For someone like me, it is a very strange habit to write in a diary. Not only that I have never written before, but it strikes me that later neither I, nor anyone else, will care for the outpouring of a thirteen year old schoolgirl.

— Anne Frank

Diary writing has become somewhat passe in an era of screens. We’re oscillating between our phones and our computers—when is there ever time to document our thoughts?

Diaries are often eclectic. They can be part rant, part polemic, and sometimes just plain trivial. We may not keep diaries but we still write about ourselves. It’s just no longer in solitude.

My Life is in Shambles ... xD — EternaLEnVy (@EternaLEnVy1991) March 22, 2015

It’s been common advice for players reaching for higher MMR to take the game less seriously. More precisely—try to improve what you can about yourself and forget about the frustrations that you can not control. It’s stress management 101. There’s no use in flaming, in wasting time typing out profanities, when instead you can be more mindful about your own play. Expressing ourselves in whatever medium has its own form of catharsis.

FYUCKJ — Artour (@Arteezy) March 24, 2015

At Dotabuff we realize we have immense resources that aid the community in revisiting old memories. All our matches can be viewed at a glance on the page. We can see our K/D/A, our impact, and whether it made any difference in the win or loss. What we’re missing is what’s behind these statistics. How did we feel about our match? And did it have any lasting influence on our performance?

We suspect that it’s this kind of introspection that can help us improve at Dota. Diary writing has become a lost art, but today it has taken a new form, and it presents us opportunities to help us grow. At Dotabuff we’ve taken these concepts and implemented a new metric. Can your mood really impact your gameplay?

Introducing My Dota Diary

Our first change is a new statistic on our match overview page to assess player mood. Similar to Valve’s question of enjoyment of a match, we’ve built on this concept and established a baseline survey that will reflect overall player happiness. You will see these now on your match page. Here are a pair of examples:

Dotabuff Plus subscribers can rate each match from their dashboard:

Using this data we have also implemented a new trends graph. We are better at giving other people advice than giving ourselves advice. This trends graph gives us distance, allowing us to criticize ourselves in a more objective manner.

This is just the beginning. While this feature is still in beta, we are eager to examine our first wave of results on player mood vs performance. There are tremendous possibilities and implications. Was your unhappiness with your teammates in that one game a factor in your losing spree? Did your feelings about your team’s Techies pick derail your performance? Rate each match today so that you can re-live the agony of it all later!

For now, what these features offer is a collection of our experience. We may look at it and cringe, like reading an old teenage diary entry, or we may realize how far much we’ve grown, or not at all.

Dotabuff VIP Experience

Today we'd also like to present a new offering, especially with the rise of TI5 fever after last week's ticket sell-out. Though the pertinent details for Valve’s VIP experience haven’t been released, what is clear is that the general public will no longer have the same access as they had last year. At Dotabuff we would like to take this chance to give back to the community by offering our own, Dotabuff VIP experience. Here are the details:

We will meet up with you at the event, enjoy a lovely fast food dinner together, answer your questions, then sneak you into the event using the "badge in a bag" technique. (Must provide own travel and accommodation. May receive a $100 travel voucher if you allow a Dotabuff intern to sleep on your floor.) A grab bag filled with an assortment of swag, including some or none of the following: stickers, t-shirts, Dotabuff Plus redeem codes, a paper bag, and a coupon for a meet and greet with Oliver Snith, renowned Chen player and SingSing’s friend. Play a game of Dota with our staff. Must play a hero among the top 10 win rates and must be over 5k MMR. A personal escort to the end of the Secret Shop line, where we will then provide you with a list of items to be purchased. A seat inside the Dotabuff VIP suite, located in a vacant row held reserve by interns who stayed in line the previous night. Snarky live commentary to be provided by staff members of unknown MMR.

We hope that this package will satisfy our fans by offering a host of goodies, unprecedented access to Dotabuff staff, and a peek at what we do behind the scenes. We’re looking forward to meet everyone (Dotabuff VIPs) at TI5. See you there!