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[Serious] A flamers perspective on the Low Priority System.
First off, a bit about myself. In the last 6 months, I have played [a consecutive total of 120 Low Priority matches](https://www.dotabuff.com/players/40253209/matches?date=6month&game_mode=single_draft), as I do not play Single Draft otherwise. I am also currently taking a break from Dota 2 because I do not think my behavior is acceptable, and am coming to grips that I have manic depression/bipolar disorder, which runs in my family. Dota 2 accidently became a channel for dealing with the lows for me, and I reached some dangerous mental points after losing my job, up to and including suicidal tendencies. I'm thankful for the friends in my life who have helped me cope, and thankful that I've recently come to terms with my symptoms and can work on dealing with them. That being said;

I want to talk about my experiences in Low Priority.

For starters this post is difficult for me to make because I am extremely ashamed of my behavior, and revealing all of that information to the public is hard. I've said a lot of shit I didn't mean, and that I'm not proud of, and have deserved every bit of low priority I've gotten minus a couple exceptions. I should not have been playing this game at all in the mindset I'm in, and would take it back if I could. Low priority is working as designed, in that it catches the worst outliers, the groups of players that are just not fun to play games with, even if there are varying amounts of innocents caught in the system from patch to patch.

However; ***I strongly believe that the "Intended Design" of Low Priority is hurting the community.***

Here's the thing; Low Priority games are different from any other mode you'll play. In a good way. You can't lose MMR, and if you say something that offends someone what are they going to do, report you? Give you double low priority? No one has any power over you, so people just cut loose.

You'd think though that when the worst of the worst, the scum of the earth, are grouped together, it would be a sort of hell on earth. Why isn't it?

The answer is simply because these people are still human beings. We forget that very easily online, and from my experience I'm actually the exception to the rule. I would be angry as hell in any setting, including low priority, yet I'd literally play a game with someone I recognized from a few games ago who was just screaming and raging, who was the chillest person in the world in LPQ. When the stress of being punished, lashed out at, reported and judged is gone, a lot of people just... turn into different people.

Plus, a lot of people in low priority are not there for raging. Some just have awful internet, some people don't actually have LP and are partied with their friends, and some are just Techies/Terrorblade/<insert obnoxious hero> spammers. As a result most games of Low Priority I play are way better than either ranked or unranked, with significantly less assholes. Here are some examples of the games I've played. With randoms:

- Played a game of Chen poorly, when I was in a rare good mood. Role played as a holier than thou stereotype in allchat and had a blast even though we eventually lost. Got a ton of commends.

- Obligatory dagon squad

- All summon/illusion strats

- People bargaining for lanes in unusual ways (I'll buy you bottle/flip a coin/my hero looks cooler) and generally more light-hearted talk. Plus the occasional "everyone put their hero in mid lane" joke pregame.

- Unusual hero builds and roles, due to people experimenting with new heroes or getting an odd selection in single draft.

- Other stuff I can't remember because 6 months is a long time and I generally was the rudest person on the team.

See, reports give people a power, that I honestly believe most people shouldn't have. I used to play a lot of Team Fortress 2, and there was a word that would make most players skin crawl in disgust: SKIAL. SKIAL was a group of servers notorious for letting people pay to be mods, and this was pretty agreed upon to be "the worst". You say something a mod doesn't like? Banned. Kill a mod too many times? Obviously you're griefing, banned. Unusual? It's ugly, banned. Sound familiar? If not, replaced 'banned' with 'reported' and it probably will be.

I've always had an abrasive personality, to a fault, and speak my mind. Some people like the honesty, a lot of others don't. Even when I'm not riding a low point I'd often rub people the wrong way, and it creates tension in a team when people are scared to talk to each other. So they rage, they blame, they do whatever they can to draw attention away from themselves. It creates a tension, and a need in people to feel like they have to either say nothing at all, or try to make someone *else* look like the idiot when the game goes wrong.

To me, low priority has always felt like a solution to its own problem. It creates this scenario where everyone is just threatening each other, and it isolates people. I've seen some scary shit in this game, including some people talking about suicide and killing themselves... and that's just not ok with me, it doesn't sit right in my stomach. These people don't need reported and sent off to some group by themselves, they need help. They need love, compassion, understanding. There isn't a system in the game for properly dealing with this kind of behavior, and the idea of just beating people into behaving well is an outdated concept.

I don't pretend to know a magic solution, but as someone who has spent a lot of time in a place some people never enter, I strongly believe that low priority is doing more damage than simply not having it, just because of the fear that going there causes, and it changes how people communicate with one another in the average game of dota. When the fear of not being reported is gone, a lot of people can relax, the anxiety dissipates, and anyone raging is usually met with "dude, it's just low priority". People can actually be themselves; some people even realize this, and intentionally get low priority because it's just a better social experience.

Thank you for your time reading this; try not to judge too strongly, because an eye for an eye makes the world blind.

With Love,
Christian Boler

**tl;dr:** Reports create a hostile environment in the game that let's people threaten each other, and causes tension. This makes games worse, and most people other than myself who are in low priority usually behave better in Low Priority when that tension is gone.

Author: ChBoler

https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/5or3vz/serious_a_flamers_perspective_on_the_low_priority/
http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comme...pective_on_the_low_priority/?ref=search_posts