u/SirMcSquiggles

It has finally dawned on me that the issue of rampant smurfing, boosted players, and terrible match quality in ranked party mode will never change. And for one simple reason: there are a LOT of closeted smurfs now. The mentality of smurfing has changed for many people, at least behind closed doors. A lot of them think they are excluded from calling themselves smurfs because "I have to play on this account to play ranked with my crusader friend" or a similar excuse.

Turbo has slowly killed casual unranked for a long time. Groups that may want to play unranked due to having huge gaps in mmr can't find matches because no one is playing it. If they do manage to find a game after a long wait, the match quality will probably be terrible. The higher ranked friend feels "forced" to get a smurf account so they can even get into a match with one another.

There is a vicious cycle here that results in so many boosted players and further ruins the match quality. The cherry on top is lack of a seasonal mmr system.

Change my mind

edit: my mind has been changed on seasonal mmr or at least I realized that I don't understand well enough to advocate for it one way or the other

Especially when they will either come up and try to last hit a wave/camp you're already on or cut you off before you can arrive. I've played this game an assload of time yet I still don't understand how people manage to hit item timings in a game where they have maybe 1 teammate considering what is good for the carry.

I'm not saying this is super common or anything. But especially in late night solo q games it seems to be an issue and I maybe wouldn't still be a shitter if I knew how to deal with it better. I just try to find the safest farm I can but managing to make a pattern is near impossible in the described games, in my experience.

Intuition also tells me to build fighting items instead of farming items in this situation, when possible. Since the farm on the map will be limited for me. But this backfires when the team is hellbent on farming. Cuz then I have fighting items and it turns out we are just defending hg 15 min later as our first teamfight or something. That constant farming doesn't always get punished in my bracket so I want to know how to make the most of my time and come back.

Yes it's subjective, but many aspects of Dota favor viewability, and imo, more aspects than any other game. There has to be a way to make this game maintain a strong viewership/playerbase. I don't know the answer to the gambling situation. It seems the money now is so deeply rooted in gambling, I don't want to suggest it is feasible to remove those sponsors entirely. But something needs to change. I guess even if that means people accepting the gambling. I say this as someone who doesn't gamble because I worry about my own self-control.

I think the legality of the sponsorships means they are inevitably going to pop up in a lot of different scenes. I don't think that means its okay to do it because others are doing it. However... Have we ever been able to count on the companies themselves to fix these kind of issues (advertising gambling to children) instead of lawmakers? Genuine question