Let's Talk Toxicity (Matchmaker is generally not the problem)

Sections:
*Introduction
*Causes of Toxicity (Theoretical)
*Toxicity as Advertised, Ingame
*Toxicity and You
*Closing Remarks

(Ctrl+F should let you skip around)


Introduction:


Why am I writing this if I’m basically quitting Vainglory? Well, I’m too frustrated with the playerbase myself, but I still love the game like one is attracted to their first crush. I guess I’m hoping that I can convince some of the readers who survive this post to consider a new point of view. With a little luck, that can lead to change within the community, maybe even a few nudges on the developers in a different direction. Maybe I want to gain a bit more influence before AFKing - most newer forummers won’t remember any of my in-depth posts from the old forums. I also feel I owe it to @Idmonfish after promising activity and never delivering any thought-out threads… :sweat_smile:

Get some coffee, and a cookie or two. Toxicity is much more complex than most people appear to realize, and any attempt to simplify the topic will not do it justice. I’m going to start this out theoretical, and then try to make sense of it from a regular player’s perspective. I’m going to tie everything back together again in a summary again at the bottom, but it won’t have much context at all.

Toxicity is very near and dear to my heart. Ok, that’s the wrong phrase. A more accurate statement would be that I have both contributed and received toxic behavior, and almost all of you readers as well. Toxicity is a topic that brings many of us frustration, in seemingly needless fashion. Its not as simple as immature brats acting up. Grown adults suffer from rage issues too. Toxicity is actually tied into a variety of other issues, and resides in all of us to an extent. View it as the collective symptoms of a disease, and attempts to ban toxic players are both misguided and foolish.

So, what causes Toxicity? What comes to mind when I say “Toxic behavior”? Think about this for a second, maybe while you fetch that cup of coffee. Go on, I’ll wait…


Causes of Toxicity (Theoretical)


Got your thoughts about toxic behavior down? Let’s list some common behaviors, and think about what they have in common:

*Flaming.
*Intentional Feeding
*Item Selling
*Farm Stealing
*Mine Spamming (only for 3v3 mode)
*Rage Pinging
*Afking

The obvious information here, is that all of these behaviors ruin game experiences. A slightly more subtle read, is that they all come from people who are frustrated and believe they are wasting their time playing the current match. People don’t usually flame or rageping for fun. They do it when they think someone made one or more highly questionable decisions. People feed, spam scout traps, or afk when they think they are just going to lose the game, often paired with sarcastic pings.

Keep in mind, I am not saying that people being toxic is inexcusable - it ruins the game further for the others on their team. Especially innocent bystanders. What’s important here, is that toxic players are being toxic as a reaction. Very few people are natural trolls and ragers. Toxic players are usually angry and reacting to actions their teammates undertake that seem objectionable. While there is usually only 1 optimal or correct decision possible in any situation, there are many more that are more likely to be found by each player. Failure to meet the expectations of any single player can result in an outpouring of toxic behavior. People get rage pinged for (not comprehensive):

*Going to try to steal Kraken solo
*For NOT trying to steal Kraken solo
*For building any item not desired by the rager
*For focusing a different target in teamfights
*For not splitting into more advantageous 1v1s
*For not peeling
*For peeling and not cancelling enemy ultimates
*For picking _ hero
*For picking _ hero to help the team - and clearly not knowing how to use said hero
*Not stutterstepping
*Inefficient stutterstepping and clearly losing DPS
*Dying in general
*Not dying for the team
*Using abilities are the “wrong” time

Many of these are paired with opposite behaviors to highlight the subjectiveness of it all. Toxicity can erupt after 1 “offense” or 15, depending on how triggered the player is. So if you were to take 1 thing away from this, know that Toxicity results from people not meeting each-other’s expectations. Suspiciously like in real life.


Toxicity as Advertised, Ingame


Ok, enough of the theoretical. Lets see Toxicity ingame. For this shining example, I would like you all to pretend you have no earthly clue who FlashX is. His pro player status is important in highlighting the extent of toxicity misunderstanding.
Its important that you watch this video with an open mind (hopefully with my commentary alongside), and don’t blindly follow everything he is doing. I respect FlashX as a player - he’s better than I will ever be. However, he clearly doesn’t understand the low and midtier mindsets at all, and makes no effort to communicate with his teammates. He states his own plans, and puts very little thought into his ally’s actions. He states a lot of good points that work on paper, but his execution is just… bad. It is really quite emblematic of the stereotypical soloque player.

The goal is not to trash FlashX (I could easily be a lot meaner). Rather, it is to show how easy it is for us to tunnel vision on specific aspects of the game while completely ignoring others to the detriment of our team.

Side note - you realistically only need to read a few of these comments with the video pulled up, to see my overall point. You are welcome to read all of them for comprehensiveness though.

Summary

1:00 - Watch what his allies do. Two flex picks who are both willing to roam with an instalocker (FlashX, obviously). The important thing here is that his allies are trying to work with an instalocker, instead of being selfish as well.

2:30 - Notice BF demonstrates greater map awareness. Ardan obviously didn’t know the high level rotation (which is common for T7).

2:55 - Pay very close attention to both FlashX’s positioning + events in lane, as well as the Blackfeather’s movements. Blackfeather sees the enemy team try to gank FlashX on Vox and IMMEDIATELY ROTATES. Was it necessary? Hard to say since Ardan hasn’t flared the enemy lane brush. Its definitely a team play on the Blackfeather’s part, and FlashX clearly does not even consider the prior gank as a reason for Blackfeather to rotate. Anyone who plays very long in the low and mid elos quickly figures out that this kind of teamplay is hard to find and really important to winning a game. Usually people have about 0 map awareness until partway through T8. FlashX hasn’t had to worry about this that much due to prior hard carrying.

Also notice that FlashX makes about 0 effort to communicate any of his thoughts to his team. No target ping on the jungle camps. No caution sign on his lane bush when Blackfeather arrives. Nothing. Blackfeather is not to blame here.

3:15 - FlashX decides that he needs to take Blackfeather’s backs to make up for the lost experience. I want you to notice two things here. A. You can see ON HIS SCREEN without even looking at the minimap, that saw is pushing through another wave of minions. You can ALSO see on the minimap, that Blackfeather is down in the center of the jungle with 2 enemies nearby. He completely ignores a highly obvious fight - a 2v1 that could have become a 3v2 if he paid any attention to his allies and wasn’t focused on stealing farm. Quite ironically, joining the fight to make it a 3v2 for his team would have mitigated the whole snowballing issue he talks about in the voice over. Saw isn’t rotating because he is pushing turret. Blackfeather is clearly trying to contest the center Treants. Instead, FlashX focuses entirely on making jungle rotations and effectively abandons his jungler AND his turret.

3:42. FlashX showcases a prime example of rationalization. Normally people are able to delay Saw a 1st turret beyond the 4 minute mark. Here Saw gets it just after 2 minutes. This + not fighting the enemy duo + missing out on farm is actually enough to lose some games already. I want you to notice how little communication FlashX gives to his teammates, for all his “concern”.

4:25 - This CS stealing/wave pushing is super common on tilted roamers. Especially ones that don’t know how to freeze under turrets, or believe their laner is absolutely horrible. coughs. Is it a good idea? Probably not. But think over what’s happened in these first 4 minutes. What reason does Ardan have to put any confidence into his Vox? It is situations exactly like this, that make good players not want to support at all. Notice that FlashX doesn’t seem to consider his behavior tilting in the least.

5:00 - again with the farm stealing. Quite ironically, here FlashX says that sharing XP is “good” but earlier he complained about Koshka being ahead in levels over Blackfeather. Sharing Jungle XP just exacerbates the initial issue further. I really don’t see how you don’t see why people are pinging. The last time he did this, they lost a turret.

6:10 - Ardan probably Vanguarded Blackfeather to try to help him get the lasthit on the Treant. FlashX disrespects the damage from the entire enemy team and blames Ardan for not saving him despite a rather obvious cooldown on Vanguard. Additionally, if FlashX had been in lane for longer, there would be less of a minion wave pushing up to the turret.

6:50 - This is common carry behavior. Speaking as a on-off roamer, its VERY HARD to fountain someone who is brought from 50% to 0 health in 2 autoattacks. Frankly, given the bad matchup, its fine for Ardan to save the fountain for Blackfeather who isn’t as hopelessly outmatched close range by the Saw. Ardan and Blackfeather have likely both concluded that their Vox is just bad, and to support eachother. Ardan’s Fountain is actually fine for the most part. FlashX hasn’t considered any of this obviously, and assumed the Ardan is just bad or trying to annoy him (FlashX).

8:20 - Notice his team has been at the Gold Miner for quite some time, roughly 20 seconds at least. Ardan might have bought SGB to take lane minions, but more likely its his normal build and he wants to take the Gold Miner. Notice that FlashX doesn’t push lane for a stated calculated reason. He pushes because he wants farm and doesn’t want Ardan to take it. I will withhold commentary on his farming style. FlashX ignores the enemy team for over 30 seconds. He assumes they are chasing down his allies with no vision. Notice both that he doesn’t check the actual teamfight and only glances at the minimap, AND that he has 0 intention of helping his allies prevent the steal or teamfight.

9:45 - FlashX disregards the potential 3v2 from the enemy. He also doesn’t try to help them push turret in the name of stealing farm. He apparently doesn’t notice the enemy laner and jungler coming to defend their turret and is confused when his team comes back for the remaining jungle farm. He doesn’t even check to see the damage on the turret before wondering if his teammates valued farm over objectives.

11:20 - I honestly don’t see how FlashX doesn’t understand why his team keeps pinging him.

12:28 - The Ardan probably tries to Vanguard FlashX too late and vanguards himself. The whole team overtextended here, placing blame on the roamer doesn’t cut it.

13:10 - FlashX takes damage and is slowed by Saw. His team has no vision on the enemy brush and Suppressing Fire could have been a setup for a Koshka gank. Ardan Vanguards FlashX to prevent this and block damage. FlashX complains later that Ardan is not helping at all. This could be general CS gripes (not going into all that) but just as likely that FlashX is just dissatisfied with his roamer most of the game.

17:00 - FlashX makes the interesting statement that his team has a lot of levels. He puts it down to sharing the jungle experience, rather than repeatedly killing enemies and stealing their stuff.

After this point, its probably not worth analyzing further. After the first 13ish minutes its really hard for the opponents to come back into this game bar a significant error from FlashX’s team.

Now, think about everything you saw in that game. Who played well here? I would say the Blackfeather actually carried the game, and Ardan was at least a decent T7 roamer who didn’t try to help his weaker carry. Seriously, most roamers there can’t Fountain at all in teamfights, let alone using Crucible to block ultimates for your team or specific allies. FlashX was carried. He repeatedly makes huge lapses in judgement during the first half of the game and makes exactly 0 effort to communicate his plan to his allies. As observers, we can see the rationale behind his decisions, but clearly many of them are faulty in practice. It takes a long time for FlashX to start actually helping his teammates on a consistent basis, and he even then maintains the selfish viewpoint. Yet to FlashX most of his decisions are reasonable, and he is often confused as to why his allies are mad at him.

(Some of you might notice my comments here bear a striking resemblance to those of a “Jon S” on FlashX’s video. Well, that’s me, but keep it on the low down will ya?)


Toxicity, and You


Currently, the primary method of dealing with toxicity is the LPQ. This is counterproductive for a couple of reasons. The obvious one should be that toxic people feel justified in their behavior. I’ve met plenty of people who threw games purely because they thought someone didn’t deserve to win. You can’t effectively punish someone who views their behavior as justified. Likewise, in the real world, treating the symptoms without addressing the cause, is foolhardy at best. We don’t blow our noses and expect a cold to go away, you take medicine and bundle up and fight the germs. We don’t fix poverty by shooting people, we fix poverty by systematically improving the economic outlook for the poor. And thus with toxicity. Its unrealistic to hope to ban/LPQ every toxic player - they live within all of us. Rather, it is more impactful, easier, and less stressful if SEMC and Players alike focus on removing the CAUSES of Toxicity for a happier game environment.

We need to make the system set up to succeed for team players, not set up to fail.

I’ll be the first to admit, FlashX got lucky that none of his teammates started feeding or mine spamming early game when they were losing hard. We actually miss out on a lot of the really toxic behavior listed earlier. But, most of us aren’t FlashX. What can we do to improve the issue of toxicity?

The first thing is easy to implement - tolerance. Its a hard sell, especially for the more emotional of us, but its necessary. If FlashX can make a ton of mistakes and be hard carried by weaker players, so can you. No need to get uppity about matchmaker pairing you with “low tier” players. Matchmaker paired you guys for a reason. Writing them off as “low tier” not only reduces the chance you work together as a team, it also takes you out of the winning mindset. You can definitely be more forgiving of your ally’s mistakes. If you focus on working with a Saw that doesn’t stutterstep, instead of writing them off as trash, you are far more likely to succeed as a team. What if you are playing your own hero wrong? I’ve run into plenty of Lance/Reim/Baptistes that never focused on peeling for their ally and instead maximized their damage output. The end result is they “carry” the game by letting their hypercarry die, ruining their team’s win condition. In such scenarios, is it truly the fault of the hypercarry?

The second thing that comes to mind to fix this toxicity issue, is improved communication (both from players and from improved ingame options). You can try to communicate more with your allies in a useful manner, rather than remaining silent. If you are going to remain silent, at least be consistent about it, don’t start ragepinging an ally for a mistake when you did NOTHING to warn them. Unfortunately, pings are not at all helpful for communicating anything remotely complex like when to engage or choosing a target. God forbid we get a method of telling your allies “Play conservatively until we catch up in items” or “Baron is our hypercarry, Krul and Ardan to peel for him.”

The third thing is strictly beyond the player’s direct control: Reducing the disparity in game knowledge between players. So much frustration and toxicity ultimately results from players not living up to each-other’s expectations. Improved communication would help with this issue, but reducing player ignorance is at least as important. As nice as it is for players to make guides themselves, most people put little effort into learning outside of the VG app. Therefore it falls upon SEMC to help with this toxicity issue and help improve the ability of players to learn about the game. The academy is a start, but it clearly is not sufficient. A lot of information needs to be forcefed to players if you want them to learn and not be as conductive to toxicity. I discuss the idea of expanded Player Tutorials in some posts here. -> Think we need some serious player made tutorials for newplayers


Closing Remarks


If it hasn’t been readily apparent before I’ll spell it out here - “bad” gameplay is often a very subjective thing. Complaining about matchmaker and the like ignores the reality of the situation and is highly counterproductive. Work with your teammates and you are likely to have more pleasant games.

Remember. Most people don’t START a game with the intent to lose. They change their mind though when they feel their teammates are going to lose them the game. Toxicity is ultimately a player based issue that results from weak infrastructure. It will require a more subtle approach to combat - simple things like banning and LPQ only address the symptoms and not the disease. Almost nobody is immune to the toxicity. The current methods only punish players who believe their behavior is justified, and only makes them angrier.

If I’m completely honest, positive reinforcement is the easier approach to implement. If you see someone make a good play, give them a happy ping. Give people upvotes by default unless they are actively trolling. Many players are just really bad and don’t even realize they are walking to their doom, pings or no, and are legitimately trying their best. Everyone has a bad game, even FlashX. It feels really bad to try your best and then feel like everyone downvoted you for being a weak player. Downvotes are intended for trolls and taunters and AFKers. Let’s keep it that way, and prop up the others a bit shall we?

Unfortunately, due to the whole Mobile interface, its impossible for VG to directly copy the chatbox from PC based MOBAs - the keyboard screen alone will murder your map awareness and get you killed. Voice chat is perhaps an option, but I might get into that in another thread. I genuinely believe expanded and improved Player Tutorials would go a long way towards solving the information issue - likewise a more forceful display of the patch notes. However, both of these belong in separate discussions.

Toxicity looks like quite the achievable problem to fix - so long as we are honest and objective with ourselves about its causes and nuances. In real life, there is plenty of cause for toxicity, but its far less often an issue compared to here in VG - in part because how we handle toxicity there and here is different. That needs to change.

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Hi MagBoss. Well I agree with everything in your thread but lemme point out another point: the devs aren’t doing anything about the toxicity though they promised to do it and they are trolling themselves (if I’m not wrong Lord @Xaldarian posted this on the old forum) but the worst thing of all people were considering the matter as a joke. I was posting like hell during the days of the old forum that this game is so toxic and the devs aren’t doing anything about the issue and I dunno why people went butthurt with my thread and regarded it as a post in The Salt Mine (that was a serious thread).

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this is a really well thought out post and this issue definitely needs to be adressed to sooner rather than later. hope fully SMEC find a way to improve communication because that pretty much would solve most of these problems

are you talking about nerfelfpls when you say most people don’t come in wanting to troll

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There were a number of excellent posts on how to handle toxicity from a game development perspective on the old forums. Unfortunately, I can’t recall who wrote them.

While better tutorials may reduce the cause of toxic behaviour, I believe people do need feedback. They need to know when other people are unhappy with the way they act, and why - and there have to be consequences.
Most importantly: All of that has to be transparent to players. The Karma concept isn’t so bad, but it needs to be re-worked and fleshed out. We need a fancy graph, so people can see their Karma take a nose-dive when they ping-spam. You could display that after every 5th match or so; it’d be much more useful than the windows we currently click away.

And the rewards for being civil should be tiered and worth-while enough to warrant good behaviour. People don’t like giving up resources, it’s ingrained in our DNA. So if you can see a relation between yourself behaving in certain ways and losing whatever bonus you are currently receiving, then you may just play nice for a few matches, despite tilt.

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Great post, I have actually scout trapped trolled once when my roam and jungle kept farming the jungle while I’m in 1v3. Surprisingly it actually got them playing and the scout traps saved our butt late game.

Honestly the tutorials need to be something where a group of SEMC employees actively watch games and take notes on strategy and trends. From there they release a new tutorial at least every season to keep up with the game and common situations

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great great great post.

I mostly agree with you, I just want to point out that the matchmaker can be and I think currently is - part of the problem.

As you have eloquently identified trolling occurs when players give up on winning - at least in part because their understanding of how the game is optimally played differs significantly from their allies.

I agree that can happen in any game but I think its likely to happen more often when there is a significant variance between team members skill levels and game knowledge. When the T3 player I got partnered with declared we had won the draft when he locked in churnwalker I thought “sweet, he is at least enthusiastic” and then he went CP churnwalker rather than support and took the buffs all game… That difference in game understanding is pretty triggering for most high tier players (I just built roam Samuel and tried to compensate, but failed to do so).

At the moment while better than it was the matchmaker still seems to settle for high variance match ups and those I think trigger toxicity.

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Nice Post. From beginning to end. A complex problem with an equally complex post.

I believe they are working on better communications… namely, voice chat. Well, I hope they are. It won’t completely solve toxicity, but it will help us be more tolerant towards mistakes. Just hearing your team mate say “shit, my bad” “sorry about that”… makes that blood pressure drop in an instant.

I feel this is their only viable solution that can be implemented in a timely manner…

Improving game knowledge is really up to each individual, it can’t be forced upon. Well, it can… but their programming team needs to kick up into high gear and produce some top notch tutorials… I’ve suggested it before… also, i know this aint a walk in the park task… its some legit mission impossible level of programming needed… so, I aint holding on for that idea to come to fruition.

So, for now, the tools we have to combat toxicity is - communication, namely this forum.
We all know in game pings don’t work.

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We need a strong way to communicate that transcends language.

Right now in draft chat 50% of the players type ??? And don’t understand English.

So standardized texts that translate into everyones own language should do the trick.

One of my favourite new text pings is: “take the objective” now all we need is a “defend your lane/turret”

We need specific texts like: “split up and push turrets” after we win a good teamfight.

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Devs also troll in-game, 2 reported cases I believe currently and those are only ones that by people who use forums.

And shhh I wasn’t here.

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I don’t think this is entirely fair, only some developers have a reputation for trolling. Frankly, I have never run into this myself - even in the game I played with MightyCamel. If anything, it was my “teammates” who were being toxic and unfair (they were mad we weren’t winning 3v5s and such…). I could have gotten lucky of course, but I don’t think I’ve ever found a dev to be toxic. Just other players. Aside from that, individual behavior should not be considerd to be emblematic of the overall playerbase.

I do think their attention was drawn away before by the advent of 5v5, logistically and otherwise. I’m hoping they do some work on this soon though, but its obviously a complex issue even for large companies. Some of them formed the Fair Play Alliance specifically to collaborate on toxicity so SEMC as a smaller company is a tad unlikely to make a lot of progress by themselves, unfortunately. http://www.fairplayalliance.org/

I think you raise some very good points here. I wonder if it would help for there to be a self-mute button - if you feel you are getting tilted you can shut off your pings for the rest of the match. Maybe call it the “focus” button or something. But yeah, people need feedback. Someone with a bad build might be totally confused as to why they are getting downvoted, for instance.

I don’t think the core game changes that much, but changing tutorials would be quite helpful in teaching players coming into ranked. Somewhere around there.

Matchmaker might be a defining cause at the moment, but not always. The transition between 3v3 and 5v5 ranked was sort of doomed to be awkward with many situations like this, I think. It probably needs a slightly higher weighting on the 3v3 Ranked MMR. Tune that too high though, and the map aware low tiers will get stuck with the less redeemed others while the mechanically adept upper tiers have much less to worry about initially. Of course, the other extreme is what we have now - 5v5 mmr being so important as to dwarf 3v3 MMR in matchmaking algorithms (at least, that’s how it looks). Nivmett said that 5v5 Casual MMR started out the same for everyone (which was why so many high tiers kept finding low tier guys). If this was true it would be a bit of a risk on their part, since a lot of weight is thrown on a relatively unknown variable. It’s not at all implausible for lower tier 3v3 players doing “odd” strategies in 5v5 to find themselves winning a majority of their 5v5 matches while everyone is figuring things out. In some ways this will probably get better down the road when people are sorted more effectively into their tiers.

Just on the side, I think the most you could do for a Roam Samuel is to drop a Fountain with a Frostburn and Clockwork for more slowing abilities and a heal, swapping out of damage entirely really gives up his primary strengths entirely.

Have you tried making a new account recently? (Or logging out?) There is a new tutorial thats been up for a little while with Catherine and Koshka that is much, much better than previous iterations of most MOBA tutorials I’ve seen. At least, IMO. It’s not really anything fancy programming wise, certainly not now that they have 1 made. More that they would need more customized voice acting and scenarios, etc.

Yeah. I’ll talk about this later separately, but one of the quagmires surrounding player communication is the wide variability with which it will be used (likewise, the purposes of its use). Simple things like more useful pings would be easy to add in the short term. Unfortunately, the usefulness of the other stuff depends on your region. In NA for instance, most people will know English by default - with only a tiny minority speaking “only” Spanish. While it’s a relatively simple solution for us here to add voice chat and the like, language barriers will be a huge issue in other areas of the world, especially SEA I think.I wonder if there could be a way to have an automatic translator during draft and game lobbies…

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For me, the matchmaker is one of the core problems in producing toxicity, alongside other terrible decisions that they have made, such as inflating the vst(starting everyone in a “Season 0” state whilst using 3v3 MMR would’ve been much better), temporarily expanding maximum tier difference for parties, SEVERE lack of communication,
and their horrible job at routing the best servers for a game( had a lot of team matches where me and my teammates had good ping before playing 5v5 ranked, but everyone suddenly had 100++ ping constantly in game)

I actually warn people whenever I can, but I guess people just dont listen.

What VST Inflation?

5v5 Ranked MMR was based off of a combination of 5v5 Casual MMR (which started at 0 btw) and 3v3 MMR. Given how some of the T9-10s played in 5v5, I don’t think they deserved to skip ahead of the line due to their 3v3 experience. 3v3 vastly emphasizes mechanical skill while 5v5 puts more into map awareness, and I saw many mid tier/average players doing a far better job of that. I’m not saying that “all” T10s are overrated, but a great many were definitely so, and didn’t deserve full standing by any means in 5v5 Ranked.

Severe lack of communication has been an ongoing thing both between players and between players and company.

Servers are largely unrelated to this issue imho. My comment about ragepinging is a generalized one, as are many others.

As I have stated before Casual matches do not have any impact on improving your play(see the difference by playing a hero you never played before in casual and then in ranked), especially when the MM algorithm barely even worked back then.

I also dont think anyone of any tier should be allowed to skip ahead, which they did, and by a crap ton given that a ton of people got boosted by SEMC’s glitch into t7+.

Yes, I have. It’s a nice start. Still very basic though. I’m thinking about advanced tutorials. It’s really something I need to explain in great detail, but it involves count down timers, graphically visual eye catching effects, and pulling off clutch manoeuvres, kills on low health, hitting that reflex block exactly within the allowed time frame, in order to earn rewards.
I have a tonn of good ideas which I have hinted to devs on the OG forum.
“hinted”… Why? Because in my weird mind, I’m really hoping my little nudge of ideas is enough to snowball into something great… But I think it’s time I made those ideas into a full blown project…

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“3v3 vastly emphasizes mechanical skill while 5v5 puts more into map awareness”

In my opinion, this is a common misconception. 5v5 adds map awareness but does not remove the importance of mechanical skill. I’ve played a lot of 5v5, casual, ranked, etc. 4 months of testing it on PBE before it was even released, mechanics matter a lot still.

In my experience Mid-tier players were actually not very good at the very simple rotations required in 3v3 either. They are most likely not only worse at mechanical skill, but worse at map awareness.

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I didn’t say that 5v5 removes the need for mechanical skill. I’m saying that it de-emphasizes it. Mechanical skill doesn’t matter so much when you are constantly outnumbered. I likewise said that some midtier players are better than you would assume at 5v5, and some high tier players are worse.

Bear in mind, if you normally play with much stronger players, then any mid-tier who gets dropped in is going to get smushed purely due to the difference in mechanical skill. It says little about most people’s macro knowledge when they just get flattened. Some of them get a better chance to shine in matches where their team isn’t wholly outclassed from the start in all the little skirmishes across the board.

Where 5v5 emphasizes macro and the like is in roaming and objective control. If you can’t win your specific lane due to hero matchups or a lack of skill, you are still in trouble. But in 3v3 most high tier players could just coast when it came to macro, there was very little thinking involved and frankly, you could get by without anything but flares if your team was competent enough, much of the time.

@Ve3nNo0wM go for it

@IncinerateZ I’m talking about matchmaker rating. I.e. your hidden elo. I’m going to explain a bunch of this in a different thread because its already derailed. Also, you don’t want people to skip ahead and mention the glitches (which are GLITCHES) but also want people to get a leg up based on 3v3 MMR?

I’m not discussing the non-toxicity stuff here further.

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What I meant is to initially use their 3v3 MMR as a base for 5v5 Ranked while both their VST and ELO are at
0(VST, MMR, and ELO are different).

By this method it will be fair for everyone (players all start at 0 Elo and gain relatively the same amount per win initially, but their opponents are of the same calibre as them).

There’s only 2 things in Vainglory, but the terms have been so screwed up at this point I have no idea what to call them.

All three actually exist in Vainglory, Vainglorious bronze is what you refer to as VST, 2400 is what you refer to ELO and the rating in which the matchmaker uses is referred to as MMR.

Officially, Rank Points, formerly known as Visual Skill Tier (or VST) are what you are calling ELO. ELO is not (officially) in vainglory. The matchmaker gives you an invisible score, what we would call matchmaker rating (MMR) this rating is apparently based on a modified elo system.

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