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TL;WR: Sometimes you don't realize quite well, but you are in your confort zone in Dota or in life. Staying in it can harm you. Getting out of it will hurt you, but what is worse? Not improving or beign confortable?
A tradition of TeamLiquid - if I allow myself to even consider to have enough knowledge to call what's a tradition in a so old and respected community TL is (man that was long) - that Off-topic blog are more interesting than on-topic (dota and sc) blogs since you have the whole website to talk about the game.
Recently, I created a new account of Dota since my main account, a regular VHS - 3.5k ranked player, was full of Windranger, Rubick and Clockwerk spam. I wanted to challenge myself out of my confort zone and just play any hero that comes to my mind, mostly carry ones. Since every time I play, I put a lot of effort on it, I wanted an account to destroy with some bad results that will end up in improving myself.
You know what, fuck it, here is my main account www.dotabuff.com
Nothing interesting as you can see. Well the thing is, that the new account started very well with some normal skilled matched and very quickly got to high skill. I had victories and defeats but I suspected I was going to be practicing mechanics a good while here.
Until it happened...
I started to feel a bit frustated since some matches went horrible, but what do I mean horrible? Oh wait... I know... me>teammates right? Not much like that... Matches where much like this: no chance to go mid since a guy highlights mid invoker at 5 secs into the match. Can't go carry since, well the same. Don't really wan't to go offlane... let me think... oh wait another carry. Then well whatever I can use Zeus or Lina as support to have some fun.
It happened, I started to abuse a hero that was Zeus. I found 'confort' again. And I spammed it. Zeus is sitting in this new account with a win rate of 76.92% with 13 matches. Not that much matches of course but at one point I said 'no, I don't want to spam a hero, I want to play different ones'. Then, after a couple of regular matches, I started to spam a hero again: Bloodseeker.
This time, it was completely the opposite. With the same 13 matches, I only won 30% of matches and with a lower KD ratio. What was wrong with me?
Yes matches were shit, same as I mentioned before but this time I was infected with something I never did before: I was flaming left and right.
Today, I played 2 matches and lost both of them. After I reviewed the score at dotabuff to see my LH I was shocked at something: normal skill. I can't even win matches that I did before. Note that this account had 60%+ WR at some point and now is at 49.49%. Beautiful.
Last 2 matches, looked like this:
Note: of course I have way better and way worst matches. Just wanted to show what made me realize that I've actually gettin worst, not only at dota
I don't know. Maybe I'm just not good enough ( TA and SF).
Conclusion: I got worse.
Lesson: I think that confort shouldn't be treated as bad as it is regularly by these 'successful' executives. I hate them. But I gotta give them credit when a life lesson slaps my face in something I like so much as dota. If you find your confort zone, you can easily stay in it. But staying too much or staying in a bad way (i.e. reaching a 'safe' moment in your job since you are sure they won't fire you) will, sooner or later, hurt you.
At my work I'm like this today. No real need to challenge myself, I know I won't get fired. I know, any moment, any time, someone can fire you. But as people is sure their football or basketball team will win a game, or even the players themselves are so sure of that, I'm sure I won't get fired in the short-to-medium term. And that's bad.
Now I'm looking for a job. I hate the idea of leaving a place that did so much for me, a place that I feel confortable with, a place in which I can, actually, do more stuff. But I need to leave. I also have financial reasons since the 100% of my salary goes to my family and I love them. But is not only money, I need to leave. I want to know what I want to do, I don't want to do Finance all my life without trying anything else. I don't want to work 15 years in a company, my first company, and then get my ass kicked to the market, a market that will se me like a one-dimensional tool.
I will find a new job and I will be out of my current work during this year. Another failure to the list if I don't make it happen. I don't want it, I need it,
As it for dota. A short 2-3 days break will do the trick. I just need to not get frustated even if I lose because if I don't, I end my match at 00:30 and I need to sleep. After all... I have a job.
I am getting worse at Dota? Did I reached my limit? As Mascheranno, captain of Argentina, said after losing the Copa America final vs Chile:
"I don't know..... perhaps it's me".
With the arrival of the new folks at work, I've realized I'm stuck in my knowledge. I don't question my knowledge, I don't question others opinions, I just want to 'get over with it' (tasks). In Dota, that was happening to me: I was stuck. I was happy with being a low 3.5k VHS guy that writes about dota. Where is the fun in that? I liked the idea of improving, of defying myself! Of realizing how much I don't know of dota! I don't want to be just a passive watcher, I want to be involved in things! I want to love playing dota, writing dota and watching dota! Same as my life, I don't want to love my work, but I want to feel that I'm moving forward!
Thank you for reading! PS: I'm not looking for advice at Dota, I'm looking for opinons of people that are 'confortable' at dota or life.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
Today, I played 2 matches and lost both of them. After I reviewed the score at dotabuff to see my LH I was shocked at something: normal skill. I can't even win matches that I did before. Note that this account had 60%+ WR at some point and now is at 49.49%. Beautiful.
from your dotabuff account it looks like you got a high winrate off beating lower players then the winrate dropped off when you reached your skill level
same thing happened with my smurf, account went from 70% to 55% soon as i hit where i was meant to be
also it looks like you spam a hero a lot in a row for some reason, im assuming thats to win? try relaxing and just randoming on the smurf account for a while and you should improve and increase your comfort zone
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My comfort zone is to just random every game...until I first random brood/techies/meepo...or the hero I hate playing - medu.
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I read all the way until you spelled comfort wrong
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On July 08 2015 14:11 gaijindash wrote: I read all the way until you spelled comfort wrong
this.
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On July 08 2015 14:11 gaijindash wrote: I read all the way until you spelled comfort wrong
Dang. And it wasn't a typo :S
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On July 08 2015 14:11 gaijindash wrote: I read all the way until you spelled comfort wrong After reading this post I scrolled back and that was the first thing I noticed rofl Breaking through a state of conformist's apathy ain't no walk in the park, but if you need someone to tell you to do it, then do it, break through and don't waste your time. There isn't enough time in life to throw it away by being average.
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Sorry for my poor english Sometimes I write some words without thinking. That's why when I write more important stuff, I use ms Word, this time I didn't. Ps: now i'm on mobile
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If you play with worse players you get used to play at that level. I have a smurf that I use exclusively to party with some of my real life friends, nothing else and I have my main account that I use to sometimes (rarely) play solo ranked and play with mix of RL friends and in game friends. My smurf is obviously much lower than my main, in addition to all my friends being much worse than me.
Thing is most of my friends have very irregular schedule, so I often end up playing like 2-3 games with them for 2 weeks, then for the next weeks two spam games with them, like 30 or so. What I noticed always happens is that each time I quit playing with my main and go play with my smurf, I dominate every game, everything is very easy and I notice that people are bad. After 20 or some games, this stops happening, I don't solo 1v5 every game and so on. Then my friends stop playing, I go back to my main, I fucking suck for a couple of game and quickly go back to my usual level.
Which brings me to the following conclusion : if you play with worse players for a while, you end up mimicking them by instink after a while and get worse, you do stupid shit because they do stupid shit. Everyone that has played a game with much worse players has thought "whatever ill dive with 400 hp, this nyx probably won't even land his stun and forget to carapace anyway". Then you do it and it works everytime because you're right, the Nyx is bad. So you do it again and again and when you come back to your rank and you see a Nyx hugging his tower you think "whatever ill dive him, it always works", he carapaces at the right time, lands his stun, in addition to his teammate tp'ing to fuck you up.
Same logic happens to you, mathematically when you have a low total amount of game your rating changes very fast after every game, so something as small has a 3-4 game winning streak can change your rating drastically if you have 60ish game.
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ha.
that 49-49-1 with 49.49% win-rate
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You are on a tilt my friend. And Illuminati..
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Sorry for my poor english Sometimes I write some words without thinking. That's why when I write more important stuff, I use ms Word, this time I didn't. Ps: now i'm on mobile
rereading prior to posting is always a +
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On July 11 2015 02:05 Laserist wrote:You are on a tilt my friend. And Illuminati..
I think I deserve it. I never liked the idea of smurf accounts.
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Be comfortable with yourself.
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On July 11 2015 23:49 NeThZOR wrote: Be comfortable with yourself.
I am in general terms, but as I wrote, I don't want to be too comfortable. Sometimes, in Dota and life, you have to look for some uncomfort since this pushes you to learn new things, improve learnt knowledge... you know... "who moved my cheese?" stuff.
As @makmeatt said above, there's not enough time in life to be average. I don't want, necessarily, be a 7k-6k player. But I should try to be better than average.
You know, one day, people will ask: "how come you are average if you have invested 2000+ hours at something like a videogame?".
Maybe I'm exaggerating, maybe not.
TY for reading
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I agree with SpiZe above, it's really hard to break out of 3.5K in DOTA because there are so many people playing so many different ways, all think their way is the "right" way and everyone else are retards. When it's your main account, you don't know any other way but to play like they're playing because it's a team game and honestly doing what your team wants to do is always better than just ignoring them and let them get destroyed with no help from you. Unless of course you're just really good at high risk, high reward heroes and just start to pub-stomp your way up the ranks. I personally have no desire to do that, I just wanna help my team any way I can and not feed. Play like me, you'll be 3.5K forever hahaha.
Also, you imply that 3.5K is average? When ranked first came out, Valve said that 2.4K was average, 3.4K was top 10% and 4.1K was top 1%. Now that was awhile ago, so I'm sure those numbers don't hold true any more but I bet they're only off by like 300-400 if I had to guess. If 3.5K was average that would have to mean that they're now off by 1100, which I seriously doubt. I really don't think 3.5K is average... I bet it's top 15% or so.
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