i started playing dota a really long time ago...it's gotta be almost 20 years now, when it first "blew up" (relatively) in the warcraft 3 custom map scene. i played intermittently until a few years into dota 2, when i was left for a few years with a pc that could play like, 2d indie games. and falcom games. i played a handful of games a year from that point on, and never really got back into it, but i started watching more and more dota 2 as time went on so eventually when there was a big patch earlier this year that changed up the game more than it had been in several years i really wanted to try it out.
funnily enough, that slow drip of games was all i played after the ranked mode got added. so i'd never been able to play it...before now. in the current implementation the "default" setting (and the one i assume is most commonly used at lower ranks) lets you choose what role you're going to play on the team, with some limitations (you have to build up charges by signing up for support periodically, which is also "free"). but i always used to play support, so it was weird to see the game also incentivizes allowing yourself to get picked for "core" roles too. which, i mean, makes enough sense, since if enough people join signed up for everything you can just mash em together. anyway, i had to play "carry" two games in a row and i played horrible. by midway through the second one i was like "UGH, FUCK THIS, I DON'T WANT TO FARM, I JUST WANT TO PLAY STUPID BULLIES WHO RUN AT PEOPLE ALL GAME"
and i recognized that feeling. because it's why i started playing rushdown characters in fighting games
i used to play a lot of zoning/runaway characters. and along with that, in modern games, is that they're not very strong usually. to me ash crimson in kof13 is like the ultimate example of that, a character with infamously long, convoluted, and difficult combos and super committal projectiles in a game where getting hit by one jump-in will cost you the round. and so eventually i got sick of that kind of thing, since it was the same playing lambda (and carl, although it was a bit easier to cover multiple options at once) in blazblue. press one button at the wrong time in neutral and you'll lose. and eventually that expanded as i started to feel more and more burdened by feelings of momentum in the games, and i realized that what i really hated...was thinking. feeling like i was the one with the burden of choosing right. "i want the other person to think."
but obviously this was all a foolish notion. a lot of thinking can be avoided by being more prepared. because really, it's more like not wanting to learn this part of the game was like not wanting to learn to block or something. when you learn how to block, you also learn how to hit people better. when you learn how to farm, you learn how to fight farmers better. probably. i assume. even aside from that, it's knowledge you could pretty much always try to apply to do better.
but that's work and do i really want to do all this fuckin' homework so i can still just get make the wrong choice once and then still get hit by an unblockable/lose the game to slark? i don't know, i've even laughed about this before bc of that one tweet with the bigtimetommie tiktok. (below) i feel like i've gotten closer to understanding competing in games intellectually, but even though i recognized the feeling right away this time and instantly started trying to push back and consider it, i think it says a lot that that it arrived so swiftly...
and dota puts this in a new perspective that splatoon doesn't, because the games can take way, way, way too fucking long. (even an appropriate length game is like a pretty hefty fighting game set, like a long ft5 or something.) in a way it's way more obvious that i really have to consider how much this is actually something i'm going to want to keep spending time on in the long term*. and...i'm not a young adult and i have a job and a long commute, so obviously the value is in learning to appreciate the game better and improve at a skill, not to have an expectation of becoming amazingly good. whichever kind of game it is.
*(although i feel like that always works itself out in the end anyway. the new things i want to check out after i've been at the same thing so often for so long always build up. and at the same time i'm not going to make myself not do it if i really want to even when i'm doing something else)
i know all that. these thoughts have been bubbling in my head for years, and even as i struggle to accept them, i feel like i'm slowly cornering myself. someday, there won't be something newer to run to, something with the same rush of intense competition but shinier. shinier and more immediately exciting than sucking it up and learning things. because that's the other thing...i do have some difficulties with attitude that i don't think will just go away sometime. learning how to accept mistakes and the coolness of the other player is a kind of separate thing that i've also been working on.
BUT I SUCK AT IT. GOD WHY DO I HAVE TO BE SO FUCKING BAD AT EVERYTHING
