DotA mode vote

[sdmf]

The two are not mutually exclusive. By offering choice of game types, you offer the best of both worlds. You also cannot have quality with an ever shrinking pool of players. Look at the vote results, essentially half the player pool wants the status quo. Another thing to remember is this is just the people who actually care enough about ent to actually register, vote, and post. If you offer choice you increase the size of your net exponentially in terms of bringing players in. Dota is old, at this point cutting out half(or more) of the available pool of players will do nothing but slowly bleed ent out until you have nothing. A quality zero is still a zero.

[kobomachi]

Why do you think that options 1 2 3 4 only represent em?

You see quality of zero atm? I see better quality in AP games and lesser quality in AREM games but a bit faster paced games. I do think that newbs who are learning the game and have limited hero choices should play AP not APEM. Those who have no time can chill and play AREM. If you dont know how to cs or farm, at least you are likely to try and learn a hero you dont often play on AP.

Currently AP games do fill pretty good. Not super fast, but fast enough. These people represent the people who want non-em or like/dont mind AP. Those who play AP will get better games and noobs playing on it will learn how to play DOTA properly or better.
AREM are filling faster than before. I am guessing this is due to people migrating from APEM. At least these people are learning new heros.
Are we having problem with filling games at all or with playerbase? Not that I can feel.

Host AP + AREM and we are all happy. Get the both of both worlds.

[allemanus]

Why do you think that options 1 2 3 4 only represent em?

Option 1 Host 6.81d on -em (apem arem) and 6.83c on non-em (ap ar)
Option 2 Host both -em and non-em both versions: ap apem ar arem v6.81d, ap apem ar arem v6.83c
Option 4 Host both -em and non-em on v6.83c. (In this case kobomachi -em can mean all EM's; arem, apem ,rdem ,sdem)

Nobody said, that they represent EM only, BUT they represent the EM mode as an valid option. In option 1,2 and 4 you can always find the modes apem and arem. The differnet mapversions are subsidiary, beacause the main discussion is about the general existence of the EM mode (let's say it openly, mainly the APEM mode).

Host AP + AREM and we are all happy. Get the both of both worlds.

Here you have to look closely at option 3. It shows very clearly, that this is the only combination nobody really wants. I hope i could explain the issue properly.

[kobomachi]

^ which is why people should not make conclusion that people from option 1 2 3 4 ALL simply want em.

^ which is why I am saying option 3 is best for both.

[polarbearz]

Look guys, I am one of those players that does not care too much about the mode or the map, essentially its still Dota 1, and like many of you I am leaning a little more towards in favor of non-em games on 6.83. However what I have noticed is that in overall, the games are filling extremely slower than before, mainly the AP and the AR games. It's been about a week and there's approximately 10-15 minute wait-time in the lobby to start a single game which is quite annoying. The AREM room seems to be okay at the moment, that's probably because all the players who support the -em mode and want quicker games are concentrated to this particular bot.

What I am concerned about the most is losing the player base on ENT, admins might say no to this with whatever statistics they pull off but seriously, the fact is that the games are filling up slowly and less played in every hour and day ( easily noticeable just by checking games list & game number) . Once enough players leave to other games ( Dota 2, League, HoN, etc ) and/or alternative bots/league, they are not likely to come back to ENT. In the long run, the Dota portion of the ENT will probably die out if this continues.

As much as I do prefer Non-EM games on the new map, I believe ENT should provide all the modes and give back -EM to satisfy everyone and to keep the community alive. I seriously couldn't agree more that the new map on non-em has more pros than cons in terms of quality of the game play, but all this is meaningless if there aren't enough players to keep this community alive. Admins, you guys should take into consideration of what is more important and set priorities to protect the players from leaving. There wasn't really any major issues with previous settings on the 6.81 with all the modes, except for the minority number of good players who understand Dota that wanted to play Non-EM games, the lobby just did not fill. A week of testing I believe is an enough time to assess if the majority of players adjusted or will likely to adjust to the new map & mode. Most important factor for any decision regarding this case should be towards maintaining the size of the player-pool.

Just keep in mind that I am not trying to be arrogant, one-sided, or demanding. This is simply my opinion from just the facts I've noticed through the gaming experience at ENT and I'm just giving my 2 cents to be supportive in any way possible, thanks.

[PharoaheMonch]

Just throwing these suggestions out there that people haven't really touched base on.
1)
If people want to keep -EM , then remove the ELO gain/loss from it. If the casual gamer, the novice players, or people that play on time constraints want to play just for fun, then it should be an unranked/social but available mode. Let me ask you this: How spoiled have we gotten to deprive ourselves of raising the bar of difficulty for a game that's been out for this long ? The main excuses about not wanting to play non-em right now right in short are one or a combination of the following 1) i don't want to get better 2) i don't have time to have prolonged matches and need easier games to raise ELO, 3) go play dota 2 if you want non-em. If they want a social easy mode game, let them have it but don't reward them with ELO. Just let them keep their k/d/a and win/loss.

In addition to this, perhaps the ELO rankings should be a clean slate so that perhaps players will have more incentive to play if ranking is their main objective. I have no doubt that the current top 50 players will inevitably reclaim their spots but it would be fun to shake things up.

2)
On the other hand, if we get rid of -em completely, I believe it is true that the playerbase might go down but I think a good number of game ruiners, maphackers, will decrease over time as well as the wall of difficulty will take away their incentive to join these games. More games played by rule breakers = more ban requests on mhers, ruiners = counterproductive to the staff's time as well as the players that take the time to request these players. I'm sure there will be players that just join -ap for the sake of being able to pick their heroes but I urge people to be patient during this transitional period and not assess that it's a failure as novice players will quit or want to strive to get better. In the long run, we can weed out the game ruining/mhing players to let them play on other bots. Even if these alleged mhers were to play -ap, they'd at least have to work for their share of gold. Can anyone really be against that?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As for the players that may have some trouble transitioning after being pampered with easy mode for so long:
There are two roads when doubt comes to these players that have a choice to get better or quit. Left and Right. As an famous MMA fighter said, they'll tell you failure is not an option. False, that's ridiculous. Failure is Always an option and it is the most readily available option there is, but it's a choice. In this case, remember that you can choose to fail and move on to another bot/game or choose to succeed on this bot. If you let these players that are willing to learn the non-em route : don't always pick carries , work on last hits, ward, work on map-awareness, that is the road to Victory. Or self-doubt, negative talk, blaming and griefing, rage-quitting, that is the road to Failure. But the higher skilled players need to be patient , let these players know that failure is always there and it's ok to recognize it especially during this transitional period. We shouldn't be trying to outcast -em players from non-em but rather taking the conscious effort to invite the players to a higher level of gaming, especially to one that with a 15 year old die-hard fan base like Dota 1. Let them come to realize and embrace the same things that you do.
Just a note, I myself don't really like the valve created Dota 2 and prefer the Blizzard's graphics , mechanics and voices in Dota 1, and as an avid player since dotapub, thr, dotacash, even to hosting one's own Listchecker games, I don't think it's asking too much to enforce a veteran recommendation.

I'm willing to bring over a good amount of players from Dota-Void as many of us are sick of -em mode as well. The thread was removed on Void due to the trolling on the polls although non-em was in the lead before it was tampered with. I'm sure some of you have seen some of the Void players migrating over here in search of a better game because the scoring setup on Void is based on K/D/A rather than win/loss. I can assure you the ones that already made the transition won't be the only ones so no need to worry about players dropping from this bot. We can make up for the numbers with players that are willing to challenge themselves. We did come to one conclusion though. Ban dodgers admitted they would stop playing Void if non-em was removed. I think that's a point that staff should make note of here.

All the time spent re-banning and range banning repeated offenders is counterproductive and that time could be spent setting up more tournaments or what Void has, Dota-Void challenges where players can do extra curricular objectives to win colored aliases .
http://www.dota-void.com/forum/index.ph ... 990.0.html
http://www.dota-void.com/forum/index.ph ... 180.0.html

Anyways,
I for one, would rather play a competitive match and lose rather than play an easy win pub stomp. But that's just me. I remember in DotaCash where 900 elo non-dodging solo pub non-em players were way better skilled in their fundamentals than a 1400 ELO -EM player. If -em mode is the one and only way that you want to play after attempting to adjust and still finding themselves wanting easier games, then perhaps you belong in a less challenging bot like OHS. Easy mode, easy community.

I'm also in agreement with jfaller1 and Frank. I too have felt that players have been forced to play -em for so long. Why not let the people that are voting have a chance to have incentive to make non-em a standard for a while? I think years of having the standard as -em mode would be a nice revival and a stride in the right direction to better the community with higher level gameplay. Granted, try-hard ragers will still rage when things don't go according to plan but like all things, it will take an adjustment period but will pay off in the end, not only for the community but for the staff as well. I just ask to consider the gents that are for -em and threatening to leave, to take note of the things mentioned above.

[polarbearz]

@pharoahemonch lol I thought I wrote a wall of text but no one is going to read your Wall of China, I'm just skimming through few lines and all I gotta say is that your suggestions most definitely won't change anything even if the admins approve it. "Your solution" 1: no stats should be rewarded for the EM games; first of all why would anyone play it then? there is no incentive for playing on ENT for EM games. It just might be better to tell the general -EM public to host their own games lmfao, because according to you the players are "truly" just playing "for fun" for "social easy mode games" ( I don't even know what that means ).

"Your Solution 2" thanks for a good laugh, I wonder how you even jumped to that conclusion. So um.. I guess there is a correlation between having Non-EM games and decreasing number of map hackers / game ruiners? ah makes perfect sense.

And the rest is lol, great insight man. May I ask for your IQ?

By the way, you should post more and make threads, I enjoyed reading that.
I died couple of times starting from the part where you throw in a quote from a MMA fighter.

[alopp12345]

Going to sound trollish probably but honestly, do players actually care about ELO? Something they are proud of to raise?

[ForsakeMe]

I've read most of the posts here and there's one thing i still don't get. Why can't EM and Non-EM modes coexist on ENT? The players that don't like to play EM and feel the need to ridicule the ones that actually enjoy this mode, perpetuate their AP's or AR's and the others just play what they want. I've read one sentence that's so stupid and so exemplary for the arguments of the Non-EM section, i have to quote it;
"I think -em is a disgrace to Dota and I am offended for being forced to play em for the past years just because ap games were forever empty"
So let me summarize; because no one wanted to play this, in your opinion, superior mode, you didn't wait for the other (eventual) admirers and just played with the EM-mob? Classy dude; that explains why there are 20 apem games in the time that you need to fill one Non-EM game. In my opinion neither EM nor Non-EM are better or worse, they are just different and every one has his preferences and subjective opinions about them. I dont' actually know why there is such a low interest in Non-Em's but to blame the EM games to ruin the Non-EM games, just because these exist is simply laughable. If someone wants to play Non-EM so where's the problem to wait, if this game is sooooo much better, more balanced and more exciting than EM? In my experience (and what i've read so far, even the Non-EM section and the Hosts second this fact) the majority plays EM. I don't know if it's because of it's easiness or the speed of action (actually i don't really care), but to deny the gamers this, just because of some few (and im talking of the whole community not only the discussants here), is unfair and not comprehensible. Btw. why did you just stop EM-modes instead of all modes while the poll is still running?
You should have asked one simple question in your poll: "Should we stop hosting the EM mode on our Servers?" instead of splitting the EM votes in three major partys. That biased the poll tremendously and gives the Non-EM section the devious illusion of "winning" the poll, while in reality it's even.
And btw. what does the Non-EM section think to gain by shutting down the EM modes? That the hated EM players now join Non-EM games, play obviously bad compared to all the Non EM pros here, so that they can rage on the hated EM noobs? there is no sence in it
I've played ap the last days and it still about 8-10 minutes to fill a game. The rage-leaving rate after about 30 minutes is very high and 7 of 8 games ended with at least 2 players missing. Where is the strategic component there? Btw. this happens in public Non-EM games more often, than in public EM games.
So please ENT proceed in hosting the EM modes. DOTA in all is facetes was and is a great game and we should be happy about every player that plays it after all the years and helps to keep the old battlenet and the ENT dota section alive.

Well written, totally agreed with you. @uakf.b get em back!

[polarbearz]

I've read most of the posts here and there's one thing i still don't get. Why can't EM and Non-EM modes coexist on ENT? The players that don't like to play EM and feel the need to ridicule the ones that actually enjoy this mode, perpetuate their AP's or AR's and the others just play what they want. I've read one sentence that's so stupid and so exemplary for the arguments of the Non-EM section, i have to quote it;
"I think -em is a disgrace to Dota and I am offended for being forced to play em for the past years just because ap games were forever empty"
So let me summarize; because no one wanted to play this, in your opinion, superior mode, you didn't wait for the other (eventual) admirers and just played with the EM-mob? Classy dude; that explains why there are 20 apem games in the time that you need to fill one Non-EM game. In my opinion neither EM nor Non-EM are better or worse, they are just different and every one has his preferences and subjective opinions about them. I dont' actually know why there is such a low interest in Non-Em's but to blame the EM games to ruin the Non-EM games, just because these exist is simply laughable. If someone wants to play Non-EM so where's the problem to wait, if this game is sooooo much better, more balanced and more exciting than EM? In my experience (and what i've read so far, even the Non-EM section and the Hosts second this fact) the majority plays EM. I don't know if it's because of it's easiness or the speed of action (actually i don't really care), but to deny the gamers this, just because of some few (and im talking of the whole community not only the discussants here), is unfair and not comprehensible. Btw. why did you just stop EM-modes instead of all modes while the poll is still running?
You should have asked one simple question in your poll: "Should we stop hosting the EM mode on our Servers?" instead of splitting the EM votes in three major partys. That biased the poll tremendously and gives the Non-EM section the devious illusion of "winning" the poll, while in reality it's even.
And btw. what does the Non-EM section think to gain by shutting down the EM modes? That the hated EM players now join Non-EM games, play obviously bad compared to all the Non EM pros here, so that they can rage on the hated EM noobs? there is no sence in it
I've played ap the last days and it still about 8-10 minutes to fill a game. The rage-leaving rate after about 30 minutes is very high and 7 of 8 games ended with at least 2 players missing. Where is the strategic component there? Btw. this happens in public Non-EM games more often, than in public EM games.
So please ENT proceed in hosting the EM modes. DOTA in all is facetes was and is a great game and we should be happy about every player that plays it after all the years and helps to keep the old battlenet and the ENT dota section alive.

+1 well said

[PharoaheMonch]

@pharoahemonch lol I thought I wrote a wall of text but no one is going to read your Wall of China, I'm just skimming through few lines and all I gotta say is that your suggestions most definitely won't change anything even if the admins approve it. "Your solution" 1: no stats should be rewarded for the EM games; first of all why would anyone play it then? there is no incentive for playing on ENT for EM games. It just might be better to tell the general -EM public to host their own games lmfao, because according to you the players are "truly" just playing "for fun" for "social easy mode games" ( I don't even know what that means ).

"Your Solution 2" thanks for a good laugh, I wonder how you even jumped to that conclusion. So um.. I guess there is a correlation between having Non-EM games and decreasing number of map hackers / game ruiners? ah makes perfect sense.

And the rest is lol, great insight man. May I ask for your IQ?

By the way, you should post more and make threads, I enjoyed reading that.
I died couple of times starting from the part where you throw in a quote from a MMA fighter.

Glad you asked. Well the issue seems to be that people don't feel like playing competitively on a higher level so my assumption was that people wanted to play -em for fun or "socially" ? Same concept of normal games in Dota 2 where it doesn't contribute to MMR. I would consider it more of a practice mode for players that would like to play non-em in the future if they're wanting to try out new heroes without affecting people's scores or just play with friends. Same with FPS console games: Halo, CS.... ranked vs unranked games, etc. Don't hate cuz I would rather aim higher than lower the bar. By your sarcastic comments I'd like to answer your question with a question(s). Why do people like playing EM mode and why should it be given a score rating?
I could have responded by calling -em players beta males and wussies and add something like this when asking why people reject the idea of getting rid of EM : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYvLWHohOlY but I chose the optimistic suggestion instead. My stance remains the same.

"suggestion" 2: I'm pretty sure I answered part of your question by saying that even if there are maphackers, they would still have to earn gold instead of snowballing with fluently picked carrys. I did the reasearch by Void stat pages.
Breakdown of some statistics:
1800 players out of 3300 players on Dota-Void have negative accounts recorded with 25 games or more. That's 36 player pages out of 66 with 50 accounts on each page. That leaves roughly 1,500 players with positive accounts (based on k/d/a from the highest Score to the avg score which is +0.00 ) and granted many have several accounts so the pool would even be smaller. I'm pretty sure ENTgaming and Void bounce their banned players to each other's servers and once range banned they eventually move on to OHS and BK. Why not just introduce the door early and save the staff some time as well as legit players that have to bear with these type of rule breakers. The whole spiel about about 2 choices : failure or success was in regards to those 1800 players (and again probably much more on ENTgaming) Give them a choice, a choice to stay and get better or leave to a league that suits that player.

The numbers are real as most maphackers and game ruiners are sub-par players. Now occasionally there are some decent players that know their way around the FCD, requiring a 2nd opinion from other staff, but eventually they get caught through greed.

As I stated before, yeah the player base might shrink but would people really care if these sub-par players really moved on to OHS or BK servers? ENTgaming has a much larger playerbase but my guess is that there are more pros here as well as noobs. Let them decide if they want to stay or not was my main point.

As for the "wall of text" i'd rather be thorough than just simply state" no because -em is bad and noobs are bad.". That's not really going to help anybody.

[Astros]

Let's face it, this site runs particularly, because of DotA. I don't have the statistics nor am I interested in them because the clear fact is, EM is favored. The poll only proves that only those who care enough to create an ENT account, are going to be voting. But the majority of ENT players aren't voting. If players want a DotA 2 version of DotA 1, why exactly are they playing DotA 1? As someone stated before, yes, non-EM games require more skill and in general, involve better players. What does that exactly prove, though? I know a majority of individuals who sign on WC3 just to play DotA. They can care less about LTD or whatever game ENT has hosted. That is a huge market you're losing because a minority amount of players want a certain option. Nabo mentioned that ENT has retained 50% of APEM players into playing AP. Great, but where's the other 50% going to? Either quitting, playing AREM, or playing another custom game. I understand the urge to play the new and updated version of a game, but I used to play a game called Battleships. It used to be a frequently played game in WC3. A new version ensued and people quit. That's a testament that some things shouldn't be changed. And if you're complaining about not enough quality games because of EM, then why don't you guys play IH's? That's right, not enough players. Well guess what? You won't garner newer players by hosting non-EM games.

[Astros]

kobmachi, your marketing strategy of quality>quantity is like comparing oranges to apples. How exactly is quality>quantity when this site depends on the quantity of players? ENT isn't for pro gamers; they are for gamers of all levels. You may want a higher quality game but I can assure you, no one is going to want to spend 10 minutes in the lobby waiting for that game. Granted, that inevitable will happen regardless. WC3 and DotA 1 is a dying game, but by changing it to non-EM what do you think happens? You eliminated a bunch of players who aren't good but love to play the game, so you can get a higher quality game? And I can assure you, there is no way removing EM will get you more players. So by all accounts, you will lose players and that is a 100% fact. Just another quick note, how many people are going to constantly sign on BNET just to see if EM games are back? Once they are gone, they'll move on and won't look back at this game.

The way I see it, why not have a separately hosted game that requires 1500 ELO in order to play? I know BTANKS has that exact same format in which you either play the regular one or the one with requirements. By having that 1500 ELO restriction, you can drastically deduce the amount of smurfs in a game but also, have a higher amount of confidence knowing that your teammates are somewhat, capable of winning games. If servers are an issue, just remove SDEM/RDEM. Are there games in which I played EM games and felt, wow, how are these guys this awful? Yeah, plenty of times. But why is it I see people smurfing with new accounts with their friends -- who are also smurfing? All in all, you have "pros" complaining about the quality of the game but how many of them are even playing fair?

[Astros]

How would you guys like it if you're playing in the park and though, you're good, a couple of NBA players come to the court and kick you out because you're not good enough. That's essentially what you're doing by removing EM games. You're taking out a huge base to fulfill the demands of the minority. ENT isn't built by pros. This site probably wouldn't be running if more and more players are quitting. So you aren't just removing DotA games, you're removing the platform that allows ENT to be ENT.

[aRt)Y]

As we mentioned, it is a test.

Thank you all for voicing your opinions, views and concerns. We will re-evaluate the changes based on the stats and your feedback.