Smurfs, Christmas and Interest

I've been reading through Nome's blog (Nome was the former lead designer for HoN) and came across this particular post talking about some of the troubles new players have when they first play HoN or DotA. I agree on all of those points, but I think one of the biggest barriers to new players is the attitude of other players. This has been made much worse by the fact that HoN is now free-to-play, so the number of 'smurf accounts' has gone up dramatically.

Smurf accounts are accounts that high rated players create to play against low rated players (though there are players who make new accounts simply because the queues are too long at higher level games - naturally it's a positive skewed distribution, as there aren't many pro players). Since this is their "fake account" they don't care about stats so much, but it also means they will be matched against players far weaker in skill than they are. And because most of their first games will be in the non-verified category, it is likely that they will be matched against people who have genuinely just started, at least for their first few games. Because they are much better players, they can typically win games on their own. This leads to a few problems, two in particular:

-players who shouldn't win, do win. I played in a game where me and my team were fairly average, but the other team featured four players who seemed to have no idea what was going on and one player who was incredibly skilled. He was enough for them to win the game, which meant that the clueless players all received a higher ranking than they should have. While this would get balanced out in their next game, where they should lose, I have played with someone who was 1600 and still had no clue (the starting rating is 1500, where you typically win or lose 5 rating points per game).

-everyone is a smurf - or so some people think. We played a game with Mark the other day, and during the game, someone on the other team implied they thought Mark was a smurf (he made a new account when HoN went free-to-play, and his current rating is 1000). Even when I play on my own "smurf" account, a lot of the time the games end with people complaining about smurfs.

(I would just like to say here that I don't really consider my smurf account a smurf account in the sense that I don't (always) play in order to beat people of a lower skill level to me. I use it to play heroes that I wouldn't normally play so that I can learn them without people complaining, "OMG, how did you get to 1700, you are so bad?!" I also think for a while, I was getting a bit of support burnout and just wanted to play other heroes.)

The problem with all the smurf accounts also means that new players never really get to learn the game because they are so severely punished for any mistake that they make which discourages trial and error. Add to that the fact that experienced players are constantly abusing them for every little thing they are or aren't doing. The only way for them to learn is to read up on a lot of theorycrafting, but they will probably never do that because their experience in playing the game is horrible. Plus, it's incredibly boring.

Olek suggested this a while ago, which was to have a "noob period" where you play your first 5 games against other new players. I think it should follow the Starcraft 2 model, where you have a practice league. Of course, this doesn't stop smurfs from making accounts and entering the practice league. But it does help divide the genuinely 1500 rated players from the new players, and you are less likely to encounter the pro players who don't want to wait in queue for a game.

Christmas baking is half-done!

This year, I went with a chocolate cupcake, fudge brooooooooownie (in honour of the Mumble channel), a choc-chip cookie and a Mars bar slice. I would have made shortbread or gingerbread, but we don't have a working oven, and the thought of baking 6 cookies at a time wasn't all that appealing. When Julian suggested rocky road, I thought it would be awesome, as it didn't require cooking, but nobody I polled said they liked rocky road, so I went with the Mars bar slice instead. That was the baking for my co-workers, not sure if I can actually be bothered making stuff for friends as it took almost the entire weekend. But I kinda want to because I'm still sad I couldn't give Vinnie a fudge brooooooooooooownie on his birthday.

Lastly, I've been thinking about what makes a blog interesting. Lately, I'm starting to think maybe I fall into that reality TV category, where people watch because it makes them feel good that their lives aren't so bad. Not that I think my life is bad, but some of my posts involve me thinking about on the train wreck events in my life, and I think it makes people feel better about themselves. Maybe the other part of it is the fact that people are usually surprised to find I write the things that I do. So maybe they enjoy reading about the "private me". If you aren't shy about it, I'd appreciate it if you told me in the comments or via email why you read my blog. =)