Dota 2 Community Collaboration Project

Welcome and thank you for joining the Dota2CCP steam group & /r/. As many other Dota 2 players you have undoubtedly noticed a significant number of issues that deter from the game's enjoyment. As the official public beta forums are proving not to be receptive of player feedback and lack any meaningful developer-player interface the only possible solution to these issues is a crowd-sourced one. This file will outline the top issues standing in the way of Dota 2 becoming all it can be and provide a set of methods to hasten the introduction of certain features requested by the community.

-Rubra's

The plague from the east and the plague from the west. Russian and Brazilian players have a certain reputation, one that is not wholly undeserved. While it is commendable that both sides have been given their own 'local' server, the Stockholm location of the Russian server being questionable, the rubra issue has not been alleviated. Wild Brazilians regularly appear on USEast and USWest and Russians are as common as the Columba livia on Europe often even venturing out to USEast. There are 0 incentives for rubra's to queue on their own servers as well as 0 repercussions for spamming their well known Xaxaxa, Huehuehue and all that accompanies it.

For the solution we look to a similar game, Heroes of Newerth, whose developer and publisher S2 Games has after some time simply sold the publishing rights for the CIS region, comprising more or less the former Soviet Union, to Garena, our dearly beloved friend from Dota 1. Interesting detail, the official HoN client did not support Cyrillic input, a conscious decision one might guess.

As Valve has been more than accommodating to the CIS region by offering cheaper local steam store prices it's unlikely that a solution to S2 Games' degree is possible. We leave speculation on viable solutions to the reader though BP gain modifiers might be a good start.

In the mean time it might be worthwhile to get familiar with the Russian language and adding it as one of your keyboard input languages, if not to communicate with Russians than to simply type English in Cyrillic spreading awareness and other four letter words. hxxp://shininghappypeople.net/deljr/gringos/xp/index.htm шилл аллош ыоу то старт тыпинг цыриллиц ригчт ашаы, ехцусе тче еррорс.

-Matchmaking Accept-Decline

We've all been there, 9/10 players having accepted, the tenth player being too busy solving the P=NP question. You're thrown back in the queue while the skill search range has either been expanded or reset. A similar issue arises with players not loading into the game, forcing you to spend the time loading, waiting in-game for the 2 minute timer and finally returning to the queue.

For the solution we turn to HoN yet again, a game which was faced with a similar problem and promptly fixed it through obvious means: a player is prevented from entering the matchmaking queue is he fails multiple times to either accept or load into the game. Given the simplicity of the solution and the lack of its implementation the problem appears to be motivation. Surely if the number of declines and load failures increases this penalty will have to be implemented. For this we call on the community and make available an autohotkey macro that will continuously enter the queue and decline the accept/decline pop-up 9 seconds after it appears. Instructions are contained in the .zip, we encourage you to virus-scan

the zip and run it whenever you are afk. hxxp://www.mediafire.com/?864s0dut97z85vn

Remember, only you can prevent forest decline.

-Forfeit, surrender and concede

A game of Dota can drag on, drag on and drag on. There is no clear answer why this option is currently not available, a forfeit/surrender/concede option is however available in similar games such as specific Dota 1 leagues, League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. Given it's widespread availability in the genre it's objectively logical to include it in Dota 2.

In reality a forfeit option already exists for 5 man groups as they can all leave at once resulting in a loss after a few seconds and no abandons. When not participating in a 5 man group the refusal of even a single player to forfeit will result in at least 1 abandon if the other 4 players forfeit and leave. Certainly prolonged games where a sudden turn-around occurs can be very exciting but the truth is that these types of games are the exception. Often the outcome of the match is evident as soon as a Sven decides to buy Vlads Offering as their first item or even earlier when a hero leaves the fountain with nothing but a ring of regen and a stout shield.

Any Dota 2 player who has seen the end of the river will consider a win a win regardless of the game duration and will derive no further joy of a lengthy stomp where the enemy is forever forced to tower hug or remain in their base as the creeps slowly push.

The solution: a gradual forfeit requirement where less ff votes are required as time goes by. Until such an option becomes available a player valuing his time will have to resort to creative measures to shorten the length of a lost game. Possibilities include disconnecting for 4.5 minutes before reconnecting to avoid an abandon and give both teams the impression that it's now 4v5 with the added demotivation of your own team upon their realization that with your return the game won't become "safe to leave". Additional methods are activating the fortification glyph as soon as it comes off cooldown and stealing items off the

courier as well as sending it to it's death. Note that these last 2 suggestions can be performed anonymously and would be discouraged or even rendered impossible by a team glyph user notification message and courier share controls.

-Matchmaking

The key to a solid game of Dota is balanced teams. With the current matchmaking system merging solo players with groups combined with extremely large skill ranges these fair games are a very rare occurrence. Solo players will receive the full brunt of complaints if they are paired with a 3 man group who consider themselves infallible, frivolous reports being plentiful.

An ideal matchmaking system would both separate solo and group players and put a player who increases in skill up against better players and with better team members. Currently a player whose skill increases is more often than not paired with worse players, the matchmaking system assuming his higher skill will offset the lower skilled players. Carrying such players is an exercise in frustration as there is no in-game indication of player skill making it impossible to determine if that anti-mage on your team knows where the pointy bit goes.

A fully separate solo queue is the logical solution, allowing 2,3 and 5 man groups to face off in a group queue with the caveat that 4 man groups will be forced to exchange bracelets with a new friend. In-game accessible player statistics such as win%, kda, apm, cs and wards would further help alleviate "We need more support but can I rely on this team member to carry?" situations. A Webkit plugin displaying concentrated stats from Steam profiles and the stats.dota2.be website is currently being worked on to fulfill this need. Until then, make ample use of the chance to leave without incurring an abandon during the 2 minute pre-hero picking loading phase.

In conclusion, even though the measures lined out above might seem harsh and unwarranted, make no mistake, we are at a crossroads where Dota 2 can go on to either become a good game or an excellent game. Some might already call this an excellent game, we call it a work in progress, a work that relies on the continued contributions and support of every single Dota 2 player. Dota2CCP embodies this ideology. Persistent, patient and steadfast Dota2CCP pushes on so Dota 2 can reach its fullest potential.

I am a Dota 2 player and so can you.

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