omg Houston with a 30 second stagger on the baby d.va
that's one of the longest baby dva staggers I've ever seen
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
OWL is adding a mini tournament (perhaps one a month) at the end of May. Regular season matches in the 3 weeks leading up to it affect seeding for that tournament. Prize money is on the line but in addition, wins will contribute to the regular season standings. So teams going on a run in the minis will contribute to their qualification for the playoffs.
They clearly need something to boost viewership and with basically everything in a state of flux, there's a lot of leeway to make have changes during the season. Should be interesting.
On another note, I kinda expect OWL to revert to online matches permanently for the remainder of this season and even next. Operating costs are reportedly very high for teams and ad revenue is probably down since viewership is down. With T2/T3 crumbling, I feel like they just need to cut costs as much as possible.
This combining of Ranked and OWL pick rates to decide the chance of getting banned is totally stupid.
Mercy was barely played! Reaper and Mei were in almost every OWL game and weren't even eligible to be picked! Seperate ranked and OWL bans was a better system (not that I agree with ranked bans at all).
Apparently they made the change to combine the pool, so that pros could practice on ladder.
Practice. On. Ladder??
Firstly, they have scrims. Secondly, I don't see how solo or duo queuing into the 12 clown car pile up that is Overwatch ranked is ever going to be practice for 6 stacking with and against the best players in the world (and Bosto)n running set strats.
Like in no way should a pro be considering ranked practice. They probably shouldn't play anything but scrims one they're signed tbh, since ranked is so different I can't imagine it doing much for them.
Apparently they made the change to combine the pool, so that pros could practice on ladder.
Practice. On. Ladder??
Firstly, they have scrims. Secondly, I don't see how solo or duo queuing into the 12 clown car pile up that is Overwatch ranked is ever going to be practice for 6 stacking with and against the best players in the world (and Bosto)n running set strats.
Like in no way should a pro be considering ranked practice. They probably shouldn't play anything but scrims one they're signed tbh, since ranked is so different I can't imagine it doing much for them.
I mean, that was the opinion coming from the pros themselves. However you feel about pros playing ranked, or that having an impact on hero bans, it's kind of hard to argue against its validity when they're the only ones that can actually speak to the experience. And I know lots of pros have mentioned how difficult it's been to get consistent scrims, which is made doubly hard when teams are divided up geographically. It's hard to organize scrims with teams outside your region, but you're playing the teams in your region in actual matches so you're not scrimming against them either.
I don't think pros see ranked as "this is where I go to practice strats and team coordination" but as "this is where I go to keep my mechanics sharp week to week" and "this is where I go to get used to new patches or practice new characters outside of scrims". Echo is a perfect example of that. Missing a week of potential practice on her might not seem like much to us, but as a pro I can imagine that being extremely annoying. Imagine if she'd be live and available in OWL this last weekend, while also being banned in ranked the entire week preceding it. It's just nonsensical.
Personally, I'm totally fine with OWL and ranked having a unified ban system (if they're gonna have a ban system at all). I'd just rather them pull from OWL only.
That being said, the bottom line at this point is if OW2 doesn't do something to pull player/viewer sentiment out of the gutter it's currently living in, OWL is dead in the water anyway.
Houk the Namebringer on
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
This weekend I asked the PA crew what to cook. Toasty suggested butter chicken.
I'm curious if him not playing recently was because he was burned out / planning to leave, or if he's leaving because he hadn't been able to beat the other 2 SF dps for playing time anyway. SF may very well have been eager to get his contract off their books, that's an expensive backup.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
He's their best Zarya and Doomfist, but I imagine the runner up in each of those positions (Choi and Architect/Rascal?) aren't far behind. Losing Sinatraa hurts SF, but it isn't a huge blow, I think.
valorant must be much more fun to play than it is to watch cause i just don’t get it
maybe i’m just not into low ttk games
Yeah I dunno, I feel like we always see this happen when a new competitive game comes out
Pros are used to grinding their own game, so it just feels like work, and competition is tight so they can't let up, they have to keep sprinting just to stay where they are
Then there's a new scene and the pros can sweep in and just dominate easily for the first year or so, and it's novel so they can just kinda have fun and not sweat that much
Riot knows what they're doing with promotion and stuff, and it seems like it's probably well positioned to do well in China, I'm sure Valorant's gonna return their investment. And apparently the netcode and behind the scenes stuff is well done.
But jeez it really does not engage me to watch it. It just feels like watching knockoff CS:GO
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
yeah I hadn't really been following it pre-release, and had mainly just heard "fast-paced shooter with OW-like abilities" so I was cautiously optimistic
but within a couple hours of watching various OW players streaming it, I was already bored out of my mind. I already know I don't like playing CS-style shooters, but I was kind of hoping I'd at least enjoy watching it
but nope, it's apparently just 100% not my thing at all, unfortunately
A note that was relevant to last night’s matches: Lucio boop cannot be deflected.
To explain, there was a moment last night where myself as Lucio and (I forget who) on Orisa were face to face fighting an enemy Genji and Orisa. I didn’t see what happened, only that our Orisa went into the well just as I booped. Kill feed apparently was that the enemy Orisa used grab, but that didn’t stop me from blaming myself for a moment thinking my boop got deflected
All of the experimental CC nerfs have gone live except for Brig's stun length. Which seems fine to me, her stun's already been nerfed previously and is quite short.
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
every other player and coach had taken the Vancouver Titans off of their bios, they switched to just saying OWL. Jjanu was the only one who still ID'd himself as a Titans player.
So Jjanu then getting released and being happy about it seems like there MIGHT be a problem
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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mightyjongyoSour CrrmEast Bay, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
Lots of players/former players/etc congratulating Jjanu on escaping, including Danteh, Linkzr, Harsha (I think, his was in Korean)... Avast hinting that this is only the start of it too. And one of their coaches was released too. Sounds like we're in for crazy levels of mid-season implosion.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
mightyjongyoSour CrrmEast Bay, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
Sign Uprising Academy so Boston can announce that they won't be fielding another contenders team and complete the list of OWL teams with no academy teams
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miscellaneousinsanitygrass grows, birds fly, sun shines,and brother, i hurt peopleRegistered Userregular
Monte (I think) pointed out that with JJanu gone, Vancouver is down to Fissure as their only tank, and their roster is down to just 7. And frankly I wouldn't be surprised to see more departures by their games next weekend, so who the hell knows what they're gonna do.
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
I dunno what that guy is talking about with the titans being seen as a "bad guy" team. They were really popular, and dominant!
Other teams have blown up their rosters and nobody cared, with this current debacle basically everyone is unanimously blaming the Vancouver management for screwing up a good thing.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I dunno what that guy is talking about with the titans being seen as a "bad guy" team. They were really popular, and dominant!
Other teams have blown up their rosters and nobody cared, with this current debacle basically everyone is unanimously blaming the Vancouver management for screwing up a good thing.
There was definitely a shift for a lot of OWL fans as the season went on last year. Titans were beloved by all when the season started, but as they dominated harder and harder lots of people started to see them (rightly or wrongly) as like the Yankees or Lakers of OWL (not everyone obviously, but it was there for sure).
That being said, I think a lot of that fell off over the off-season (the narrative of the management/coaches dropping Bumper got a lot of people back on the players' side, funnily enough) and everyone was excited to see how they fared this season. Even as someone who's always been pretty ambivalent about the team, it's a massive bummer to see what they're going through.
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mightyjongyoSour CrrmEast Bay, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
I think that even if you don't buy the idea that Titans became the villains of OWL, it is definitely true that there has been zero attempts to capitalize on their popularity as the Runaway all-stars outside of the casters and analysts hyping them up. You'd think that the org itself would try to get in on it too, or at least do...well, anything at all.
I didn't really see them as villains per se, but they definitely became the team-to-beat (alongside SF Shock) which meant that overall they were painted in a negative light compared to the constant underdog of almost every other team in OWL.
More tweaking to hero pools
- Hero pools will (eventually) only occur in master's and up.
- Hero pools will be based off of OWL playtime instead of ladder. During offseason it'll be based off of the ladder. It'll still be shared pools though.
- They're tweaking the algorithim to hopefully avoid "every other week" bans, but they don't specify much more than that.
Makes sense to me. Even like diamond games don't adhere to any kind of meta anyway, you barely ever saw goats at most ranks back when goats was mandatory in GM. And high level ladder play is usually copying OWL strats anyway, so copying hero bans from OWL at high levels makes sense.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Posts
that's one of the longest baby dva staggers I've ever seen
never make him play mccree again
Weird to realize that one of the strongest abilities they could give Dva would be a suicide
They clearly need something to boost viewership and with basically everything in a state of flux, there's a lot of leeway to make have changes during the season. Should be interesting.
On another note, I kinda expect OWL to revert to online matches permanently for the remainder of this season and even next. Operating costs are reportedly very high for teams and ad revenue is probably down since viewership is down. With T2/T3 crumbling, I feel like they just need to cut costs as much as possible.
Edit: Hero Bans for next week:
Mercy
Wrecking Ball (RIP Ameng again)
Widowmaker
McCree
Echo is available (no Mercy RIP)
Should be interesting to see what DPS is paired with Echo. Possibly divers? I could see Doomfist, Tracer, and maybe even some Genji.
Mercy was barely played! Reaper and Mei were in almost every OWL game and weren't even eligible to be picked! Seperate ranked and OWL bans was a better system (not that I agree with ranked bans at all).
I agree, I think they should have just kept them separate.
Practice. On. Ladder??
Firstly, they have scrims. Secondly, I don't see how solo or duo queuing into the 12 clown car pile up that is Overwatch ranked is ever going to be practice for 6 stacking with and against the best players in the world (and Bosto)n running set strats.
Like in no way should a pro be considering ranked practice. They probably shouldn't play anything but scrims one they're signed tbh, since ranked is so different I can't imagine it doing much for them.
I mean, that was the opinion coming from the pros themselves. However you feel about pros playing ranked, or that having an impact on hero bans, it's kind of hard to argue against its validity when they're the only ones that can actually speak to the experience. And I know lots of pros have mentioned how difficult it's been to get consistent scrims, which is made doubly hard when teams are divided up geographically. It's hard to organize scrims with teams outside your region, but you're playing the teams in your region in actual matches so you're not scrimming against them either.
I don't think pros see ranked as "this is where I go to practice strats and team coordination" but as "this is where I go to keep my mechanics sharp week to week" and "this is where I go to get used to new patches or practice new characters outside of scrims". Echo is a perfect example of that. Missing a week of potential practice on her might not seem like much to us, but as a pro I can imagine that being extremely annoying. Imagine if she'd be live and available in OWL this last weekend, while also being banned in ranked the entire week preceding it. It's just nonsensical.
Personally, I'm totally fine with OWL and ranked having a unified ban system (if they're gonna have a ban system at all). I'd just rather them pull from OWL only.
mr. 150k is peacing out to valorant
now to see if we get his mvp skin before or after this happens
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
maybe i’m just not into low ttk games
https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sr7l88
Yeah I dunno, I feel like we always see this happen when a new competitive game comes out
Pros are used to grinding their own game, so it just feels like work, and competition is tight so they can't let up, they have to keep sprinting just to stay where they are
Then there's a new scene and the pros can sweep in and just dominate easily for the first year or so, and it's novel so they can just kinda have fun and not sweat that much
Riot knows what they're doing with promotion and stuff, and it seems like it's probably well positioned to do well in China, I'm sure Valorant's gonna return their investment. And apparently the netcode and behind the scenes stuff is well done.
But jeez it really does not engage me to watch it. It just feels like watching knockoff CS:GO
but within a couple hours of watching various OW players streaming it, I was already bored out of my mind. I already know I don't like playing CS-style shooters, but I was kind of hoping I'd at least enjoy watching it
but nope, it's apparently just 100% not my thing at all, unfortunately
A note that was relevant to last night’s matches: Lucio boop cannot be deflected.
To explain, there was a moment last night where myself as Lucio and (I forget who) on Orisa were face to face fighting an enemy Genji and Orisa. I didn’t see what happened, only that our Orisa went into the well just as I booped. Kill feed apparently was that the enemy Orisa used grab, but that didn’t stop me from blaming myself for a moment thinking my boop got deflected
Uhhhh...
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
He was
so this is probably a bad sign for the org
Titans management must REALLY suck
every other player and coach had taken the Vancouver Titans off of their bios, they switched to just saying OWL. Jjanu was the only one who still ID'd himself as a Titans player.
So Jjanu then getting released and being happy about it seems like there MIGHT be a problem
more titans tweetin
Also, good riddance to Sinatra.
Other teams have blown up their rosters and nobody cared, with this current debacle basically everyone is unanimously blaming the Vancouver management for screwing up a good thing.
There was definitely a shift for a lot of OWL fans as the season went on last year. Titans were beloved by all when the season started, but as they dominated harder and harder lots of people started to see them (rightly or wrongly) as like the Yankees or Lakers of OWL (not everyone obviously, but it was there for sure).
That being said, I think a lot of that fell off over the off-season (the narrative of the management/coaches dropping Bumper got a lot of people back on the players' side, funnily enough) and everyone was excited to see how they fared this season. Even as someone who's always been pretty ambivalent about the team, it's a massive bummer to see what they're going through.
I didn't really see them as villains per se, but they definitely became the team-to-beat (alongside SF Shock) which meant that overall they were painted in a negative light compared to the constant underdog of almost every other team in OWL.
More tweaking to hero pools
- Hero pools will (eventually) only occur in master's and up.
- Hero pools will be based off of OWL playtime instead of ladder. During offseason it'll be based off of the ladder. It'll still be shared pools though.
- They're tweaking the algorithim to hopefully avoid "every other week" bans, but they don't specify much more than that.
Makes sense to me. Even like diamond games don't adhere to any kind of meta anyway, you barely ever saw goats at most ranks back when goats was mandatory in GM. And high level ladder play is usually copying OWL strats anyway, so copying hero bans from OWL at high levels makes sense.