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the global mute is ridiculous. even after their fix after a week/halfweek of nonsense, it's still crazy:

"I've been playing 5+ games a day. Believe me, I have some really good games, and some really bad games.

Today, I got muted. For what, I don't know.

I didn't swear. I didn't use racial slurs. All I did was tell my team when I was ganking, to defend, to push, etc.
I criticized inefficient and stupid builds like a wraithband, tangos start. Mind you, I normally play in High MMR.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

And yet, I'm muted for an undefined period of time.

Often, people simply report you, and swear at you afterwards.
But because I've already used all of my reports this week since I've played easily over 15 games, I can do NOTHING.

The mute feature is there for a reason. These mute bans are an outrage.
And the forums have not had this kind of outcry to an update in ages.

This is a sign of Valve turning the wrong direction.
This policy is entirely against the consumer.
There are no appeals and there is no vetting.
You literally can pick up Dota 2 invites for a rare a piece, create three accounts, and just report people you don't like.
Within 12 hours, you'll have them muted.

For what? Only Valve seems to know.

If this is some campaign against 'cyber bullying' then I can't help but think that Valve has its priorities completely out of order.
The Dota community is centered about a game that gives a player extremely high and low valence emotions.
It's natural to be angry and to express that.

This system promotes an artificial politeness.
It is unnatural, it is fake.

People who are muted cannot communicate effectively in any high level match, especially if they are solo queuing versus a coordinated via voice stack or small parties.

You cast your ulti in a teamfight late because of the cooldown? Too bad, your team doesn't know that.
Reported for throwing. Enjoy your mute extension." - daed

"The chat wheel does not solve any problems. If you are in a very high skill game then you typically need to type an in depth description of what you are about to do during a gank or teamfight.

People are getting complacent because the mute bans are being enforced less frequently.
That does not keep mute bans from being a terrible system that simply does not improve the game!

The only reason people accept the mute ban system is because they think that Valve should have the right to police their players.
Well guess what? Dota is a community made game, and if Valve wants to cash in on that community then they should respect it." - mcheeawai

"im just amazed how some people can be this incompetent just because they did not get muted or reported. First of all, what you guys need to understand is that some people are more passionate then others, and some get stuck with different players and have different personalities.

For instance, if someone comes out and calls me something like a newb or any other offensive name, i would not report him because i feel like first of all that is super childish because i chose to play an ONLINE game with no RATING meaning that you can swear and do all sorts of crap, which is what i agreed to by playing online.

Second, you are playing with 9 strangers in a long 5v5, this is a competition of-course people will talk trash, of-course people will get mad and butthurt and brag and do all this stuff, this is how the world works. Look at any sport, take NBA for example, you see players openly talking trash every time after a basket, assist, some are even encourage to show emotion to get their team playing better, EMOTION is what makes us human.

This report system is the dumbest system ever made, how someone can think that this is a good idea is beyond me, in no way shape or form is this remotely helpful EVER. You shouldn't be able to report anyone, at-least not with few simple clicks without going in GREAT detail on what happened and when(which then should be reviewed by a person to see if its true or not).

Reports solve nothing... If a guy is griefing you and decided to buy 1000 cur's to feed to another team, then what is you reporting him going to do? He will go to low pro? Cool and his buddies will report you too and you will meet him there in 15 minutes? Its just pointless, it does nothing but start more problems then it solves.

The best idea is to take it out completely or as ive always said make it alot more informative as to what you are reporting people and alot more complicated process that requires you more then 3 simple clicks to affect someones game play experience." - TomTomNT

"Lucky. My friend got banned for playing Medusa. No he did not flame. The guy said in chat he reported him for playing Medusa.

I personally don't think I deserved mine, as I was trying really hard to be nice, but some things I said were in a bit of a gray area.

I dunno, but alot of people are really not getting banned fairly. I just think Valve should give power to players to deal with people who ruin games, and fix the problem for themselves if possible. If not, make it reportable. We do not need this system. We have a mute button." - 4o4Hellfire

"Everytime I report someone, they get muted. But I usually only report the people who rage or start fights on the team.

Only 1 report left. Not muted yet myself. This is interesting. I see two problems with the system:

1- Amount of reports per week is too low if you play a lot. Otherwise it's fine.

2- Abuse. It seems like people can report me for simply not liking me. Sure, people generally won't report me, but if they decide to gang up and do it because I didn't build a certain item build, they can. Where are the measures against that?" - KitsuneSefam

"The problem is people are not getting muted for 'raging' as you know it. They are getting muted for 'raging' by being ignored by people. In other words their allies are merely being incompetent and they try to communicate 'how to do it better' and then they are simply ignored. At some point they might decide to tell opponents, 'bad game' for no cooperation and the opponents in their fit of pride in feeling like it was a 'good game' even though clearly their opponents let them win will report people for simply being honest." - SanKakU

"So much for their Fixpatch, ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfz51XYmZ-o

The muting is absolutly sick as is!" - 3qual

"I get the ''Thanks for improving the community'' very often and 90% of the people i report didnt do anything that is a reportable offense." - iamVo0dO

"Played 1600 games of Dota 2.
Held a 'teach a new player how to dota' group with 80 members actively learning.
Never been in low priority, never had any bans.
Only 3 abandons out of those 1600 games due to power shortage.
Don't rage, don't flame. Just some occasional F and C word, not directed at anyone particular.
Tried my best to be as polite and helpful in PlayDota as possible (check my history).

Got chat-muted because I got matched into a 4 man stack of Russian players in captains mode and they disliked my picks = 4 reports." - Chaqu

"Kids using their 4 weekly reports for minor things like "easy" instead of using them on real flamers who make this community toxic. If you can't accept a bit "trash talk" that happens in every competitive game/sport, something like "easy" then god damn it you are one little wuss.

I never do offensive gg, easy and similar... hmmm, I can't remember last time I used /all chat but it never bothers me when opponents do a little "trash talk" after they win." - Rainheart

"For people wondering if I berated my team, no I didn't.

In that game, I recall saying 3 nuggets of wisdom to my team.

I told DK to get a Mjollnor and BKB to deal with Meepo late game.
I told Storm Spirit to stop dying, and made it explicit that he should avoid getting stunned and should focus all his damage onto Lina.
I told Rubick to stop eating stuns.

What happened late is the enemy team said 'push in, we don't def'. I went to push the t3 tower (with Aegis in hand), and they all jumped me and popped my Aegis. They lied on all chat in order to try and comeback. After double raxing, I said "no def", then "but def?", then said "easy" to tease them for trying to win in such a low brow way." - Straylian

"Then you would be abusing the report system which is why no part of it should be automated. The communication abuse report option is for things like death threats, walls of text spam, severe racism, etc, not for reporting someone because they hurt your feelings by saying the game was easy" - Jones

"I report everyone that says easy, no matter how "easy" the game was." - TheWilder

"you know what's even better, you're not even good enough to have programmed in a legible timer because I'm apparently banned for %s1 hours. Valve time right? If you were any other company you'd have all been fired for poor quality workmanship and undelivered promises. You know who else used to be a big successful company? Creative Labs." - 8087h3d1n054ur

well, i guess that's enough for now!
i'll write another blog later if i see some more good stuff.

it's been almost a year since my previous blog directed specifically at new dota 2 players, so i figure why not write a new one?

1) How to get good.
hopefully you did the things recommended in the first blog, but you're probably still struggling to be any good. here's a few things to keep in mind:
a) ALWAYS watch replays. review replays where you lose and where you win, watch at least 1 replay every day that you play.
b) spectate OFTEN. if you are feeling a little sick or for whatever reason can't play a full game, why not spectate? it doesn't have to be a full game, or maybe it should be! either way, you might be able to learn something, if not from the game itself, from the other spectators. and don't forget to turn off and back on directed camera when you need to, which normally should probably be often.
c) make solid friends. find good players and stalk their channels. my home channel on dota 2 is "potato chip dota". while it can be fun to stalk guys like sunsfan from dotacinema, you are not likely to get any better at the game by hanging out with them.
d) don't forget to practice! whether it's just a game vs bots, a custom 5v5 match, or even a 1v1 solo mid, practicing is important and should never be neglected.
e) (this one is optional) play war3 dota sometimes if you have the time for it. yeah, it's got some annoying quirks, but learning the heroes that haven't come out yet could be good for you.

2) Cosmetic Items Discussion.
the cosmetics items are getting to be more and more a part of the game. there's a lot to be said for them, and i'm not sure i'm the one who knows enough about them to tell you all you need to know, but they're still worth commenting on.
a) FREE items events. there have been 2 events that have come that have been interesting little side games and they have both left the scene. during that time they were dropping for players cosmetic items every game rather than every level up or whatever in the battle points. in this case, there have been no wins or losses recorded. this is a good time to learn heroes you are unfamiliar with, or to try new tricks with heroes you are familiar with. just try not to let your obsession with extra items cloud your rise to a higher skill level. there's a balance that needs to be achieved. if you're running around with 0 items on all heros in all your games, other 'new players' might assume that you haven't bothered to learn such a hero. grabbing some free HQ items for trading in these events can give you an edge when it comes to trading. don't neglect it if at all possible.
b) cosmetics to WIN? there is no such thing as buy to win in dota 2. however, there is a popular game that is such a thing. as a result, you might bump into players that think because they have some special item(s) they deserve some special treatment. whatever you do, don't give it to them. the way to winning is teamwork, and whether you have a good cosmetic or not, you're still you. do not let cosmetics influence your choice of hero for a game. work on your inner qualities of a person and a player, and you might be surprised by how often a player might feel like rewarding you for being a nice person with a free item. if valve can give away free items, so can other players.

3) How to continue enjoying the game.
a) report. win or lose, report players that tried to make the game not fun. try to be detailed.
b) commend. try to remember to commend players that were fun to play with. realistically you won't always be able to do this, so if nothing else, offer up a friend request and see what happens next. you can always delete them later.
c) find the fun. find favorite heroes, watch games of your friends, try to arrange custom 5v5 games, form a team, even enter tournaments or leagues if possible, but whatever you do, do it because it is fun.

i've taken to figuring out how streaming works and as a result i'm going to start streaming the matchmaking games and broadcasting those. i'll most likely stick to captain's mode games since those are the most interesting IMO. but you can expect i'll probably do some AP games if i get requests on broadcasting tips about various heroes.

the main reason i have a fascination with CM games at the moment is that i'm trying to form a team so i'm looking at how other teams look, amateur teams that could very well be what my team might look like. i want to try to keep an open mind about how realistic i should be in my expectations, while at the same time having some good and bad examples of teamwork shown.

with all that mentioned, feel free to add my channel, 'potato chip dota' in the dota 2 client if you want to chat and possibly either get added to a team or get some advice on how you can step up your game, or even just to do some solo mid sparring or private games together with either full teams or testers for bugs.

http://www.twitch.tv/dcttr66
http://www.youtube.com/user/iNsOmNiAcAnDrEw

dota 2 match id:
99271337

kda:
16/5/15//0/9/11//6/3/26//17/6/18//7/9/13///6/10/12//8/7/11//5/11/8//7/8/9//4/10/11

16+0+6+16+7=46
5+9+3+6+9=32
15+11+26+18+13=83
total team kda=46-32=14+83=97

6+8+5+7+4=30
10+7+11+8+10=46
12+11+8+9+11=51
total team kda=51-46=5+30=35

so, even though just by kills, they only losing by 16, and it looks like we beat them only by fifty percent, the deaths and assists together complete the kda.

if we count both kda totals we get 97-35=62 is the difference in power, which is a big number.

let's count individual kda totals.

16-5=11+15=26/97
11-9=2+0=2/97
6-3=3+26=29/97
17-6=11+18=29/97
13-9=4+7=11/97

so as you could see from these numbers, we had 2 relatively ineffective heroes. with a kda team total of nearly 100, we can rougly conclude that 3 of the heroes did over 1/4 of the teamwork, meaning that they 'carried' as opposed to the remaining 2 teammates, considering that this is higher than 1/5 which would be the expected teammate contribution for a balanced team.

so, using calculator, we find that 60 percent of the team is responsible for 86.5 percent of the teamwork. and 20 percent at number 1 position is providing 29.9 percent of the work

so since this team is not well balanced, we can see that matchmaking is not well balanced, or at the least dota is not well balanced, depending on the argument.

now for the other team.

12-10=2+6=8/35
11-7=4+8=12/35
8+5=13-11=2/35
9-8=1+7=8/35
11-10=1+4=5/35

despite disruptor's early dominance, he didn't take control of the game. he failed to truly carry. his other allies were mostly ineffective, despite the fact that his power waned mid and late game, he still had the highest team contribution in the game by the end, higher than the 2nd and 3rd highest by 50 percent. which is a considerable difference when compared with the winning team with a tie for 1st and 2nd, and a 3rd trailing very closely. conclusion? the first team found a good 3 man combination while the second team seemed to mostly rely on the might of a single hero to make kills. that disruptor was responsible for over 1/3 of the team contribution, which is much higher than the expected 1/5, yet if he had carried better, his team would've prospered over the opponents. 2nd and 3rd did get higher than 1/5, but not as high as 1/4 of the contribution. while the numbers are in theory, more balanced among the team compared to the winning team, it really in the end felt like only the top player on the team knew what he was doing.

while on their team, 60 for 80 even. but, of these 'carries', the number 1 was 20 for 34.2, which is 4.3 percentage difference. what does it mean? it means that the number 1 for team 2 was much better than the number 1 for team 1 compared to the rest of his teammates. and the bigger this number is, the worse the matchmaking is.

that's the theory, anyway.
why is this theory important? you see that players can lag behind, but players that are doing well need to take control, show leadership, and without that, their team won't have a good shot at winning. but it doesn't stop there, players have to be ready to follow good leadership. if they don't follow, they're bound to have a rough time.