Saturday, December 29, 2012

[SUMMARY] Transitioning from EARLY to MID/LATE game: Tactics and Priorities

Properly transitioning from early game to mid/late game tactics is vital to winning. Players that do not master this transition may find themselves winning their lanes, yet unable to make use of their early lead because of poor strategy and/or poor planning. I will highlight key points that will help make your transition much more smoothly. Below is a TLDR summary of my article, but I urge everyone to read the rest of it.
  1. Heroes that don't need farm to be effective should gank as soon as possible.
  2. Heroes that need a specific item to be effective (Moraxus with a Portal Key, for example) should prioritize farm until they get it and gank immediately.
  3. Heroes that need a significant amount of farm (Hard carries) to be effective should farm while the rest of their team ganks.
  4. Farming after getting your core build will show diminishing returns on your farm. Fight after you get the item(s) that you need.
  5. Find ways to deny the enemy money and experience. An example would be taking the enemy's jungle and leaving a small creep behind.
  6. If possible, focus heroes on ganking heroes on the other team that need farm instead of constantly killing heroes that don't.
  7. Find ways to bait and finish off turtlers. An example would be to build a massive advantage by taking their jungle/ancients and then Kongor after that.
  8. Plan ahead.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Reasons to keep playing even in the face of "defeat."

Everyone that plays competitive games has been in a losing position, but not everyone has the proper mindset to climb out of that position.

What do you focus on when you're losing? What items the enemy has? What levels the enemy has? How many of your towers are down? How many towers they have? Are these the right things to focus on if you are trying to turn a losing game into a winning one? If you don't care much about winning, go ahead and press the green thumbs up button on the concede vote. But if you care about winning and have a truly burning desire to win, keep reading.

One of the main weaknesses of mankind is the average man's familiarity with the word "impossible." He knows all the rules which will NOT work. He knows all the things which CANNOT be done. 
Success comes to those who become SUCCESS CONSCIOUS. Failure comes to those who indifferently allow themselves to become FAILURE CONSCIOUS.
 - Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)

Too many times in life, we think of reasons why things are impossible. We think of reasons why our desires aren't going to become reality. We create artificial shortcomings for ourselves and those around us. We say we can't do something because X or because someone else is Y. We create limitations for ourselves and sabotage ourselves. We find reasons why something will not happen or something will not work and we give up. Inaction will NEVER yield any results. If you TRULY want to accomplish something, why should you limit yourself and give up?

Let's all be the better man (or woman) and forget about failure. Let's think about how we can be successful and win the game. Even if the game looks like a lost one, why not work as hard as you can and turn it around? Failure will come to those who allow it to saturate and consume their mind. The ones who cry for concede votes are the ones who will be losing the most games. They give up before the other team has defeated them. They would rather predict a loss and be correct than trying as hard as they can. I truly realized this after reading the following quote:

Most people would rather be CERTAIN they're miserable, than risk being happy. 
- Robert Anthony

Think about that quote for a second. When people give up and beg for concede votes, isn't this what they are doing? They would rather be certain they've lost instead of doing all they can and risk winning? You know that these people have a habit of giving up. They have a habit of being defeated in life, and their habit perpetuates itself in all other parts of life. I'm writing to pull people out of their terrible attitudes and to inspire them to be better and stop giving up. This game should be a way for all of us to become mentally stronger people, not a place for us to practice giving up. We can make it that way one step at a time.

Focus on the right things, and you can turn a losing game into a winning one. The best part about working hard from a losing position is that even if you don't end up with a win, at least you didn't beat yourself and you made your enemy defeat you himself. By pressing the concede button, you have beaten yourself. You've saved your opponent much trouble. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu describes the process of winning.

To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself ... Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.
- Sun Tzu

We can never truly be certain of our success. All we have the power to do is to make sure WE don't make mistakes ourselves. That is the first step to winning. Capitalizing on the errors the enemy makes is the second step. As Sun Tzu says, the enemy must first make an error. Without their error, you cannot win. Considering that, the enemy can't win if you don't give them an opportunity to defeat you. Surrendering makes no sense at all if you are sincerely trying to win. You have not done all that you can to secure yourself against defeat. In fact, you are the ultimate cause of your own defeat by surrendering.

Work to secure yourself against defeat while waiting for your opponent to give you an opportunity to defeat them. You can't say that the enemy "won't throw" because that is not something you are in control of. You are only in control of yourself and indirectly, your teammates. Only your opponents can control how they react to you and your team's actions.

Being defeated is only a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
- Marilyn Vos Savant

Be the one on the team who makes defeat temporary. What is giving up going to do for you? What will it do for your team? Nothing. Work to change "defeat" into something more productive. And if you ever want to blame your enemies, read the following article and make the change that ensures your success and development.

How to improve your mindset to deal with bad teammates.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

6 Steps to Improve Your Skills

When people ask others for tips on becoming a better player, they get very general, unspecific responses. How does this really help someone genuinely trying to improve? When someone is told that, will they just keep playing over and over and hope for the best? You can be in control of your improvement. When one asks how they can get better, they are often told:

  • "Practice makes perfect."
  • "Just think about what you're doing."
  • "Practice your fundamentals."
  • "Play over and over and you'll get better."
  • "You'll get better with experience. Don't worry. It will come in time."

They're all encouraging words, but it can be hard to act on them and get results. Sometimes, you get more specific answers. Those are few and far between, and usually lead nowhere because the person asking for help doesn't even know where to start! The problem with a lot of these responses is that it leaves your improvement to chance. Leaving things to chance is NEVER the way to go. In this article, I'll be writing a step-by-step process on improving your skills one by one. But before I begin, we must know that any improvement begins with realizing that you are doing something wrong and it needs to change.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
-Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein would kick your ass in any game he plays because he knows how to improve.

You must realize that doing the same thing over and over again will result in the same thing. If one strategy does not work, you must adapt. If you lose, but change nothing about the way you play, you can never hope to improve. We have all had times where we say one of the following statements:
  • "I should have done X."
  • "I can't believe I did X."
  • "X seemed like a good idea..."
  • "How could I have made a simple mistake as X."
Replace the X's with your favorite mistake. Instead of "remembering" them and keeping them in mind, these X's should be recorded. I used to keep a notebook the mistakes I made whenever I played. After pages and pages of games and faults, I scanned the notebook for mistakes that I commonly made. When I found my common mistakes, I put them all on one page and decided to do something about them.

In this article, I will use myself as an example and how I improved. In the past, I struggled with mouse control. I was constantly missing skills I shouldn't have missed. I constantly clicked in the wrong place, and missed opportunities I shouldn't have missed. I set aside an hour everyday to practice. These are the steps I took. Recently, I bought a new computer and I have to work on it again. The resolution on this monitor is DRASTICALLY different from my old one, and I have to get used to it. I lost my records from my previous endeavor and will be sharing my current progression. And without further ado...

THE SIX STEPS TO IMPROVE YOUR SKILLS

  1. Find a weakness to focus on
  2. Rationalize your training
  3. Find a way to improve
  4. Set time aside
  5. Track your progress
  6. Work and reflect
1. Find a weakness to focus on.

If you don't focus on your mistakes one-by-one, you will leave your improvement to chance. If you just keep playing the game believing that you will get better in time, you are right. The keyword in your belief is "in time." You are giving control of your improvement to something other than yourself. By giving it to time, you don't know when you will improve. You don't know how much you improved. You don't know how it will happen. You just know that time will give it to you eventually. Take matters into your own hands and make your improvement happen.

While playing over and over again will result in improvement, it leaves things to chance. What if you have a game where your mistakes don't matter and you still win? What if the game you're playing doesn't require you to focus on the mistakes that you have? For those reading who play sports competitively, you understand that improvement comes a step at a time. You didn't get better by simply playing over and over again. Though it helped, I'm sure you also spent time improving your skills individually. If you focus on one task at a time, your skill in that task will improve at a fast rate and you will be able to focus on other tasks after that.

After logging my mistakes, I realized the things I needed to focus on the most. Too many times, I saw that I missed skills because I couldn't click the target. I also missed some skills because I aimed them incorrectly because I overshot/undershot with my mouse pointer. These mistakes are unforgivable and I had to do something about it. I chose to focus on this.

2. Rationalize your training

Find many reasons why you need to improve this skill. Find many reasons why NOT improving will lead to your downfall. By rationalizing your training, you further motivate yourself to do what you need to do. These reasons will push you to learn what you're trying to learn. It will also make you realize why what you are focusing on is important. Maybe in the future, you can communicate these things with others who are also trying to improve themselves.

Some of my reasons for working to improve my mouse control:

  1. I will be able to click what I need to, when I need to with confidence.
  2. I have an urge to win, so I must be able to take every opportunity easily and precisely.

What will happen if I don't improve my mouse control:

  1. I will keep missing my skills. By missing my skills, I miss opportunities. By missing opportunities, I have lost the game for myself.
  2. I will be too busy focusing on using my mouse to focus on more important aspects of the game.
  3. I will keep losing games because I missed too many skills. Mistakes add up and actually amount to something.

These two lists are a few of my reasons why I work to improve my mouse control. I have MANY more, but there is no need to go through every single one of them. Find reasons for your own improvement, and you will successfully improve in anything you focus on.

3. Find a way to improve

Take some time to figure out ways you can improve your skills. Also take the time to find ways people improved if they're having the same problems as you are. Their methods can probably work for you. When you find something you can do that SPECIFICALLY trains the skill you are looking for, remember it and try it. If you feel like the method you found is beneficial, stick with it and move to the next step.

I looked online for ways people improved their mouse control. I found this forum post that gives three ways of improving mouse control. I chose one of them and stuck to it. It had a way that I could monitor my progress and it was challenging. I could also do it for either a short period of time or a long period of time, which allowed flexibility.

A Wonderful Article on TeamLiquid's forum about Improving Mouse Control

4. Set time aside

Know how much time you will set aside for your work. Maybe you'll work on improving for 30 minutes a day. Maybe you'll work on improving for an hour a day. Work on it for a week. Work on it for two weeks. It doesn't matter. Make a reasonable commitment that you will be able to fulfill. Also make sure that your commitment will yield results. If you are going to work on something for only 30 minutes everyday, make sure you work on it for a while so you see results. You can only take out as much as you put in. Something for nothing has yet to be discovered.

I set aside an hour a day to improve my mouse control. Before I played a game, I practiced my mouse control for an hour. Some days that I had more time, I set aside even more. Since I had a reason to improve, I had no problem in setting aside extra time in a day if I had it.

5. Track your progress.

To make sure you aren't aimlessly working, track your progress somehow. Keep a paper, a spreadsheet, a sticky note, or anything that you can write information on to keep track of how you are doing. If you can, also take notes on how you can practice even harder. Take notes on what helps you and what doesn't help you. It will allow you to further focus and get more out of your practice sessions and in your games in the future.

Whenever I practiced, I kept track of what I was doing in my sessions. To practice, I chose a game that challenged my mouse precision. As I said earlier, it had measures of accuracy and difficulty so I could see how much progress I was making. In just one day, I made progress. In my spreadsheet, I noted every variable I found useful. I also took notes on what helped me succeed in my practice sessions. Have a look in the link below for an example of how to track your progress.

Here is the spreadsheet I used to track my progress

6. Work and reflect

As you work, think about your improvement. Are you really improving? Do the records you're taking show slight improvement? Do games you play out of practice show your improvement? If the answer to these questions is yes, you are doing good work. Remember what you are doing well. Keep doing what you're doing and keep finding ways to improve. If the answer is no, then maybe you need to go back to Step 3 and find a different way. As Einstein said, don't do the same thing over and over expecting different results.

Reflection helped me find MORE reasons why I was practicing mouse control. I thought about what I was doing and how it could help in my gameplay. It kept me going on my work and it helped me write this article to help everyone else who either might be having trouble improving or help those already good at this by making them better.

Thank you for reading. I would love to hear improvement stories or anything. I write to inspire people to be better and I hope I accomplished that here. :) Happy gaming.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Why HoN will always have a place in my heart


I have been a MOBA player (AoS anyone?) for 5 years. I started with RoC DotA, moved to TFT DotA, and now I play HoN and LoL. Before you start flaming because I play both, please wait for what I have to say. I still believe HoN is a superior game, though I start to give LoL some credit nowadays. It's not as terrible a game as many make it seem. I really believe that until you reach a high rating in BOTH games, you cannot make a fair judgment. That is one reason why I am playing LoL. I am also playing league to expand my thoughts and knowledge so I can reach out to more people.

Anyway, on to the subject: Why HoN will always have a place in my heart.

1. INNOVATION AND VARIETY
The way DotA has a place in my heart, HoN will have one as well. I have grown an appreciation for innovative lineups, a jungle that actually gives money, innovative strategies, and more. I have reached level 30 in LoL and I have started on my way up the ladder in ranked. I'm glad that I have extensive experience and a modestly high rating in HoN because it continues to help my LoL gameplay. What I find concerning in league is its stale metagame. A solo lane, a mid lane, a duo lane with the AD carry and support, and a jungler. As a HoN player, it concerns me. A LOT. While the top and bottom lane may swap in LoL, mid and jungle usually remain the same. HoN was always the more versatile game. 2-1-2 lane can work. 3-1-1 lane can work. 2-1-1 with a jungler can work. I also recall double jungle working at some point. (Or maybe it was just attempted) Maybe this just applies to THIS league metagame, but people are very strict on it.

2. THE JUNGLE
I am a jungler at heart. I love to play the jungle. I love coming out of the jungle, ganking, and receding back into the shadows to play with creeps and get money. In both games, I enjoy jungling and roaming. League's jungle is very different from HoN and DotA's jungle. HoN jungle creeps give a good amount of money and can be stacked. This means junglers can either 1) jungle, gank, then go back to the jungle or 2) focus on jungling and FARM HARD. In league, the jungler is practically just a glorified roamer. I just like having many options, such as a Legionnaire coming out with a PK early in the game because nobody on the other team bothered to check if he was low HP because he was taking triple stack medium camps. You can do silly things like get to level 6 in 3 minutes, or close to it given the right circumstances


3. THE PLAYERS
Many think HoN's RAP system sucks. Imagine a system you are judged by peers, and not by people who have gained the respect of the HoN community and staff. If I am not mistaken, is that not how it works? I just find it strange.


Time and time again, I have come across people in LoL who complain over and over about lanes, lineups, etc. I know this happens in HoN as well, but not nearly as bad as in LoL. Instantly, comments like "I REPORT U NOOB THROW" come up and make the game ridiculous. Why would someone report another for wanting to try dual lane mid or some other strategy? At one point in time or another, every dominant metagame was a mystery and had to be tested... People threatening to report is all too common and league and is becoming annoying. If a system were implemented in LoL like we have in HoN, a deposit on report, maybe people would think twice. Or maybe if a 5 minute wait time were implemented. Reporting is silly and too easy in LoL, resulting in too many whiners. Maybe I haven't played enough high ranked games to know.

4. THE IMPORTANCE OF LIFE AND DEATH
In HoN, I really feel like life and death play a huge role in the game; a bigger role than it does in LoL. Money lost on death and buy backs create such an interesting dynamic to the game. Mistakes cost a person more. What better way to learn from your mistakes than to have them cost you a lot? Deaths in HoN really make me think twice about my actions. Will I have money for buy back? Will the money I lose matter? Not only do you lose the opportunity to make money, you also lose money itself. And the fact that killing someone also makes them lose money makes kills much more rewarding and worthwhile. I like knowing that I've messed up someone else's game.

5. THE ITEMS
I love my Kelen's Dagger of Escape. I love my PORTAL KEY. I love my HOMECOMING STONE. I LOVE IT! And most importantly: I love my Power Supply. Enough said.

P.S. Two more words. CODEX FIVE.