Two Types of Dota Players and Why Our Events Are Changing

Hey guys,

Today's video is going to be an announcement for the future of the dojo and how we plan to organize our events and help you get the absolute most out of your experience with us.

For me, it has been quite a revelation. I talked to my class about this, got some really useful feedback, I went to our in house night last Wednesday and got an interesting experience of my own that helped me understand better what is going on with the events. I have also had some IRL stories that have pertained to this. Life has a way of themes, you know.

The theme is starting with board game nights from IRL.

I realized that there are two real distinct types of people at board game nights. There are the people that you are playing a board game and they completely nerd out. They get completely immersed and you talk about literally nothing else for three hours while you play this board game.

Then there are people that join the board game night and they want to talk about their week the whole time, and it is like a social event for them. It is much more about having something in the background that is kind of fun, but it is serving as a base for spending time with other people.

Neither of these is wrong. They are just very different things that you get out of playing board games together, and this also applies to Dota.

To be quite frank, I fit into the former. If I am playing board games, I would much prefer to talk about literally nothing else than the board games and get fully immersed. If I want to be social, I would go out to dinner with people or just hang out at somebody's house and chill.

If I am being honest, I actually loathe playing board game nights with people when they just want to chat. I would rather be playing board games or I would rather be chatting. At the same time, they are being themselves and I cannot get mad at it.

This absolutely happens in Dota 2.

I could tell there were two very different types of people in the in house night I came to. Then there are people in the middle that are fine with either. They do not have a strong preference. They enjoy both.

There is the same disconnect that I feel during board game nights.

People told me the in houses were too casual, and other people told me the in houses were too tryhard. What that is literally saying is we are not doing anything. We are half of each. It is too tryhard for people who just want a nice time, and it is not tryhard enough for people who want to compete and learn new things.

Initially the thought was tryhard versus casual. But those words do not resonate with everybody. They both have negative connotations.

What we decided was that every event in the community is going to have a clear distinction between improvement based activities and community based events.

Improvement based activities are more for people trying to get better. Community based events are more for the social side of things. People use Dota as a medium to hang out with friends. These are two very different appeals of Dota, and they do not mesh well in the same setting.

For improvement nights, if people come in wanting to shoot the during the game, they will be politely told that is not what this is for. This is more of a tryhard night, no extra chit chatting.

For community nights, if somebody is screaming at the team about objectives and smokes, we are going to tell them to chill out. That is not what that night is for.

We want to make sure people have the exact experience they are expecting and that when you sign up for something, you know what you are going to get.

I talked to the mods that organize the in house nights. We have Wednesday and Friday for Europe and Saturday for NA.

Wednesday nights are going to be casual. A place to hang out, play, party queue, watch games, theory craft, whatever you want.

Saturday nights are going to be tryhard scrim nights. Try new heroes, pick your best heroes, and try your best to win. Mutually agree on what you are working on. Simulate a pub with the people you want to play with.

For Friday, we want to hear from you.

We are going to have a poll in the Dota Dojo.

Are you improvement based. Community based. You do not care and will attend either. Or you do not want to attend events at all. We want to hear from you.

For us to give you the best product, everyone must know what they are signing up for.

The biggest shock was people in my class telling me they love Dota for the social aspect, not the improvement aspect. They want to enhance their understanding so they can talk about it more, watch pro Dota, or watch streams. They do not care as much about applying it to their games.

I never realized that was part of my service.

That affects coaching, it affects how I help you, and it was really exciting for me to learn.

I had a long discussion with Erfan about this today.

It feels like a relief to know I am never going to go to a board game night again where it is not explicitly communicated what kind of night it is.

I am going to work on communicating what I want out of something, both in the dojo and in real life. It hit me hard how many parts of my life I have been doing things I did not want to, because I never communicated it.

For those of you who do this naturally, maybe you can be proud of me for learning it. For those who do not, I hope the dojo is a place to learn it.

All events will be labeled improvement or community at the start of them. You will know exactly what you are signing up for.

If you have not given the Dota Dojo a try, and this resonates with you, please come join us.

All these events are free. You can also try the class. That is a monthly free trial and can be found through the Discord.

I appreciate you so much for listening. I am super excited about what is to come.

See you in the dojo,
BSJ

P.S. This was a AI formatted transcript from the Brian Canavan Youtube channel.