Yes riot has always pushed narratives for their media day videos, however its braindead to blame them for this backlash
There have been plenty of players who have equal if not worse quotes taken out of context by the team to create tension, yet weirdly enough those players then dont also fully lean into it during live interviews, press conferences and their personal tweets.

Like do any of you think of MIBRs frz as a toxic player because of the quote during the original Reykjavík? Do we think Scream is an NA hating asshole?
Even if its the most atrocious shit you can either call out riot or explain where the quote is from and youll be fine.
Assuming the current discourse around demon1 has gotten to him, just stopping with the persona will realistically fix it; the only players we remember as toxic are people like Zombs who made it their personality and farmed interactions with it. If that aint you then you dont have to do it

yea the problem with discussions on here is that people arent here to be convinced or informed. The few times we do have people who are well informed on the subject due to their studies share their opinions/understanding of the subject they have to deal with idiots to the point where they just dont comment on future threads

There is nothing to be gained from the threads in their current form. It sucks to indirectly silence a minority however I just dont see a way you can change this fact without HEAVY moderation, which VLR has never really done.

it does look like he was helping with the calls a good bit, they feel kinda lost in some situations
at the same time it might just be one of those games where nothing works how they want it to and the mental is destroyed, so we'll see how they bounce back

every International the team I was cheering for didnt win was a fluke, how is that so hard to understand?!

I would say they signed him for his experience to help with the 3.5 inexperienced players but yes the goal was never to have him igl (at least initially during the offseason interviews)

I miss guy....

Team that lost all their good players to other orgs, that just swapped coaching staff and has very inexperienced (in t1) players

individually probably not (he had an insane game vs Vit but hes always had these blowout games from time to time), but the util they lose when he dies tends to be less valuable

They really gotta ban pansy from the building, this is insane

stating current standings/form isnt bias
and at least imo it hasnt been distracting in terms of frequency with a decent amount of praise mixed in between criticisms

its the other way round since turkey was part of emea first, but yes you are correct

I dont think hes very underrated at all since everyone knows that hes a talent
hes just always been signed to big orgs that arent likely to just let him go

Sorta the same way how all the acend players didnt get on t1 teams, despite multiple teams being interested in them; buyouts are a bitch

Only if consoles become strong enough to run it at 60fps with updated graphics, otherwise I see no world where they remaster it
(and dream on if you think theyd port it to pc while also improving the product... that'd make them money and we cant have that)

sayf really wanted to stay with leo so its not impossible
but since he was pretty clear that his goal was to try and teach younger players this year, joining a team like fnatic would go against that

potential problem with that is that we dont know how much midrounding input starxo has (since Shadow is new to igl)

doubt it'd fix anything, but yea would be an upgrade atm

I wanna see them bolster their coaching staff, last year they always feel so flat in the idea department (and feels like theyll continue that trend this year)

nah g2 is spanish too
just have headquarters in germany, but they never really tried to be a german org and market to german fans

(realistically they are just international since they dont have a focus on any country at all nowadays)

Koi vs Bleed is gonna be a battle for the ages
But after today Koi do just have to be the worst team, they have all the issues of the other teams while also lacking firepower
(New IGL and very few setplays, lacking fundamentals, missed lineups galore, firepower)

Mibr is just better than the other teams here based on what we saw and really should be here^ but ye its gonna be between them and giants imo

thats for the better ngl

way way WAY too early

its gonna depend on the person for sure; someone young like Miniboo probably wouldnt shit-talk to coach that got him into t1
but theres quite a few players who do just call out their former coaches when asked to compare them

the ones I can think off of the top of my head are sayf talking about barbarr (wasnt that negative), nukkye had a pretty long discussion comparing his past coaches to pipson a while ago and then theres the ardiis stream where he just talks about all his past teams (and a ton of coaches get called out)

but also them just bringing up past coaches when not explicitly asked about them is a sign for a good coach (like the miniboo example above)

You pretty much have to listen to how their former players talk about them

I have very little knowledge about the Spanish scene so I cant give you that much info, but miniboo praised him on his stream today as a strategic coach

Yea id say hes good enough and I can see him being a filler piece on a roster rebuild when one of the bottom teams restructures.
However thats also sorta the only way I can see him getting picked up into t1 again - it wouldnt make sense to pick him up as a player to develop and hes not super star level either (obviously since hes in t2).

Its a shame for him that the internals of case are so fucked (and that they just blew up the offseason roster for a certain fraud watch coach) since I could have seen him make a return this year based on their offseason performance and the teams INSANE upper limit.

lmao yea I remember the amount of flaming that resulted due to that series
had people convinced they were gonna be absolute garbage

high deaths so a lot of his kills were considered "low impact" (traded) by the ratings formula
(still bad) rule of thumb is to use ACS for duelists and rating for support players

fut know how to play their comp on attack so they didnt lose

on attack you get to decide the pace so you can just avoid the problem of not having any info by clearing out space via util + trades

on defense KC controls the pace and any space they take Fut have no util to reclear
(basically comp is good at not giving up space but space they do lose is just gone)

also ofc while I write this matreen happens so ya know.... like map 1 where KC have some insane plays and Fut sorta choke

idk im just not used to being a grandpa yet

WAIT THAT WAS IN 2014?!

His "crime" was repeating a states propaganda while discussing it with a girl in a private text chat. Yes the issue was a young adult repeated something the media was telling him right after (24th Feb) the war started.
That was the weakest kind of "support" you can think of and for any normal and less horrific topic the conversation would have continued until both understood each others position and BraveAF would have been made aware that his media was pushing an untrue agenda and that his comment was incredibly insensitive.
It really wasnt hard to convince brave either since he made an apology post saying how he wasnt well informed right after the shit hit the fan and that he didnt want the war to continue.

The point isnt that hes an angel or anything, the whole thing was def fucked up to say to someone whos country currently getting invaded, but you shouldnt blow this out of proportion and make it into something it quite simply wasnt.

dont come here with thats bs shit, we want life in prison!

they were also considered favorites going into the reykjavík qualifiers (with fpx and guild (last one being a bit questionable) being the other 2 big names), but got absolutely owned by fnatic and liquid "creating" the postplant meta between qualifiers

banger series so far
and the casters quite literally losing their shit is funny af when you dont understand them
rap god -> random animal sounds -> laugh flash -> more rap god

Had they been able to keep their players last year I think it would have been fine
They had some real talent there, its just that everyone of those players got offers elsewhere and wanted to leave

Well good thing tarik is our perfect org owner
Orgs need to balance immediate return with long term investment into players - imo their main goal this year should be trying to create a core they can iterate on for future years to come
Is the roster perfect for that? eeeeh Id prefer it if Polvi wasnt an import (find it hard to build a core around an import), but its really not a bad attempt. 3 t2 players, Russ as a new (only 1 year experience) IGL and then Benkai to give the team experience.

Thats the perfect composition for talent development imo^
Could you have had all 3 t2 players be from SA? For sure and I would have 100% supported that team too, but it would have looked significantly worse in the short term.

I actually dont outright mind the idea of a bracket reset since it does fix some issues
Multiple coaches at this point have commented on the fact that a rematch (on even grounds) favors the loser since it is easier to fix mistakes and anti than it is to predict how your opponent is going to adapt to your gameplan (imo mainly the fact that often times the winner already showed their anti is the main advantage for the loser)

And theres the semi major problem that finals are played in a completely different format. Bo5s just play out different to Bo3s and different teams are good at them. I find it hard to judge how big of an effect this ends up having, it is however a potential problem for the current format.

BUT adding a bracket reset creates so many problems that I just dont think it would be viable to switch. On one hand bracket reset means bo3 finals (2 bo5s in a day is too much and splitting the finals into 2 days would just create the problems the current format had again). From a competitive integrity standpoint I dont think bo3s are too bad (above point) however the hype aspect just dies. The grand finals being a 2 map series would be the most anti-climatic way to end an international.

Its also just boring tbh. Realistically both teams will want to play the same maps again and the only way we get a different map pool is via bans. In a then exclusively bo3 format where perma bans are incredibly viable these bans could very well be set in stone already. Teams wont have fun anti/set plays ready for the second round either since they have to show everything in the first round.

Tldr: bracket reset (bo3) could be interesting but creates bigger problems than it fixes

There has to be a scrim troll going round in apac atm convincing teams that single controller is good
first GE and now Bleed

(but also tbf we did see cypher be used as a substitute smoker back in... 2022(?) to moderate success, where they be aggressively throwing their cages... just.... dont do it in the fucking viper meta while shes the most busted thing in the game AND on one of her best maps. Or at least have some good and fun set plays ready)

Really nice article
Also gotta appreciate Ze1sh for being involved with the "casual" community, whether thats interviews or just randomly chatting with us plebs in twitch chat

What a series, ggs to both

yea had a similar issue (and similar to you didnt ear them for way too long after getting glasses)
I was recommended to just power through it and wear them as often as possible when I called my optician (it did get better as time went by)

just the new meta comp atm
we'll see if itll end up beating out the traditional sage comps but it has a ton of potential

dude will never leave dach
even when he tries to escape the region and go to polaris the entire org just says screw it and goes back to dach xD

worst part is that going into franchise we had 2 Dach teams in t1

just none of them were international level and orgs prefer taking risks on players from their own subregion so they can at least please the fans even if the player doesnt turn out to be good enough in the long run
(which is completely fine from the orgs, but riot just didnt consider that possibility whatsoever when selecting partners)

bracket reset would be a fun thing to try for VCLs, but yea a bo5 bracket reset is rough (and I dont think anyone's gonna argue for a bo3 grand finals)

to my understanding theyre gonna finish the split before fully leaving

A custom config of firefox
Lets you benefit from the google money without having to deal with the abundance of inbuilt trackers (mainstream browsers) or shady af ethics (most other "privacy" browsers)

Just a shame that its a really high bar of entry (although people are sharing their configs that you can just copy if you want it to work out of the box)
And with tracking pixels now being everywhere who tf knows if it actually matters but oh well

given that the next lower bracket game is a bo5 I think its safe to say thats gonna be a bo3 (otherwise they would have done 2 bo3s instead of a bo1 and bo5)

way too early to have spin on a worst coaches list
he had great success in t2 and has only had 3 games as head coach in t1 this far (1 of which they won)

Nukkye being benched wasnt on my 2024 card ngl
Im guessing disagreements with Redgar and Giants didnt want to end up with a liquid? Cause I feel like his performance was still more than fine

To quote your linked article: "However, that sex difference in reaction time is likely an artifact caused by using the same force threshold in women as men" - As the article itself explains theyre talking about "response time" and not reaction ("which is the sum of the premotor time, the electromechanical delay, and the time required to generate a given foot force against the starting block") and heavily incorperate on the force aspect for their argumentation. How do the differences in Spatial Ability scale when it comes to small movements like in esports?

Theres also the problem with using sprints as a source for reaction based research since the correlation between reaction time and results isnt generally accepted. From https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2013/04000/reaction_time_aspects_of_elite_sprinters_in.3.aspx (an article in favor of correlation): "Mero et al. (16) and Smirniotou et al. (20) reported no correlation between reaction time and performance level. Delalija et al. (9) observed a significant correlation [...]".

But most importantly the article I linked concludes " that male athletes younger than 18 years had a significantly longer reaction time (0.170 ± 0.031 seconds) (p < 0.01) than the other age groups [of male athletes]". 26–29 years is the "optimal" age according to their numbers with "0.150 ± 0.017 seconds". The >18 year olds RT is a whole 0.017 longer than more than 30 year old females ("0.153 ± 0.020 seconds").

Would this be a conclusion you agree with by looking at Valorant or CS pro players? Is the scene dominated by 26-29 year olds because they have a significant (up to 0.02 seconds!) biological advantage over their younger competition?

Very glad to see SK start meshing together more as the season goes on and not being as dependent on Click getting multi kills (though the first kills obviously still help)