Valve is always working to crack down on trolls and cheats in Dota 2. With that in mind, they outlined their plans to punish these players more severely in a recent post on their website. This could even include making the rest of the community pay for ranked games.
Will they go through with it? And what other changes are they planning on implementing to deal with the worst individuals in Dota 2? Let’s take a look.
If you’re a regular Dota player then you’re definitely no stranger to the report button. Even if your behavior score is at 10,000 (casual flex). Barely a day goes by without at least considering reporting someone for flaming, or feeding, or verbal abuse, etc. etc. etc.
Well, this is a slippery slope for some players. If your account receives consistent reports then you could find yourself getting banned for a substantial period of time. One Reddit user submitted a post entitled “I just got a 19 year BAN?! WTF”.
Yep, you red that right. Due to excessive reports Reddit user, YeezyReseller, has been banned from Dota ranked games for 19 YEARS! However, eagle-eyed Reddit detectives were quick to ascertain the cause. YeezyReseller’s behavior score in Dota 2 was 509.
As Reddit user nameorfeed quite eloquently put it, “If you were rated how nice u are as a person on a scale of 10, you barely reached 0.5/10”.
Valve is also going to great efforts to ban Smurf accounts. For those of you not down with the hip-hop lingo, my homeboy…or something… a Smurf account is a bought or boosted account. This process involves
players buying a boosted account from someone else who has spent time to boost it to a higher MMR rating or drop it to a lower MMR rating.
The reason for this is often for bragging rights. Being able to tell your friends and rivals that you are in a much higher MMR bracket than them is great – unless you’ve bought the account, you dirty Smurf. Players will also buy accounts at significantly lower MMR ratings so that they can have the satisfaction of winning every game.
Valve plans to crack down on this by boosting the MMR rating potential Smurf accounts will receive for winning and losing. This will ensure the problem corrects itself as the account will quickly fall back into the correct bracket. Valve also plans on a process of live detection for these accounts and will then enact something they call “aggressive recalibration”.
In an almost throwaway paragraph at the end of their update, Valve mentioned possibly the most worrying change of all. Dota 2 has always been free to play. Of course, some choose to throw plenty of money at the game for treasures, Battle Passes and the like.
In their most ambitious attempt to crack down on players ruining the game, it looks like Valve are to consider making ranked pay to play. This would involve a one-time fee for everyone who wanted to play ranked. The aim here is to discourage people from having multiple accounts at various MMR levels.
However, by punishing cheats and Smurfs Valve would also be punishing the rest of the community by locking ranked play behind a paywall. It makes sense why they would consider making ranked games this way, but hopefully their other prevention methods work well enough so as to make this change unnecessary.
Applause is in order for Valve’s ongoing efforts to make Dota 2 a more enjoyable game for everyone. In Valve’s own words, certain players are “too big of a tax on the rest of the community and are not wanted”. The full update on next seasons’ ranked changes can be found on Valves website.
Despite the fact they continue to consider making you pay for ranked games, there is hope that it won’t come to that.
Perhaps all the trolls and cheats will one day see the error of their ways and come good. Then all can enjoy gaming together in harmony. In other news, a pig with wings has just flown past the window… Did someone just upgrade the courier?
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