I think you're ignoring that most people do not have a social circle full of hardcore moba gamers like you do. It makes sense to cater to solo que, because no matter what system you choose, the vast majority of people queing in will be solo
I think you're ignoring that Dota 2 is an online game with other real people who play that same game as much as you lol if you liked playing with someone invite them to your party or join a guild. Unless you're "an insufferable prick" there's no reason you can't find people to play dota with.
For all the dota 2 solo-q players, in the settings, you can select that when you re playing solo, you get not matched with parties, so you'll always be playing against and with solo players. I know lots of people know about it but i also know that even more doesn't.
DotA used to have a separate "solo" and "party" MMR and I played a lot of ranked back then. I knew that my solo MMR wasn't going to be affected by queueing with friends who aren't as good as I am. But now that there's one MMR shared between the two, I don't want to play ranked with my friends because they're going to drag my MMR down-but I mostly play DotA with friends, so the result is I don't play ranked very often anymore. IMO, Heroes of Newerth had the best solution to this I've seen (at least at not-super-high-ranks), which was to have a different ranked MMR for each specific combination of players you queued with. If I queue with friends A and B, we have to do 10 (or however many) games as *that* specific 3-stack, to get our party MMR. Then if we add friends C and D, we've got to do it again for that specific 3-stack we have. I found the system worked great, and I'm disappointed I've never seen any other games run with it. I imagine the downside is that queues can be longer, but there have to be other ways to handle that, right?
If your average ranked between the whole team is X, the system search for that exact same X on the opposite team, ofc it's not perfect, but it's more than enough imo for this not to be an issue (unless ofc you have huge gaps of MMR difference with your friends, which should decline over time since the worst ones will learn faster than the best ones).
@@berryesseen Hidden MMR obviously is still taken into account. If you play unranked for 4 years and end up with immortals in every game and then hit ranked, do you think it puts you with heralds?
@@Vorsgald Yeah obviously it would make sense to start you around the average MMR of your stack and use the first 5 or 10 games to fine tune the MMR for that stack. And then at worst, you have the system you currently have now where it's average MMR for the team, and at best, it gets adjusted to account for the effective MMR of certain players playing together.
The problem with party playing is the time. We're all adults in different stages in our life. We have responsibilities and different time zones etc. It's so much easier and time saver to solo Q.
This is something that a lot of people fail to realize for some reason. Dota is quite an old game. We all started playing it either as children or teenagers (wc3 dota, or early Dota 2 day) The audience has aged with the game.
@@luisyupari yes. People say just play unranked if you’re not serious. Uhh what’s the point of playing Dota if not to be competitive. Every game is a solid investment of time. The payoff in winning unranked vs ranked is so much better. At least everybody is more serious at ranked.
@@joshuafaramir3569On the other hand, if unranked played by the same ruleset as ranked queue, I would sink an ungodly amount of time into Dota 2. If role queue was a thing there I would have little reason to play ranked, but that's just me
I think a lot of the reason why Solo Q is faster is simply because there is a system supporting it. Imagine If it were as easy to Duo Q as it is currently as easy to Solo Q. You could simply toggle ON a "Duo Q" function, where you'll be paired with another random player looking for a Duo Q. Your Duo would be placed in a Queue that could find any match that contains Solo Players, other Duo Players or Trio Players. This simple encouragement would make more people play with another player. They could even make friends this way, or block players that were toxic. This would also help fix the problem faced by the two Pro Players that BSJ mentioned, since that would be a lot more Players available in their Queue. If you think this is unfair to the Solo Player, again, as BSJ said, this is a skill isse, and it is also a more moral system, since it promotes healthy interactions, and it is a smarter system, since discussion is a major driver of the meta game adaptments.
1) I personally have pretty little time to play, I can not coordinate with any regular teammate at all since I play whenever i have that little gap of time. 2) As someone already mentioned, "most people do not have a social circle full of hardcore moba gamers like you do". But i guess this is somewhat fixable if you are a cool guy and you have a good amount of time to play. PS: I would love to play with friends/regular teammates but unfortunately I can't. And in my case i'm so far away from being even remotely toxic, i'm at top score behaviour although that doesn't actually say that much.
I haven't gone through the whole video yet but as someone that can't party-queue, in the lower ranks, there's the option in Dota at least of "Strict Solo Matchmaking" which I'm very fond of since you know that everyone is a total stranger to one another and there's no ganging up on someone and then the game ends and guess what they were partied. I don't know why more people don't use that setting if they complain getting matched with/against parties.
I'm completely fine with solo queueing because it usually just introduces me to like minded people also trying to chill. When people talk shit I just mute them, but it doesn't happen nearly as often as a lot of people say it does. Makes me think those people are actually the problem children.
@@ssaalleeeemm didn't the game previously have a system where parties would have a party mmr? Does it not have that anymore? Idk if he advocates for that I haven't finished the video, but to me that system made the most sense. Your party mmr might be higher than your individual mmrs.
@@Sc0pee if it did then they did it wrong. A 2k mmr duo party for example can be matched with other 2k mmr solos or parties of whatever size. Is that not the entire point of making the party specific mmr? So you can ignore how many people are in the party and still just use the number?
In Dota 2 below Immortal rank you can choose "strict solo queue" from the advanced options. I believe that most people use this option. Immortal rank is only a very small portion of the player base so naturally this wouldn't work very well in there because the queue times would then possibly get very long.
@@Sc0pee good less ruining in the draft when one friend gets drafted into enemy team and chain feeds have you played immortal draft or you just talkin out of your ass?
Starting to dislike the game simply because of having randoms in ranked queue. Reporting for role abuse doesn’t seem to matter to people and it ruins the experience for me. Looking for other stuff to play.
@canoninmunaone ? hes leaving the game cause he doesnt like the common mentality or vibe of randoms in dota, if you play dota as a solo q grinder there's no way you can't understand that sentiment.
@@sameveland8560 12k behavior score and i encounter this behavior maybe 1 out of 10 games. If thats enough to make u quit a game, online muliplayer simply isnt fpor u.
What you are describing fits probably all team based competitive games on the market. It's part of the (solo) game experience wheter you like it or not. If you really don't like randoms in your games then why not try and find a party to play with? You can start by adding people you like to play with from your games. If you play solo you should tick the "restricted solo queue" from the options, that way you won't run into any stacks and everyone's on the same line. Also, actual role abuse happens rarely. Dota is a diverse game with different strategies and heroes that fit many roles. The meta changes constantly with new patches. If you reported them for "role abuse" and it didn't do anything then changes are he/she wasn't griefing after all, but rather playing something in a way that YOU didn't want them to play.
I mean it's even said in the patchnotes that ranked is solo only FOR NOW. Party ranked will be there eventually. Deadlock is still in a very early development stage and I'm surprised that they even added ranked already. It's a first iteration mainly used to gain data and adapt algorithms to refine matchmaking. Once they have enough data to provide a solid experience for solo and groups, ranked will be open for groups.
For everyone in the 1-5k MMR range: Why are we all forgetting that platforms like Steam want us to keep playing? The algorithm might send you to toxic queues for a reason. They want you to think it’s about behavior, but at the end of the day, there’s always a 50-55% chance of winning. The algorithm even keeps track of which positions you usually report and matches you with those same players. I believe in solo queue, you can only control your own actions to climb ranks. Mute overly vocal players, focus on proper itemization, don’t push as pos 3 if your team doesn’t even know why to push, and avoid aggressive warding when your team isn’t aware of power spikes or objectives. Stay fluid and keep your emotions in check-trying to be rational won’t work until you maybe hit 4-5k MMR.
I haven't played a single ranked solo queue game in months. I just can't handle people breaking their items just because they lost their lane and can honestly say I don't miss it one bit. I play a lot of ranked party and unranked party and my stress with Dota has gone down so much. I've been playing party queue on the side for years but giving up solo ranked was the best thing for my mental health and I hate that I get anxiety of just thinking to play a solo ranked game.
I had actually stopped playing for quite a while and I specifically came back when they introduced the strict solo-q option. I don't know how much of it is psychological, but I felt it was a huge improvement in terms of quality of games.
Imo it removed some problems but the times id get paired with a bad or toxic stack and lose is a lot less than some random solo q guy griefing or going nuclear and giving up from a slight real or imagined. It's a positive change but in the end we're left with the problems of solo q still.
@@sameveland8560 Is your behavior score above 10k? I found that even if you dip slightly, you're immediately in the trenches. As long as you maintain a perfect score and reject "good" behavior matched games, it's fine. With stacks the problem was less throwing and more just uneven games. I honestly rather have a toxic pos who knows how to play his role than the nicest lane partner who constantly blunders.
@IsawUupThere ofc to ur 2nd point i agree, a more common situation for me with stacks (when i played with them enabled or didnt have a choice) was 3 guys in a party playing very mid or even bad but being completely insular and then collectively blaming the remainder of the team even though they were shotcalling by majoirity most of the game and ignored the non partied calls. So not toxic in the sense that they're owning but being rude more like rudely delfecting after making poor choices as a group echo chamber sort of thing. An example would be playing 1 and my 5 leaves like 5m in and never comes back because hes partied with the offlaner and 4 or goes mid for same reason. it creates needless division that results in griefing and toxic behavior ig would be a better way to put it. But yeah I found that to be relatively uncommon, it was just the worst thing for me about stacks. I don't care about a good stack against me cause that means good dota.
I had the opposite experience to you. I didn't really learn to play Dota until I started solo queuing. I think the distraction of talking to other people, as well as he fact you can just lean on your party for calls and to carry you really limited me.
Same for me, I would just follow my friends when playing in a party. Only when solo queueing I could feel the consequences of my own actions and learn the game.
Exactly. 10 years ago I was playing with my roommate who was 2k mmr higher than me, which was a lot 10 years ago. So, the only way to have a chance is that he goes position 1, I go hard support. Do what he tells me to do. Stick to 1-2 heroes. Pull, but ward etc. I didn’t learn anything. I didn’t learn how to farm safely. Then I started to solo Q and then I discovered ability draft. Now I have played each hero 50 times, all with unique skill sets. I know the attack animation of every single hero. I know the skills much better because I actually cast every single skill in the game.
I remember when i played Call of Duty 4 in middle school. You could play a whole afternoon with the same people in a dedicated server and come back next week and see them again. And that was the default experience. Nowadays the default experience in a multiplayer game is to click a button and be plopped into a match with a bunch of faceless, anonymous players who youll never see again. Its very isolating, and i think its moved this way to appeal primarily to solo queuers. Its the path of least resistance by far - you dont have to have any friends or coordinate anything to get a match. I agree that its a much less healthy paradigm for multiplayer gaming compared to playing with friends. I hope developers can deprioritise it; not just in Dota but in live service multiplayer titles across the industry. Itd be nice to be able to make friends in game again.
The thing that frustrates me the most about dota party queue is that once someone hits immortal they can no longer queue with their ancient 3-5 friends. There is just an arbitrary lockout from party ranked with anyone who is below divine 1 even if they're within the allowable 2800mmr difference which breaks up friend groups for no reason.
Playing restrict solo queue all the time myself. It adds waiting time tho. Also not using solo mmr option can pair you with a duo that is more stupid than enemy duo which translates in auto-loss. Hate it
I used to play dota at a semi-competitive level as a position 5, as I got to immortal, I could no longer party queue with my main lane partner, and that really took out a lot of fun from the game, I'm someone who shotcalls a lot, and it really takes a lot mentally to do that with randos who sometimes aren't very cooperative. It's been years since then, and I only play party queues to enjoy the game with my friends, I learned that solo queue does indeed promote that mentality of "Dota is an individual game" rather than "Let's win together team!"
great point, solo q dota is a 1v9 especially in core roles because of many factors, you have to compete with and manage both the enenmy team and yours, whereas in a functional party things just flow and good games happen or you stomp through superior coordination. Solo q is almost like a race to which team can work together effectively more quickly without overtaxing themselves. Generally as a solo q grinder I favor playmakers or lane combos so I can build trust with my team early and that's just not necessary in party
Now, this is something I'm looking for a response to. I've been kicked out of two groups who I've stacked with, and I got told one time it came to an outside issue, and the whole group fell apart, but the second one, no one EVER told me they had an issue with how I spoke and communicated. I got told afterward that they hated how hard I tried and how I told people what they were doing wrong and how to improve even though they were generally all around my rank. I want to find more people again, but it's gotten to the point where I don't play Dota at all and go into deadlock a game. I am still trying to learn more and figure it out, but I also end up in random groups just in the deadlock in the discord.
High level coordination. I love that you mentioned that at the end. Solo queue is a hollow and crude version of what Dota 2 has the potential to be. I compare solo queue with my times playing inhouses, scrims and tournament matches. It doesn't come close. What is the solution this late in the hour? It may be a drastic one, but it would probably have to be removing the strict solo queue option.
My problem with party queue has always been that it's statistically unlikely for people in a party to just happen to grow at the exact same rate. Someone will eventually become much better and party games for them will become boring and hinder their growth, but they won't want to find a new partner because that's whom they've been playing with their entire life.
If i play a game with someone and have a good time, I just add them as a friend. At this point, I always have someone to play with, and honestly, it makes the game more fun.
In a perfect world, it makes much more sense to party play. But unfortunately, the reality is very different... people think differently, and if EVERYONE is not on the same page and willing to listen and learn, the friendship can end because of a game. I would say that if both are on the same page, everything is set to work out and both will really improve together, but if one is very stubborn, things can get complicated.
Ever since I played my first battlecup years ago when dotaplus first came out I always thought this should be THE way to play the game. Right now they actively dissuade party play, and buying a ticket each week to play battlecup is a huge barrier to entry. I really wish they would encourage consistent 5 man party play more. Personally, I'd like to see somekinda tournament mode where you play in a consistent party, you play bo3 games against other teams, maybe in a week long tournament, games scheduled at a good time for the region each day. Tournament exclusive mmr, maybe cosmetic rewards for placement.
Party queue is definitely a better experience than solo queue, but the majority of players will be solo queue and so that experience should be focused on and stress-tested at this stage of the game's development. A lot of the incentives to party queueing, such as a battle cup or LFT feature, require badges to already be in place so that you can find approximate skill levels. For what it's worth, I don't mind going up against stacks if I'm solo queueing. Thing is, I have a work friend group, outside of work friends, family, and I don't really care to build a whole new social network in order to just play a game. I don't want solo queue to be left to the wolves because it's hard to make it an enjoyable experience.
I started solo queuing because I was TIRED of playing against mid-smurf accounts. There's been some banwaves since that time but it isn't entirely sorted
Most people neither have the time nor several friends playing DOTA, but if there are the same number of groups and members on each side, why not letting them play together? So all Solo or 1+1+1+2 vs 1+2+1+1 / 1+3+1 vs 3+1+1 / 2+3 vs 3+2 / 1+4 vs 4+1 / 5 vs 5 should be allowed.
Bro you really hit the nail on the head here BSJ. I was talking to my wife about this (she still hasn't showered after you signed her arm, send help). I wasn't feeling fulfilled and yea - I got a bit better than my buddies at dota, they were playing less, I was playing a lot of solo queue in dota and deadlock. And I got better at having a positive mindset, learning from games even if they are bad, and moving on when a game really sucks, muting etc. I can still, in my head, make excuses for why it's great to play and why it's a matter of mindset. But in reality, playing these fast paced, complex multiplayer games with a bunch of randos who more often than not are not capable of or interested in playing together and seem miserable in general just sucks. And your video really explains it a lot. I just miss my friends :(. And solo queue is sorta worse. Thanks you BSJ.
I am learning a lot playing wth my higher MMR friends. I play the game 2,5 years and the playing more than 7-8 years. I am trying to be elavate from 2K to 3K but i had a bad strike and i am back at 1,8K. Psychologically recked me to be back down at and losing the momentum. I am now doing a pause due to work related issues and i believe the help of my friends i will be back. I am playing in game with average MMR more than 3-4K due to my friends rank but i am learning a lot. I fail some games but i am sure that i will be better in the long run
I for the life of me find it a massive missed opportunity that there isnt a tavern style pick up party system already built in. Closest thing is people in region chat saying join my party. Its sad that you can have a connection to 200k players in a region and be unable to get any sort of connection with them. Every solution i have seen for this eventually gets abandoned. Even on weekends, discord servers, guilds, all of those options are empty. 80% of the steam people I added through Dota, and either most of them simply play invisible or they quit. The best times for APEX, CS or any other competitive games are with other players. Numbers speak for themselves, Dota has notoriously struggled to retain players and there is no shortage of them out there.
As a cs player myself, I suggest we have a separated ranking system like in CS2. Premier is for solo Q only and Competitive is for party Q. Main ranking of a player is Premier ELO. Competitive ranking is just an archivement.
Honestly, it's not that I don't want to party queue with 4 friends, it's just that doing so at a time where everyone is available is just downright impossible.
I think the solution is simply have an option for strict solo queue like Dota has. Allow parties to queue but allow solo players to have an option to force strict solo queue for their solo games.
I think Deadlock is doing it right for the starting point. Specifically solo only and the updates to ranked occurring weekly that takes into account a whole week’s worth of matches and factors in how well the players that beat you perform in their other matches. The next ranked mode I would like to see would be a full 6 player team queue and the rankings are kept separate from solos.
I really like this kind of video. A deep dive into your thoughts about the system and your growth/change in opinion during your time within the system. Obviously everyone is going to have their own opinions but if you look at it objectively, no matter whether you're playing for fun or to learn or to win, doing so with others is almost always going to be a better experience than doing so alone. People aren't meant to be alone, we're supposed to be part of communities, sound ourselves with people we both agree and disagree and that allows us to change our own thoughts, feelings and beliefs and as you've said many a time BSJ, that translates into Dota as well. Love what you're doing mate and I'm sorry to see the game you've loved to play for so long not hold the same place in your life as it once used to. Keep doing your thing and much respect!
I like your journey and transformation BSJ, you're getting wiser and humbler In my case, if I don't have any of my friends available I'd rather not play at all, it's just not as fun One aspect that I've been suffering from is getting matched with new players
100% it was a mistake from the very beginning. Especially in Dota 2 which is a lot more based in specific roles and jobs with the draft and itemization, as opposed to Deadlock which so far seems to be more focused on individual skill and much easier for an overranked player to carry given the many more item slots and therefore power ceiling. Not to mention Deadlock is less about strategy like macro decisions and teamwork than Dota and more about reflexes, aiming, and mechanical skill. So the fact that Dota 2 got RID of the Teams UI and Team MMR with the Reborn update was absurd. The entire game revolves around teamwork, everyone's biggest complaint is lack of coordination / accountability for toxic behaviours. From the get go it was clear there shouldn't even BE a solo MMR, solo practice is for unranked to get better. There should've been a team making UI built into Dota 2 that matches you with teams that fit your bracket, your goals, your behaviour scores, region, language, and schedule. There should be tournaments or leagues that reward teams that work well together with cosmetics or recognition and at the highest level, invites to LAN qualifiers. All built into the game and official website for tracking. Players should have been able to join or make multiple teams, to leave, kick, or vote-kick. Maybe a team would have a couple of subs since 5 players always available in IRL can be tough. And a players visible rank would be the highest MMR of all their teams. Their individual MMR for purposes of finding teams would simply be their hidden mmr that's been confirmed to exist - which should also not be impacted if playing a new hero they have less than 10 games of. And you're wrong, it's not too late for dota. There needs to be a huge overhaul of matchmaking. And people will complain at first as with any change, but in the long run it would be positive. It's the best time now, with Immortal Draft being broken, people less inclined to play ranked overall, and most of the players feeling lonely because their IRL friends slowly fading from the game leaving only us that really like the game for what it is and would love to still improve and play in 5 stacks rather than sweaty solo queue pubs where you have to play therapist as much as your hero.
But the party ranked still works outside Immortal, which only consists of about 2% of the player base. The whole solo rating/team rating just divided the player base in two making up for longer queue times.
@@Sc0pee By team ranked I meant full 5 stacks. Before the Reborn engine / UI update you could create a 'team' with a name, logo, banner, and roster. When queueing ranked with this team you would eventually be assigned the 'team MMR', that would only apply when all 5 people on the team roster were in the stack playing against other full teams. Even then this feature was hard to find in the UI as Valve focused only on Solo MMR and Party MMR before combining those two, and completely removing Team MMR. This bred an awful culture or solo / duo queueing in one of the most team-oriented games, and what I believe led to a lot of toxicity. I've always thought MMR should only be tied to full teams - not individual players. A player's displayed medal / rank would just be their highest Team MMR that they're on the roster for. Yatoro may be regarded as one of the best carry players of all time - but it's Team Spirit that won 2 TI's.
Dota matchamking system since quite a few months was unbearable for me. Stopped playing Dota at the end of June and I don't miss it at all. 3,5k hours and I can't stand sweeping people or being swept anymore. There is barely anything inbetween the two. 1 or 2 (if lucky) games out of 10 I can say were actually good game of Dota. Not worth it for me.
3.5k is baby hours. I got 20k+ atm. I'm definitely getting more even games than that but I feel like the "snowballish"-games have definitely increased since recent patches (it feels harder to make a comeback) . I believe it's the game that has changed, not the MM. Dota 2 ranked is not for the weak.
@@Sc0pee I'd agree and disagree: while it's true recent patches especially have contributed to the sweep problem: this exists in most competitive games and is usually a symptom of poor coordination in the face of desperation. For me: desperation can be one of the most fun experiences GIVEN that my team isn't delusional about our win condition. Getting picked off is wasteful, being selfish is going to ruin the game, but of course: these are Dota players, so you lose!
@@bluejay7058 Good point. But on the flipside when you make that comeback it feels great! It's true that people in general quit or get tilted 8and lose because of it) way too easily.
@@Sc0pee Dude I'm at 15k hours and I can honestly say both have changed immensely. Ranked almost means NOTHING anymore. It feels pointless. I reached the rank I wanted and I felt nothing from it because it was such a shit journey to reach, much worse than it was to reach years ago. Smurfs, people who give up easily or random, or just forget about the entire meta itself. The amount of people who don't realize how insanely team driven the game is at the moment is INSANE, and I hate it. They still truly believe they can solo win the game by themselves against a team who is going to 5 man us and win easily. It's enough to drive you away from the game so quick.
@@ItsTheGhettoFRESH I always felt it's like that in all of the MOBA's I've played since Dota 1, then HoN, and then Dota 2 and even some hundred games in LoL. Either you suck it up or you don't I guess.
I like the League of Legend matchmaking system more than the Dota 2 matchmaking system. In League of Legends you can Duo Queue or Solo Queue for ranked. If you want to play in a party of 3+ there is a separate rank and Queue for that.. In Dota 2 you can Strict Solo Queue. If you choose to Duo Queue you can go against a 5 man stack. I like League of Legend's system better than Dota 2's system because it encourages you to play with another person. When I Duo Queue ranked I communicate with my partner over Discord and then separately communicate with my whole team. I've found that it lowers my toxicity and improves my experience. It makes me seek out people I want to play with in the future from current games and this makes me want to give the best version of myself to my team so they would potentially want to play with me again in the future as well. When I played Dota 2 solo without selecting "Strict Solo Queue Matchmaking" it was a miserable experience. I had games where I would be matched with a party of 4 and they would single me out and be toxic to me and one person would get upset with me over something that wasn't my fault and convince his other 3 teammates to report me. This was back when reports mattered in Dota 2 and being reported 4 times by a single party in one match would send me to low priority queue. The game of Dota 2 became the most toxic in the world because of the system in which the game was set up as well as the gameplay of the game itself. Having a single courier shared among 5 people was just one small example. A larger example would be how one person could buy every ward and ward every single jungle camp (this was back when you couldn't kill the wards so the jungle camps wouldn't spawn for several minutes). After the report came out that Dota 2 was the #1 most toxic game in the world, Dota 2 made many game changes (two of which I just mentioned) that helped reduce toxicity. It's my current opinion based on 10,000 hours in League and 5,000 hours in Dota that Deadlock should have a Solo/Duo Queue ranked option and a 3+ party ranked option. Both ranks should be separate. When Dota 2 banned all smurfs my gaming experience was so much better. Instead of 50% of my games at 4k being decided by a smurf it was now closer to 10%.
While i get the idea, the main concern i have is player numbers, which at least temporarily would drop off vastly. This is also the reason why I don't think BSJ's idea will ever get implemented by valve. It's fine if you develop a new game built around party queque- you attract players who are also attracted to this idea, but changing an old game in this way seems very hard to me.
It’s happened to me me with every team game I’ve ever played. Wether with dota, lol, cs or overwatch, at some point i managed to play with a full stack and the game felt WAY more enjoyable. After i could hardly bother playing solo again. I feel like soloq is the worst way to play these games
I personally as a solo q grinder care more about a good game than winning. I do agree with that view of solo q players in general but there are some people who play it for different reasons such as time, lack of good players to party with, or personal preference.
This video LITERALLY explain my situation, i normally play with 2 more friends and we are from South America. it is really IMPOSIBLE to find an ranked inmortal match, any change on the system that allows players to find someone (named friend or not) to cooperate and coordinate will be a great improvement from my perspective also. I am afraid tho, we exercise SOLO queue too long, and the population of dota 2 growed over the years and years in a toxic and solo queue environment and (not all) but i would risk to say a high % of that population spend a lot of hours in video game since young age and did not improve social skills too much. and summing this up would be "years and years of poor social skills + demanding a very intrusive change of the system" i dont know how that would result. I really hope something changes, but i do not see how, any change of paradigm will be very violent on the comunity i think. thanks once again for the great video! (i am not replying comments just in case of someone want to argue, just telling my point of view)
I've switched to unranked almost a year ago. Now, with the advent of double downs, ranked is even more toxic by what my friends tell me. High skill unranked games are fun, and playing with friend can never be better then playing alone.
IMO for ranked mmr i think it should be ranked reset system. For example every 3/6 months there should be reset mmr and not having to deal with 15's millions mmr without being able to queue and people being given gifts for being in top 100 in their division.
I used to play party ranked a lot when party and solo were separate. Lots of fun, playing with players of varying skill levels. But that changes when there's only one rating system. Now it's not just a fun time, your rating goes down if your party isn't at your exact wavelength. The worst issue with one rating system is that it encourages boosting like no other. Someone plays on their real account, while getting booster by a friend or a booster on a smurf account. So now instead of having fun party ranked games every game you have to bring your absolute best game ever to have any chance at winning. You have to coordinate your picks, you have to plan strategies. This is just not something most parties want to do so basically the only time to play ranked in a party is if you're in a group that's incredibly hardcore or you want to lose some MMR. And when playing solo if brings the game quality down tremendously if there are parties in the games. Every game is a stomp depending on which team got the better party because as a duo or a triple they just have a larger impact on the game. One party is just queuing as mid and safe lane core, they have little coordination at all and end up not doing much. The other picks some Marci-Io lane and absolutely demolishes the other team with their coordination. Doesn't mean you win or lose more, just means the games are less enjoyable. To me it rather sounds like there should be some 3rd party league for the top echelons of players that can go to matches with a stack where other players are also interested in practicing in duos or triples or even full stacks.
Below Immortal rank you have the option to use the "strict solo queue" from the options, which puts everyone on the same starting line. It allows no parties and everyone on your team and in the opponent team are all solo players.
@@Sc0pee yes, but BSJ is precisely suggesting not having that option. Which for a short while was disabled in Dota something like 2-3 years ago at this point. No doubt what Valve saw in their statistics when it was disabled that games were more heavily one sided which likely affected how frequently players came back to play ranked. So they enabled strict solo again.
Personally, I queue solo and pick all roles and quite enjoy the game. I do not use the queue only with solo queues in settings. Obviously, I usually am playing support due to the lack of preference for others to play that role in the greater scheme of things. Thus, when matched with random parties, its all about doing what you can do to support them if that is your role. Also, understanding that one of the players could be a very low mmr player and to play accordingly once noticing this by not relying so much on that player.
I think the argument of "well party q involves how good your party is so it's not a true representation of skill" is true in a way, but solo q includes how well you can talk down babies and get them to co-operate. What is skill?
Hey BSJ - I enjoy your videos and have been using them with my friends to improve our dota experience. So thank you for that. I felt compelled to reply to you since I can hopefully shed some light onto the "why" that you're looking for when you ask about catering to Solo Queue vs Team Queue. Let me start with some basics: 1. To grow user base - you need to be primarily Solo Queue focused. This allows new people who want to enter the game, an easy way to jump in and play. This also allows them a chance to organically learn the game, grow on their own, and play at their own pace. It's counter intuitive, but when you start a game you do not want someone telling you what to do. You want to learn and explore the game yourself. 2. Dota 2 Matchmaking is better than ever. Having played Dota 1, HoN, and Dota 2 now for over 15 years I can tell you that match making is at it's best right now. Measuring fairness vs queue time and having that (somewhat) visible to the players helped. Banning smurfs this past year helped immensely. (Note: Account buyers and smurfs still exist, obviously). I'd ask you to recognize that the system in place currently is better than ever. 3. MMR Discussion. I don't agree with Dota 2's MMR method. It's a flat method (you gain and lose the same MMR) whereas HoN used the progressive method (If you are much stronger than an enemy, you might win 2 MMR and lose 30 MMR). This keeps the MMR spread closer together and enables more realistic match making. If you're looking for a place to have a discussion and improve the game - this is an area of opportunity. 4. Solo Queue vs Team Queue MMR. This was historically discussed but to your point and specific example of two pro's playing together - their MMR would be more reflective of their teamwork rather than their individual skill. My personal opinion is to keep the MMR as one number, but this again is an area of opportunity if you're interested diving into. 5. Social Structure: Dota 2 does not have an easy way to "make friends". There is no built in system to guide people to play together. I.e. If we win a game you have to actively add me as a friend and ask to play with me. The game doesn't recommend us being friends (as an example). If you want the game to be Team Queue focused, you must FIRST build in the ability to make friends, and to join teams. You can see this "failed" attempt in MMOs when they are "LFG" (Looking for Group) bc they don't have friends to play with; or even the weekly Battle Cup where people want to play but don't have friends online. So this is a prerequisite for the things you want. 6: Punishments: The punishments in dota are not harsh enough. This could be for one of many reasons but the reality is you can cause problems in many games without being punished. This, again, would need to be addressed before being Team Queue focused. My opinion: 1. The MMR system is why people "can't queue" as their MMR is artificially high and games that don't use progressive MMR systems have bi-modal populations (instead of normal populations). They have a spike of players at average MMR, then a spike at the top MMR. 2. Team Queuing makes dota more fun. Hands down, for all the reasons you mentioned, it's more fun playing with friends. However, dota first needs to implement a social feature to support making more friends. 3. People want different things out of the game. You might want to win. I might want to try a new hero. If we Team Queue, one of us must make a sacrifice here. Me trying a new hero means I won't be anywhere near as good as my MMR so we might lose. It's important to keep this in mind. 4. The game should lean harder into Solo Queue. By making the Solo Queue experience better, it will teach people how to become better teammates organically. This will lead to more people wanting to Team Queue. I'm happy to hop on a discord call with you to discuss things in more detail, but hopefully this sheds some light onto the "why".
I actually only play Dota with my friend, we often duoQ, if we achieve a point that we can actually find a game we problably just gonna start to play normal games or even stop playing
Hey BSJ please do an updated guide of basics... Like CS, laning, roles, items , map. Your previous guides have helped me a lot. I literally learned the attack stop attack from you which helped me last hit( im low rank) i'm still not great but yea small tips help out.
I dont comment here on youtube but this is a video thats so worth commenting. I’ve been playing since dota1 days up until today with friends in the country i was in (sea) and when i transferred to eu the matches were so much easier but i hated solo queue because the worst games are the worst. In party queue, your friends dont break items. So ive made a whole community of pinoy gamers here and we play everyday and have a whole guild now. It feels so much better to win a tough game with friends than a stomp alone. I’ve been thinking a whole lot too on how to improve the matchmaking system and i think your idea is great. Even better would be to incentivize playing with friends. This would bring back the spark i had playing LAN with friends back dota1. Nice content bsj.
I think there should be two ranks, 1 for solo queue, other for 5v5. Solo for assessment of individual skill, and party rank for team skill. I don't understand why they merged them back in the day. I have always been a solo queue enjoyer, I never had urge to play in 5. I loved it when we were trying for international open quals mid 2010s but never for rank.
Yeah this makes sense for you and lots of others I'm sure, but what about people who have no stack, no discord group they can fall back on to play party queue? People in some countries go to local gaming centers to play Dota, they can't afford to have a party ready to go and play with them. so why are we unnecessarily punishing them? I know this has a good idea, but the execution might cause more problems than it solves.
The problem is toxic behavior, not solo queue. BSJ has a biased take on matchmaking because he's such high rank. Don't punish solo queue just because you're tired of communicating with tilting teammates. Solo vs party shouldn't be the issue he even said he's not gonna say ones wrong and ones right but then goes on to imply it
The ranking system itself is totally flawed. Had an offlane SF the other day. I rotated, chatted & pinged for a kill. The other supp helped, whilst SF did nothing and farmed the wave. Spent the rest of game in jungle doing absolutely fuck all, other than making map small for our carry. Enemy team couldn't take our hg (zero def by sf) and we won a long game with SF finishing 2-8 and zero bldg dmg. Yet that fucker gained MMR. The matchmaking system and MMR rewarding system are both flawed. A bigger issue than solo vs party
As someone who plays on and off in lower ranks most of this does not matter. The random 5 stack is not any better than 5 randoms tbh. I don't see why we wouldn't just make it easier for top players to que up.
Based. I play mostly party queue and playing only party queue definitely build bad habits. Some solo is good for everyone, but party queue dota is just more fun because you get to play the game with coordination in mind
The worst thing about Party Qs is that they are either all very toxic/low skill or all nice/high skill. So if you are paired with the bad ones, there is nothing you can do to fix it. They will feed together and do stupid things all game long. Party games are resulted in the draft phase. You just waste your time to see the ending.
It should have both solo and party modes with separate mmrs just like how dota used to be back in the day. Since you might be close to devs I was thinking another thing they could implement is a system to show you how many parties are currently queuing and their size so that you can change your party size or even solo q in order to find a game or the match maker itself could give a recommendation about that but such a thing should only happen when there are less than 50 players or so queuing for a game . Thats something that can be implemented in dota and deadlock.
I've been playing strictly solo q for the past few years. I have 4000 hours and im still guardian. The problem with solo q is that your lane partner is so unpredictable if you play sidelanes. If I'm playing solo q now I only play mid and I've been gaining mmr ever since. I would not recommend solo q if you're playing a sidelane role. It got to the point where I was so toxic that I had to stop playing carry. I'm not proud of it but it is what it is.
Party matches have obvious benefits. They also have requirements and limitations, such that they are not always viable. That being said, the limitation should not come from the game/system itself
You’re missing on a few different points such as: skill based matching vs true rank/ hidden mmr. Elo hell for high hidden mmr players who get stuck with lop sided duos trios and 5 stacks. Companies like riot who want their players to have 50% win rates to make it as enjoyable for everyone as possible. Does valve also make this a factor for their match making system?
I completely agree with solo queue vs Party matchmaking. But my boys only play turbo and thats at a faster pace and fun as party but for ranked I end up playing solo
I hope decent comments find you well. I would love to see Valve implement a party favored queuing system. I hope they haven't figured out that it is much harder to implement algorithms that match your parties with any form of queueing system, I do think overall a toxic person in solo queue would generally lean towards being a good friend to play with and being a good team mate. But I also do believe there are people who just wouldn't change but a system catered for party would be a good stimulus.
I think we misunderstood what DOTA is trying to tell us. I recently started playing group games again where I enjoy them more than in single queue. That's because I bought, like almost everyone else, the message "Good players rise on their own, if you're good they can carry your games, you are the common denominator of your games." Dota stopped being a Skill game a long time ago, today it is Macro decisions and I assure you that this way you are a Divine player. I finally convinced myself of this after watching a video about Miracle... how come the most talented player only has ONE TI? The player that the rest of the players admire was only able to consecrate himself once on the big stage and that was when his team had absolute synergy. Why have players like Insania established themselves in TI at the age of 30 and not at 20? Micro decisions and Skill make you a better player, but Macros win games, and those are best made in teams.
I think a healthy journey in a game like dota 2 or deadlock involves both solo q and party q. Dota turned into a 90% solo q experience game and the culture soured massively over time. I would like to see a 60%/40% split of solo q/party q prioritization. Solo q feels valuable when you are trying to improve mechanical skill and niche item build stuff. You don't get someone like 15 year old Sumail without allowing him to solo q nonstop. That being said, party stacks were undervalued in dota 2, really social people like Sing find a way to incorporate it, but most people don't find it easy to get people to a discord and game for hours. And Sing had to make sacrifices, not playing the game at all, rather than being forced to solo q grind. I really enjoy hearing about how impactful the party games have been for you. For years, I really thought Singsing, in particular, could show you an alternative way to approach the game than what your dota 2 solo q journey was doing for you
Solo Q in lock is a mixed bag for sure, but makes sense they're trying things out. My issue is i have a much higher mmr than friends and they get annoyed because they'll get stomped while i go 30-2 or something. One game I was shiv and the rest of my team left and me and my friend almost won. 110k damage, half the weakened patron down but they just beat me on dps killing ours. It's kinda not fun, but idk the solution. I miss old cod style matchmaking where there wasn't hardcore skill based matchmaking. You get in with anyone. For dota 2 I have no friends that play, so I queue strict solo queue. But yeah I'd rather play with friends.
Fixing solo queue is much easier than people think: just ban toxic people. I intentionally griefed a game of League ONCE and got banned fot 2 weeks. Yet someone who griefs 10 games of Dota gets a couple low priority games..
The problem with match maker is the punushment to grief behaviour and skill gap between 2 teams (smurf problems). I'm sure most people with a reasonable mind will ok losing to good opponents when his team perform atleast adequate to the rank they have. Valve for some reason punish verbal toxicity the most, i guess because it's easily detected, while neglect the most important aspect which is actual grief like running down mid or role abuse, because toxic u can just mute. There are lots of solution but the devs simply too busy or just don't care😊
I always see it as a challenge when I’m solo and get paired against a party cause when you win u get to just flame the whole party nd it’s so worth it 😂
I've been playing DOTA for about a year. Never once met another person who played DOTA. So Solo Queue is all I've got. Am I in the minority for this? Maybe. But its the same for Deadlock now and it does certainly feel bad being punished for not having friends. So having a place where I play people at my skill level who can't communicate with friends sound incredibly enjoyable
Agree 💯 with everything you said. Only play party unranked now and it feels like were going to war against other 5 stack immortals everynight now. Its quite good. Much better then ranked and Solo Q
i actually hate playing WITH parties. often one of them is super toxic, and they can grief the game with their dumb ideas. id rather deal with one player who griefs the game by doing a silly build. its just unsalvageable when half the team is doing it
As a manager and dota 2 pleb I agree that there are many things in common when talking about working with disfunctional teammates and having to do things that other roles should be doing. And I believe that is what dota essence truly is, you can see many things in the game that happen in real life. I believe the manager could improve his team with some better help from HR to hire correct people or have his insight on the people that are hired before having a heavy rock put randomly in his team (dealing with this at the moment). Also in dota I probabbly have a different take than you as I'm not even close to inmortal, but in Europe you are probabbly in the best region talking about teammates wanting to work together.. imagine the rest of the world. There are still lots of improvements needed on the system side to improve the communication and teamwork aspects of the game. My opinion is that the system should be way stricter on those feeders and item-breakers so that they can never play again on that account, that way those game ruiners can get serious punishment and not able to create a new smurf account and play again. The punishments on this should not be with a score of 12k but just like 2 or 3 lives and then you are done forever on that account (if the smurf detection is not as good) or at least for a couple months if we are sure they cannot create a new smurf and they will not be able to play dota at all for some months to reflect on their actions. On the solo versus duos/trios I'm not sure if there is a better way of solving it, those games always have a lot of skill disparity and is so hard to matchmake it evenly... at the inmortal level I think the system should let you know if there is the possibility of finding you a match in duos, otherwise you will need to play 5v5 (maybe more battlecups or something?) or strictly solo for the highest.
Nice, nice. Developing is great, especially if you feel trapped (more than that sometimes ppl deny they are). Life is developing as well. It’s about making changes to have more fresh air. That is greatly works for me.
I think you're ignoring that most people do not have a social circle full of hardcore moba gamers like you do. It makes sense to cater to solo que, because no matter what system you choose, the vast majority of people queing in will be solo
you can add random folks you enjoyed playing with and that can be nice
Make friends then. I've met multiple people I still talk to today due to adding random people after a dota match 10 years ago
@@10Radu93 Try to play with friends while shift work in the social sector. Good luck bro!
I think you're ignoring that Dota 2 is an online game with other real people who play that same game as much as you lol if you liked playing with someone invite them to your party or join a guild. Unless you're "an insufferable prick" there's no reason you can't find people to play dota with.
My friends have family now at 25yo. We used to q as 5 but now its mostly duo. I just q as pos5 or pos1 cause its easier for me as solo.
For all the dota 2 solo-q players, in the settings, you can select that when you re playing solo, you get not matched with parties, so you'll always be playing against and with solo players.
I know lots of people know about it but i also know that even more doesn't.
doesnt work in immortal draft btw
Does not always work... Especially in all pick ranked... Matchmaker ignores that selection 6/10 times
@@seacowDUGONGfactually false unless you are in Immortal draft. In Immortal draft it does not work at all.
DotA used to have a separate "solo" and "party" MMR and I played a lot of ranked back then. I knew that my solo MMR wasn't going to be affected by queueing with friends who aren't as good as I am. But now that there's one MMR shared between the two, I don't want to play ranked with my friends because they're going to drag my MMR down-but I mostly play DotA with friends, so the result is I don't play ranked very often anymore.
IMO, Heroes of Newerth had the best solution to this I've seen (at least at not-super-high-ranks), which was to have a different ranked MMR for each specific combination of players you queued with. If I queue with friends A and B, we have to do 10 (or however many) games as *that* specific 3-stack, to get our party MMR. Then if we add friends C and D, we've got to do it again for that specific 3-stack we have.
I found the system worked great, and I'm disappointed I've never seen any other games run with it. I imagine the downside is that queues can be longer, but there have to be other ways to handle that, right?
If your average ranked between the whole team is X, the system search for that exact same X on the opposite team, ofc it's not perfect, but it's more than enough imo for this not to be an issue (unless ofc you have huge gaps of MMR difference with your friends, which should decline over time since the worst ones will learn faster than the best ones).
3 immortals Q together for the first time. Valve acts like they are heralds. Good solution.
@@berryesseen Hidden MMR obviously is still taken into account. If you play unranked for 4 years and end up with immortals in every game and then hit ranked, do you think it puts you with heralds?
@@Vorsgald Yeah obviously it would make sense to start you around the average MMR of your stack and use the first 5 or 10 games to fine tune the MMR for that stack. And then at worst, you have the system you currently have now where it's average MMR for the team, and at best, it gets adjusted to account for the effective MMR of certain players playing together.
was 4k in party mmr.after 10 years back playing..how come it resets to 1k
The problem with party playing is the time. We're all adults in different stages in our life. We have responsibilities and different time zones etc. It's so much easier and time saver to solo Q.
This is something that a lot of people fail to realize for some reason. Dota is quite an old game. We all started playing it either as children or teenagers (wc3 dota, or early Dota 2 day) The audience has aged with the game.
@@luisyupari yes. People say just play unranked if you’re not serious. Uhh what’s the point of playing Dota if not to be competitive. Every game is a solid investment of time. The payoff in winning unranked vs ranked is so much better. At least everybody is more serious at ranked.
@@joshuafaramir3569On the other hand, if unranked played by the same ruleset as ranked queue, I would sink an ungodly amount of time into Dota 2. If role queue was a thing there I would have little reason to play ranked, but that's just me
Yeah given how long some games can be I don't want to wait 20 mins for a game as well.
I think a lot of the reason why Solo Q is faster is simply because there is a system supporting it.
Imagine If it were as easy to Duo Q as it is currently as easy to Solo Q.
You could simply toggle ON a "Duo Q" function, where you'll be paired with another random player looking for a Duo Q.
Your Duo would be placed in a Queue that could find any match that contains Solo Players, other Duo Players or Trio Players.
This simple encouragement would make more people play with another player. They could even make friends this way, or block players that were toxic.
This would also help fix the problem faced by the two Pro Players that BSJ mentioned, since that would be a lot more Players available in their Queue.
If you think this is unfair to the Solo Player, again, as BSJ said, this is a skill isse, and it is also a more moral system, since it promotes healthy interactions, and it is a smarter system, since discussion is a major driver of the meta game adaptments.
1) I personally have pretty little time to play, I can not coordinate with any regular teammate at all since I play whenever i have that little gap of time.
2) As someone already mentioned, "most people do not have a social circle full of hardcore moba gamers like you do". But i guess this is somewhat fixable if you are a cool guy and you have a good amount of time to play.
PS: I would love to play with friends/regular teammates but unfortunately I can't. And in my case i'm so far away from being even remotely toxic, i'm at top score behaviour although that doesn't actually say that much.
I rank Solo Q with forced solo Q activated.
I haven't gone through the whole video yet but as someone that can't party-queue, in the lower ranks, there's the option in Dota at least of "Strict Solo Matchmaking" which I'm very fond of since you know that everyone is a total stranger to one another and there's no ganging up on someone and then the game ends and guess what they were partied.
I don't know why more people don't use that setting if they complain getting matched with/against parties.
I'm completely fine with solo queueing because it usually just introduces me to like minded people also trying to chill. When people talk shit I just mute them, but it doesn't happen nearly as often as a lot of people say it does. Makes me think those people are actually the problem children.
You should watch the whole video cause he is basically saying remove that option
@@ssaalleeeemm didn't the game previously have a system where parties would have a party mmr? Does it not have that anymore? Idk if he advocates for that I haven't finished the video, but to me that system made the most sense. Your party mmr might be higher than your individual mmrs.
@@Oddant1 But it divided the player base and made the queues longer. They removed it.
@@Sc0pee if it did then they did it wrong. A 2k mmr duo party for example can be matched with other 2k mmr solos or parties of whatever size. Is that not the entire point of making the party specific mmr? So you can ignore how many people are in the party and still just use the number?
In Dota 2 below Immortal rank you can choose "strict solo queue" from the advanced options. I believe that most people use this option. Immortal rank is only a very small portion of the player base so naturally this wouldn't work very well in there because the queue times would then possibly get very long.
no it would not it would make ppl solo q makin games faster and make wintrading harder if you removed immortal draft party que
@@Balder147 you are 100% right. idk how more people don't see this. 7.4k mmr - immortal queue is a disaster.
@@kylelnwonderland amen brother the shitters will never know the struggle god bless them
@@Sc0pee good less ruining in the draft when one friend gets drafted into enemy team and chain feeds have you played immortal draft or you just talkin out of your ass?
@@Balder147 Valve brought back the "strict solo queue" matchmaking for Immortal back in 2020, but then later removed it again.
Starting to dislike the game simply because of having randoms in ranked queue. Reporting for role abuse doesn’t seem to matter to people and it ruins the experience for me. Looking for other stuff to play.
yeah people like this (you) ruin the game.
@canoninmunaone ? hes leaving the game cause he doesnt like the common mentality or vibe of randoms in dota, if you play dota as a solo q grinder there's no way you can't understand that sentiment.
@@sameveland8560 12k behavior score and i encounter this behavior maybe 1 out of 10 games. If thats enough to make u quit a game, online muliplayer simply isnt fpor u.
@@sameveland8560 If you feel like that then it's better to find a party to play with.
What you are describing fits probably all team based competitive games on the market. It's part of the (solo) game experience wheter you like it or not. If you really don't like randoms in your games then why not try and find a party to play with? You can start by adding people you like to play with from your games. If you play solo you should tick the "restricted solo queue" from the options, that way you won't run into any stacks and everyone's on the same line. Also, actual role abuse happens rarely. Dota is a diverse game with different strategies and heroes that fit many roles. The meta changes constantly with new patches. If you reported them for "role abuse" and it didn't do anything then changes are he/she wasn't griefing after all, but rather playing something in a way that YOU didn't want them to play.
I mean it's even said in the patchnotes that ranked is solo only FOR NOW. Party ranked will be there eventually. Deadlock is still in a very early development stage and I'm surprised that they even added ranked already. It's a first iteration mainly used to gain data and adapt algorithms to refine matchmaking. Once they have enough data to provide a solid experience for solo and groups, ranked will be open for groups.
For everyone in the 1-5k MMR range: Why are we all forgetting that platforms like Steam want us to keep playing?
The algorithm might send you to toxic queues for a reason. They want you to think it’s about behavior, but at the end of the day, there’s always a 50-55% chance of winning. The algorithm even keeps track of which positions you usually report and matches you with those same players.
I believe in solo queue, you can only control your own actions to climb ranks. Mute overly vocal players, focus on proper itemization, don’t push as pos 3 if your team doesn’t even know why to push, and avoid aggressive warding when your team isn’t aware of power spikes or objectives. Stay fluid and keep your emotions in check-trying to be rational won’t work until you maybe hit 4-5k MMR.
I haven't played a single ranked solo queue game in months. I just can't handle people breaking their items just because they lost their lane and can honestly say I don't miss it one bit. I play a lot of ranked party and unranked party and my stress with Dota has gone down so much. I've been playing party queue on the side for years but giving up solo ranked was the best thing for my mental health and I hate that I get anxiety of just thinking to play a solo ranked game.
I had actually stopped playing for quite a while and I specifically came back when they introduced the strict solo-q option. I don't know how much of it is psychological, but I felt it was a huge improvement in terms of quality of games.
BSj wouldn't know about it because it doesn't work in Immortal (or at least it didn't used to work).
Below immortal solo queue is fantastic, reduces variability, which helps a lot.
Imo it removed some problems but the times id get paired with a bad or toxic stack and lose is a lot less than some random solo q guy griefing or going nuclear and giving up from a slight real or imagined. It's a positive change but in the end we're left with the problems of solo q still.
@@sameveland8560 Is your behavior score above 10k? I found that even if you dip slightly, you're immediately in the trenches. As long as you maintain a perfect score and reject "good" behavior matched games, it's fine.
With stacks the problem was less throwing and more just uneven games. I honestly rather have a toxic pos who knows how to play his role than the nicest lane partner who constantly blunders.
@IsawUupThere ofc to ur 2nd point i agree, a more common situation for me with stacks (when i played with them enabled or didnt have a choice) was 3 guys in a party playing very mid or even bad but being completely insular and then collectively blaming the remainder of the team even though they were shotcalling by majoirity most of the game and ignored the non partied calls. So not toxic in the sense that they're owning but being rude more like rudely delfecting after making poor choices as a group echo chamber sort of thing. An example would be playing 1 and my 5 leaves like 5m in and never comes back because hes partied with the offlaner and 4 or goes mid for same reason. it creates needless division that results in griefing and toxic behavior ig would be a better way to put it. But yeah I found that to be relatively uncommon, it was just the worst thing for me about stacks. I don't care about a good stack against me cause that means good dota.
I had the opposite experience to you. I didn't really learn to play Dota until I started solo queuing. I think the distraction of talking to other people, as well as he fact you can just lean on your party for calls and to carry you really limited me.
I feel the same way, although I do miss getting some good advice from friends. But Dota 2 ranked play in team queue can kill friendships lol.
Same for me, I would just follow my friends when playing in a party. Only when solo queueing I could feel the consequences of my own actions and learn the game.
Exactly. 10 years ago I was playing with my roommate who was 2k mmr higher than me, which was a lot 10 years ago. So, the only way to have a chance is that he goes position 1, I go hard support. Do what he tells me to do. Stick to 1-2 heroes. Pull, but ward etc. I didn’t learn anything. I didn’t learn how to farm safely. Then I started to solo Q and then I discovered ability draft. Now I have played each hero 50 times, all with unique skill sets. I know the attack animation of every single hero. I know the skills much better because I actually cast every single skill in the game.
I remember when i played Call of Duty 4 in middle school. You could play a whole afternoon with the same people in a dedicated server and come back next week and see them again. And that was the default experience.
Nowadays the default experience in a multiplayer game is to click a button and be plopped into a match with a bunch of faceless, anonymous players who youll never see again. Its very isolating, and i think its moved this way to appeal primarily to solo queuers. Its the path of least resistance by far - you dont have to have any friends or coordinate anything to get a match. I agree that its a much less healthy paradigm for multiplayer gaming compared to playing with friends. I hope developers can deprioritise it; not just in Dota but in live service multiplayer titles across the industry. Itd be nice to be able to make friends in game again.
I agree wholeheartedly. It takes away player choice and community
The thing that frustrates me the most about dota party queue is that once someone hits immortal they can no longer queue with their ancient 3-5 friends. There is just an arbitrary lockout from party ranked with anyone who is below divine 1 even if they're within the allowable 2800mmr difference which breaks up friend groups for no reason.
Playing restrict solo queue all the time myself. It adds waiting time tho. Also not using solo mmr option can pair you with a duo that is more stupid than enemy duo which translates in auto-loss. Hate it
I used to play dota at a semi-competitive level as a position 5, as I got to immortal, I could no longer party queue with my main lane partner, and that really took out a lot of fun from the game, I'm someone who shotcalls a lot, and it really takes a lot mentally to do that with randos who sometimes aren't very cooperative.
It's been years since then, and I only play party queues to enjoy the game with my friends, I learned that solo queue does indeed promote that mentality of "Dota is an individual game" rather than "Let's win together team!"
great point, solo q dota is a 1v9 especially in core roles because of many factors, you have to compete with and manage both the enenmy team and yours, whereas in a functional party things just flow and good games happen or you stomp through superior coordination. Solo q is almost like a race to which team can work together effectively more quickly without overtaxing themselves. Generally as a solo q grinder I favor playmakers or lane combos so I can build trust with my team early and that's just not necessary in party
Now, this is something I'm looking for a response to. I've been kicked out of two groups who I've stacked with, and I got told one time it came to an outside issue, and the whole group fell apart, but the second one, no one EVER told me they had an issue with how I spoke and communicated. I got told afterward that they hated how hard I tried and how I told people what they were doing wrong and how to improve even though they were generally all around my rank. I want to find more people again, but it's gotten to the point where I don't play Dota at all and go into deadlock a game. I am still trying to learn more and figure it out, but I also end up in random groups just in the deadlock in the discord.
High level coordination. I love that you mentioned that at the end.
Solo queue is a hollow and crude version of what Dota 2 has the potential to be. I compare solo queue with my times playing inhouses, scrims and tournament matches. It doesn't come close.
What is the solution this late in the hour? It may be a drastic one, but it would probably have to be removing the strict solo queue option.
My problem with party queue has always been that it's statistically unlikely for people in a party to just happen to grow at the exact same rate. Someone will eventually become much better and party games for them will become boring and hinder their growth, but they won't want to find a new partner because that's whom they've been playing with their entire life.
If i play a game with someone and have a good time, I just add them as a friend. At this point, I always have someone to play with, and honestly, it makes the game more fun.
In a perfect world, it makes much more sense to party play.
But unfortunately, the reality is very different... people think differently, and if EVERYONE is not on the same page and willing to listen and learn, the friendship can end because of a game.
I would say that if both are on the same page, everything is set to work out and both will really improve together, but if one is very stubborn, things can get complicated.
Same! And I've played with friends for hundreds of hours in 3 different MOBA's!
In the memories of Henry Carney💔
Ever since I played my first battlecup years ago when dotaplus first came out I always thought this should be THE way to play the game. Right now they actively dissuade party play, and buying a ticket each week to play battlecup is a huge barrier to entry. I really wish they would encourage consistent 5 man party play more.
Personally, I'd like to see somekinda tournament mode where you play in a consistent party, you play bo3 games against other teams, maybe in a week long tournament, games scheduled at a good time for the region each day. Tournament exclusive mmr, maybe cosmetic rewards for placement.
Party queue is definitely a better experience than solo queue, but the majority of players will be solo queue and so that experience should be focused on and stress-tested at this stage of the game's development. A lot of the incentives to party queueing, such as a battle cup or LFT feature, require badges to already be in place so that you can find approximate skill levels.
For what it's worth, I don't mind going up against stacks if I'm solo queueing. Thing is, I have a work friend group, outside of work friends, family, and I don't really care to build a whole new social network in order to just play a game. I don't want solo queue to be left to the wolves because it's hard to make it an enjoyable experience.
I just got a deadlock match where a bunch of mid elo nerds like me made mincemeat of the enemy with shotcalls.
I started solo queuing because I was TIRED of playing against mid-smurf accounts. There's been some banwaves since that time but it isn't entirely sorted
Most people neither have the time nor several friends playing DOTA, but if there are the same number of groups and members on each side, why not letting them play together?
So all Solo or 1+1+1+2 vs 1+2+1+1 / 1+3+1 vs 3+1+1 / 2+3 vs 3+2 / 1+4 vs 4+1 / 5 vs 5 should be allowed.
Team game whether its solo or party. Dota has built in communication features. Its a human problem not a system one.
Exactly.
How does it help when you can write and talk to people and they still don't cooperate?
@@melbifk Exactly. human problem not a system one.
Talking to the person sitting next to you is different than typing.
Unless human behaviour itself starts getting engineered for the sake of Dota 2 ranked outcomes, I'm more interested in systems changes.
Bro you really hit the nail on the head here BSJ. I was talking to my wife about this (she still hasn't showered after you signed her arm, send help). I wasn't feeling fulfilled and yea - I got a bit better than my buddies at dota, they were playing less, I was playing a lot of solo queue in dota and deadlock. And I got better at having a positive mindset, learning from games even if they are bad, and moving on when a game really sucks, muting etc. I can still, in my head, make excuses for why it's great to play and why it's a matter of mindset. But in reality, playing these fast paced, complex multiplayer games with a bunch of randos who more often than not are not capable of or interested in playing together and seem miserable in general just sucks. And your video really explains it a lot. I just miss my friends :(. And solo queue is sorta worse. Thanks you BSJ.
Why can't you play with your friends? The forced solo queue in Deadlock is temporary like it says in the patch notes.
I am learning a lot playing wth my higher MMR friends. I play the game 2,5 years and the playing more than 7-8 years. I am trying to be elavate from 2K to 3K but i had a bad strike and i am back at 1,8K. Psychologically recked me to be back down at and losing the momentum. I am now doing a pause due to work related issues and i believe the help of my friends i will be back. I am playing in game with average MMR more than 3-4K due to my friends rank but i am learning a lot. I fail some games but i am sure that i will be better in the long run
I for the life of me find it a massive missed opportunity that there isnt a tavern style pick up party system already built in. Closest thing is people in region chat saying join my party. Its sad that you can have a connection to 200k players in a region and be unable to get any sort of connection with them. Every solution i have seen for this eventually gets abandoned. Even on weekends, discord servers, guilds, all of those options are empty. 80% of the steam people I added through Dota, and either most of them simply play invisible or they quit. The best times for APEX, CS or any other competitive games are with other players. Numbers speak for themselves, Dota has notoriously struggled to retain players and there is no shortage of them out there.
As a cs player myself, I suggest we have a separated ranking system like in CS2. Premier is for solo Q only and Competitive is for party Q. Main ranking of a player is Premier ELO. Competitive ranking is just an archivement.
Well articulated, I enjoy these more abstract discussions about the game.
This might be the best dota video ever.
Honestly, it's not that I don't want to party queue with 4 friends, it's just that doing so at a time where everyone is available is just downright impossible.
I think the solution is simply have an option for strict solo queue like Dota has. Allow parties to queue but allow solo players to have an option to force strict solo queue for their solo games.
I think Deadlock is doing it right for the starting point. Specifically solo only and the updates to ranked occurring weekly that takes into account a whole week’s worth of matches and factors in how well the players that beat you perform in their other matches. The next ranked mode I would like to see would be a full 6 player team queue and the rankings are kept separate from solos.
tbh, I haven't noticed people duo queuing/triple queuing. but it may be because i have a low rank.
never thought about this until now.
This is like when singers make songs about how hard it is to be famous
Always thought that party queuing was the thing that made the most sense. In CS:GO, it was normal to party queue as well. IDK nowadays in CS2.
I really like this kind of video. A deep dive into your thoughts about the system and your growth/change in opinion during your time within the system.
Obviously everyone is going to have their own opinions but if you look at it objectively, no matter whether you're playing for fun or to learn or to win, doing so with others is almost always going to be a better experience than doing so alone.
People aren't meant to be alone, we're supposed to be part of communities, sound ourselves with people we both agree and disagree and that allows us to change our own thoughts, feelings and beliefs and as you've said many a time BSJ, that translates into Dota as well.
Love what you're doing mate and I'm sorry to see the game you've loved to play for so long not hold the same place in your life as it once used to.
Keep doing your thing and much respect!
I like your journey and transformation BSJ, you're getting wiser and humbler
In my case, if I don't have any of my friends available I'd rather not play at all, it's just not as fun
One aspect that I've been suffering from is getting matched with new players
100% it was a mistake from the very beginning. Especially in Dota 2 which is a lot more based in specific roles and jobs with the draft and itemization, as opposed to Deadlock which so far seems to be more focused on individual skill and much easier for an overranked player to carry given the many more item slots and therefore power ceiling. Not to mention Deadlock is less about strategy like macro decisions and teamwork than Dota and more about reflexes, aiming, and mechanical skill.
So the fact that Dota 2 got RID of the Teams UI and Team MMR with the Reborn update was absurd. The entire game revolves around teamwork, everyone's biggest complaint is lack of coordination / accountability for toxic behaviours. From the get go it was clear there shouldn't even BE a solo MMR, solo practice is for unranked to get better. There should've been a team making UI built into Dota 2 that matches you with teams that fit your bracket, your goals, your behaviour scores, region, language, and schedule. There should be tournaments or leagues that reward teams that work well together with cosmetics or recognition and at the highest level, invites to LAN qualifiers. All built into the game and official website for tracking. Players should have been able to join or make multiple teams, to leave, kick, or vote-kick. Maybe a team would have a couple of subs since 5 players always available in IRL can be tough. And a players visible rank would be the highest MMR of all their teams. Their individual MMR for purposes of finding teams would simply be their hidden mmr that's been confirmed to exist - which should also not be impacted if playing a new hero they have less than 10 games of.
And you're wrong, it's not too late for dota. There needs to be a huge overhaul of matchmaking. And people will complain at first as with any change, but in the long run it would be positive. It's the best time now, with Immortal Draft being broken, people less inclined to play ranked overall, and most of the players feeling lonely because their IRL friends slowly fading from the game leaving only us that really like the game for what it is and would love to still improve and play in 5 stacks rather than sweaty solo queue pubs where you have to play therapist as much as your hero.
But the party ranked still works outside Immortal, which only consists of about 2% of the player base. The whole solo rating/team rating just divided the player base in two making up for longer queue times.
@@Sc0pee By team ranked I meant full 5 stacks. Before the Reborn engine / UI update you could create a 'team' with a name, logo, banner, and roster. When queueing ranked with this team you would eventually be assigned the 'team MMR', that would only apply when all 5 people on the team roster were in the stack playing against other full teams. Even then this feature was hard to find in the UI as Valve focused only on Solo MMR and Party MMR before combining those two, and completely removing Team MMR. This bred an awful culture or solo / duo queueing in one of the most team-oriented games, and what I believe led to a lot of toxicity. I've always thought MMR should only be tied to full teams - not individual players. A player's displayed medal / rank would just be their highest Team MMR that they're on the roster for. Yatoro may be regarded as one of the best carry players of all time - but it's Team Spirit that won 2 TI's.
Dota matchamking system since quite a few months was unbearable for me. Stopped playing Dota at the end of June and I don't miss it at all. 3,5k hours and I can't stand sweeping people or being swept anymore. There is barely anything inbetween the two. 1 or 2 (if lucky) games out of 10 I can say were actually good game of Dota. Not worth it for me.
3.5k is baby hours. I got 20k+ atm. I'm definitely getting more even games than that but I feel like the "snowballish"-games have definitely increased since recent patches (it feels harder to make a comeback) . I believe it's the game that has changed, not the MM. Dota 2 ranked is not for the weak.
@@Sc0pee I'd agree and disagree: while it's true recent patches especially have contributed to the sweep problem: this exists in most competitive games and is usually a symptom of poor coordination in the face of desperation. For me: desperation can be one of the most fun experiences GIVEN that my team isn't delusional about our win condition. Getting picked off is wasteful, being selfish is going to ruin the game, but of course: these are Dota players, so you lose!
@@bluejay7058 Good point. But on the flipside when you make that comeback it feels great! It's true that people in general quit or get tilted 8and lose because of it) way too easily.
@@Sc0pee Dude I'm at 15k hours and I can honestly say both have changed immensely. Ranked almost means NOTHING anymore. It feels pointless. I reached the rank I wanted and I felt nothing from it because it was such a shit journey to reach, much worse than it was to reach years ago. Smurfs, people who give up easily or random, or just forget about the entire meta itself. The amount of people who don't realize how insanely team driven the game is at the moment is INSANE, and I hate it. They still truly believe they can solo win the game by themselves against a team who is going to 5 man us and win easily. It's enough to drive you away from the game so quick.
@@ItsTheGhettoFRESH I always felt it's like that in all of the MOBA's I've played since Dota 1, then HoN, and then Dota 2 and even some hundred games in LoL. Either you suck it up or you don't I guess.
This is a really interesting debate. I enjoy playing game with friends more than solo so I'd rather rank be playable with friends.
I like the League of Legend matchmaking system more than the Dota 2 matchmaking system. In League of Legends you can Duo Queue or Solo Queue for ranked. If you want to play in a party of 3+ there is a separate rank and Queue for that.. In Dota 2 you can Strict Solo Queue. If you choose to Duo Queue you can go against a 5 man stack. I like League of Legend's system better than Dota 2's system because it encourages you to play with another person. When I Duo Queue ranked I communicate with my partner over Discord and then separately communicate with my whole team. I've found that it lowers my toxicity and improves my experience. It makes me seek out people I want to play with in the future from current games and this makes me want to give the best version of myself to my team so they would potentially want to play with me again in the future as well.
When I played Dota 2 solo without selecting "Strict Solo Queue Matchmaking" it was a miserable experience. I had games where I would be matched with a party of 4 and they would single me out and be toxic to me and one person would get upset with me over something that wasn't my fault and convince his other 3 teammates to report me. This was back when reports mattered in Dota 2 and being reported 4 times by a single party in one match would send me to low priority queue.
The game of Dota 2 became the most toxic in the world because of the system in which the game was set up as well as the gameplay of the game itself. Having a single courier shared among 5 people was just one small example. A larger example would be how one person could buy every ward and ward every single jungle camp (this was back when you couldn't kill the wards so the jungle camps wouldn't spawn for several minutes). After the report came out that Dota 2 was the #1 most toxic game in the world, Dota 2 made many game changes (two of which I just mentioned) that helped reduce toxicity.
It's my current opinion based on 10,000 hours in League and 5,000 hours in Dota that Deadlock should have a Solo/Duo Queue ranked option and a 3+ party ranked option. Both ranks should be separate.
When Dota 2 banned all smurfs my gaming experience was so much better. Instead of 50% of my games at 4k being decided by a smurf it was now closer to 10%.
While i get the idea, the main concern i have is player numbers, which at least temporarily would drop off vastly. This is also the reason why I don't think BSJ's idea will ever get implemented by valve. It's fine if you develop a new game built around party queque- you attract players who are also attracted to this idea, but changing an old game in this way seems very hard to me.
It’s happened to me me with every team game I’ve ever played. Wether with dota, lol, cs or overwatch, at some point i managed to play with a full stack and the game felt WAY more enjoyable. After i could hardly bother playing solo again. I feel like soloq is the worst way to play these games
I personally as a solo q grinder care more about a good game than winning. I do agree with that view of solo q players in general but there are some people who play it for different reasons such as time, lack of good players to party with, or personal preference.
This video LITERALLY explain my situation, i normally play with 2 more friends and we are from South America. it is really IMPOSIBLE to find an ranked inmortal match, any change on the system that allows players to find someone (named friend or not) to cooperate and coordinate will be a great improvement from my perspective also. I am afraid tho, we exercise SOLO queue too long, and the population of dota 2 growed over the years and years in a toxic and solo queue environment and (not all) but i would risk to say a high % of that population spend a lot of hours in video game since young age and did not improve social skills too much. and summing this up would be "years and years of poor social skills + demanding a very intrusive change of the system" i dont know how that would result. I really hope something changes, but i do not see how, any change of paradigm will be very violent on the comunity i think. thanks once again for the great video! (i am not replying comments just in case of someone want to argue, just telling my point of view)
I've switched to unranked almost a year ago. Now, with the advent of double downs, ranked is even more toxic by what my friends tell me. High skill unranked games are fun, and playing with friend can never be better then playing alone.
IMO for ranked mmr i think it should be ranked reset system. For example every 3/6 months there should be reset mmr and not having to deal with 15's millions mmr without being able to queue and people being given gifts for being in top 100 in their division.
I used to play party ranked a lot when party and solo were separate. Lots of fun, playing with players of varying skill levels. But that changes when there's only one rating system. Now it's not just a fun time, your rating goes down if your party isn't at your exact wavelength.
The worst issue with one rating system is that it encourages boosting like no other. Someone plays on their real account, while getting booster by a friend or a booster on a smurf account.
So now instead of having fun party ranked games every game you have to bring your absolute best game ever to have any chance at winning. You have to coordinate your picks, you have to plan strategies. This is just not something most parties want to do so basically the only time to play ranked in a party is if you're in a group that's incredibly hardcore or you want to lose some MMR.
And when playing solo if brings the game quality down tremendously if there are parties in the games. Every game is a stomp depending on which team got the better party because as a duo or a triple they just have a larger impact on the game. One party is just queuing as mid and safe lane core, they have little coordination at all and end up not doing much. The other picks some Marci-Io lane and absolutely demolishes the other team with their coordination. Doesn't mean you win or lose more, just means the games are less enjoyable.
To me it rather sounds like there should be some 3rd party league for the top echelons of players that can go to matches with a stack where other players are also interested in practicing in duos or triples or even full stacks.
Below Immortal rank you have the option to use the "strict solo queue" from the options, which puts everyone on the same starting line. It allows no parties and everyone on your team and in the opponent team are all solo players.
@@Sc0pee yes, but BSJ is precisely suggesting not having that option. Which for a short while was disabled in Dota something like 2-3 years ago at this point. No doubt what Valve saw in their statistics when it was disabled that games were more heavily one sided which likely affected how frequently players came back to play ranked. So they enabled strict solo again.
@@harpake It sucked for a solo player like myself to get stacked with or against teams. I really like the option for better solo experience.
Personally, I queue solo and pick all roles and quite enjoy the game. I do not use the queue only with solo queues in settings. Obviously, I usually am playing support due to the lack of preference for others to play that role in the greater scheme of things. Thus, when matched with random parties, its all about doing what you can do to support them if that is your role. Also, understanding that one of the players could be a very low mmr player and to play accordingly once noticing this by not relying so much on that player.
I think the argument of "well party q involves how good your party is so it's not a true representation of skill" is true in a way, but solo q includes how well you can talk down babies and get them to co-operate. What is skill?
Hey BSJ - I enjoy your videos and have been using them with my friends to improve our dota experience. So thank you for that. I felt compelled to reply to you since I can hopefully shed some light onto the "why" that you're looking for when you ask about catering to Solo Queue vs Team Queue.
Let me start with some basics:
1. To grow user base - you need to be primarily Solo Queue focused. This allows new people who want to enter the game, an easy way to jump in and play. This also allows them a chance to organically learn the game, grow on their own, and play at their own pace. It's counter intuitive, but when you start a game you do not want someone telling you what to do. You want to learn and explore the game yourself.
2. Dota 2 Matchmaking is better than ever. Having played Dota 1, HoN, and Dota 2 now for over 15 years I can tell you that match making is at it's best right now. Measuring fairness vs queue time and having that (somewhat) visible to the players helped. Banning smurfs this past year helped immensely. (Note: Account buyers and smurfs still exist, obviously). I'd ask you to recognize that the system in place currently is better than ever.
3. MMR Discussion. I don't agree with Dota 2's MMR method. It's a flat method (you gain and lose the same MMR) whereas HoN used the progressive method (If you are much stronger than an enemy, you might win 2 MMR and lose 30 MMR). This keeps the MMR spread closer together and enables more realistic match making. If you're looking for a place to have a discussion and improve the game - this is an area of opportunity.
4. Solo Queue vs Team Queue MMR. This was historically discussed but to your point and specific example of two pro's playing together - their MMR would be more reflective of their teamwork rather than their individual skill. My personal opinion is to keep the MMR as one number, but this again is an area of opportunity if you're interested diving into.
5. Social Structure: Dota 2 does not have an easy way to "make friends". There is no built in system to guide people to play together. I.e. If we win a game you have to actively add me as a friend and ask to play with me. The game doesn't recommend us being friends (as an example). If you want the game to be Team Queue focused, you must FIRST build in the ability to make friends, and to join teams. You can see this "failed" attempt in MMOs when they are "LFG" (Looking for Group) bc they don't have friends to play with; or even the weekly Battle Cup where people want to play but don't have friends online. So this is a prerequisite for the things you want.
6: Punishments: The punishments in dota are not harsh enough. This could be for one of many reasons but the reality is you can cause problems in many games without being punished. This, again, would need to be addressed before being Team Queue focused.
My opinion:
1. The MMR system is why people "can't queue" as their MMR is artificially high and games that don't use progressive MMR systems have bi-modal populations (instead of normal populations). They have a spike of players at average MMR, then a spike at the top MMR.
2. Team Queuing makes dota more fun. Hands down, for all the reasons you mentioned, it's more fun playing with friends. However, dota first needs to implement a social feature to support making more friends.
3. People want different things out of the game. You might want to win. I might want to try a new hero. If we Team Queue, one of us must make a sacrifice here. Me trying a new hero means I won't be anywhere near as good as my MMR so we might lose. It's important to keep this in mind.
4. The game should lean harder into Solo Queue. By making the Solo Queue experience better, it will teach people how to become better teammates organically. This will lead to more people wanting to Team Queue.
I'm happy to hop on a discord call with you to discuss things in more detail, but hopefully this sheds some light onto the "why".
I actually only play Dota with my friend, we often duoQ, if we achieve a point that we can actually find a game we problably just gonna start to play normal games or even stop playing
I'm currently voice muted on dota. Yea, Its forcing me to be nice, right now. I stay quite and just play. lol
Hey BSJ please do an updated guide of basics... Like CS, laning, roles, items , map. Your previous guides have helped me a lot. I literally learned the attack stop attack from you which helped me last hit( im low rank) i'm still not great but yea small tips help out.
I dont comment here on youtube but this is a video thats so worth commenting. I’ve been playing since dota1 days up until today with friends in the country i was in (sea) and when i transferred to eu the matches were so much easier but i hated solo queue because the worst games are the worst. In party queue, your friends dont break items. So ive made a whole community of pinoy gamers here and we play everyday and have a whole guild now. It feels so much better to win a tough game with friends than a stomp alone. I’ve been thinking a whole lot too on how to improve the matchmaking system and i think your idea is great. Even better would be to incentivize playing with friends. This would bring back the spark i had playing LAN with friends back dota1. Nice content bsj.
I think there should be two ranks, 1 for solo queue, other for 5v5. Solo for assessment of individual skill, and party rank for team skill. I don't understand why they merged them back in the day.
I have always been a solo queue enjoyer, I never had urge to play in 5. I loved it when we were trying for international open quals mid 2010s but never for rank.
Thanks for the video!
Yeah this makes sense for you and lots of others I'm sure, but what about people who have no stack, no discord group they can fall back on to play party queue?
People in some countries go to local gaming centers to play Dota, they can't afford to have a party ready to go and play with them. so why are we unnecessarily punishing them?
I know this has a good idea, but the execution might cause more problems than it solves.
The problem is toxic behavior, not solo queue. BSJ has a biased take on matchmaking because he's such high rank. Don't punish solo queue just because you're tired of communicating with tilting teammates. Solo vs party shouldn't be the issue he even said he's not gonna say ones wrong and ones right but then goes on to imply it
They should reintroduce the solo queue and party queue ranked. It was much better tbh when they had this.
The ranking system itself is totally flawed.
Had an offlane SF the other day. I rotated, chatted & pinged for a kill.
The other supp helped, whilst SF did nothing and farmed the wave. Spent the rest of game in jungle doing absolutely fuck all, other than making map small for our carry.
Enemy team couldn't take our hg (zero def by sf) and we won a long game with SF finishing 2-8 and zero bldg dmg. Yet that fucker gained MMR.
The matchmaking system and MMR rewarding system are both flawed.
A bigger issue than solo vs party
As someone who plays on and off in lower ranks most of this does not matter. The random 5 stack is not any better than 5 randoms tbh. I don't see why we wouldn't just make it easier for top players to que up.
Based. I play mostly party queue and playing only party queue definitely build bad habits. Some solo is good for everyone, but party queue dota is just more fun because you get to play the game with coordination in mind
The worst thing about Party Qs is that they are either all very toxic/low skill or all nice/high skill. So if you are paired with the bad ones, there is nothing you can do to fix it. They will feed together and do stupid things all game long. Party games are resulted in the draft phase. You just waste your time to see the ending.
It should have both solo and party modes with separate mmrs just like how dota used to be back in the day. Since you might be close to devs I was thinking another thing they could implement is a system to show you how many parties are currently queuing and their size so that you can change your party size or even solo q in order to find a game or the match maker itself could give a recommendation about that but such a thing should only happen when there are less than 50 players or so queuing for a game . Thats something that can be implemented in dota and deadlock.
I've been playing strictly solo q for the past few years. I have 4000 hours and im still guardian. The problem with solo q is that your lane partner is so unpredictable if you play sidelanes. If I'm playing solo q now I only play mid and I've been gaining mmr ever since. I would not recommend solo q if you're playing a sidelane role. It got to the point where I was so toxic that I had to stop playing carry. I'm not proud of it but it is what it is.
Party matches have obvious benefits. They also have requirements and limitations, such that they are not always viable. That being said, the limitation should not come from the game/system itself
You’re missing on a few different points such as: skill based matching vs true rank/ hidden mmr. Elo hell for high hidden mmr players who get stuck with lop sided duos trios and 5 stacks. Companies like riot who want their players to have 50% win rates to make it as enjoyable for everyone as possible. Does valve also make this a factor for their match making system?
I completely agree with solo queue vs Party matchmaking. But my boys only play turbo and thats at a faster pace and fun as party but for ranked I end up playing solo
one of the most insightful videos!! great job
I hope decent comments find you well. I would love to see Valve implement a party favored queuing system. I hope they haven't figured out that it is much harder to implement algorithms that match your parties with any form of queueing system, I do think overall a toxic person in solo queue would generally lean towards being a good friend to play with and being a good team mate. But I also do believe there are people who just wouldn't change but a system catered for party would be a good stimulus.
I think we misunderstood what DOTA is trying to tell us.
I recently started playing group games again where I enjoy them more than in single queue. That's because I bought, like almost everyone else, the message "Good players rise on their own, if you're good they can carry your games, you are the common denominator of your games."
Dota stopped being a Skill game a long time ago, today it is Macro decisions and I assure you that this way you are a Divine player.
I finally convinced myself of this after watching a video about Miracle... how come the most talented player only has ONE TI? The player that the rest of the players admire was only able to consecrate himself once on the big stage and that was when his team had absolute synergy.
Why have players like Insania established themselves in TI at the age of 30 and not at 20?
Micro decisions and Skill make you a better player, but Macros win games, and those are best made in teams.
I think a healthy journey in a game like dota 2 or deadlock involves both solo q and party q. Dota turned into a 90% solo q experience game and the culture soured massively over time. I would like to see a 60%/40% split of solo q/party q prioritization.
Solo q feels valuable when you are trying to improve mechanical skill and niche item build stuff. You don't get someone like 15 year old Sumail without allowing him to solo q nonstop.
That being said, party stacks were undervalued in dota 2, really social people like Sing find a way to incorporate it, but most people don't find it easy to get people to a discord and game for hours. And Sing had to make sacrifices, not playing the game at all, rather than being forced to solo q grind.
I really enjoy hearing about how impactful the party games have been for you. For years, I really thought Singsing, in particular, could show you an alternative way to approach the game than what your dota 2 solo q journey was doing for you
Solo Q in lock is a mixed bag for sure, but makes sense they're trying things out.
My issue is i have a much higher mmr than friends and they get annoyed because they'll get stomped while i go 30-2 or something. One game I was shiv and the rest of my team left and me and my friend almost won. 110k damage, half the weakened patron down but they just beat me on dps killing ours. It's kinda not fun, but idk the solution. I miss old cod style matchmaking where there wasn't hardcore skill based matchmaking. You get in with anyone. For dota 2 I have no friends that play, so I queue strict solo queue. But yeah I'd rather play with friends.
Where has he been?
I get it, but finding people is probably a really big barrier.
Fixing solo queue is much easier than people think: just ban toxic people. I intentionally griefed a game of League ONCE and got banned fot 2 weeks. Yet someone who griefs 10 games of Dota gets a couple low priority games..
I agree with your thesis. I think team queueing should be more accessible in ranked.
Imagine you playing a team game but you want to play solo...
where are u man?
I think they should make a server like in LoL where only pros can play in that server or include high rank pubsters.
Been playing with all muted chat for a while now, simply because playing with random ragers is just insuferable
the option to "strict solo queue" doesnt actually work. played thousands of games with that on and always get groups.
Then you must be in Immortal rank and it's working as intended.
Feel like this is the best way to gauge your skill. Unless your party is roughly the same skilllevel.
Also the lobbies are then balenced pretty well.
The problem with match maker is the punushment to grief behaviour and skill gap between 2 teams (smurf problems). I'm sure most people with a reasonable mind will ok losing to good opponents when his team perform atleast adequate to the rank they have. Valve for some reason punish verbal toxicity the most, i guess because it's easily detected, while neglect the most important aspect which is actual grief like running down mid or role abuse, because toxic u can just mute. There are lots of solution but the devs simply too busy or just don't care😊
i think partial parties are on average more toxic towards the random players than solo players are by themselves.
I always see it as a challenge when I’m solo and get paired against a party cause when you win u get to just flame the whole party nd it’s so worth it 😂
I've been playing DOTA for about a year. Never once met another person who played DOTA. So Solo Queue is all I've got. Am I in the minority for this? Maybe. But its the same for Deadlock now and it does certainly feel bad being punished for not having friends. So having a place where I play people at my skill level who can't communicate with friends sound incredibly enjoyable
Agree 💯 with everything you said.
Only play party unranked now and it feels like were going to war against other 5 stack immortals everynight now.
Its quite good. Much better then ranked and Solo Q
i actually hate playing WITH parties. often one of them is super toxic, and they can grief the game with their dumb ideas. id rather deal with one player who griefs the game by doing a silly build. its just unsalvageable when half the team is doing it
As a manager and dota 2 pleb I agree that there are many things in common when talking about working with disfunctional teammates and having to do things that other roles should be doing. And I believe that is what dota essence truly is, you can see many things in the game that happen in real life. I believe the manager could improve his team with some better help from HR to hire correct people or have his insight on the people that are hired before having a heavy rock put randomly in his team (dealing with this at the moment). Also in dota I probabbly have a different take than you as I'm not even close to inmortal, but in Europe you are probabbly in the best region talking about teammates wanting to work together.. imagine the rest of the world. There are still lots of improvements needed on the system side to improve the communication and teamwork aspects of the game.
My opinion is that the system should be way stricter on those feeders and item-breakers so that they can never play again on that account, that way those game ruiners can get serious punishment and not able to create a new smurf account and play again. The punishments on this should not be with a score of 12k but just like 2 or 3 lives and then you are done forever on that account (if the smurf detection is not as good) or at least for a couple months if we are sure they cannot create a new smurf and they will not be able to play dota at all for some months to reflect on their actions.
On the solo versus duos/trios I'm not sure if there is a better way of solving it, those games always have a lot of skill disparity and is so hard to matchmake it evenly... at the inmortal level I think the system should let you know if there is the possibility of finding you a match in duos, otherwise you will need to play 5v5 (maybe more battlecups or something?) or strictly solo for the highest.
In the end solo q is what works, parties looks perfect in theory but it just didn't work
Strict solo queue helped me climb ranks, crusader to ancient. For non immoral player, solo is the key.
Nice, nice. Developing is great, especially if you feel trapped (more than that sometimes ppl deny they are). Life is developing as well. It’s about making changes to have more fresh air. That is greatly works for me.