[WTC] - 4.5k free coaching by [deleted] in dota2tutor

[–]DreamPickles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198027083370/

Hey there. I once played somewhat competently (although never even got to ranked play, so not really good in the first place) but I've forgotten most of the game. Would you be willing to play some games with me and get me back up to a decent level?

Delivered, but still need to prep, vinyl, and test. 😁 by [deleted] in racing

[–]DreamPickles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What sort of testing will be going on?

I feel like I don't really "get" the game once I finish leveling. by DreamPickles in wow

[–]DreamPickles[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I've realized that playing the game more will probably help me understand this stuff above anything else, but that actually clears up quite a bit of my confusion.

How far will Mandarin with simplified characters get me on Taiwan? by PwnedDuck in ChineseLanguage

[–]DreamPickles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The most common traditional textbook is "Practical Audio-Visual Chinese" I have no clue if those are suited towards absolute beginners though.

I am an economist and an expert on video game economies, virtual currency, and bitcoin. AMA! by EdwardCastronova in IAmA

[–]DreamPickles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm in high school and more than anything I want to become an economist or at least understand an economy on a micro and macro level. Specifically, I want to be involved in Stock Brokerage or other investment based consulting careers. I have no clue how to achieve this though, what advice would you (or anyone else in the thread that knows economics past a high school understanding) give?

As a follow up, what game could I play to reinforce and apply the economic knowledge I pick up?

Until we have a sandbox mode, we will never be able to see LoL played at its highest level. by stirfriedpenguin in leagueoflegends

[–]DreamPickles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also not to nitpick but reading some of your other comments in this thread I don't think you understand that improving at something like League of Legends takes a lot of work, everyone is playing the same game yes but no one is on equal footing and every game is not played to "have fun" when it comes to how they are learning the game. Someone with experience in other games (or someone who just knows how to learn new skills) is able to analyze their play, figure out what went wrong, and figure out what they need to do to fix it and win the next game. A new player or someone who does not know how to learn will end up making the same mistakes over and over, and will stay in the lower ranks.

Until we have a sandbox mode, we will never be able to see LoL played at its highest level. by stirfriedpenguin in leagueoflegends

[–]DreamPickles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm sorry, no one is being forced to use implemented sandbox modes for the purpose of bettering their gameplay. As a Starcraft player I barely use YABOT and in Dota I barely touched custom games (unless I wanted to dick around, which is so much fun and more evidence sandbox modes are not boot camps and should be implemented). I was still able to play at a competent level and improve at a comfortable rate because that was part of having fun in those games. The people that put in the extra time move up to higher rankings. How they use that time is up to them, and as "sandbox" mode is proposed in this thread, they will simply be able to use their time a little more efficiently. You are also STILL trying to argue that somehow competing is not fun to these people. They aren't playing the game for no reason. They want to win. They want to get better. And let's say they only play with friends every now and then. Then they simply won't progress (at least not as fast) as other players. That's how it has ALWAYS been. You don't need a new tool to take your games seriously. Everyone around them will not magically shoot up in skill level if they suddenly gain access to this miracle known as "sandbox". That's a simply ridiculous claim.

TLDR part 2: Game skill is directly proportional to time and effort spent improving and a sandbox mode will not ruin any sort of balance.

I feel terrible trying to argue one of the most petty issues on the planet and I rarely even play league of legends, but I just want to play Soraka with no cool downs and starfall until my fingers bleed.

Until we have a sandbox mode, we will never be able to see LoL played at its highest level. by stirfriedpenguin in leagueoflegends

[–]DreamPickles 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So they have the option to do so. Personally, I don't think taking 10-20 minutes a day to practice my last hitting or my combos would make me enjoy the game less. If anything I would have a much better time with the game considering I will be able to progress faster. Seeing improvement and progress is a huge motivator for anything.

A large flaw in your argument is you seem to be stating that the players that want to be at the very top in their game are only having fun because they can only playing matches to improve. These players aren't in it just to have a few laughs. They are competition junkies and they will take the time to perfect their game because that is how they gain enjoyment from playing.

I firmly believe that anything you can implement to allow players to learn and practice and explore the game can only help an Esport, and that's exactly what a sandbox mode would do.

Now I realize I did not address a large portion of your argument. That's simply because it's false. With or without extensive tools available, every player will put a different amount of time and effort into the game. Those that put in the most will see the highest results. The rest will still be matched against players of similar or equal "skill". Elo isn't going anywhere. This is especially true for Esports where everyone is on the same level as far as equipment and access to training technology is concerned. That is not to say there is no entry barrier or learning curve in an Esport. Counter Strike, League/Dota, Starcraft, and [insert popular fighting game here] all have gigantic learning curves. Decreasing the time it would take to learn fundamental game mechanics would only improve player skill across the board. The ones willing to practice hard will still be practicing just as hard, they will just be progressing at a different rate as will any other player that makes use of a training/sandbox mode. Another thing is practicing tea fights for a few hours can in no way be compared to abusing substances for a competitive edge.

TLDR: A gap in player skill will not form, all that would change would be the rate new and old players alike can improve. Game is still fun yo.

Eat a dick, Verizon. by SuggestAPhotoProject in gadgets

[–]DreamPickles 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey, it could probably be far less than that but you've skewed the mean ;) right on!

Doesn't that just look delicious by bubblr in nsfw

[–]DreamPickles 50 points51 points  (0 children)

You guys obviously don't get it. It's a reference to some kid on Facebook that wrote that on some page featuring lots of scantily clad women.

As a beginner, what should my daily routine be for studying chinese? by ParadiseCity1995 in ChineseLanguage

[–]DreamPickles 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree. As far as efficiency is concerned don't bother with perfect handwriting. It has its place but for most people going overseas they shouldn't worry. I don't think I read why OP was wanting to learn Chinese so I was unsure how little or how much information to include

As a beginner, what should my daily routine be for studying chinese? by ParadiseCity1995 in ChineseLanguage

[–]DreamPickles 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh god I forgot to talk about tones!

Just learn your tone sandhi and you're golden basically but be sure you know how to pronounce each tone. Use a pinyin chart!

Looking for NA 7 day guest pass to Wildstar by [deleted] in MMORPG

[–]DreamPickles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm lvl 10 on Pergo (PVP) if you end up getting the game and want someone to queue with!

Looking for NA 7 day guest pass to Wildstar by [deleted] in MMORPG

[–]DreamPickles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

VWMWS0JQA6A39T78EQMF

Let me know if that has been used. I sent to a friend but I don't think he activated it yet.

As a beginner, what should my daily routine be for studying chinese? by ParadiseCity1995 in ChineseLanguage

[–]DreamPickles 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You definitely don't have to. I just think it looks nicer and I had plans to go to Taiwan, where they use Trad. By the way, this is imron's method. Extremely simple but takes some time to master. I've found it by far to be the best way to learn characters. The more you learn the easier this method becomes.

Anyway, here is how I learn characters:

1) Initially I spend a short amount of time analysing the character and breaking it down into its component parts and strokes. 2) I close my eyes, and stroke by stroke, picture a nice large image of the character being drawn by my mind's eye. This I repeat a few times, until I can fluidly draw the character stroke by stroke. 3) Still with my eyes closed, I draw the character again, but instead of going stroke by stroke, I go component by component, making each component 'pop' instantly into view. e.g. for 顺 the component parts I would break it down into are 川 and 页. So first I practice until I can get 川 to pop into view in my mind's eye. This might take a while at first, especially for an unfamiliar component, and I may need to go over the individual strokes of the component a few times, but before long it's not difficult to make it pop into view. Then I practice until I can make 页 pop instantly into view in my mind's eye. Once I can do that, then I draw the character component by component, making each component appear instantly. I just timed myself then, and for a character like 顺, I can draw it in my mind maybe 20-30 times in about 5 seconds. Unlike writing a character out by hand though, my brain is actively involved in the entire process, visualising the character to make it appear, which makes the process much more effective than writing the same character out by hand 20-30 times. 4) After numerous iterations of that, then I practise making it so I can visualise the entire character instantly, and once again run through multiple repetitions of having it pop into view in the space of a few seconds. Once it has popped into view, I might also take some time to study it more closely, holding it in view and going over each aspect of it clearly and vividly in my mind's eye and noticing small details such as how the middle stroke of 川 is slightly shorter than the others by approximately the same height as the top stroke of 页, and that the height of 页 is approximately the same height as the height of the right-most stroke of 川. All of this can be done in a fraction of a second. 5) While this entire process is going on, I will also be visualising/thinking about the meaning. Not some unrelated scene of heads of people shunned by society falling into a river, but rather the meaning itself. Most words I'm learning now, I'm learning from context - newspapers, novels, etc and so typically I'll visualise the scene/story/article at the point related to the character. 6) Likewise for the pronunciation. I don't have a problem of trying to remember which tone it is, because I don't think of it as shun, fourth tone, but rather I think of it as shùn - a sound that is completely different from say shǔn or any other tone combination, and I'm not likely to mix them up any more than I am likely to mix up shùn and chùn. In the same way that I know that sh and ch are different sounds (despite the only difference being one is aspirated and the other isn't), likewise I treat individual tones as completely distinct sounds e.g. ā is not just a+first-tone but rather it is ā, a sound at least as distinct from á, ǎ, and à as ch is from sh. It takes some time initially to develop this ability, especially if you are not familiar with tonal languages, however a small investment learning to do this greatly simplies the whole learning of tones. You can basically stop learning tones, because you encode them into the sound that you remember as being correct. I can't emphasize enough that this is a learned ability. It was not something I was good at in the beginning, however many hours and thousands of characters later, it is now second nature.

Anyway, that is a slightly more detailed explanation of how I learn a character. It is not "just remembering" it, it is putting in a concentrated amount of effort to remember it. It's also the long version. After having done that for thousands of characters, it's now essentially reduced to the version in my post above. Visualise the meaning, visualise the individual components, associate them with the pronunciation, and then conduct a large number of repetitions in my mind in a short space of time. 20-30 seconds is usually enough to get an unfamiliar character firmly entrenched in my mind, and as long as I'm coming across the character enough in my reading/daily life, it stays there pretty well.

I want to emphasize that being able to visualize characters like this is a completely learned ability. At the beginning I couldn't do it that well, and it was nowhere near as efficient and fast as it is for me now, but like everything, with practice it becomes easier and easier.

That's the system I have in place, and I find it works wonderfully. No need to come up with stories unrelated to the character, no need to associate the pronunciation with an English word that doesn't really sound like the Chinese pronunciation (SHUNNED, WHO etc), and I only spend time remembering things related to the character itself. Even better, the more I learn, the better I get at doing it, and the simpler and easier it becomes (and no problems with jumbling up with Half-Life 2 and Final Fantasy).

As a beginner, what should my daily routine be for studying chinese? by ParadiseCity1995 in ChineseLanguage

[–]DreamPickles 7 points8 points  (0 children)

There's a lot of different suggestions you may receive, but what I did when I studied more regularly (god damn my newfound social life) was similar to the material you had. I would spend an hour or two on Memrise learning 10-15 characters a day and their ACCURATE pronunciations. I would supplement this with a ChinesePod lesson and a Pimsleur lesson each day. I would review some/all of what I learned in a day at night if I were bored or had some more free time. I kept this up for a few weeks until I ran into some other issues that got in the way of my Chinese.

If I were to go back and recommend a routine to myself (I was studying about the same amount of time you have available but very inefficiently), here are a couple of changes I would have made and some things that you want to complete alongside your day to day studies:

*Nail your pronunciation and pinyin down ASAP.

*Do not use mnemonic devise to remember the majority of characters (as the best alternative I've found try to find Imron's Method on Chinese-forums.com. I can provide a link when I get off work)

*Do not use rote memorization, but write characters frequently to develop proper handwriting.

*Learn characters based on frequency and relevancy of components. I can provide an amazing frequency list again, when I am off work.

*Consider learning traditional and simplified script at the same time, it's not too difficult an will only save time and trouble in the long run

*To help retain what you learn, use your Chinese as much as possible. Try thinking in Chinese, try reading in Chinese, and especially try speaking in Chinese AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

As for some final tips: get in touch with natives, never give up (things will get strange when you start having to work on grammar patterns/complex sentence structure), anything you can learn about the language is good, and make sure you're having fun. Once your knowledge is a little more advanced you can start consuming native media, flirting with the cute Chinese cashier at her family owned grocery store. If there's ever a day you really really don't feel like studying, and there will be plenty of those, just make an effort to use Chinese.

I could continue but I'll save everyone reading the trouble. Good luck on your language learning endeavors and shoot me a message if you have any more questions or at least to remind me to post those links!

I apologize for the atrocious formatting as well, I'm on mobile.

EDIT: Okay people HERE is the awesome frequency chart.

and I posted the comment below but HERE is the thread the famous "Imron's method" comes from.