Low-Priority: There's got to be a better way.

[Ding]

About 22 minutes into a Ranked game a few days ago my son comes rushing into the room asking me for help with his truck. Something isn't working right and he's going to possibly be late for work.

My first thought: "I can't, I'm in a game..." Then I realize how ridiculous a reaction that is and leave the game to attend to the issue IRL.

Two days prior...the internet in my area was having issues and I was unintentionally D/C'd from 2 Unranked games through no fault of my own.

At the time of all this I had a 12000 Behavior and Communication score.

I knew I'd end up having to wait a little longer to play my next round the next time I had a chance to game...but I did NOT expect to be placed in Low Priority.

Low Priority, where I wait in queue for up to and exceeding an hour to even be matching into a game...only to have someone else not Ready Up and the cycle begins anew. Should the great fates come together and allow me to actually get into a game, select a hero, and start a round of DOTA...generally the individuals with this designation are here for a reason, and those reasons quickly come to the fore. Feeders, racist/homophobic chat spammers, trolls...they're all here ensuring that anyone in a position like mine will either remain in this hell forever or find their way away from DOTA all together.

I'm 100% not against punitive actions being taken as an attempt to thwart bad behaviors. (Generally, I think rewarding positive behaviors is a better strategy overall...but this works too.) But the current paradigm doesn't work. "Leavers" (even unintentional ones) being lumped in with the carrion that populate this game and literally enjoy ruining the experience for others isn't right, and it doesn't actually address a problem with these players that requires solving.

#rant

With that, I'll go queue up for another slog...hoping against hope to be released.

[ohne_caps]

you have to leave more than a single game to get low prio games.

[Ding]

Correct, I mentioned that in the post. Two days earlier my internet was trash and I got docked with 2 "Abandons" due to circumstances beyond my control.

Then I stopped trying.

[AIR]

Originally posted by Ding:

Correct, I mentioned that in the post. Two days earlier my internet was trash and I got docked with 2 "Abandons" due to circumstances beyond my control.

Then I stopped trying.

You can say that the first time you get an abandon because the internet was being trash an incident. 100%. But you queueing right after and getting the second abandon was your choice of taking the risky to play the same day knowing the internet was underperforming.

In the end, it's a multiplayer team x team zero sum game. And when your team loses because someone dc'ed, it kinda sucks. Low Priority is a weird form of punishment, but if your Behavior is really 12.000 most of the time, you probably got one must win game punishment. People with lower behavior score, or that abandon more often and got sent to LP constantly, they got 3, 5 or even more win requirements.

I agree with you that helping your son was way more important, and I know that most teams would not respect a pause because, well, it's the internet and as I mentioned, it's a Zero Sum game and someone has to lose for someone to win, and that brings the worst in people. But the punishment exists because some people abuse, extremely hard, both the communications and abandoning games.

I actually praise your effort in the well written post, it's more than a rant. I can give you only one advice, that would be "try to create buffers" so this doesn't happen again. For example, if you see your internet is bad, avoid queuing, specially after an abandon - yeah, I know, it sucks, but your other option is try to have some sort of back up internet. I have my phone ready to connect to the PC and share the internet when my main internet fails, and that usually saves me. Also, if you get an abandon on Ranked, try playing some unranked games, this way it "clears" you, so to speak. Those buffers I mentioned really help.

Anyway, good luck in your games, hope this doesn't happen again.

[GroovyHobo]

Originally posted by Cybertrump 2077:

Originally posted by Ding:

Correct, I mentioned that in the post. Two days earlier my internet was trash and I got docked with 2 "Abandons" due to circumstances beyond my control.

Then I stopped trying.

You can say that the first time you get an abandon because the internet was being trash an incident. 100%. But you queueing right after and getting the second abandon was your choice of taking the risky to play the same day knowing the internet was underperforming.

In the end, it's a multiplayer team x team zero sum game. And when your team loses because someone dc'ed, it kinda sucks. Low Priority is a weird form of punishment, but if your Behavior is really 12.000 most of the time, you probably got one must win game punishment. People with lower behavior score, or that abandon more often and got sent to LP constantly, they got 3, 5 or even more win requirements.

I agree with you that helping your son was way more important, and I know that most teams would not respect a pause because, well, it's the internet and as I mentioned, it's a Zero Sum game and someone has to lose for someone to win, and that brings the worst in people. But the punishment exists because some people abuse, extremely hard, both the communications and abandoning games.

I actually praise your effort in the well written post, it's more than a rant. I can give you only one advice, that would be "try to create buffers" so this doesn't happen again. For example, if you see your internet is bad, avoid queuing, specially after an abandon - yeah, I know, it sucks, but your other option is try to have some sort of back up internet. I have my phone ready to connect to the PC and share the internet when my main internet fails, and that usually saves me. Also, if you get an abandon on Ranked, try playing some unranked games, this way it "clears" you, so to speak. Those buffers I mentioned really help.

Anyway, good luck in your games, hope this doesn't happen again.

Sometimes internet conks out and then comes back normal for the rest of the day. You can't say that if someone's internet conks out for one time in a day that he can't try again later. What if it conks out again tomorrow and he tries again? There's no way of knowing. Your internet could go out twice in a day even if it hasn't gone down once in 10 years.

Anyways as a reply to OP what's your behavior score now? Please update this thread if you find it again soon.

[Zagryzaec]

Low priority exist to make sure you solved your problems. Your problems with internet, your problems with kids, your problems with parents and poorly planned daily errands.

As soon as you prove your issues bieng fixed you can go out of there and keep playing.

[Absche]

Low priority is a kind of poisonous (black) pedagogy with the simple advantage that it keeps people playing with the chance to show off their fancy cosmetics they payed for. Timely bans would be better to let players solve their problems. Not to isolate angry people in putting them in a fighting cage with other angry people.

[Zagryzaec]

Originally posted by Absche:

Low priority is a kind of poisonous (black) pedagogy with the simple advantage that it keeps people playing with the chance to show off their fancy cosmetics they payed for. Timely bans would be better to let players solve their problems. Not to isolate angry people in putting them in a fighting cage with other angry people.

But how do you ensure that they solved their issue during time out?

[Ding]

Originally posted by Zagryzaec:

Originally posted by Absche:

Low priority is a kind of poisonous (black) pedagogy with the simple advantage that it keeps people playing with the chance to show off their fancy cosmetics they payed for. Timely bans would be better to let players solve their problems. Not to isolate angry people in putting them in a fighting cage with other angry people.

But how do you ensure that they solved their issue during time out?

Based on how it was in there...I think they just assume that most never make it out.

I was lucky...I got matched up opposite one team with a blatant feeder and another with at least 3 folks who were almost certainly new, and not really trying to hard to learn.

[Deepbluediver]

Originally posted by Ding:

Correct, I mentioned that in the post. Two days earlier my internet was trash and I got docked with 2 "Abandons" due to circumstances beyond my control.

Then I stopped trying.

Valve has no way of know WHY you DC'd from a particular match- anything from a power outage to someone yanking the cord out of their modem in a tantrum appear exactly the same.

So Valve punishes everyone the same. If they were able to confirm who was leaving intentionally I'm sure the punishment would be harsher. As it was, they gave you at least 1, if not 2 chances to not have any more issues.
But then it was 3 strikes and you're out. For a while anyhow.

If you have any specific ideas for how the system might be made better, I'm happy to hear them. In the meantime, consider that the wait time for LPQ matches is long because few people are in it, which means the system is mostly working.
And if you don't have any more issues, hopefully this will be the last time you end up there. (in 10 years of DotA I've only been sent to the LPQ once myself)

[Death by coughs]

You can party in Low prio, or used to be able to. I had a friend with ♥♥♥♥ internet who kept getting thrown in there and we would party to get him out

[Си́нтез]

Look at it this way, you are paired with people who also had to disconnect. However since you and them both expect the other to be "toxic" you all project your own toxicity onto each other and these people are preemptively racist/throwing cause they suspect you or another of being racist thrower, so they act accordingly

[Zagryzaec]

Originally posted by Ding:

Originally posted by Zagryzaec:

But how do you ensure that they solved their issue during time out?

Based on how it was in there...I think they just assume that most never make it out.

I was lucky...I got matched up opposite one team with a blatant feeder and another with at least 3 folks who were almost certainly new, and not really trying to hard to learn.

They assume nothing. They test it. In lp.

Originally posted by Deepbluediver:

Originally posted by Ding:

Correct, I mentioned that in the post. Two days earlier my internet was trash and I got docked with 2 "Abandons" due to circumstances beyond my control.

Then I stopped trying.

Valve has no way of know WHY you DC'd from a particular match- anything from a power outage to someone yanking the cord out of their modem in a tantrum appear exactly the same.

So Valve punishes everyone the same. If they were able to confirm who was leaving intentionally I'm sure the punishment would be harsher. As it was, they gave you at least 1, if not 2 chances to not have any more issues.
But then it was 3 strikes and you're out. For a while anyhow.

If you have any specific ideas for how the system might be made better, I'm happy to hear them. In the meantime, consider that the wait time for LPQ matches is long because few people are in it, which means the system is mostly working.
And if you don't have any more issues, hopefully this will be the last time you end up there. (in 10 years of DotA I've only been sent to the LPQ once myself)

They don't need to know the reason. The only thing that has meaning is that you systematically disconnect from games ruining it for 9 other people who spent about hour of their life for it.

So they quarantine you untill they are sure you fixed the issue and no longer ruin games.

That's it. It's not to make you suffer. It's to improve the overall community quality. At least in theory

[Absche]

Originally posted by Zagryzaec:

Originally posted by Absche:

Low priority is a kind of poisonous (black) pedagogy with the simple advantage that it keeps people playing with the chance to show off their fancy cosmetics they payed for. Timely bans would be better to let players solve their problems. Not to isolate angry people in putting them in a fighting cage with other angry people.

But how do you ensure that they solved their issue during time out?

Do you think they solve their issues better when fighting on in matches they don‘t want to be in? I mean, instead of taking a day off and calm down.

[Zagryzaec]

You get way more than day to calm down if it's not your first offence.

And those matches are not just for solving your issue but also a test that shows that you solved whatever forced you to ruin matches.