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MMR INFLATION, ACCOUNT BOOSTING, SMURF ACCOUNTS AND RANKED DOTA.
Well hello there...
Stay a while and listen
My name is DKnuGGeT, I am a DotA player who wants to bring this to everyone's attention. After watching ChiLongQua's youtube page, he showed me something very interesting. This got me thinking, how much abuse is going on in DotA 2? Well its simple. There's a lot more then we know. We play DotA for fun, it is our game of choice. But one does not simply play DotA, it is a very complex game which requires time and dedication. You need at least 200 games of DotA to understand how it works, who the heroes are, their abilities and all the items. Even after 200 games you still won't be that good. DotA is a wolf pack, you must be strong to survive. People are rude, angry, aggressive and that means your first game won't be very pleasant.(Probably because we are playing DotA trying to climb out of the pit instead of getting laid) But that's not your fault, its the communities fault as we are all frustrated. We just want to play DotA and we get put on tilt when we have bad players, people who feed, and all the usual DotA nonsense that happens. I remember going from a passive calm player to a "Rage-aholic". This pretty much happens to every DotA player who is trying to get better and still lose games, still lose MMR.
MMR
So I want to bring too your attention about MMR. First of all, what is MMR? It is Match Making Rank. This is a score all players get once they have a level 13 account and have played the calibration games. Now the idea of MMR is for the serious players who want to play with other serious good players. MMR is designed to separate us. With MMR the higher it is, the better the players you will encounter. MMR is designed so that only those who have the skills needed to win games can advance and climb whilst those who arnt as good won't. So basically a good player can have 3.5k and climb to 4.5k MMR. Whilst a bad player will have 3.5 and drop to 3k. Eventually you will get stuck at your peak. You will reach a MMR you simply can't pass. Or you will drop to a MMR where people are so bad you just simply can't lose. This means you will reach a sort of "Float Point" this is the point where you will go up and down but still sit around an average bar. Now bad players will be 3k and lower whilst good players will be 4k and higher (this is how it was when it first came out) now after doing some research I found some disturbing things. First of all, MMR doesn't calibrate in those 10 games, your MMR is taking from your whole account. I remember when I first played dota 2. It was about 5 years ago. Once ranked came out I was a seriously good player, I had learnt all the heroes and items. I was carrying, averaging 100 to 300 CS per game. I wasn't focused on kills which meant I would die for my team a lot in order to win games. So when I calibrated I had the account when I had only played DotA 1 for 6 months and still bad. So all my bad games where I was still learning had now come back to haunt me. I picked natures, I won 18 out of my 20 ranked calibration games (party and solo) I still got a low MMR (3.5k) and that's because all my old games with my bad KDA had now ruined my account. So I gave up on ranked and just played normal dota for the next 1000 games. Pro's who play with other pro's have good KDA's and are so good, that they got 6k MMR calibrated even if they lost all 20 games. So now, we come to our next part.
MMR SMURF ACCOUNTS.
The idea is simple, instead of climbing from 3k to 5k by playing possibly 300-500 games of ranked, you just create a new account and play 100 games till level 13 then you que ranked and there you have it. 4.5k MMR. I Tried this (without researching) I had a 80% win rate which dropped to 70% by the time I reached level 13. Then I calibrated at 2.8k MMR. I just couldn't understand this. I win 70% of my games yet I got a lower MMR? How is this possible? Then after checking online I saw that MMR works off of an old DotA 1 play style. KDA (kills deaths assists) KDA is what made DotA 1. If you had a bad KDA other players would vote kick you from the game. Which forced you to play good every game, not die, not focus on winning, just focus on getting kills and not dying. This is what was needed to play DotA 1. As you joined a game if you had a bad KDA you were kicked and sometimes even banned forcing you to create a new account and in some cases, Change your IP address in order to bypass the ip ban. This made me a better player as it forced me not to feed and to just kill steal every game. (Pick lion, finger of death some poor kid, Repeat) now this isn't very fun but that was the way of life back then, DotA 2 however is very different. If you thought it was cut throat and ruthless, then go play warcraft 3 and see how barbaric DotA players can be. Now this is very confusing, in order to gain MMR you must win games, yet in order to calibrate at a high MMR bench mark you must have a good KDA? Now pro's can do both of those easily. But normal players can't, we don't have the time or effort to get extremely good and beable to have a high win rate and good KDA every game. At least 1 of those suffer... This is where you find a loop hole, you see... Now you can either play your main account and just focus on winning games to climb MMR. However this will take very long as you only gain 25MMR and if you lose, then -25MMR for you bro. This sucks because it means you must win 4 games to gain 100 MMR, if you lose 4 games you will lose 100 MMR. Its much easier to create a new account but then it means that you must change your play style, no more play to win. Only aim for kills. This is bad because it means bad players can pick zues, sit under their tower till level 6, then sit afk in fountain kill stealing all game. They can have a 0% winrate and only need roughly 4kills 0 deaths per game in order to have a high MMR. Now imagine if you were a hacker, you could make 5 zeus bots, run 5 instance's of DotA, allow them to que, program them to sit afk mid till level 6 and just basically, grind accounts which you could then sell to players for let's say 10$ an account. That's easy money. Now I'm not saying this is happening, but it is possible. I saw so many boosted accounts and techies script players that it just made me sick, valve needs to punish these people and stop all of this nonsense. This is why we are so frustrated. Because we are playing 4k-6k MMR DotA games and you get these bad players who have bought, smurfed, or boosted their accounts and they are feeding. This is ruining the game for the die hard players who pride them selves in aiming for a high MMR. You can't just put a random player in a shark tank, he will be eaten alive. Only somebody trained and deserving with lots of experience can survive. These Beta's (scrubs, noobs) as I call them, are trying to play with the Alpha's (pro's, Pwners) and are just causing depression and stress. People come home, go online que and play DotA, then some fool with his freshly boosted account comes along and feeds. I've watched pro streams where players like singsing and arise actually feel sad winning games and MMR because its too easy... Because they can tell that these players arnt good and have bought their accounts. All this does is inflate the worlds MMR.
INFLATION
Every time we play ranked we take MMR from the losers, and every time you lose, they take MMR from you. Now this is balanced... Once you throw in a brand new account with 4.5k MMR into the mix, all of a sudden there's fresh MMR in the system waiting to be snatched. This player will most likely (not saying all smurfs feed mmr) he will feed the MMR away, throw away the account and all of a sudden he's increased players accounts by a few MMR. This is inflating the average MMR. This is why MMR is so high nowadays and 5k isn't even good anymore. Because bad players lose 1k MMR to other players and go get a new account. So MMR is now inflating across the servers, if you check the top ranked MMR in the world. Miracle- is sitting with 8k MMR. (W33haa was the first to hit 8k) now these players deserve the 8k because when they que. They are pitted against the best of the best, often running into other professionals. But 1 year ago nobody touched 8k. 2-3 years ago nobody touched 8k. I feel that this might be, because of inflation. All the spare MMR has changed 7k MMR from being the highest, to now 8K MMR. What happens in 2 years time? Will we have 10k MMR players running around? Will we have more cheats, hacks, boosted accounts? Or will valve sort this whole issue out and we can be proud to play DotA 2 saying there's no cheats, hacks, boosting thanks to valve. Please share your thoughts on this topic, I just felt that all these things are happening and it needs to be dealt with. We cannot allow all this to carry on as it just upsets the balance.
Thanks for reading, please share and leave a comment
This is DKnuGGeT signing off.
References: ChiLongQua https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i1G1sIOCHr8
Personal experience
DKnuGGeT
NidHogg
Lil Kunt
ZeroX
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well thought out post.
I'm noticing the inflation too, and I've had some bad players on my team but the true is same either way. Somtimes you get easy loss, sometimes you get easy wins. same idea.
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A few things. Calibrating is not only based on win rate. It also tracks other things in order to place you correctly faster. I am around 5k rated. If I start a new account I will stomp my first 3 games. Then they start becoming pretty even, within the first 10 games I am somewhere near where I should be in rating. The rest is just lowering the uncertainty value.
Could you please link the dotabuff or similar of your 70-80% win rate account that calibrated at 2,7k? I am interested in seeing which role you played and which stats you had in that role since it sounds incorrect.
As for rating inflation. It is real, it isn't a major problem. Anybody good enough to reach 8k is playing so many games that calibrating at 4.5k isn't a problem. They will be up at 8k within half a year. The second reason it isn't a major problem is that the average player not buying an account will rise just as likely as fall. The most extreme example being the 8k players that has taken several k mmr into their account from the pool. Any time they make a new account and don't sell it they lock up more mmr again, when they climb from the max calibrated mmr until they stop playing the account.
A reason inflation is good. It means somebody that is inactive and then comes back has to play a few games to get to the new MMR that is the same as her old one. Thus you naturally get a decrease in skill level and relative mmr at the same time. Something that is desired.
Thirdly, 3k mmr used to be above average. Still might be. I would consider that near being good. Which % of the Dota population is the limit for good?
Fourthly, which major cheats and hacks are in the game? I honestly don't think boosting is a serious issue, the % of players is so low that it doesn't really matter. The normal player having an off game is a much bigger problem.
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Link to dotabuff of your 70% winrate 2.8k smurf?
Yes the zeus KDA spamming thing definitely used to work for your 10 ranked placement matches, but valve has since changed their placements algorithm (so that you can't calibrate past 4.7?k anymore) and it's obviously very possible to calibrate highly without winning every game or spamming necro/zeus/spectre. There are likely more things taken into account than just KDA.
I also don't buy the idea that the existence of 8k mmr players has much to do with an influx of zeus spammers or bought accounts. Theoretically yes, if you added a good chunk of high mmr players into the distribution and let everyone play then both the average and the highest mmr would go up. However, the highest ranking mmr increases simply as the playerbase increases (widens the distribution) and more games are played (by the top players) as well. Pro-level streamers matched with average 4ks and 5ks obviously think their teammates / opponents are trash.
Is buying fresh, high mmr accounts a real thing and a real problem? Yes. But I think you're really overestimating how much it affects MMR.
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Reminder that every time a team wins 4v5 with an abandoned player they deflate the system by ~50 mmr
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I might be over estimating the amount of mmr being thrown around here, but the point is to raise awareness, it is happening. People are smurfing, boosting, buying accounts, and its affecting our games.
I tryed searching for both of my old smurfs I made, however those were made 2-3 years ago and won't pop up in dota buff, I will screen shot the accounts, not sure which 1 is the correct one but maybe you guys will find them and see.
Firstly here's my DotAbuff
http://www.dotabuff.com/players/116562351
I have screen shots of zidko and zerox (top 100 invoker in world on dota buff) atleast zerox was, not sure now
http://www.dotabuff.com/heroes/invoker/players
I did die a lot on my smurfs, I was litterly suiciding to team fight to make sure we won the games. Really frustrating how I can't show the account. I even tried playing the 2.8k ranked and its just a horrible bracket. If you watch ChiLongQua you can see him expose account boosters, and a techies script user who doesn't even detonate his 10 mines, but 4 will pop to kill a hero that's in the area. Leaving 6 left for other heroes without the guy even having his mouse or screen in the area.
Images of the steam smurf accounts, like 600 days since last online with the 1
http://postimg.org/image/vcxvfjv8b/
http://postimg.org/image/n6b4k2lk9/
http://postimg.org/image/4445qkvdj/
http://postimg.org/image/pisihtsml/
(My dota buff is shit kuz I haven't had a pc for 2 years now. So I only play when I get a chance)
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I would just like to say, zidko is a high mmr player, my self and zerox found him on our smurfs, because I didn't have a pc I couldn't finish my 3rd attempt at smurfing, zerox did and made top 100 invoker. Zidko cannot believe that us two 3.5k players were so skilled and was capable of playing in his average 5k mmr games. He said "there's no way that you 2 are 3k players" I've got no pc and school so I haven't had time to play. I still keep up with the pro scene and watch tourneys every day. Hopefully end of this year I can finally make a proper smurf and go to 5k. (Really hard when you don't own a computer)
http://www.dotabuff.com/players/202813104/heroes
This was my last smurf with ZeroX where I just couldn't get the KDA (I refuse to spam zeus) last game was 2015/01/17 my games are litterly seperated by months at a time, that's why I do so terrible in them.
But I do plan to fix all this as I did with my main. I managed to fix winrates and play heroes that were hard and only had low winrates like alchemist(41%+ -) got my fav's above 50% took meepo from like 10% winrate up to 55% check my one month I had like 33wins 8 losses or something. Can't remember.
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Unfortunately for your and CLQ's case, bought accounts and abusers can't account for very much MMR inflation, if any at all. This is because there will be, on average, almost the same amount of bought accounts on your team as on the other team. This means that you will lose almost as much MMR from having a bought account on your team as you will gain having a bought account on the other team. In addition, players who reach a certain MMR level and then stop playing don't "take MMR". There isn't a finite amount of MMR to be had.
What actually causes MMR inflation to happen is increased population. The more people you have, the more there are above a certain MMR. The percentage above an MMR is the same but because there are more people, being a 5k is less impressive (one out of perhaps two thousand players, rather than one out of a few hundred players). An Oceanic player has to work a lot harder to reach 6000 MMR because of a smaller player pool, and theoretically is better than a 6000 MMR player from Europe or North America on average.
In practice, you can only make generalizations and they tend not to hold true for outliers (those above, say, 5.5k). In general you would expect a 4k player from a small-population server to be slightly better than a 4k player from a large-population server.
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nice 43% winrate
good luck getting to 5k
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i can't tell if this is a joke or not
CLQ is an internet personality, not a real person
it's not smurfing if you're the same mmr as your old account
one good game doesn't mean your mmr is inaccurate
i don't think u realize how big the difference is between 4k and 5k
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I'm not talking about one good game, remember I made this account with onl 4-6 months of playing dota. So that means now in 2015. I've still got all my noob games sitting on my account. So that's why my winrates are low, KDA's are none existant, I live in africa and we never had an South African server until ti3. So like I said, this whole account is ruined and there's no way of fixing. However I did bring my win rate to 50% and pushed some of my heroes above 50%. I'm not saying I'm a pro player, just saying if I actually owned a computer and didn't play 4 games every 2-3 months. I could make a smurf and do a lot better. You can't just look at an over view of some 1's account. You have to view the games, see how team mates did. Go further back into my match history to when I was playing for days in a row, then you can see the difference. Like I said, don't judge my account. I was forced to play with 500 ms and only 4-6 months dota exp when I started. Still managed 3.5k after all the abuse my account had from me being a shit stain player.
Just view my last natures game. Was best in my team on a hero that can't just hardcarry. Not like I'm spamming bloodseeker or void, I'm playing natures out farming my team and enemy team being forced to carry after not playing for 2 months. On average I am the best player in the game. I'm not saying I'm a pro, just saying I can do better.
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I don't think anyone needs to see your main account, we're asking for the 70% winrate account you said you smurfed and calibrated to 2.8k on.
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i didn't even look at ur account
i assume u mean this game?
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1673625758
looking at ur account u consistently buy bad items and have mediocre farm
idk what the issue is looking at ur games ur low 4kish
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TLDR: Player thinks he is better than he is and is totally undiscerning when called out. 1/5 Stars
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I had the idea for such a post for a long time. The general approach here is correct while most of the stuff is sadly very wrong 
Yes, MMR inflation is bad, but since MMR inflates, good players will simply get higher MMR values by playing on the same level as before. Its still just a number which indicates how likely you are winning a public game. The value it self is meaningless, your overall rank on the leader boards however is not.
Also smurfs are a big problem, I refer here to a post which is close to 1 year old: www.liquiddota.com. The post explains how people reach high mmr values by abusing the calibration algorithms and systems. High MMR players will not encounter this problem anymore but people in the 3-4ks will heavily run into these smurfs.
And just for the record... when you played your calibration games and where new to the game, everything went accordingly. When I played my first calibrations games I ended up with 4,8k by playing support only since I didn't knew how calibration worked. So when you got calibrated to 3,5k by playing whatever, you simply sucked like shit and the system recognized it. Calibrating is not about winning the game, its about playing good compared to other players in this bracket. KDA, GPM/EXPM, Hero damage and Tower damage are way more important than winning.
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Ler beat me to it.
If you calibrated at 2.8K ,you are a 2.8K player with the heroś that you played. KDA is no longer the sole measurement for calibration. So far Ler mentioned the GPM/XPM, but also LH/DN at 10 minutes is another one ( i think ).
i created a new account, was 3.5K before, and calibrated at 3.8K. So the system is spot on ( some variance is always there )
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Northern Ireland22208 Posts
if ur a true 5k player, u shud have a rly easy ride from 2.8k. like from 2.8-4k, u shud be winning at least 80% of ur games
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On September 17 2015 17:58 ahswtini wrote:
if ur a true 5k player, u shud have a rly easy ride from 2.8k. like from 2.8-4k, u shud be winning at least 80% of ur games
ya its not hard at all to climb from the 3k level if you deserve better
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bjDEzC3.png)
4.6 main (5.2 party, dont play solo much)
each dot is 1 game
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You have to win 5 games and lose 1 to make 100 mmr. Now to reach 5k you would need like 120 games wins and 20 losses or something like that. Not easy when I can't play for months at a time.
As you can see it took 3 months for that dude to get to 4.3k can take you like 2 weeks on a new account.
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That was ~50 games. Less than needed to get level to then calibrate? Unless the new trophy system changed it a lot.
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EPT
