EPTHere I go again, with a cup of tea with waay too much sugar... Earl Grey, very nommy!
Last time I wrote about a way that a group of 5 new people could get a decent team up and running in a matter of weeks. This time I am going to write about the purpose of PRACTICE!
With the recent addition of playerstreams for DotA I feel like I have to explain something about Practice- vs. Non-Practice- matches. Since I began streaming some of our practice matches, quite a few people have been interested in the results of those matches. And when I say interested, I mean interested as in how interested people would be to know the result of a finals game in some tournament. I thought about it for a while and understood, from a perspective of a non-competitive mobaplayer, that he/she could be more intersted in the result instead of what happened inside the game. In some way the matches imply how good the teams performance currently is. The meta-game of DotA changes very often, it changes a little bit everyday, therefore if you are playing stable and good now, it does not mean that your playstyle and strategies works in 2 weeks from now, the same way they did. For instance is it better to be in really good shape just before a lan-tournement is about to start than 3 weeks before, since you know that your strategies will also work during the tournement. If you already have all your key-strategies prepared and ready 3 weeks before the tournemnt you will be rather predictable at the actual tournament and your meta-game might also be outdated, and it will therefore be hard to consistantly win matches, since it is such a big factor in DotA, whether your opponent is inside your head or not!
There has always been a Golden unofficial rule within the competitive community of DotA. You do not upload your replays of your practice matches, neither do you brag about them or even mention the result of them to for instance a curious interviewer. At first this might sound a little off to many of you guys but that is how it has always been and now that practice matches are coming out in the public for everyone to see. Because of how long the results of practice games have been hidden from the public, it has resulted in the general public forgetting that it is a PRACTICE match, where winning is not the ultimate aim - and instead treating it as a groupstage knockout or tournament final! It is not the result of a practice match that really matters! When we, SK-gaming, practice as a team our goal of the match is not simply to WIN! Even though we are always playing to win, the importance of a win is not as big as the importance of eliminating limitation, improving overall performance, and to keep up with the changing meta-game! And I am sure other teams have this in mind when they practice as well. To give an example so it is easier to comprehend and understand, when we heard that we were going to DREAMHACK, we had around 3 weeks of practice until the actual event with some matches from The Defense mixed in. Therefore instead of playing, let us say, POTM/Anti-Mage everygame, which worked pretty well at ESWC, we want to expand our horizons, so we have more options to go for, should they be a better choice in the situation of a match within the tournement and the current meta-game at the time the tournement is taking place. When you are at an actual tournement, you have a few key-strategies that you go for because those are the ones you feel confident with and work within the current meta-game at the current time. Now with more heroes added everyweek it is important for us to get out of our comfortzone and try out different things so we are not taken by surprise where it really matters! Practice matches are indeed very important, but the importance does not lie in the result, even if it is 10 games in a row.
With all this being said, the closer the tournement, the importance of wins and stable strategies grows, since a winning team also need that winning attitude, and it is hard if not impossible to have an attitude like that if you are losing every game, it would be faking it.
This was not meant to compensate for the results of our practice matches but merely to educate the people within our beloved community who have never considered something like this!
Until next time, pce.
