and it makes no difference whatsoever.

Actually, I think it's terrible in it's current state. I made a second account to try some heroes/practice heroes on. Recently they changed the number of reports to four per week, but I almost need to report a person per match for either feeding, afking or really bad language. I realize this is in the 'normal' bracket, which is still pretty terrible.

You might be consistently impressed, lately I have been consistently disappointed by the Dota 2 community.

I'm in the normal bracket too and that is my experience as well. I used to max out on reports per week just reporting bad language.

It really varies. I try to play like I play prisoner's dilemma, my first move is "courteous" and subsequent moves are to do whatever you do.

Sometimes you get teams of mature people who realize we're all in it to have fun, who will wait for you, crack jokes while you're all waiting, and generally make you feel better about the game. Those have been some of the best matches I've played, and included extending condolences to the other player when I've killed them and giving them tips on what they could do better after they respawn.

Other times, people will just yell at you, swear at you, call you names, constantly unpause the games, and just be horrible shits.

Also, I wonder what's different (culturally) about Russians, as they seem to be, by far, the less courteous of the bunch. I think they are racist towards Americans, so when someone speaks English, they basically go "fuck him, he's an American". A few of my friends go the opposite racism route, and say "fuck him, he's Russian", but I obviously try to tell them that you shouldn't be a dick to someone if he's not been a dick to you first.

Came here to say the same thing. DotA 2 is one of the best experiences I've had in gaming ettiquette. Sure there are still the occasional trolls and flamewars. In general the games are handled with sportsmanship and teamwork.

Contrast this with any other multiplayer game and you'll see constant harassment, cheating, and an overwhelming lack of team play. Overall just too many people who make it their job to ruin the games.

The only thing I'd change is better onboarding of new players. There's a big gulf between the tutorials/bots and PvP. The first 5-10 real games for a new player are filled with insults, and losses.

On the flip side, if you get placed into the punishment brackets its back to dota1 style game play.

Which is significantly annoying because there is a bug where you get disconnected from dota. Your only fix is to shut down steam, and I've had to turn off my modem and restart it.

And theres a 5 minute timer waiting to ban you if you are either AFK, or not earning EXP.

Then theres the bans for being a noob on top of that. As a result, its currently sub-par to on par with Dota 1 for me.

Whenever I play, my teammates pause the game and wait so the 5 minute timer doesn't apply.

You can buy a new dota key for around 2 euros if you get stuck in that pool. Jealous noobs are also flagging really good players to get rid of them too, plenty of threads on people who got stuck in the low priority pool for being too good.

different genre, but I find the starcraft community pretty good. The culture of even wishing your opponent(s) glhf (good luck have fun) and saying gg (good game) afterwards is pretty respectful (most of the time).

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