Val is more random, but you have a ton of opportunities to control the randomness. The length of tournaments means that only the most consistent teams will actually win.

Val is more complicated than CS (and chess, sorta). There aren't ~4 basic pieces (smoke, flash, molly/bishop knight, rook) , there are ~10 (recon, traps, wall smoke, walls, decay, vulnerable, detained). With more frequent updates and balance patches, it's not enough to be good and implementing a strategy someone else discovered, you have to be able to invent things yourself during play.

Val also reduces the peak mechanical skill ceiling. Chess has no mechanical skill (other than blitz? Sorta?) so you have to rely more on mental calculation and preparation, not just shoot good. In that way, Val is more like chess.

Overall, I think they're just interesting in different ways. I don't play Val, CS, or chess seriously, but I watch them all seriously, in that order. Val is the more interesting because it combines the most fields and has the best balance of skills required. But watching Donk destroy a server of veterans is fun, and understanding a really good game of chess is fun (although I still need commentary or engines to understand high level chess).

I would guess that in the long run, Valorant will be the most approachable to casual viewers/players (including against LoL), because it doesn't put too much weight on any specific type of thing, and everyone can choose something they enjoy.

Streisand effect speedrun

It's only a day old

Yea, this might be rare enough not to be worth it. Maybe S1mon was just that perfect of a pickup, and fragging IGLs are more and more common.

And I just meant that IGLs often play killjoy, viper, or breach, but not because they're the best at that role; they're just comparatively easier agents to play. Maybe you'd rather have say, Sayf play Cypher and someone else play Jett, but the IGL can only play Killjoy, so that's what you play. Or have Alfajer, and play Killjoy anyway. Of course, this does not apply at all to fragging IGLs.

No, it's because they expected Ethan to walk in and fill FNS's calling style when he had just spent the past year with Boostio's, and the optic core had spent the last ~3 with FNS's. The mid-year switch and remaining as a coach are important so the style doesn't change, and the IGL is still there every timeout.

Edit: also, Haodong had been with the core for years. So maybe FNS/Boostio are not good candidates, but Boaster is. No wait, they just moved players around this year 🤔 okay maybe this is even more edge case than I thought.

But teams are still squeezing out role compatibility, and IGLs are usually kinda bad at their "role" no matter what it is. You gain extra bandwidth to play the best roles with an extra flex/fragger. Yes, it requires having a decent second caller and picking up just the right player, but it seems like a decent compromise between finding a fragging IGL or having no IGL at all.

Oh I'm def tired of FNS, but if he's gonna play, he should consider this.

I'm rewatching Platoon's videos about EDG's champs win, and just theorizing... is it meta to swap your IGL with an initiator/flex/easy to drop into role, and keep your IGL as coach/assistant coach? Haodong swap with S1mon was exactly this.

You need the IGL to help the team build strategy and cohesion and adapt to a meta. You can't not have an IGL at all, but once the team is comfortable, your second caller can probably handle it because they just have to copy what the IGL was doing. As long as you used to have an IGL, and maybe keep that IGL as a coach, you can swap without disaster.

Teams should try this. Boostio, Boaster, FNS etc. should stop playing before/during stage 2 and just put in someone else until the end of the year, then swap back for the next year/meta.

Oh okay, this is a cook then.

It looks like he's an IGL, and they did win split 1. But man, feels like there should be better IGL options, even in Brazil T2.

Please do more of these, but this first one was impossible.

W bait

I had never even considered a multi-sport tournament with LoL/CS/Val until you said it, but now I want it too.

Do you ever feel, feel so @PaperThin

Why unfair?

It could totally happen, if they can get their team play vibe down they could be vicious. But unless FNS learns to IGL less 5head and more like the aggressive style that's becoming meta, it'll peak early in the year.

Coming from valve/cs, I just don't get this.

I stopped trying to eat tasty food for every meal and eat meal replacement shakes twice a day. The reduced stress and hassle of trying to make good food so often is nuts. I appreciate good food when I have it, I have more time during the day, and it's cheaper and healthier. Unironically life changing.

Good food is not overrated. Eating it for every meal is.

None of things that matter have anything to do with the games themselves. Cs esport is still s tier

• working anti cheat: pros unironically play the vanilla, riot supported ranked mode, same as silvers.
• less toxic community
• less harsh learning curve

Cs has an open modding system tho, and there's so much that Val misses without that.

Engagement comment, gotta make this thread look legit

That is weird. I have 7950x but NOT x3D, with 7900XTX. I get closer to 700 (oh, 1080p low tho). You might benefit from switching off one of the CCDs, so it's forced to either use the extra memory or not at all. I think I did win a bit of the silicon lottery, though. It will do 5.2 GHz stable all 16 core load.

Bren

Wait yea, what's the timeline. They're not doing this in time for champs right?

China is the only country that has Western amenities while maintaining strict cultural rules. Everyone will bend over backwards to appease whatever China wants. If that means they get their own closed region and custom game build with a greater say over how it's run, Riot will do it. In the short term, it's bad for the players and the sport. But in the long run, the players will get good, and China will trust Riot and let them run more games and stuff. It would be a lot harder to do later into the sport.

But it happens pretty often in VCT, too. I'd have to look, but I swear its been common in Stage 2 across all regions.

I don't care about who/when/why, players can do what they want. But for Riot, what are they thinking? They don't really enforce it, and it happens all the time lately. I have like a million questions...

1. Was EG Demon1 Champs LA the last time they enforced?
2. Does the rule apply to all streams of VCT/VCL/GC, or only a subset?
3. Who has final say on enforcement? Like, each region must have their own moderators/refs that might judge differently.
4. Is the official rule like "Unsportsmanlike conduct" and they always judge case by case? This would make way more sense.
5. Is there a world where they try to enforce this in ranked, with like, a hitbox on corpses?
6. Does Riot even actually care? Do they only care if advertisers/venue/other stakeholders care?

Thank you for indulging my sudden questions about my current obsession, have a wonderful day internet denizen

The gap will also probably close somewhat, over the next 20 years, across all esports. Esports is extremely young and unrecognized by normies. Male focus marketing has kept women out of video games from the beginning. Counter-Strike is the only other real tactical FPS, and ain't nobody gonna argue that it wasn't so toxic that women could barely consider playing casually, much less professionally.

And don't discount the insane change in general male/female relations over the last 10 years. Cancel culture was awful, but things overall have gotten way better since GamerGate in 2014 and Weinstein in 2017. It'll take a looong time for those changes to really take effect. The future T1 women are probably like 5 years old right now. Valorant and Riot are generally ahead of the industry. Chess is still extremely male-dominated for no apparent reason.

50/50 split is unlikely (the genders are indeed different), but 25% women in T1 seems possible. Riot is doing good, it'll just take time.

Why do I write on this site, noones gonna read this lol

Fun fact, Ascent has not had meaningful changes (even just boxes) since patch 1.02, June 2020.

ELEVEN IS ALL THEY GET

Just to be clear:

• During the on-season
• In between/during main events
• Riot sponsored tournaments
• Optional/invitational for t1 and t2 teams, likely the bad t1 teams.

But... on LAN? I feel like the budget to pay for lots of in-person tournaments must not be that big. But regional t1/t2 online might be okay. I guess I'm not picturing how Riot sells this, like, "Hey, come watch the bad teams do bad!" If it's optional, I can't see the bad t1 teams wanting to go.

Are all those played on LAN? It's one thing to play 1 pro match a week from your own house, but another from hotel rooms in LA, Berlin or Seoul for weeks straight, fly home, then fly across the world for international. To make it work like pro sports would be if every team had their own esports arena and they play at home every other week, so basically 2 weeks at home, 3 days out somewhere, back home.

i love the internet

While babysauske is being rude, I think what they mean is that rating players is kinda its own entire industry, separate from watching the game. No one who rates players does so by just watching matches, since you don't even see every player's POV. They look at statistics and a bunch of math. The stats page here on VLR is a good entry to that, but the VLR "rating" stat can also be misleading and not everyone approves of it. This video goes nuts into more complex stats and makes it clear why rating players is hard https://youtu.be/FrLtJSpaSLI

Every one of the players you mentioned is good, and honestly probably more fun to watch than other players. But giving them numerical ratings like that seems odd if other people think you're comparing them to calculated ratings. Many of those players are nowhere near the top 10.

All regions have 11 teams this year, it's really hard to build tournaments with 11 teams. Giving 1 team a bye round makes it much more reasonable.