(1 week ago)
So my dad asked me today if there was anything constructive I could gain out of playing DotA competitively. All that politically correct bullshit about cultivating teamwork sort of gets thrown out the window when you have been playing competitively for about 3 years or so. You don't exactly become a better person from "cultivating teamwork" in DotA after 3 years of playing. There are some things I have learnt about game development (BELIEVE IT OR NOT) from being in the competitive scene, but the amount you learn sort of tapers out when you've been in it for 3 years.
All I can tell him is that "you meet and work with a lot of people you otherwise won't meet".
(now)
I wanted to talk about last week's competition, but DotaSG seems to have done pretty good coverage, and it was really not very exciting. Most of the fun was from it being the first victory I've had in a LONG time (because, well, I haven't had any competitions for a long time).
There's a certain amount of anticipation that comes into my first DotA game of every weekend. Often while the week passes, and my mind strays, I get one of those "OOOOH" moments where I suddenly feel like using a certain hero, only unlike normal, I have a LONG LONG time before I can actually try it out.
It's about the same with a post here. This post has been idling for an entire week, and I sort of had an entire essay planned out the previous week, but I forgot about it, and had different stuff sort of pop up in my mind throughout the passing of the week, but it all vanishes at this point.
And now I have to book in again.
Perhaps next week I'll do a post on SATURDAY so I have time to have enough thinking to write something substantial. The moral of the story is that it's always better to do something immediately when you think of it. Somehow it feels very wasted to know that I had thought of so much stuff but can't remember it anymore when the time comes to pen it down.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
A lot of very busy weekends. Whoo.
With so much to blog about not relating to DotA, I should actually go back to my personal blog, but then no one reads it so what's the point?
Unlike a normal blog, where what is written is subtly disguised to imitate personal private matters when the full intention is almost always to address the public, this blog has the privilege of being allowed to fully shamelessly write what is intended for public consumption, with me having to sneak in thoughts and emotions of my own just so I can whine about something.
"Sneak." Heh. *snicker*.
It's pitiful that this glorious venture (which surprisingly went about with all its glory for more than a year, and counting) is being abused by me to project any DotA-related thoughts instead of being, as it originally started, anything to do with Zenith at all. For any updates on team Zenith which I can no longer provide, you can turn to www.teamzenith.net for what you already know expressed as personal exposition, or ask any of the existing members and be probably ignored.
Or alternatively you probably won't care and will continue reading this rant, wondering where it leads to :D
As a matter of fact I have no idea how I came about to discussing the state of this blog. It just came up.
Where was I? Right. 2 busy busy weekends.
Oh right. And Rapture Gaming begins to start disqualifying teams who show up a few minutes late.
More on that later if I have time. It's an issue that is persistent enough to be discussed at a later time anyway, but my general opinion is that it's about time they did it.
So anyway, 2 weeks ago, wondering what to do with my weekend, I went down to WCG Home Team qualifiers around Balestier to maybe have lunch with people I know, check out anything new and interesting in the scene, and play guitar hero.
Bad news one. Surprise, Zenith came late and got disqualified.
Bad news two. Guitar hero is actually an official WCG game so no more free play.
Good news. I find a bunch of my inter-school teammates who are gracious enough to let me play with them! Yay! Something to do!
Better news. They manage to get 3rd, which lands me YET ANOTHER free mp3 player (to be collected next month), and 40 hours of free gaming at GG, which I have yet to touch. Plus I get to spend my weekend doing something, and I get to watch "Wanted" before I book in, which in a note totally unrelated to DotA, is probably the best show I have ever watched. Highly disputed opinion though. Some people say it totally sucks.
I could go on about how the matches went, but it did happen quite long ago, and frankly it wasn't all that interesting. What is interesting though is how different the experience was, playing in a competitive environment leading a team that for the past year I have never played a single time with.
The first and most important lesson though, is that personal improvement in skill can happen even after a long time of playing. The last time I played with any of these people was in Funan Inter-school about 16 months ago, and even with all their NS and Study commitments, they have all made significant improvements in individual skill.
The second lesson I learnt is one about team organisation. The feeling I had when playing with a team I had never played with before, was surprisingly weird in a competitive environment. Often I don't care what happens to my teammates when playing pub-draft matches, but when your teammates are right next to you and you still have no idea what is happening, except that there are things happening, it feels very weird. It has never struck me before this as important to actually know your teammates, but I realised that up till now, I have been playing with the subconscious knowledge of what my team is probably going to do, when I play with people I know. There is a certain way a team will naturally play.
Conversely, it should be thus possible to know the natural way your opponents play and expect certain things from them. Of course, this is much more difficult, but playing the same opponents over and over again actually made me able to predict their actions quite naturally.
You might also notice, that when you try to force a change in the way your team naturally plays, it becomes quite unusual. Certain things that your teammates used to be always reliably able to do aren't happening anymore, because they aren't playing in their natural manner. Teamplay falls differently.
The question of course, is how much of teamwork comes naturally, and how much of it is deliberately controlled and consciously done?
I would say more, but with book-in time approaching, I don't tend to write very well, or have much time to write anything at all.
Maybe more next week, with the whole 3 concurrent competitions that happened last week, and the whole DQ issue. Until then, next week looks very exciting. WCG Qualifiers.
With so much to blog about not relating to DotA, I should actually go back to my personal blog, but then no one reads it so what's the point?
Unlike a normal blog, where what is written is subtly disguised to imitate personal private matters when the full intention is almost always to address the public, this blog has the privilege of being allowed to fully shamelessly write what is intended for public consumption, with me having to sneak in thoughts and emotions of my own just so I can whine about something.
"Sneak." Heh. *snicker*.
It's pitiful that this glorious venture (which surprisingly went about with all its glory for more than a year, and counting) is being abused by me to project any DotA-related thoughts instead of being, as it originally started, anything to do with Zenith at all. For any updates on team Zenith which I can no longer provide, you can turn to www.teamzenith.net for what you already know expressed as personal exposition, or ask any of the existing members and be probably ignored.
Or alternatively you probably won't care and will continue reading this rant, wondering where it leads to :D
As a matter of fact I have no idea how I came about to discussing the state of this blog. It just came up.
Where was I? Right. 2 busy busy weekends.
Oh right. And Rapture Gaming begins to start disqualifying teams who show up a few minutes late.
More on that later if I have time. It's an issue that is persistent enough to be discussed at a later time anyway, but my general opinion is that it's about time they did it.
So anyway, 2 weeks ago, wondering what to do with my weekend, I went down to WCG Home Team qualifiers around Balestier to maybe have lunch with people I know, check out anything new and interesting in the scene, and play guitar hero.
Bad news one. Surprise, Zenith came late and got disqualified.
Bad news two. Guitar hero is actually an official WCG game so no more free play.
Good news. I find a bunch of my inter-school teammates who are gracious enough to let me play with them! Yay! Something to do!
Better news. They manage to get 3rd, which lands me YET ANOTHER free mp3 player (to be collected next month), and 40 hours of free gaming at GG, which I have yet to touch. Plus I get to spend my weekend doing something, and I get to watch "Wanted" before I book in, which in a note totally unrelated to DotA, is probably the best show I have ever watched. Highly disputed opinion though. Some people say it totally sucks.
I could go on about how the matches went, but it did happen quite long ago, and frankly it wasn't all that interesting. What is interesting though is how different the experience was, playing in a competitive environment leading a team that for the past year I have never played a single time with.
The first and most important lesson though, is that personal improvement in skill can happen even after a long time of playing. The last time I played with any of these people was in Funan Inter-school about 16 months ago, and even with all their NS and Study commitments, they have all made significant improvements in individual skill.
The second lesson I learnt is one about team organisation. The feeling I had when playing with a team I had never played with before, was surprisingly weird in a competitive environment. Often I don't care what happens to my teammates when playing pub-draft matches, but when your teammates are right next to you and you still have no idea what is happening, except that there are things happening, it feels very weird. It has never struck me before this as important to actually know your teammates, but I realised that up till now, I have been playing with the subconscious knowledge of what my team is probably going to do, when I play with people I know. There is a certain way a team will naturally play.
Conversely, it should be thus possible to know the natural way your opponents play and expect certain things from them. Of course, this is much more difficult, but playing the same opponents over and over again actually made me able to predict their actions quite naturally.
You might also notice, that when you try to force a change in the way your team naturally plays, it becomes quite unusual. Certain things that your teammates used to be always reliably able to do aren't happening anymore, because they aren't playing in their natural manner. Teamplay falls differently.
The question of course, is how much of teamwork comes naturally, and how much of it is deliberately controlled and consciously done?
I would say more, but with book-in time approaching, I don't tend to write very well, or have much time to write anything at all.
Maybe more next week, with the whole 3 concurrent competitions that happened last week, and the whole DQ issue. Until then, next week looks very exciting. WCG Qualifiers.