As a possibility, we are already half-way to becoming more. Our skill is on the edge of great, and as such, so should our attitude be when we play the game. This however, is where we fall short.
Public match-making is a great tool to play with nine other, randomly selected players in a 5v5 skirmish to the death. This method gives diversity to games, as so many people are different, and use different strategies, some of which you can learn from.
But, the match-making system has a large flaw, and this flaw is of a great disagreement on many people's lips. The Dota community seems to think that the major flaw of this MM system we're using is that they get matched up with 'noobs', 'Russians', 'Brazillians', '*******s', etc. They want various different systems, including region locks, and a better MM system, etc. A way to weed out the 'bad' players, so that only good players are left.
Sadly, this is not the solution to our problem. The one major barrier is, and will always be, language. It's hard to play with someone that does not speak your language. But, the first way to fix this is your choice of server. And this refers to everyone, even the so-called 'ruskies' and any other non-english speaking country that doesn't play on local servers. Learn English, or stick to your own countrymen. It's hard to play a team game if you can't communicate properly. This will help a lot in decreasing the hate the western people have for your language.
The main problem is the attitude of players, especially those with skill. As average players, we have some skill now, and can do most things that pros do, albeit a bit less effective. But, for some reason, this makes us think that we are super pro, and that anyone that is not as good as we are, should 'uninstall dota'.
Think like Yoda. Arrogance leads to subversion. Subversion leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate is a path to the Dark Side.
Consider a new player. We were all there. Starting out in Dota, you've read the guides, did the vs bots games, but now you want to start playing with players. You head out into your first game, random first, and get a hero you've played before. You run out onto an open lane, and prepare to start farming. But, within the first 2 minutes, you get killed. You kinda become dejected at how aggressive the players are playing, but accept it anyway. So you run in again, farm and farm, and boom, die again. Out of nowhere, your lane partner throws a "fk you noob, gg ff". You sit, confused as to what is going on. Clearly you did something wrong, but all you got was a swear word. So, you continue, and eventually lose the game having fed quite a bit, and your allies type all sorts of "lifestealer noob, gg", or "4v5 congrats". It makes you feel sad and angry, but you persist.
This doesn't stop, and as you go along, you start to get resentful. The nuance of flaming and anger continues game after game, pulling you into a void of darkness. As you play, you keep yourself in, ignoring the swear words and simply trying to find out what you are doing wrong.
This builds and builds, and eventually you are flamed particularly badly, and you snap, flaming back. This opens the door, and spirals down into an insanity of anger and arrogance, leading to reports and intentional feeding.
It is this type of thing that breeds the quite bad community we currently suffer. People grow to become angry at other players for the smallest things, because they were judged so harshly. We as average players need to remember that we too were "noop", we too were "newb", or "bad". This is something we need to consider when playing. Just because we're in the medium MM bracket, doesn't mean that we're better than others.
So, if you're too lazy to read everything, at least read this: Next time you consider flaming someone for doing something wrong, remember where you were when you started playing Dota, and try and help, hopefully improving the community in the process.
Image by Biggreenpepper : Original Image
"...even the so-called 'ruskies' and any other non-english speaking country that doesn't play on local servers. Learn English, or stick to your own countrymen..." The servers are called Europe (if u meant US then sry) for a reason. But on the other hand, english is prob the only way people can talk to each other in dota unless you are stacked or extremly lucky. In my case, I usually talk english, even if I'm plaing with 2 other friends of mine, becasue I know that it is frustrating if three or four talk in a language u dont know. And if you readed my text, you probatly know that english isnt my native language so pls dont hate me for my grammar usw. <3
Okay, I agree, in the Europe server you obviously have many different languages on the same server. But don't you think playing online should at least require you to speak a common language if you que on a multi-language server? So if you are unable to properly speak English, learn it. :D
Confirmation bias. People only notice the bad Russians that don't speak English, yet there are good ones that do speak English or don't talk at all.
This is exceptionally true. This is and always will be a community problem. People only ever see the flamers, 'noobs', bad players, and non-English speaking players, and complain about them. They almost always, ALWAYS only represent the minority of the entire community. I have played with so many Russians that say nothing save for the every now and then missing call on the mic, but are masters at Dota and not noob at all, and speak English.
Still, it really does suck when someone from across the world who doesn't speak a lick of English gets queued with you. Valve added options for languages spoken, and regions for servers. That means that they are both selecting servers not close to them and selecting languages they don't speak just so they can get a quicker queue time.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Either way it's something everyone can work on, what scares me is the amount of bigotry that builds up "all russians should die" etc, fighting it ends you up arguing against 50 people, with nobody backing you up, it's frightening.
As you said the language barrier is a huge problem, I've downloaded the Dota 2 Translator from Patrik Sletmo which uses google translate and overlays it on top of dota, translating any text done in all / allies, it's a huge help but it of course doesn't translate what I say to whatever their language is, unless they use it too.
At the moment sletmo.com (where I got it from) is down but I suggest anyone to just google dota 2 translator and you should find a mirror to the download somewhere. (As always with downloading stuff from the internet, proceed with caution.)