ascension does not mix well with rulebooks

just cant read those things

nah they would just continue the game 11-0 if they considered that the problem
like 100% agree, wrong ruling, but I doubt that specific one will be the justification

I assume they are more going the route of the ping/dc never being fixed and affecting the whole map, but the admin not granting the correct timeouts
or something along those lines

yes

Im looking forward to how they justify that one

cause we read those rules in quite a bit of detail last time around (now even have precedent after JL) and it doesnt say "once a player dc's you shall only take a short tech pause and then continue the game like normal... but all the results are void of course"

I really think we might need a major ascension rule rewrite if they are apparently this hard to read and constantly cause major issuees

that last sentence was peak before you noticed xD

ye, its just fun to watch em when theyre on a roll ngl

idk, didnt make it out of groups twice
clearly bad team

I think youre over rating them a tad - eye test is really rough in games where the team stomps

Id recommend the game vs CGN just to see how they look when things aren't going their way 100% of the time
Still insane and t1 ready, but I struggle to really call them better than BBL for example

regardless gonna be a fun watch next year either as a team or all the players on different rosters

idk, having read some of Newton's shit I feel like he just got drunk, wrote random scribbles and (also drunk) people later interpreted maths into it

ye, sickening that cheaters like this get a spot in t1/t2

Riot should have banned them when they had the chance smh

its a double elim without proper seeding

they could do worse by doing single elim yes, but thats about it

absolutely fucked if it is

ig it would be the excuse to have ewc be fully open t2 teams since its online anyways, and with how trash the format already is adding more teams isnt gonna change anything

but except that it only reduces competitive integrity in a way which just isnt necessary for what could/should just be an independent tournament with more than enough prize pool to incentivize teams

different, but sorta?

like hes a t1 player in terms of highs (which he regularly achieves) with inconsistencies that make him t2 for the time being
if he gets picked up in t1 then I dont doubt he'd develop into a good t1 duelist

Amazing game and hats off to KC
idk if it was prep but dang they punished fokus hard

my Sevire stocks are at an all time high after this one

bro poor frz

hard to not take the opportunity, but dang

Liquid is set up super well by the coaches. That makes it far easier to shine on an individual level as well and farm stats.

So how do you know it would be those 3 that would shine if set up correctly and not Koala?

And....rookies

Koala is also in his rookie year. Any benefit of doubt your apply to them also applies to Koala. All of em had an above 1.4 rating game, so whats to say Koala cant develop like you think the other 2 can?

think thats a big part why people are upset. If you import someone who isnt rocking the world despite having partcipated in bloody First Strike NA its just frustrating.

And that is exactly why I called it a Polvi situation.
It is wrong to blame the player for that; he has done nothing wrong.
He got an offer, took it and is now playing to a perfectly acceptable level compared to the rest of the roster.

You can be upset at the coaching staff for bringing him in (although I still think it is perfectly valid for happy to make this decision as a coach as described back here: https://www.vlr.gg/post/4173793/click).

[...] Especially when the team feels like its on the cusp of something but not quite there and that someone is the worst rated non igl on the team....

And while I disagree on it being a valid reason, this is probably correct. I believe him being an import is the bigger reason as to why hes in the spotlight THIS much, but its hard to deny that we do like dog-piling on the worst rated player on a roster

They are getting carried by Nats/Keiko

Ye and thats the point: they have players which are clearly the best on the team (stat wise)
NaVi doesnt

And dont forget.... Navi had completely the wrong meta read at the start of the year and played with 3 rookies. They could attack the top spots and sneak into the 4th champs seed.

Perfectly valid, but not at all what Im talking about. I think navi is great, but im talking about relative individual performance of the players.
Im biased and want BBL ofc, but it wouldnt really be much of an upset if NaVi take it

Lets me ask you this question. If you are Navi management and you want to make the next step to win masters...what do you do?

Win masters is a very high bar. I frankly dont think anyone is on the level rn where I would be able to argue for them on my fantasy master winning roster.
That aside, the question is about who id replace first I assume: There is no un-replaceable player on this roster. I would be very against a change with Ange1 and I think its incredibly hard to replace Shao. The other 3 would be fair game and I think their internal preformance, as well as how their potential replacements do in that regard, would be the determining factor.
I personally would be replacing Koala first too, since I dont believe in wasting resources developing import rookies that you'll struggle to keep on the roster in the future. But thats not why people are upset.

they dont have one according to their interviews
at least theyve been very careful to never name anyone

The Shao, ruxic, hiro core is proving too strong to waste

but genuinely has it?
Cause that was exactly what I was on about. Its a great core, perfectly suited for t1 and no team would be upset at having it, but is it better than TL, FNC or TH?
None of the 3 players are fragging out of their mind and we regularly see (the person I noticed, not saying hes the worst) ruxic making round losing mistakes early on.

Id just ask how TL is outperforming them when Kamo has had a worse split than Koala

Basically I think the team is looking really good, but I dont think anyone on the team is looking good enough that Koala seems out of place in the roster. The extremely negative focus on his individual performance is misplaced imo.

appreciate making it harder for the french at least
also dw NE always look good map 1 and then crumble

What a showing from KC
game vs Fokus should be a banger

unfortunate showing by z10, but i'm sure theyll be back

idk, like I get what you mean but its not like hes an actual problem
aint special, but not horrible either

Id just rather not have another Polvi where hes perfectly fine compared to the team, but people get into their own heads and hate him because of it

well.... uuuhhh...
gg go next?

very nice showing from pxl, even if it wasnt quite enough
hopefully they can keep up the performance vs bcf

Regarding the bias... This is just based on wrong facts about how Riot does things.

Sinatra was one of the worst handled situations ever and I think everyone can agree on that. It should not be the standard.
During the Sinatraa situation his name got dropped at the start of the investigation, in conjunction with his suspension. <- We are here (sorta*)

Dawn's case was also badly handled (gj doxing your competitors) however her name was dropped AFTER the investigation
Her investigation was not announced (which is significantly better for the players than 'announcement -> finding' separately), and Riot only shared their findings and decision. <- We are not here yet

* We technically arent even there yet since Riot hasnt issued a suspension, which is another important part of Riot naming players during investigations. Generally its action -> name, no action -> no name

do you remember any examples?
Quickly going through the major ones I remember, I cant find any others

most cases they either didn't make a statement at all or only named the findings/decision (with player name) after they had concluded their investigation (without announcing the investigation)

Basically from what I can tell its:
action taken -> name (can be combined with an unannounced investigation like with Jayh)
no action taken (investigation) -> no name

idk, dont think it works for non smokes players
s0m better be worried for his job temporarily though if things dont work out right away

Idk I think you might be underestimating Pal here; he seems pretty magic to me.
Have you seen his hat?!

ye desk also talked about it last ahead of the last games (idk if they did today too, didnt watch that one)

well no termi wont
aside from the fact he only acknowledged half of the accusation (ignores the receiving part), this is just bait

Leaking scrim information is such a low bar to set. A player talking about how another team (without naming the team) plays a new agent (without naming the agent) to a friend in an encrypted private chat that is never leaked is already sharing information.
Players go way way way further.
For example we (the public) knew BBL was going to be playing vyse on Pearl months in advanced. These (to my knowledge) werent maliciously shared. It was just players talking to each other, leading to an offhand comment during a ranked game.
Stuff like that happens all the time.

This is just gonna turn into a bitchfest on semantics between people that dont speak the same language.
So yay congrats you managed to 1 up Frost in yall fight of whos can take this too far once more. Cant wait to see how frost responds in 2 months.

oh it 100% was, but a bit of drama is always fun
heres neil talking about aspas baiting if you wanna hear some actual thoughts from th: https://www.vlr.gg/401176/neilzinhos-aspas-take

Yea almost the perfect solution
imo they should have kept the first 2 bans too (since they were part of how we got to split), but this is way way better than the initial wave of solutions people were debating about

it does favor TL, but nothing too major

Do it like a weird bracket reset
So new map picks with Pearl, Fracture, Split pre-banned -> KC pick map 1 -> both ban a map -> remaining map is played)
TL win 1 map -> they win
KC win 2 maps -> they win

essentially recreates the bo3 at 1-0, but redoes the map picks/bans after TL picked split

the vlt ones

... 3rd highest rated player in the league
and thats with the tensions that were going on in the team

to add onto the above example:

Now assume Team A and B are the exact same again. This time there is a Team C that is competitive against A and B, but wont make playoffs.
Both Team A and Team B will end the season on a tie (we disregard who won the h2h matchup and only look at final "score").

Team A has to play Team C early into the season. Since team C is competitive it is a close game and they barely gain any rounds/maps.
Now by the time Team B plays Team C, Team C is already eliminated from playoffs and is making early roster changes to prepare for next split.

Team B crushes the newly formed Team C and gains massive round/map differential putting them ahead of team A narrowly (works the other way around too where Team C gets better post roster change).

Team B now wins the tiebreaker because of external factors neither team had a chance to influence. The tiebreaker is not decided by Team A, but by a 3rd team.

Thats why h2h is generally preferable, since it isolates the performance of the teams involved in the tiebreaker.
(This isnt to say there arent any scenarios that feel bad with h2h either, but I hope cloudberry's and my example illustrated why its good)

Apeks were also 2 rounds off beating NaVi
They have had an incredibly competitive map during every series this stage

So while I agree the M8 is better they are very similar teams in terms of current performance (on a map basis)
1 good map per series, 1+ criminally bad

Difference is that M8 do just have 2 strong maps in icebox and haven where I think they can be competitive against any team whereas its nowhere near as clear with apeks

The infinite game
edit: ofc it has to end right after

Because when having to make predictive rankings (which tierlists always are per nature) a teams perceived strength is often more impactful than results.

T1 struggle vs bad teams, have huge holes in their gameplay and their map pool was mediocre (for a team going to an international) at best.
Whereas G2's "cleaner" playstyle makes them look stronger on more maps during regional competition. They crush weak teams and dont get punished for their mistakes (so we dont see them).

As such we perceive T1 to be weaker.
They werent actually weaker, as they were all to happy to show us, but we cant exactly make predictions on stuff which doesnt show until deep international runs.

Basically treat tierlists as what they are: predictions.

Rn both of em are WORLDS better than PatrickWho xD They both ended up being the definition of mid stat wise (~220 acs vs whatevver tf this is)

but we do have to assume he steps up to the form the coaches saw during trials and scrims eventually (cope)

(Ignoring the fact that every single region has a different format in EMEA this year)
Because they not other regions?

They (and NE) have a much larger team count since they house multiple regions - as such you have different priority when it comes to the format
Bo2 allows you to get the maximum amounts of maps in per day, making it very suitable for Spain

To clarify:

A Russian player can play in any region in EMEA while counting as an EMEA player (this is what is defined by the "EMEA Competitive Region"), but they will be counted as an "import" (non LTR) in said region. This is because they arent in any leagues territory ("Challengers League Territories").

Basically theres 2 separate systems.
Imports from another VCT region, in the traditional sense (not in "EMEA Competitive Region").
And players who arent LTR ("Locally trained Representative"). You need 3 LTR players.
LTR players need to be residents (so from the "Challenger League Territory") or need to have been on a roster of the respective region for the majority of the previous season.

Trivially easy to count as LTR, but it is an extra barrier for young and unknown players from Russia.
Cant comment on if this ends up making a difference though.

Id ask what KC form is first.
Because I dont think hes playing significantly worse than he did on KC, its just that hes surrounded by players that are plain better than him currently.
It highlights his mistakes.

On KC we hand-waved his bad util and (at times) crazy decision making.
It was fine because KC was a team where individual firepower shone. And he did frag. A lot. Combine this with set plays where his util would look really good and you, if you picked to correct rounds, had a borderline perfect player.

He still has all these positive qualities and they regularly show. The expectations just need to be lowered a tad - he is a young player, currently swapping roles every 3 days. With time I dont doubt that he'll grow to match what you thought he was on KC.

the emea g2 yea
but we dont want that team back xD

If this is automatic (and applicable to all games in the future) that'd be a huge QOL change

you can edit in the first 5 minutes without it being marked as edited - given that the reply (and gamergirl looking up a source) was in less than 5 minutes its not unlikely it was actually edited to clarify what they meant

It might be unusual to you to see people "dogging on the orgs" since you don't consciously notice how much we already criticize orgs for (from a fans perspective) bad decisions. But thats exactly what I was explaining.

We have the ability to represent our interests here and as such it shouldn't be surprising that people do.
Understanding why they do it doesn't mean you have to stop complaining about it. You'll find with most major issues that its quite easy to understand why a party would do it. Doesn't make stuff less of an issue.

And regarding sustainability... well thats not what this is about in the slightest. No org is going to be more sustainable due to accepting a volatile and temporary stimulus, designed for them to get more rosters (so increase spending).
More money always good for sure, but you cant plan ahead with this kind of money. There is no guarantee youll get this money in 5 years time.
(For context this partnership money isnt payed for playing in the EWC. This is money partnered teams get regardless of what games they take part and how they preform in them.)

This is temporary money designed to build the EWC as a staple of esports.

But that argument is exactly why we need to be complaining.
We have one of the few industries which has to directly engage with us. They dont produce any good except for our engagement. Without fans there is no product.

It is our responsibility to add a cost to these kinds of decisions. We do it all the time, whether people notice or not. And no, it wont matter. Good public perception just doesnt translate into money anywhere near well enough to offset the insane money they get for the EWC. We can at least pretend esports is still about passion, rather than mindless investment, though.

The opposite approach is to not care about the orgs at all. Thats fine too. The majority of fans dont.
I belief its a bad approach to completely remove yourself from talking about issues, just blaming the world for being evil, however it is how you have to live the majority of your life anyways.

Thats probably not a crazy revelation to you but 4 spots to northeast and 2 to turkey makes little sense.

We are being VERY reactionary here.

You are currently judging a region which started their teambuilding way later than the others (due to factors outside of the teams control) for not doing well in the first of 3 internationals.

Punishing a newly formed region for having a slow start is nonsensical.

Didnt really fit anywhere in the form so imma just drop it here:

The schedule as a whole needs to be drawn out more (and I have no clue how youd do it so gl). We've seen plently of complaints about various formats (bo1s, bo2s and dach playing like 3 games) which I assume are caused by time crunch.
And now the international itself was plagued by it, with the group stage being very short and "random" as such (1 loss can mean elimination). With a bit extra time a swiss (or even just tad larger groups) would have been possible and mitigated a lot of the seeding concerns others have voiced.