Balance in all things.

Back when I considered myself a serious gamer, my macro was way better than it is now. I didn’t need missing calls, I knew when someone was missing from your lane before you did. I didn’t need you to tell me how your lane was going, because I already knew (and it annoyed me when people asked about mine, because I thought these people should use their focus on their own lanes).

I’m a fraction of the gamer I used to be, and while it’s easy to blame it on older age and less play-time, I know that a large part is due to my attitude too–I just don’t care anymore. But the robot god revealed this to me, and my first goal this season is to start caring again.

This is not to say that I’m going to have a competitive attitude, but that I think you should make an effort in whatever you do. I believe it will also help maintain my mental acuity. So my first goal this season is to try hard without being a tryhard. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory.

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I think improving my macro will also benefit my leadership. People who first play with me think I don’t talk much, and therefore don’t lead much. The first is true, but the latter not so. I prefer when my teams follow my lead exactly. However, when playing with unfamiliar people, I don’t like to start off telling everyone what to do. I don’t think it’s polite to command strangers to listen to your orders like you have some right.

By the way, if you want to be lead, maybe you should learn how to be a follower.

There’s also a false dichotomy, to me, between friendship and leadership, which I struggle to reconcile. When I like people more (in a team situation), I tend to start going along with them and being less domineering, out of friendly respect. I don’t know what the ideal solution is.

Some readers might object to my arrogance in thinking that I’m always right. It’s not that I think I’m infallible, but that results would be better if we rose and fell by my sword.

This is what I’ve recently come to realize ‘faith’ means. Faith is not believing without evidence. But rather, having been presented with some evidence of truth, a willingness to then be led blindly through a dark tunnel by those you believe have a light you can’t see–this is the meaning of faith.

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Another thing I want to work on this season is how to be constructive without being critical. This is by nature difficult, as in order to build you must tear down.

In any case, I can definitely continue working on my balance between construction and criticism.

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P.S.

On a PST-Sun content front, I don’t plan on doing a week 0 power ranking:

1) It’s kind of boring to do the same things over and over. I’d rather do new things like #blogboy more.
2) I think medals/mmr are wildly inaccurate right now due to the re-calibration a couple months ago. I wouldn’t want to do a subjective ranking that’s not based on numbers.

Good luck everyone, and be nice to me when I/my team sucks thanks.

115 sign-ups
23 captains
Average Badge: Ancient 2/3
11 immortal players
36 divine or above
70 ancient or above
Average draft value: 27.7

If you’re like me and aren’t sure what the lower badges represent:

Guardian = 770-1540 mmr
Crusader = 1540-2310
Archon = 2310-3080
Legend = 3080-3850
Ancient = 3850-4620

How accurately does current mmr represent a player’s true skill? Would it make more sense to use some kind of lagging indicator, like a trailing average?

Can you capture the differences between players like bloodninja, who fluctuate up and down, and those who are on an upward trajectory?

When bloodninja fluctuates up and down, does his true skill remain constant, or do the fluctuations represent his current level of play?

How do you determine those who are value for their mmr?

If there is no matchmaking abuse, and assuming players are not initially overvalued, mmr should theoretically converge to “true skill” and there shouldn’t be severely overvalued players. However, due to factors such as new patches, and boosting, there may be anti-value players. How do you determine them?

For mmr vis-à-vis true skill, clearly there is a lot you could consider.

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Setting aside the above problem, let us consider badges.

If every badge tier corresponds to 154 mmr, a player with a certain badge could have any mmr within a 307 mmr range. (Because a de-rank isn’t updated until you’ve fallen farther than one star away. See here. Note that matchmaking is done “on MMR and not medals, and thus sometimes a game can appear to be good or bad as a result of the medals not representing reality.” Conclude for yourself how much sense it makes for us to use medals instead of mmr in RD2L.)

If you always draft players at the top of their “mmr buckets”, and another captain always drafts those at the bottom, by the end of the draft you could theoretically build up a 307 x 4 = 1228 mmr advantage!

This is significant, but is there a way to tell who is at the top and bottom of their buckets? I’m not sure.

In any case, a strictly numerical approach isn’t likely to get you far anyway. The appropriate consideration is still: who is value and anti-value.

MMR, and also badge stars, are familiar and intuitive for me. The draft-sheet numerical equivalent, less so. I’m not sure how I’m going to work with the draft sheet yet. Do I just translate to mmr and do what I’ve always done? I’d like to hear ideas from other captains.

I propose splitting RD2L into a higher mmr league, and a lower mmr league. The higher league, which I will call RD2L-A, could have an mmr floor of say, 3300. The lower league, RD2L-B, could have an mmr ceiling of say, 4800. Players between 3300 and 4800 mmr could play in both leagues.

The effects would be to
– decrease division sizes
– tighten the skill range (but not to mini’s extent)
– prevent some friends from playing with each other. therefore the mmr floor and ceiling should be chosen to make this trade-off worth it.

I’ll use PST-SUN Season 18’s player pool as a study. Last season there were 190 sign-ups, which made 38 teams. The average mmr was 3845, the highest mmr was 6306, and the lowest was 316.

If we set a floor of 3300 for RD2L-A, the pool becomes 140 players, making 28 teams, with an average mmr of 4365.

If we set a ceiling of 4800 for RD2L-B, the pool is 151 players, making 30.2 teams, with an average mmr of 3470.

In practice, I don’t think all players who can play both divisions would choose to do so. In practice, a higher RD2L-B ceiling would probably work better, both for friendships, and to differentiate more from LD2L. It would also include more high-mmr leadership. Additionally, while higher mmr players may gripe about playing with lower mmr players, the reverse is not typically true. I would suggest polling the community before making final decisions. In the extreme case, RD2L-B has no ceiling, and RD2L-A is effectively a separate, but affiliated league (itachi-cede?).

Gamers, forget your game, and list’ to the game of these…

I’ll start with a personal story. I used to think that supports who didn’t buy wards were lazy, greedy, and, unconscientious–lazy because they didn’t care about doing their job; greedy because they had incorrect ideas about “needing farm”, or just plain simply wanting it; and unconscientious because they aren’t the type of people who care about doing what is right.

With this patch making wards free, something shocking happened. I thought it would make supports ward better, but in fact the opposite occurred. I have to ward on my own more than ever. This tells me that, 1) it wasn’t the cost that stopped them from warding in the past. 2) they were probably buying them out of a sense of duty, before.

It was a humbling reminder that you should be slow to judge other people. Everyone has their own situation and struggles.

As part of my High MMR Player Retention Program™, I want to remind players to be more patient, understanding, and forgiving with everyone–even those who treat you unfairly.

High mmr players place a lot of stress on themselves. They feel a burden to carry the game, and when the team loses, they may subconsciously feel inadequate. It then may manifest as toxic behavior and team blaming. If your treatment of people is tied to the wins and losses of games, it compounds their feeling of weight and isolation.

柔能克剛
If you feel unfairly wronged, try not to reciprocate with negativity. It may bring you temporary illusory relief, but in the end, you hurt yourself, and the situation. Experiment, observe, and believe.

Please also be kind to your lower mmr players, even if you think they don’t listen. The game is very hard for them.

For want of blogboy content, I’ll look back at my player draft this season.

I went into the draft intending to first pick the best off-laner available. (I intended to play mid.) I think the off-lane role is too important: It’s the hardest role in the game, requiring familiarity with the most match-ups, and ability to react to unfamiliar situations. It requires a player to get “something out of nothing.” A deficiency in the off-lane throws the whole team into imbalance. It’s like a floor that’s not level, or a chair that wobbles, or one of Treebeard’s structural disasters. (I cannot regret more, the off-laners who abandon from 0:00 to jungle “because they get more that way”).

So I was just going to take the best-offlaner once it got to me. This was just after TI, and 7mad had just won with an impressionable mek-Timbersaw. When it was my turn and Lilith the Timbersaw main was available, well; it was a match made in heaven. Although we never utilized the mek-Timbersaw (I’d still like to use this, to be honest), our cleanest wins this season were with Lilith Timbersaw and an aggro-trilane.

Speaking of tri-lanes, right from the beginning I intended to use tri-lanes as a dominant part of my strategy, which is also why I insisted on first picking a strong off-laner. I have always preferred tri-lanes to dual-lanes. I won’t go into my laning theories, but I will note that almost every time we aggro tri-laned, the opponent responded by matching our tri-lane with three heroes. (I don’t necessarily agree with their response, though).

I also wanted the option to sacrifice my off-laner, but this ended up not being a comfortable move. (I’ll ask again, where are the off-laners who can be sac’d!!)

All-in-all, I took two lessons away from my first pick strategy this season. First, I think the teams with more even mmr distributions tended to fare better. (Or more specifically, teams with a truer tri-core threat). Next season, I’ll think about first-picking a slightly lower-mmr player. Second, rather than auto-taking the strongest first pick available, I should still look at value for mmr.

I still think I like prioritizing the off-laner pick. But on the other hand, with everyone else prioritizing mids and carries, if no one grabs the stronger off-laners, it might create opportunities for other captains in the draft. That considered, I don’t think the block-picking meta is worth agonizing over when you’re 1 captain out of 38. It would require more captains thinking game-theoretically.

Inspired by Burrahobbit’s vlog last night, I will continue blog-boying it up.

Someone last week opined that 109 was the best mid-laner in the division this season. For me, the best mid-laner was FlyingNightmare. When I ask who the “best players” are, another way of putting it is “who can I learn from and not go astray?” I think FlyingNightmare’s play and decisions are the most standard, accurate, and scientific. To give an example, Phantasmal told me Clinkz was busted, but I wasn’t convinced aghs. first item was accurate. Consulting other options, I came across FlyingNightmare’s line. He put on a clinic on Lina last night too. To put it unpolitely, I don’t think his team was that good, but as a nosebleed mmr player, I think FlyingNightmare carried his team and delivered the goods.

Value-for-money mid-laner award goes to deadprez. If he wasn’t a known rd2ler, you’d probably think this guy was a smurf. Runner-up goes to Joric.

Best carry in the division I’ll give to UltraGunner, who kind of wins this category by default. Value-for-money carry is Legion, in my book. He seems like the definition of stability. To be fair, he was drafted at 5k, though. Runner-up goes to ChowMains, who over-performed but has gained a bunch of mmr since the draft.

Best off-laner, I will grudgingly give to MGHappyHobo, by default. Value-for-money goes to Mags. Halfcast was a stronger contender too. Halfcast has been versatile and performing well, but maybe loses out slightly in raw power level and consistency.

For the supports, I will say that chances are high that I overlooked players I’m not familiar with.

Best 4 position goes to pandaPGOD, who I also give value-for-money. This guy’s good™.

I’ll withhold awarding position 5, because I don’t think I know the players well enough. Nominate your own 🙂

Part 2 to come later.

I am thankful to my team. I am thankful that everyone is good-natured and agreeable. (It only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch.)

I am thankful for Lilith 开花, for carrying the burden of being a high mmr first-pick. I am thankful that even though we don’t always see eye-to-eye, you are able to be a team player. I am thankful for an off-lane player who doesn’t grumble much. I am thankful for your kind words about me, which were noted and appreciated.

Gracious Papi basically fits my RD2L dream-pick archetype. New to RD2L, positive attitude, enthusiasm for the game, willingness to play as an extension of my style, and with the competence to execute. During the draft I wavered between Bury and Gracious Papi. There were solid arguments for picking Bury, but I’m delighted with my choice. #Don’t flame my carry. If any play is weird, the fault is mine.

I’m thankful to Free Lunch for being my value dive in the third round. With EU-draft format, captains have more leeway in their drafting strategies, and this is but one example of how complexity can favor players who take advantage, even when that complexity was intended to reduce advantages. Free Lunch is not a support player, but has taken up support without even a single grumbling or sarcastic word. This is a rarity indeed. I also think Free Lunch’s latent potential is yet unrealized. If you watch his player perspective, sometimes he looks around the fights more than 4k and 5k players do. If you said to me “you have to lock in a player to play the next 5 seasons with,” Free Lunch would make the shortlist easily.

Blakkout was actually recommended by Narte, so my first thanks should actually go to Narte. I really couldn’t have done better with my last pick. In the age of support players who think they’re carry players, Blakkout is as solid a support player as they come, fitting of his RD2L veteran status. I’m thankful for your willingness to play [redacted] every game, and for being the best last pick a robot could hope for.

I’m thankful to Phantasmal, for being gracious in your victory over me. A true friend in fair or foul weather. I’m actually thankful for most of my opponents this season, who have reaffirmed my belief that PST-Sun has the most sportsmanship of the RD2L divisions.

I decided to post a team review before playoffs, while my spirit of camaraderie is at its peak. Even though the playoff loss will inevitably be sour, by posting now I hope that my team will know my words are sincere.

I scored the Week 0 power rankings for accuracy. Basically, I calculated a power-rank’s deviation from the end-of-season ranking. For example, if you ranked a team 5th, and they were actually 1st at the end, this is a difference of 4 places.

Here are the results. A “perfect score” would be 0.

BoX: 314
Treebeard: 376
Itachi: 378
MGHappyhobo: 402
Clare: 455

I am clear first, and Clare is clear last. Surprisingly, Treebeard came in 2nd (just barely).

My worksheet with data is here. Thanks Gwenhwyfar for the consolidated power ranking data.

When I made my Week 0 ranking, I didn’t explain my method. There were several reasons:

1. I was just trying to get the content going, so the point of my post wasn’t really the method used.
2. I was trying an experimental method, which I knew was not particularly sound. It was for my own amusement. I didn’t feel like defending myself from people who wouldn’t get it.

In the past, I would just adjust player mmrs using my proprietary methods, and then see which teams had the most mmr. The fact is, starting resource value is too important. I firmly believe that in the long run, mmr-based methods will outperform completely subjective ones. If I ranked teams according to total BoX-mmr, I would’ve gotten this:

crap
lucky
jabinski
princemeerkat92
moca
burrahobbit
box
doomcow33
steven
aeos
clare
ultragunner
skaterx7
clueless
MGHappyhobo
stonedspirit
deadprez
Charles the Baboon
velvelvel
JIVEE
lemonardo
polo5885
khillasaurus
flyingnightmare
themantis
bbtm
mappo
sharingan
seven thirty
bsvhsvj
fatsloth
jonsquid
jenny death
give up dude
maximus
♂K[A]livunkka♂
starend 2.0
spidez

A problem I was thinking about this season is, “what is the ideal mmr distribution for the players of a team?” For example, let’s use an average mmr of 3845. If one player has 8000 mmr, and the remaining four players are 2800 mmr, this is probably not ideal. Having all five players with 3845 mmr is likely a stronger team. Can this perfectly equal team be improved? What if we transferred some mmr from the 5 position to the mid-player? That’s probably better.

What if we tried to set our mmr distribution up, such that of the three Dota lanes, we could win two of them?

For my Week 0 power ranking, I divided each team into three groups: mid player, highest and lowest remaining mmrs, and 2nd and 3rd highest mmrs. These three groups were my “three lanes.” If I mis-assigned some player roles, I figured it wasn’t a big deal.

Then I sorted teams by the mmr of the mid player, and assigned a score from 1 to 38. I did the same for my 1+4 and 2+3 groups. I then added up the 3 scores, and ranked teams from lowest to highest. This was my final power ranking.