With Racquel's first kill of the game, the other team began to draw back. I could see them be a bit more conservative with their play. It was the right time to gain ground.
I should explain the setup in a bit more detail. Five chairs side by side were set up on a small stage. The teams were facing each other a little bit arranged diagonally. In front of the two teams, two large display screens showed a bit of the details of what was going on.
They knew this would be played competitively.
The developers made a god mode where an eleventh of twelfth person could observe a match. This was the job of someone usually the team manager to showcase their side of the match. It let the player hop around through parts of the map or lock onto the avatars. It was the only way that the game could be displayed live in anything approaching a show.
It meant that when Murph got ganked there was a reacting from the small crowd of people eating at the food court. Honestly it was a good way to get there stuff out but as it was also a poor showing. There were less viewers than there were players.
It came close to draw there in the second turn of the game. I was having. My guys are putting out what they told me they were as you. Everything was going according to what we did in practice.
Their mechanics were good.
Their fundamentals were good.
They were talking.
It was all going according to plan except for a few deaths on our side when we went for the dragon.
I cursed. Racquel had gone down trying to steal the dragon kill and get the team buff. She had jumped in with her speed spec’d bottom lane avatar. It wasn't enough with the rest of the team around.
They were aiming for her on purpose. Three out of the four opposing avatars targeted her with a pull then two back-to-back stuns.
It wasn't a fight.
It was an assassination.
That move cost them the game though. My team was way better suited to the even exchanges and Racquel was the last one to die. The last one of mine at least.
"Push them hard," I said. "Full court press."
"Yes boss!" Racquel said.
I got a pop-up message.
---
Now available: Turn Based Strategies
50 points.
---
Given the rest of the things in the shop, I didn't expect much.
I was getting about three points per minute in this match though. Something special was going on here. Maybe it was because I was managing them? Or because they saw me as their leader?
I would have to check. It was going to be some sort of investigation. I figured that I could use it that evening and see what I did. I was already talking about my turn strategies and what we could implement.
I checked my points that I had enough, so I went ahead and bought it.
Instantly, I was given the option to fix a strategy for that turn. The current turn that I was working at late second turn. I set the strategy to full court press. I didn't know if that was something that my mind had made up or if that was something that the patch head put in there. Either way, I wanted to see how it would play out.
I could see the team get a little bit more active.
In my overlay of the game, I could see that they were all red. It was like they had all been selected and I guess red was the offensive option. I took a second to go over my options. It looked like there was offense, defense, and farming. There was also an option for looking for team fights, although I didn't know how that would be different than an offense. And with a purely offensive build, they would keep going and trying to get to the enemy’s base.
It was a balanced mix of team fights and offense. I would have to try it out against a defensive strategy. I couldn't figure out when I wanted the best strategy except for when I was down a person or two. As for the farming, it made sense to take that strategy up in the early game. Also farming and offense might be same thing in the early game. That is unless I was trying to get to get a random kill way too soon.
Sometimes it's better to build early.
The next game, I set the strategy to be farming for the first turn. I was still going to see how that went. Every time that you kill a minion, you get a little bit of gold. They track the amount of gold that each player gets and that each team gets. If you can graph that, you can kind of understand when teams are pulling ahead.
If they pulled ahead and they bought the equipment to respec? They'd do better.
Every Time that an avatar was killed, the killer gets a lot of gold. It's only like 200 to 400 depending on their level. But it's still a good amount and it helped in the early game. It's less helpful later but that's when we get back into the snowballing territory. The amount would grow more at higher levels.
If a team's already snowballing? It's not going to help so much.
There are techniques that help you get more gold like you're supposed to. Let the bottom laner final hit each of the minions to get gold and the supports are supposed to take a specific item to help them farm gold. If a team doesn't have a jungle, they're also missing out on gold from the mobs that spawn in the jungle. That's a negligible difference at higher levels where everyone is playing the meta. It's a lot larger of a difference in the leagues we were playing in. The players generally had less than a few hundred games. Some had thousands already.
I didn't yet have an option to see how many games they played. It made sense for this to be an option.
I didn't have exactly the amount. You could assume a certain amount of scale based on how they got in the regular play. They were different tiers of ranks based off the general pool of players. If I looked at the profile inside of the game, it would show their full stats, but I didn’t have that readily available.
It was good. But you never knew when you were about to queue into a queue with somebody who was a savant from Korea. Those were the games that made you question everything because you decided to come in on the wrong time.
The fifth player in our team was Korean though she had not lived there since she was very little. Esther Kim, one of the legions of girls that I had met with the same exact name was a fill. She had said that she would take whatever position was available and she generally played like that. Everybody else had to rotate around to feel the new avatars and see how they played. She excelled at it.
It was scary to think how much he had played in high school before she came here. But her school had a program, so her parents had let her do it. The fact that a Catholic all-girls school had a DOTA team blindsided me. It made sense but it sounded more like something that they were doing as a club sport than anything else. She was a standout star. If I had my way, I would give her a full ride.
The four-year University that she was aiming for. They would take her as well.
She was, of course majoring in international studies. That she spoke fluent Korean was another plus. I was able to get her to commit to translating some South Korean games for us. I understand that the game was made in America, but it was perfected in South Korea.
In the second game, she swapped out with the middle laner. It was all too easy for the two of them to replicate their success in the top Lane in the Middle Lane. The fact that she had chosen a more skill-heavy build as well meant that I was thirsty to have her signing long-term contract with the team.
If you ever admired someone because they were smart or intelligent, you would understand why I wanted her on the team. I wasn't attracted to her in a physical way or a sexual way. I was attracted to her brain and the way that it could help me win games.
One of the things that strategy gave me was the ability to see the match rating of every player. I quickly scanned my guys, and the average match rating was about a six out of ten. I took this to mean that they would win in about 60% of the exchanges all things being equal. Racquel was the only holdout at about four out of ten.
I have it over to see what she was doing. It looked like she was getting distracted. I checked her stats and the unknown stat had stayed the same.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
She was low on gold.
Either she had just gone back and got stuff, or her support was killing more of the minions from the other team that I had expected. I checked on Murph. His gold was high.
Either she wasn't killing them, or he was going overboard and killing them.
"Hey Raquel, you need to farm more," I said.
"I know, it's just that the opponent keeps baiting me," she said.
After watching a play for a minute, I could see what she meant. Murph was playing a slow, calm farming game trying to feel offensive. The opposing bottom laner and their support were continually hitting Racquel. They were trying to intimidate her.
I slid over to our jungler, and I had them try to deal with this problem. This was going to get bad; I would swap the mid laner in for a bit and have them go three on two.
It was another minute until both the middle layer and the jungler arrives and we got our first kill about five minutes in the second match. Thankfully it was Raquel's kill, and her match rating went from a four to a five. I was glad to see that now she was feeling a little more agency. She began to farm more and with that little boost, they cleaned all the immunes they had of the present. Let their minions head up to the first enemy tower and then she teleported back to base.
She respec’d. For the rest of that part of the turn, I had the team set to farm. This kept them at an even match rating from where they had been which was a relief. At least we went into the second turn up two kills.
Once I saw what was happening, I put it back into offense. With that small advantage, I was looking for a big snowball.
I was investing my time and to seeing the kids when some of those early contests.
"Esther, good game there, you're really supporting their moves," I said.
She blushed. I got her. She probably read way too much romantasy.
"Thanks," she said softly, before pulling another surprise gank.
Maybe I had a soft spot for girls in college, but she seemed very sweet and very reserved. But also like she was a killer. She could stab you right in your face and not have a problem with it. Like she was at an assassin’s school or something.
In our way she was a perfect assassin. She had the perfect manners off the culture she was born up with, but she also had the repressed rage of Bergen County that I encountered so much. That rage that fell right in step with having Rich parents with high expectations. Great expectations that a tiger mama might give somebody.
I can see it now, a k drama about an assassin who takes three seasons to just get to the point where she's ready to go on a first date with somebody. They wouldn't even kiss by the end of the fourth season. That will be a hard sell for the networks. It would be cheap for them to film, but it would be hard sell further and that works.
I was beginning to think that she might do better as a jungler. She was an absolute Ace and whatever position I put her in so far. So why would I ruin that. What I needed it to really do was to have her talk more about what she was whatever black people and had no debts herself. She was on fire. In fact, the came and let us know that she had a kill streak on the fifth one.
In MOBA terms, I kill stray kids when you got five in a row. A pentacle is when you kill five. At the same time. A team kill is when you kill the whole team. Any of those is a good place to be in. If you can wipe a team off the face of the board for a little bit? You can dominate and the third turn of the game, you can even push, and gain victory earlier than you would have otherwise.
By the end of the second turn when the team fights were becoming more and more common, we were up, and we were on fire.
Then I saw something new in my mind’s eye. Oh, this was a delicious piece of news.
That was when I realized that I could see what the other team was doing as well. I looked across the way and I could see that their manager, who was a student, was speaking in the ears of their team.
I brought up my strategy and I could see that he had implemented defense strategy for the second turn. I wondered if you've actively done that or if it had just been something that his guys had assumed. I still wasn't sure exactly what was to be ascribed to his intentions and what his guys were doing. Like he was a conductor maybe but were they playing to his music.
I didn't know if it was going to give me information on him as a player, but then I saw that he was and that gave me more questions. If I could see their strategy, that meant that I could counter their strategy. Rock paper scissors was easy.
Easy.
If they were farming? I could go on offense. If they were on defense? Then I could send them for farming. If they were on offense, did it make sense to me but my guys on defense?
I was going to have to wait for Frozen the cons of that as I heard one of the sweetest sounds.
Esther squealed when she got another kill. I walked over to see what was happening and yeah, she was pretty darn good. She was nearly at full health despite having killed somebody who had decided to head to the dragon too early. Heck it was their problem, not hers.
The opposing team looked a little bit deflated.
Mentally, I could see it taking over to the third turn and I saw that their manager had put their strategy as offense. I was curious as to the choice.
It didn't take long.
I could see the Rockies going down the middle lane, the shortest route between the two bases. I was interested in what they were doing.
Racquel turned to me.
"Let them cook," I said. "I want to see what they think they can do with this."
Everything had at least three towers before you got to the outside of the base. The middle lane had only one remaining Tower outside of the base. Then they were going to have to face one interior and at least two more next to the actual base that spawned minions. This month they had to go in there and to destroy at least one Tower before they were going to be under the eye of two other towers.
Taking a dive was when somebody jumped under tower and then targeted an avatar that was aligned to the tower. Towers would auto attack anyone who attacked an avatar under their watch.
Murph decided that he was going to sit there in our base. He would try to draw the entire group so that he would get one of them to take a dive.
Towers put out a consistent amount of damage. If they were getting pummeled by it repeatedly, meant that the avatar would die quickly. At lower levels? Three or four hits would kill an avatar. At higher levels it was less than 10 hits. They were still formidable.
They were still a threat, but with minions to tank the hits and four avatars? They were gone fast especially at higher level.
We routed them, finishing them off in the second game.
I surveyed my team. Racquel looked like she had been through a battle. Esther of course looked fresh, as if this was just a stop on her way to the place with the sushi on a conveyor belt.
"Hey," I said.
"It was a poor showing for me. I let the team down."
Murph raised a hand, as he got up from his spot. He stepped in like he wanted to hug her.
"You didn't let anyone down! You did what you were supposed to do, but they baited the heck out of you. Honestly, I would have taken the bait myself," he said. "You took it way longer than I would have."
They locked eyes. Whatever was going on between them, I needed to step back from.
"Alright," I said, moving on. "Good work Bob."
"Thanks!" He said, still at the desk.
I had to admit it was a pretty nice setup. It wasn’t his own computer, which I was pretty sure was not this nice. One of the things about the game was that it would play. An old Hardware. Might not play the best and he wanted to have the best shading or pixels, but it still ran.
"How do you think you did, Bob?" I said, pausing.
Esther turned to see what we were talking about.
"I think I did...okay. Better than some other players, but not my absolute best."
He might do better at home under the most ideal of conditions, but that was your friend that a match out here in the open. They were going to have to learn that the people cheering from the food court were their fans. Even if it was just one guy in a parking shirt that had turned up to see what the buzz was. We had a legitimate esports team attached to our community college. We were playing another community college meant that we had a little bit of legitimacy. We didn't just take anyone in off the streets. They also had to sign up for classes. Which, sitting around here for a bit too long, I was realizing they might need to do some homework or something.
I turned to Esther.
"You know you're good. Now I need you to work on being a member of this team," I said.
She smiled.
"What was the name of the intramural teams from Holy Angels?" I said. She had told me what it was, but I had forgotten.
"The two teams were the sisters and the saints," she said. "The saints were the varsity team and they got to play other schools. The sisters...well best to think of them as the B team."
I knew without asking that she was going to have been one of the members of the saints. She was probably recruited young. They were a lot of Korean girls that lived in that area. The school, being private was not forced to recruit from the people that lived nearby.
She could have walked to school from where she lived. There was even another entire high school in the two neighboring towns. Not only that, but they were also good high schools as well.
"You know you're going to be our star," I said, checking her stats.
Once again, she blushed.
She had a PA of one hundred, making me think that she had a huge capacity. So long as I kept her happy, she would make this team. Then I saw a few Korean girls in the audience that were way in the back. Heck, it was only seven thirty, maybe they had plans.
I released the team and went over to talk to the Rockies coach. Mister Johnson was a tall black man with a bow tie.
"Your team is pretty good," he said. "It's too bad we're in different states otherwise we would want a rematch."
I smiled.
"You do want a rematch," I said.
"Not for nothing, if I could trade for your all-around girl right there?" He said, smiling. "I would."
I knew we weren't going to be able to trade like that. Unfortunately for him, she was already on scholarship. This was extra credit for her. It we would look good on her application to a 4-year College next year. She was just trying to save money. It wasn't for me to say. She was a nice kind girl who would have been the perfect assassin.
"How are you doing with this new patch?" he said.
"Well, you saw how I picked our avatars I made them all read the patches. I don't know if I should have summarized the important parts for them."
He gave me a little bit of side eye.
"I gave them a little briefing. The fact that they dropped this patch right before the season began. It kind of shook up two of my players main characters. What kind of reeling over the changes but we're here now."
"You know what? I want you to do that. That seems very interesting. Hey since You guys are a different state who you are playing next?".
"It's funny you say that we've got an invitational with West Point. I've been trying to get them to play with us for years and now with this new cyber program. They are trying to get more kids in that already have the skills and guess who has the skills already?"
"DOTA players?"
"DOTA players. Do you remember back when you used to know that someone was gamer because they had an online presence? And now we've democratized the web so anyone can use it and social media is a thing?"
"Are you reminiscing about the good old days?"
I put my hands on my hips.
"I'm just saying.... The world has changed. We're preparing these kids for a far different world that the one we came up from."
I smiled.
"You're going to have to tell me how this West Point thing goes. I'm dying to know," I said.
We exchanged numbers. I put him in my phone as Mister Johnson, no first name.
"If you want to tell any of your guys to move up north, we have tons of opportunities," he said. "I know you're way closer to the city, but we're also an option."
We both laughed.
"I'll think about it," I said.
The kids had scattered, so all we had to do was pack everything onto the cart that Mr. Johnson had laid out. That took all of five minutes because we were borrowing them from a new computer cafe on the top floor.
It had taken the spot occupied by the Games Workshop and I didn't know how I felt about that. We handed off the equipment and went our separate ways. Well, he left. I stuck around to see what the internet cafe was doing.