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Why am I getting so many griefers in my games?

Here is my match history for the last few games:

  • 7552918956 l primal beast running alone and running into enemy alone, globally muted during game
  • 7552902567 l pos 5 pudge abandon
  • 7552860133 l mid necro rushes dagon ONLY, gets it at 9 mins with 4 deaths. result: 19-0 enchantress opponent on mid
  • 7552767327 l long game, pos 5 grim plays very poorly, worthless items, then abandons
  • 7550071221 w played as wd, lost of mistakes, played him like 5 times, team won
  • 7549980733 w played as lion, same as above
  • 7548787204 w 68 min game, pretty normal and close compared to that
  • 7548731357 l 7-16 (lvl7 @10 mins vs lvl10 lc) mid np tping behind towers and feeding, vs 536 stack duel victory lc
  • 7548485224 l pos 1 pl barely more nw than a support, dying uselessly a lot, lc afk deffensively farming triangle
  • 7548416320 l everyone fed meepo, offlaner didnt know how to play his hero
  • 7548356120 l cw pos 1, i wasn't good either but he felt insanely useless and died a lot
  • 7548301173 l pos 1 dude was straight out afk from the start

I had more or less (rather less) success before, but in the games I lost I there is always one lc mid rushing khanda, or someone who plays their hero for the first time (believe me, I can go on)

I get someone who griefs nearly every single game, and it makes impossible to have fun during games. Worst part is that I have to play the game till the end even if there is 0 chance of any play. What am I doing wrong? In the past there were multiple occurrences of having a really good winstreak, where my team won pretty hard, and I took a good part of it. Even if it was a loss, it was something to learn from, and I could blame myself for the mistakes I knew I made, and it was somewhat close. Then I got griefers for the next matches till I lost all of my advancements.

I seriously doubt that after having such a good winrates at 1.7k mmr I reach 2k, and the skill difference is that much that I have absolutely 0 chance to win, and suddenly everyone in my team plays insanely bad, or griefs. I get a ton of uncalibrated players who usually play awful in my team

I know that I'm possibly not better then everyone, but it always feels like I'm the only one in the team that knows how to play, and nearly always feel like that I was the best in my team. I know this sounds bad, but prove me otherwise, because at this point I have no idea what to do to stop this.

MatchID    Date                    Periodic  Excessive Reports  Excessive Abandons  Match Count  Positive Matches  Reported Matches  Abandoned Matches  Reports  Reporting Parties  Comms Reports  Comms Reporting Parties  Commends  Behavior Score
7548356120 2024-01-21 16:02:44 GMT Yes       No                 No                  15           14                1                 0                  2        2                  0              0                        20        11875 
7537612880 2024-01-14 16:34:57 GMT Yes       No                 No                  15           15                0                 0                  0        0                  0              0                        27        12000 
7531262752 2024-01-10 18:18:10 GMT Yes       No                 No                  15           15                0                 0                  0        0                  0              0                        24        12000

My all-time lowest behavior score was 11767 (since the increase to 12k), my comms score is the same

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14 comments
  • I've said this before, but I'm still pretty sure that your definition of griefing is absolutely wrong. People have fun playing dota. In the end, it's still a game, even if you think ranked is ultra serious and everyone has to play cookie cutter pro builds, no one else has to think like this. If someone wants to try out rushing Khanda on LC, they don't have to go to unranked with this. If someone wants to rush Dagon because it worked one time, that doesn't mean it'll work another time and they might die 4 times and have no impact. None of this is griefing, it's just people playing bad.

    These people might be legend level players if they went good items, but since they try out stupid shit all the time, they are ranked in crusader. That's a completely valid playstyle, everyone can play this game however they like.

    I didn't look at any of the games you linked here, but literally each and every description you gave is just people playing badly. Even afk jungling is a poor play, but it can be valid, and running into the enemies alone and dying are also mostly just stubborn mis-plays. God knows I very often go in somewhere and die uselessly.

    Same with abandons/afks, abandons are not griefing. People abandon for all kinds of reasons, often external ones that they can "do nothing" about. Their mom called them to dinner, whatever.

    The only way to stop this is to stop taking this game so seriously or to stop playing it. You can't control other people's actions. I'm almost 99% sure that if you simply stopped caring about your team playing bad, stop categorizing it as griefing, you'd start winning again.

    Your problem is your mindset. You can't make other people play better.

    • There's never "0 chance to make a play". I played with mid PA and offlane WK yesterday. Offlane WK flamed his support and said "> Good Game, Well Played" and started jungling. Enemy antimage was 15/0/something at a time.

      I refused to give up. We caught AM a few times based on my support plays and even teamwiped the enemy multiple times. It was much closer than it had any business to be, and even though we still lost, in a game where the Wraith King just pulls himself a little bit more together or we'd have a proper mid, it might've still been a win.

      But if I had said "there's 0 chance" and gave up myself, then it'll always be a loss.

      And idk, I personally think it's really fun to always play your best and get creative in the face of severe adversity, even if the adversity is your own team. Honestly it's how I deal with this same thing happening in real life, too. Much too often I feel like we humans are on "the same team" but someone is behaving badly. Just doing the best I personally can in the face of this is how I stay sane.

    • If someone wants to try out rushing Khanda on LC, they don’t have to go to unranked with this

      Maybe I'm taking ranked too seriously, but ranked is supposed to be a "serious" environment, I highly doubt that trying out random stuff, that just popped out of a random players head is ok, then whats the point of unranked? Random strategies are known to be extremely volatile, and can easily ruin the game for their teammates (and possibly the opponents too). These players deliberately get weird stuff, or play extremely unusual heroes for their positions in ranked, and they are for sure doing something wrong. Its like going in a 3 lane highway with a go-kart, I'm pretty sure that this is disrespecting other players, most likely ruins their games, and is griefing

      Even afk jungling is a poor play, but it can be valid, and running into the enemies alone and dying are also mostly just stubborn mis-plays. God knows I very often go in somewhere and die uselessly.

      I don't want to go into details, but I'm pretty sure that in that specific case afk jungling was the last valid play, and the run-into-enemies guy was not just at the wrong place, he literally just walked into enemy multiple times

      Your problem is your mindset. You can’t make other people play better.

      I'm pretty sure that it makes a toll on me. But if you are right, and most of the things that I experience is not griefing, then I have control over like 5% of my games? And the rest is a fortune game, where the point is to get the least amount of "griefers" in your team? Because if yes, then I'm sure am extremely unlucky, because it seems like I'm the only one taking ranked seriously, and the whole community (=players who play pubs) is not respecting players who want to take the game a bit more seriously

      Its insanely hard to just bear the fact that others deliberately play bad, especially when you are loosing so badly, that there is no point to stay in game. And believe me there is absolutely no comeback potential in those games, because of the mindset of those players

      • ranked is supposed to be a “serious” environment

        Have you ever looked at the official, in-game description and behavior guidelines of ranked versus unranked queue? No? Because there isn't one. The literal only difference in the game is that the one shows your rank and the other does not (and has no roles and is a bit more lenient with matchmaking). Everything you've constructed about what ranked is supposed to be is entirely in your head. And thus, someone else can and is allowed to construct something entirely different.

        What you're talking about is the textbook version of a social construct. And, just like in real life, a social construct is entirely subjective and someone else can be just as right rejecting that social construct and putting a different one in its place. No objective basis for any of it.

        then I have control over like 5% of my games

        You have control over 100% of how you play. You have control over 0% of how everyone else plays. Let's say a normal match starts out with a 50/50 probability to win or lose, no one losing especially hard, no one griefing, no one visibly playing terrible. Then if you personally play well, it goes to 55/45. That still means, even in "normal" games that you play especially well in, you have "no control over your games" because you still lose 45% of them, so basically still every 2nd one! Barely any change!

        But actually, how well you play shifts the win probability of each and every given game up and down. If you play well, you shift a 50/50 game to 55/45, you shift a 70/30 game to 75/25, and a 30/70 game to 35/65.

        If you make the 50/50 go to 55/45, every 20th game you win one more than you lose.

        But let's say you have no control over a lane and that goes badly for your team, and those guys in that lane give up mentally. Now the win probability might be 30/70, in favor of the enemies. But if you don't give up and play well, you might shift that probability to 35/65. You're still mostly going to lose, but you also still win 1 more game every 20th game of those kinds of games! Exact same impact as the impact on the "normal" game!

        But if you also give up in those games, then you shift the win probability in the other direction, let's say 25/75. That means you lose 1 more game every 20th, effectively canceling out the games in the "average 50/50" range. Because you are the one that makes these "guaranteed" losses (not really, because there is always still a chance, even though low) actually guaranteed.

        That's why I'm saying this is a mindset problem. The fact that you give up in "lost" games makes these games more likely to actually be losses. Even though you will lose those games most of the time, sometimes you will get an epic comeback. But not if you also give up. Not getting these comebacks cancels out some (or all) of the gains you achieve by playing well in normal 50/50 games.

        believe me there is absolutely no comeback potential

        It is your choice to believe that, but I won't believe you. I have won quite a few comebacks in games with actual griefers in them. Next time I have one, I'll try to remember and show you the replay. But of course you lose a lot of them, if you make the winrate go from 5/95 to 10/90, you're still going to lose 9 of 10 of those games. We humans can't handle these probabilities. For us, anecdotally, losing 9 of 10 games feels exactly as bad as losing 19 out of every 20th game. But statistically, which is the thing that counts when looking at MMR, it definitely does matter, even if it doesn't feel different.

      • deliberately get weird stuff, or play extremely unusual heroes for their positions in ranked, and they are for sure doing something wrong

        This is is literally how every meta change ever happened. People started randomly playing "weird" stuff like core IO going Armlet, and it worked extremely well and now this is an accepted possibility. Everyone around them thought "aaah you're griefing you bad person ruining my game" but they still won because it was actually good, not just unusual. And often it went bad solely because of those people that cried "grieeef", not because the play was bad. Then people felt that they were right crying "grief" while they themselves were actually the problem.

        Of course you're going to have actual fails where something is actually bad. But if no one ever experiments with weird stuff dota today would look extreeeeemely differently.

        Everything can work. Literal 2 time TI champion saying this. Who made carry IO come into the meta that everyone thought was bad and griefing and won a TI with exactly that.

        Fun version of this quote

  • Also I know that you always play right after Europeans school is over, which may also contribute to this. More kids in your games and so on.

    I already offered you to play with me, but you can also just start making friends yourself to play dota with. They will never "grief" you if you select them correctly. It's the best way to play a team game, with people you know. Guilds are really really good for this. Just ask people to play instead of going into solo queue right away, be willing to wait 5 mins for people to answer, and so on.

  • Just keep in playing.Focus on your mistakes Not on Others. You will get better by time not by night. Mute toxic Players to avoid getting toxic for the Same evening. Try to say motovating Things while playing. ASK Others what their plan is Like "After i got the exp Rune in min 7 could WE try to gank bot? Mabye use a clarity before WE Join the fight. Mid Whats Up wanna also gank bot?" After every Game try to find rethink Situations what your could done better. Its very important to do that. For example you win a gank then you push T2 Tower and then your Team wents Low on health Low on Mana to T3 Tower and you die. Also for example If you are Support If you pull please warn your carry. Alot of Public POS 1 kinda sleep while Last hitting.

  • Some people offered very good advices.

    Dota is a "dieing" breed of a MOBA because of the way that the game is balanced and this kind of balancing hurts new players or the old ones with very old strategies that are not working anymore.

    Just accept what are you playing don't bother yourself by others because you are in the mudy, filthy trench of dota and only luck can get you out of there or heavy perseverance.

  • Had an Underlord play mid a few days ago in ranked roles, there is certainly alot of Malarkey going on.

  • Also, let me construct you a hypothetical scenario.

    I'm an offlane Viper. I'm happy with my lane, I've killed the enemy carry 2 times already. I want to keep pushing my advantage, take the tower. My mid rotates to our safe lane, mid farm goes lost. My support leaves me to get the mid farm. I did not notice in time, and get ganked. I run, I just need someone to TP to my tower then I'll live and we turn it around. But no one does. I could have lived if only someone TP'd, where is my support? Mid lane instead of helping me, I ping his TP and say "wtf why you no help?!" I mean, of course pushing your advantage in this lane is more important than some mid creeps, right?!

    He says he needs to get farm. Wtf, my support is supposed to support me. Clearly he's griefing me. He intentionally did not TP just to let me die. If he griefs me, I can not win this game. There's 0 chance of any play. My support is Pugna and his name is catlover.

    Of course, you did the "right play". The farm may be more important. You probably didn't see the gank, and maybe you also even considered getting the farm to be more important than saving your Viper. You could definitely be right.

    But your offlaner thinks you griefed him. And of course, when someone griefs you, you can also start giving up, because of course there's no chance with someone like that on your team.

    Now I know this is incredibly hard: but can you tell me with absolute 100% confidence that everything you think about the game is 100% right? That you never misplay? That you never leave your offlaner when you shouldn't have left him?

    Because if you are not 100% sure that everything you do is right, how can you expect this from your teammates? How often have you misconstructed the guy just trying to play to his best ability to be intentionally griefing you? How often, really, does someone just start griefing a game without any reason? Do you really think that people don't start out trying to win?

    95% of players start griefing because they think someone else "griefed" them first. Only in 0,1% of times or so did anyone actually simply start griefing without any reason. Everyone thinks they're right.

14 comments