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I made a new friend the other day. I was playing some ranked games in the afternoon, and we both queued into the same game. He was on the other team, and someone on my team didn't load. I liked my friend's picture, which was the word "fun" with a prohibition sign over it. Truly, that tiny picture embodies the spirit of dota, and I must tell this person my appreciation for their accuracy.
I added my new friend, and sent him a quick message to let him know why I did so. By that point, we had both had queues popped, and were placed into different games.
Later, I figured this fellow was around the same solo MMR as I, and I invited him for some games. Indeed, we both had similar skill levels and "no fun" mentalities. We've only played maybe 5 or 10 games together at this point, but something he said really resonated:
He already had thousands of hours into this game, and that the reality of it is that he has reached his skill cap. The best he can do to expand on his knowledge of the game is to expand his hero base.
I had been having trouble progressing past the 4k boundary for the past 6 months or so. At times, I'd jump on the meta-train and pick a versatile hero strong in the meta, and push past 4k, but then, after I'd get bored, I'd slip back. Thousands of hours playing dota for almost 10 years, and thousands of pro games watched mean that each additional game just adds very little marginal skill gain.
In juggling, for example, even after 10 years, I would still be expanding my trick repertoire and improving on my mechanics. As long as I kept in practice, I would still be learning new ways to learn new tricks. Why should this video game with supposedly infinite skill cap be any different?
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If you actively focus on improving, you will.
Also current you would win vs 2 years ago you probably 60-70% of the time, but your MMR doesn't necessarily rise because the entire community improves as well.
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ya maybe its more like improvement rate cap
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What's your point exactly?
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I'm guessing he's reflecting on the stagnation of improvement unless you apply an increasing amount of effort. If you only play five games per week, you're bound to stagnate because the time generally needed to make improvements increase somewhat exponentially for each step you take beyond a certain limit.
Some people understand DotA and have the intuition needed to see beyond what most people believe is the cap of their unrefined ability. After reaching this point, you have to approach learning differently because at this point you must refine knowledge and mechanics rather than just accept input, which makes it more time-consuming and therefore it feels like you reach a personal limit.
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Do you have a certain mindset in you that is ingrained, such that it makes you not flexible with ideas? For example if I were to tell you that vlads and drums are bad items, manta is terrible on medusa, and that ember guard builds are bad, would you shut me down just because pros do these?
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thanks for sharing
can I ask you, why do you stick to dota, if you feel you are not progressing? what satisfaction do you get from it at this stage in your life?
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On May 16 2015 04:18 Sn0_Man wrote:
If you actively focus on improving, you will.
Also current you would win vs 2 years ago you probably 60-70% of the time, but your MMR doesn't necessarily rise because the entire community improves as well.
How do you actively focus on improving? Spam heroes, play regularly, focus on certain points of your play per game?
On May 16 2015 14:05 aboxcar wrote:
thanks for sharing
can I ask you, why do you stick to dota, if you feel you are not progressing? what satisfaction do you get from it at this stage in your life?
Dota is fun, so even if you arent improving faster than everyone else I'd say there's nothing wrong with just doing what's fun, right? But he might have a totally different answer.
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On May 16 2015 23:11 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On May 16 2015 04:18 Sn0_Man wrote:
If you actively focus on improving, you will.
Also current you would win vs 2 years ago you probably 60-70% of the time, but your MMR doesn't necessarily rise because the entire community improves as well. How do you actively focus on improving? Spam heroes, play regularly, focus on certain points of your play per game?
General game awareness develops from a lot of play, but at the point of your first plateau you're bound to feel somewhat lost. At that point, you need to identify your weaknesses. Do you get ganked a lot? Does your supporting get static? What can you do to use your time better? Where should you be when? How do you act when you don't see anyone on the map? There's a ton of questions you can ask yourself to become more efficient in your play.
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On May 16 2015 13:14 DucK- wrote:
Do you have a certain mindset in you that is ingrained, such that it makes you not flexible with ideas? For example if I were to tell you that vlads and drums are bad items, manta is terrible on medusa, and that ember guard builds are bad, would you shut me down just because pros do these?
Who is inflexible here im confused
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The problem with most people is that they dont know how to improve when it comes to dota. They just play thousand of hours without questioning.
In sc2 for example there are set build order benchmarks and others stuff like maps for mechanic and multitask improvement like marine splits vs banelings.
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Challenging yourself in Dota can be hard as well because you need to sign up for games that make you feel uncomfortable under pressure. At least in SC2 you could just try out a new build, fail and play another game. Learning new heroes and play styles is hard, especially when you team mates are counting on you sort of fell like you are guessing. And the worst part is that if you want to practice a specific hero, it might not work into every game.
But its the only way to get better in dota. I am terrible on heroes like QOP and storm, but I need to at least become passable at them to get out of my comfort zone.
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There's honestly just too much emphasis on team compositions in DOTA, especially in the new 6.84 patch. I'd argue 35% of the game is picks. All Pick is a joke half of the time, only way to win and grow in pubs is to just be way more mechanically skilled then your opponents and "Pub-Stomp" your way to victory. In my opinion in order to improve at DOTA you need to have a static 5-man team playing captains mode-only. If your goal is to improve your solo MMR then in my opinion you're not really improving at DOTA, you're just getting better at pub-stomping which most of the time is a horrible thing to learn if you actually want to get better at DOTA in general. Pub-Stompers are very rarely able to transition into a stable known team because pub mentality is a terrible mentality.
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On May 20 2015 04:51 MidgetExplosion wrote:
There's honestly just too much emphasis on team compositions in DOTA, especially in the new 6.84 patch. I'd argue 35% of the game is picks. All Pick is a joke half of the time, only way to win and grow in pubs is to just be way more mechanically skilled then your opponents and "Pub-Stomp" your way to victory. In my opinion in order to improve at DOTA you need to have a static 5-man team playing captains mode-only. If your goal is to improve your solo MMR then in my opinion you're not really improving at DOTA, you're just getting better at pub-stomping which most of the time is a horrible thing to learn if you actually want to get better at DOTA in general. Pub-Stompers are very rarely able to transition into a stable known team because pub mentality is a terrible mentality.
I might be wrong about this, but I dont believe that winning is necessary for improving. I do however believe that people who win a lot do so because they improve fast, cause that's pretty much the only way to beat matchmaking.
Also RTZ, Mason and Sumail have proven that the step from being a really good pub player to being a good pro isnt as big as people make it to be. There have been multiple interviews with pros touching on that and they have been saying over and over again that many pubstompers have the potential to be pretty good players if they can play with the team.
On May 17 2015 03:12 Jisira wrote:Show nested quote +On May 16 2015 23:11 Blackfeather wrote:On May 16 2015 04:18 Sn0_Man wrote:
If you actively focus on improving, you will.
Also current you would win vs 2 years ago you probably 60-70% of the time, but your MMR doesn't necessarily rise because the entire community improves as well. How do you actively focus on improving? Spam heroes, play regularly, focus on certain points of your play per game? General game awareness develops from a lot of play, but at the point of your first plateau you're bound to feel somewhat lost. At that point, you need to identify your weaknesses. Do you get ganked a lot? Does your supporting get static? What can you do to use your time better? Where should you be when? How do you act when you don't see anyone on the map? There's a ton of questions you can ask yourself to become more efficient in your play.
Tbh I feel like I know about some of my weaknesses. My support rotations could be more clutch and I'm often to impatient on them, I am often overaggressive once i get blink cause i want to catch people out of position even when i'm not sure whether they have backup and my overall map awareness could be better. I feel that my support play isnt bad per se and most people I play at my measly 3k mmr tell me that I'm a very good support player.
My general carry play on the other hand is miserable. I miss lasthits in the early game and struggle a lot under pressure and my teamfight positioning is everything but clutch. I feel that as a carry player you have to be way more accustomed to your hero, which is bad for me since I random a lot. My mid play suffers extremely because of that, I often misjudge when to hit the aggression switch and when not to. But it's also a lot about concentration and patience (the lasthit part especially).
I've probably put three times as much time into training lasthits and watching high mmr people play carries as I have in my general support play, but I cant seem to improve on that end. So yeah I'm kinda lost here, it seems like every time I watch someone play support I'm able to learn something, but the same cant be said at all for my carry play.
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EPT
