2 Good

A few years ago, someone at work challenged me to a 3v1 Dota 2 match. We have an open office, so I imagine other people heard us discussing it. At the time, I said that I was average at the game (which I think is true given my rating was around 4000). Fast forward to a couple of months ago, when I organised a team Counter-Strike: GO night at the request of one of the devs on my team. I mentioned that I was rubbish at the game, and he said that he had heard I said I was average at Dota 2, and then I won a 3v1 game, so he thought I was just being modest about my FPS skills. I was not, and was definitely dumpster tier on the night (not that it mattered, because everyone had a great time).

It got me thinking, how do you respond to the question, "How good are you?" Ever since I started playing with the Kiwi stack, I've definitely felt bottom-tier in terms of my Dota 2 skills. Then again, that's a pretty biased view, given that most of them are divine / immortal rank. It would be like being the worst player on a VFL football team - sure, you might be bad at that level, but you're probably still ahead of a large number of people who play on amateur teams. You are the 1%.

Well... not quite. Based on my last badge (Ancient 7, which I guess is now Ancient 5), I was in the top 7% based on these opt-in stats from Open Dota users. But I still feel reluctant to say I'm good at the game because I don't honestly feel like I am. Part of it is probably the whole "I know that I know nothing" idea - I've seen just how good people are at the top end and it feels like they're so far away from me. I learn new things just from watching them play.

 

At a different work event, someone found out that I played HoN (it was a long time ago). He asked me how good I was and I told him my PSR. He replied with his, and I nearly said, "I didn't know it could be that low."  But I didn't, and asked him what kind of heroes he liked to play. We spoke a bit, and he kept saying, "Oh, but I bet things are different at your level" which made me feel really awkward. I really feel like I was average at that game, and it wasn't until Dota 2 when I put a lot of effort into improving.

I also think about a story a friend told me about when he found out someone he worked with also played Hearthstone. He asked her what kind of deck she played and she replied, "The blue one". He got the impression that she only played casually as she couldn't remember which class (is that what they're called? I don't play) her deck was. I don't remember the names of most of the spells in the game, especially for the heroes that I don't play. I mean, I recognise them when I see them, so if someone pings that it's on cooldown, I know what they mean, but what's the name of Juggernaut's spin? No clue. What's the name of Monkey King's long stick hitty ability? Wouldn't have the foggiest. Which ability is in Anti-Mage's second ability slot? *blank stare* And this is a game I've put thousands of hours into. Filthy casual, indeed! (But in all seriousness, there are things that I should really know, but don't, like how much gold Black King Bar is off the top of my head.)

So I'm often quite reluctant to say with confidence that I'm "good". Especially when I read online about how women are often quizzed about games in order to prove that they're a "real" gamer. Though I don't think it's happened to me recently. I've been asked about games I play, and people will follow up with questions like, "Which class do you play?" for MMOs, or "Who are your favourite heroes?" for Dota, but they seem like reasonable questions that aren't for the purpose of gatekeeping.

Back to the original question! I could respond with something that is objective, like, "I've played for 4,000 hours, or my MMR is 4000" (is there a link between number of hours played and MMR? Will my MMR shoot up if I play more?!), but what does that mean to someone who doesn't play? One of my co-workers told me that he received a resume where the person listed their MMR in Dota 2. He didn't know what to make of the information so he asked me. 

Depending on the other person, I might be a bit ashamed to reveal just how many hours I've put into the game. Is that the wrong mindset to have? They say that it takes 10,000 hours to master something, and 4,000 hours is a reasonable chunk of the way there. If someone told me they have spent 4,000 hours playing basketball, I'd be impressed - so what's wrong with spending 4,000 hours playing a computer game? Regardless, it's still not a good indicator, as it doesn't really give an indication of the quality of those hours. I could have spent 4,000 hours in the hero browsing screen looking at cosmetics (not talking about anyone in particular).

Let's rewind a bit, and think about why someone would ask such a question. They might be trying to make conversation, and lacking anything else to ask, they asked that. Personally, I think it's a strange question. Using basketball again, if someone mentioned they played basketball, I wouldn't ask how good they are. I might ask if they're part of a team / league, and how often they play. But that's probably because I don't know much about basketball. In any case, an in-depth answer about how good or bad you are probably isn't that interesting to them.

Someone might ask because they also play, and they're looking for someone to play with. And they're an elitist jerk who only wants to play with people who are the same level as them. (Still not talking about anyone in particular.)

In either case, I think the best solution is to answer the same way people answer the question, "How are you?": "Not bad, how about you?" If they don't play, they'll respond that they don't play and you can move on to another topic of conversation, or explain the game to them at a basic level if they seem interested. If they do play and they're an elitist jerk, they'll let you know pretty quickly, and you haven't wasted time telling them about your skill since they don't care anyway. And if they do want someone to play with, and don't care about your level, it opens them up to asking for your gaming details.

And by saying "not bad", you leave yourself a bit of space. If it turns out that they're really good at the game, then you haven't given them the impression that you're on their level. If they're really bad at the game, you don't make them feel awkward about it.

2018 AMD Dota 2 Pro Series by Convictus eSports Group

It's not every day we get a huge Dota 2 tournament in Melbourne, so of course it was something I had to mark in my calendar: the AMD Dota 2 Pro series, run by Convictus eSports Group. The total prize pool was $50,000 (AUD), which isn't TI levels of money that you can retire on, but it's by far the largest prize pool in the Australian Dota 2 scene. Despite being held all the way over here, the team list was nothing to sneeze at, featuring both this year's TI winners, OG, and Kpii's new team, Mineski.

I'll admit, I was really excited to see Kpii live!

The Production

The quality of the production at this tournament was more better than I expected. Full disclosure, this is the first time I've spectated a Dota 2 tournament live, so I don't have much to compare to. I'm more of a player than a spectator, and generally only watch TI and occasionally a major. So to be honest, I wasn't expecting much - maybe something like the Mara Cup (YouTube video) they showcased this year at TI where it's just some fans sitting and watching the players play.

There were booths for the players, they had high-profile casters, and even SirActionSlacks as one of the hosts! Prior to the tournament, Danog, Rangers and DareDevilDota showed Slacks around Melbourne, and they filmed some segments of them doing various things, including going to a water park which I really want to go to now! I think Slacks was a really good sport about everything they had him do - including a shoey. I'd never heard of a shoey before, and I learned something about Australian culture that I didn't really want to know... I won't describe it, in case you also lived in blissful ignorance like I did, but if you want to see it, here's a clip from Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/convictus_esports/clip/FitPoisedLapwingANELE

There was also a tech booth outside the conference room, where you could check out and / or buy stuff between games.

They also organised player signing sessions and Q&As, but I didn't get a chance to check them out as I was watching games.

People who bought VIP tickets also got a showbag.

There was also a water bottle, but I must have lost mine. In case you can't see from the tiny picture, there was a mousepad, two T-shirts (one from Convictus esports Group (size M) and one from AMD (size XL)), a flashlight keyring, pen and phone ring stand thing. VIP ticket holders also got the chance to meet OG backstage!

The Games

The games themselves were really great to watch. I didn't expect to be able to spend most of a day watching Dota 2, but other than a break for lunch and one for dinner, I was riveted. The quality of the games was really high and all of the teams played their hearts out. There were a lot of aggressive plays, and all of the games were quite action-packed. I'm sure most people were surprised to see OG drop to the lower bracket, but they managed to hold out through the elimination rounds until the semi-finals against Newbee.MGB. They won the first game, but Newbee.MGB seemed to find their stride, and dominated the final two games, taking them to the grand final (Dotabuff link for the series: https://www.dotabuff.com/esports/series/1499502-unknown-vs-mineski). They continued that streak, confidently winning the first two games of the best-of-5 grand final against Mineski, and I was pretty crushed going in to watch game 3.

It didn't help that Mineski then gave up Grimstroke, which Newbee.MGB had shown themselves to be really strong with all tournament. But Mineski seemed to have woken up, and did really well in game 3. Watching that game made me so happy, because it's so nice to see Shadow Shaman have such a strong impact. Kpii also did so well on Brewmaster, getting so many good stuns and cyclones with his pandas. Checkout this fight: https://www.dotabuff.com/clips/mineski-trades-4-for-2-4262233447-726435df0edf

Unfortunately, about 32 minutes into the game, another DDoS attack seemed to hit, and the casters' connection cut out. From the spectator point of view, it seemed to go to a black screen, and then suddenly, "MINESKI VICTORY" appeared. I went back to watch the replay, and Mineski took a really good fight near the Dire secret shop, with some great Wyvern cold embraces protecting the team against Troll Warlord. Cat you ended up calling GG.

It wouldn't be a grand final without a divine rapier or two! Phew, I nearly cried when JiaJia's Luna managed to wipe Mineski while defending her base. You can see it pretty clearly on the gold graph.

Fortunately, JT's amazing Morphling plays keep them in the game, they manage to grab one of the rapiers, and even though Luna manages to farm up a second one, it's not enough to stop the Mineski train, and we fortunately get a game 5.

When Mineski last picked Tinker, I groaned a little inside. You have to understand, that it was around 11pm by this point, and the tournament started at 9am, so it was a long day - and I wasn't even the one playing. Fortunately, the game wasn't your typical Tinker snorefest, and ended up being the most exciting. There was a lot of back and forth, as you can see from the networth graph.

Despite the late hour, I wasn't feeling sleepy at all, it was an edge-of-your-seat game. I really thought Newbee.MGB were going to take it, but Tinker's buyback to save the base made it too hard for them to push in. It was a grand finish at the end: https://www.dotabuff.com/clips/mineski-teamwipes-newbee-mgb-4262448841-0e572d6d6808

The Memes

And what kind of Dota 2 tournament would it be without its memes?

Shoey

I think I covered that earlier. I still think it's gross, but it became a meme.

Glen (Glenn?)

As I mentioned earlier, the tournament suffered from some DDoS attacks, causing either the casters' connection to drop out, or the game to lag out completely (https://www.twitch.tv/convictus_esports/clip/AgileBlindingCobblerImGlitch). It seemed better by the second day, with the players being able to play on most of the time, but there were quite a few pauses throughout the day. Mish and Slacks did a great job keeping the audience entertained, but Glen became an unofficial hero, as the Internet connection seemed to get fixed whenever he got up on stage. MLP ended up giving him a tie signed by OG as thanks.

Slacks (left), Glen and Mish

The anime mousepads

There were a few AMD giveaways throughout the tournament, including I think CPUs and graphics cards, but nothing was more coveted than what Slacks was alternatively calling the "anime mousepads" or the "weeb mousepads".

The famous AMD anime mousepad

There were a few competitions to win one, including: singing, answering questions about Sailor Moon, acting out iconic Australian movie scenes. One guy one a graphics card, but decided he wanted to swap it for the "second place" prize: the anime mousepad. That shows you the true value!

Box Hill

OG.Jerax's flight didn't land until after the first day of the tournament was due to finish, so one of OG.Ana's friends stepped in to save the day. A previously unknown player, who for some reason chose the somewhat sketchy Melbournian suburb of Box Hill as his gamer name got to play with some of the biggest names in Dota 2, and he really held his own. It's true that OG did drop down to the lower bracket, but he played amazingly well to keep them in the tournament. Unfortunately, as Jerax was back for the second day, he had to get benched, but he will always be in our memories.

I really hope he does manage to get on a team after this.

I'm fat

Being in front of a mic when you signed up for it is hard enough, so I can't imagine the pressure you're under when you have a mic shoved in front of you. Kinda rough to answer the question, "Tell us something about yourself" with "I'm fat", but it can happen: https://www.twitch.tv/convictus_esports/clip/KindSmallShingleNerfRedBlaster

I thought it was endearing.

Conclusion

Personally, I had a great time. Sure, the DDoS pauses were annoying, but I think Slacks in particular kept things going. Oh, how could I miss mentioning the AMD rep (whose name was Adam, I think... or Matt or Mark...), he was funny. Celebrity Heads Dota was fun.

With the audience response to "Am I an agility hero?" about SirActionSlacks a resounding, "No!" Poor guy. I think he did well at the water park obstacle course, he deserves to be an AGI hero! In my brief sojourn as a caster, we had a situation where the game was paused for a long time, and it's really hard to fill in that void with chatter. I have a lot of respect for Mish and Slacks doing such a great job keeping people's spirits up.

It was also fortunate that they had the Slacks in Melbourne videos to play.

Overall, the games were fun to watch, and I'm glad there was a chance for some up-and-coming teams to show off their skills. It'd be nice to see more Australian Dota 2 players around, and even though I'm well past even considering a professional Dota 2 career, I want to see eSports in Australia grow in general.

Maybe so I don't have to sheepishly admit to my co-workers that I've logged 4500 hours in the game.

Keep Bonding and Nobody Explodes

In my first actual focused attempt to "bring people together", I organised a team bonding session with the game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes for the programming team. The game is multiplayer, with one person acting as the bomb defuser and everyone else the bomb experts.

The bomb defuser is the only person who can see the bomb and has to describe it to the other players. That wouldn't be so bad if the bomb just had a bunch of different coloured wires, like they do in movies, but instead, the bomb has multiple "modules", each with a different method of disarmment.

The experts have to use the bomb defusal manual, hosted at the hilariously named URL http://www.bombmanual.com/ (which is now in Jal's search history at work), to work out how to defuse the bomb.

Our first few attempts were quite rough, only managing to disarm two or three modules before the bomb exploded, but after that, we had developed our own language to describe things and settled into a bit of a pattern. We worked out which of the modules we could farm out, so that we could work things out in parallel, and different people had different modules that they were better at solving.

In the end, we managed to disarm 2 out of 7 bombs, mostly getting stuck on any bomb that had the morse code module, as none of us were any good at reading morse code (Jal knows morse code, but he had to leave early to join some other people for lunch).

As far as team bonding exercises go, I think this one was pretty good. The instructions are straightforward, and if you play it the way MrFodder suggests (where you only have one copy of the bomb defusal manual which is divided up between all the other players), allows everyone a chance to contribute. I don't think this would work too well with a group larger than 5 though, as you run the risk of someone not having a module they can help out with, so they end up sitting out the entire round. This game isn't really about building trust, but more about developing effective methods of communication. And to a slight degree, leadership.

You quickly find that if everyone is talking over everyone else, it becomes impossible to clearly communicate the correct instructions to disarm the bomb, especially when some of the modules are purposely designed to make it hard to communicate. One of them has instructions that depend on which words are displayed on the screen, but the options are things like "YOUR" and "YOU'RE". We didn't really have a designated leader, as such, but once we started getting into the swing of things, I noticed Nev would say things like, "Fodder, you do this while I do this" and it helped us solve the modules faster, because we weren't doubling up on work.

I don't think our team really needed much bonding, as everyone was really co-operative throughout the entire session. Whenever someone figured out a way to do something better, everyone else complimented them on the suggestion. But it wasn't like we had a hive mind / yes-man attitude,  if someone miscalculated something, everyone felt perfectly comfortable jumping in and saying, "I don't think that's right, I think we should not cut the blue wire because the manual says _______." It didn't even matter that our boss was there with us, people were perfectly fine correcting him, too.

That's a sign that we are a cohesive team: everyone feels comfortable around each other. We're not trying to compete to show off the fact that we're the best, and we don't have that "fake nice" demeanor that just gives the illusion of being cohesive, but just hides the torrent of tension bubbling underneath. Even when the clock is ticking, and we're nearly out of time, nobody criticizes anyone for making a mistake, and as a team, we usually work out something so that we don't make the same mistake next time.

I've noticed that in some of my solo queue Dota 2 games there's the initial teamwork, but that usually falls apart at the first sign of trouble. For the most part, the team is happy at the start, everyone is getting along (maybe because I usually take the support role, so nobody is fighting to pick a core hero early in order to dodge having to play support). In most of my games there's no complaints about playstyle until we lose first blood, which usually happens in the offlane  or mid (and I'm in the safelane).

That usually degenerates into people yelling at me, telling me how to play - often with conflicting instructions (mid wants me to gank mid, safe lane wants me to hang around so that they can farm, offlane wants me to gank offlane). Inevitably, I will fail someone, and that person feels vindicated in their belief that we're losing because I didn't do what they said. So they decide to become the new leader of the team and begin bossing everyone around, telling them how to play and asking why they bought one item instead of another. If I don't manage to redeem myself at this point, a clusterbomb goes off and everyone starts telling everyone else what to do. Except it seems like some of them have muted each other by this point, so they start talking over each other.

I really need to work on my "bring people together" skills, so I can nip this in the bud before it happens, and hopefully that'll help keep the team from falling apart. Comparing how we played Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes and how I play with randoms in Dota 2, I think I need to work harder on complimenting people when they do well, but also on trying to do what other people think needs to be done - even if I disagree. And if it's not possible, at least try to explain why, "Sorry, I can't gank mid right now because they are harassing us a lot in the safe lane."

Maybe they won't fall into that spiral of "we're losing because nobody listens to me" if they feel like their complaints are being acknowledged, but it's just not feasible to address it. And in any case, it gives them a chance to say, "Maybe the safe lane can jungle for a bit while you help me in mid" and we talk about how we're going to go forward, rather than me just deciding what I'm going to do in a silent rage.

Once You Go Black

As Pharmacist put it:

crush on black intensifies

I first noticed Black back in TI2, I think it was. He did a player interview, and talked about what he would do with the money if he won. He said he really wanted to win so that he could buy a house for his parents. Which is pretty much my goal in life, so that immediately warmed him to me.

I can't say what he's like behind the scenes, but he seems to be a really friendly player, and if I were famous for something, I'd like to behave like him.

He doesn't seem over-the-top arrogant, and not your typical dudebro. There's a video of him from TI4 where he was asked to sign a QoP cosplayer's boobs, and as you can imagine, it's really awkward. He looks really uncomfortable about the whole thing. Which I found endearing. Which is the weirdest thing I've had to write today. He addresses it in his IAmA:

I also read that he hung around signing autographs long after a lot of the other players had left.

Plus, he replied to me when I asked if we could meet (we couldn't, unfortunately).

And this was after I wrote him a 3 paragraph message asking him to meet up. So he's no single-line-response NiceMoustacheGuy!

I don't seem to be loyal to any particular team. I mostly follow certain players: black^, iceiceice, kpii, Akke.

Look at Kpii's adorable drawing of Tidehunter!

For me, I enjoy seeing people with nice personalities than spectacular Dota playing. Probably why I wasn't super upset that Newbee lost this year.

Speaking of building snowmen, I've been slowly making progress with this song.

Not that it means I can sing now, but at least I'm getting more and more in tune for this particular song! MrFodder was humming it earlier, and I was surprised he even knew the song as he had only seen the movie once, and I purposely avoid playing the game when he's around so he doesn't have to hear my bad singing. He said that I hum this song quite regularly, seemingly without realising!

Grill'd

It finally happened to me - the reason I was inspired to start my Dota 2 experiment in the first place. I got grouped with someone who thinks girls are bad players.

Dotabuff: https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/3574096046
OpenDota: https://www.opendota.com/matches/3574096046

Unfortunately, I wanted to get both of my accounts to roughly 4000 MMR before starting my experiment, so I hadn't started recording yet, and I wish I had, because a lot of the stuff was said over voice chat.

As you can see from the post-match screen, the enemy team's Huskar player was called: ♥DotaPrincess♥. Just before 5 minutes into the game, our Spectre asks Huskar if he's a girl.

Overall all chat log (open dota can't access teamchat, only all chat):

Pudge asks how Spectre knows that Huskar is a girl. Spectre replies, "Because girls are bad. Do you know any girls who are good at the game?" Pudge replies that he doesn't know any girls, but adds that he doesn't know any girls who are good either. Clockwerk, Mirana and I don't say anything.

Admittedly, I didn't play my best, and missed an easy gank, and later, Spectre asks if I'm a girl. I thought about whether to reply. I'd already messed up a couple of fights. Chances are, I was going to make more mistakes in the future, and I think I was the lowest rated person in the game (the game only tells you the highest rated person, and there was a decent gap between my MMR (3.9k) and Spectre's, which was I think 4.3k).

I could have told the truth. Any mistake I made would be magnified, and possibly even make it to all chat so the other team would also know how much my teammates had to suffer by having a girl on their team. But if I played well, maybe it'd show them that not all girls are bad at the game.

I could have lied. Nobody would have any evidence to counter my claim, the game would move on, nothing would change.

Instead, I chose to say nothing. Well, I didn't really choose, as such. I felt myself getting angry, because he was obviously insinuating that I was bad by asking if I was a girl, which was stupid, because we just won a teamfight, 4v5, losing only Pudge, and taking out everyone on their team except Sniper. I wasn't playing that well to begin with, and if they started flaming me, I didn't think I would be able to keep a positive focus. I spent too long trying to think of a response, so the moment passed.

Their attention shifted to Mirana instead, though it didn't stop this:

(I had Aether Lens and Glimmer Cape.)

Anyway, I've been making lots of excuses not to start the experiment in earnest, because I was starting to feel like I wasn't going to find a result. Maybe I play too many games in a party.

It was this last stupid comment in the post-game chat that made me feel fired up about doing my experiment again.

This should actually make me feel more fired up about getting better at the game. Maybe that's a more productive use of my time.

Normally I'd try and blur out people's names to protect their privacy, but you can find it in Dotabuff / OpenDota anyway.

Bane of My Existence

Can you guess when my subscription to Photoshop ran out based on the recent quality of my images?

I got asked a question, "If I were a Dota hero, which one would I be?" which sounds like a question from one of those ad-filled websites, "Which is your spirit power ranger?" but I did try to answer it sincerely, and in the end, I chose Bane.

My most played hero are Crystal Maiden, Rubick and Silencer, and my most successful hero (with more than 10 games) is Magnus (75% with 12 games) - though more realistically, KotL (60% with 122 games). But I don't think any of those heroes suit my personality. I like Silencer the most, because I like stealing people's int, as I know how frustrating it can be playing heroes like Crystal Maiden, who really feel it when they have a diminished mana pool. I don't think he suits my personality though.

The first hero that jumped out at me was Bane. Mostly because of his ult, and I think this is probably a core part of my personality (Bane's ultimate skill is Fiend's Grip, and is a channelled spell which stops your target from being able to do anything except writhe around in pain, but you can't do anything else either as you have to focus your attention on them 100%). I find that when something or someone captures my attention, it absorbs my focus. Almost to the point that I would say I have an addictive personality. When the target of my attention is a person, then that's where the trouble begins. I find that I become hyperaware. For instance, a week ago, NMG was invisible to me. Sure, I knew who he was, and I'd talk to him when the need arose, but other than that, he was white noise. Ever since the moustache compliment challenge, I've become incredibly aware of where he is at all times. I can pick his voice out of a crowd. I've started noticing things like when he arrives at work, when he tends to go to lunch, when he goes for a coffee, where he likes to sit in meetings.

Fortunately, there will usually be someone around to interrupt my ultimate, before I go too far off the deep end. But there was one case where I finished channelling, and let's just say, my poor victim is married to me now.

As for his other skills:

Enfeeble: reduces an enemy hero's attack damage.
In a weird way, I think I do this by befriending people. It's possible that it's just because of my gender, but I find that my co-workers are less inclined to say bad things to me, or blame me for things, and I think it's because I'm friendly. Jal says that nobody minds it when I change their desktop background, or leave silly text documents on their computer because they like me. Not that I see my co-workers as enemies!

Brain sap: drains life from an enemy hero.
MrFodder always accuses me of draining his energy. I very rarely drink coffee and get up a stupid o'clock, yet somehow I'm annoyingly cheerful at work. His theory is that he's always so tired because I drain his energy away.

Nightmare: Bane puts an enemy hero to sleep. If the slept target is attacked, the attacker will fall asleep.
Well, I think this blog speaks enough on its own. Have you seen my 4000 word diatribes on Star Wars?! And then if some poor sap gets tricked into linking it to one of their friends, well, let me tell you: let this nightmare never end.

For a creepy note to end this post, as Bane would say, "See you in your dreams." (Warning: it's kinda loud)

Dr Cox or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Unfriend with Aplomb

A former Valve employee posted a Half Life 3 fanfic recently, and it seems to have caused a lot of backlash against Valve's current franchise baby, Dota 2, the implication being that Valve's focus has shifted and Dota is to blame for why there isn't going to be a Half Life 3. The fact that Valve announced they'd be making a card game based on Dota 2 probably didn't help things. The response seems to be to post a heap of negative reviews for the game.

I don't know how much of an impact the negative reviews will have on the game, everyone I know who plays it only plays it because a friend of their recommended it to them. And the kind of people who are likely to sink cash into the game are people who already enjoy it. I guess it adds just another thing to stop new people from choosing the game.

Some of the reviews are funny.

"Think of how many fans of Half Life died during this time... They talked about how cool it would be to see the continuation of the game. But alas. They will never see it."

I thought this one was clever.

This one pretty much sums up how I feel about Dota.

Person claims to have spent 3 hours in a tutorial but has 2 hours on record. To have finished the tutorial and finished an entire game (approx 40 mins) in 2 hours is quite impressive.

"When Artifact releases you better prepare for unforseen consequences." What are you going to do, leave another negative review? Oh no.

Anyway, reviews aside, I noticed that one of my "friends" jumped on the bandwagon. I put it in quotation marks because we met once, at a party hosted by a mutual friend, added each other on Facebook and then Steam, and have succeeded in never playing a game together since. He messages me every now and again to get me to look at a screenshot from whatever game he happens to be playing at the time, but that's the extent of our friendship. I've been meaning to remove him for a while, and I haven't. I can't really explain why. Maybe I felt bad for him? Maybe I didn't want to put our mutual friend into an awkward situation?

It really bothered me to see that today because often I would have no interest in his comments or screenshots, but I always listened to him patiently, and made some sort of conversation about his screenshots. I'd let him explain skill build ideas to me, and even look up the mechanics of the game to understand what he was talking about. I haven't once said anything against his interests, so to see him to so against one of mine really pissed me off.

Well, today, after nearly 8 years of "friendship", I've finally removed him. It's probably been a year since we last messaged each other anyway. I still feel bad for doing it, but I also feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, as I felt guilty whenever I saw his name pop-up.

Pudge and Silencer at the Library

Fan-Fiction Friday! Featuring two of my favourite Dota 2 heroes: Silencer and Pudge. My goal in writing this is to channel my 15-year-old self.

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Silencer's stomach began to grumble, and he quickly silenced it through sheer force of will. He looked up to see if his master had noticed, but his master didn't even stir from his sleep. Quietly sliding on his terry-towel slippers, Silencer slowly made his way towards the hall, gently opening the door and then sliding it shut without making a sound. It wouldn't do to wake his master up this early.

Once he made it to the outer confines of the Sanctuary, he changed into his boots and ran towards the butcher shop. He was really excited to see what Mr Goldstone had on offer today, as the chef said that since it was birthday, he could pick what they'd be eating for dinner.

He walked in the door, and covered his ears in pain.

Clink, clink, clink. Someone was dragging chains around, and the loud sound was far more than he was used to.

"Stop! Please stop!" he whispered in desparation, hoping someone would end the agony.

The clinking stopped.

"CHIN CHOPPER, CHIN CHOPPER," the fat green-haired man drawled.

"Pudge, shhhh!" Mr Goldstone ran out frantically from the back. He turned to Silencer. "I'm sorry, " he whispered quietly. "This is my nephew, Pudge. Me brother wants him to learn a trade, said he likes workin' with meat."

Silencer finally took in the strange, fat creature in front of him. His hair was a disgusting shade of green -the kind of colour you'd expect to see in a toxic waste dump, or cow poop. His face looked like a truck had run over it, and then reversed so it could run over it again. His teeth struggled to stay in his mouth. His eyes looked like they were candies on a gingerbread man that had fallen off and a child had clumsily glued them back on. Did he even have a nose? It was hard to tell. Then you get to his body. It was easy to see why he was called Pudge.

"LOOK AT ALL THAT MEAT JUST WAITING TO BE CARVED" Pudge yelled, proudly.

Silencer covered his ears in pain again, and saw Mr Goldstone saying something to Pudge, but couldn't make out the words. Once Pudge's mouth stopped moving, he hesitantly uncovered his ears.

"What would you like today, Mr Silencer?"

"The chef said I could have whatever I wanted for dinner tonight, because it's my birthday!"

"We just got some fresh lamb from the farm up near Top Tower. Reckon it'd go great with some rosemary. Pop it in the oven with some potatoes."

"Sounds delicious. And the usual order for everyone else, thanks."

Mr Goldstone whispered something into Pudge's ear, and the boy / man / creature's eyes perked up. He picked up the butcher's knife from the block, and with a speed that seemed unbelievable given the thing's side, he quickly carved out the choice pieces from a large lamb hanging from a hook and wrapped it up. Silencer watched him in awe, his movements were mesmerising.

After packaging the lamb, he set to work on the other carcasses, laughing softly to himself and repeating, "Fresh meat", over and over again. His apron was covered in blood, but he didn't seem to care, happily slashing away.

Mr Goldstone tapped Silencer on the shoulder. "I hope you don't mind, but Brody is sick today, so I've asked Pudge to help carry the meat back to the Sanctuary. He moves slowly, but he's really strong. Between the two of you, it should be an easy trip. I've told him that you lot like it quiet up there."

Silencer was reminded of the noisy brute he saw this morning. Maybe he could get him to wait outside while he slowly ferried the meat into the kitchen.

"Bit of a hack-job, that." Pudge said, toning down his voice at least 30 decibels, as he began packing the wrapped bundles of meat into a box. Silencer grabbed the smaller of the boxes, and the two of them headed towards the Sanctuary. Fortunately, it seemed Pudge was not much of a talker, so the journey was quiet.

They approached the Sanctuary, and Pudge's eyes lit up once again as he saw all the animals in the yard.

"PUDGE IS HERE!" he declared, loudly.

Silencer dropped the box and covered his ears, too incapacitated to stop Pudge from running into the Sanctuary. His eyes opened in panic, as he feared what would happen.

Pudge happily ran about, his large body knocking vases and causing the ground to shake. Book shelves were falling over. Books that had been precariously balanced in sorted stacks topped over.

"SO MUCH MEAT, SO LITTLE TIME!" He crashed through the fence towards the animals.

"YOU'LL LOOK GOOD WITH AN APPLE IN YET MOUTH!"

Silencer looked on in horror, as Pudge continued making his way towards the animals, who had sensed that something was up.

"NICE BIT O' CREEP FILET."

So much noise, too much noise. Silencer couldn't think properly.

The other librarians had filed out of the other rooms, coming to see what the commotion was. They were shocked at all the noise.

Silencer started to panic. They would know he was the one who had brought Pudge into the Sanctuary. He'd be the one to blame. He had to stop him somehow. But how?! He was going to get kicked out.

"SILENCE!" he screamed, as loud as he could.

Suddenly, it was quiet.

....

...

And that's how he learned his Ultimate.


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I'm sorry for the crappy story, ran out of time!

Hot 'n' Steamy

I had lunch with Jal, D and one of D's friends (not OCD) and he apologised for being a huge nerd. Both Jal and I started laughing, pointing out that we're both developers. D added that I'm the "4,000 hours of Dota girl". His friend, who I'll call Marvin, said that he had played 16,000 hours in 2 years.

I was impressed until Jal did the maths. There's 17,520 hours in 2 years, which means he would have to be playing nearly 22 hours, every day, for two years. Even if he meant a bit more than two years, that's a pretty crazy amount of played time. I asked him what his rating was (not because I'm a Rating Queen, but because if you've put in a crazy amount of time like that, surely your rating is going to be crazily high), and he said it was 6000, but dropped down to 3000 as he wasn't playing as much anymore.

Either way, he was a really cool guy to hang out with. It turns out that we have a heap in common: we were both in the chess club, we both like gaming, we both like the same TV shows and books. He also really opened up, even though it was my first time meeting him, and spoke about some really personal stuff. Most importantly: he didn't think I was weird at all.

I asked D for his Steam ID, as I was keen to play with him. My first action was to check his played time, to see if it really was legit, and unfortunately, it wasn't. However, I looked through his library and he owns a lot of the games that I own, which immediately raised the level of respect I had for him. Still, What he told me about his Dota experience and reality didn't really match, and so I've yet to add him. Not because I look down on him for having less hours played than me or anything like that, just because I don't understand why he lied.

Anyway, some of the uni people have been talking about dating apps, and I did have that idea of a dating app that matches you based on interests, but I couldn't work out a good way of making it different to something like OKCupid, other than my feature of suggesting conversation topics, which a lot of people said was creepy / unnatural. Instead, I was thinking about whether you could have a Steam-based dating app. You get matched with people who have similar libraries, and rather than going on a traditional date, you could game together. That way there's no pressure to spend money on a first date, there's no concerns about going out and meeting someone dangerous, and all the effort of organising an activity to do together isn't needed.

Of course, Dota players would just have to be matched with Dota players:

https://twitter.com/steam_spy/status/729732607013998593?lang=en

I remember someone in my WoW guild telling me that one of the best ways to get to know someone is to see what they're like when they're angry. Playing Dota with a date would be a great way to sort out who you want to stay with. ^_^

I don't know what the demographics for Steam users are, but one of the problems that seems to plague dating apps is the disproportionate number of males to females, and I feel like this dating app would suffer from that. And yes, I'm still one of those naïve people who believes that some people would use this kind of app to find friends, so maybe that could be an alternate use for it.

Even if you only played single-player games, it could still work, as you could both play through the game together, or discuss the game afterwards - like a book club (not taking credit for the idea, someone else from uni came up with the idea).

The International 2017

Can you tell it's that time of the year?

The grand final of the biggest Dota 2 tournament of the year, sponsored by Valve was today. The lead up to it was a rollercoaster of ups and downs. Teams that looked good didn't do so well. Chinese teams dominated the upper bracket slots for the main event. Games that looked like they were in the bag had huge turnarounds. This year I was flying the Newbee flag, after finding out that Kpii is from Australia.

Since the finals only happened earlier today, I won't write about them to avoid giving away spoilers, but I think the overall production level of this year's event was great.

Day[9], who is probably more popular as a Starcraft caster / personality than Dota 2, has been slowly making a transition over, and was asked to host this year's event. There were a lot of reddit comments complaining about the fact that he isn't as familiar with all the memes, or even the game itself, as some of the other hosts, but I enjoyed having him as a host. As a change from previous years, they got players from some of the eliminated teams to join the panel, and it was really insightful to hear from them. Despite his lack of some of the finer aspects of the game, Day[9] did a good job of directing the conversation to the players. I imagine some of the questions he asked where pre-scripted by someone else, but the way he managed the flow of the talk was good.

The player / team videos were even more amazing this year. My favourite so far was the video of Virtus Pro doing an escape room. Not only is it really nice to listen to them speaking Russian, but it was funny watching them solve the escape room, and I like how Ramzes calls them old geezers and thinks they've failed because the USB doesn't go in.... but it's a USB, you have to rotate it at least 3 times! And 9pasha's comment, "Can we swear now?", probably a reference to the complaints from VP's manager that "True Sight" video released after the Kiev major portrayed VP as the "swearing smoking Russians" and OG as the "chill and disciplined Europeans" (link to reddit thread with an English translation).

I think I enjoy this more than the games themselves, as I get to learn a lot about techniques for pulling the heart strings, or making people laugh. I also really enjoy seeing some of the stuff the players do when they're not playing Dota.

The announcement of Artifact, a new card-game, seemed to have a mixed response. After being sucked into Magic: the Gathering so many times, I'm pretty reluctant to play any new card games. I still haven't touched Hearthstone, and I'll probably avoid Artifact, too. I am curious about how they'll approach it, as they managed to make the best out of all the Dota-clones so far (at least in my opinion, and I'm sure getting Ice Frog on board helped a lot).

They also announced two new heroes!

The part that really interested me was the match against the OpenAI Shadow Fiend bot. Here's the Open AI blog post on the bot, and a link to the YouTube video of the match played on the main stage. The match was amazing to watch. The bot executed a perfect creep block, doing better than than pros it was matched up against. The scariest part was watching it animation cancel - and according to their blog post, it's entirely self-learned behaviour - though whether they learned it from humans or from playing itself wasn't specifically stated, so it was probably learned from humans. Because it's a bot, it doesn't suffer from the same decision paralysis that can hinder humans. The bot just went in and dived past the tier 1 tower without hesitation or concern about whether it'd make it out alive. It knew it would.

The earlier iterations of the bots did stupid things - either stay in base for the entire game, or die to a non-mid tower. Over many iterations, it learned to go to the mid-lane and farm creeps. Then to go for hero kills / towers.

They had two of the developers on the stage who said that the bot basically played a "lifetime" of games against itself in the span of two weeks, and it is now consistently beating the pros. EG's manager wanted to say that Sumail did win against the bot, but the bot quickly learned from that and adapted, and once it picked up the new strategy, it beat him. I'm looking forward to seeing what else comes out of the team - they said they are trying to tackle a 5v5 game now, but the complexity of that is much, much greater. Even in this 1v1, it was quite restricted. No bottle, neutrals, runes, raindrops, shrines, soul ring. The games would go to 10 minutes. If nobody had more kills / towers by then, the winner would be whoever had the most creep kills.

I didn't take time off work to watch it this year, as I already had time off for Fiji, and I didn't want to fall too far behind at work. I ended up listening to a lot of games via the Twitch app - though it ate up a lot of my mobile data! I used nearly 8GB last month (yesterday was the last day of the "month" for me, fortunately), chewing through nearly 2GB per day of active listening. A lot of it was in the audio-only mode, with me changing to video mode during one of my lunch breaks. Maybe that's not normal, as I searched through some other threads, and they all said Twitch shouldn't use much data in audio-only mode, and it doesn't even make sense for 4 hours of audio streaming to be 2GB of data. If that were the case, Spotify wouldn't work, as it would get crazily expensive to listen to music on-the-go.

It's a different experience listening online, and I probably missed a lot of plays as I was multitasking work at the same time. But I think I got the important stuff, as you can tell from the excitement of the casters whether something big is going down or not. It also takes me a while to adjust to who is playing which hero.

The production team behind this year's TI did an amazing job, really enjoyed the main event.

Return of the Cookie Monster

I did resolve not to bake cookies for OCD, because I thought it'd be creepy.

However.

We were playing a bot match in Dota 2: me, OCD and D. I was Enchantress (mid), OCD was Legion Commander (bot) and D was Lich (top), on the Radiant team. D and OCD never seem to buy the courier, and the last time I played with them, I started the rule that the first person to die has to buy the courier. Well, being mid with no courier sucks, so I bought the courier, and said the first person to die must upgrade it.

OCD started joking that it'd be D for sure, and we both started saying he was going to die first. OCD then made a bet, saying he would buy D a quarter pounder if he didn't die first. D accepted right away, saying that a bot would probably die first, so it was an easy bet to win. OCD and I argued that it was the first person to die, so that didn't count bots. I was about to kill Pugna in mid, when we were debating it, so I pulled back and stopped.

We continued to debate it, with D finally agreeing that it was real people only. So I went for the Pugna kill, miscalculated, and died to the tower + nether ward damage (healing myself was a mistake).

D didn't even realise I had died, that's how bad he is.... ~_~ I pointed it out, and apologised to OCD for making him lose a quarter pounder.

So I had an excuse to bake him cookies in a non-creepy way.

Though to be honest, I've found the sheen of spending time with him has worn off, and he's no longer the amazing person I thought him to be. Maybe it's because Soulcry is back, and the bar has been raised again.

Devil May Soulcry

I was a bit freaked out to see this message. I wasn't sure if the person on the other side had a good or bad memory of me, maybe I had trash-talked them (unlikely, but maybe I was in a party with someone who did trash talk them and they associated it with me), maybe I had corpse camped them on one of my world-PvP romps with various people, I couldn't tell! So I tried to keep my reply pretty neutral.

I was doing a bunch of quests with cutscenes, and didn't see a reply for a while, until...

Now I was pretty freaked out. I still didn't know if it was a good or bad thing! But I figured the person was probably from One, as that was the most likely way they would know my first name but not already have me on steam / Facebook.

I nearly screamed with joy when I got this response. The only thing that stopped me was that I was completely stunned. IT'S HIM! It's been a while since I mentioned him, but Soulcry was a mage in One. He was an incredibly dedicated and talented player, but more importantly, he was one of the most nurturing players I've ever met. A few people in the guild would get together and play DotA (the Warcraft 3 version), and I'd often ask if I could join - sometimes they'd even ask me if I'd like to join! To say I was bad was an understatement. I didn't know any heroes and as I mentioned in that blog post, I'd often random and rely on Soulcry to tell me what to do. I bought Diffusal Blade on Anti-Mage, I would Omnislash when there were lots of creeps. I'd be off farming while my team was dying. I was the world's biggest anchor, and whether we won or lost was probably due to how much I fed.

I've come a long way since then, and the last time Soul and I played together was when we randomly bumped into each other on the Bored Aussie server. I pulled my weight in that game as Dazzle. I had his email address from the time that I tried to meet up with him when I was in his city briefly, and we were even both going to be at the airport at the same time, but unfortunately, he was arriving and I was departing, and we missed each other. I felt weird contacting him out of the blue after I stopped playing WoW, so I never did. But I still thought about him. A lot.

To bump into him in Final Fantasy XIV was an amazing stroke of luck. It turns out he was invited to join our guild, and he was guildless at the time, so he accepted.

Anyway, his statement hung in the air for a while, "dont know if you remember".

I wanted to say, "Of course I remember you! You are the most amazing gamer I've ever met. You always kept your cool, you're such a great coach, you're so good at everything you do. I wanted to be like you for so long. I still remember that time TheShadow (?) raged at Moo for buying Mechansm on every single hero, and he just snapped when Moo bought it on Alchemist. You were trying not to laugh, but you didn't quite mute your mic in time. Or maybe you hit your PTT button by accident. I'd recognise your laugh anywhere."

Too intense. Too creepy. Gotta try again.

Take 2: "Yeah, sure, you were a mage, right?"

Pfft. Complete lie. The fangirl in me could never say such a thing.

I felt so nervous. It felt like an eternity had passed and I still hadn't typed anything in response. Even though most of my time with him was through WoW, I mostly associate him with DotA. Whenever I play well, I imagine him being proud of me. Whenever someone picks Vengeful Spirit (one of his favourite heroes), it always makes me think of him (he played carry VS, as opposed to my support VS). He just had such an easy-going nature that it made me feel good to be around him. He never made me feel bad about feeding, and always had something helpful to say. Despite that, you could really feel how intense he was when he was completely focused on something and it felt like he was good at everything.

So this is what I ended up saying to him:

Cool as a cucumber.

Then redbeanpork said it was time to play Dota, so I said bye and logged out.

And then I started kicking myself. What was I doing?! Even though we were in the same guild, that was such a crappy response. After explaining to redbeanpork that I wanted to wait a bit before we queued, I logged back into the game (and was put in queue to get onto the server!!!!! T_T), and quickly messaged him asking if he still played Dota.

He responded that he stopped playing a couple of years ago, but he'd be up for playing again if people he knew were playing. I linked him my Steam profile and he added me to Steam.

HE ADDED ME TO STEAM!

I'm really trying to suppress my innate stalker urges right now. I've only looked through his library. And found an old WoW video that he uploaded (I didn't watch it).

I finally worked up the courage to ask him to join us for a game of Dota 2, but it wasn't meant to be. :'(

We chatted for a bit, but there was Dota to be played, so the conversation died off.

I still feel like I'm on cloud nine.

Battle Cup Weekend - Game 3

We made it to the Grand Final!

Match ID 3314960903 (DotaBuff / OpenDota)

They actually banned Clockwerk and CM first, which is pretty funny, but I guess those two heroes really worked for us, so it made sense. They then went on to ban Ursa, Morphling and Necrolyte. Which means my beloved Shadow Fiend made it through, but I guess Viper was a better pick-up, so I ended up playing him again.

They had a weird line-up, with Enchantress in middle lane, but it worked, as I really struggled against her, being ganked by Spirit Breaker and Rubick so much that I had to have redbeanpork and MrMoustache babysit me again.

Radiant
MrMoustache - Witch Doctor
redbeanpork - Warlock
Pharmacist - Wraith King
Me - Viper
Ridehunter - Earthshaker

Dire
Spirit Breaker
Enchantress
Axe
Visage
Rubick

It actually looked like they were going a strong pushing line-up, which is why we picked Earthshaker. It ended up being a bit of a mixed bag, as it allowed Rubick to steal Fissure, and with Rubick's faster cast point, meant he'd usually get it off first.

The game was quite touch-and-go, with us being quite far behind until the 25 minute mark, where we managed to turn it around. But then we lost our lead in 10 minutes, and it was pretty back and forth until we finally managed to break their base.

Earthshaker gave away first blood, and then died 2 more times in the early game. I got ganked a couple of times, as well, and it was a really rough start for our team. Things finally started turning around for me once I got Shadow Blade, which I turned into Silver Edge, as it meant we could get rid of Enchantress' Untouchable passive and she started dropping a bit more. Earthshaker also ended up picking up a Silver Edge, probably for the same reason.

Warlock's Aghs also came online at around the 42 minute mark, and it was much smoother sailing from there.

It was a really close game, and we lost all of our tier 2 towers. I actually had quite a bad death in bottom lane, that should have cost us the game, but fortunately, the other team didn't push their advantage, and we managed to stay in it. Teaches me not to be so cocky!

And that's the end of that Battle Cup weekend!

Battle Cup Weekend - Game 2

Game 2! Match ID: 3314828470 - Dotabuff / OpenDota

We banned Jugg and Sven.

They banned Kunkka and Anti-Mage. Not sure if they banned Kunkka because of MrMoustache, but he said he could play CM, so we decided to put him on CM and redbeanpork would take another hero.

We picked up CM and Clockwerk for MrMoustache and Ridehunter.

Their next two bans were Invoker and Shadow Fiend.

Uh-oh. Disaster. I guess it shouldn't have come as a surprise. Even though Shadow Fiend is nowhere near my most played hero, I've probably played him the most - 7 out of my last 15 matches. However, this marks my first respect ban! I said to Pharmacist that I'm kinda like AdmiralBulldog only worse, as he had two heroes he played reliably (Lone Druid and Nature's Prophet). I only have one!

The original plan was for Ridehunter to take mid if Shadow Fiend was taken, but we had already picked Clockwerk for him! I can't play Clockwerk. But the only effective mid hero I can play is Shadow Fiend - with the others being Skywrath Mage and Silencer. Skywrath tends to fall off and can't kill towers, and Silencer just needs too much before he becomes effective.

We picked up the Warlock, but spent a lot of time trying to decide on our mid hero. I think the other team must been quite happy with the Shadow Fiend ban. redbeanpork offered to play Viper in mid, but I figured he'd be a better Warlock than me, so we opted to give him Warlock and I'd take Viper. Our team was rounded out with Necro, after Pharmacist meant to pick Wraith King, but accidentally banned him instead! Not a great start to our second game.

Radiant
Witch Doctor
Centaur Warrunner
Disruptor
Spectre
Obsidian Destroyer

Dire
MrMoustache: CM
Ridehunter: Clockwerk
redbeanpork: Warlock
me: Viper
Pharmacist: Necrophos

We knew that with this line-up against theirs, we had to end the game quickly, well before Spectre would have a chance to come online. They had a decent team fight team, with Witch Doctor and Disruptor working well to keep us zoned, and Centaur to jump in and tank hits.

Mid actually went really well for me. Unlike last week's Battle Cup, where I was Shadow Fiend and really struggled against OD, this time I was Viper, whose Corrosive Skin ability makes it hard for OD to constantly spam his Astral Imprison on me (since doing so will make him take damage, too). I think OD might have been their weakest player, because I managed to solo kill him a couple of times, even though he could have saved himself with Astral while a teammate teleported in. I couldn't believe it, but I ended up going 9-0 at the start of the game, before dying to Witch Doctor.

I really messed up this game, and I think we nearly lost because I decided to go MKB before BKB. Once I picked up BKB, things went a lot easier for me. I went MKB first because I wanted the damage and to pre-emptively counter Spectre's Radiance, but if I had picked up BKB first, I probably wouldn't have died as much, and been able to have both a lot quicker than by going MKB first. I think I'm still in the support "I can't afford BKB" mindset, but I am getting better at it - usually picking it up as my third or fourth item, depending on how the game is going.

I can't remember if it was MrMoustache or Ridehunter who commented that I was building Viper exactly the same way I built SF. Not going to argue against that point! I played Viper the same way, and even got frustrated at how slowly he clears waves of creeps. I focused far too much on denying, even though he doesn't pick up souls like SF, and there was a team fight when I had just died, and I was about to say that I wasn't ready to fight as I had to farm up souls before I remembered that Viper doesn't need them. Viper is a lot tankier off the bat than SF, which helped me a lot. And the extra damage from Nethertoxin really helped me get last hits in the early game.

You probably can't tell from the graph, but I felt like there were a few moments in the game where it was a bit iffy that we could pull this off. Pharmacist got some good ults off, making it easier for us to break the base as we had longer before they respawned.

Fortunately, we were able to end the game in 43:31, and Spectre only had Radiance and Yasha at that point. Our CM had a higher networth than their entire team, with redbeanpork not far behind (10.8k compared to their highest on 11.1k).

With this victory, we headed towards the grand final of that week's Battle Cup!