Season 20

Offending the Snake

In season 18, I baited FierySnake, saying I would draft him. I didn’t think he’d take it at face value. I actually drafted lilith/h. At the time, I thought lilith was the strongest offlaner in the pool, and I also wanted a timbersaw player (7mad had just won TI? with mek timbersaw). My next pick was Mags, based on draft value.

I think I accidentally offended FierySnake, and he’s been kind of cold to me since then. In a way, he got revenge on me by standing in as offlane during the week 0 scrim this season. Having now played seasons with lilith (S18) and Mags (S20), I’ve sort of completed my “Monte Carlo tree search,” and I think I can say I’d go with FierySnake.

FierySnake I’m sorry !!! Come back to me !!!

On Draft Prep

I spent more time on draft prep. this season than ever before. Within a few weeks after the season started, 3 of us had dropped medals (one was me though. I blame the core/support merger).

Honestly, a lot of my pick choices felt forced though. As a non-high mmr captain, if I started diving for players, I wouldn’t be able to make up the mmr by the end of the draft. This is a consequence of the 2000 mmr floor.

So when high mmr players were passed over and it got to me, I was under some obligation to take them, from a game-theoretic perspective. In the final round, drafting 6th or 7th to last, I also was left without much choice.

No one likes playing with BoX

In the captain flame sheet, Joric posted a screenshot.

It unexpectedly bugged me. All my life, I’ve tried to act in a just and fair way. Being on the side of “righteousness” was to me the most justifiable course before God.

So I know not everyone is going to like me, and I don’t mind. But I thought reasonable people would at least think of me as a reasonable person.

So when someone felt that strongly about me, it kind of bugged me. I decided I needed to reprogram myself:

Compassion is greater than justice/”being right.”
I don’t have to always force people to my way.
Turning the other cheek/Getting the short end can be a blessing (吃虧是福). Just let it go when you’re being treated unjustly, and don’t be too petty.

After we were knocked out, a teammate messaged me to tell me he “really really really didn’t enjoy playing with me.”

Watcha gonna do.

I wanted a Hufflepuff Harem

…and ended up with 2 Ravenclaws (Mags and Krenn) and 2 Slytherins (730 and big retard). If I play next season, I MUST have some Hufflepuffs.

As it happened, I immediately got a chance to practice my reprogramming. There was a bit of toxicity on this team, and also some strong opinions, and if I didn’t go into it with the right attitude I’m sure it would’ve been suffering. I think my teammates might’ve suffered, but as for me, I came out relatively unscathed.

On cohesion and friction

People talk about team “chemistry” and “cohesion”, but I think a more useful way of looking at it might be from the negative side–how much “friction” there is. Friction is the opposite of things running smoothly.

When there is toxicity, this creates friction. When people insist on playing according to their own understanding, this creates friction.

So when looking at a team, rather than talk about cohesion, it might be better to start from a baseline of no friction (perfect hivemind), and say how much deviation there is.

Hufflepuffs in general come with the least friction, and that’s why I like them.

Most people are NPCs

Generally, I believe you can think of people as NPCs:

– Their behaviors and responses are more or less fixed
– How you interact with them determines their responses and storyline
– Your relationship with them is not complex enough for them to have complex thoughts about you

In an RPG, if an NPC does something, is there any sense in getting angry? It would be ridiculous. Likewise, it should be ridiculous to get worked up about people, unless getting angry can accomplish something.

It’s also helpful to remember that DotA is just a side quest.

On 730

In our first games, I made some joking comments about half his hero pool being banned out by 2 bans. I regret making them, because they planted an insidious seed in our team dynamic when we were first getting to know each other. I’ve been trying to remove sarcasm from my behavior, and this is just another reminder. Almost nothing good comes from sarcasm, even if it’s amusing for a moment, and many bad things can come from it.

So to 730, I apologize for any poor comments I made, and I hope you can let them go and not carry them.

730 had some ownage games, and most of the games we won, he carried.

Mags

Mags has been on my radar a long time. His natural tendency as an offlaner is to treat himself as a core (and not a utility support). I also think this is correct play–for the early stage of the game. As a value proposition, I still think you can’t do much better, especially as he’s dropped to Legend for next season.

The main reason I was wary in the past seasons is that Mags flames his teammates a lot in public. But this season, I figured my robot training had progressed enough to handle that. Plus I just asked him to tone his captain-flaming down, and he did, so that was easy.

He’s not even really toxic, if you’re using toxic in the bad-mannered, team-contagion sense. Calling Mags toxic is a little like calling a woman ugly for having a resting bitch face.

By the way, Mags and Papi made playoffs this season, just saying.

Big Retard

A rare example where you can ask a player what he’s good at and wants to play, and then he’s actually good at it and it works. Pretty chill. Would draft again (again).

Krenn

Krenn has a bit of an absurdist sense of humor.

I think big retard found Krenn to be amusing too. Sometimes it’s just good to laugh.