I won't play the game, because DOTA and its many clones probably have the most unfriendly players in all of gaming, but it's great news for Linux.
I think it essentially comes from the nature of the game: as an individual, you're suddenly stuck with a bunch of other people you have to cooperate with. It's not like tf2 or CS. The teams are smaller and the stakes are much higher. People care about winning games in DotA a lot more than they do in most FPS games, where the journey is the destination. In DotA, the win is the destination and it's the validation of your abilities (k/d ratio doesn't cut it).
You would think having the win be so important would make it easier or better to work together, but the fact of the matter is most DotA players suck. Even people who consistently win public games still suck. Players hold everyone else to incredibly high standards and get frustrated when they feel like their team "drags them down." This is compounded by a feeling that, if you're doing badly yourself, you should scapegoat a team member in order to shift the blame.
DotA 2 is actually a lot better. I'm not sure why exactly, and it depends on your level. Maybe there's hope.
The fact that you are launched into a game where your fun depends on the performance of a bunch of strangers in a fast -paced, hostile environment that penalizes mistakes heavily with only short bursts of text to communicate is a recipe for vile players.
The weird thing is that the stakes are largely only whether the game will meet the player's expectations.
Also, humans are generous when judging their own abilities and are miserly when judging a stranger's abilities.
I don't find this genre fun whether I'm succeeding or not, for me it's 100% journey (casually and socially exploring the way mechanics combine into interesting gameplay - including failures as much as successes) and these games and their player base seem to be the precise opposite of that.
This game is massively popular in both of those regions.
I think MOBA games (except for the kiddie ones like LoL) are popular there because they like their games to be challenging. Most games today are rich in graphics but poor in gameplay, dumbed down for the masses to enjoy. At least in D2 and HoN even the most dedicated players still get a thrill out of sharpening their skills and being better then the other guy.
A lot of games involve team work, but it isn't crucial: that is you'll play better if you work as a team, but you don't need to and you can still enjoy the game if you ignore your team.
This is manifestly untrue for Dota. if you ignore your team you'll have a horrible time and so will the rest of your team.
As result this is actually an interesting social experiment: based on dota it looks like a lot of people don't like working as a team.
Imagine that baseball games were played using a non-discriminatory matchmaking service. So start of the "Dodgers vs Giants" game there would be a pause and then 25 "players" would materialize. Some of them would be athletes in their 20s with strong skills, some would be 40+ year old veterans who have good skills but aren't in shape, some would be 10 year old little leaguers who are very knowledgeable but inexperienced and out of shape, and some would be people who just randomly picked "play baseball" as their selected activity, not really knowing even what the rules of the game were. Then there is a "manager" who has to create a starting lineup, assign positions, and win the pennant.
Extremely frustrating.
Blizzard was working on "fixing" this by segregating selection of players into "twinks" and "non-twinks", "experienced" vs "non-experienced" and "hardcore" vs "casual" which helped but it still made for a crappy experience a lot of the time.
Also, I realized that I feel around ten times worse when losing than how good I feel when winning, so the expected derived pleasure from the game is really really negative, so I scaled my playing down a whole lot.
Because that's what the system was designed to do. If you're winning more than 50% it means that some percentage of the time, the game can't find 5 people who are better than you to put in a game. You'd have to compete at a semi-pro level to get this to happen.
Other games such as Dota 2, Starcraft 2 and League of Legends feature excellent match making. Anyone who takes these games seriously usually has a set group of people to play with, and only do public games when they have to.
I played HoN before matchmmaking, and it was quite interesting: you created a lobby, people would join, and you as leader could vet your teammates and kick the ones you didn't want to play with. Then the game proceeded once both sides were happy.
It took about ~10mins to get a game going, but the games were far higher quality.
The real hazard in DOTA / AOS / MOBA games are the people who slowly (or quickly) transform from quiet or reasonable people into insanely angry trash talking monsters. After all, the DOTA community got its reputation for being awful back in WC3, totally independent of any matchmaking.
There wasn't really a good way to tell who was going to be an asshole, and who wasn't going to be one.
You could be contributing to the problem a lot more than you think, e.g. by way of the Broken Windows theory[1].
Just moved from Wordpress to Flask, got the Valve Dota2 replay-parser running on Linux and am preparing some cool stuff with that on the back end.
tl;dr: get on teamspeak (voice.dotanoobs.com) and play with people who aren't mean.
TeamSpeak's serverquery let me do a lot of cool things easier than Mumble/ice. There is a TeamSpeak client for linux (http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=downloads)!
Did you ever submit any feature requests or talk to the Mumble people about those integrations you use? Being an open-source project, it may not be too far-fetched to see them added in.
To deal with trolls/toxic people, they have a reporting system. If someone gets reported by a number of people they will be muted and/or put into the low priority queue. Muting lasts X duration (depending on repeat offences) and prevents that person from talking at all in game (they can still use the chat wheel I believe).
The low-priority queue is a separate match-making queue, where only people in this queue will play against one another. It is for people that regularly abandon games (or are toxic players). It tends to be filled with the trouble-making players.
In DOTAlike games? You're married to the bad teammate. If you drop, the game brands you a leaver. You won't be scrambled. The round won't even end any time soon - you're just stuck with him for many, many minutes of play. But the worst part is, he's actually feeding power to the enemy. Every time you get in a fight and get your ass kicked, you're going to think of the screwups your bad teammate did.
And there's no perspective, no fog-of-war between teammates. You can see his every screw-up. Can watch it in hateful detail.
And then the other team just reams you and clobbers you because they've cranked their power up.... but the game doesn't even have the dignity of ending quickly, you're stuck while they pummel you until the game ends properly instead of being trapped in this moribund state.
And all the time, your hatred for that idiotic scrub boils.
The game is practically designed to make you hate the weakest player on your team.
It sounds like you need to do the opposite -- help the bad teammate. Yelling at the person is just going to make them less cooperative. How is it that we've been programmed to yell at these people when that makes it worse? (or have we learned that yelling works and we apply it to everything?)
The Dunning-Kruger effect gets in the way of this. A lot of unskilled people take offense at unsolicited advice, particularly if they're so unskilled as to deem themselves the best player on the team. It doesn't help that the game tracks somewhat superficial stats such as kills and deaths; a score that can run counter to the actual hidden score in the game: gold/experience differential. Like a basketball player who shoots all the time and refuses to pass, bad players will often prioritise individual success in lieu of team success. Then when you try to help them they lash out at you for not having as many kills as them; seemingly ignorant of the different roles on a team.
From personal experience, I disagree with the implication that the dunning-krueger effect gets in the way of it.
I have a hard time explaining how precisely atm, but you can often get the weaker players to work with you, and at the same time create a team even in the middle of a pub game.
TO give an example of some of the core tricks: in WoW battlegrounds the simple act of constantly YELLING the enemies incoming to a node, and keeping up the communication banter (even alone in local chat) will result in a spate of wins.
If I were to simplify it, it would be know what to communicate, and communicate simply. Your greatest enemy is discord, and poor communication.
Further: in pub games its probably easier because a modicum of co-ordination will get you quick battle wins over the opponents and so solidify camaraderie. Strong opponents who know what they are doing better than you can assist will leave you with few opportunities on the field to capitalize on.
----
For weak players in DoTA 1 and 2.
No one likes being cursed, and become more receptive to someone who steps in, while also providing some space to enjoy themselves and win. I've found myself saying
> "Chill out. All of us were noobs once. Player X, you did screw up, but it happens. Next time, call out, or let us know." Or
> "mate, we're bugged because we NEED your skill to land, thats why they are pissed, they depend on you."
Those lines sound cheesy when I write them down, but context, delivery and crafting of the appropriate sentence matters a lot more.
Side note: In DoTA I've found you can control your team better playing a support role.
I've never played these games so I may be missing something, but why is that a problem? Somebody else in this thread mentioned that lossing in Dota is worse than losing in other games, but didn't explain why either.
I'm getting the sense that the real cause of the issue is that for some reason people take Dota way too seriously. If you lose, what's the big deal? You still had fun right?
A coworker told me a few days ago that he use to play "league of legends" but quit when he realized he wasn't actually having fun since the experience become too stressful.
When you start getting better in such games, you need to be very concentrated, very nervous. It isn't all fun and casual gaming anymore. When this concentration pays off and you win, it feel amazing, when it doesn't and you lose, you feel miserable. Anyway, you can't get back to lower level casual gaming (make a new account, for example) since it becomes so easy that you could play blindfolded.
Of course you could somewhat alleviate the negative effect of losses by having good permanent teammates, also whole game becomes much more interesting if you coordinate with fellows you know. Still, blame shifting happens even in the friendliest of teams.
I've stopped playing MOBA (HoN is my poison of choice) when I understood how nervous and unpleasant I am after the game session.
This block of text here explains why I consider the entire genre to be fundamentally flawed.
Knowing that those people are out there, what you can do is be the moral leader. When the game starts, give the all-chat "good luck have fun" greeting, start discussing lane strategy, team strategy (push/turtlefarm/gank), etc. If you make a mistake, live up to it. The only time the trolls really ruin games is if everyone else is silent and lets the person continue ranting.
Learning to float above the trolls' guilt trips while still being able to admit your mistakes is an interesting emotional exercise.
Please please please please don't be That Guy. I encourage muting individuals who are annoying. But I use mic exclusively and how are we supposed to cooperate?
Valve's commitment to tweaking behaviour through player feedback has been surprisingly effective. You can read a bit about it here: http://blog.dota2.com/2013/05/communication-reports/
I play League of Legends, and while there's a decent chance that you'll run into a few toxic players every 3 or 4 games, most of the time if you set the tone at champion select or the start of a game with "gl hf" and, more impoartantly something like, "hey guys, how's it going?" or "let's have a good time" (as cheesy as it sounds) things end up going really smoothly. Silliness and joking helps too (such as, "Party at our nexus!" or "ey yo [champion name], what u doin later tonight?"). I've played 4 games over the past 2 days and only one person came close to raging.
The worst of the worst tend to have the lowest ratings, so if you're halfway decent (which is pretty easy to achieve) then you'll be alright, barring the occasional crazy person.
The best solution to enjoy your game when a scumbag is in your team (or the other):
1. Mute him/her. Both the chat and microphone will be muted. 2. Report. 3. Keep playing.
I've done this since day one, I've muted about 5 people during the last month. It's acceptable for me. And if you team up with friends in a party, you'll have so much more fun.
Please remember to commend the people helping you out. I love being commended, and that's why I'm trying to help out and staying friendly during all of my games no matter how it turns out.
This scenario makes it very easy to get agitated when a person on your team screws up badly and ends up costing your team the game.
Dota 2 has recently introduced a robust muting system that has really done a good job changing the behavior of the more... voiceful members online - this has led to an overall much more pleasant in-game chat experience.