yes lets bench the best breach itw in a breach tejo meta with a star duelist known for his neon

still pissed btw

step 1 is asking whether or not you're willing/able to commit the time.

immortal is doable for anyone and pretty easy to get playing a few hours per week and some aim practice. radiant you kind of need to nolife the game. unless you're extremely talented, say goodbye to your academics, your social life, mental health etc. if you're not questioning your life, you're not playing enough.

radiant is top 500. idk which server you're playing on, but generally every server has an active ranked playerbase of 1-2mil? (ballpark underapproximation here, accounting for people having multiple accounts). that means, randomly sampling from AT LEAST 2000 random players, you need to be, on average, THE BEST (not second best, number 1 and number 1 only) than all other 2000 players (as an underapproximation), in order to reach the very bottom of radiant. to contextualise, schools in the U.K average 22 students/class. being the very bottom of radiant in valorant is equivalent to being THE strongest academically over AT LEAST 100 classes. assuming 10 classes/year, you need to be THE strongest out of 10 random schools (again, not second. first and first only). for context, being d1 is being around top 4 in ONE class, and immortal 1 is being the best out of 5 classes or so (first/second in the year).

then, assuming that the time you spend on the game is directly proportional to your skill, to be the best, you need to spend the most time. out of 2000 players, you need to spend more time than EVERY one of them. this includes 12 yr olds that can play val for hours and hours without needing to worry about a job/bills.

wait, he didn't just spell the word "rapper" and leave out a p, did he?

he's always played like that. difference is he had simon in the back piling util to back it up.

stats stacy

he's a util player, he doesn't get the good gunfights, i've been saying this shit since before all that drama

1. definitely helped yeah, but its not like teams not named edg were banned from picking her, meta just fit their playstyle better. could say the same for jawg yoru or yay chamber

2. yes, bring him back, y'all adults figure shit out and win again

3. yes

but s1mon throws good util, top tier support player which is what edg needs, they have enough shooters already

he made the team work

went from bombing every international and being a region farmer to a top tier team after picking up a certain player, and now they miss their first international.

edg without s1mon lmao

drama aside, i've been glazing this guy since day 1, still an insane player, fix mental win everything again

even if they win this is the worst they've looked since 2023

south, close to london

uk

don't think so, it's been a while since i watched it tho

stranger things was pretty good, terror in resonance just came off as a bit plasticky i think - hard to describe, but it kind of felt like it was being edgy solely for the sake of being edgy.

based

terror in resonance was kinda ass tho idk

omg an english speaking country using more nuanced english suffixes/prefixes, what a shocker

isnt graduating with a bachelors before 21 normal for anyone who goes to uni

yes

P(a | b) = P(b | a) P(a) / P(b)

and

P(b) = integral from -inf -> inf ( P(b | a) P (a) )

as i've stated though, in this case I think this approach overcomplicates. you can simply just measure expected win probabilities for all combinations of economies (full buy vs full buy, full buy vs force, full buy vs eco, force vs force?) etc.

IB is a complete pain haha, had friends who did it and heard nothing but complaining. good luck with it.

as for the normalisation of probabilities, you're exactly right - i actually made an error in that this normalisation factor will likely not be constant. it's modifying/modelling the expected round win probability depending on the economy/ult difference. to do this, you could take a bunch of data on total loadout costs and measure how this affects your expected win probability - then, for any future rounds, you can apply your model to "normalise" your expected round win probability dependent on economy. this is actually one of the foundations of machine learning - utilising bayes rule (you may have encountered this in your statistics classes?) to model probabilities "conditioned" on another variable. in this case, modelling round win probability conditioned on economy differences.

EDIT: ignore the next 2 paragraphs - it overcomplicates things. you can measure your "posterior" distribution directly from data. that said, may be interesting. alternatively, read here https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/bayes-rule-explained/

to do this, you need a set of "likelihood" probabilities - that is, your economy difference given your win probabilities (which you can try measure), a "prior" model - your win probability independent of economy, to then calculate a predicted "posterior" probability distribution. read up on (and understand) bayes rule and google these terms if you can't quite visualise it - it's hard to fully flesh out here.

the problem with this is that the true posterior and likelihood distributions is likely to be highly non-linear and therefore difficult to find an accurate model - intuitively, it will be some sort of piecewise function. if you do decide to give this a shot, you'll find that you'll need to perform an integration on this function somewhere down the line, which may be extremely difficult/impossible. for simplicity, you could simply bundle everything into "full buy", "half buy", "eco" and maybe "forces" - in which case an integration simply becomes a sum (i'm assuming you've done some basic calculus).

all this said, you'll then run into similar issues as before - some teams may be better at ecos, some teams may be better at anti-ecos etc. agents may matter - chamber can probably whack people far harder on an eco round than other agents. finding a way to "normalise" these probabilities with high confidence may be challenging.

I actually believe focusing on the economic aspect may be far more interesting and quantifiable. unlike a more vague concept of momentum which can potentially be bundled with many other things, in game economy has measurable data and a more tangibly significant effect on rounds. you could even try to find how having certain ultimates versus others may affect win probability - this could actually potentially revolutionise how teams allocate ultimates, manage economy and even what agents they pick.

good luck with your project either way. feel free to ask if you have any more questions

i'm going to be a bit more cynical here - there are too many externalities you can't reasonably account for. you can try, but i think whatever result you get will always have massive uncertainties involved to be of any substantiative use.

1. the probability of winning a round is not independent of previous round events in the absence of "momentum". gun/ultimate economy is the first big thing that comes to mind - naturally, winning a round means enemy team may be forced to save and/or you may have better ult economy. valorant has an inbuilt snowballing mechanism - so if you want to account for this, you're going to need to further parse your data to ignore all rounds where one team is saving or has significantly more/less ultimates than the other (essentially rejection sampling), or calculate some normalisation constant to account for these differences.

2. the round win probability is not constant throughout all games. teams will play vs worse or better teams, against which they will have different winrates. when a team wins more vs another team and achieves certain winstreaks, it's entirely likely that it's simply the result of being the better team, even in the absence of any momentum effect. this is logical - you're more likely to hit long winstreaks if your winrate against a certain team is higher. if you want to account for this, you're going to need to further parse your data to specifically include individual roster matchups, but even then, that won't account for strategy adaptation, composition differences, map vetos, or even whether or not a player is having an off-day. further still, the sample sizes for specific roster vs specific roster is often extremely small in official matches - most rosters may only ever play a different roster once or twice. you're going to again, end up with huge uncertainties in the true win probability of each matchup.

to that end, you could potentially use the vlr elo system to try normalise your individual head-to-head matchups - it's probably your best bet, but obviously, there is again, massive uncertainties in the elo system too.

either way, not sure there's anywhere near enough data to get any form of statistically significant result.

edit: specifically, you're going to need head to head matchups on the same map, with the same agent compositions, with the same gun + ult economy, with the same players, prehaps even played on the same day. if not, you'll have to find some way of normalising all your probabilties to account for this. if you can't account for these factors, then you can't, with confidence, say that your samples are independent and, consequently, state you have an unbiased result.

still, could be interesting to try. good luck with it either way.

uhh, no. if you think about it for more than a second, the "ability to make the most of an opportunity" is just skill. luck is having unlikely events align in a way that grants you an opportunity, which is completely separate from skill.

valorant is probabilistic. as is many things in life. just because t1 won doesn't necessarily mean they played better.

it is NOT like chess, which is purely deterministic. if you lose in chess, you played worse.

what's the difference? valorant actually has two layers of non-determinism:

1. it's an imperfect information game. there's inherent luck in guessing/reading. if you're good at it, you make your odds better, but all "reads" are still guesses. phil ivey doesn't win every poker tournament he enters.

2. inbuilt rng in bullet patterns. especially important when smoke spamming, which is a pretty major part of the current valorant meta. g2 got EXTREMELY unlucky with the round 3 defuse on pearl. had the bullet spray been different, or if they chose to spam a different location (which isn't a skill, since there's no way of gleaning whereabouts someone in a smoke is), game could have gone very differnet

whether or not t1 got lucky is down to you. idk, i didn't watch all 5 maps. point is, "oh if they were better they would have won" isn't valid.

language is inherently irrational, no point trying to over-rationalise something that ends up being purely subjective. if there exists a large proportion of the population that will get upset if you use certain words, just avoid using it - i trust you're smart enough to figure out other ways of getting across what you want to say.

especially in the internet age, words can pick up and lose meaning very, very quickly. just half a decade ago the word "mid" meant absolutely nothing, yet now it's an ingrained part of "leet-speak", so to say (another term that probably hasn't been used in half a decade). i guess that particular word just picked up more sinister connotations over the years compared to similar terms.

performance aside, wilds.

i miss the wirebugs from rise cause those were fun as hell, but theres so much qol in wilds. haven't played world in a while, no point comparing to 4u.

pros:
the "open world" part of the game actually works really well and is super immersive
hunts are great, monsters are cool
multiplayer is really well done past campaign and once you learn all the systems

cons:
performance
campaign is 10 hour unskippable cutscene until you get to the good part (so like all other mh games)
multiplayer makes 0 sense until you read a whole thesis about it, after which is still doesn't make much sense

yes thank you finally someone with eyes

edit: i take it back s1mon is goated

i put jawgemo up there also because yoru ult is broken, and he's been abusing it throughout the whole tournament - it's probably the highest impact ult in the game (?) and it only costs 7, and he's consistently using it 3 times a half.

s1mon is insane. he's bottom of the scoreboard, sure, but he's a full support player, he's not supposed to frag. his assist/round are among the highest in the tournament for initiator players - jonah is higher by 0.2 but he plays skye, trexx but he plays brim, patti plays skye, only comparable person is beYN. his HS% is the highest among them, so less of his assists are from hitting someone for 80 and more from full stuns/flashes. his clutch rate is the second highest among them with the highest sample size, showing that he can shoot when he needs to. his first deaths per round is very low, very rarely the weak entry point.

thats the thing with the scoreboard stats - he doesn't get kills in the rounds where he sets up kangkang/chichoo to run in and kill everyone, if s1mon needs to shoot someone, something went wrong. he lets his teammates take the good gunfights - if he has to shoot, it's always in bad spots. of course his kd will be worse.

watching any of the edg games from enemy pov nowadays vs pre s1mon, the difference is night and day. keep in mind he replaced haodong, who was a great igl (nobody igling is a strict downgrade) and not even bad at shooting. the rest of the team could always shoot, but this guy honestly makes the whole team work. ever since he joined, they went from bombing every international to hitting top 3 twice in a row and winning champs. no other team in history has made one roster change and have their international performances change so drastically.

much more new player friendly, but its end of league rn, new league in a month or so

ehh yoru impact isn't really fully reflected in stats, that ult is so criminally overpowered but it doesn't do anything for ur own k/d. if he's ulting 3 times per half, he's p much winning 3 rounds per half.

chichoo/meteor are insanely good, but lurkers are often in spots to get free kills and pad stats. still 3/4, but yeah

theres a reason edg went from going 1-2 every international to being a top tier team after s1mon joined - kangkang went from being a mid entry to one of the best, and i honestly think it's slightly carried by s1mon.

1. jawg
   consistent entry, shoots well - i will say i think he's slightly carried (no hate, if its in the game use it, kind of like kk neon at champs) by how disgustingly overpowered yoru ult is (criminal that it costs 7). still, insane impact, pretty much solo carried g2 to second place imo.

2. s1mon
   i will glaze this guy till the day i die. probably the best support player this game has seen. piles all his util super effectively and is more than willing to throw his life away once he's out of util to secure a good trade. also good in a clutch too and can land the impact kills when his team really needs it.

3/4. meteor/chichoo
asian alfajer(s), shoots people in the head, impacts massive amounts of empty space on map etc.

5. derke
   also pretty much solo carried vit to playoffs. he's kangkang but consistent/aspas but doesn't bait.

it's s1mon. don't @ me. disagree = 0 ball knowledge.

see the world, invest etc.

important thing is you do something with it now and not let it inflate away.

with the internet, yes. welcome to the world.

mexico is p nice i heard, don't think theres any other notable places around there

i mean it's fine, eco anyways - if he dies well they were prob losing the round anyways

he's full gambling that there's a hole and no vyse wall and full knife walking will let him catch an insane timing or something

makes a ton of sense imo, only gonna work out like 1/5 times but it'll just win you the round when it does