Xyrus's Inhouse Rant + Poll

True for most regions, but I think with the US players, time is an issue as well. Bear in mind that 4:30 Luxembourg time is very early in most of America, Sterling VA is 6 hours behind Luxembourg and that's the East Coast...I think...

...this is why I'm planning on hosting a seperate US inhouse, much later in the day, but I don't want to take it too late as this will prevent many EU Players from joining. We've already tried hosting US inhouses before, but there was a lack of response. Hopefully, now, things will be different.

To all those willing to play in a US Inhouse, how does US East 11:30 (ETZ / UTC - 5) sound? That should be 9:30a.m. for West US, right?

As for SEA, Smuggles recently made a half-arsed attempt at holding an inhouse after being bullied into it (I helped 8{3 ). We certainy have enough SEA players to round up for an inhouse, but the main problem there appears to be a huge diversity in our SEA players' timeframes. Some wanted morning, some wanted evening, some wanted Saturday, some wanted Sunday. I think we need a much higher player base for this region, but that's something I'll look into after I get some more results from this thread.

How did you know that I'm his secret alt account? 8{3

Edit: I don't care that I'm double posting, my posts are getting ridiculously long in this thread 8{3

Btw, this is the game that Xyrus is talking about: http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1812763077

Where the only person that played good was actually Timminator, who curiously didn't complain at all about his teammates during the entire game :P

(note that he didn't do it also because he knows that we probably were aware of what mistakes we made; we just commited them anyways, for different reasons, which I will not be listing here because that's beside the point)

If this doesn't help getting to the bottom of the "boss-the-others-around-cause-all-suck-and-I-know-how-to-correctly-react-to-every-situation" not helping others and even yourself, I don't know what will.

dat feed xyrus .... wot the hell happened ! haha

Massive tilt that night T-T

You guys got rekt. Was xyrus mid BTW?

I think this just illustrates some of the different tensions that exist when you have a broad range of skills playing in the same game.

The less experienced players generally feel a lot of pressure to perform and are routinely taken out of their comfort zone by the picks, formations and opposition.

The more experienced players generally struggle to find the right balance of offering help, advice and not getting frustrated by "obvious" (to them) mistakes.

And it's not like you can have a 1 size fits all solution - different players may or not want help, aren't comfortable in particular roles, heroes etc. Being nagged or salted may help them, or may leave them demoralised.

Personally, I think the solution to this is to take things down a notch - less serious, less win focused. Something like:

- Let the less experienced players choose their own hero

- More experienced players volunteer something from their "least played" list and/or have their hero chosen for them by the opposition.

No doubt this immediately means some genius will give me Techies, but whatever, it will make for a better game to have everyone on a more level playing field, with less pressure and a lot more room for mistakes.

Should lead to some slightly comical games, experienced players will more focused on trying to master whatever weird and wonderful stuff they've been given, but are still available to offer advice when asked for. Also a good chance to develop their hero pool away from pubs. Less experienced players get to use heroes they like in a harder environment, and can get used to the kinds of formations, play patterns and expectations team mates will have.

E.g. My unplayed heroes includes: Pudge, Invoker, Chen, Winter Wyvern, Terrorblade

This is actually a very good idea. Please implement and ban Techies in respect for the fact that Sando's the author of the idea :P

I think at the very least we should have some games which are not quite as serious as they usually are. I remember when I first joined an in-house and we played Reverse Captains mode, I had to play PA and I literally had no idea how to, but nobody really cared that I played like ****, it was actually fun and more.. relaxed.

Not saying we should play all random or ARDM or RCM but, I'd at least prefer a more "play for fun" kind of environment instead of "play to win". Where if I make the stupidest mistake we can just laugh about it instead of rage about it.

I'm not sure if in-houses are intended to be this competitive, but that's really how they feel from my perspective.

I'm not so sure this is a solution to the problem. Just indirectly "nerfing" the more experienced players is going to make the inhouse less fun for them and isn't going to decrease the amount of mistakes the newer players make, it will only increase the overall amount of mistakes made. This will only add more frustration.

We have the Custom Games inhouse for this. 8{3

Well yeah, and I actually played at that inhouse last time ^^