Dota 2 role selection

[Nakedpengwin]

Hi, this is my first post - I have a fantastic idea!

I often run into needless problems in games of ranked EU as well as when playing locally (South Africa), eg: when playing, 2 people put their icon onto the mid lane because they both want to solo mid, which results in a bitter dispute about who called first and who's better, and once that's over, if the mid player dies or makes a mistake, we never hear the end of it, basically, the game becomes ruined by toxic comments and negative behavior.

I think this can be so very easily avoided by assigning a role selection option prior to searching, eg: you have the following roles - solo mid, offlane, support, jungler, hard carry and roaming support.

Every player needs to select a role before searching, and then we will have a lovely game where everyone is doing what they would like to regarding their role, and they can work on improving their skill and game play.

Feel free to chime in and add further suggestions.

Thank you, yours faithfully, Jonathan Waters

[discplusplusisezbrah]

I like your idea but here's a few issues that come to mind:

The roles that you listed may exist in the current meta, but that does not mean they always existed nor are they guaranteed to exist in future. For example, since I started playing a few years ago certain heroes as well as hero combinations and laning configurations have come and gone. When I first started playing, aggressive trilaning was the norm. Since then, each consecutive patch brought changes that slowly but surely resulted in the way most matches are played at the present time. Despite my having played fairly regularly since I first started, these metagame changes are sometimes hard for me to remember or even put in chronological order. Certain horrors stand out of course, such as the instapick Sniper or Storm mid, getting bashed to hell by a Troll Warlord or more recently the whole jungle Legion fad.

In my opinion Dota is simply too fluid and ever-changing to be able to define which heroes fit a certain role, what the laning configuration should be or what a specific player should be doing at a particular point in the match. A "role" is not easily defined, heroes are not easily categorised and players will almost surely still have different ideas about what constitutes a "roaming support" vs "lane support" or any other mix of roles. This is because the dynamics of the game and the humans playing it are simply too immense to be reduced to a mere two-syllable description.

Think of it this way, you know that pentagon shaped graph in your profile that shows you how much you are supporting vs. farming vs. fighting etc? Well ask yourself what does that thing even mean really? Someone at Valve sat down and tried to somehow quantify/qualify what it means to "support" for example. I sure ain't envious of that job because you're bound to make someone unhappy.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN I DIDNT SUPPORT MUCH THAT GAME, I GAVE ALL THE FARM TO MY CARRY, I DIDNT HAVE ANY ITEMS BECAUSE I ONLY BOUGHT WARDS AND DUST AND I STAYED OUT OF XP RANGE SO MY CARRY COULD HAVE A GOOD LANING PHASE!"

But did that player use their time efficiently for example? Did they stack camps, did they help maintain creep equilibrium by pulling, did they actively show up to get the rune before the enemy mid got there and waste their time etc? Are these things I just mentioned even relevant or are they just my interpretation of what it means to support?

In the end the only thing that's really concrete in Dota is the objective: To destroy the enemy ancient. It doesn't really matter how you do it. "Roles" are just something we created to help understand and categorise our own tendencies, skill-level and actions when playing the game and thereby make the game enjoyable for ourselves and our teammates.

Speaking of skill-level, that is yet another can of worms because there is definitely a relationship of some kind between commonly understood "roles" and specific actions within the game. The ability to play efficiently and effectively and do all the things expected of such a role are a function of skill and game experience.

At the end of the day the goal should not just be to destroy the enemy ancient, it should be to have fun doing it. What I consider to be fun may not be fun for you. As such, the basic premise of your idea is good but it needs to be adjusted slightly to allow for these complexities. Having a sort of SQL-type matchmaking system where players can define what would make a game fun for them seems to be a good starting point.

Pseudocode for this type of system:

SELECT * FROM PlayerBase WHERE:
My.PreferredLane = Mid
My.PreferredLaneConfiguration = Solo
My.PreferredFarmPriority = 2
My.LaningPhaseTimeLimit <= 7
My.RunePriority = 1
My.SupportExpectation.ProvideHeals = False && My.SupportExpectation.TPBottleRefill = True&& My.SupportExpectation.EarlyGank = True && My.SupportExpectation.StackedCamps > 2


... or something of the sort. To define such a complex criteria might seem overkill and perhaps even unfeasible but I can't really see any other way of being matched with players that will agree on such things unless the expectations are clear from the get-go.

Hope this provides a different perspective and thanks for the idea, it has potential.