Dota 2: How Important is Your Behavior Score?

Behavior score has been around longer than most Dota players know. However, in the past year, Valve Studios made this value visible to their players.

Behavior score is a number rating from 1-10,000 that gives value to how your attitude in game is perceived, with 10,000 being the best possible score. In this piece, we will go over the importance of having a good behavior score.

What Does Behavior Score Do?

When you queue for a match, Dota 2 works to line up players who are at similar skill levels. In addition, Behavior Scores come in to play. The client strives to match you with players with the same score as you. There is some leniency to this, since it might take a while to get only players who have 10,000 Behavior Score. It is not uncommon to have a 10,000 player with someone 7,000 or lower.

Dota 2, like many competitive online games has a fair share of angry players. Some days it can feel like every other game has a player berating you on that missed skillshot or accusing you of feeding. Even worse, having players that might threaten to feed kills to the enemy team.

After playing 25 games, you will receive a “Conduct Summary” Listing the amount of Abandons, Reports and Commends you received during those matches, as well as your conduct summary number.

Behavior Score also affects the time it takes to find a match in the first place. When you have a low behavior score, you are put at a lower priority when in queue, therefore having much longer queue times making many players frustrated even before the start of the game.

Is Behavior Score Important?

Imagine a horrible game experience: you queue for a match and immediately everyone on your team is fighting over Mid or Carry. Eventually, someone randoms and now you are stuck with a Solo Offlane Anti-Mage who is verbally upset in the the team chat all game. The enemy team already has an advantage over you before the game starts because you and your teammates cannot get along.

This is a sad example and we would not wish an allied Offlane Anti-Mage onto anyone. However, many games can feel over from the picking phase if your team is already butting heads and name-calling.

On the other hand, the value of being able to work with teammates who do not let their emotions control their actions is refreshing. All you need to come back from a hard early game is some dedication and cooperation. Having teammates who understand people have bad games and allow you to catch up is game winning.

Having a high Behavior Score does not guarantee there are no feeders in your games, but it does make the odds much lower. And in a game like Dota 2, it is all about winning the hard games.

How Can I Raise My Score?

Raising your Behavior Score is not something that happens overnight.

Before any advice can be received on Behavior Score in Dota, one must understand that many instances of difficult teammates is a result of a difficult day, or stressful situation in life. Many players have losing streaks, maybe that teammate who is upset with you just had two games prior where people were mad at them. As a result, they are now just frustrated and has some built-up stress.

The most important thing is to understand we are all human, make mistakes, get upset, and have bad days.

If you want to improve your behavior score, you must treat people with respect (which can be hard at times). If you have played Dota for many hours, you have most likely had a game where you got angry as well. It is a natural human tendency to have emotion. The importance comes with how you use your emotion.

Honestly, being silent is one of the best things you can do with tense teammates. Feel free to have serious communication about Ganking or Teamfights. But many players do not enjoy the chit chat and if things go downhill they are likely to blame who they might think was a shot-caller. On another note, if you have friendly teammates joking around and being a fun teammate is ideal. People like playing with people they can have fun with.

Lastly, simple manners go a long way. Congratulating your teammates on a completed Gank, solo kill or anything else does way more than you might think.

Applying simple understanding and ignoring people who are flaming makes all the difference, and after several weeks with a positive mental attitude, your score will really climb. As it climbs, it gets steadily easier to continue the trend.

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