Diversification

gwon made a comment on my post Fifteen Minute Cast Time where he said:

Something else to think about: you actually have an advantage because they are restricting themselves to not having girls on their team, while your team can actually have players based on skill and not gender.

I don't think they specifically chose not to have a girl, it probably never came up. I know Alex had a girl in his DotA clan for a while, but some of the stuff I heard gave me the impression that she was more interested in socalising than playing, and I think eventually she dropped out. So it probably gives a bad impression for any future females who want to join, as people tend to try and work out what went wrong and blame it on whatever difference they can perceive.

I spent an hour in a workshop at work where people were trying to discuss the problem of the lack of females in technology. I actually found it a bit boring, because it mostly involved women talking about how they can't work as much as they would like because they have kids. While there may be a gender agenda when it comes to corporate life, I don't think it applies so much to gaming. I definitely don't recruit people based on gender (though my requirements are a bit more strict, I only like to invite people who I know in real life, but I don't hold anyone else to that same requirement, so they are free to invite whoever they want).

There was a girl that Julian and Char wanted to invite to the clan, but they left the decision up to me. Through random chance, we ended up playing in a game against her, our group of friends against her group of friends, and we won. I made the excuse that I didn't want to invite her because she wasn't very good, but I think I just didn't want a stranger in our clan. But maybe I should have invited her, so that we could train her up. I've invited people who aren't great into the clan (*cough, cough*), so it's not really fair to leave her out for that reason.

Anyway, back to gwon's comment. One of the arguments they always bring up when talking about the whole gender diversity thing is that when you bring together a bunch of people from diverse backgrounds it makes it easier to solve new problems, because you can draw from a wide range of knowledge. I think for things like gaming and sports, the opposite is true. When you are out there playing, you want to act like a well-oiled machine, you don't want someone rocking the boat. When our clan fields a team of five, we (mostly) listen to each other, and we've played together enough now to have a rough idea of each other's play style. We are not identical robots, but we are also not so different that we end up clashing in each game and not being able to function.

I think that in cases like these, diversity can be a problem, because you just end up butting heads too often to be able to function properly. But with computers being the great equaliser, I think people should be ranked based on their skill and experience.

As I discussed last time, there are so many variations in a game that it's difficult to create accurate models. So now when I say something like "1700 level Tundra", I'm not taking into account match-ups against specific teams, what I mean is that on average, in a 1700 level game, you will not play badly as Tundra (I know that is also subjective, but the gist of it is you don't die too often, you perform the role you want to perform (keyword "want": dps, initiator, support)).

Given a limited amount of time, you will acquire a certain amount of experience (represented by the area under the graph). How much experience you gain depends on your level of skill, and the level of skill that you play at. E.g. someone who has played a lot of RTS games in the past and starts to play HoN may pick up game concepts a lot faster than someone who doesn't have that background, so they will gain a lot of experience at the start playing against noobs, but after they start to play against more experienced players, their learning will slow down because there are so many little nuances to learn at this point that are game-specific and their RTS background doesn't really help.

So you have jack-of-all trades players, who have played a wide variety of heroes, and while they may have a few favourites, they tend to be fairly average at most heroes. They are very good with team cohesion, as they are able to take up whatever role is missing from the current line-up.

Then there are the specialist players, who tend to play the same few heroes over and over again, and are quite good at those heroes, but pretty poor at all the others. What the dotted line is supposed to indicate is that when you hit a certain level of skill, your overall game experience can make up for your lack of experience with that specific hero. E.g. you are an 1900 level player, and so your map awareness is high, your instincts are refined, and your knowledge of game mechanics is good. Even though you may not have played Myrmidon before, you don't die very often, you are aware enough to be in team fights, and you do your job. Basically, you are helping by not being a hindrance.

Of course, you are never stuck as one type or the other, it's a bit like WoW, you can chuck all of your talent points into a specific area (PvP spec vs PvE spec, for example), or you can try to go some sort of hybrid, where you may not be as good in that area as someone who has devoted all their time to that area, but you can still do what needs to be done. Unlike talent specs, it just takes a lot of time to change over.

Since my headphones have been almost broken, I haven't been able to play HoN with everyone else over Mumble, and it feels like I've lost a limb. I don't tend to talk very much, but being able to listen to what people want to do, or just what they are thinking really helps me work out what to do next. I was reminded of D2: The Mighty Ducks (spoiler incoming, if you haven't seen the movie), after their first game against Iceland:

Julie: Coach Stansson and his team knew everything about us.
Luis: Yeah, and you've just been driving around in convertibles talking with all those sponsor fools.
Fulton: And eating ice cream with the Iceland lady.

I guess I really don't know the people that I play with very well. I should really spend more time getting to know everyone's preferred styles, as I think it would make me a better support player. And I guess in the future, when I am deciding whether or not to recruit people, I should base that decision on how well they will fit in with the people who are currently there.