What grinds my Awesomenauter's gears

Hello awesomedventurers! Today I'd like to vent off some recent events that grinded my Awesomenauter's gears lately. xD

Recently I've been matched against a few League 1 players when I solo queued (curiously all of 'em were Coco mains) and, with the exception of one game, I was utterly stomped in all of 'em. Oddly, The only game I played gainst the L1 which wasn't a total stomped was the game I raged the most. Usually total stomps don't frustrate me mainly because it's easy to learn what happenned in hindsight and the guy who stomps has to outplay us by a huge margin. But that game was different. Both my teammates and the opposing Coco's teammates were in suicidal mode and the only thing that kept both team's turrets from falling were me and Coco. Then out of nowhere both my teammates DCed. The only kind of games I hate to lose are the close calls where something random and beyond my control comes and takes away my chances of winning. This loss proved too frustrating and ended up closing my Awesomenaut's session for the day. :P

Another thing that's really frustrating are the clueless teammates. :P While I can't blame someone for the lack of sinergy in a solo queue game, it becomes really hard to do something when you are totally out of sync with your teammates. Sometimes you go for a kill and suddenly get ganked by the enemy team because your allies with full health didn't chase their low health Vinnie (who proceeds spam taunts after that just seem to taste a bit my tears). T.T Sometimes you try to help an ally who's caught in a gank and die along with him (along with more taunt spamming). Anyway, while you can find some really nice teammates who seems to work really well with you, there's a good share of Nauters who simply doesn't know what they are doing and is a real challenge to have some teamwork going on. xD

What does grinds your gears in Awesomenauts? Have any stories to share? Post 'em in the comments bellow!

Premium Skin giveaway results!

Hello awesomedventurers!

Well, I promised everybody who liked my facebook page a chance to win a premium skin, but the amount of people who liked it was REAAAALLY LOW (Out of the 6 peeps who liked it, one is my acc, 2 are my friends who don't even own the game and 3 are people who actually liked our facebook page :P). So for those 3 who liked my facebook page (Thank you Michael Palmer, Kenneth Loyd Gilbert and Ankush Rawal for supporting this project!), I'll give a premium skin to each one as a 'thank you' for following my work. ^^ I'll be contacting you guys soon via facebook for delivery details!

All hail the Space Butterfly!

The reasoning of why I like supporting so much

Hello awesomedventurers! How are you doing? I'm feeling great  because it's Friday! Weekends usually means a lot of Awesomenauts playtime, something I've been missing for the entire week xD.

As you guys might know, I main Genji. I think half of my games were played with him. The funny thing is, when I think about it in hindsight, I'm always drawn to high impact supporting roles in other games. I played healers when I wasn't playing with my warlock on WoW and mained support and tanks in League of Legends. My personality fits supports like a glove, as I never liked the idea of trying to be the most popular guy, but always wanted to feel a decisive and important part of a group.

Another aspect most support I always liked is their personality. Most support/protective characters usually only wish the best for their kin, helping their own people and acting with the best intents for them. These valors are what I usually strive for in my daily life, and finding characters that seek this connects me with them.

It's nice to reflect and learn about yourself, reflecting about why you really like some things. So Awesomedventures, what is your favorite character in Awesomenauts and why do you enjoy playing with him?

New blog layout!

Hello Awesomedventurers! Did you guys like the new blog's layout? It was amazingly done by the extremely talented web designer Luh@. You guys can check out more of her amazing work here! 

To celebrate the blog revamp, I'll be giving away a Pirate Leon and Gnabot skin! To have a chance to win one of those two wonderful skins, like The Awesomedventures facebook page and share it with your friends. I'll randomly select a winner at 3 PM (-3 GMT) on August 12th. 

Preparing a surprise!

Hello awesomedventurers! Unfortunately I won't be able to bring a new story today, but it's for a bigger cause. Yesterday I told y'all I was preparing a surprise and today I'm adjusting some small details about it. I promise it's worth it! Stay tuned! :D

Learn how to learn!

Hello awesomedventurers! Yesterday I became a really happy Nauter, as I've managed to grab a 3 digit position in the leaderboards! :3 Ok, ok... I know this is just the begginning of a new Season and the ladders are still a mess, but placing that high within 2 weeks of my first contact with the game is something I've been proud of. :) So today, I'll share with you what I've been doing to steadily improve my gameplay and climb the ladders.

How did I manage to go that far within 2 weeks? "Hackzorz?" Nope. (u.u) "Black Magicz?" No. (o.o) "Pact with da Devil?" What!? No! (>.<) What I've been doing are these 3 little things: use my previous experiences with other games in the context of Awesomenauts; observe what other players do while trying to understand why; and ask myself what should I do next. Yes, I know that what I wrote is pretty bland and generic, but it is the truest way of improving in anything and achieve success, from your working performance to your l33t gaming skillz. I'll try to detail a bit each point to anyone who's struggling to improve can understand them better. ^^

Using previous experiences

Probably, everyone who plays Awesomenauts has played other games. I've played a lot of World of Warcraft, League of Legends and Mass Effect 3 (multiplayer). Of all these experiences, only one is directly related to Awesomenauts (League of Legends), but almost all of them helped me improve something. League of Legends gave me a nice basis of how to approach a MOBA game and taught me some really nice stuff, such as zoning and map control. World of Warcraft taught me how to filter what's important on the screen and short-mid term planning. Mass Effect 3 taught me mouse precision, map awareness and how to handle pressure. It was all a matter of taking everything these games taught me and find aspects of the game where all these things could be applied. But any experience in your life can accomplish that. Driving can give you situational and awareness of your surroundings. Playing ping-pong can give you nice hand-eye coordination and precision. Associating skills you might have with aspects of the game can greatly improve your learning speed in new things. And as you improve in the game, it might 'reciprocally' help the primary skill you started associating in the first place.

Observe what other players do

This is perhaps the most given advice from pro players to aspiring amateurs (as I'm one :P). Learning through observation is as simple as watching what someone is doing and try to understand why he's doing that. This can be done in different situations with different reasons and different intents. You can see what your allies are doing so you can do the same thing if it works, you can see what your enemies are doing to use it when you try playing with the same character he's playing, you can watch pro player streams and videos to learn how and why they act and position themselves during a match. The possibilities are almost endless.

As simple as observing what other people do might sound, I've found the hard cold truth that it's really hard to learn, specially to people who are not used to do it (MEEE!). My observation skills simply suck. It sucks so bad that if I go to a shopping mall and have to find a friend who's sittingin the food court, I won't find him unless he waves at me for a couple of minutes. Heck, if you ask me what clothes my parents were wearing before they went to work, I won't remember.

The good thing is that Awesomenauts is a really simple game with simple mechanics and good visual feedback, so learning through observation is way easier than other games. You don't have to worry about looking at armor or attack damage value, as this game doesn't take anything like that into account. You don't have to look at your enemy's build to know what he's doing, as you can see and 'feel' their upgrades. You won't die because you were attacked by an offscreen attack. The clarity Awesomenauts has is what really makes it the best MOBA for newbies.

Ask yourself what to do (Planning)

Everybody has played a game where it stalled for what it seems like hours (but it was actually 10 minutes xD). Just imagine the following situation: you're in Sorona (the smoochin' worm map) and destroyed both of their front turrets. In the middle of the map there is a big nest of Weedlings from the enemy's Gnaw and their Derpl is eagerly waiting someone of your team to pass nearby to nuke the brains out it. Also, every time you try to solo push it, a wild Coco appears to try to stop you. You're playing Genji with Yuri and Gnaw as allies. What would you do in this situation?

Thinking and finding ways to overcome difficult situations in the game gradually becomes more important as you become a better player. Eventually, both you and your opponent will know how to hit each other with abilities, but having a better strategy than him will net you advantages that you'll be able to further press against him and eventually win. Always asking yourself what to do next will allow you to plan your next moves and begin to add small victories throughout the game to eventually win the game.

That game, me and Gnaw split-pushed the bottom lane. All three of them came to try to gank us, giving the opportunity for our Yuri to clear the Weedlings with a couple of mines. We managed to kill Coco before escaping and guard mid. After that we began to push and steamroll the game.

Did you guys (and gals) enjoy today's post? I intend to write many more with tips about how to improve in the game. As always, feedback and suggestions are appreciated! If you have any, please leave them in the comments bellow!

PS: I've got a big surprise for y'all soon. Stay tuned!

Exploring the community

Hello awesomedventurers! How was your weekends? Mine was great, full of bbq and draught beer on the saturday and Awesomenauts on sunday xD. Well, today I'll share my experience with the fantastic Awesomenaut's community, and how it inspired me to create this blog.

As I posted previously, I have to wait for 2 hours after my working time everyday for my ride back home.  So what's better to kill time than browsing the internet? As I have a deep gaming passion for the games I play, this time is used to check news about them. I used to check out mmo-champion (and the extinct worldofraids) when I played WoW, Reign of Gaming for League of Legends articles and news, and after getting hooked on  Awesomenauts, I naturally began looking for something similar. Well, the only website I've found that had something nice was the awesomenauts pro league, and they're focused mostly on organizing tournaments than posting stuff on their blog.

Without any popular blog to read (as I'm usually restricted to the written media during this time) and my need to see something Awesomenaut related (I'm a devourer of gaming blog content, what can I do? :P), I decided to give a chance to the forums. To my greater surprise, it was one of the few select forums I've ever found where people are mature and respectful. Back when I visited LoL official forums, whenever I tried to join a topic or discussion, it seemed like nobody gave a damn about other's opinions. People would argue over meaningless details of the posts and responses and not capture and discuss the main idea behind them. But there it was different. People responded to other people's point and respectfully agreed or disagreed. Heck, even a topic about a controversial theme in the offtopic area with a high 'derailment' chance didn't evolve to a ****storm over the course of several pages. I gotta say I loved this forums and I'm pretty sure I'll be a frequent user for a long time. :)

While looking at the forums, I learned about PUGrnauts, a public mumble server for Awesomenauts's players. Seeking to play with other people (as both friends I gave my extra Awesomenauts copies didn't gave the game a serious try </3) to learn a bit more advanced strategy and learn the dynamics of a closed premade group, I gave it a try. Though I'm a really shy person and my rusty english (it usually takes me 2-3 reviews for each blog post to reach an acceptable grammar level xD), I met some really nice people (thumbs up for Javtech for teaching me so much about the flow of the game, Stefanos for being such awesome partner and SH4F3R [sorry if I mispelled, your name is too hard to memorize correctly >.<] for teaching me Genji tips!). It's a great place to hang around and I strongly recommend going there.

After experiencing so many good things that the community had to offer, I felt strongly compelled to give something back to the community. Since there was no blogs or fansites, I created The Awesomedventures! :)

How has your experience with the community been so far? Have any good stories? Share them in the comment section bellow with our fellow Awesomedventurers!