article is a little bit misleading: "Teams from the Singapore/Malaysia region and the Japan region also received byes as BLEED and SCARZ were the finalists from both regions last year."

while those teams have the "top 2 seeds" there are actually 6 teams getting byes, not just 2

the main distinction that the top 2 seeds get is that if they lose their first match they go to lower round 2 instead of lower round 1

also for anyone confused about how seeding was done, the 4 regions that didn't qualify out of groups in ascension last year were Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, and India, so those 4 regions were seeded as the bottom 4 in this year's Ascension

I do agree that doing a standard group stage format like last year is way better but if they are going to do 10 team double elim then this is probably the most "fair" way to seed it, since there's really no other way to do so.

i thought top teams got a bye in playoffs?

https://twitter.com/SirMaza/status/1703834260879163477

isn't this the guy who got extremely toxic and starting throwing a fit and trying to teamkill in ranked because someone wouldn't give him his vandal back

international LAN tournaments have english broadcasts because they're international
emea and pacific league matches have english broadcasts because they're international
vct china ascension is not international

could she be on:
an americas/EMEA/pacific franchise team? not unless it's as a substitute player
an NA VCL team? probably yeah
a chinese franchise team? possibly if the language barrier isn't an issue (there are other Australian players on Chinese teams so not an unreasonable possibility)

if you think she's good enough to start right now on a non-Chinese franchise team you're coping, even Demon1 had to start as a reserve player before proving he was good enough to be on the starting roster. could she be a sub/reserve player? maybe, but there are very few franchised teams signing actual subs let alone full reserve rosters

however, if you don't think she's good enough to be given a shot in t2 you're just hating because she's more than proven that she deserves that chance. remember that she was 2 rounds away with soniqs from taking luminosity's spot in 2022 challengers, and keep in mind that this was before franchising so in the current system there's more space for players in the NA VCLs due to 6 NA teams being in the franchise. even just recently she played a big role in defeating turtle troop who are one of the current top NA VCL teams.

does all of this means she DESERVES a spot in an NA VCL team? not necessarily, but she definitely deserves a shot and i hope to see her get signed soon

or maybe she'll qualify for the NA VCL with SaD Esports, she hasn't announced if she's officially been signed yet so who knows

you were the one asking for a knights monthly? no one brought it up until you did?

https://www.vlr.gg/16983/soniqs-vs-complexity-pittsburgh-knights-monthly-gauntlet-april-gf

there's your knights monthly, yes it was a long ass time ago but it does exist

or are you going to call this fake and say it's not enough evidence?

people are repeatedly straight up saying the n word in the stream chat and either getting a warning or anything at all? their messages aren't even being deleted? and i'm not talking about people saying nga/ngga which is slang for enggak which means no in indonesian (yes other languages do exist), i'm talking about people who are actually calling other people the n word

it can be a smart and good decision for Sentinels to field Zellsis instead of pANcada especially if the team seems to perform better with him, if they truly believe that their team is better with Zellsis than pANcada then they should play with the 5 that they think is most likely to win

it can still be a fucked up situation for pANcada to get benched for a player that was specifically signed to be a 6th man/substitute player especially when pANcada is undoubtedly an extremely strong player and deserves to be starting on a franchised roster

an ideal solution would be if one of the Brazilian franchise teams was interested in having pANcada start for them (assuming pANcada is willing to transfer) and SEN were able to come to an agreement to trade/transfer his contract to them

now if SEN is purposely keeping pANcada in contract jail and purposely not allowing him to play either for them or for another team, then yeah that is pretty fucked up, but unless we actually know that's the case, it's not fair to assume

hopefully we can see pANcada playing in VCT Americas in 2024, regardless of what team it's for

W

iso vs iso

ok

they didn't say or type anything actually

you turned off comms and started giving away locations on round 2??

turned off comms round 5 while going 0-4?

now he's giving away locations and throwing round 2?

i just found you in a ranked game and you said "100% a woman" after someone locked sage

?

he plays for Maryville University in collegiate now and according to his twitter he's getting a full scholarship to play for them, I'd imagine he's content with being able to play val at a somewhat high level while pursuing his education and preparing for his future, plus he would likely have to forfeit his scholarship and possibly drop out if he signed to another team

one of the common responses to people calling EMEA a 1 team region in tokyo was that NA was also a 1 team region since NRG was 4th and barely beat liquid

what point are you trying to make?

NRG didn't play BLG during the run they got 4th in, which is specifically what i'm talking about. in fact, NRG was 6-4 in maps against EMEA during that event!

i'm directly comparing the fact that NRG got 4th at tokyo and that people still called NA a 1 team region, why are you bringing up their performance at champions when it's irrelevant to the conversation?

every time NA fans said that EMEA was a 1 team region, one of the common responses was to say that every region is a 1 team region, even though NRG placed 4th last event. fair enough!

now that FNC placed 4th, and there are no EMEA teams in the top 3, is it official now?

is EMEA a 0 team region?

btw, i'm not talking about throughout the course of the year, i'm talking about specifically right now. FNC is obviously the most accomplished team of the year regardless of who wins Champions, but at this very moment it's a double standard to not call EMEA a 0 team region.

EMEA had a whopping 5 teams in champions, 4 chances to beat the "one team region" allegations

there's 7 teams left in champions now and how many of them are EMEA teams? EMEA makes up almost half of the 9 teams eliminated so far, can't even send a team other than FNC to the top 6

kind of embarrassing no?

a better way to do this might just be to have round win % maybe?

in terms of excitement and entertainment? probably one of the craziest maps of the year

in terms of quality? this is a complete shitshow, so many thrown rounds

fun to watch though

I GOT TROLLED THEY DREW GROUPS AS I WAS WRITING THIS

oh shit where

Since all the teams in VCT Champions 2023 have been confirmed, I've decided to come up with a potential group distribution as a fun hypothetical

Since there are 5 EMEA teams, 4 Americas teams, 4 Pacific teams, and 3 Chinese teams, I'm drawing each group in a way to have one team from every region, except for one group which will have to have 2 EMEA teams and no Chinese teams. I've also tried to balance out groups somewhat through creating pools based on seeding, mostly based on each team's performance at Tokyo rather than their seeding going INTO Tokyo. I KNOW THIS IS PROBABLY NOT HOW RIOT WILL DO IT, AND I HONESTLY DON'T CARE BC I'M DOING THIS FOR FUN!

Pool 1 contains FNC, EG, PRX, and NRG (top 4 in Tokyo)
Pool 2 contains TL, EDG, DRX, and LOUD (5th-8th at Tokyo)
Pool 3 contains FUT, T1, GIA, and BLG (9th-12th at Tokyo, with NAVI replaced by Giants since Giants won LCQ over NAVI, and ASE replaced by BLG as the second seed from China)
Pool 4 contains NAVI, KRU, ZETA, and FPX (bottom seed from each region)

I'll be drawing groups so that each group has 1 team from each pool AND meets the region distribution conditions.

Group A:
NRG Esports (Pool 1, Americas)
EDward Gaming (Pool 2, China)
FUT Esports (Pool 3, EMEA)
ZETA Division (Pool 4, Pacific)

Group B:
FNATIC (Pool 1, EMEA)
LOUD (Pool 2, Americas)
T1 (Pool 3, Pacific)
FunPlus Phoenix (Pool 4, China)

Group C:
Paper Rex (Pool 1, Pacific)
Team Liquid (Pool 2, EMEA)
Bilibili Gaming (Pool 3, China)
KRÜ Esports (Pool 4, Americas)

Group D:
Evil Geniuses (Pool 1, Americas)
DRX (Pool 2, Pacific)
Giants Gaming (Pool 3, EMEA)
Natus Vincere (Pool 4, EMEA)

Assume that opening matches in each group would be the Pool 1 team vs. the Pool 4 team and the Pool 2 team vs. the Pool 3 team.

AGAIN, THIS IS A HYPOTHETICAL, GROUPS HAVE NOT YET BEEN CONFIRMED, AND I MADE UP THE POOLS MYSELF

If these were your Champions 2023 groups, who do you have making it to playoffs?

EDIT: GROUPS GOT DRAWN AS I WAS MAKING THIS LMAOOO

yes just like at tokyo

navi isn't even supposed to be here as a 5th place team in their region they're only at champs bc of the extra LCQ slot

fair enough these guys ran harbor viper and threw some of the worst walls i've ever seen

didn't spam through smokes the other team did and all reloaded at the same time so i ran at them with a judge and got 2 actually GG

W, we can qualify for playoffs tomorrow then, 4-0 incoming

my team played our 2 bind matches today, but it says under "Weekly Matches Remaining: 0/2" that they reset in 4 hours

tomorrow is also supposed to be bind, does that mean they fucked up and we'll be able to play 2 more bind matches tomorrow, or is this just a visual bug?

"emotions got the best of me" does not mean in any way that what she said was good

"emotions got the worst of me" does not make sense as a saying

saying that emotions got the best of her means that she let her emotions take over

not defending her, feel free to criticize her for what she said but purposely taking words out of context is not the "gotcha" moment you think it is

a $30.09 million valuation means they're valuing the company at $30.09 million

so if they're looking to sell 4% at a $30.09 million valuation then that means they're selling 4% for about $1.2 million

are you guys okay

that just means that his gf is willing to help and manage the reservations so he doesn't have to? she's likely getting a portion of the money too for it, but either way it makes sense, there's nothing wrong with someone helping their partner deal with stuff like that and it doesn't make it a joke?

i don't know why people are like trying to flame him for this? yeah, for most people $85/hour is absolutely not worth it and they shouldn't even consider this. but he's obviously not trying to coach the entire valorant community? he's doing like 3 hours a day which is 3 sessions per day so 21 sessions per week assuming he does do it everyday. there's certainly going to be a lot more people that would want his coaching than that.

people are saying he's overcharging, but there's an extremely high chance that all or at least most of his available slots will be filled, so is it really overcharging if the supply meets the demand? he knows his value, he's young and is trying to make extra money for himself by doing something he'll at least somewhat enjoy, while not having to commit an unnecessarily high amount of time to it.

be honest with yourself, if you were in his position and knew you could make $85/hour from coaching... you'd probably try to charge $120 or even $150/hour to get even more money, and honestly if he did that he'd probably still get customers. if it's not for you, and for most people it definitely isn't, then... it's not for you? there's nothing wrong with what he's doing.

10.5, i guess american football?, 1

c9 but it's somewhat close and TGRD takes a map, C9 wins one of the maps by a lot though
maybe something like:
C9 13-10
TGRD 13-11
C9 13-5

dare i say it...
BONK 3-2 SCARZ
9-13
13-10
8-13
13-5
13-11

SCARZ 2-1
9-13
13-11
13-8

BONK 2-1
13-11
6-13
15-13

SCARZ 2-0
13-9
13-7

BONK 2-1
13-10
7-13
14-12

asc1 with extremely high MMR, are radiants smurfing at the start of every episode because they got placed asc1?

if you're playing educational controller only and you're the one placing the account, you'll be put in the rank that riot thinks corresponds with your skill based on your performance, which should be pretty high no?

I think unranked to immortal/radiant/whatever is fine if the content creator is the one who levels/places the account and doesn't purposely hard throw their leveling/placement games to get a lower rank. If they do whatever challenge they're doing throughout all their leveling/placement games, they'll likely get placed in a somewhat decent spot.

Like if someone is just doing educational controller only, then they'll probably get placed pretty high, but still in a spot where there's a lot of climbing to do. If someone wants to do a shorty only series, goes shorty only for their leveling/placement games, and gets placed in low gold or so because that's where their performance throughout their unrated/placement games has set them at, then sure, go ahead. At least at that point you're getting placed at the rank the game thinks you should be at based on your performance with that challenge.

the fact that there's a high chance of teams having to play 4 BO5s IN A ROW within a week of each other, and potentially even 3 BO5s in the span of 3 days is a little bit daunting on the surface

BUT, if you consider that the qualification matches for Champs are the upper semis and LR3, since winning one of those matches locks in a top 3 spot, it makes a lot more sense to make them BO5s

also, since seeding probably won't really matter (every team will have to play in a 4-team group stage at Champs anyways) the upper/lower/grand finals don't really matter and it hopefully won't be as draining for the players since they will only have to play at most 2 "meaningful" BO5s (if you lose upper semis you have to win a BO3 in LR2 and then win the LR3 BO5 to qualify)

obviously viewers might be disappointed if upper/lower/grand finals aren't as high quality, but hopefully the players are at least somewhat more laidback during those matches so they don't get burnt out; having to play 4 BO5s in a row with 3 of them being in back to back days is a lot