On November 20 2015 01:25 spudde123 wrote: You are quoting the c9 owner who had nothing to do with the decision and the quote doesn't even say anything about skills but instead the team wanting to become stronger as a whole. I'm talking about what EE, the person who mostly made the decision, has said. He has talked about it in different places but one example is here at 1h24min:
The issue I have with what you are saying is that there is no way a captain can decide every move in dota. A lot of what happens is down to the individual communication and decision making capabilities of different players. When EE has talked about PLD as player, for example his comments about PLD being the best player in the world around MLG in 2013, he credited specifically PLD's understanding of the game in different aspects. It is not a coincidence that he excels in very similar things as he did when he was in c9.
Of course the team being coordinated at crucial times and having Puppey to help out with calls makes everyone look better. But the team is not full of mediocre players. Without Puppey these players have the capability to be in one of the very best teams in Europe, as c9 has shown. Around this time last year they were even rather close to the best teams in the world. Puppey may be the difference that puts them from that kind of a team to a team that competes for the title in every tournament.
One would assume the owner would have gotten some form of reasoning for the change or do you imagin he just wake up some days and find that half his roster has changed and go "Oh well". If I remember it correctly it was fairly accepted that pie played bad in that periode, but if you think someone as hellbent on winning as EE decided to make the team worse for some untangable reason I will leave you to it.
I'm not saying he does micro manage everything, but he does direct practice and form a playstyle in practice. He makes the major calls and direct the team during games. This removes a huge part of the skill needed to succeed in dota from the other players. It is easy to make one good decision when that's the only thing you yourself is responsible for. Like I said I don't think the skill ceiling in dota, outside of the formentioned things, is very high to begin with. It follows that the difference between mediocre and good is not that big so it is debatable but I do think pie is mediocre.
I am not following at all how you get that I am saying EE was making the team worse or how you get that the owner is even talking about skill in that statement. PLD had some issues as a teammate attitude wise, which in EE's mind brought the team down. If you change one skilled player to another skilled player but the new guy improves the teams cohesion, the team will become better. It doesn't have to have anything to do with the new player being more skilled. Though in this case as it turned out the new team had far more issues than the old one.
Puppey is the captain, but he isn't alone in forming an idea in how the team should draft or how they should play. I would guess players like EE&PLD contribute a lot in terms of ideas, and when you watch Secret play there are a bunch of things that are very similar to what c9 used to do at their best. If you are talking just spellcasting or whatever you refer to as "skill", I don't know if PLD stands from the pack. But what people are generally praising him for doesn't have all to do with that but how he positions himself and how he moves around the map, and I don't think one should just credit Puppey for that.
We see DotA in such different manners ddayzy. I believe that skill ceiling in DotA doesn't even exist such is the imperfection of the best team's play and you think it's not very high. So yeah, we're probably talking about different things and watching the same game but in very different ways. There's barely any common ground to discuss. PLD is a god of the subtle things in DotA for me while for you there is not much room for subtlety to make a real difference. What makes difference is the cat herder. making DotA almost a 1v1 game. But if DotA was close to a 1v1 game between team directors, why did Puppey lose TI2, TI3, TI4 and TI5? The other herders were better?
I don't think it's possibly for single player to absolutely decide on everything. If you think you can basically make anything work with just a great captain and shit players. Then you have not navi close to TI4, or Secret 1.0(and the only time were actually doing better than c9/eg was when EG was on full internal issues summit 2 ) didn't have great players except s4 and puppey. Another example would be the current alliance so they have s4 , s4 is a good captain but his team isn't doing well.
Have you seen FPL games where EG got stacked together as a team ? There was ppd, arteezy and zai (and universe too at one game) they played like 5 games together back then and you wouldn't hear ppd make all the calls, he only started doing that under time of distress and you would hear arteezy and even zai making calls, sometimes nobody would even talk and rtz/zai/ppd just threw spells at ganks and fights and everything would go well because are actually good at playing.
There was even a time fata and EE also played FPL. Fata made the calls about rotations and EE only started punching calls when he decides to take objectives like rosh,tower, smoke or massive decisions like smoke looking for a fight or highground pushes.
Dota is a very complicated game that there are so many little decisions to be made in every scenario that 1 person can't possibly make calls for every player like how you would think a puppet works. Like everything is a snowballing effect. It is not enough that you have a good leader and shit teammates. Everybody has to be good. It's a game about building advantage on many little things.
There's a reason why players like sumail or miracle or zai can obviously make so many game winning plays is because they are actually individually talented. Even little misplays matters so much. Like there are interviews from somebody from eg/secret i can't remember saying that zai and universe doesn't really talk alot ingame but you know that they have insane teamplay impact.
Definitely not true that a captain devices all the strategy and ideas of the team. Even ppd said that he's role is like a communicator he filters good and bad ideas, rtz said the same thing about s4 when he captained secret and even aui during the thorin interview said that c9 made it difficult for envy to draft since all of them had polarizing ideas and very vocal about it. (i can't remember when ppd and rtz said it )
Another thing that a captain does that is that they know how to make there teammates feel better like somebody from secret has said that puppey makes them feel better after having a disastrous play, or when thoorin asked aui if does fear being the veteran helps calms the team down when the team is under tension but aui rejected it saying ppd does that.
If the game was never truly about individual skill and just about leadership , ppd wouldn't dump aui so that rtz can play carry for them or puppey wouldn't try to take pieliedie and offer rtz to be in a team together (after MLG 2013) willing to leave the rest of navi if that was the case . Or before TI4 when fear couldn't play did you know that EG tried to offer s4/EE/notail/iceiceice to play as their 1 position in place of mason. Or the time c9 kicked singsing in place of Fata . Or VG would kick black in favor of Hao. Or when NTH kicked EE for EGM.
If pro scene is never about individual skill those things would've never happened. I could go on but i think you get the point.
Leadership is important but so is individual skill.
You misunderstand me completly. Decision making, unit cohesion and tactics are all individual skills and if you look at what you are praising players for it is those skills you are prasining. When it comes to those things you are right in saying in saying there is no upper skill ceiling. What I am saying is that a lack of those skills can be offset by a great leader. The skillset essential to be good at dota all revolve around decision making which is why I believe mediocre players can be great players under a good leader. It takes the burden of the major decisions of you and you know how you are supose to play, if you make a mistake you get corrected and not having to think about all those things allows you to focus on making the correct micro decisions. Again essentially making the game easier to play for you. Of course I'm not saying there is no individual skills, that would be rediculus and mean that every player was essentially at the same level. I'm saying that the specific skill sett needed in dota is such that a great leader can compensate for a lack of those skills in his players.
You might be right that there is not much point in talking about mechanical skill in dota. Outside of wave blocking, taking full advantage of the few abilites you have and farming efficency there probably isn't much, unless you are playing Meepo.
On November 20 2015 01:50 spudde123 wrote: I am not following at all how you get that I am saying EE was making the team worse or how you get that the owner is even talking about skill in that statement. PLD had some issues as a teammate attitude wise, which in EE's mind brought the team down. If you change one skilled player to another skilled player but the new guy improves the teams cohesion, the team will become better. It doesn't have to have anything to do with the new player being more skilled. Though in this case as it turned out the new team had far more issues than the old one.
Puppey is the captain, but he isn't alone in forming an idea in how the team should draft or how they should play. I would guess players like EE&PLD contribute a lot in terms of ideas, and when you watch Secret play there are a bunch of things that are very similar to what c9 used to do at their best. If you are talking just spellcasting or whatever you refer to as "skill", I don't know if PLD stands from the pack. But what people are generally praising him for doesn't have all to do with that but how he positions himself and how he moves around the map, and I don't think one should just credit Puppey for that.
You are being a little rediculus here. First off being able to play and communicate with your team in a team game is a skill and a lack of that ability would be a lack of skill so you are arguing nothing but semantic to start with. Secondly, by all accounts the C9 guys spent most of the game yelling at eachother during games and this seemed common from most, if not all player, the players on the team. That team lost games because EE forgot get a tp. It is that mess you think pie was screwing up the harmony of? Come on it is fairly obvious what it says between the lines and what the owner states directly. That is all I have to say about that, you are of course free to disagree but I feel your argument requires a lot of intellectual dishonesty, pretending a lack of the skill of adapting to, and play with, your team in a team game is not a lack of skill, and a very naive way to see the facts.
Since all three of you wrote similar things on the second subject I decided to just put that reply sepratly so I don't repeat myself three times over.
I am not making an argument, I am stating what the player who made the decision has said about the player. "Arguing semantics" is pretty far from it, there is a pretty big difference between having good spell casting or having good game understanding and being a dick to your teammates. Not that I know exactly what PLD was like but the point was that according the player doing the kicking PLD is "one of the best players he has ever played with". My impression was that you were solely talking about PLD the player inside the game, which is why I made the distinction between being a good player and being a good teammate.
According to what PLD has said himself in interviews, he feels less stressed in Secret because the final responsibility is ultimately on Puppey if there is some big decision to be made. Of course playing with Puppey can help him play as his own responsibilities are not as wide as you pointed out too, but still I find it silly to talk about the guy as mediocre in his role. If he is mediocre, who is not?
See I can get on board with "Puppey makes his team play better" but "PLD plays bad" doesn't make any sense. PLD is playing the exact same style on Secret as he was on C9. That space creation strategy obviously worked extremely well for C9 for a while with PLD doing his thing but ddayzy is saying he's only finding success because of Puppey? It's nonsense. The current team is just better than any of the rejects PLD had to play with this last TI cycle. No way Puppey can carry Black/qojva/bulba/WAYTO.
Of course if you lose Puppey that's a huge loss but if you lose PLD I don't think any other 5 can really do what he does. It's like losing $1000 compared to losing $750. One is preferable but both are bad.
Hilarious to read now, even if Secret bomb out and finish third. Some of the biggest haters now rocking Secret flairs too...
I'm guessing most of the secret flair donning haters were likely puppey4life types. Most of them were probably upset at the idea of him teaming up with some widely disliked personas. Players disliked outside of the game tend to be undervalued for their contributions in-game. Hence the gloom and doom.
On November 21 2015 02:15 Hai1Fyre wrote: Grand Finals Boys!!!!!
Indeed, as expected of our boys!! About OG, they are doing far better than I expected, LB Final? Who would ever think that they are capable of defeating almost every chinese and SEA teams in the Major? It will be a fun match i think, to see which team will fight against Team Secret in the Bo5 Grand Final, EG or OG?
I'm not going to flame albeit a little disappointed at Puppey's drafting in the Grand Finals. With that said, being in the Grand Finals on 4 LANs in a row is still a good accomplishment.
EPT
