Xyrus's Inhouse Rant + Poll

Long long ago, in a faraway galaxy, I started hosting the EU West inhouse for DOTKAFire. Back then, I had imagined that after a while, if we held a stable amount of members, we'd eventually end up with inhouses being run for different regions each weekend.

For some reason, our inhouse community has never really grown...well, it grew a little...then shrank again, then repeated this process a few times, and while there have been people requesting ionhouses for America and SEA, we've never been able to successfully hold an inhouse for those regions.

So, what's the problem? That's what I'm trying to find out. If it turns out that at least 10 people can't play because they want an inhouse at a later time on US servers, then it may be worth considering hosting a US Inhouse in the evening (US East time - https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=dnMBVp3iCrKx8wecjrDYAQ#q=what+time+is+it+in+sterling+va+right+now ).

So, please vote and leave a comment, especially if you vote for other (e.g. if you vote for another time and server, say which times and servers would suit you better).

Other: I play GW2

SEA/Australia. About 2 hours earlier than the current time. Although I already play but sometimes I get like 400-500 ping In EU West. The time is good but earlier means I'd be there for more than one game(s).

For me the slight turn-off about inhouses is the captain's mode part. Everything else like the time, date and server is fine.

I guess I just don't like CM very much...especially in this kind of setup.

The issue is that for me, to play CM, you need to be able to play almost every hero at least decently, since situational decisions on lineups can bring you to play tons of different heroes. The problem is, because of the way the inhouses work (people of every skill level playing the same game), what you have is that some people can only play a very small pool of heroes. And what you get a lot is "I got a Magnus from the captain and I don't know how to play Magnus, game is lost GG".

Personally I'd like it much more if we played the turn-by-turn all pick, you know the game mode that you play in ranked games, where people take turns picking their hero one by one. This way everyone can go for the heroes he's comfortable with.
In terms of teamwork it comes down to the same thing (you still talk during the picking stage) however at the end of the day everyone plays a hero he's comfortable with and that he enjoys playing. It's like playing a pub, without the flaming...that's what we should go for IMO :)
Like, you call within your team the position you want to play, and then you pick *yourself* a hero that fits this position. And yes, there's an option to play this mode in lobbies so we can do this easily.

By the way if you're worried about spamming meta heroes in AP, there's the same problem in CM anyways so I'd favor making a banlist. Like ban the 10-15 most picked heroes in competitive (e.g on datdota). There's an extremely steep difference between tier A "over-spammed meta hero" and tier B "good but balanced hero", shouldn't be that hard.


By the way another turnoff about inhouses for me is that people call GG when it's not GG. This is dota guys, not league of lemmings. Stop calling GG and bringing your whole team down for no reason when the game is anything but over. The most annoying part is that "the game will end in x seconds" screen that pops when someone types GG, that actually prevents you from playing and inputting commands unless you click on it...which actually loses you the game on its own because you lose screen focus at a critical moment.
If it were me I'd completely remove that auto-GG screen and make the game end when the ancient dies, period. I think there's an option to do that.

So yeah giff turn based AP not CM. At least cycle between turn based AP and CM, not 100% CM which gets a bit old.

I mostly can't play due to other commitments, but do get on occasionally - that's nothing to do with date/time/location etc.

My biggest moan would be somewhat along the lines of Hamster's - we've got this conflict between fun/tryhardness. You end up with a bunch of the overpicked super-meta-heroes picked, but can also end up with situations where players don't know their hero at all, or someone ends up playing solo mid against someone with 2k MMR less than them.

I think we kinda need to figure out whether we're playing for fun times and balance, or a simple to-win.

Last time out, one side's inexperienced mid got utterly destroyed by a 5k Lina for a brief and salty 1st game, while game 2 was a 100 minute AM/Techies ratfest that was won on who got bored first.

Personally, I'd like Captain's Draft (the random/reduced mode) but do agree with Hamster's point about people not knowing heroes - if you've only got a few, and they're not on there, you're in for a tough game, so maybe ranked AP style is better. I also think we should pick two equally matched Mid players pre-game as it can have such a big impact. I don't know if 10-15 bans is too much to remember (esp when people are picking), but it would be good to play with a more interesting set of heroes.

My main dislike about the in-houses is the difference between my skill and everyone else's pretty much. I still don't know a lot of stuff about the game, and it's not personally fun for me when I get flamed for doing something badly or wrong, just because I either A. Need some advice on how to do ___ or B. I'm not really practiced enough to play in this kind of level.

I also would rather play heroes I know how to play, I guarantee you that our team will do worse if I am playing a hero that fits the lineup, but I don't know how to play, that a hero that doesn't necessarily fit, but I know how to play them decently.

I've had some bad experiences due to lack of skill on my part that have kind of put me off playing in-house games.

You know, you could ask mobafire inhouse referees how to make the games more enjoyable


LevasNoob has been really active on EUW with that stuff ;)

For me it's somewhere in-between, but I think the most important opportunity in inhouses is that you can focus on teamwork instead of simply picking a team-independent hero like you do in solo queue.

Like if I wanted to tryhard I'd be spamming meta mids but instead I end up always playing initiators/counterinitiators of some sort just to learn to get clean and coordinated initiations and synergize with the team. So I lose a lot of games beause of wonky wombo combos that don't work but who cares.




From experience, poor support play has lost inhouses far, far more than poor mid play. Actually I'd even say that supports win and lose games and cores have very little margin to do anything to come back from the feed train in this kind of games, which are mostly 25 minute deathball stomps that are decided in the laning stage :)

So I really don't think the mid role is more important than other roles here (unlike solo queue). It comes down to the same thing in the end IMO. Personally if it was a competition I'd put the best players on support.



You don't have to remember anything! Just post the banlist on the inhouse page, and alt-tab to it during the picking stage.



There's a difference between 1) pointing out something that a teammate did wrong and saying what he should be doing instead, and 2) downright fruitless flaming/complaining. I think we need to be clear on that distinction.

The thing is, sadly I have seen instances of complaining/blaming teammates in inhouses and it can *definitely* be a pain in the *** to deal with and put you off from playing again.

So just to be clear : inhouses are not solo queue. Complaining about your teammates and uselessly blaming them (sometimes for your own mistakes) in NOT OK here. Just because the dota community is cancer and is populated with whiny kids which can give you the impression that it's the normal way to act, does not mean that acting like this in dotafire inhouses is acceptable. It is not.

So if someone is feeling bad about getting flamed, people should make it very clear to the flamers that acting this way is not accepted.

For me you guys play very early since most of you are playing in EU times. The times you guy finish playing are the times that I'm either still sleeping or just woke up at. I also just prefer to play customs :D

I also am not sure about Captain's Mode anymore. It often creates great saltiness just when it comes who picked a captain.
Then it is either someone who took captain and has no idea what to pick; or a captain with an idea of the draft, but players are not comfortable enough with heroes they are about to play.

I am voting for Ranked All Pick mode. We could give it a try.

About the ban list - I think 4 perma-banned heroes are the most we can do (I am sure there will be situations when someone will pick one of them anyway). On slow PC's alt-tabbing is a pain in the ***, and sometimes there is just not enough time to check it on DotaFire. I think optimal number of nonavailable heroes is 3.