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I've been playing a bunch of games where all the saves and goals I pull off cause everyone on the other team to rage quit. Maybe I am a bad person, but that is always such a satisfying feeling.

I'm with Twig on this. I get how people that follow other e-sports get frustrated with DOTA 2's more free-for-all structure, but I think it is the best thing for the game. I think if you have a system that's strictly regulated the way Riot structures tournaments and teams then you don't see things like the wild card teams that made such an impressive showing at the International, and you don't see teams like Team Secret that decided to go out on their own without the typical backing you see in an e-sports organization. I think we'd all be worse off without teams like that. What the Majors will look like is anyone's best guess, but hopefully it finds some nice middle ground between the scene as it currently exists and the more heavily structured environment.

I can't believe they let Storm through in game 4 over Shadow Fiend, they literally beat that EG lineup the day before. But I think they were on tilt by then. Those first two games were great though. I hope Bloodstone gets nerfed hard next patch so that takes care of Leshrac, Storm Spirit, and core Lina. Bloodstone carriers seem too good at the moment. Probably nerf that track gold from Bounty Hunter too.

Well dead maus definitely caused me to leave the stadium promptly so that was a bit unhype but otherwise what an amazing tournament!

Yeah I mostly agree with this. The misplays on his QoP in game 3 are neither here nor there, everyone in Secret has bad games but the rest of the team can come back, but the drafting was clearly suboptimal. It's not even like they are bad at heroes that are favored in the current meta is the crazy part. I feel like Secret figured out a good theory for this patch quickly when it came out, so they won all the major LANs. But by the time TI rolled in the Chinese teams, LGD and CDEC in particular, developed a superior understanding of the patch and other teams adapted to greater and lesser extents but Secret seemed to rarely deviate from their initial theory about the patch. I think they also might just be really good at playing vs teams like EG and iG, but playing against teams of similar skill that they are less familiar with exposed serious flaws in their drafts and play style. In that sense they were always punching a bit above their weight. Feel sorry for EG fans! Crowd was clearly disappointed with that early gg. What a stinker of a game.

I am so sad about the Secret loss :-( Very proud of how they went out though, they put up a much better fight than most teams. Ran into Arteezy after the match and he was surprisingly cool about everything and talkative. Considering his reputation he gets props in my book for how he handled himself. Rooting for VG at this point I guess.

He's a bit like Legion Commander where you really need to snowball by getting lots of successful kills/ganks for the hero to be powerful, otherwise they are just kind of okay. There are specific lineups that Silencer is very good against so iris kind of rare to see a player that learns to play the hero at the highest level, but VP happen to have that player in Illidan.

Very easy for these teams to get myopic about what heroes they need to pick. Drafting is such a mind game and there's so much pressure for this tournament I think so many drafts end up being sub-optimal. I'm always so impressed with teams that come back after that first loss because it's so easy for the enemy team to be in your head at that point and teams will often over correct mistakes when in reality they only need to make slight adjustments. If I recall correctly (feels like a lifetime ago at this point) EG played a Techies during the group stage vs another Chinese team without the Tusk. Most of the Chinese teams look completely unprepared to deal with Techies and would just ban the Tusk vs Western teams hoping that would cover both heroes. EG were able to exploit that weakness.

The games today were so hype. Western DOTA still isn't quite dead yet after all. Feel bad for people that are into e-sports but haven't gotten into DOTA this TI is really showing off what they're missing!

I haven't heard the first episode yet, but I'm curious if you'll be doing answering questions from listener emails? A show like this seems ideal for that format. Either way very excited for this show!

Yeah clearly I hadn't thought about it either because I had this powerful moment of empathy that hit me like a ton of bricks. I wanted to go over and give him a hug and tell him it's gonna be okay, but I took the more prudent course and left him alone with his thoughts. Game one will definitely go down in the history books, but the second game they went out on was just brutal. Initially VG fans were super hyped the first few minutes but as they stomped harder and harder I think more and more people just felt bad for Cloud 9... seemed like they had just completely cracked at that point.

Just got back from the hotel bar where I saw BigDaddyNoTail looking devastated. Their loss suddenly just felt super real to me.

My best guess is that if robots become super intelligent/self-aware they would be completely indifferent about human beings. The real danger is that they would reshape the environment in a way that made it completely inhospitable to life. In other words we'd die off not because of hostility or malice, but as an unintended consequence.

Complexity was new to me as well, and a pleasant surprise. EHOME is a DOTA team with some history though! They played against Na'Vi in the finals for the first TI. My big criticism of the Free to Play movie is that the narrative framed EHOME as the villains that the good guys had to beat. They were treated as this impersonal juggernaut team. The non-Chinese teams all had coverage of players like Dendi and Fear humanizing them and assigning them personal narratives. I think that was a big disservice to all the Chinese DOTA fans as well as playing into some lazy xenophobic tropes. CDEC is a relatively new team having formed in October, but they are definitely impressive. I've been enjoying the clips Valve has been releasing covering the players for the various teams. I've been told by friends of mine that follow professional LoL that the player bios there tend to emphasize how much of a rockstar the players have become since becoming LoL pros. If true, interesting contrast with these DOTA videos where the themes hit are on how much the players have sacrificed to be at TI and their relationships with their families. Almost definitely a reflection of how these games play on our identities.

I wish Games Done Quickly wasn't happening at the same time as the International. I'd like to check it out, but I have like 12 DOTA matches a day to watch.

I think Chris' criticism of Alphabears is completely correct. I definitely don't have any counter argument to it. I think the game is worse off for a lot of design decisions that stem from its business model. But actually playing the game none of that stuff seems to bother me. Even if on an intellectual level I think the way the scoring system is bad, in the moment of playing it I'm enjoying myself too much to care. I think this is a case where you can really see the value of good audio/visual feedback from a game kind of trumping more high minded design ideals, at least for me.

I'd say of all the Secret matches today, the one to watch is the 1st game VS Cloud9. Not that it was a dynamic match by any means, I'd say Secret was definitely in control mostly, but that Reverse Polarity steal from Kuroky as Rubick in the Rosh Pit, holy hell, what a cool moment to watch.

My impression of the first day of the Group stages is that the games have been wonderfully unpredictable. I suspect that will be less true as the tournament moves on (because that's usually how things work... once you proceed to elimination matches teams start busting out much more cautious strats) but I'm enjoying myself for now. Hard for me to pick a favorite from day 1 to be honest.

Yup, I bought the infinite energy thing just because I felt like giving the developers money, but in practice my habit with mobile games is I'll only play them briefly like once or twice a day so not much has changed in practice compared to when I hadn't paid anything. So I'd say for people that don't play obsessively Alphabears is absolutely worth checking out. The Fallout Shelter game is the most recent free to play game that I really didn't get along with. I really can't stand the mechanic where resources appear sporadically, and you have to tap on them to actually collect them. I just find that super irritating and wish it was all automated (I disliked Plants vs. Zombies for the same reason). So I basically gave up on Fallout Shelter after about an hour and a half because even though the business model seemed generous enough the actual experience of interacting with the game felt obnoxious to me.

There's a plot to Sid Meier's Pirates!?! XD

Oh yeah, by the time I learned about DOTA tickets on sale they were definitely sold out! My wife picked them up second hand, and spent a little more than the average asking price to buy from a reputable seller. Still, the price of the tickets isn't so very much, even at the inflated 2nd hand market rate, compared to the cost of staying at a hotel, that's the real expense. We're also lucky in that the flight from San Francisco to Seattle is short and inexpensive as far as air fare goes. I went to see Team Secret play vs IG at the Warfield Theater. I had never been to any big public gaming event thing before so I didn't really know how I would feel about it, if it would be too nerdy to handle or whatever, but the crowd was great, and it was a lot of fun. So it'll be interesting to see that experience scaled up to the size of a sports arena!

These videos were so much fun to watch: http://www.pcgamer.com/the-best-rocket-league-plays-of-the-week/

Hahaha yes. I haven't jumped into a multiplayer match yet (I expect to next time I play) but watching people play this on twitch I noticed the whole phenomenon of people just moving towards the ball at maximum velocity, and it was like, "do they not realize that this is not how soccer/football matches play out?"

I like that this game appears to have a really high skill ceiling. I suspect I'll be playing it for awhile.

It is DOTA 2 and XCOM for me these days (and I haven't played much XCOM lately).