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Toxic community is something that affects pretty much every online game, doubly so for PVP centric games. Valve seeks to address this issue with a new update that adjusts multiple aspects of ranked play, including requiring players to register a phone number to queue up for Ranked mode in DOTA 2.

With how competitive and addicting games like League of Legends and DOTA 2, it’s no surprise that tensions run high and you start to run into toxic gameplay that ruins the enjoyment of others. Whether this toxicity is language related, intentional feeding, or leaving a game early when things don’t go your way, the behavior of gamers can affect the experience of their teammates pretty quickly and severely.

In the more competitive modes of MOBAs like DOTA 2, people rely on every teammate to carry their weight, and the penalties for losing result in a lower ELO or rank. Losing fair and square is already disappointing enough, but the experience is 1000 times worse when you lose due to toxic teammates.

The addition of a phone number requirement for ranked play lowers the amount of duplicate accounts players can create, as a given phone number can only be on one account at a time.

“There will be a two-week grace period from today during which players have time to register a number, but starting on May 4th, accounts without a registered number will no longer be eligible for Ranked play. If a phone number is removed from an account after registration, a new number can be added, but there will be a three-month waiting period before the removed number can be registered on a new account. This is to prevent using the same number on multiple accounts. Online services that provide phone numbers are not allowed.”

In DOTA 2, players who leave the game early or are reported multiple times by teammates are put into a “low priority queue” where they are forced, for a time, to play only against other reported players and leavers. This situation has worked well, but Valve has made some tweaks to make the system a little bit better with this new patch.

“Being marked for low-priority matches now results in a duration-based ban from the Ranked queue, in addition to the current game-count-based low priority requirement. The ban will start at a low threshold of a few hours, and increase up to four days for players who are very frequently in low priority.”

Completely locking toxic players out of ranked for a short period of time may result in some meaningful behavior form. If not, at least we don’t have to deal with them for up to four days!

In addition to fixing toxicity issues, Valve introduced several changes to DOTA 2 with this patch intended to result  in more balanced matches. Players can now queue up solo again and be matched mostly against players who also queued up by themselves. There was also an adjustment to the way MMR is calculated for players who queue together with vastly different ratings.

“Starting today, if a player’s Solo MMR is higher than their Party MMR, queuing in a party will result in the matchmaker assigning a higher MMR to that player. Effectively, these players will search for a match as if their MMR were halfway between the Solo and Party MMR values.”

What do you guys think of these changes? I think necessitating a phone number attached to an account is a little extreme, but considering how rough the community can be at times maybe it’s necessary. Is Valve overstepping their boundaries with this update? Sound off in the comments below!

As Editor here at GeekReply, I'm a big fan of all things Geeky. Most of my contributions to the site are technology related, but I'm also a big fan of video games. My genres of choice include RPGs, MMOs, Grand Strategy, and Simulation. If I'm not chasing after the latest gear on my MMO of choice, I'm here at GeekReply reporting on the latest in Geek culture.

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