who the fuck plays football outside of the US

oh no....

I agree with everything else tho

I was gonna write something along the lines of him not considering any of those sports real sports unlike the actual real sports (i.e. the ones that are popular in his country), but he did it for me.

Bro, it was a joke, not that deep

Fair enough

top 11*

Possibly, but The cypher cam into both mains is just too stronk I think. Plus demon1 rifling is too good, don't need chamber for that.

Cypher just too good on Sunset tho

Run the SEN comp on Sunset, easily the best.

Fade - Crashies
Breach - Ethan
Raze - Victor
Cypher - Demon1
Omen -Marved

Does Tenz have a tower named after him in the country he's from? Didn't think so.

Only people who don't know who Faker is think Tenz is more popular than Faker.

To add to this, I also like that VAL isn't just the one-region show. Every region in the world is competitive and has a legitimate shot at winning titles.

Not many other maps where double smokes is necessary. Maybe split, and in that case you could do this comp, and just have victor solo raze, wouldn't be the worst.

first tweet says due to time constrictions they couldn't have full RRs per split

replier says they could add more time to the schedule

"We're happy with the baseline"

The true position is that they don't want to have a full RR per split. This isn't popular with the community, so he says that they couldn't make it full RRs per split, when in reality, they didn't want to.

You said it perfectly, they would have to have two games on at the same time to make it work (similar to CS). They could just say we don't want double viewing, and that would be fine with me, but he didn't say that. Instead, he said that they couldn't make it work.

Personally, I don't know. Maybe I would prefer no communication instead of this shit where we have to dig 3 levels deep to see what he's really saying.

Val. Just don't like CS. Don't care all too much about the number of games.

Because he's the commissioner of the VCT... He should have a large impact on the decisions the VCT makes.

Plus this is more of a personal dislike, but he has a tendency for his first reply to any criticism to be a "PR response" where it doesn't make sense, he'll get called out for it, then have a second response which is more honest, but is normally a bad take.

If you want some examples of what I mean, you can look here. (https://twitter.com/LoganBartley25/status/1747666705382597048) where initially he says they couldn't do it, then the second reply where he says they were "happy" with the number of games. I don't have the tweets, but there was something similar in the TGRD/G2 situation.

I would think demon1 on normal smokes and Marved on viper would make more sense, considering that demon1 played brim and Astra on EG

I don't think Champs 21 was a Mickey Mouse. Acend fluked a win, but the format wasn't any different than Berlin

Calling any international LAN a Mickey Mouse is cope, but I do disagree with the idea that all international LANs are equal. Champs, in my opinion, is way more difficult and important than either masters of a given year. More teams, more time to figure out meta, and play styles that were exploited earlier in the year have been figured out.

I don't watch him, but I tried to watch him when SEN first signed him. He had a pinned msg at the top of the chat saying, "Please keep the chat in only Portuguese" and then something along the lines of him not being confident in streaming in English, and outside of talking to teammates he only spoke in Portuguese. Like I said, this could've changed.

How the fuck would the "language excuse" be xenophobic? There's literally nothing in there that implies that people from Brazil are stupid or worse? English is a really difficult language to learn. Plus, add in the fact that you're on a team of zoomers/millennials that are going to speak in a version of English so broken that it's not going to resemble anything you learn on Duolingo or a textbook, and they're going to be speaking really fast.

Even Sacy who has really good English still chose to keep his twitch in Portuguese when he joined SEN ( I don't know if it's changed now).

Also for FNC, most of Europe learns English alongside their birth language at a much higher rate then in other continents, because they need to use it the most.

How is Pancada in contract jail? Is our idea of contract jail just having a buyout now?

The fact that someone missed the joke so badly is making me double-check to see if I'm actually going crazy and it was true.

Back when I was a kid, I wasn't the smartest and used a combination of my first name and my birthdate. After that I wanted to use the name "Ni" as a reference to one of my favorite movies from when I was a kid(Monty Python and the Holy Grail), but some friends informed me that it might not be the best idea.

Riot gives out API access if you want to apply for it (https://www.riotgames.com/en/DevRel/valorant-api-launch). I haven't used them personally, but there are some unofficial APIs out there,

the yay, vanity, leaf, and zellsis c9 lineup might be cheating....

ardiis is finally carrying a team at something

There's a chance I might be in Spain for work around the time of Masters Madrid. I'm debating about whether or not to go, since there's a high chance that the team I'm rooting for, JDG, is going to be there.

In case I do go, do you guys have any recommendations for where I could get merch to wear to support them? I'm not too familiar with Chinese esports and they don't seem to have any website outside of their Weibo. Preferably a shop that ships internationally. Thanks!

I never said anything about "trying to win." Riot doesn't care if KC sits in last place for eternity because KC brings fans and, in turn, money to the sport. You could take Cloud9 for example. Sure, they pay the org minimum, but they constantly try to create engagement on social media, create skits for their roster announcements, create merch, and compete in off-season tournaments.

Again, I don't know if these are things in the contract, but if I was writing it, I would include them. If not, you're just gonna have a bunch of teams join the league, receive the stipend, and then pay league minimum while pocketing the rest.

Also, you're assuming the players are the only ones being paid. Afaik, EG is only in valorant atm, which means that they still have to spend money on salaries of employees, executives, and any work that they contract, while collecting no revenue outside of investment, and who tf is investing in EG right now?

I'm speaking out of my ass here since I don't know the contracts, but I doubt that Riot has their contract set up in a way that if an org accepts the stipend, and then spends the bare minimum on salaries, and nothing else, they would be fine.

The likely have obligations that relate to promoting the sport. These could be things like driving social media engagement, creating merchandise, etc... stuff that will get people invested in the team, and as a result more invested in the VCT. Which is part of the reason Riot looked for orgs with large fan bases instead of new teams, even if those teams invested more in the early scene of Valorant.

I think Deadlock is actually in a good place right now. I think on certain maps, her trips make retaking into a post-plant really difficult. Certain areas you have to make noise (I.e. drops) and you either have to accept you get stunned, or spend time finding and destroying trips instead of defusing. You do kinda need to combo her with a different sentinel for flank watch (cypher/kj)

EG most likely has certain contractual obligations they have to fulfil as a result of receiving the stipend. Those obligations likely cost EG money and are hurting their bottom line, which could lead them to being insolvent. EG doesn't want to have to do that, so they would seek to exit the partnership league.

It's unfortunate, but if you're going to seed teams like this, you have to do it based on the orgs placement last year. I'm not sure how it would work logistically, but I feel like they should've done a swiss format.

Curious how they'll seed China. EDG will probably be number 1, but it feels almost impossible to tell after that. DRG is #11 because they were ascension winners, but they beat the only other team to be close to EDG throughout this year (Rare Atom) to win ascension.

Bad choice of words by me. I was a little annoyed that they were saying it was for women ( and not marginalized genders) in a ruling regarding a player providing false information. Just thought it was a bad time to forget that info.

Felt like people might use it as an argument.

Moreover, VCT Game Changers is a program designed to provide additional exposure and opportunities to women within VALORANT esports.

Uhh? Riot, I thought it was about marginalized genders not just women.

Hard to tell if their champ's performance, which was still good, was because of them getting complacent or teams figuring out their playstyle. Fnatic have maps where they're not impossible to beat, i.e., ascent, lotus, and Bind. They're definitely the top candidate this year considering that every other top team of last year, presumably, got weaker. Meanwhile, Fnatic's best map reentered the map pool. There are a lot of dark horses this year, and I can see them challenging Fnatic: sen, lev, loud, and nrg. Hard to say until the season starts.

Xeppaa and Less in the same tier is actually criminal. Idc if you think Xeppaa is A tier, but that makes Less at least S

Doesn't make sense to import a player like Gov, do all the work with visas and such, only to bench him. Especially if you have bn on the roster, might as well just go full Thai at that point so language isn't an issue. My guess is they're either replacing both bn and gov or Surf is 6th.

A lot of people thought EG was at the bottom of the tier list last year, but then they won champs.

However, that was after finding demon1 and every other player stepping up their performances. With the current rumours of the roster they're building, I don't see the same thing happening. However, I am happy to be proven wrong.

Good showing from nuclear. 10-13 isn't that bad.

Why is bro verified? Literally an anomaly.

https://www.vlr.gg/player/19616/ayuchakakoigosu

Give Fennel some respect. That roster is really good, and would probably be better than current ZETA and DFM in franchising. Plus the map was Ascent, one Fnatic is not the best at.

Art is a good igl. Has a track record of leading teams to being good T2 japanese teams (Notably Sengoku and Jadeite). Plus, DFM was criticized early on in franchising for taking a JP slot and having 3 instead of 4 players being Japanese.

Demon1 (3k Guardian on Split) and Yay chamber. Suygetsu def up there tho.

If 100T could somehow get Potter I think this roster has the potential to be really good. I'm still holding my opinion until I see how Ziks does as a HC.

Depends. With old Lev, I'd say taking a hit in firepower would've been a really bad idea, so they should've stuck with nzr. However, I think Aspas and Kingg are enough to carry the team in firepower, so c0m is probably an upgrade. Though, c0m has gotten a lot better, so I don't know how much I would say he's actually worse in firepower.

I considered making a community-version app in the past that used web scraping, but it raised the question of whether or not that would be fair to the VLR team as they wouldn't get the ad revenue anymore. As well as being questionable legally, so I decided not to do it.

Would be cool, but would be difficult in the initial setup since I'm assuming VLR doesn't use a code base like ReactNative or Flutter that makes the web-to-app transition easy.

LOUD > Leviatan imo

I think the war was an amplifier on gambit/m3cs performance. I think we still would've seen a decline, teams like FPX, FNC, and Guild just kinda looked better. Instead of not making a single lan, they probably just been a top 8 team at most events.

The meta didn't suit them, and nAts' play style had already been adapted to.

The actual sad opinion is that fnatic, going off last years results, will probably be the best. only top 4 team of last year to not either implode or lose a key player. Still a chance for dark horses like Sen and Nrg, but I think it will really just be weaker loud and prx vs fnc