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I used to play DOTA. When I say "used to," I played DOTA in Warcraft 3 Vanilla days. I think it was around WC3 1.05 or 1.06, I forget, back when there was no magic damage type or unarmored type and the only strategies were mass casters/ghouls/dryads. DOTA was pretty fun and offered me a diversion over the constant losses I would suffer on the ladder, mostly because I suck at RTS. I never lost a match at DOTA and pretty soon got bored of it, because the skill level was so low.
At the time though, I was wondering about strategy. Mainly, I was wondering if it was possible to hit an enemy at the last minute to get the gold, and to do it consistently. I posted about it on the most popular WC3 forum at the time.
"Hey, is it physically possible to hit a creep at the last second? It seems like if you could, you would get a lot more money and dominate the opponent."
One of the top WC3 ladder guys scoffed at me for suggesting this. Everyone else agreed with him.
(Fuck that guy anyway. He ended up being caught hacking.)
But as you probably know now, the strategy behind it is called "Last Hit" and anybody who's anybody probably uses it. And what do I get? "Told you so?"
If you are nowhere near top, or at least the Ro8 in a major tournament then almost no one will listen to your strategy ramblings. Maybe if you bust out some science like with the 9rax/12rax or the building an HQ farther from the minerals thing, you can get some people listening. Maybe you'll get lucky and a top player will read your strategy and implement it in a tournament... but guess what? That's his strategy, not yours.
Same thing happened in SF4 with Sakura's resets. As it came out there were only a handful of people on SRK studying it and using it. JWong said she might be the best console character because of it, but there were still hardly any people convinced at how good she was. Enter SaBRe vs. Valle and now people think Sakura reset = SaBRe and that she's a somewhat viable character now.
Simply posting, or even worse conjecturing about a strategy almost always gets you nowhere unless it's actually been proven in a high level competition. (Or cheese.) So I guess if you wanna talk about great new TvP 2 BC-push you developed, all you can really do to promote it is to use it yourself at a high level.
(Then when you're at that point anyway, you don't necessarily want to promote it because then people will know what to expect when they face off against you, so you still lose at telling people about your strategy.)
 
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well of course ppl are going to trust the pros rather than someone random who has no rep. it's like that in everything no?
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If that DOTA story is true, that's pretty shocking, especially considering how boring the game is when you don't add in last hit. Also... it's just so obvious lol. That's like someone scoffing at using archons against pure ling zerg who does not get lair. There's not even a tradeoff in that Dota example O.O
Anyways, unless you bring results with your proposed strat, no one will listen to it of course unless you are a known pro. I mean, I could suggest some strange strat and claim a 1 second timing window, but unless it can be demonstrated, I'm just full of shit. Theory is no good without proof (except for string theory)
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Seems reasonable to me and not something to whine about. People want to see a strategy executed before they start considering it 'viable'. And they want to see it executed at the highest level. A suggestion may work well against low level players but fail miserably against decent opponents.
Skill level at dota is actually pretty high these days. And people have been 'last hitting' ever since I've been playing, pretty much the last 6 years.
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Nothing better than proving doubters I mean haters wrong.
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Calgary25981 Posts
This is a terrible thread. So one time you had an idea and people didn't accept it but now it's standard? And another time people didn't study a character in a fighting game except a few people and now people think that character is viable? First of all, I completely reject your hypothesis that no one will listen to you unless you are a top 8 player, and secondly I don't even understand what point you are driving at even if that is true. Let's assume it is true, what is your comment or suggestion or what should anyone take away from this?
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Because calling imbalance and bandwagon/FOTM is so much easier. I'm pretty sure every single unit in SC2 has been "the shittiest unit ever omg buff plz or get rid of it srs this sucks ass" only to have someone use it the way it was intended, and suddenly its the best unit ever.
People are also adverse to change and unable to think for themselves. Just yesterday someone was amazed at the ingenuity of using Fungal Growth in worker lines. Seriously!? How anyone with a brain couldn't figure that out on their own is beyond me.
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Calgary25981 Posts
I mean imagine some D+ player developed the Bisu Build and wrote about it, it would probably get rejected because on paper it's impossibly difficult to imagine the timings working together, how map control goes back and forth, and how all the counters get dealt with. But I can watch one best of 5 and instantly be able to infer all that information easily.
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On April 22 2010 02:37 Chill wrote:
I mean imagine some D+ player developed the Bisu Build and wrote about it, it would probably get rejected because on paper it's impossibly difficult to imagine the timings working together, how map control goes back and forth, and how all the counters get dealt with. But I can watch one best of 5 and instantly be able to infer all that information easily.
I think the point is that unless you're high level, few will listen to you merely because you aren't high level, regardless of if you have a good idea or not. It's more like the proof they want is just your skill representation. The rational folks will ask for proof of the strategy in action (or test it themselves), the irrational ones will ask for rank or go to someone they believe is authoritative and have them reaffirm their bias. It's more important to look at the claim, not who is making the claim, because that creates bias and a good idea can be ignored. Even if the idea is flawed, it could be improved or lead to better ideas.
However, it is reasonable to expect someone of higher skill is a better authority on strategy, because they probably understand strategy better. But they should be the ones reviewing it and being objective and logical about it, and not flaunting around rank.
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This is a good blog, let alone thread.
One issue here is that in, say, chess, football, tennis, etc, you can do pretty well as a coach.
Not so in video games.
If there is no market for coaching, then it seems that there is hardly any value in knowing something but not implementing it.
(and even in coaching it often helps immensely to be successful in competition)
Still throwing around strategy ideas can be fun, just realize its worth just about nothing without being developed. That is probably the main point here. Had an idea like facebook before facebook? Oh well too bad since you did nothing with it.
Personally, will I ever go though as much effort for sc2 as I did to make guides for sc1.
Heck no. Then, if anything, my gain, and I won't really be missed for it either.
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United States17042 Posts
another easy example of a top level player playing, and then everyone else just "understanding" the timing (in addition to the bisu build) is the fantasy mech build. Explaining the variants and imagining the possibilites of early/mid/lategame working together is almost impossible, but watching it makes it easy to understand (and pretty sick).
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Could you explain the reset thing you're talking about? I know about canceling and focus canceling ad stuff but never heard of that term. Played some SF4 Sakura pretty casually after being used to classic SSF2T chars.
Oh, and yeah, coming up with the strategy and executing it properly to make it viable are 2 seperate processes that has to happen. that's pretty obvious though =p
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hum.....maybe ppl dont take your strategies seriously because they (your strategies) are not very good...
just saying..
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Calgary25981 Posts
On April 22 2010 02:57 RageOverdose wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2010 02:37 Chill wrote:
I mean imagine some D+ player developed the Bisu Build and wrote about it, it would probably get rejected because on paper it's impossibly difficult to imagine the timings working together, how map control goes back and forth, and how all the counters get dealt with. But I can watch one best of 5 and instantly be able to infer all that information easily. I think the point is that unless you're high level, few will listen to you merely because you aren't high level, regardless of if you have a good idea or not. It's more like the proof they want is just your skill representation. The rational folks will ask for proof of the strategy in action (or test it themselves), the irrational ones will ask for rank or go to someone they believe is authoritative and have them reaffirm their bias. It's more important to look at the claim, not who is making the claim, because that creates bias and a good idea can be ignored. Even if the idea is flawed, it could be improved or lead to better ideas. However, it is reasonable to expect someone of higher skill is a better authority on strategy, because they probably understand strategy better. But they should be the ones reviewing it and being objective and logical about it, and not flaunting around rank.
Right, just like if you're a doctor, people will likely listen to your ideas; whereas if you are some university student you will have to work harder to prove your ideas.
Which is completely analogous to this situation and hence I don't understand why this thread exists.
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Chill, did you lose sight of the "close thread" button?
there's a big white "reply" box....which shouldnt be there,
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Every time I've seen someone suggest something it gets explored or gunned down ferociously, don't see where the "not caring" comes from there.
I think what you really mean to say is random newbie's thoughts often get dismissed. It doesn't take much thought to realise why that happens.
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Last hitting and animation canceling were a part of War3 long before 1.06.
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Did they alt key function exist at that time? If not, then maybe that's why people didn't see it as a viable tactic back then.
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Calgary25981 Posts
I think alt was in WC3 1.00
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On April 22 2010 03:11 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2010 02:57 RageOverdose wrote:On April 22 2010 02:37 Chill wrote:
I mean imagine some D+ player developed the Bisu Build and wrote about it, it would probably get rejected because on paper it's impossibly difficult to imagine the timings working together, how map control goes back and forth, and how all the counters get dealt with. But I can watch one best of 5 and instantly be able to infer all that information easily. I think the point is that unless you're high level, few will listen to you merely because you aren't high level, regardless of if you have a good idea or not. It's more like the proof they want is just your skill representation. The rational folks will ask for proof of the strategy in action (or test it themselves), the irrational ones will ask for rank or go to someone they believe is authoritative and have them reaffirm their bias. It's more important to look at the claim, not who is making the claim, because that creates bias and a good idea can be ignored. Even if the idea is flawed, it could be improved or lead to better ideas. However, it is reasonable to expect someone of higher skill is a better authority on strategy, because they probably understand strategy better. But they should be the ones reviewing it and being objective and logical about it, and not flaunting around rank. Right, just like if you're a doctor, people will likely listen to your ideas; whereas if you are some university student you will have to work harder to prove your ideas. Which is completely analogous to this situation and hence I don't understand why this thread exists.
I think the analogy you made is fine, but I feel like it exaggerates the disparity in this situation. A doctor compared to a university student is a huge leap in comparison to two people of different skill levels in both knowledge and ability, and a person with a lower skill level in a game can have just as much knowledge, only be unable to effectively implement it because of lack of ability.
I mean, some people can see things on paper and conceptualize it very easily too. Some people need the visual stimuli.
At the end of they day, they made the claim his strategy was bad, using the logic that they are better and that's it (at least as far as his story says). That's false authority fallacy.
Now, if a progamer or progamer coach came in and said your strategy is bad, I'd probably not bring up this false authority point because they probably are legitimate authorities. However, I'd also probably expect they could tell you why it's bad, not just say it's bad because they are better. Although I guess that goes further into saying whether or not they want to take the time to explain why, which is a different point altogether.
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EPT
