DotA: Beliefs, Decisions and Actions

The South African DotA community is well known for the continually controversial, yet, surprisingly, convivial, environment it has managed to maintain for the better part of the game’s existence. In many respects, we are more active, more engaging, and more dynamic than most other gaming communities out there – owing, perhaps, to the user base being dominated by restless youths. It is a wonderful thing to be part of a community which encompasses so many unique forms of expression, and, even though it is a community which can at times exhibit some of the less desirable humanly traits, it is, after all, our community and for the most part,  quite an exciting one.

However, it seems a shame that a DotA community be best known for things unrelated to the game. Unfortunately, the simple truth is that it’s unlikely you’ll find the terms ‘SA’, ‘DotA’ and ‘excellence’ remotely near to one another very often. The continued failure of competitive DotA in South Africa is a much discussed issue, especially within the community itself, but hardly ever is the issue unpacked, scrutinized and criticized to any point sufficient to yield results which are remotely conclusive. Why are we so bad? Usually, people are satisfied attributing the very noticeable gap between DotA at the international level and DotA locally to either our internet being worse, our player base being smaller, or, my personal favourite, organizational deficiencies. Don’t get me wrong, all three of the above mentioned factors play crucial roles in hindering our progress in the realm of competitive DotA, but, at the same time, they seem to sidestep the real issues, somewhat, in that they do not explain why it is that when an event is organized and players do participate, the play is quite plainly of a far lower standard than the type of play seen from professional teams abroad. So then, suspending the more commonly engaged issues which we have very little control over anyway, I would like to delve a bit deeper into which DotA-related reasons make our DotA [or any DotA which isn't that great] worse than it perhaps could be, for these are the things we most certainly can improve on.

This brings us back to the title of this article: Beliefs, Decisions and Actions. I am of the view that the aforementioned three terms are likely to be the best medium for explaining just what it is that is lacking in our play. I’ve promised myself that the eager epistemological philosopher inside me will be contained for the purposes of this discussion but, nevertheless, there are those terms which require clear definitions before beginning such an endeavour. Generally speaking, if one believes something it means that one would be inclined to or predisposed to affirm the truth of that thing. So then, a belief about DotA is simply a statement the truth of which one would likely affirm. In laymen’s terms, a person might say that he believes that destroying the world tree achieves victory for the Scourge, an uncontroversial belief to hold, and one which is quite blatantly true [some might say, by definition]. Of course, often, and especially in a game like DotA, there are things about which it will be prudent to hold a belief which don’t clearly or ‘self-evidently’ exhibit some or other obvious fact-of-the-matter type of truth. For example, owing to the highly circumstantial nature of the game, which items to buy on which heroes is a very contested question and, in this sort of case, there can almost never be one belief which is true and others which are false but, rather, some which can be better justified than others.

Subsequently, typically, our beliefs motivate us to take certain actions. One way to put it is that one ought to be able to predict the actions of a rational person, given sufficiently detailed knowledge of that person’s beliefs. However, this sort of talk is only useful with reference to simpler situations. For example, if person X is rational and holds the belief that when it rains, he will get wet as well as the preference not to get wet; one could quite accurately predict that person X will take measures to counteract getting wet by the rain. Even this simple example leads us to the first problem: that there are many ways to achieve the same goal. Moreover, in complex situations, which arise commonly in DotA, given the number of variables one must constantly take into account, two people could hold very similar beliefs about the game and hold the same goal of achieving victory but still make very different decisions as to what to do. Decisions, as referred to in the title of this article, are essentially the strategies and choices we use as the means to our end, given our beliefs about how things are in the game.

Now that it’s a little more clear what I’m talking about, I can move on to the more substantial part of the discussion. I believe that some of the most fundamental problems with the local DotA scene is that just about every player struggles in at least one of these three senses: they either hold ignorant views about the game in general and misinformed beliefs about specific interactions, struggle to make the right decisions, especially when under pressure to make them fast, or simply fail at executing said [or any] actions very efficiently.

I’ll begin with the last problem first, because it’s the least interesting one, in my opinion. Usually, execution is only a serious problem if you’ve already got a decent set of beliefs about the game and are fairly well equipped to make the right decisions – if you’re doing the wrong thing, it’s the wrong thing regardless of how well you do it. However, if you’re doing the right thing, it can still go very wrong owing to poor implementation on your part. In a very crude sense, this is the type of ‘skill’ that most people rate DotA players on. If you use your blink dagger effectively or aim an arrow or hook well, the masses of DotA players are likely to respect that more than anything else. The downside is that it’s also the most noticed type of mistake, a play mistake, that is. My advice to people who have a well developed understanding of the game and a good grasp of strategic decision-making is quite simple, practice. Practice, practice, practice. I’m certain it sounds like a complete cliché, but the truth of the matter is that the cliché is there for a reason. Almost always, if you’re struggling with an activity which is a fairly mechanical process, the best way to learn to do it better is by practicing. The biggest mistake that is made in this regard is the mistake of watching other people do something well and assuming that one will easily be able to mimic such an action. It would seem that a lot of our players are simply very lazy, or have pre-inflated egos and this leads to people neglecting practicing things which are, pretty much ‘the basics’, in my opinion. In any event, this is an easy problem to progress past, and I’m confident that we can and will, although perhaps slower than necessary, see our top DotA players making very few execution-of-actions related mistakes sometime in the future.

Moving on, I’d like to discuss beliefs next, because this problem is also one which is fairly easy to understand, and fairly easy to overcome, only a tad bit more interesting and controversial than the previous one. Launching directly into my assault on beliefs which are damaging to the local DotA scene: DotA is a team game! Anybody who is playing for themselves, for his or her own ego or prowess is already adopting an attitude which can be very dangerous to his or her team. Prioritizing your own farming or leveling over other players’ is only a good idea if this is what is in the best interests of your team. Furthermore, since I’m on the topic of farming, the belief that DotA just is farming couldn’t be less accurate if it tried to be. As a product of the local competitive scene not being so great, games frequently become ‘farmathons’ ending in the team with heroes better suited to being farmed up winning. While it is a valid point that because the environment is often as such, it might be a good strategy to play into it rather than try force a different play-style into somewhere its seemingly unwanted, there is a difference between appeasing the dominant play-style as a necessary means to compete at all and exacerbating the problem by deliberately spending entire DotA games just farming and doing nothing else. Many people I’m sure will read this and say ‘but whenever I perma-farm all game, I win’. Well, that’s good for you, but in any fairly competitive environment, the mere fact of your perma-farming will cost your team the game long before you get any especially good items. I’m not trying to pick on the farmers, I’m merely using this belief as an example of one belief which is both very pervasive in South Africa and, without a doubt, fundamentally flawed. In any event, it would be impossible for me to go through every flawed belief I’ve observed people holding about DotA and expressing my views on it. However, to sum up my general view on the ‘beliefs’ problem, be critical. As Karl Popper said,

‘Criticize everything, including this statement’. The only way to ensure you hold ‘good’ or justified beliefs is by adopting a very critical attitude at all times. Question your own beliefs and question the beliefs of others and never accept them until you are comfortable that the reasoning provided to back them up is sound. Adopting a critical attitude towards beliefs about DotA is something which, I’m convinced could improve many South African DotA players’ play.

Finally, onto what I believe is the most intriguing phenomenon about DotA and, well, just about any game: Strategy. I’ve referred to it as decision-making earlier on but, this is essentially synonymous with strategy. For the purposes of convenience, I will speak separately about ‘long-term strategy’, ‘mid-term strategy’ and ‘short-term strategy’.

Long-term strategy includes, but isn’t limited to, which heroes a team drafts, which lanes they go to, how each of them behave, and how the entire combo works out in gangs and team-fights. Now, what I have to stress in terms of long-term strategy is that most of this strategizing occurs before the game begins but that does not make it independent of the game. On the contrary, it is important that one’s long-term strategy can react appropriately, where necessary, to the opposing team’s strategy, where hints are shown during the drafting of heroes. Constantly consider why the enemy team are choosing the heroes they are choosing and which lanes they are more likely to send which heroes to – I can’t describe just how many games I’ve been in where the game has, for all intents and purposes, been decided at this stage. It shocks me that most of the top DotA players locally don’t even attempt to approach the game in any analytical respect, whatsoever – and, not surprisingly, this often results in people playing the entire game with either no bigger picture or a very misconceived one in mind.

Mid-term strategy is about what you are doing and what you should be doing at any given time in the game. From participating in numerous South African In-House League games recently, I have picked up quite a few problems in this regard. Firstly, most support players spend extended periods of time during games unsure as to what to do – they are told by more experienced players not to farm and, since, farming is what they usually spend most of their DotA game doing, they get lost and stop doing much at all. Support players ought to be constantly monitoring their warding, the enemy teams’ warding, and the status of the lanes, holding onto tp scroll, ready to tp to an ally needing assistance or wanting a gang. In the meantime, most local carry players are convinced that all they should do is farm. This might have been true a couple of maps ago, but dealing with DotA version 6.57b, it’s pretty clear to anybody who spends the time thinking about that to only farm detriments your team more than it benefits them, except for in some very exceptional circumstances, usually involving a spectre. Very often, especially on heroes like Naix, a player could be a serious asset to his or her team by positioning himself such that he or she could be available for skirmishes and gangs likely to come. And, if you didn’t see it coming, the problem most gang-orientated players struggle with in terms of mid-term strategy is a complete lack of concern for farming where such concern should exist, even though only slightly. Essentially, mid-term strategy is almost always about two things: adapting to what is actually happening on the map as opposed to playing out the game the way you want it to work in your head and, making a conscious effort to balance your role in the team in order to constantly be as helpful as you can to the team in both the short-term and the long-term.

Short-term strategy is probably the most difficult thing to excel at in DotA – in fact, I’m of the view that the recent dominance of Ks.Int in the international scene has a lot to do with their understanding of short-term strategy. Essentially, short-term strategy deals with in-the-moment decisions, the really difficult decisions to either run or fight, who to fight, which way to run, when to go where in a fight, and who to cast which spells on. These sorts of decisions are extremely difficult to make, take a lot of practice to perfect and essentially amount to what a friend of mine refers to as ‘fighting well’. Personally, I’m pretty clueless in terms of advice for local players on how to improve their short-term strategy. Perhaps, the practice, practice, practice approach would work, but I’m even uncomfortable with that because I’ve seen players who have been around longer than me making some very questionable decisions. For now, all I have to offer is that players need to make a conscious effort to make short-term decisions rationally, and not emotionally – don’t chase further than you should because you’re greedy, don’t engage prematurely because of a hunger for revenge or a lust for battle and don’t retreat unnecessarily to protect your own personal pride.

I hope that those South African DotA players who do read this take at least some of it into serious consideration and work on improving in these spheres of play rather than choosing the easy way out and hiding behind the factors which are beyond our control.

Thanks to everyone who managed to ‘tank’ this entire read, so to speak – I don’t blame anyone who couldn’t.

~