I had to post this cause it's just damn cute. <3 http://icanhascheezburger.wordpress.com/
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
If the point was missed in the start of the previous post, I'll just re-orate the announcement made. In all likelihood, we'll be playing in the Open Category of CAPL Winter by virtue of simply not playing CAPL Elites in Autumn.
We do have enough players to stay in Elites for Autumn, but the lineup will be shaky at best, and a player might have to register purely for the sake of keeping the team in Elites and not actually playing. I mean... 2 players from the original Zenith with 3 others... isn't the best team to field in the world.
It isn't my style to have a post simply to make some minor announcement that affects no one, so here's a little discussion about...
Why Damage Reduction is Imba.
And no, I don't throw the word "imba" around randomly. I'm just using it loosely here as something that is "very good", but not to the point of utter imbalance where a team will is forced to use it or almost immediately loses.
For starters, let us just throw out some heroes. Bristleback Visage Viper Void Anti-Mage Spectre.
Except for Anti-Mage, these heroes have at some point or other been used as gay late gamers in normal drafts.
Back to the late-gamer theory, late gamers usually fare well in the late game due to an offensive skill that greatly boosts their damage. Clinks with Strafe. Sven/Arnold/GPS with God's Strength, et cetera. However, we see that popular late-gamers are drafted now due to their ability to be so damn difficult to take down, not so much their ability to dish out damage.
Just look at QoP and PotM now. Both rose to popularity as late gamers simply because their escaping skills allowed them to avoid a large amount of damage.
But that isn't so much the discussion today. Back to damage reduction.
Generally, any hero with damage reduction is going to be a pain in the ass to take down. Check the above. We see heroes with many forms of damage avoidance. However, windwalk is limited at best in avoiding damage since you can't deal damage at the same time as you are avoiding it, mirror image or illusion skills are rather short term and serve more as offensiverather than defensive measures. Reincarnation is easily stopped, and the best bet would be Sunder, something I would classify as damage avoidance since it makes it seem as if the damage simply wasn't done, but even Sunder can be prevented with the proper counter-measures.
Passive damage avoidance however, as in the above heroes, are not preventable. There is absolutely nothing stopping the Spectre from Dispersing or the Void from Backtracking. Like it or not, these heroes are so damn difficult to take down because there is absolutely nothing stopping them from reducing the damage you do to them.
Mathematically there seems to be nothing impressive about a simple 25% Backtrack or even a 40% reduction in damage doesn't seem so bad. A Platemail or so, or maybe a bit more HP, could at certain times increase your survivability by much more than these damage avoidance spells seem to do.
The key here is that damage avoidance skills (Backtrack, Disperse, or even spell resistance from Viper or Anti-Mage) stack multiplicatively with every other damage reduction thingy you have. A reduction of 40% damage is not much except that it stacks multiplicatively with all your armor and spell resistance. As one would know, the damage reduction offered by armor grows significantly lower with each point of armor. Armor gives the same absolute bonus (6% of hp) with each point but does not stack multiplicatively. Damage reduction skills however, will stack with every damn thing you have.
Add that to the fact that you can't increase your spell resistance by adding armor, and heroes that can reduce spell damage will have a much greater survival advantage over heroes without.
The second thing is that element of the unexpected. Low HP heroes with damage reduction skills have deceiving amount of survivability. No one expects the Spectre to Disperse Laguna Blade, or the Anti-Mage to take no damage from your nuke, which greatly throws off how people calculate engagements or fights will go.
But my lesson is over and I gotta leave the complab, so I shall just leave this post in its rather unsatisfactory condition (too lazy to edit and add at home).
We do have enough players to stay in Elites for Autumn, but the lineup will be shaky at best, and a player might have to register purely for the sake of keeping the team in Elites and not actually playing. I mean... 2 players from the original Zenith with 3 others... isn't the best team to field in the world.
It isn't my style to have a post simply to make some minor announcement that affects no one, so here's a little discussion about...
Why Damage Reduction is Imba.
And no, I don't throw the word "imba" around randomly. I'm just using it loosely here as something that is "very good", but not to the point of utter imbalance where a team will is forced to use it or almost immediately loses.
For starters, let us just throw out some heroes. Bristleback Visage Viper Void Anti-Mage Spectre.
Except for Anti-Mage, these heroes have at some point or other been used as gay late gamers in normal drafts.
Back to the late-gamer theory, late gamers usually fare well in the late game due to an offensive skill that greatly boosts their damage. Clinks with Strafe. Sven/Arnold/GPS with God's Strength, et cetera. However, we see that popular late-gamers are drafted now due to their ability to be so damn difficult to take down, not so much their ability to dish out damage.
Just look at QoP and PotM now. Both rose to popularity as late gamers simply because their escaping skills allowed them to avoid a large amount of damage.
But that isn't so much the discussion today. Back to damage reduction.
Generally, any hero with damage reduction is going to be a pain in the ass to take down. Check the above. We see heroes with many forms of damage avoidance. However, windwalk is limited at best in avoiding damage since you can't deal damage at the same time as you are avoiding it, mirror image or illusion skills are rather short term and serve more as offensiverather than defensive measures. Reincarnation is easily stopped, and the best bet would be Sunder, something I would classify as damage avoidance since it makes it seem as if the damage simply wasn't done, but even Sunder can be prevented with the proper counter-measures.
Passive damage avoidance however, as in the above heroes, are not preventable. There is absolutely nothing stopping the Spectre from Dispersing or the Void from Backtracking. Like it or not, these heroes are so damn difficult to take down because there is absolutely nothing stopping them from reducing the damage you do to them.
Mathematically there seems to be nothing impressive about a simple 25% Backtrack or even a 40% reduction in damage doesn't seem so bad. A Platemail or so, or maybe a bit more HP, could at certain times increase your survivability by much more than these damage avoidance spells seem to do.
The key here is that damage avoidance skills (Backtrack, Disperse, or even spell resistance from Viper or Anti-Mage) stack multiplicatively with every other damage reduction thingy you have. A reduction of 40% damage is not much except that it stacks multiplicatively with all your armor and spell resistance. As one would know, the damage reduction offered by armor grows significantly lower with each point of armor. Armor gives the same absolute bonus (6% of hp) with each point but does not stack multiplicatively. Damage reduction skills however, will stack with every damn thing you have.
Add that to the fact that you can't increase your spell resistance by adding armor, and heroes that can reduce spell damage will have a much greater survival advantage over heroes without.
The second thing is that element of the unexpected. Low HP heroes with damage reduction skills have deceiving amount of survivability. No one expects the Spectre to Disperse Laguna Blade, or the Anti-Mage to take no damage from your nuke, which greatly throws off how people calculate engagements or fights will go.
But my lesson is over and I gotta leave the complab, so I shall just leave this post in its rather unsatisfactory condition (too lazy to edit and add at home).
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Assuming I'm not already serving NS, I'll most likely be looking forward to playing CAPL Open in the Winter Season.
Well, we never expected so many major tournaments to come up during the 3 months of exam period right after WCG. WGT, CAPL, Batu Pahat Resurgence v2, is about a potential 7K worth of prizes we're missing out on. We hopefully can send an incomplete team for WGT though.
Our trivial writeup for today has me discussing what everyone already knows yet again. Prompted by gross inactivity though, I feel tempted to write something.
Today's topic is about our friendly late game heroes.
Generally a late game hero is simply... a hero that has an advantage over other heroes in the late game mostly because it can deal more damage to opponents using physical attacks before getting taken down. Duh. Now lets go on to less trivial stuff.
As with everything else, your late gamers run from high-risk to low-risk late gamers. Risk is basically the chance of your late-gamer being useless in the game. There are usually 4 factors involved in this. How fast the hero can farm, how difficult it is to take down the hero, how well the hero can lane control, and how useful the hero is without items.
Generally the faster a hero can clear creeps the faster it can farm. Heroes with AoE spells can generally farm much faster because they can farm quickly and run away with less risk of being backstabbed, and when all else fails they can neutral very quickly. A difficult to kill hero farms more by simply not dying... with the added benefit of the opponent not backstabbing him much since he's so damn hard to kill.
Lane control is a no-brainer. You can't be farming free lanes all the time. A late gamer that is useful without actually needing to farm is practically a risk-free late gamer as the late-gamer farming is merely a benefit. Without being farmed, the late gamer still has a high utility. A prime example would be Silencer, who actually is pretty damn useful without any items because he has awesome utility simply pressing one button the entire game.
On the other side we have late-gamer effectiveness. Basically this measures how much a late gamer needs to farm in order to be effective. Warlock as a late gamer, for example (for whoever uses it) needs to farm... MKB Treads Guinsoo... or something like that, to be able to match up to a Faceless Void with one Butterfly. For the most part, risk is proportionate to effectiveness. A hero that is more risky as a late gamer usually also is much more awesome given the same amount of farming.
Which is why we don't see much of Naix. Naix is the epitome of high-risk late gamers. He has no lane control, no fast farming, absolutely no damn use without items (a living observer ward is not a valid use) and perhaps the only silver of hope left is that he isn't that easy to take down with Rage. Then again, he's an extremely effective hero when farmed. A single Heart increases his effectiveness in battle by a hundredfold.
Let's then take a look at our favourite Queen Of Pain and Bristleback. QoP is superbly low-risk. She pretty much fulfills all 4 low-risk criteria. Her AoE skills make farming a breeze, she has good lane control, is one of the hardest damn heroes to take down with Blink, and is actually pretty damn effective in the event that she actually can't farm anything. Blink (arguably the best spell in the game) also makes her so notoriously difficult to kill that her damage output as a late gamer grows higher simply by her staying alive and shooting enemies for so damn long. Thus, her effectiveness level is also quite high.
Bristleback is yet another low-risk hero. Superb lane control, AoE skill for farming, is insanely difficult to take down, the only drawback being that the Bristleback isn't very useful without items... but he's so damn good at the other 3 areas that him not farming is a travesty. BB is surprisingly good with few items. His absolute tankage makes him effective with a simple Heart Radiance even very late into the game, not to mention that he's probably going to farm a lot more.
In fact, most heroes you see are low-risk with moderate effectiveness. They can farm early game but given the same amount of farming as other late gamers they wouldn't be effective. This makes perfect sense since few teams would like to take the risk of their late gamers being completely useless.
Naix is an extreme, on the other end of the spectrum, an extreme-high risk. Occasionally we do see rather high-risk heroes being used however, because they have extreme item efficiency, being really effective with few items. An example would be Phantom Lancer. Quite honestly he doesn't need many items to be rather insanely powerful, but he has almost no lane control but at least isn't too bad because he can save himself with Dopplewalk.
Shadow Fiend is probably the extreme for the low-risk spectrum. A Shadow Fiend more or less relies only on items in the late game. Generally a high-effectiveness late gamer will have a skill to boost its damage output or survivability. QoP has blink, Viper has Frenzy, Sven has God's Strength. SF has none of those, and is a late gamer simply by virtue of his insane farming rate and lane control. Okay, maybe +60 damage and -5 armor helps a little... but not as much as Critical Strike or most other late gamer skills.
High-risk but high effectiveness farmers usually cause a lot of pressure from both teams. One team will usually do all it can to protect the farmer, the other will do all it can to keep it from farming (because it is so easy to do so). The best counter to high-risk farmers is simply to... not let it farm.
Low-risk farmers often have low item efficiency. Often it is possible to counter those simply by having a farmer with higher item efficiency farm at the same rate, to be more effective in the late game. Usually this is mixed with some form of attempting to at least slow down the low-risk farmer's effeciency.
Then when you meet a low-risk farmer with quite high item efficiency, you just have to try to enact some form of super controlling on it and waste about half your heroes trying to take it down before it farms. Which is why Bristleback is so damn imbalanced.
Well, we never expected so many major tournaments to come up during the 3 months of exam period right after WCG. WGT, CAPL, Batu Pahat Resurgence v2, is about a potential 7K worth of prizes we're missing out on. We hopefully can send an incomplete team for WGT though.
Our trivial writeup for today has me discussing what everyone already knows yet again. Prompted by gross inactivity though, I feel tempted to write something.
Today's topic is about our friendly late game heroes.
Generally a late game hero is simply... a hero that has an advantage over other heroes in the late game mostly because it can deal more damage to opponents using physical attacks before getting taken down. Duh. Now lets go on to less trivial stuff.
As with everything else, your late gamers run from high-risk to low-risk late gamers. Risk is basically the chance of your late-gamer being useless in the game. There are usually 4 factors involved in this. How fast the hero can farm, how difficult it is to take down the hero, how well the hero can lane control, and how useful the hero is without items.
Generally the faster a hero can clear creeps the faster it can farm. Heroes with AoE spells can generally farm much faster because they can farm quickly and run away with less risk of being backstabbed, and when all else fails they can neutral very quickly. A difficult to kill hero farms more by simply not dying... with the added benefit of the opponent not backstabbing him much since he's so damn hard to kill.
Lane control is a no-brainer. You can't be farming free lanes all the time. A late gamer that is useful without actually needing to farm is practically a risk-free late gamer as the late-gamer farming is merely a benefit. Without being farmed, the late gamer still has a high utility. A prime example would be Silencer, who actually is pretty damn useful without any items because he has awesome utility simply pressing one button the entire game.
On the other side we have late-gamer effectiveness. Basically this measures how much a late gamer needs to farm in order to be effective. Warlock as a late gamer, for example (for whoever uses it) needs to farm... MKB Treads Guinsoo... or something like that, to be able to match up to a Faceless Void with one Butterfly. For the most part, risk is proportionate to effectiveness. A hero that is more risky as a late gamer usually also is much more awesome given the same amount of farming.
Which is why we don't see much of Naix. Naix is the epitome of high-risk late gamers. He has no lane control, no fast farming, absolutely no damn use without items (a living observer ward is not a valid use) and perhaps the only silver of hope left is that he isn't that easy to take down with Rage. Then again, he's an extremely effective hero when farmed. A single Heart increases his effectiveness in battle by a hundredfold.
Let's then take a look at our favourite Queen Of Pain and Bristleback. QoP is superbly low-risk. She pretty much fulfills all 4 low-risk criteria. Her AoE skills make farming a breeze, she has good lane control, is one of the hardest damn heroes to take down with Blink, and is actually pretty damn effective in the event that she actually can't farm anything. Blink (arguably the best spell in the game) also makes her so notoriously difficult to kill that her damage output as a late gamer grows higher simply by her staying alive and shooting enemies for so damn long. Thus, her effectiveness level is also quite high.
Bristleback is yet another low-risk hero. Superb lane control, AoE skill for farming, is insanely difficult to take down, the only drawback being that the Bristleback isn't very useful without items... but he's so damn good at the other 3 areas that him not farming is a travesty. BB is surprisingly good with few items. His absolute tankage makes him effective with a simple Heart Radiance even very late into the game, not to mention that he's probably going to farm a lot more.
In fact, most heroes you see are low-risk with moderate effectiveness. They can farm early game but given the same amount of farming as other late gamers they wouldn't be effective. This makes perfect sense since few teams would like to take the risk of their late gamers being completely useless.
Naix is an extreme, on the other end of the spectrum, an extreme-high risk. Occasionally we do see rather high-risk heroes being used however, because they have extreme item efficiency, being really effective with few items. An example would be Phantom Lancer. Quite honestly he doesn't need many items to be rather insanely powerful, but he has almost no lane control but at least isn't too bad because he can save himself with Dopplewalk.
Shadow Fiend is probably the extreme for the low-risk spectrum. A Shadow Fiend more or less relies only on items in the late game. Generally a high-effectiveness late gamer will have a skill to boost its damage output or survivability. QoP has blink, Viper has Frenzy, Sven has God's Strength. SF has none of those, and is a late gamer simply by virtue of his insane farming rate and lane control. Okay, maybe +60 damage and -5 armor helps a little... but not as much as Critical Strike or most other late gamer skills.
High-risk but high effectiveness farmers usually cause a lot of pressure from both teams. One team will usually do all it can to protect the farmer, the other will do all it can to keep it from farming (because it is so easy to do so). The best counter to high-risk farmers is simply to... not let it farm.
Low-risk farmers often have low item efficiency. Often it is possible to counter those simply by having a farmer with higher item efficiency farm at the same rate, to be more effective in the late game. Usually this is mixed with some form of attempting to at least slow down the low-risk farmer's effeciency.
Then when you meet a low-risk farmer with quite high item efficiency, you just have to try to enact some form of super controlling on it and waste about half your heroes trying to take it down before it farms. Which is why Bristleback is so damn imbalanced.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
The State Of The Nation!! Err... Team...
Our workforce is at an all-time low. We are faced with an ageing population. Our workforce will have to work much harder in order to support the elderly. Following the large exodus of foreign talent, as well as being forced to dedicate more resources to support our war efforts, our domestic workforce ability has seriously dwindled. We are expecting some foreign talent to return shortly though, and perhaps some of our ageing population can be called back to work. Re-training the elderly to have the relevant skills however, will not be done until much later. The current recession however, is not expected to continue for long unless our workforce decides to continue to laze around.
With regards to trade, foreign countries have reduced some of their protectionist measures slightly, possibly a result of a change in government. Our merchants are also becoming much more skilled at dealing with traders from the far reaches of the World. Nevertheless, it is still undesirable that we still have little control over trade with other countries. It merely seems as a means to export goods when our domestic market is already saturated.
Our research and development has been doing better than we expected, except with the dwindling workforce, it seems that all the new technology will have no consumers to use them.
Competition with neighbouring countries is stiff. In fact, a recent security breach and a bout of carelessness, has left our neighbour with a much better deal than we have. Does make everything more fun though don't it ^^.
The Ministers are soon finishing their term. However, they are still shaky as to the next batch of leaders appointed. We are entering a transition period where we will now be led by a mix of old and new Ministers, while the older Ministers try to do as much as they can while not being routinely owned by Very Senior Ministers (Parents) or Senior Ministeresses (not to be confused with Mistresses, of which we hope none of our Ministers have).
Our workforce is at an all-time low. We are faced with an ageing population. Our workforce will have to work much harder in order to support the elderly. Following the large exodus of foreign talent, as well as being forced to dedicate more resources to support our war efforts, our domestic workforce ability has seriously dwindled. We are expecting some foreign talent to return shortly though, and perhaps some of our ageing population can be called back to work. Re-training the elderly to have the relevant skills however, will not be done until much later. The current recession however, is not expected to continue for long unless our workforce decides to continue to laze around.
With regards to trade, foreign countries have reduced some of their protectionist measures slightly, possibly a result of a change in government. Our merchants are also becoming much more skilled at dealing with traders from the far reaches of the World. Nevertheless, it is still undesirable that we still have little control over trade with other countries. It merely seems as a means to export goods when our domestic market is already saturated.
Our research and development has been doing better than we expected, except with the dwindling workforce, it seems that all the new technology will have no consumers to use them.
Competition with neighbouring countries is stiff. In fact, a recent security breach and a bout of carelessness, has left our neighbour with a much better deal than we have. Does make everything more fun though don't it ^^.
The Ministers are soon finishing their term. However, they are still shaky as to the next batch of leaders appointed. We are entering a transition period where we will now be led by a mix of old and new Ministers, while the older Ministers try to do as much as they can while not being routinely owned by Very Senior Ministers (Parents) or Senior Ministeresses (not to be confused with Mistresses, of which we hope none of our Ministers have).
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
1) hi gals, pls let me know who wants to go work for this. i think asta, sheep and i cant commit because we're working.
Regarding our upcoming events – Games Convention Asia 2007, AsiaSoft is going to push our new game title- Darkness and Light (www.darknessandlightsea.com) we need to hire promoters ( we call it DAL angels) who know how to play strategy games. I hope that you can help me to check with your girls team who want to work for this event, pay will be $7 per hour. And before the event AsiaSoft will conduct a training session for DAL angels.
Events detail:
Date: 6-9 Sep
Venue: Suntec Convention Hall 601-603
Event Title: Games Convention Asia 2007
Working hour: 10am -8pm (10 hrs)
2) friday meet at 8pm at GG katong. i will be a little late cos i end work at 8. asta has church til 10, so she'll be down after that.
3) saturday shopping! who wants to go where? and meet what time? i need to alter some clothes at far east plaza, and have dinner at vivo with some uni friends.
Regarding our upcoming events – Games Convention Asia 2007, AsiaSoft is going to push our new game title- Darkness and Light (www.darknessandlightsea.com) we need to hire promoters ( we call it DAL angels) who know how to play strategy games. I hope that you can help me to check with your girls team who want to work for this event, pay will be $7 per hour. And before the event AsiaSoft will conduct a training session for DAL angels.
Events detail:
Date: 6-9 Sep
Venue: Suntec Convention Hall 601-603
Event Title: Games Convention Asia 2007
Working hour: 10am -8pm (10 hrs)
2) friday meet at 8pm at GG katong. i will be a little late cos i end work at 8. asta has church til 10, so she'll be down after that.
3) saturday shopping! who wants to go where? and meet what time? i need to alter some clothes at far east plaza, and have dinner at vivo with some uni friends.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
One week from WCG seems enough time to look back and talk about it.
This WCG was probably the most well organised tournament I have ever seen, and I think the result of this was that player welfare was... well... shitty. It seems to be a fair tradeoff.
For such a long drawn and tiring massive tournament though, the marshalls for the most part maintained a surprising amount of friendliness. Problems were resolved directly, and they always helped as much as they could while rushing the schedule.
Some people should know though, that it really, sincerely, truthfully, DOES take more than 15 seconds to draft a hero.
I'm pretty sure gamesync and gg-game.com did more than enough coverage for our matches for me to do anything here.
On a final note though, to anyone ELSE who is going to ask "Why didn't Ant play for WCG..."
I DID! JUST NOT THE FINALS.
And no it probably would have made no difference, but I like living with the feeling that perhaps I could have.
This WCG was probably the most well organised tournament I have ever seen, and I think the result of this was that player welfare was... well... shitty. It seems to be a fair tradeoff.
For such a long drawn and tiring massive tournament though, the marshalls for the most part maintained a surprising amount of friendliness. Problems were resolved directly, and they always helped as much as they could while rushing the schedule.
Some people should know though, that it really, sincerely, truthfully, DOES take more than 15 seconds to draft a hero.
I'm pretty sure gamesync and gg-game.com did more than enough coverage for our matches for me to do anything here.
On a final note though, to anyone ELSE who is going to ask "Why didn't Ant play for WCG..."
I DID! JUST NOT THE FINALS.
And no it probably would have made no difference, but I like living with the feeling that perhaps I could have.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
ok there goes the age old argument about RGN sucking and marshalls sucking and all that. in the end, i've always taken bryan's stand. rules are there for a reason, for everyone to read. if you cant read, you can get someone to read it to you, so there's no real excuse you can give when you are penalised for a stated rule.
anyway, back to bryan. bryan btw, used to work with RGN, but he has since moved on to another job.bryan always stood by the rules, rules are black and white, and they give you no room for dispute. so, even if some idiot picks up a teammate's voidstone for fun then puts it down a second later, that a DQ. of course, ant will think otherwise. but i feel, that giving players the benefit of a doubt means that you will be taken advantage of. if you want to argue about it more, such a dumb act is simply against sportsmanship. like... why are you fooling around in a competition? are you not taking it and its rules seriously? if so, then you definitely deserve to be DQed!
i've been on the otherside of the registration table before, and players can a great pain. its really up to the marshalls to keep everyone in check, especially since most of them are little boys who have some kind of attp and expect the world to kneel at their name.
being a player myself, it does exasperate me greatly that marshalls can be so unyielding too. i remember capl a few seasons ago... our team didnt get to play many many matches til the last one by virtue of the other teams not being present. so these auto walk overs meant that we were totally un warmed up. e2max was freezing, and we were all sleepy, having been there since about 10. so we requested for coms about half an hour before we were due to play... at 4 i think, and we were rejected, for no real good reason. those coms were arguably, rightfully ours to use, since we were supposed to have been playing since 10, and the bulk of the matches were already over.
then when the match came, we needed to warm up a while, but the marshall (JS was the marshall of this match!!) kept hurrying us to join the game because they have a schedule to stick to, they rented the place for a certain time frame only, if overshoot the time, then gotta pay more and all that. i grumpily snapped back, "i need to warm up, my creeps havent even reached each other how do i try my last hit? you all dun want us to warm up earlier then too bad u gotta wait now."
both sides unhappy, both sides can't really help it.
so with that anecdote.. i hope both sides start understanding each other better. in the end who loses? the players stand lose more because they are the ones who want to play, and to win. whereas the all-powerful marshalls have the last say, remember?
anyway, back to bryan. bryan btw, used to work with RGN, but he has since moved on to another job.bryan always stood by the rules, rules are black and white, and they give you no room for dispute. so, even if some idiot picks up a teammate's voidstone for fun then puts it down a second later, that a DQ. of course, ant will think otherwise. but i feel, that giving players the benefit of a doubt means that you will be taken advantage of. if you want to argue about it more, such a dumb act is simply against sportsmanship. like... why are you fooling around in a competition? are you not taking it and its rules seriously? if so, then you definitely deserve to be DQed!
i've been on the otherside of the registration table before, and players can a great pain. its really up to the marshalls to keep everyone in check, especially since most of them are little boys who have some kind of attp and expect the world to kneel at their name.
being a player myself, it does exasperate me greatly that marshalls can be so unyielding too. i remember capl a few seasons ago... our team didnt get to play many many matches til the last one by virtue of the other teams not being present. so these auto walk overs meant that we were totally un warmed up. e2max was freezing, and we were all sleepy, having been there since about 10. so we requested for coms about half an hour before we were due to play... at 4 i think, and we were rejected, for no real good reason. those coms were arguably, rightfully ours to use, since we were supposed to have been playing since 10, and the bulk of the matches were already over.
then when the match came, we needed to warm up a while, but the marshall (JS was the marshall of this match!!) kept hurrying us to join the game because they have a schedule to stick to, they rented the place for a certain time frame only, if overshoot the time, then gotta pay more and all that. i grumpily snapped back, "i need to warm up, my creeps havent even reached each other how do i try my last hit? you all dun want us to warm up earlier then too bad u gotta wait now."
both sides unhappy, both sides can't really help it.
so with that anecdote.. i hope both sides start understanding each other better. in the end who loses? the players stand lose more because they are the ones who want to play, and to win. whereas the all-powerful marshalls have the last say, remember?
Monday, August 06, 2007
Saturday, August 04, 2007
im damn tired after 3 days of marshalling.. but i just felt like blogging this down.
ACG today didnt went off quite well. in fact, there were incidents where other countries (actually only china), who threatened rapture that they will bring the issue up to wcg organisation. its not exactly what happened that bothers me. its the attitude.
so as many have heard, there was a 3-way tie for AOE3 between australia, china and hongkong and base on the rules, the win was given to australia, for having the highest total score. china was unhappy and demanded for an explanation. 3 people were sent to explain. first, the AOE3 in charge, then the chief marshal, then the rapture management. the guy who was in charge of the china players was SO RUDE. he started shouting very loudly that its unfair and that singapore management sucks and all that, despite the 3 people telling him very nicely that they are doing things according to rules, and that now that they are in singapore, they should follow the rules of singapore. furthermore, before they even started any games, marshals already brief them on what is going to happen if there is a tie. buy hey, we all understand that they flew all the way from china and if im the guy, i wouldnt want to give in so easily. airtickets aren't cheap. but the way the guy shouted.. its just bad. furthermore, he started PUSHING people. thats just, argh. doesnt reflect well on their country la.
on top of the bad attitude, the players werent very mannered. they came down early yesterday, the last day of singapore finals. took photos with the ACG scoreboard. and guess what they did! they were pointing middle fingers to other countries as they took pictures. like, hello? =.= that's just plain rude la. and they just bang into the competition area like its their home, demanding that they should be allowed to use the coms as and when they like. and you might have already heard that there was a dispute when micronology played against china's team. micronology typed "gg". and they assumed that micronology conceded and thats it, end of game, they win. then they kicked a fuss when they realised that "oh no, its not the end of the game!" they raised their voice at the marshal on duty, demanding for the rules of dota. first of all, its already hard to communicate with them in chinese. like how do you translate FROZEN THRONE in chinese? yah, just nice i walk past and heard what happened so i tried my very best to tell them in chinese that the only way a game is considered ended is when the throne or tree is down. thank god they understood me. and guess what, they glared and rolled their eyes at me after hearing me said that.
so my point is! basic manners should be observed when you're overseas. doesnt reflect well on the country. at end of the day, dont blame everyone for condemning your countries just because of that few black sheeps.
ACG today didnt went off quite well. in fact, there were incidents where other countries (actually only china), who threatened rapture that they will bring the issue up to wcg organisation. its not exactly what happened that bothers me. its the attitude.
so as many have heard, there was a 3-way tie for AOE3 between australia, china and hongkong and base on the rules, the win was given to australia, for having the highest total score. china was unhappy and demanded for an explanation. 3 people were sent to explain. first, the AOE3 in charge, then the chief marshal, then the rapture management. the guy who was in charge of the china players was SO RUDE. he started shouting very loudly that its unfair and that singapore management sucks and all that, despite the 3 people telling him very nicely that they are doing things according to rules, and that now that they are in singapore, they should follow the rules of singapore. furthermore, before they even started any games, marshals already brief them on what is going to happen if there is a tie. buy hey, we all understand that they flew all the way from china and if im the guy, i wouldnt want to give in so easily. airtickets aren't cheap. but the way the guy shouted.. its just bad. furthermore, he started PUSHING people. thats just, argh. doesnt reflect well on their country la.
on top of the bad attitude, the players werent very mannered. they came down early yesterday, the last day of singapore finals. took photos with the ACG scoreboard. and guess what they did! they were pointing middle fingers to other countries as they took pictures. like, hello? =.= that's just plain rude la. and they just bang into the competition area like its their home, demanding that they should be allowed to use the coms as and when they like. and you might have already heard that there was a dispute when micronology played against china's team. micronology typed "gg". and they assumed that micronology conceded and thats it, end of game, they win. then they kicked a fuss when they realised that "oh no, its not the end of the game!" they raised their voice at the marshal on duty, demanding for the rules of dota. first of all, its already hard to communicate with them in chinese. like how do you translate FROZEN THRONE in chinese? yah, just nice i walk past and heard what happened so i tried my very best to tell them in chinese that the only way a game is considered ended is when the throne or tree is down. thank god they understood me. and guess what, they glared and rolled their eyes at me after hearing me said that.
so my point is! basic manners should be observed when you're overseas. doesnt reflect well on the country. at end of the day, dont blame everyone for condemning your countries just because of that few black sheeps.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Asterisk has been featured in today's issue of TODAY. (I hate how weird that sounds when you say it. ._.Will scan and post up the picture soon. Meanwhile, here's a picture taken during our interview.
From left: cass*, Astatine*, d4wn*, furryfish*, =pinksheep*, flawed* who was marshalling but joined us right on time to appear :D
Hime wasn't there yet so unfortunately she didn't get to be in the picture.
Was an exhilarating experience, at least for me, a complete noob to the competitive scene. I would have to say we played really badly, even by our own standards! Was not one of our better days. Girls please fill in the blanks, my memory fails me!
First game: Asterisk*(Scourge) vs m2f (Sents)
Lineup: SF(Cass), Veno(Asta), Zeus(D4wn), Beastmaster(Tammy), Warlock(Dawnsheep)
versus
Bristleback, Tinker, Qop, Lina, Sandking
We were pretty devastated when the opponents picked the bristleback which we had intended to take. Ended up losing pretty badly with me being blicked half the time just before or just after I pull off a poison nova. After the first game we were rather frustrated - A problem with our brackets meant we'd have to win both games, or we weren't advancing.
2nd game: Asterisk*(Scourge) vs AxG(Sents)
Lineup: Viper(Cass), VS(Asta), Sandking(D4wn), Bristleback(Dawnsheep), QoP(Tammy)
versus
Warlock, NA, Veno, Zeus, Tinker
In this game we had a good draft - Ice, Ant and Wan were advising us on the sidelines, while Shan was there with us discussing the drafts. The last draft was a fight between silencer and VS, both my heroes, and it ended up with VS. Needless to say I was pretty worried as my VS is still in need of lots of training. Me and D4wn ended up farming horribly - So much of my gold was spent on wards that kept getting destroyed, and eventually I just fed. Dawnsheep had to farm and farm and wasn't able to be part of our engagements, D4wn didn't get her blink dagger up so there wasn't a single epic due to it being cancelled, or just not being cast. My chasing timing was wrong so I didn't help kill much and I was running around too often to gain any significant exp, and Cass was farming well as usual, but was somewhat distanced when it came to the engagements.
With that failure on our hands, we wandered aimlessly around before D4 went off, then we went to eat. Later we went training and just playing lan pubs together, after drawing up a list of heroes to use.
There is no 'i' in team. We definitely need to forget about what we like to do, what we feel like doing or don't feel like doing, if we intend to ever make progress. Ie. It's not enough for me to say something like, "I can't farm so I won't play a farmer." All of us need to get sufficiently versatile, both in heroes and roles. And if we continue to be just focussing on what we like doing, we won't succeed.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
WCG 2007 starts tomorrow, and right now we're still feeling... grossly unprepared. I take it the guys aren't too peachy either judging by the number of times I've seen Ice tell them, "I am psing you now, byebye!" or something to that extent.
For all of us in Asterisk*, it will be our first time getting something to wear from our sponsors, and for some (well okay, me) a maiden voyage in competitive gaming. Besides dreading and longing for tomorrow all at once, I have been mentally playing out Dota games in my head while going through files at work. I'm starting to feel regrets already at being only able to competitively play a limited number of heroes, and wishing I had been able to train more over the past couple of months. Work pwns us, and I miss those days when my life was pretty much made up of gaming and boyfriend. Now it's a chore to fit in a single game a day, let alone more.
After hearing Tammy declare, "We have too much of a life!" and hearing my boyfriend tell me that real competitive players eat, sleep and breathe gaming, the jitters start coming in and the scary thoughts, "I'M NOT READY!!"
On a great note, dear Hime, who's been gamely training with us over the past couple of months, has agreed to join us, at least for WCG, which entitles her to a new garment too! HOW WE LOVE BEING SPONSORED! <3
So to Tammy, Dawnsheep, Cass, D4wn and maybe now Hime, if tomorrow doesn't work out, I hope we still continue to stay together as a team and keep playing, at least for a long, long while. <3 and emoness.
For all of us in Asterisk*, it will be our first time getting something to wear from our sponsors, and for some (well okay, me) a maiden voyage in competitive gaming. Besides dreading and longing for tomorrow all at once, I have been mentally playing out Dota games in my head while going through files at work. I'm starting to feel regrets already at being only able to competitively play a limited number of heroes, and wishing I had been able to train more over the past couple of months. Work pwns us, and I miss those days when my life was pretty much made up of gaming and boyfriend. Now it's a chore to fit in a single game a day, let alone more.
After hearing Tammy declare, "We have too much of a life!" and hearing my boyfriend tell me that real competitive players eat, sleep and breathe gaming, the jitters start coming in and the scary thoughts, "I'M NOT READY!!"
On a great note, dear Hime, who's been gamely training with us over the past couple of months, has agreed to join us, at least for WCG, which entitles her to a new garment too! HOW WE LOVE BEING SPONSORED! <3
So to Tammy, Dawnsheep, Cass, D4wn and maybe now Hime, if tomorrow doesn't work out, I hope we still continue to stay together as a team and keep playing, at least for a long, long while. <3 and emoness.