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Dota -> eSports General -> Pros Talk Dota -> Ep 18.5: The RijaLeu controversy
== KantrIP vs PewDiePie Invitational Team: Match History ==
Janine
Caster
1444 posts
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This is pretty informal. We brought on some pros from the audience at Trump Condominiums and had them talk a little bit about RijaLeu. The conversation got sidetracked when we got on the topic of the delicious red sauce.
Turns out Martin doesn't like it and I don't like it, but the pros all thought it was pretty great.
We also briefly covered ESEX Vita. Yaru was under NDA though and couldn't tell us most of the details.
CoDA
Verified
1097 posts
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There's a couple loose ends which haven't been covered:
- Why was RijaLeu unseen until the final minutes of game 2?
- RijaLeu obviously has past Dota experience. Furthermore, he is obviously a lizardman. Why is nobody commenting on this?
- I have about 10 minutes of missing time during game 1. I am not the only person to report problems of this nature. Why?
- What's in the red sauce? Why do only certain people like it?
- There appears to be a thin reflective screen separating the stage and the audience. Why?
- Why do my teeth hurt?
agent-dean
Probation
19281 posts
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CoDA posted:
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- RijaLeu obviously has past Dota experience.
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Game 1 was played on Dendi's account according to the replay. Game 2 was played on a new personal account called MYSTERY_LIZARD. By game 3 the account had been renamed to RijaLeu.
None of these accounts have a match history under "RijaLeu" but we'd probably know if a player this good actually existed. It could be he deliberately played bad for a long time, then just got tired of faking.
CoDA posted:
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- Why do my teeth hurt?
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Bad dental hygiene?
Needs clarification. I get this too though. It's like something's trying to get out. The red sauce helps. I think it's an anesthetic. I still don't like the pita chips.
CoDA
Verified
1097 posts
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None of the pros liked the pita chips, not even Yaru. Maybe it is an anesthetic. I really like letting it just sit in my mouth for a long time. The pain doesn't go away though.
RijaLeu isn't good the way a newbie would be good at the game. His first game looked newbie-ish -- but games 2 and 3 he pulled every dirty trick in the book, and some that aren't. He plays like a reverse engineer. What really scared me is the way he set up long-term contingencies and triggered them at the last minute. He could stick a group of neutral creeps somewhere seemingly irrelevant, then trigger them in the middle of a teamfight, break pathfinding, and wind up unscathed.
If he is new he has incredibly strong pattern recognition and a very experimental mindset. But the way he deliberately introduces complexity makes me think he's skilled, not talented. Most people who are merely talented are natural simplifiers -- they can see past the bullshit and otherwise do as well as anyone else who can see past the bullshit. He intentionally made the game more complex.
Maybe he's just a genius. Stuff that looks hard for us is easy for him.
agent-dean
Probation
19281 posts
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He didn't really pull any tricks that a normal human couldn't have pulled off in his first game. It's unlikely a normal human would have, but still -- it's possible, especially if you learn fast.
CoDA
Verified
1097 posts
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I think you and I have completely different definitions of "normal human." He's not a human, of course. He's not even a mammal afaict.
Could be he just has insane reflexes. He's only dealing with LAN lag here. If he lives somewhere with bad internet, that'd make him average-to-pro on the online scene and unbeatably skilled in the tournament format.
There were just too many clever tricks though. Even if you don't need to be a mechanical genius to do most of them.
Game 3 was a little less clever but he pulled it off so well. It's just a reminder of how far the best humans in the world are from actual optimal play.
agent-dean
Probation
19281 posts
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You're aware he didn't even buy items game 3, right? He should have lost to right-clicking.
CoDA
Verified
1097 posts
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Not true. He bought boots about 5 minutes in, roughly on time. (although he already had a gank under his belt to put him ahead.) He sold them twenty minutes in and started buying butterflies.
He bought items very suboptimally, then cashed them in later. He basically made a bet with himself that he could last fifteen minutes without trying hard.
carmichael
Probation
40 posts
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oh woow
I'm hard
you are Fucking Nerds
The Process is still talking about the soul
Yaru
Verified
350 posts
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Let me answer some of CoDA's questions.
CoDA posted:
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- Why was RijaLeu unseen until the final minutes of game 2?
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I don't know why, but I was backstage and I can verify he came in about ten minutes into the game. Before then Selfie (one of the Korean guys) was dual-boxing. The official narrative is confirmably true here.
CoDA posted:
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- RijaLeu obviously has past Dota experience. Furthermore, he is obviously a lizardman. Why is nobody commenting on this?
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DISCLAIMER: I don't think I'm as good at Dota as RijaLeu is, but I think our skillsets lie in completely different areas. He won several fights that looked totally one-sided to me in favor of his opponents, and when he wasn't winning he had a very graceful juke with no easy counter. He played it like it was a game of perfect information.
At the same time, he made several mistakes that would have cost most pros the game. Mostly involving macro-level strategy. My theory is that he's a transplant from a different game and his skills mapped unexpectedly well to Dota micro.
His reflexes were important but they were less important than his planning, particularly wrt pathfinding and turn rate. Those features all exist to slow down the game and reduce reflex-dependence, and he was more able than most pros to compensate for them.
I don't know any other games that are as micromanagement-intensive as Dota, aside maybe from Starcraft. But he could have probably gotten this good in any game just by having great physical intuition, multiboxing well, and playing strategic moves instead of cheesy ones. (Unlike what most people do when they multibox.)
All I'm certain about is that he didn't get this good by playing Dota. Whatever he played probably had similar controls, turn-rate, and pathfinding mechanics though.
CoDA posted:
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- I have about 10 minutes of missing time during game 1. I am not the only person to report problems of this nature. Why?
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I want to tie this in with the red sauce comment.
CoDA posted:
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- What's in the red sauce? Why do only certain people like it?
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I had a brief instance of missing time as well during a meeting with some of the press dudes. I tried the red sauce twice before realizing I liked it. I really hated it at the pre-party near the start of the evening, and other people shared that opinion.
Later I got to try some between games 1 and 2, *after* my missing time. Everyone liked it, including me. The bowl was gone in like 30 seconds.
CoDA posted:
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- There appears to be a thin reflective screen separating the stage and the audience. Why?
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I observed this but I don't know why. I would infer it's part of the presentation/recording setup. The sheet does not flex or waver as it goes down and does not transmit sound very well, but I was still able to hear a little bit of offstage chatter from behind it. I would guess it's not porous, but also not airtight against the base of the stage. And I would guess it's a hard surface, not cloth or rubber or screen.
CoDA posted:
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- Why do my teeth hurt?
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I get this too. I have no explanation as to why, other than that it started after the missing time thing.
But I think we might be reading a little much into the missing time thing. It's mysterious, but that doesn't mean it's the answer to everything. It's also later at night and we've had a lot of exertion since then. We don't have that many reports of that happening, and this is a loud event with a lot of colors and lights, which means that even if we did, we're in a situation where it's really hard to actually keep track of time to begin with.
I might be in an unrelatable position for some of you though. RijaLeu has a lot of pros psychologically shaken, in a way I don't think you can understand if you're not a pro.
CoDA
Verified
1097 posts
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I find staring at RijaLeu oddly relaxing, and it realy helps with the teeth thing. Every time I see his canines I feel small and insignificant by comparison, though.
I just realized I have a killer overbite. To the point where my teeth stick out if I close my mouth. I tuck them under my lip and they just pop out again.
Yaru
Verified
350 posts
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If nothing else, his shifty lizard smile can inspire us all to improved dental health. Mine do too BTW. It's normal, especially if you're a nerd who cracks his jaw. =D
Come backstage (I can get you in) and we'll have a quick red sauce meetup. You seem pretty cool! Maybe RijaLeu will come by and grace us with some of his tricks.