Dota 2: The Language Filter

[DustyDrB]

I've only started playing Dota this year, though I have been playing it quite a bit (to put it lightly). An issue I had been running into sometimes (when I can't play with friends for whatever reason) is games (hosted on US servers) full of people who apparently don't speak English. That kind of throws a wrench into the whole communication aspect of the game, as the command wheel and pings only go so far.

I'd checked online and found that people had been complaining of this for a long time, and with much heated debate. Some say it's intolerant to not want to play with people because of the language barrier. Other say it really hinders your teamwork, and why would you want to play on servers where people won't understand you anyways?

Well, Dota 2's update for today has added a language filter, and people have started arguing already. Some say it's racist [http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=72786]. Other say it's poorly implemented [http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=72750]. Some are happy, and some of these also say this is a good reason to report [http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=72654] those who don't respect the filter. Some say it isn't restrictive enough [http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=72669].

I can understand a few of these views. One, the filter only includes English, Russian, and Chinese. That's very limited. It's stupidly limited, actually. Whether it is "racist" (that's not really the right word. Intolerant? That sounds so PC. Eh...) or not I'm really iffy on, because I totally get the frustration of saying something important in game and then having the response back be in another language. But many of the people arguing for the filter do come across as arrogant and seem to forget that the online space is all-inclusive.

So what do you guys think? This goes beyond just Dota. Do you expect the language barrier to be an actual block keeping people speaking in different tongues separated? Or do you think it isn't right to make that separation, and people should find a way to work together despite it?

 

[Daystar Clarion]

When I lose a game because I got randomed with 2 Russians, then there needs to be a system in place so at least I'm paired with people I can actually communicate with.

It's not racist or bigoted, it's just common sense to have a filter in place.

 

[The-Traveling-Bard]

Woops. Totally misread this. I'm very tired at the moment. Hahaha.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

I think people are way too sensitive towards swear words. Racist words? Eh, fine. I can see them censoring that.
But if you're going to upset, and report, and get someone ban just because said. "Shit, I died! Someone come to my line!"

You're just being a baby.

For me swear words are fine if they're not overused, and they're harassing anyone. Besides *everyone swears* even I could get my grandmother to swear, and she's a good christian lady. Bahahaha. It's quite shocking when a person who isn't known to swear actually does.

You didn't even read the OP did you...



Shame on you

 

[The-Traveling-Bard]

I think people are way too sensitive towards swear words. Racist words? Eh, fine. I can see them censoring that.
But if you're going to upset, and report, and get someone ban just because said. "Shit, I died! Someone come to my line!"

You're just being a baby.

For me swear words are fine if they're not overused, and they're harassing anyone. Besides *everyone swears* even I could get my grandmother to swear, and she's a good christian lady. Bahahaha. It's quite shocking when a person who isn't known to swear actually does.

You didn't even read the OP did you...



Shame on you

Corrected my post explaining why I misunderstood. It's been a hard days work, and my brain isn't registering things as it should..

 

[Daystar Clarion]

I think people are way too sensitive towards swear words. Racist words? Eh, fine. I can see them censoring that.
But if you're going to upset, and report, and get someone ban just because said. "Shit, I died! Someone come to my line!"

You're just being a baby.

For me swear words are fine if they're not overused, and they're harassing anyone. Besides *everyone swears* even I could get my grandmother to swear, and she's a good christian lady. Bahahaha. It's quite shocking when a person who isn't known to swear actually does.

You didn't even read the OP did you...



Shame on you

Corrected my post explaining why I misunderstood. It's been a hard days work, and my brain isn't registering things as it should..

[HEADING=1]No excuse![/HEADING]

You should understand things, one hundred percent, one hundred percent of the time.

 

[The-Traveling-Bard]

I think people are way too sensitive towards swear words. Racist words? Eh, fine. I can see them censoring that.
But if you're going to upset, and report, and get someone ban just because said. "Shit, I died! Someone come to my line!"

You're just being a baby.

For me swear words are fine if they're not overused, and they're harassing anyone. Besides *everyone swears* even I could get my grandmother to swear, and she's a good christian lady. Bahahaha. It's quite shocking when a person who isn't known to swear actually does.

You didn't even read the OP did you...



Shame on you

Corrected my post explaining why I misunderstood. It's been a hard days work, and my brain isn't registering things as it should..

[HEADING=1]No excuse![/HEADING]

You should understand things, one hundred percent, one hundred percent of the time.

D:< But, but...
Tiredness.. it.. drains... my.. IQ level.

 

[z3tzilla]

One, the filter only includes English, Russian, and Chinese.

This is, basically, a big checkbox asking "ARE YOU RUSSIAN?". I've never seen any threads about chinese players ruining games, yet i see threads about russians being the plague of dota almost every single day...

I'm really glad they didn't region lock the entire thing. I hope they will never do.

Still, i don't think that this will help. Most of the games i've played were silent. As in "command wheel and pings" only, even if every player spoke english. People don't even bother. That's the nature of pub games, especially when you're soloing. There was a great post on dev.dota2 that describes this perfectly:

The language "problem" is one of the stupidest things Dota2 players complain about. These people who complain about not being able to communicate with their team are going to still have the same problem. Even if everyone in their game spoke the same language, they would still complain and blame someone or something else for their loss.

The quality of games will not change because everyone on your team can speak your language. You aren't going to win anymore either, and you are not going to have better teamwork. After playing hundreds of games on USW and USE, I'd have to say that the majority of games has nobody using their mic or talking in chat. Most games only have pings on maps and using the chat wheel. And when there is communication, it's only to talk shit to each other or the enemy team or to complain how they have RU/BR on their team.

P.S. Yes, before you ask, i am russian myself. No, i don't like playing with "stereotypical russian dota players" myself.

 

[WoW Killer]

Isn't there a shortcut system for calling mia's and the like? That should let people communicate even when they don't speak the same language. To what extent can you play a match just using the shortcuts?

 

[endtherapture]

They should just ban Russians from going into any other servers apart from the Russian area.

I don't mind playing with or against other foreign people, they usually have a grasp of English but Russians don't even try at all.

 

[DustyDrB]

snip

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I'm not saying you won't win any games where your team has minimal communication, but some of the closer games are won and lost by how well your team communicates. Even in the games where I didn't play with friends, I've had random people who were excellent at this. Pinging the map doesn't say everything. Like..."Enemy push coming to mid. Meet at the tower and wait for me to initiate on the Earthshaker". And yes, I have honest to goodness had more than a few games already like that playing only with pubbers. Those kinds of games where everyone communicates are a pure joy.

 

[WoW Killer]

To what extent you can win a match by just using the shortcuts?

Well, that question is answered by a question. How bad is the team you're playing against?

If we're talking top-tier pre-mades, then I doubt there's going to be a language barrier. I'm on about your standard run-of-the-mill public games. How much extra communication do you typically see? If the shortcuts aren't enough, could they be expanded on? Like, if there's just a generic "push" shortcut, you could easily expand for things like "push top", "push mid" etc. I'm just thinking that stopping to type out a more specific command isn't something you're always going to have the time to do. As an act of opportunism, say you spot an enemy out of position in the jungle that could be easily ganked, you're not going to type out "there's an enemy out of position in the jungle, lets go gank him". You can only ping and hope your teammates get the message.

 

[Smertnik]

I'm sure if the feature is here to stay more language options will be added later on. This is still beta, after all.
Either way, it's better than nothing. Even if 1% of the non-English speakers use the feature correctly it's still 1% less non-English speakers you have to deal with.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Personally, I'd appreciate it if games that require coordination matched me with people I could communicate with. This isn't a case of country club "keep the foreigners out". I can't understand them and chances are good they can't understand me. That undermines my experience and theirs.

That said, in the unashamedly identical game League of Legends, my own experience has been that Spanish speaking players are prevalent. In many cases that I've observed, they are capable of communicating in english (and respond appropriately to efforts at communication) and as such I have had few problems. The closest I've come is instances where I'm playing at an odd hour where the bulk of my team is Spanish speaking and they simply communicate in that language. In that case, their attempts to communicate are failing because I was a allowed to play with them.

The sorting system works both ways I think. It is only at the highest levels of play that such a system may introduce any unfairness that I can see where language limitations might keep an otherwise world class player relegated to a relatively small pool. But the problem of such equity seems far beyond the scope of problems within the developer's control. Those who cry foul essentially argue that a huge population ought to be given less than ideal scenarios when an easy technological solution exists essentially to serve the highest levels of play.

And for games built on the notion that they'd like the bulk of us to give them five bucks every now and then, such a tack seems silly to take.

There is one final addendum however: in my experience very little of the text chat is constructive. It's usually statements that are obvious (x player with 10 kills is "fed"). The only non-obvious things are statements that players are missing from their lanes. Given that such trivial information could easily be communicated via any number of means (even the Spanish speaking players say top MIA rather than. . . whatever the Spanish word for top is (I live in Texas - you'd THINK that'd be something I'd know)). All the rest is generally complaints about one thing or another, accusations of lack of skill and a general mass of text that seems intended offend.

 

[CrazyJew]

Look, I know Russian, I was born in Ukraine, but grew up in Israel, which is closer to EU servers, and I asked them why they insisted on invading EU servers and refusing to speak anything but Russian.

Because they can. Because it's faster matchmaking and they don't care how much it ruins the experience for others. They will keep doing it.

 

[WoW Killer]

"Easily ganked" - what does this mean? Is the enemy low on both health and mana while the rest of his team pushes mid hard? Then you lucked out. This will happen once in 10 games. Not a common occurence once you leave the molten core bracket.

Anything above that and you have start asking yourself things like who is the enemy hero? Is it Enigma? Is his ultimate up? If so, does he have enough mana for it? Does he have a blink? Does he have a BKB? If so, can he BKB and TP out? If he does, will it be worth forcing out the BKB charge and reducing its duration for the next proper fight? Where is the rest of his team standing? Do they have any heros that could turn around this gank?

I could keep going on like this for half a page. It is impossible to ask or answer these questions with a shortcut system, you'd need 3 keyboards for every command. You need 5 people typing in chat in the same language, or even better, 5 people talking over mic in the same language.

You've missed the point. You can't relay that information by typing either. If somebody is in a gankable position, you may only have seconds to communicate that to your friends. By the time you've typed out who they are, their gear, whether their ultimate is available et. al. they're already back to safe ground. For proper communication, you need Skype. If you're on Skype with your teammates... I'm assuming you speak the same language as them.