Meiy and Anthem are good, and popogachi is pretty decent. Neth is really hit or miss, and Medusa has never really impressed me.

Deft won worlds before Keria and T1, so PRX would win first tho.

Bro thought he was cooking with this

I see literally 0 reason to have any player other than f0rsaken on yoru on that roster.

If our definition of washed is making every international lan except 1 (pretty sure the core didn't even exist for that LA ) and then only failing twice, I guess they're washed.

The only thing I would be concerned about with the 1.1mil to 730k is that you're going below you're previous average of around 800K. Now, there could be some sort of lurking variable that's causing this, but the obvious conclusion would be that CS2 is a downgrade for some CSGO fans.

However, Playerbases fluctuate all the time. People tend to lose interest, and whenever the next update (at valve pace maybe 2026) happens, the player base will go back.

Depends on what you mean by confusing. I play a lot of valorant so when I see the ability dump clips that go viral, they tend to not be really confusing, but put me on Anubis and there's more than 2 pieces of util and I don't know what's happening.

Just depends on what you're used to.

Idk, they're going back to before CS2 was announced number, and even starting to go lower than that. That shouldn't be what you expect for a huge decade-old game that's got a major update. I think the game just feels like shit rn. Even CS frogs don't argue with that it seems from the Reddit comments.

There needs to be studies into how Valve fumbled the bag so hard on CS2. I initially though it was just an overinflated player base and they went back to normal, but they're starting to go below CS2 being announced numbers.

Funnily enough, I'm starting to enjoy CS esports more, but holy shit is playing that game a pain. I even like a lot of the changes they made to CS2, 13 rounds, smokes etc. It's just playing the actual game feels like torture sometimes, constant cheaters, bad netcode, mollies look really bad (more of a personal opinion).

I'm kinda in agreement that I think the UB advantage is too strong, but I don't think I agree with the counter factual. FNC in Tokyo probably still would've won.

I kinda like the idea that the Team that is in the UB gets first side pick on every map, allowing them to still have an advantage while not insanely stacking a series in their favor.

It depends a lot on how both are set up. If they're a club and not directly affiliated with the school, then they're basically a free-agent team, meaning an org would need to pick them up. If Winthrop has them under contract, then Winthrop would need to sign the contract for VCT.

I'm assuming they're a club, so I would say they're essentially the equivalent of a free agent team that would need an org to pick them up, they just use the Winthrop university branding.

I can't imagine Riot would be okay with cash substitutes for player salaries in T1 circuit. They'd likely have to pay the league minimum as salaries to the players, and then they'd have to start considering a bunch of extra legal business that comes around with what type of employee someone is.

I wouldn't be surprised if all this complexity causes them to lose interest in signing onto the system. That or they start trying to pull a TGRD and try to negotiate different elements of the contract.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to put your signature in escrow for the VCT contract when you join T2, so that in the case that you win ascension you don't start to try to negotiate.

Do you guys think Winthrop has agreed to something like this? I can see a very real scenario in which the players get left out to dry because the university doesn't want to start signing contracts like that. I hope that either I'm wrong about the escrow, or the players had the foresight to talk to administration about it prior, because it would be really unfortunate for them if Winthrop doesn't want to.

Idk man, I had a similar thought the other night, and after thinking about it more, I don't think it mattered. In between GC champs and the GC OQ, the map pool changed and we had some buffs and nerfs to agents that will change how comps are picked. If SR, the best GC team in the world, went into the NA GC OQ revealing strats that they were going to use in the T2 OQ, they probably deserve to get anti-strated.

JDG wanted to pick up the RA team, and Stew was already in the RA roster, so they had to let him go due to import restrictions. I assume he's LFT and will probably be picked up by a T2 emea or JP team eventually.

Also a side note, but if you look at his twitter, most of his posts are just about something. Kinda cute. https://twitter.com/Vici_tty

Hmm, I think Lock-In had some issues, but past that, it was really good.

The Tokyo production was really good, and I'm pretty sure the overall number of Tech pauses went way down.

Idk bro, I've been watching some LCS and there have been net issues in almost every game that cause them to have some 10-15-minute pauses. I don't know if that's a League issue or a Riot Arena networking issue, but it's got me a little nervous. I can't speak for the Pacific arena, but EMEA has been fine tho. Stadium's look a lot better imo

I've been trying to watch some more CS esports recently, and I must say, while I still don't like the game as much, their UI is MILES better than what we have. Last year wasn't that bad, but I think there need to be some changes to the Ability bar at the bottom when you're watching only one player. I don't like that it just uses the default UI for that, makes the camera look out of place.

I get that people might disagree with this, but I think it really comes down to how long they've been playing the game. I don't have any data to back this up, but I would assume that if you polled most VCT pros, they started playing fps games at a very young age. I'd also be willing to be that if you did the same polling to GC teams, the average age you get would be a lot higher, probably around early teens.

It's a well understood fact of psychology that skills are way easier to learn when you're younger. I.e., learning a language or an instrument is a lot easier when you're a kid then when youre in your mid twenties. People that have been playing since they were a kid develop the essential habits way quicker then someone who decides to start playing later in life.

As for why this is the case, you can look at the score eSports channel and look at any story of pro players. They tend to have some sort of older brother, friend, or father that gets them into gaming at a young age. It's true that in society, we tend to discourage women from gaming when they're young as we don't typically associate it with them. I can only speak from anecdotes, but my female friends who got into gaming only got into it because of friends they met later on in their lives.

I'll admit, there are articles that he wrote that are really good, you can see either my response to ChickenJoe or #5 for a clarification on my position.

And then the drama... its stupid that it escalated to this extend. A simple clarification from ds_santos on either of the dramas would have reduced it to a "I think youre stupid" instead of whatever tf this is.

Yes... It's almost like my critique of him not engaging with criticism would change if he engaged with criticism, wow...

As for the rest, I shouldn't care about what a prominent journalist is doing to gatekeep his profession and belittle someone trying to startup because people post unhinged shit on VLR?

My critique will always be the same, you can't just ignore criticism even if you think it is from people that don't understand your field. Prior to starting my graduate education, I worked in game dev. I'm well used to people saying they want certain things about games when they don't really understand what goes on behind the scenes, and how plausible certain ideas are. You can't just sit yourself in an echo chamber and ignore outside criticism from anyone just simply because they don't have the same credentials as you.

His articles were fine. What my criticism was meant to be was more that he made high standards for what journalism was supposed to be, tried to use those standards as a way to gatekeep the profession, and belittle the work of someone who was trying to start up in the field.

The term journalist/journalism has a very different conotation to it. I think most people see it as talking to sources, compiling information, and then choosing what information is trustworthy enough to then report it to a broader audience. The vast majority of the articles that happen on VLR are just summaries of videos or tweets that get put out by Orgs or players. Every now and then we do get in depth articles around events, but they are few and far between.

Again, I don't want to belittle the work of the VLR writers, I just think that it doesn't give them carte-blanche to gatekeep journalism.

I appreciate the response. I did try to ammend my statement more in #5. My attempt wasn't to dismiss anything that he did on VLR as unimportant, or not a "real job." My statement was more in attempt to criticize the fact that he gatekept an area where he probably would not have met the criteria that he was using to gatekeep. Again, I will throw in the caveat that I don't understand journalism as much as the writers, and I don't know the inner workings of VLR, but to me I don't see where the journalism aspect comes in. But never the less, I should have been more carefully worded.

Again, thank you for the response.

Daveeys Tweet: put out a tweet saying that Twistens death hit him more than Daveeys ( I think it was on the day he died) https://twitter.com/ds_santos_/status/1698726866864009354?t=daEpAOlHYzICrHO9_BUUjA&s=19

James: called James a "basement dweller who looks at twitch all day," after James started a Twitter account for posting scrim leaks, where he added the job Journalist in his bio. https://twitter.com/ds_santos_/status/1697658983480230224?t=BtPZeUN-qvDEibsugGa_Hg&s=19

Edit: added posts for context

Yeah, rest in piss bozo

I just saw that in the r/ValComp thread, he was saying that he still doesn't believe in accepting criticism from anyone on social media.

Obviously, not literally what he said but you get the point.

Anything can technically be a job and I don't want to personally attack the other writers, because they're all good people.

To be clear, I don't have any problem calling what happens on VLR journalism, but I don't think it's right to the use that as a way to patronize what James was doing.

Friendly reminder that the whole thing happened with James adding journalist to his Twitter bio, iirc, he never made any attacks on Santos prior.

Apologies if this topic has already been talked about today, but I just saw that he resigned from VLR.

I must say, the ability this man has to not take any ounce of criticism is personally bewildering to me. I personally didn't have any strong opinions on the daveeys tweet, and I did find the James situation a little ironic, but not too bad.

But holy shit, even now, to this day, the man can not even accept a shred of humility and admit that he might have said something insensitive, or been overly rude. Just look here https://www.reddit.com/r/ValorantCompetitive/s/QbrsXXntlE

Look at what happened when another writer, I can't remember who it was, wrote out a detailed cordial response to peoples reactions. surprising how much more engagement and meaningful feedback you can get when you actually try to engage with criticism.

On another hand, was he really a good journalist? I tried scrolling through his Twitter, and I can't find any stories that he actually did any sort of investigative journalism. It's all just retweets where he's summarizing the contents of what has happened. Now, maybe I just don't know anything about journalism or I'm missing some old stuff where he actually did talk to sources, and break news, but I can't find any of the from anything recent.

I know this was a schizo post, but the attitude of people like him just piss me off.

TL;DR ds_santos, an unassailable writer with the ego the size of the US, resigned from VLR, and I believe eSports journalism as a whole.

Banger starting game. I think Fennel with Xdll will take it 2-1/0

No offense, but tell me you know nothing about fennel without telling me you know nothing about Fennel. This team with a sub looked really good against Fnatic. Syouta also is a really good duelist, and as much as I like Flor, would probably win the matchup.

Hmm, looks like they'll probably get the two spots

https://liquipedia.net/valorant/VCT/2024/China_League/Kickoff

Is it guaranteed that it's not 4 teams that go through in the Second? If you look at the VLR page for the main event, they still need 8 teams to be finished. Are there 2 cores that are left over from the previous season that are still playing together?

I don't see many insane comments that are pro-Shopify. Most of them are just really positive, and you'll sometimes get toxic people, but it's usually in response to trolls, i.e., that one koi fan. I'd be interested to see that post about someone getting flamed for good-faith criticism on Shopify saying they were overpeaking. Granted, I could've missed some.

Yes, and No. I doubt riot wouldn't allow SR in if they qualify, and there's no incentive for either team to throw and let the other win. Shopify funds Moist, but it's still Moist at the end of the day.

The edater drama was actually so zzzz I don't think anyone gave a shit.

They've got this. Even if they don't qualify this OQ, I feel like the odds are super high next time.

I don't mean it in so far as watching vods and stuff, but if you know the comp you're going to likely play against, I feel like that at least gives you a head up in prepping.

You might also have an advantage in picks and bans

I was thinking about the SR game earlier and it made me realize something. I think GC teams might have the hardest time going through these open qualifiers.

Even if you ignore anything related to skill

1) about 1-2 months before this, they play in the GC championship, meaning they have to try their hardest and show strats, comps, and agent picks which anyone can see. Maybe the fact that we have a map pool change doesn't make this that big of a deal, but it still doesn't feel fair.
2) they have to worry about the GC qualifiers coming up, something that non-gc teams don't have to worry about.

It feels like the way challengers is set up kinda puts them at a disadvantage. I don't really think there is a way to get around this.

Idk tho, something feels a little unfair about it, but maybe I'm just coping preemptively in case SR lose.

I read the video wrong, they used the word that means team, and I assumed it meant "seed". It's not likely to be the right bracket.

I know, after making it the seeding didn't make any sense. I just kinda trusted what VLR had was how the seeding distribution would work.

If you go to around 1:25 in the video it has the rankings for the bracket. https://x.com/valesports_cn/status/1752711797466079513?t=5sRjzrIn1Jhuva06uAS1kQ&s=09

Group A
JDG
TE
FPX
BLG

Group B
DRG
TEC
TYL
NOVA

Group C
EDG
AG
Wolves

This is assuming the mapping of what spot goes where is correct on the VLR page.

What type of cheating? Aim or wall, etc...

I like ZETA, but I feel like you're underating T1. They looked good in the off-season, and Zeta didn't look the best. Zeta also has two rookie players. I think they'll struggle earlier in the season, and improve once their rookies get accustomed to competing.

Tough first match for M8 in franchising. Yet, Vitality not having their roster set might lead to an upset.

If I had to take a guess, I think Leo generally agrees with the community, but has certain limits and requirements imposed by execs, such as budgets and not interfering with League viewership.

While they're technically the same company, I think it's important to separate the VCT and Riot. Leo and the VCT's interest is promoting Valorant, but Riot's goal is maximizing profit. If I'm being charitable, Leo is likely trying his hardest to push for longer schedules, but is getting shut down by execs who want to maximize league viewership since it's likely more profitable.

While I may disagree, I understand your reasoning for putting Demon1 in a flex slot. However, f0rsaken to me is number 1. The man plays literally every role from duelist, to recon, to flashes, to senti, to smokes at a high level. The other players in that category don't do as much.

What is even the difference between cutting and benching lol?

It would make more sense to have something like on-role, off-role, cut IMO and just have same role players.

I think their prospects are higher than last year, but they're probably not going to.

giants (at least during lockin, i dont remember if they kept them)

Sorry, but please don't deadname burger king gaming

Holy shit. They got the 13-year-old who observed the NA Challengers matches to make their announcement videos.

I put T1 over ZETA personally