zzz

i am finally posting an article xD. MUAHAHAHAHA!!!!
*looks proudly around*

no more EMO EMO EMO EMO EMO
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
wait but i'm not emo
maybe lately
nah. it's just that i've cleared away all my whatever feelings in the past long long time
:-(
i think i shall stop writing in a "stream of consciousness" way
should i use more emoticons?
this is like a warped poem!
*dances happily*

So let's stuff all the stuff about history and thoughts and whatever before I degenerate this blog into... an actual blog.

My recent situation has led me to seek out methods of trying to train that someone in a situation such as mine can only resort to. Up till now, I've been pretty content with sticking with a small group and finding draft matches with a small mix of people in my team. With recent developments, I have, well, no team to train with, and hey, everyone else is training with THEIR team.

Occasionally there is the urge to join up as a last in a draft match. Experience has shown that me going out to solo look for 4 teammates usually has a very disastrous outcome.

The unfortunate case is that I actually have normal sleeping hours (as your parents would most likely put it) unlike the rest of the draft matching community, and am not home on most nights or days, an unfortunate result of my current job. So for one, finding a match during my playing hours is much more time consuming.

And of course since it takes so long for a match to pop up, I don't check IRC or other channels that often for people who are finding players, which multiplies the entire effect of me being unable to find a match since I miss most opportunities from checking too late.

Doing stuff like writing this article of course, means that for 99% or more of the time that I'm on my computer, I'm not actually checking any other forms of communication with the rest of the world (99% of course being a high figure since checking any forms of communication requires so damn little time).

Next, joining 4 friends as a last generally lends you with very little power to do anything. It is not uncommon to be in a situation where I find myself completely powerless to change the game - not by my own demerit but by the whole power ditch bestowed upon someone in my position. That being said, there are a fair enough share of games where I join a bunch of decent players that make the game worthwhile.

That being said, you, my ever discerning reader, will no doubt have concluded that I have been indulging myself in the *DREADED PUBLIC GAME*.

On Garena, I find myself actually in a surprising amount of pretty good pubs with a lot of players worth their salt. That being said, I've held a pretty low impression of the "public game", so what I term a "surprising amount" is somewhere close to around 5% of games. There are a lot of games where a team of competent players will decide to gank up against a team of, well, not so competent players (a judgment passed simply because of statistics). Those sometimes end up as challenges, but often end up as a situation like one described above. A very frustrating sequence of events that you have almost absolutely no control over.

Almost all the cases stated though, are minorities. Not to the extent of being exceptions (though I would consider some games to be exceptional considering the statistical probabilities), but not games that I would include in a sweeping description of the general "public game".

There are some things that can be learnt about public games, though there is nothing I can think of that can be learnt FROM public games that cannot be learnt in a proper good match. It is an amazing thing that where the general "public game" is the most common mode of play for DotA, it defies most of what the game is about. Indeed, DotA is one game where, and increasingly so nowadays, coordination and teamwork is absolutely essential. Yet majority of what happens in "public games" has at least one team lacking in any basic team work or coordination, and some things are impossible to learn without practicing.

Having read thus far into my exposition, you might be disappointed to know that there is no magnificent revelation about the DotA pub in this post. With all the above being flashed out, the next bit is about a specific way to make your DotA pub much more enjoyable.

Tada. The key is to play with ONE friend. Suddenly everything is much easier. If by any chance both of you join a random pub, chances are that by bringing in one friend who is a competent player, you are statistically more likely to win. The challenge is what happens when you fight a bigger group of friends on the other side (mostly on the hosting side... perhaps it might be an unjustified generalisation, but friends on the scourge side usually end up just leaving together), or in the surprisingly likely event where your teammates are utterly atrocious. Perhaps it only is a surprisingly likely event because most of the games where mine teammates aren't utterly atrocious end up being short and not very memorable games, but this is where the fun begins.

Because suddenly, when you have just one good friend amongst all the blazing noobness, the game becomes CHALLENGING as opposed to FRUSTRATING.

The impact dealt to the game by one single good player is nothing compared to that brought about by a pair. This statement I have yet to put into proper explanation, but is one of those statements that simply feel right, and at least seem empirically correct for my case.

I would love to discuss more about this, but this post is already dragging too long for me to write down all the things I love to write down about. Perhaps I'll explore this further, with more specific case studies, but like I said, I never actually follow up any of my points do I?

Anyway, I was playing a game today, and all of a sudden I experienced a fresh feeling I have yet to encounter in the past few months. Forgive the vague analogy, but it was as if I was myopic and suddenly got glasses. Basically, I started consciously thinking about almost everything that was currently happening in the game. It was almost a heightened sense of map awareness, coupled with a clear idea of what to do against a visible enemy.

Makes one wonder if it's possible to recreate such a sense all the time. It feels a bit lousy sometimes to simply play by instinct and occasionally just have everything fall in your way.