General Discussion - Page 132

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On February 19 2012 12:17 Hoban wrote:
I think lozarian had a very good point about how decision making is what separated the higher tier from the highest tier. It is completely plausible for a Day[9]-type person to teach methods to develop good decision making as well as actual decision making. When I played SC2 all the time, it was never build orders and strategies that I focused on learning, it was always how to improve my mechanics and proper decision-making. Day[9] is a big deal because almost everything he taught was focused around improving mechanics, decision making, game sense, and refining your game. The Idra vs Sen ZvZ is way different than a run-of-the-mill masters ZvZ because of the mechanical barrier between what Idra and Sen can do vs masters league players. To me, the mechanical aspect of Dota is much easier to grasp and become proficient at compared to SC2. The focus for teaching and learning should be what is dota, how to evaluate and implement strategies at your appropriate skill level, what is/how to improve decision making, the little things that improve your game, and how to improve overall as a player.

I am still very new to Dota relative to everyone else on these boards but I do spend a lot of time improving my game (not only practice but learning how to actually improve vs mass gaming). I really believe it is not that difficult to teach Dota in a similar fashion that Day[9] teaches Sc2. It comes down to lesson structure, topics, and building foundations of knowledge. I will try to give a single example of what a good lesson would look like in my opinion. This would be for someone of my skill level who understands the basic mechanics of the game and the general meta and who has the capability to understand basic strategies. The idea is that you pick a replay and focus on a very specific aspect of it.

Topic: Pushing strategies with a hard carry in your lineup
Game: Na'Vi vs (cannot remember aghh)
Idea: During the first ban phase, Antimage was not banned. Na'Vi has 2nd pick and picks up chen and AM. The idea behind this is that the other team feels required to pick up a hard carry to counter the AM pick. As the picks progress Na'Vi ends up with the stronger push lineup plus an AM while the other team has an invoker and a void which gives them a better teamfight and push defense lineup. Conventionally, antimage focuses on getting vanguards, manta style, and heart before strongly contributing to teamfights. Instead, Na'Vi opts to get a quick Vlad's on AM. Normally, this is a terrible item for an AM carry but this gives Na'Vi a very strong aura for pushing down towers. Since Na'Vi's goal was to win the game fast and early, this sort of surprising item choice catches the other team off guard and really strengthens Na'Vi's push before the void can get any sort of decent farm. Even with the strong push defense an invoker gives, Na'Vi is able to win the game quickly and succinctly. Even though AM is typically not a part of a pushing lineup, Na'Vi itemized him in a way to greatly contribute to their overall strategy. Disclaimer, I may be mixing up several games in my head but the AM with a Vlads and the impact it had from picking, to early, mid, and late game was what I wanted to focus on.

So, I know it is a shoddy attempt. I would rather this be an hour lesson by someone who can actually analyze things in a proper fashion (I am sure a lot of my analysis is completely off). But the general idea is that you take a single game and address a single part of the game, why it is important to the strategy, and how it impacted the overall strategy. This would obviously be if you were focusing on teaching a strategy. Which brings me to my next point.

People need to be taught how to teach themselves how to get better. It sounds silly but it is the absolute truth. Having lessons devoted solely to analyzing a specific replay focusing on only your gameplay. Then having another focusing on your gameplay in reaction to what everyone else was doing (or your lack of reaction because you didn't know what everyone else was doing). Showing people how to learn was the #1 thing that makes Day[9] awesome at what he does. Sure, he is funny, insightful, and a great personality but that is just the flair of what he does, not the actual content. People need to be taught how to improve themselves, plain and simple.

Here is what I believe to be an effective strategy for teaching someone who is new to Dota. Start with "In general, this is what heroes do. Some like to start fights, some do a lot of damage early game, some do a lot of damage late game, they all have hp, mana, and a primary stat" and "these are items, this is their role in the game. Some let you do lots of damage, other items help out your team more than yourself." Explaining these two aspects in a very basic sense (along with the goal of go kill the opponents base) is a good introduction.

Second, teach the basic mechanics of the game (last hitting, moving, basic juking, denying, creep blocking, creep stacking, spawn blocking, roshan, day/night cycle) and do this using various hero introductions. The idea is to give a complete newbie a starting point for what they would like to play. I knew nothing at all about jungling, stacking, pulling until I spent a day playing nothing but enchantress and working on optimizing my early game play. Teaching these mechanics through a hero introduction is a very efficient way to introduce someone to heroes they might like to play and things they should be aware of.

Third, teaching various roles in the game, in a more specific sense (now that you have introduced some heroes), and doing it by also explaining early game, mid game, and late game. This is another area where you can teach multiple things with a single lesson. Using heroes to explain different phases of the game and different roles is most effective. The big obstacle is that you can say "a support hero is strong in the early game because they rely heavily on their spells. They could be good at helping a late-game hero stay safe, or they could be good at killing the opponents late-game heroes. They could also be supportive by having useful spells in team fights." This is such a general explanation for what a support does and it doesn't even remotely touch all the capabilities of support heroes. It is much easier to say "Lich is an example of a support hero. He has an ability to deny the enemy creeps, his spells do a lot of damage early game, his armor helps your team greatly late game, and his ultimate is very strong in team fights." "Warlock is an example of a support hero because he has a very powerful heal early game which can keep your late-game hero alive during ganks, and his ultimate is very strong in teamfights, able to stun many enemies on the opposing team. He also has a spell that cause the enemy team to take amplified damage and his third spell is a gigantic AoE slow, making him an excellent team fighting hero." Then expand on the hero and say "this is why these abilities matter in the picking phase, early, mid, and late game and this is why this hero falls into this class" This would include how items affect these different heroes but only in a very general sense. You do not want to overwhelm someone with "Go X item in this case Y item in this case maybe Z or Q items if they ASDF" It is much better to say "Spectre has an ability to disperse the damage that she takes to enemies around her. Giving Spectre a huge amount of life will result in her being able to take a huge amount of damage before she dies. This will, in turn, result in her enemies taking a huge amount of damage trying to kill her. This is why spectre needs items to truly be effective." The logic behind "why a hero needs items vs why a hero doesnt need items" is more important than the actual items they need/don't need.

So up until this point, the lessons would be focused on explaining mechanics, phases of the game, and roles through different heroes and their abilities. Emphasis should be placed on the player trying out as much as they can to get familiar with various game mechanics. I wouldn't suggest the "play a game with every single hero" but rather "play a few games with a hero that seems interesting or that involves a mechanic you don't really understand" because it takes a couple games to get used to a specific hero before you can actually become aware of what is going on around you. In my opinion it is much better for a new person to play 10 heroes 5 times than 50 heroes 1 time. Ok I am going to stop writing now, this is really long. I guess I got really carried away.

tl;dr and closing thoughts:
If you don't care about teaching people dota, don't bother reading this. If you do, feel free to take a gander. In summary, the most important lessons are the ones that teach people how to teach themselves. Concepts should be introduced through very specific examples and then expanded on. Mechanics/roles/game stages can be introduced with heroes, game play/decision making/strategies can be introduced and expanded on with replays.

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On February 19 2012 12:25 rabidch wrote:

in general, i'd avoid using giant walls of texts to teach people dota concepts

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On February 19 2012 14:39 OuchyDathurts wrote:
Don't think it'd be that hard to do.

First few episodes would have to be really general broad basics. But a similar format with theme days would be good. Maybe eventually devote a week to each hero, which yeah, would take a while to get through them all but you could pretty well thoroughly cover everything. I don't know that I'd do a funday monday since generally thats going to ruin a game for people and not teach much. But newbie tuesday you could do easily, frienday wednesday have a pro on to talk about a game and his thought process. The other days have replays to go through and teach in a general manner, show some of the finer points, etc.

I think it would work out pretty well tbh. The downside is a lot of people would probably shit on builds since there can be a lot of flexibility in the game. Who knows.

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On February 19 2012 17:45 lozarian wrote:


That is the other problem - dota players and fans are fairly rabid in their defence and tendency to jump on anything they dislike. The nature of the game and community doesn't encourage learning quite the way starcraft seems to (or maybe my view is tinted because my only SC exposure is teamliquid) - whoever was doing it would need to have extremely thick skin, or impeccable credentials.

Funday monday style things are fine, as long as it's your whole team doing them - I used to do stupid stuff like that all the time with my mates, or if we were feeling kinda trolly we'd find a war and play a level 1 push, which is hilarious, by the way.

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On February 19 2012 19:19 OuchyDathurts wrote:
But if people don't play RTSes it doesn't really equate. Plus its way faster paced than the majority of RTS games.

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On February 19 2012 21:16 OuchyDathurts wrote:
In my experience its not the people that play SC2 that need the help its the people that play Age of Empires, Civilization, etc. The game moves at light speed compared.

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On February 19 2012 22:08 mr_tolkien wrote:
Noob here. Is there anything I can do as DK when the ennemy team has a LS ? What would be a good equipment to try and not die to fast to this bastard ?

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