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[Cthulhu]

I've got 37 wins and 72 games total.  Add me on steam and we'll play some games, try to get better.

[RexMundi]

I've got 37 wins and 72 games total.  Add me on steam and we'll play some games, try to get better.

may i add you too?

[Putnam]

Imma join in on this. I've been meaning to see if I can get my 16-18 minute radiance as Naga Siren consistent...

[Cthulhu]

Everyone can add me. 

[Chaos Armor]

You can still show the world you play well in Dota 2, but no matter what you'll probably end up with around a 50% win-rate unless you play in a stacked party.

(One of the better presented arguments: http://www.playdota.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1394726)

Every time I go above a 50% win-rate it matches me with a sniper or someone similar who goes 0-12-2... or worse.

Also, if you want to get better:

1. Watch streams of professional players.    (Watch Dendi go mid and pay attention to his positioning)
2. Read all of the hero guides you can.   (Go to DotaFire and find the newer guides that have a lot of views)
3. Learn about every hero in the game.     (Every ability)


I am by no means a great player myself. I'd generally consider myself below-average. I have, however, improved a lot from when I first started and I did it by reading about the heroes and watching videos.

[Cthulhu]

Watch Dendi go mid and pay attention to his positioning)

This seems like a good idea, I think positioning might be part of my problem.  Dota's positioning's a lot different, league's full of slows and skillshot stuns so it's all about the mobility moves.  Too many get out of jail free cards, I'll have to break the habit of overextending.

[Malus]

You can still show the world you play well in Dota 2, but no matter what you'll probably end up with around a 50% win-rate unless you play in a stacked party.

(One of the better presented arguments: http://www.playdota.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1394726)

Every time I go above a 50% win-rate it matches me with a sniper or someone similar who goes 0-12-2... or worse.

No. No. No. No.

There is no such thing as "forced-fifty". The matchmaking system will not match you with inferior players unless you are an extreme outlier in terms of MMR (i.e., 5.5k+). If you are below the 5k range, you will be matched with and against people who are approximately your MMR. At 3.8k, the overwhelming majority of my teammates and opponents are within 100MMR points of each other. The very nature of a good matchmaking system is that most players will converge on a 50% winrate. It's basic logic. If you do well, your MMR increases, which means the strength of both your opponents and your teammates will also increase accordingly. Ranked games even show you the MMR breakdown of every player after every match. When everyone's within 100MMR points of each other, the system has no clue which player is "good" or which player is "bad" -- to the matchmaking algorithm, they're all of equal skill.

If forced 50% were true, then climbing MMR would be literally impossible. If you're playing solo, every victory gives you +25 MMR points, and every loss takes away 25 points. The only way to raise your MMR is to win more than you lose, which disproves the forced 50% "theory". Unless you're Dendi or Arteezy, the system is not going to match you with players who are worse than you and expect you to carry. That's just not how it goes.

Whether MMR is an accurate predictor of someone's performance is an entirely separate matter. That 0-12 Sniper you just played against might have gone 25-0 last match. He might have had a good rotation from his supports, which lead to him gaining an early advantage and pressing it, all the way to victory. The match where he went 0-12, he might've had the pressure put on him right from the start. You might've forced him to go middle versus a strong mid laner and he just got steamrolled. By the time he realizes he's fallen too far behind to contribute, it's already too late, so he tries to catch up in farm, knowing he's useless in team fights. He gets ganked in jungle. He gets ganked in lane. He's fallen so far behind he's completely, 100% useless, and his efforts to catch up only send him further back, all the while, your entire team complains that he's not farmed and isn't showing up in team fights (not that he could do much anyway).

Forced 50%, much like the MMR hell fallacy, is a fiction players invent to shift the blame for their loss from themselves to their teammates, or other factors outside their control. I've personally gained 1000MMR points by playing heroes I'm good at, and dictating the flow of the game. By being a controlling presence, I take the responsibility for the loss as far out of my teammate's hands as possible. I have a solo ranked winrate of 56%. It's closer to 65% if you look at only the past 3 months, when I started playing to seriously try to increase my MMR. There is no forced 50%.

[cerapa]

Oh god. The proposed solution there is to randomly stack teams in one teams favour. What?! Not only would that turn even more games into stomps that are nearly lost after 10 minutes, but it would also fuck with the MMR system by a gigantic amount.

MMR works on the basis of putting you in a match it believes you have a 50% of winning. If you win, then it assumes it underestimated you. If you lose, then it assumes it overestimated you. It has absolutely nothing to do with winrates. If the chances aren't 50%, then the amount of MMR gained/lost would need to depend on the chances, which would be...difficult to make a correct formulae for. Plus the system would literally fuck you over 50% of the time.

The better you are at dota 2, the worse your allies will be compared to your opponents.

This guy is an idiot...

It doesn't matter how skilled you are, how big your MMR is or your winrate. The system is constant. Sometimes your team will be better than you, sometimes it will be worse, and sometimes you will be in the middle of the pack. There are no special little snowflake good players that must be matched with worse ones because otherwise their magnificence would break DOTA, on average, everyone gets equal teams.

...

Jesus fucking christ it keeps getting worse and worse the more I read. EVERYONES WINRATE WILL TEND TOWARDS 50% NATURALLY. THIS IS A GOOD THING, IT IS LITERALLY WHAT MATCHMAKING IS FOR. IT MEANS THAT YOUR GAMES ARE BALANCED.

The coins you line gabes wallet with are nothing next to the 48% winrate talentless bottom feeders who turn out in droves to suckle at the teat of valve's matchmaking handouts. Without this handicap, they would drop to 35% winrate. And at 35% winrate, they would quit the game, and there would be less revenue.

I give up. Fuck that guy.


EDIT: Okay, I calmed down a bit so I will explain why winrates tend towards 50%.

Matchmaking tries to (with the help of MMR) make every individual game have both sides with an equal chance of winning. This is individual games, it doesn't give a shit if your winrate is 35% or 75%, it only cares about MMR and this particular match.

If you are better than your MMR on average, then you winrate will be >50% because you acted contrary to what it expected of you.
If you are worse than your MMR on average, then you winrate will be <50% for the same reason.

So the only thing winrate shows is how wrong matchmaking has been about your skill in the past. On average MMR should slowly slip towards the correct value, and in the process your winrates of individual games will also begin to go towards 50%.

As you spend more and more time at the correct level, your average winrate across games will also start tending towards 50%.

TL;DR:   Winrate is not a measure of how good you are, but a measure of how much matchmaking has fucked up in the past. MMR shows how good you are.

[crazysheep]

This seems like a good idea, I think positioning might be part of my problem.  Dota's positioning's a lot different, league's full of slows and skillshot stuns so it's all about the mobility moves.  Too many get out of jail free cards, I'll have to break the habit of overextending.

Positioning isn't just about overextending. It's pretty much the deciding factor in (almost) everything in Dota. You can make or break teamfights through proper positioning and clever usage (some call this abuse) of fog of war. Heck, you could even win games by deciding where and when you harass heroes during the laning phase.

[Putnam]

If you want some terrifying spartan position training, try playing Earth Spirit or Rubick.

[Wysthric]

Let's not forget reactions and cast speeds, now.

[Chaos Armor]

I was talking about about the other posts in the thread, not necessarily the OP.

Although, it makes for an interesting discussion and possibly a symbol of what PlayDota has turned into.

----

I agree, your win-rate should stay around 50% and that's why I said that it doesn't reflect on how well you play Dota 2.

In my opinion, win-rate is not important. In life, most people want to feel a sense of accomplishment. Do they feel that when they know that they improved? Or when they win? Most people will feel the accomplishment when they've won. Which, I believe, is why their win-rate in Dota 2 is important to them. It gives them a sense of accomplishment. I'm also pretty sure people are self-conscience of their win-rate. Like a bad hair day, or something...

I try and not care about my win-rate and just look at what I did right and what I did wrong in the game. It really helps your self-esteem if you're into that kind of stuff and it will help you improve.

Also, that Sniper was either intentionally feeding that Ursa or he's just... I'm going to opt for the intentional feeding. If it tells you anything, he's the kind of Sniper that goes for Shadow Blade as an escape tool and as a first item.

(Kinda' got off topic there, me thinks.)

[Teneb]

Also, that Sniper was either intentionally feeding that Ursa or he's just... I'm going to opt for the intentional feeding. If it tells you anything, he's the kind of Sniper that goes for Shadow Blade as an escape tool and as a first item.

Or maybe, you know, it was one of his first matches as a sniper. There is really no way to know without mind-reading.

[Cthulhu]

I stopped pretending video games were out to get me a long time ago but I can see how you'd come to think they were.

I check my team's profiles before I start a game.  If anti-mage or void are in their featured hero box, I kind of write the game off.  Hasn't failed me so far.

I'm still having my league/dota conundrum.  ON one hand my philosophy is I'm gonna have a shitty time sometimes either way, may as well have it in a better game.  League's boring.  Unless jungler trolls my lane (fucking god damn udyr giving akali doublebuff and first blood then bitching at me for getting zoned go fuck the devil in hell) I'm pretty much guaranteed to stomp said lane every time with no challenge, even against hard counters. 

But then strangely enough for all their lack of crunchy man fight skills, league players seem to have the fundamentals like warding and supporting down.  That's not say they're any good at it, pretty much every game of league I play is decided, win or loss, by one team's bot lane feeding, but still.  Dota, I've basically accepted that if I don't buy literally everything no one will.  I usually end up having to buy the flying courier even if I'm playing a carry.

[Chaos Armor]

Also, that Sniper was either intentionally feeding that Ursa or he's just... I'm going to opt for the intentional feeding. If it tells you anything, he's the kind of Sniper that goes for Shadow Blade as an escape tool and as a first item.

Or maybe, you know, it was one of his first matches as a sniper. There is really no way to know without mind-reading.

Unless you look at their profile and see that they've played most of their matches as Sniper.