Esports still on the rise

[Keyrock]

if you think huskalr dazzle is bad, wait when Oracle will appear. this combo is just dirty....

Yeah, I'm not sure when Oracle will make an appearance in Captain's Mode, but there are some disgusting combos with him. 

[Darkpriest]

 

if you think huskalr dazzle is bad, wait when Oracle will appear. this combo is just dirty....

Yeah, I'm not sure when Oracle will make an appearance in Captain's Mode, but there are some disgusting combos with him. 

 

 

Yeah i Oracle slark, Oracle Sven, Oracle +anything that you want to kite but now you cant

the only disable working vs that will be nigma BlackHole...

[Keyrock]

OG 

 

[Darkpriest]

well another team richer for 1,1+ mln USD

 

Quite some stories behind players on that team

[Keyrock]

So, WCA happened.  Anyone here watch it?  More importantly, anyone here watch the closing ceremony after the grand final on BTS?  I wound up falling asleep during the grand final because it was at like 2 or 3 AM where I am, but BTS showed a rebroadcast the next day so I got to see the rest of it and stuck around for the closing ceremony afterward, and boy am I glad I did.  Anyone who watched that closing ceremony and wasn't already a fan of ODPixel has got to be a fan now.  It was his finest hour...  or 2 hours plus.  It went on for over 2 hours and there must have been like 10 musical acts with ODPixel "translating" and singing along for most of it.  My man went through several stages of madness and somehow emerged from it on the other side.  The best part was Chinese Mr T singing We Are the Champions.  It was amazing.  The sucky part is that they put on a fake DJ after Chinese Mr T.  I mean, she was hot and wearing an outfit that left little to the imagination, which was cool, but it was blatantly obvious that she wasn't actually doing anything and it was a prerecorded set.  More importantly, how do you put on anything after Chinese Mr T?  The show should have just faded to black after Chinese Mr T sang We Are the Champions.  It would have been the perfect ending.

Edited December 21, 2015 by Keyrock

[Darkpriest]

It was so goood. I was watching it live with little regard to my sleepig schedule. That guy has some cool brit accent and he makes it work.

 

And Alliance is back

Edited December 21, 2015 by Darkpriest

[Darkpriest]

[Keyrock]

By now, everyone into Esports has probably heard about the DotA2 Shanghai Major Firing Fiasco.  For those not familiar with what happened, let me summarize what happened.

 

First a little backstory:  After TI5 (The International 5) Valve announced that they would be holding several big Valve sponsored tournaments called "Majors" a year leading up to TI (essentially the DotA2 World Championships).  These Majors are big tournaments with serious money (3 million prize pool each) and significant prestige.  The first major was held in Frankfurt last year and it went off, for the most part, without a hitch.  The next Major is being held now in Shanghai.  For this event, Valve hired James Harding to host it.  James, commonly known as "2GD" or "Yames" is a well known and overall well liked host/caster/personality who has been in the Esports scene for quite some time in several games (Quake, Counter Strike, DotA2, just to name a few).  He is rather famous in the scene for his casual hosting style which encourages banter between panelists and tends to include crass jokes and busting people's balls.  He had worked for Valve before.  In fact, he hosted 3 TIs in a row for them (TI2-TI4).

 

Anyway, so the Shanghai Major starts and immediately it's one issue after another.  The broadcast is plagued with a host of production problems: Sound problems, stream crashes, transition problems, computer crashes, delays.  You name it, it went wrong.  It's a train wreck.  They get through the first day and the second day begins.  Again, it's a production train wreck.  Now I didn't see Yames' last segment live because it happened in the middle of the night, but I saw an abridged snippet video of it.  The gist of it is that they are having yet another technical problem and the next match winds up being delayed for a ridiculous amount of time, something like an hour and a half.  During the time Yames is trying to keep a conversation going with the panelists for an indefinite amount of time and keep things entertaining during this down time.  As Yames does, he cracks some off-color jokes and takes shots at some of the players and some casters (it should be noted that he's good friends with many of these people).  At one point apparently production was telling him to send it to just a screen with a logo and music playing but he ignored them for a bit because he had an interesting conversation going.  Finally the delay ends and the games are back on.  Shortly after that Yames is told he's fired.  Sheever takes over hosting duties and Yames issues a Tweet telling people he'd been fired and he would eventually issue a statement on the matter but he would sleep on it.

 

As you can imagine, the DotA community goes crazy and Reddit lights up with WTF just happened?  Yames got fired! threads.  (Apparently Reddit is still ablaze with that.  I don't know, I don't go there).  Gabe Newell himself pops up on Reddit and makes this statement:

 

 

James. We’ve had issues with James at previous events. Some Valve people lobbied to bring him back for Shanghai, feeling that he deserved another chance. That was a mistake. James is an ass, and we won’t be working with him again.

 

Valve also fires the production crew doing the Shanghai Major. (The subsequent days have been definitely better as far as production, though not flawless)

 

After GabeN's statement Reddit blows up even more.  Yames wakes up to see the statement from GabeN and finally writes his statement. (warning: it's a very long read)  In his 17 page long statement he goes over his entire history with Valve and speculates on why he was fired.

 

Those are the facts, to the best of my knowledge.  From here forth I will be giving my opinion on the matter.

 

In my opinion Valve comes off with egg on their face here.  Regardless of who is actually in the wrong here, this all looks really bad for Valve.  Valve has always been pretty poor at communicating with the public, usually giving little if any information about happenings, changes, etc.  They're very curt.  This works against them here.  The statement issued by GabeN on the matter is very brief and extremely blunt.  What's more, it defames Yames on one of the most public places on the internet and does it with somewhat crass language.  Okay "ass" isn't all that crass by today's standards, and I personally find it refreshing to see the head honcho of a company be that blunt, but that doesn't change the fact that publicly defaming someone like that is rather unbecoming of a person of his standing. (Company heads tend to be very measured and diplomatic with public statements)  What's more, it really doesn't explain why they fired Yames, it just states they've had problems with him before and that he's an ass.  No details, no explanation, no nothing. (It should be noted that neither GabeN nor anyone else at Valve has given any further statement on the matter).  By contrast, Yames' long statement tells a long story.  Whether by calculated design or not, Yames' statement reads like a genuine pouring out of one's heart (complete with plenty of spelling and grammar mistakes) where he goes through all the events he hosted for Valve in the past, speculates on why he was fired, admits his own failings, and refuses to take a shot at GabeN, even saying he admires the man.  He also reveals that he and GabeN had only met twice and only spoken to each other once.

 

The problem here for Valve is that Yames' statement is all we really have to go by since GabeN's statement doesn't really tell us anything, so Yames' statement is naturally going to be more convincing since any information is generally more convincing than no information.  What's more, GabeN's blunt manner and public defamation of Yames coupled with Yames' refusal to take a shot at GabeN makes Yames look like the better man here.  Also, for the people watching the broadcasts it comes off like Valve took the embarrassment of the terrible production out on Yames as in many people's eyes, mine included, Yames was the one guy putting the train wreck of a tournament on his back and making the ridiculous anount of unscheduled down time entertaining to watch.

 

Things also just kind of don't add up.  It's a really odd situation.  Yames is not an unknown personality, his antics are quite famous in the Esports community.  When you hire Yames to host a tournament you know what you're going to get.  His hosting style certainly rubs some people the wrong way, but it's also gained him fairly widespread popularity.  Valve certainly knew what his hosting style was like, he hosted 3 TIs for them in the past, they knew exactly what he was about.  I'm kind of thinking that maybe some stuff happened backstage that neither side has told us about because on the surface it looks like Yames was fired for his casual hosting style and crass humor and Valve wanted a host to be more professional and to play it by the book like the drones doing casts for ESPN and such for sports events, where the few jokes are super safe "family friendly" jokes.  But if they wanted a host like that why in the world would they hire Yames?  There are plenty of capable hosts that will play it by the book, Yames is the last guy you'd hire to play it by the book.  That's not what he's about and everyone knows that.  it's like hiring Miles Davis for an event then firing him because he plays the trumpet.  It doesn't make any sense.

 

Right or wrong, the vast majority of the DotA2 community is in the Yames got wronged camp.  It's interesting to see Valve show some **** (Word that means cracks but is also a racial slur meaning Asian people that is CLEARLY not being used as a racial slur here.  Friggin' auto-censor ) in their armor.   For so long Valve has overall been the darling of the gaming world, the company that could do no wrong, the company most fans would defend no matter what.  With this and the semi-recent paid mods debacle we've seen a couple examples where the majority of the public was angry and displeased with Valve.  I wonder if these things will prompt Valve to improve their communication skills with the fans or if they'll just take them as rare anomalies and keep on keeping on as they always have.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Keyrock

[Darkpriest]

To be honest 2GD ne3ds to grow up because this is not a time for hosting style of porn jokes, jerking off, riding butts or whatever other low jokes and poor language (do you really need to drop f bombs so often?)

 

It might be ok for casual on couch home cast with your followers but it is a big "no no" for a main stage of a.fore front esport event which might be monitored by potential big sponsors. No big brand with huge money will want to affiliate their name with hosts like that and i am not surprised that Gabe got pissed off. I would be too.

 

As for the production company, a well deserved kick.

 

There is nothing wrong with firing some shots or casual banter, regular sport casts do it too, but there is a world of difference in the language and the form.

[Humanoid]

Not sure it would have been legal for them to say more really, how often do details of employee termination really come out? Calling him an ass, while unprofessional on Gabe's part, is presumably not defamatory in a legal sense, is not a breach of privacy or employer confidentiality, etc, etc.

[Keyrock]

To be honest 2GD ne3ds to grow up because this is not a time for hosting style of porn jokes, jerking off, riding butts or whatever other low jokes and poor language (do you really need to drop f bombs so often?)

 

It might be ok for casual on couch home cast with your followers but it is a big "no no" for a main stage of a.fore front esport event which might be monitored by potential big sponsors. No big brand with huge money will want to affiliate their name with hosts like that and i am not surprised that Gabe got pissed off. I would be too.

 

As for the production company, a well deserved kick.

 

There is nothing wrong with firing some shots or casual banter, regular sport casts do it too, but there is a world of difference in the language and the form.

Sure, it makes sense you want a professional style cast for the Major, it's a big deal event.  But then why hire Yames to host it in the first place?  Valve knew exactly what they were getting when they hired him.  That is not the guy you hire when you want a straightlaced host, that's just not him, never has been never will be.  Presumably it was icefrog that lobbied to get him the gig and I get icefrog has at least some pull within Valve, being that he essentially designs DotA2, but ultimately the final call still comes down to the higherups.  No matter how you slice it, it makes no sense to hire Yames if you want a straightlaced host.

 

As for the production company, that falls on Valve too since they were the ones that hired a cut-rate production company in the first place.  90% of the time you get what you pay for.  Sure, once in a while you'll luck out and get someone who does a really good job at a lower rate, but why chance that for such a big tournament?

 

And yes, I get that mainstream sports  commentators do banter and jokes.  Those jokes are super duper safe and almost always completely lame and the banter sounds forced and scripted, which is why those shows are so incredibly boring to watch.  That said, I get why Valve would want that kind of show, that's the established "standard" for sports shows and even though Esports are not sports, I get wanting to conform to those standards in the pursuit of luring over the mainstream public to your competitions.  Again, why hire Yames to host if this is what you want?  It makes no sense.

 

Not sure it would have been legal for them to say more really, how often do details of employee termination really come out? Calling him an ass, while unprofessional on Gabe's part, is presumably not defamatory in a legal sense, is not a breach of privacy or employer confidentiality, etc, etc.

 

They didn't have to go into specific details, but generally when a well known public company goes through something like this they either remain completely silent on the matter or they make a formal statement with carefully chosen and diplomatic wording.  Something to the effect of "We have regretfully made the decision to terminate the contract of James '2GD' Harding.  His level of professionalism and conduct did not meet our expectations and we felt it was negatively affecting our fans viewing and hurting our reputation as a company.  Yada yada yada, stuff that sounds important and visionary but actually means nothing"  I, for one, find it refreshing for a company head to be that blunt, that said, just calling a guy an ass makes Valve look rather unprofessional.

 

Regardless, this tournament has been a disaster for Valve.  Unless the main even goes flawless and we have a series of really exciting and memorable games (the games were dreadfully unexciting during the group stage), this event will be remembered tor the firing drama and the train wreck production during the first 2 days, and rightfully so.  Valve are a big company with more money than God.  Hopefully this black eye teaches them to put more effort into these things and to hire top notch production next time.  One of your Majors is not the time to skimp on production costs if you want to look like a professional outfit.  And if you want a certain kind of hosting style then hire the right person for the job, not the polar opposite.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Keyrock

[Darkpriest]

Gabe said, someone lobbied for one more chance and he literally blew it in his first entry with "jerking off to a chinese porn" stuff, hence we will never see Yames again for the Valve events. RedEye would be a host light years ahead and better.

 

One can only hope the main event will be a blast.

[Keyrock]

Hopefully it's lightyears better than the group stage.  That was a snooze fest, and not just beacause of the ridiculous delays between games.  I could not name you one even slightly memorable match from the entire group stage.  The whole thing is a blur of boredom to me.

 

I like ReDeYe, but I wouldn't want him to host every Major.  They should rotate it between him, Sheever, KotLGuy, and Soe.  I don't know if Chobra has hosted DotA events before, he's mostly worked Starcraft 2 from what I remember, but I wouldn't mind seeming him host a Major.  

 

As for Yames, I like the guy and his uncouth humor.  He's really good at getting panelists to loosen up and get a real genuine relaxed banter going, as opposed to the faux-casual banter you usually get with prim and proper production (you can't fake real relaxed banter, some can disguise faux-casual better than others, but I can tell).  That said, I agree that an event the magnitude of a Major is probably not a good fit for Yames' brand of hosting, particularly given that Valve currently seem to be going after the ESPN crowd and given the current social climate, which is why I was so surprised they hired him in the first place.  

 

It saddens me a bit because I can see where Esports is headed in terms of broadcasting.  It's the same path ESPN took.  Many years ago when ESPN was still a relatively new kid on the block their broadcasts were a lot more casual and a lot more fun.  The back and forth between the analysts and commentators was more relaxed.  As the company got larger and more mainstream all that disappeared and their broadcasts got sterilized.  Now it's at the point where I make a concerted effort to avoid all pre-game, post-game, half-time, warm-up, round-up, analysis type shows and only watch the sporting event itself from whistle to whistle, because those shows are all painful to watch with their lame jokes, forced laughter, and faux-casual banter.  It's all disgustingly fake.  One of the things that initially drew me to Esports was that it was still in the relaxed and casual state of broadcasting with people genuinely ribbing each other, joking around, unafraid to go off the script and off-color.  It was like watching an actual conversation between actual relaxed friends shooting from the hip, as opposed to corporate drones pretending like they are having fun ad being casual while making absolutely sure everything is super duper safe and all jokes have a foam Nerf coating to protect the poor sensitive viewers.  Deep inside I knew this day would come and Esports would eventually get sterilized, just like everything else does when it becomes mainstream big business and just like with sports I'll stop watching the pre-shows, post-shows, analysis shows, etc.  I guess I had hoped we were still further away from the sterilization creeping into Esports, though that's greedy on my part, I guess, since the sterilization naturally follows something becoming widespread, and it's essentially me hoping Esports stays niche to cater to my tastes.  I guess I'm just an Esports hipster, I liked it better before it went mainstream. 

[Darkpriest]

I think that Chobra was.hosting the group stage at the last TI

 

Edit: also 2GD forgot what he was hired for. To host a dota2 event and not trying to make this event about himself. Too much ego too little brain. In the big man's world such things don't fly.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Darkpriest

[Zoraptor]

By now, everyone into Esports has probably heard about the DotA2 Shanghai Major Firing Fiasco.  For those not familiar with what happened, let me summarize what happened.

Even I've heard of it, and I semi actively avoid esports. Though I guess given the subject it isn't that surprising.

 

 

James. We’ve had issues with James at previous events. Some Valve people lobbied to bring him back for Shanghai, feeling that he deserved another chance. That was a mistake. James is an ass, and we won’t be working with him again.

 

 

The big problem with that statement is that it is effectively accusing someone of being unprofessional while being unprofessional himself. The reason why you get either 'no comment' or inoffensive legalese type statements most of the time and the reason why they are more sensible is precisely because- most of the time- you actively want to avoid anything that will extend or aggravate the issue. Firings or even voluntary losses are very seldom good news and that statement while it does vaguely explain why/ what happened doesn't do so in a sensible manner but in an inflammatory way which suggests that there was personal animus involved plus infers there are differences in how people see things at Valve- both of which can only exacerbate the issue especially when Gabe seldom comments on stuff publicly because that by itself adds weight. Valve does know how to do this properly, they've had many quite prominent people leave and projects shut down with mostly no comment at all or measured 'wish them well in their future endeavours' type statements.

 

Have to say though, I think the support issues are what is really killing Valve's PR. That's not a big, one time blow to reputation but a slow, creeping malaise that sees people praising their rivals and many (most?) discussions of anything Valve related garner a lot of support horror stories; and apart from the refund policy improvements (forced by the EU) the situation has been the same for years. At least this issue and the paid mods controversy are/ were acute rather than chronic problems.

[Keyrock]

And the main event starts with a 1 1/2 hour delay. 

 

This tournament just keeps getting worse.  This is nearing MDL-levels of holy **** how can production be this bad for a professional LAN tournament?

 

Edit: Now machinegun sounds during the match.  Now one audio bleeding into another, super echo.  Monster (?) sounds.  I don't even...  

 

 

This is so bad.

 

Now Chinese in-game audio mixed with English commentary. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Edited March 2, 2016 by Keyrock

[Darkpriest]

Looks like people responsible for preparing venue etc on the Perfect World side spent all the production money on hookers during the chinese new year festival... or were drunk the whole time... I can't find anything that would justify this mess

 

I mean even the booths seem to be subpar and you can hear chinese casters in them.

Edited March 2, 2016 by Darkpriest

[Keyrock]

At first I was angry because I'm on the east coast and the 1st series would have started around 9 PM had it been on time, which means I could likely watch the entire first series before I go to sleep (usually around 11 PM-ish) and the delay made it so I would only get to watch game 1 at best.  Then the broadcast got so bad that it became comical.  They had just about every technical **** up I could think of and some I hadn't even though of.  It got to the point that I wasn't even paying attention to the match, I was just laughing hysterically. 

 

Edit:  The matches I've seen in the morning, they seem to have sorted some of the problems out, but the stream has still crashed a bunch of times.  At this point, only Chinese Mr T can save this event.

 

Man, I really hope the Manila Major is a lot better than this.

Edited March 2, 2016 by Keyrock

[Calax]

And this is why I watch the LCS. At least it's got consistent production values.

[Keyrock]

I'll give Riot that, their broadcasts are rock solid.  LoL doesn't really appeal to me from a viewership standpoint, I can't get into it, for whatever reason, but I've never seem a Riot event have serious problems, granted I haven't watched that many events so the sample size is relatively small.

 

At least day 2 of the main event has been much better than yesterday so far.  Still a bit of a delay and some hiccups, but nothing on the magnitude of the **** show that happened yesterday.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Keyrock

[Keyrock]

Another day, another long delay (Almost 2 hours!) and another bunch of problems (Electricity this time? Something different every day.)  At least we have a feel good story to somewhat offset the train wreck that has been the production of this tournament:  The rise of Complexity.  I've personally been saying for over a month that Complexity is a tier 1 team, but that's largely been laughed off because LULZ "NA" DOTO (I put "NA" in quotes because the team has 3 Swedes on it).  Now there can be no doubt.  They are guaranteed top 6 and, while they'll clearly be underdogs in their next match, don't count them out against EG.

 

Edit:  Holy ****, Fnatic.  I was not surprised that Complexity beat Alliance, even though Alliance was one of the odds on favorites coming into this, simply because I've been on the Complexity bandwagon for a while now (basically since they got Chessie, Limmp, and Handsken), but Fnatic beating OG really took me by surprise.

 

The remaining six are:

 

Liquid

Secret

EG 

 

Those 3 are probably not a surprise to anyone

 

Complexity

MVP Phoenix

Fnatic

 

Those 3 are probably a surprise to most people.  Complexity is not a surprise to me, but MVP and Fnatic are.  I totally did not see those 2 teams doing so well.

 

Also, press "F" to pay respects to Chinese DotA.   In all seriousness, I don't think the situation is as dire with Chinese DotA as it seems right now, I just think there is going to be a shake up with what teams represent China.  There are several really good up and coming Chinese squads and I think they'll take over as the old guard fall by the wayside, IG already did previous and now it looks like VG, CDEC, and LGD are crumbling too (I still think EHOME is in decent shape).

Edited March 4, 2016 by Keyrock

[Darkpriest]

The day of underdogs...

[Ganrich]

I decided to watch the games yesterday. Both the complexity vs alliance and the fnatic vs OG games were incredibly gripping. First time watching one of these tournaments via streaming as I usually watch them (if I watch them) after the fact on YouTube, but I may start doing it more often.

 

It's kind of like going to see an awesome concert and going home with an itch to learn an instrument. Now I am debating getting into Dota. I doubt I will, but watching it makes me want to.

[Keyrock]

I really like watching DotA but I don't play it much.  I have in the past but I'm awful at it, plus I'm not good at dealing with the pressure of having 4 other people depending on me to not suck.  It's an incredibly difficult game to get good at.  The level of complexity is truly daunting.  Even the top level pros don't know all the different ability and effect interactions.  I'm not even sure if even Icefrog knows all the interactions.

Edited March 5, 2016 by Keyrock

[Ganrich]

I really like watching DotA but I don't play it much. I have in the past but I'm awful at it, plus I'm not good at dealing with the pressure of having 4 other people depending on me to not suck. It's an incredibly difficult game to get good at. The level of complexity is truly daunting. Even the top level pros don't know all the different ability and effect interactions. I'm not even sure if even Icefrog knows all the interactions.

Yup, the complexity ( <- see wut I did there) of dota is why I am adverse to trying. I don't have the time to get competent at it, but it looks fun. I already have a few games I play that have a learning curve (Tekken is one of them), and I don't need another game where you need to know nearly everything to excel when there is sooo much.