I suppose it's not that surprising, there are a million invites now and it takes like 5 minutes to make a new account (not fine). Plus the fact that people make smurfs to teach their friends (like you do) so that they don't play high level matchmaking. (This is obviously fine of course!)
That Valve matchmaking is very good at this aspect actually which is quite important. Anyone who is any good at the game seems to get very quickly lifted to a much higher matchmaking level (for example the streamer Draskyl who made a smurf account yesterday because he ended up in low prio, is already playing somewhat decent players (at least not first timers)) I don't know how it manages to do it, maybe it is really clever and can see who buys a ghost scepter, BKB, how many denies you have but people I know who have smurfed (I haven't) say it doesn't take more than 4 or 5 matches to be at a similar level to before.
On a side note, I've played a bunch of games with my noob friends, and I can't believe how many smurf accounts we run into.
Yesterday night I wanted to tryout the new Huskar for mindless fun.
Of course I'm matched against Sneyking of Dignitas. FFS, I should just create a smurf account.. :\
That's TWO games of pros when I pick Huskar in last 2 days. wtf.
[edit]
Okay I played a proper Huskar now and carried. I'm not really impressed- actually prefer the older Huskar.
-The no-damage nerf is quite bad for his killing power. The increased attack speed doesn't do much because he has plenty of it and suffers from diminishing return.
-The 98%~ magic immunity is really a gimmick since enemies will still stun/disable/autoattack you to death. He really needs that damage.
-The buffed Flaming Spear is great early/mid indeed & dishes out insane damage. But this makes his late game with lifesteal awkward. With lifesteal, he can't DPS with no damage. His late game is quite bad.
He's still squishy as hell. A very subpar hero.
Yea the range display is really disappointing to me. I had my game set up such that I could hit * on my keypad and type in whatever range I wanted shown without going in to console.
The general consensus on reddit is 'time to man up and learn like the rest of us.'
Well the general dota community is a cesspool so I don't see much credence there.
I'm not playing for money. I am not at the tier where I can differentiate 1200 vs 1300 nor do I ever care to be.
If the feature never existed I wouldn't be as bitter, but it's really a disappointment. You don't take features out of a game that you left in for that long. The game is literally less fun to me now.
What is this range thing that you guys are talking about? Keep in mind I'm at the "noob" phase still; mostly have been playing against bots to level 4 so far until I have all of the hero basics down.
There was a console command that you could create a green ring around your hero to any range.
For example, I made a bind that when I hit "T" and ring with a range 1200 would appear around my hero. It was helpful when I was solo hard lane, or had a blink dagger.
I wouldn't have a problem with it if hovering the blink dagger showed it's range. There is no way to define 1200 range in game at the moment. New players can only guess how far away they can get experience, or how far they can blink away.
Then you have the issue with the blink dagger that if you try to blink further than 1200 units away, you only go 960. It is such an obscure rule that is not defined in game.
Oh weird; never knew about that.
Oh weird; never knew about that.
Feature? It was a console command that gave unfair advantage to minorities that use them for online ranked matchmaking games.
Good thing they disabled it. It still works in bot games. So you know Valve validates my point.
Console commands are absolutely features. Yes, you get validation because they changed their opinion on something years later. I am stating I don’t agree with that opinion and you can act like it’s some form of vindication for the hardcare all you want but that doesn’t change my opinion.
Any ranged skills, you can hover your mouse on the skill and it would pop up the skill's range temporarily.
The console command made it static, making it unfair.
I think unfair is the wrong word. It was available to everyone. To me, it is similar to playing CS:S with your brightness turned way up. For example, with default settings, it was very difficult to see in the de_dust tunnel. With the brightness up, it was almost clear as day. It is exploiting a setting written within the game.
The clear difference is that one needed the console to use it, and the other was a setting in the menu.
I would like to see them add an experience range halo by hovering something (maybe the XP bar?), similar to how they do the skill ranges. I think new players being able to physically see how far away they can be to gain XP would be very beneficial.
Personally I think it was stupid for it to be a console command, Valve had two choices, either enable it in the options menu, or remove it, both options would be fine because the playing field is level either way.
Also I think Zeze is out of order for accusing someone who used it of being a 1% noob, as Admiral Bulldog and EternalEnvy both used it (as well as many other pro players I'm sure).