Mike
on
LAN

h3x! Making me eat all the times I made fun of him. Good stuff.

I stop watching Overwatch for a few weeks and Dennia is top tier.

harsha, I don't know how, but you've written a good article.

Don't ethnic Russians think of themselves as Russian? That's what the Crimean attaché told me anyway.

I think the bastion tilted them so now they're "messing around haha".

Will these be the final teams or just trialists? Haven't been following.

Surely this team gets dropped soon.

Just ban or low-priority his account of whatever Blizzard do, no need for drama. Obviously he's a complete bell-end but that hardly makes him unique.

Ah, they didn't make it in the playoff. Watching this team is by far the best thing in competitive Overwatch, imo.

First season of OWL better include lots of Korean teams or it's looking like a tier 2 affair.

Is it movi star or movie star? Is it swoosh or cwoosh?

Which team is Seagull's?

Cool that Bren and Sideshow are carrying their form into a new arena, they already seem top tier.

Interesting list of countries allowed. No SK or China obviously, also no Montenegro.

No Mexico in NA. Bad luck Dcop.

Just shut down Western Overwatch until OWL. Seagull leading the way as usual.

Problem is a lack of connectivity. If you imagine a network of blood vessels, you need sufficient capillaries to get the right amount of blood to all the smaller nodes/teams, and when you only have a few big veins linking disparate organs you end up with the tenth best Korean team rated close to the tenth best Chinese team, and no natural way within the system to fix that. You can rate each team manually to begin with (not actually cheating) so it starts off looking intuitively correct.

#20 Propagation is an interesting thought. It would also propagate errors. I think it would have the effect of changing the time scale without addressing the connectivity problem (and it would be confusing for teams who like to have clear targets to aim for). Might be​ worthwhile though, to deal with regions shifting relative strength. You can arbitrarily set the best Chinese team equal to the eighth Korean team, the best NA to the fourth best Korean, etc, then turn on the machine and it'll look fine for a while as they mostly play within their regions, but it'll fail to capture a regional surge, like gosugamers with Korea. So I like that idea.

If an Elo system works then it's a self-correcting network, so you can test it by giving it dodgy starting values and feeding it results, see how quickly it tends towards correctness. And if it doesn't work then you want it to look like it works for as long as possible, because who cares, it's just entertainment.

You'd expect someone like Meta Athena to really utilise the 7th man with some specialised plays. Don't see Envy getting much stronger though.

I don't know how the behind the scenes stuff works. Need new 'brand' then, whatever that is. You must have seen Montecristo railing against the idea of Selfless getting invited to stuff because one of them is 15 apparently. As a viewer I just want to see the best teams.

plus seems unlikely that nV and selfless have been invited since nV have APEX games on 30th May and Selfless coach was unaware of invites yet. We'll see!

Looks like if Selfless ever want to get invited to LANs they need new management.

EU teams the only ones without extra players, will get found out.

I'd like skins of national teams.

Splyce top tier NA?

I think this is Rogue beating Selfless in the final again. Envy maybe third or fourth best.

Wonder if the problem was Seagull being a superstar meant no one could stamp their authority on the team and they end up feeling like a sloppy mix over and over.

Huh. Hulk really impressed me with how he thinks about the game. You'd think they might've kept him as the 7th man to sub in when they need a Winston.

New Lucio with mad skills?

Interesting in light of Sideshow's video (which basically said Buds plays too passively). I think the psychology is more important: if everyone is reading each other's minds a bit then you can sustain most sort of shapes and playstyles, because you know people are reacting properly. Probably why Talespin is back. Let's see if they aren't just beta heroes.

Every team needs seven until rules say a different number, if they want to win (though not convinced that winning is necessary either now or once there are franchises).

Zeb on support still seems a waste of creativity. Would be nice if this works.

konr, I'll give you a million pounds, or a scout spot in Prem, if you understand what the disagreement here is about. It's in #51: there are three options, and harsha is saying, without evidence, that the least plausible of those three options is what happened.

Gosh. Seems unlikely they would get into Blizzard's league. Wonder if the game can sustain professional non-league teams (maybe in Korea, you'd think).

Do LG Loyal live in Canada?

I'm saying harsha is most likely talking bollocks. It just doesn't add up. You're welcome to find him more credible than I do.

America isn't really a country, it's like a collecting basin for industry and ideas. Think of it that way.

Group B tasty too.

Think it through: Envy can tell Apex they changed their mind, and then either NRG can say they aren't bothered (declining the invite = news) or Apex can tell NRG they're preferring Envy for some reason (=news). However you cut it there's a story not being told here. The suggestion that NRG - the most popular team in the game - were offered a place that could be taken away if Envy changed their minds is clearly bollocks.

What made Envy change their minds? Let's get some quotes, let's get the story.

He meant in contrast to "leading many to speculate that the invite would soon be rescinded". But why should we believe him without any quotes? "In reality..." oh okay, thanks.

#43 An article without quotes that supports the organisation isn't journalism, it's a press release. Someone is manipulating harsha into uncritically issuing press releases. This one appears not to be true. Once you decline an offer, and it gets offered to two other people, you have to be re-offered it before you can accept.

"In reality, Team EnVyUs is attending APEX entirely of their own volition."

That's very bold. Prove it.

Yes but what actually happened? over.gg doesn't work for APEX. If NRG had their invitation revoked it's an esports story. (harsha I've said this before: if your articles used quotes instead of anonymous sources, they would much closer resemble journalism)

Wonder why that wasn't mentioned when "Sources close to the OGN's production staff and both Rogue and NRG indicate that the two teams have received offers to attend APEX Season 3". That's multiple sources hiding a key piece of information.

NRG must have said "We're not sure" then APEX said "Envy have changed their mind, shall we just use them?" and NRG said "Okay."

I don't buy NRG saying "Waaiiit..." and APEX saying "Too slow!"

But then why was it leaked/released that NRG were invited but not Immortals until Immortals had declined?

And do we know why Envy changed their minds?

Also this line from the previous article: "Trips to APEX are seen as a rare chance that must be earned." - someone thought Envy earned one of the top two spots? Do Koreans not watch NA Overwatch?

Maybe I just struggle with that because from a British point of view it looks rude.

Did NRG turn down the offer or was it revoked? Immortals turned it down to rest players, apparently. Then it goes to NRG, who drop Seagull, and what happened next? Does anyone here know?

Harsha, if you're keeping your sources anonymous then the story isn't worth much. Why did Immortals turn it down?

Do you have a source for that?

#20 They could invite anyone once they decided NRG weren't up to it. Invitations don't "reactivate", unless Korean society works even more differently than I imagine.

I don't think the relegation/promotion stuff applies to invited non-Korean teams. Most likely they were going to invite NRG until Seagull left, and now they're using this story as cover.

#12, well I saw someone (Reinforce?) saying that unsigned European teams would be among the top in NA, but we just don't have any ability to know that. All we have are results, and results say that Rogue and Selfless are clearly very good. We have one tournament of results from Europe, which isn't enough to judge.

If they're going for a LAN-proven team, I'd prefer Faze to Envy. How often will we get to see Mike and Shadowburn on LAN ping before Blizzard's league?

Ah, that's interesting. Although my question was have they even played since the last one. I'd rather see a team invited who have shown strong form, if we're only having two Western teams.

It doesn't really address my question, harsha.