hat can we do better?
add an ICAL feed so I can add the event calendar to my personal one

What pisses you off?
that there is no ICAL feed

it'd be a cool feature for sure. I need those remidners to watch 4am games from korea.

The group stage results of Contenders were super confusing because the checkbox and x showed up after the first day of group stage play. Some way to wait to apply those tags would be less confusing.

lamematt420 > coolmatt69

*if I ever make a smurf it's name is going to be lamematt420

Time stamp for the ridiculous Control Center round with the Cwoosh 4kftw: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/148917422?t=06h03m52s

I expected you to reach diamond at the end of that map. Platinum does seem to lend itself to tight 5 round KOTH games, it seems choking and creating reverse sweeps is too common.

The Player Handbook actually shows a slightly different map setup which makes more sense (not including the comp names).

It's actually

Best of 3: Payload / Control / 2CP
4 Game Set: Hybrid / Control / 2CP / Payload
Best of 5: Control / Payload / 2CP / Hybrid / Control
Best of 7: Control / Payload / 2CP / Hybrid / Control / Payload / Hybrid

You Europeans are so commonly bilingual, I'm guessing l'internethulk probably speaks French as well?

So weird to see the former APEX champion lucio/tank becoming an analyst for the other side. Almost feels traitorish? I guess go where the money takes you, perhaps?

Did you miss the Overwatch PIT tournament? Same 4 maps for 4 days and then on the 5th day of group stage they switch the map pool entirely. This map pool setup was fine.

Also Sideshow's mic was super quiet. I was trying to watch a bit at work but if I turned it down to a stealthy level all I'd hear was Jamerson...

Us OW watchers are so spoiled by NGE/ogn production teams!

Why change the map pool after the 4th round robin game? And having such a small pool weirdly balances it towards practicing certain maps.

This is similar to what I dreamed up in another post, but based on the slide that was presented it doesn't seem like they have any intention of doing it.

So they [Americans/Euros] for example, would rather spend months in Korea at a time as they currently do for APEX?

If anything they should really have like 4 teams a region and have some intercontinental play and not a ton. In America, baseball has the American league and National league and they play their division teams more often then the other teams in the entire league.

4 Pacific teams, 4 Asian teams, 4 NA, 4 EU, etc.etc.,

having 16 teams randomly plucked in places seems like a stretch.

"Overwatch League" as Blizzard wants to dream it up could work if it's not the same as just passively watching LoL/CS/DOTA, but if it's just pro teams becoming regional entities it's not going to draw a ton of focus. If IRL watching events included convention-like gaming experiences it could be well attended. I could see myself going to a Boston OW team event if there is some other draw to it. Big cities like Boston could use more internet/gaming cafes. Perhaps if these are part of the home arena it could boost the draw. High-refresh rate gaming isn't something every PC (and no console) gamers get, the chance to demo OW at one of these events could draw more people in.

Anecdotally, even though OW has sold millions of units, a good fraction of those players aren't playing the game anymore and have no interest in watching competitive OW. There was a lot of hype around some of my circles at launch and now it's only the diehards that love FPSs who are still playing it. OW the universe drew a lot of people in, but the game itself is a particular blend of FPS that doesn't attract everyone.

But if there are more opportunities for casual or high-ladder OW players to play on teams (B-teams for practice, or local amateurs mixed with pros?), then it could attract a more wide spread viewer base. But as it is right now with low viewer counts for current professional tournaments, it doesn't make sense for OW to be a million dollar league without something drastically different.

So what's the full train on these team names? WEUNiTED > REUNITED > ex-Reunited > eUnited?

Is this real life?

Yeah I like it, maybe find a top play to fit somewhere in there and it works well as a recap.

It'd be a shame to fly across the world and only play 1 game.

Complexity to win LAN thanks to Sombra buffs.

The universe where Russian visas weren't so hard to come by and SDB made a TF2 LAN.

manofsnow's twitch title: @manofsnow Not playing in WP tonight

I like that this site is very clean and the information/articles are explicitly about the games and the teams that are happening, unlike gosugamers which has way more commentary articles and more clutter on their main site. When I just want to know what games are happening this is a great site and it can only get better!

From that same thread at bottom: (doh beat by admirable)

TifaPls 1 point 31 minutes ago

Quick update: It's a really unfortunate situation for everyone involved, especially Taimou, so we have agreed to postpone the match to 10:30am PST on Saturday. Get some rest Taimou and glhf when we play on stage tomorrow :)

This tournament is legit happening in the middle of Symmetra remake patch? HeadExplode. Symmetra isn't banned?

If numlocked is playing from the UK the lucio lag might not be good for the team dynamics?

The ticker on the front page has the newest matches at top of the list, while the Matches page by itself has the newest matches at bottom of the matches to play list. Somewhat confusing, requires scrolling if there are lots of matches to be played in the log.

So I've been theory-crafting about the Overwatch League. I have no inside knowledge and haven't done any hard-hitting research like Sideshow--just thinking about how it might be dreamed up in a successful way. I remember some opinions being a bit skeptical how it would work, but I don't think it's too crazy an idea.

1. Focus on NA/EU/Asia/ETC (4) divisions. You could try for 6 regionals teams in each area. Let's take NA as an example: North-east/SE/MidWest/South/Cali/NorthWest (I completely neglected Canada here, oops.) BostonNY?/Miami/Chicago/Austin/Cali/Seattle

2. "Combine" - invite try-outs from competitive ladder players at gaming/LAN cafe event centers, where that regions' team would play in future events.

3. Local transport is cheaper if you stay inter-regional. Not that expensive to send 6 players, a coach, some assistants across the US, I know Europe train prices are pretty reasonable too.

4. Final World Series event could be top 4 teams from each region. At a big Blizzcon like event.

5. Overwatch League runs separate from the sponsor-driven competitive team market, invites only players within a certain region. Must be citizens of that country maybe? IDK if that's fair even, but it would limit people moving across regions just to play top OW.

6. The OW World Cup was the most solid Overwatch produced tournament to date, but the games weren't as satisfying and the finals were depressing due to Korea's amazing team. Bringing real player talent from competitive ladder who aren't already on Pro teams, as well as maybe various local-Pro's should up the quality of the gameplay.

7. Overwatch does seem widely popular, and I can imagine lots of people who may not normally be seen as gaming pros get to try out, playing on 144hz+ screens with good equipment. Seems like a cool event if you're from that gaming area. (Note Blizzard surely could crunch the numbers and find areas with high concentrations of Overwatch players.)

Seems like an interesting way to create a more NFL/MLB league system where teams are associated with popular cities/areas. I think that's all I've come up with.

Thoughts?

I didn't know shadder2k played on a team, I just thought him and Seagull were BFF overwatch hunks.

It's awesome to see such closely matched Overwatch teams take games all the way in best of 5/best of 7 series.

Sideshow at MGA?

PogChamp

Almost no Mei was played in the APEX tournament, hence why it happened so much here. Which was strange since that match saw perma-Dva.

Very interesting to see his behind the scenes view. I can see why he was chosen as BlizzCon analyst, he writes really well about the game. Sucks that Blizzard doesn't care about breaking competitive metas that may favor certain teams.

It always says most popular in the Arcade list, so I don't think you're alone.

So who is it? Gods? was already in korea... already has visa...

Wouldn't it be better to pick EnVyUs and play on Friday if they know Talespin isn't going to play? NV would either have random sub after a day or forfeit. The weekend gives time for NV to practice with the new line up.

Hahah you got me there.

What would this game be like Mei Walls weren't a thing--if CC wasn't a thing, etc. I'm afraid maybe the problem with Overwatch long-term is it tries to pack too many abilities into this game just for the sake of new heroes to have fun with, when it changes the game to know that a character can take away someone else's abilities.

I wonder if the next generation of FPS games inspired by Overwatch will ban things like crowd control from Mei's kit simply because it's not fun to play against.

I think they need to tone down her whole kit. Hacking healthpacks lasts too long. Stealth has a crazy short cooldown for an invisible power. It's also an incredibly frustrating and trolly character to play against. It makes me afraid for whatever next character will ruin the basic FPS gameplay that is fun about this game. Perhaps building a large hero pool in an FPS isnt sustainable for fun game play.

Sombra being released to PTR today or tomorrow. How much will she be nerfed before live? Discuss competitive/casual things?

I'm not really looking forward to a trolly stealth character. Also that smg has 60 per clip which is ridiculous.

You will get less FPS running at 144hz vs. 60hz since it requires the graphics card to do more work, but 300 uncapped is more than enough to get over 200 at 144hz, i think.

a new all-tf2 team with clockwork and seagull, drama on over.gg, how can this get any better? usa usa usa

PogChamp

EU Group A/B?

Also are these Asian tournaments LAN or Online/Asian servers? I know some of the teams/people (like Seagull) said they were going to Asia to play in these, but it's not clear if it's for a in-person live tournament or they are just bootcamping in a house while playing online games.

Yeah that's strange. Send a bunch of Europeans to America just to play against all Europeans until the final round. Ruins intercontinental competition.

Hanamura??!?! I know comp hates playing these maps but the strats that come out are super interesting.

I don't find Overwatch any harder to watch than any other fast-paced "esport". If you don't understand the game it's going to be hard to follow but that's true of anything. I don't understand LoL or DOTA, hence I don't watch their esport events. People who don't play Overwatch might not understand what is happening. Tournaments are already getting 20-30k viewers, maybe the bigger prizepool will get it to 60-100k? The Overwatch universe is already super popular and it's great that companies want to throw money at tournaments.

The Overwatch Heroes Rising event had really high production values with a separate analyst desk and player interviews, and I felt that added a lot to the game--giving a human element towards the players. There were lots of story-lines in that event--like the 14-year old gamer who made it far. The biggest problem with that tournament was the scope and drawn out games due to the tournament format (point system rather than stopwatch). The tournament HUD already gives a great overview of gameplay at a glance.

EDIT: I'll make an exception and say that having to fake stopwatch-mode and leave the tournament game UI instead of running sudden death makes everything really climatic. That would suck for a TV tournament. Hopefully Blizzard can at least support a stopwatch mode for lobbies.

Just on battle.net ad list so sure everyone saw it.
https://tespa.org/news/20121072/bring-the-heat-in-the-overwatch-summer-series

Each weekly tournament will award the following prizes to all 6 competing finalists (as well as Coordinators of any Primary Teams) as credit to their Battle.net account balance:

First Place: $40 USD
Second Place: $20 USD
Third Place: $10 USD

The hero switching in the Volskaya game was pretty awesome (IMO) to watch, but i only saw the last 3 maps of the tournament. All the characters got played.

https://clips.twitch.tv/gosugamers/AgreeableAntKAPOW surefour widow mercy 2k numbani flank with edge speedjump?

eSports are for nerds who like drama, apparently. With it being early days in competitive overwatch, the more cutthroat nerds are doing their best to claw their way to the top. Video games.

Snore? time wrong?

Anyone care to mention what preferred call outs are? Playing casually with friends it'd be helpful to let them know some common places and the accurate comms.

Wow! Impressive that a small esports org was able to get a full list of teams for this small LAN. The competitive 6 player teams lend themselves to friends grouping up to play these kinds of things. I was shocked there were 32 teams at PAX East.

I heard rumors, guess it's been announced for several days/weeks now. No cash prizes but Alienware desktops for 1st.

http://www.meetup.com/eSports-Heroes-of-NYC/events/229702939/

I'm tentatively LFT since I missed out on the PAX tournament.