On Breaking VIness

Original Lecture: On breaking VIness

Take it from a guy who used to BE that VI.

In this case? The solution is to discard being a VI. Acknowledge that you might have been one. Say you've been a VI. But show conviction, absolute resolve, in your determination to not be one, that you CAN be a good player. I was a VI at a time, but once I admitted it, once I admitted there were fundamental flaws in my play, I started improving, because I started analyzing them and seeing them, and worked slowly but progressively on eliminating them. Or, even, turning what was a flaw in my posting into a strength.

(As one example of that, walls. As I said in my previous lecture, most people actually read them. So I've turned my verbosity that I used to despise into something productive that people can actually use. Rarely if ever do I actually use a summary, and despite that, rarely if ever am I asked for one or is there confusion on where I stand, because people actually read the wall and know!)

Often-times, a VI who knows they've got issues in their play, but shows interest, shows actual effort, in having them fixed...will evolve from a VI into a great player, given the time to succeed. It's not an overnight change! You can't one day be incompetent, and the next be a scumhunting god. But by actually recognizing you need to improve...chances are, you'll slowly be working towards that improvement and have done so.

Now that said. VIs are actually players I massively respect, because in a way, VIs have something in common with newbies--their opinions are massively outside the norm. If you couldn't tell from my mini-lecture before, that's actually a good thing. Because VIs think outside the norm, they're actually harder to manipulate. As scum, the thing I fear most aside from players I know and respect is VIs, because they're wildcards that cannot be accurately predicted with great success.

So my solution isn't for the VI to "think more like a normal person", as some would suggest of a VI. It's to analyze what is good and what is bad about their play, and to bring out the good and minimize the bad. One such way for a VI to become less of a VI is to work with others. Instead of being in their own world and having tinfoil conspiracy theories they randomly blurt out, the former-VI can work with others, explain their crazy theory, recognize it's crazy, but ask for feedback if it has any backing at all.

And, more often than not...it actually does! Because this is where the former-VI's value comes in. They bring up one or two really valid points, despite mostly being wrong. If the former-VI is actually working with another player, said other player is more likely to pick up on the valid points, and use them. And not only will they use those points, but they'll encourage the former-VI to flesh them out a bit. But it requires initiative from the former-VI. To talk to those other players.

Talking is a key part of this process. You need to not do it on your own. You need to do it with their assistance. Ask for them to give feedback. Tell them what your angle is. Explain it, and recognize that your viewpoint is kinda crazy. Know that you're not going to be right about everything. And work with them to figure out what you ARE right about. Another aspect of this is recognizing the scale of things. You might have this grand paranoid theory that is hugely-improbable and incredibly unrealistic, violating occam's razor. But that doesn't mean elements of your theory are wrong, in that you'll often have kernels of truth in them that when you scale the theory back to a more realistic smaller scale, can be brought out and emphasized for all to see.

It's a process much like that which turned me from the VI I used to be into the respectable player I am now. I'm still a bit of an unusual player! My thoughts are largely outside-the-box (and sometimes even controversial). But they're received a lot more positively now than they were originally, because I refined this process a lot. I can't guarantee success, but I can definitely say you'll improve, even if you don't think you have.