It turns out this weekend was the quarterly MLG major event. The format seemed to change a fair bit. The last time I tuned in the MLG championships were pretty much a big open event. Top seeds would maybe get some byes or start off in a separate pool play while open entrants played double elimination, but the big thing was that anyone who wanted to show up and pay could play. This time around seemed different. They only had 32 people in the StarCraft II event, and it was straight single elimination. League of Legends ran 3 mini-events (12 standard LCS matches, a LCS qualifier from the minor leagues, and a 4 team exhibition event with a top EU team and a top Korean team against two of the NA LCS teams). I didn't watch any of the Call of Duty stuff, so I don't know how that worked. Fighting games and Halo were both dropped entirely. The crowds still seemed pretty big despite not being able to compete themselves, and the games all seemed to be pretty high quality. By getting rid of the whole 256 man bracket for SCII they were able to stream every game which was certainly nice, and they did it on only 2 SCII streams instead of 6 like last time.
The website also changed a bit. It used to be that MLG had their own combination stream thing where you could watch all the streams at once in a tiles layout. This time all of the streams were done through Twitch and the MLG site essentially just had tabs to select the 4 different streams. No way to watch all 4 at once easily. I guess I could have opened 4 web browser windows. It seems like the loss of functionality would be bad, but I actually liked it. MLG events have always had streaming issues in my experience, but this one went very smooth. Maybe that was the switch to Twitch. Maybe it was preventing all the viewers from watching all the streams at once and overloading things. Whatever it was, I liked it.
I didn't really know what was going on in the SCII games. They're using the new expansion that just came out and I didn't have a clue what most of the new units did. Also apparently you can build reapers without needing a tech lab now? Most of the matches seemed to be TvZ which makes me sad as an old Protoss player.
The LCS games were actually pretty great. Lots of the matches pitted a 'top 4' team against a 'bottom 4' team but the bottom 4 team won several of those games. I think maybe all the experience of playing professionally for a month and a half is finally starting to come home for some of these guys.
At any rate, I had a great time just sitting back and watching games all weekend. I also got some tax stuff done during pauses between games, so this may have been the most productive weekend I've had in a long time. Woo!
Showing posts with label MLG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MLG. Show all posts
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Thursday, November 01, 2012
MLG Fall Championships
It's been a while since I've been able to spend a whole weekend just watching video games online. This weekend will change that since it's the Major League Gaming championships this weekend. I haven't been following them at all this quarter so I don't know if they'd been running arenas or whatnot. If they have, Facebook wasn't telling me about it.
This championship looks to be interesting in that they're bring back a first person shooter for the first time in quite a while. Even more interesting is that it's a game that hasn't even come out yet! Halo 4 is getting a prerelease of sorts by being a $40k tournament! Beyond that they're holding events for StarCraft II, League of Legends, Mortal Kombat, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and something called PlayStation AllStars that I've never heard of.
Apparently they've got a field of over 850 people to play the Halo 4 event which seems like an awful lot of people to compete in a game no one has even played! I donno, have they given beta copies to these people or is everyone going in blind?
This championship looks to be interesting in that they're bring back a first person shooter for the first time in quite a while. Even more interesting is that it's a game that hasn't even come out yet! Halo 4 is getting a prerelease of sorts by being a $40k tournament! Beyond that they're holding events for StarCraft II, League of Legends, Mortal Kombat, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and something called PlayStation AllStars that I've never heard of.
Apparently they've got a field of over 850 people to play the Halo 4 event which seems like an awful lot of people to compete in a game no one has even played! I donno, have they given beta copies to these people or is everyone going in blind?
Monday, August 27, 2012
MLG Controversy
The MLG Summer Championships were held over last weekend. I watched a lot of the games live but ended up playing in the Go4LoL cup thing during the start of the League of Legends finals. At one point I popped the stream back open to catch a glimpse of what was going on (we had a first round bye and then promptly got stomped by a cheating 2200 team) and was shocked to discover that there were something like 31 kills in the first 8 minutes of the game. This is really surprising because I feel one of the things that really distinguishes top tier play is knowing when to engage and when to run. I constantly see top players escaping with a sliver of health or preemptively running from a bad situation where my team would engage to death or not run in time and die. 31 kills is insane. Heck, we only died 34 times in 22 minutes in our cup game!
I mentioned this on Skype and Kevin went to check the game out. His immediate reaction was the game was an ARAM and not a normal game. For those who may not know, ARAM stands for All Random All Middle which is a style of game where everyone takes a random champion and runs to the middle lane. You can't go back to base to shop or heal unless you die. It's an interesting variant and I've played it a few times. But it's not the actual game. A couple arenas ago the StarCraft II guys played a 2v2 tournament which was interesting. But they tacked it on as an added bonus; they didn't replace actual games that people were paying for. I would be in favour of them running an ARAM side event at some point. I'd find that amusing. But replacing one of the games in a final? Pretty sketchy. MLG makes the finals a best 3 of 5 for a reason... The fans want to watch a lot of quality games between the best teams. Throwing one of those games away sucks.
It would be like if the Penguins and Capitals were playing hockey and decided to replace the first period with a series of Crosby and Ovechkin breakaways. Some people would find that interesting (just look at the All-Star game) but the people who paid to get in to the game expecting to watch hockey would be in for a real shock. As someone who does pay a fair bit to watch LoL online I'm pretty bitter that they screwed around with an ARAM in the finals.
Now long after the finals finished MLG released a statement stating they'd disqualified Curse and Diginitas (the two teams in the finals) for breaking a rule about forfeiting matches/colluding to alter the outcome of a game. Eventually more details came out and it actually wasn't because of the ARAM. They got some sort of warning for the ARAM but it wasn't worth a $32k penalty. It turns out they got disqualified for being very public about agreeing to a prize split. With nothing on the line the teams were free to screw around which resulted in the ARAM. The difference between first and second place was supposed to be $8k which should be enough incentive to actually try to win. Remove that incentive and MLG feels the games get screwy and the viewers fail to get their money's worth. Apparently MLG disqualified some Smash Bros players for a similiar thing a while ago? So it's not like this is something new. MLG is against match fixing and they view prize splits as being part of match fixing.
Personally I think if eSports wants to be taken seriously this is a good stance to take. You wouldn't see the Canucks and Bruins agreeing to just be friends and share the Stanley Cup. I seem to recall prize splits happening all the time in Magic and poker so I am surprised to find MLG taking this stance. It's always just been something that happens.
I mentioned this on Skype and Kevin went to check the game out. His immediate reaction was the game was an ARAM and not a normal game. For those who may not know, ARAM stands for All Random All Middle which is a style of game where everyone takes a random champion and runs to the middle lane. You can't go back to base to shop or heal unless you die. It's an interesting variant and I've played it a few times. But it's not the actual game. A couple arenas ago the StarCraft II guys played a 2v2 tournament which was interesting. But they tacked it on as an added bonus; they didn't replace actual games that people were paying for. I would be in favour of them running an ARAM side event at some point. I'd find that amusing. But replacing one of the games in a final? Pretty sketchy. MLG makes the finals a best 3 of 5 for a reason... The fans want to watch a lot of quality games between the best teams. Throwing one of those games away sucks.
It would be like if the Penguins and Capitals were playing hockey and decided to replace the first period with a series of Crosby and Ovechkin breakaways. Some people would find that interesting (just look at the All-Star game) but the people who paid to get in to the game expecting to watch hockey would be in for a real shock. As someone who does pay a fair bit to watch LoL online I'm pretty bitter that they screwed around with an ARAM in the finals.
Now long after the finals finished MLG released a statement stating they'd disqualified Curse and Diginitas (the two teams in the finals) for breaking a rule about forfeiting matches/colluding to alter the outcome of a game. Eventually more details came out and it actually wasn't because of the ARAM. They got some sort of warning for the ARAM but it wasn't worth a $32k penalty. It turns out they got disqualified for being very public about agreeing to a prize split. With nothing on the line the teams were free to screw around which resulted in the ARAM. The difference between first and second place was supposed to be $8k which should be enough incentive to actually try to win. Remove that incentive and MLG feels the games get screwy and the viewers fail to get their money's worth. Apparently MLG disqualified some Smash Bros players for a similiar thing a while ago? So it's not like this is something new. MLG is against match fixing and they view prize splits as being part of match fixing.
Personally I think if eSports wants to be taken seriously this is a good stance to take. You wouldn't see the Canucks and Bruins agreeing to just be friends and share the Stanley Cup. I seem to recall prize splits happening all the time in Magic and poker so I am surprised to find MLG taking this stance. It's always just been something that happens.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
MLG Summer Championship
This weekend brings the return of a couple recurring events in my life... Fan eXpo is this weekend in downtown Toronto and the MLG season championship is being held in Raleigh (but is being streamed online so I can watch it in the comfort of my home). Having them both happen at the same time is a little annoying because realistically I can only be involved with one of them. There are pros and cons each way but I can't lie... A deciding factor for which I'm going to do is the need to put on pants. It also doesn't help that Fan eXpo is so soon after WBC and I'm still a little people'd out. And I don't have a free pass this year while I do have access to MLG.
League of Legends is being featured once again which makes me happy. StarCraft II is as well, and Day[9] will be casting, which makes me happy. I hope MarineKing shows up this time! Still no first person shooter event which is a little surprising but I don't really care all that much. Only two fighting games instead of three. I wonder what King of Fighters did to warrant exclusion this time around. I may flip over to the fighters at some point over the weekend but my main focus is certainly going to be LoL and then SC2.
Apparently they're giving away some HD streams as a bit of a preshow starting at 1:30pm on Friday. It may be worth checking out? All weekend most of the streams will be free in standard definition as well. Don't miss out!
League of Legends is being featured once again which makes me happy. StarCraft II is as well, and Day[9] will be casting, which makes me happy. I hope MarineKing shows up this time! Still no first person shooter event which is a little surprising but I don't really care all that much. Only two fighting games instead of three. I wonder what King of Fighters did to warrant exclusion this time around. I may flip over to the fighters at some point over the weekend but my main focus is certainly going to be LoL and then SC2.
Apparently they're giving away some HD streams as a bit of a preshow starting at 1:30pm on Friday. It may be worth checking out? All weekend most of the streams will be free in standard definition as well. Don't miss out!
Thursday, July 26, 2012
ELOBUFF
I found out earlier today that there's a League of Legends related website which is really serious about tracking stats for the game. It's called ELOBUFF and it sounds like it does everything I'd want in a stat site. Avid readers with a good memory may remember my post about positional statistics from a few months ago where I looked at the lolstatistics site and lamented a lot of glitches in their data. It was counting my Akali games in my jungler stats. It wasn't counting my Graves games anywhere. I play Ezreal both AD and AP. In both 5s and 3s. I had no way to possibly glean relevant data from what it was giving me.
ELOBUFF sounds like it solves those problems. It doesn't just look at the end result of a game. It looks at the items you built and the summoner skills you used in an attempt to more accurately determine your role. It claims to have a bajillion filters. It tracks most games, not just your games, and can give actual statistical 'counter-picks' based on the results of hundreds of thousands of games. It stays on top of current trends to let you know how the metagame may be shifting in terms of roles, rules, and items. It sounds fantastic.
Unfortunately there is no free lunch. They're running a subscription model with a $6 per month fee. It doesn't seem to have any sort of free trial which seems a little odd. I'd think letting everyone check out their data once would make sense. It did let me look up the info for the games played at the last MLG. There were 88 games played and Janna was played in 53 of them!
I found out about ELOBUFF because they're running a promotion with MLG for the Summer Arena. Anyone who buys an HD pass to the arena gets a free month on ELOBUFF. That pass is $10 ($8 for gold members) so it's really not much more than the ELOBUFF fee itself. I was planning on buying an HD pass anyway... Except the summer arena for LoL is during WBC. The internet in the hotel was really terrible last year and I can't imagine watching an HD stream would be feasible.
On the other hand I want to support MLG and I really want them to think League of Legends is a game worth supporting. So maybe I'll buy a pass anyway and just watch the VODs on the civic holiday Monday after WBC?
ELOBUFF sounds like it solves those problems. It doesn't just look at the end result of a game. It looks at the items you built and the summoner skills you used in an attempt to more accurately determine your role. It claims to have a bajillion filters. It tracks most games, not just your games, and can give actual statistical 'counter-picks' based on the results of hundreds of thousands of games. It stays on top of current trends to let you know how the metagame may be shifting in terms of roles, rules, and items. It sounds fantastic.
Unfortunately there is no free lunch. They're running a subscription model with a $6 per month fee. It doesn't seem to have any sort of free trial which seems a little odd. I'd think letting everyone check out their data once would make sense. It did let me look up the info for the games played at the last MLG. There were 88 games played and Janna was played in 53 of them!
I found out about ELOBUFF because they're running a promotion with MLG for the Summer Arena. Anyone who buys an HD pass to the arena gets a free month on ELOBUFF. That pass is $10 ($8 for gold members) so it's really not much more than the ELOBUFF fee itself. I was planning on buying an HD pass anyway... Except the summer arena for LoL is during WBC. The internet in the hotel was really terrible last year and I can't imagine watching an HD stream would be feasible.
On the other hand I want to support MLG and I really want them to think League of Legends is a game worth supporting. So maybe I'll buy a pass anyway and just watch the VODs on the civic holiday Monday after WBC?
Friday, July 20, 2012
MLG StarCraft II Summer Arena
It snuck up on me, but apparently the StarCraft II summer arena is this weekend. This is great for me, since I can craft some stuff in Final Fantasy XI and watch top tier StarCraft games at the same time. Woo!
They seem to like shaking up the format each arena and the twist this time is they're running two different double-elimination brackets with the two winners meeting in the grand finals. This is different in that there could be someone who only loses one match but still doesn't win the whole thing. I'm not sure I really understand why they're making this switch but it's interesting.
They also let the top 16 players choose their first round opponents. My initial feeling is that this is going to make for some bad opening round matches. A Zerg player who is really good against Protoss is going to search out a Protoss player who isn't so good against Zerg and then stomp them. But I guess this will only really be true for the first few people who are picking their opponents and the #1 seed is likely to stomp the #32 seed in a normal system anyway. Now, the seeding system isn't perfect (often the top players are from Korea and may not have played in a previous MLG event to build up a high seed), so this does have the advantage of letting the top seeds dodge an underseeded player.
When I look at the roster I'm a little sad. No HuK. No Idra. No MarineKing. On the plus side two of their race specific commentators from the first Spring arena qualified this time around. I made a snide comment about thinking if they were that good they'd be playing in the arena... Well, they are! I can't help but think that the opportunity to go to an arena and break down all the games was a big help for them and I'm really happy that they're there. Qxc, Sheth, and Grubby were all commentators at the first spring arena and are all playing in this event. I like having someone to root for so I'm going to cheer for these guys. Especially Grubby since he plays Protoss!
Perhaps the best part of this arena is they've got Day[9] to do cast some of the games. Woo! Also pretty cool is they've made the standard definition feed free so if anyone is curious they can check it out themselves.
They seem to like shaking up the format each arena and the twist this time is they're running two different double-elimination brackets with the two winners meeting in the grand finals. This is different in that there could be someone who only loses one match but still doesn't win the whole thing. I'm not sure I really understand why they're making this switch but it's interesting.
They also let the top 16 players choose their first round opponents. My initial feeling is that this is going to make for some bad opening round matches. A Zerg player who is really good against Protoss is going to search out a Protoss player who isn't so good against Zerg and then stomp them. But I guess this will only really be true for the first few people who are picking their opponents and the #1 seed is likely to stomp the #32 seed in a normal system anyway. Now, the seeding system isn't perfect (often the top players are from Korea and may not have played in a previous MLG event to build up a high seed), so this does have the advantage of letting the top seeds dodge an underseeded player.
When I look at the roster I'm a little sad. No HuK. No Idra. No MarineKing. On the plus side two of their race specific commentators from the first Spring arena qualified this time around. I made a snide comment about thinking if they were that good they'd be playing in the arena... Well, they are! I can't help but think that the opportunity to go to an arena and break down all the games was a big help for them and I'm really happy that they're there. Qxc, Sheth, and Grubby were all commentators at the first spring arena and are all playing in this event. I like having someone to root for so I'm going to cheer for these guys. Especially Grubby since he plays Protoss!
Perhaps the best part of this arena is they've got Day[9] to do cast some of the games. Woo! Also pretty cool is they've made the standard definition feed free so if anyone is curious they can check it out themselves.
Monday, July 09, 2012
MLG Summer Arena: League of Legends Qualifier
An interesting item popped up on Facebook today from Major League Gaming. It would seem they're holding a League of Legends arena this season and are running open qualifying tournaments. It looks like they're advancing one NA team and one EU team from these qualifiers but I can't find any information about how else might be qualified for the arena already. Are any of the top notch teams excluded from the qualifiers? Just how good do you need to be to play in this thing?
The announcement was put up on the 5th and matches start on the 10th (tomorrow!) so there hasn't been a whole lot of time for teams to sign up. There's room for 32 teams and I'm really wondering how competitive the bottom chunk of this bracket is going to be. If Mathletes signed up would we get trounced or would we get thoroughly trounced? There's a $50 registration fee and prizes only for first place (free trip to New York to play in the arena) so signing up would be a lot like pissing $10 away... But getting to play at least two games in a serious (and possibly streamed) event actually sounds like better entertainment value than going to a movie, for example, and it's in the same price range.
Of course, jumping right in at the MLG level seems a little crazy. Do I really want to be the blackcat08 of LoL? I wonder if there are any more minor circuits kicking around to check out first. I remember playing in some scrub league for DotA many years ago with Robb and my brother. Those sorts of things have to exist now, right? Gamezilla back in New Brunswick is holding a LAN event in a couple weeks and I wonder if similarly things exist around here...
At any rate... Anyone else tempted to make a fool of themselves? Enh? Enh?
The announcement was put up on the 5th and matches start on the 10th (tomorrow!) so there hasn't been a whole lot of time for teams to sign up. There's room for 32 teams and I'm really wondering how competitive the bottom chunk of this bracket is going to be. If Mathletes signed up would we get trounced or would we get thoroughly trounced? There's a $50 registration fee and prizes only for first place (free trip to New York to play in the arena) so signing up would be a lot like pissing $10 away... But getting to play at least two games in a serious (and possibly streamed) event actually sounds like better entertainment value than going to a movie, for example, and it's in the same price range.
Of course, jumping right in at the MLG level seems a little crazy. Do I really want to be the blackcat08 of LoL? I wonder if there are any more minor circuits kicking around to check out first. I remember playing in some scrub league for DotA many years ago with Robb and my brother. Those sorts of things have to exist now, right? Gamezilla back in New Brunswick is holding a LAN event in a couple weeks and I wonder if similarly things exist around here...
At any rate... Anyone else tempted to make a fool of themselves? Enh? Enh?
Thursday, June 07, 2012
MLG: Anaheim
Major League Gaming is holding their spring championship event this weekend with coverage starting tomorrow at 8:30 pm. I get pretty pumped about watching these events in general because of StarCraft II. It turns out this time around they're also running a huge League of Legends event. 19 teams with a $40k prize pool! They've apparently even built 5-man sound-proof booths to use in order to be able to show the games to the big crowd at the event site.
The fact the event is in Anaheim makes me happy, too. The times are PST this time around, which means the Saturday broadcast schedule is from 1pm until 4am. I'm sure for some people this is unfortunate but for me it's awesome. I get to sleep in reasonably late (probably still have to set an alarm) and then have something to watch all day long.
StarCraft II and League of Legends aren't the only games being played this weekend. They're also running events for Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters, and Soul Calibur. I watched some of those games during the winter championship and found them to be interesting enough. They had the real advantage that the games are fairly quick and the whole match gets played out one after another. I find there's a fair amount of downtime between games of SC2 and a ton of downtime between games of LoL so having a quick thing on another channel available to switch to was pretty useful.
If anyone wants to swing by this weekend and watch some pro level video games on the big screen give me a call or shoot me a message somewhere. LoL is going to have priority but I'm sure some of all the games will get watched!
The fact the event is in Anaheim makes me happy, too. The times are PST this time around, which means the Saturday broadcast schedule is from 1pm until 4am. I'm sure for some people this is unfortunate but for me it's awesome. I get to sleep in reasonably late (probably still have to set an alarm) and then have something to watch all day long.
StarCraft II and League of Legends aren't the only games being played this weekend. They're also running events for Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters, and Soul Calibur. I watched some of those games during the winter championship and found them to be interesting enough. They had the real advantage that the games are fairly quick and the whole match gets played out one after another. I find there's a fair amount of downtime between games of SC2 and a ton of downtime between games of LoL so having a quick thing on another channel available to switch to was pretty useful.
If anyone wants to swing by this weekend and watch some pro level video games on the big screen give me a call or shoot me a message somewhere. LoL is going to have priority but I'm sure some of all the games will get watched!
Sunday, May 20, 2012
StarCraft II Spring Arena 2
The second MLG spring arena for StarCraft II took place this weekend. My sleep schedule hasn't exactly been normal so I didn't get a chance to watch many game lives but I did watch quite a few on demand. I was happy to see both Huk and Idra ended up qualifying though they didn't end up doing terribly well. I was really sad to see that MarineKing didn't show up. I did a little searching but couldn't find out why he missed it.
Apparently Blizzard recently released a balance patch with 3 changes. Protoss observers build 10 seconds faster, Zerg overlords move 25% faster, and Zerg queens had their melee attack range extended. I don't think the observer change did a whole lot this weekend but the two Zerg buffs had a huge impact.
Overlord speed is something that doesn't feel important on the surface but it has a huge impact in terms of scouting. Zerg get initial information faster and are in significantly less danger of having their overlord sniped by a marine or a stalker. It's easier to get full information out of a suicide scout. The extra speed could possibly even come home with drops? I'm not sure if the buff impacts the speed after researching the improved speed buff but I did see some overlord drop games this weekend and I don't recall that ever really being a strategy people used except for a cute game or two with banelings.
The queen range buff is insane. It was pretty much solely responsible for shutting down early hellion harassment out of Terran players. They mostly all still tried it out and got completely shut down when they did. This is the sort of thing that probably needs adaptation and will shake out in the wash in the long run but for this tournament it felt like it really skewed the results in terms of the Zerg vs Terran matches.
The top 3 of the event were all Zerg which meant the final three matches were all Zerg mirror matches. I didn't find them to be terribly interesting. I'm sure it's really skill intensive to micro small armies of zerglings and banelings around but for me it was pretty boring to watch. I ended up napping during the finals! At any rate, Violet ended up winning! He was wearing a surgical mask which I thought was a little odd but it would seem he was sick and didn't want to infect other people. How thoughtful!
Apparently Blizzard recently released a balance patch with 3 changes. Protoss observers build 10 seconds faster, Zerg overlords move 25% faster, and Zerg queens had their melee attack range extended. I don't think the observer change did a whole lot this weekend but the two Zerg buffs had a huge impact.
Overlord speed is something that doesn't feel important on the surface but it has a huge impact in terms of scouting. Zerg get initial information faster and are in significantly less danger of having their overlord sniped by a marine or a stalker. It's easier to get full information out of a suicide scout. The extra speed could possibly even come home with drops? I'm not sure if the buff impacts the speed after researching the improved speed buff but I did see some overlord drop games this weekend and I don't recall that ever really being a strategy people used except for a cute game or two with banelings.
The queen range buff is insane. It was pretty much solely responsible for shutting down early hellion harassment out of Terran players. They mostly all still tried it out and got completely shut down when they did. This is the sort of thing that probably needs adaptation and will shake out in the wash in the long run but for this tournament it felt like it really skewed the results in terms of the Zerg vs Terran matches.
The top 3 of the event were all Zerg which meant the final three matches were all Zerg mirror matches. I didn't find them to be terribly interesting. I'm sure it's really skill intensive to micro small armies of zerglings and banelings around but for me it was pretty boring to watch. I ended up napping during the finals! At any rate, Violet ended up winning! He was wearing a surgical mask which I thought was a little odd but it would seem he was sick and didn't want to infect other people. How thoughtful!
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
StarCraft II Spring Arena 2 Qualifiers
Apparently MLG is broadcasting the games from the invite only qualifiers for the second StarCraft II spring arena starting today. I found out because they emailed me a code to watch it in HD (part of the arena package thing I bought to watch the first one I guess). They're going to be shown over the next 6 days so I guess I have something to do in the week before Diablo III launches! I hope Huk and Idra can come back from their recent poor showings and qualify for the next arena!
Sunday, April 22, 2012
All Kings Must Die!
First of all, I was a little disappointed with the 2v2 tournament last night. MKP and Huk were the most popular team but apparently MKP was really unhappy with that team. It turns out in a field of 7 Koreans and 1 Canadian you don't actually want to team up with the person with whom you can't really communicate. During the games themselves it became pretty clear that they didn't have any 2v2 experience at all. I used to play a lot of 2v2s back in the day (T&P with Jer, T&P with Tom, R&R with Robb) and the very first thing we learned was that you have to completely wall in your ramp if the other team has a Zerg. DRG went with a 10-pool, MC proxied two barracks and spammed marauders and swarmed them. If they were walled off (or if Huk had built any zealots) they could have handled it pretty easily I think. As it was they had to sac most of their workers to survive a little bit and then lost shortly thereafter. The commentators weren't taking it very seriously but it was actually pretty funny. The tournament itself was pretty cool; I just wanted MKP and Huk to win.
For the main event MKP went 6-1 in the round robin and handily won his semifinal match. He ended up in the final against DRG for the 3rd straight MLG event. It went to a 7th game and DRG pulled off a quick baneling bust and managed to win. The king is dead! 8(
For the main event MKP went 6-1 in the round robin and handily won his semifinal match. He ended up in the final against DRG for the 3rd straight MLG event. It went to a 7th game and DRG pulled off a quick baneling bust and managed to win. The king is dead! 8(
Friday, April 20, 2012
Building 2v2 Teams
I've been thinking a fair bit about how to properly turn internet votes for potential pairs into an actual split of 8 people into 2 teams. (Getting to sleep when I have something like this to think about is really hard...) Properly may not even be the right term because there are different ways to work it out that are different and yet still optimal depending on what your criteria are going into the decision. I thought it would be useful to look at the numbers as of early Friday morning along with different ways I could see to split the StarCraft 2 spring arena teams up.
For starters we have the restriction that there will be no same-race teams. This was handed down by MLG in the announcement post so I'm going to assume it's non-negotiable. I also happen to like the restriction if only to stop a double 6-pool from happening. At any rate, with the racial split of the players (3 terran, 3 protoss, 2 zerg) this actually significantly reduces the options. The only way to work it out with the given restriction is to have one ZT team, one ZP team, and 2 TP teams. (You can't have two ZT teams since that would leave three P for the remaining two teams. The same logic applies to two ZP teams. The only remaining option is the given one.)
After that you need to decide what the most important factor is. Each team is getting a number of YES votes and a number of NO votes. The way I see it you can use one of those as your main criteria, or the other one, or you can build a function between the two of them. The simplest would be a straight subtraction. I might go with something where the YES votes were weighted as worth twice as much as a NO vote, for example. You can also try to maximize the total sum of your main criteria across the four teams or you could try to maximize the main criteria on a team by team basis to fill in our 4 legal team options.
Answer the following questions to see where you'd fall on that spectrum:
- Should the team with the most YES votes get included no matter what?
- Should the team with the most NO votes get excluded no matter what?
- Should the team with the biggest YES-NO spread get included no matter what?
- Should you try to make the most people very happy or should you try to make everyone as happy as possible even if no one gets what they really want?
Picking the biggest number, eliminating all now illegal teams (ones containing a chosen player or ones in a race combination which is no longer legal), and iterating is pretty easy. Maximizing the total sum is less so. I feel like I should know how to do this sort of thing from my C&O days. Simplex method or something. I couldn't think of how to do it right away and let my mind wander a bit. I started thinking about how I'd write a program for it and what sort of pruning function I could use to pare down the search tree. Then I thought about how big the tree would even be... Turns out there's only 36 possible combinations. Oh. Well then, I'll just build a spreadsheet!
Before looking at how things shake out (to avoid allowing a potential MKP&Huk team cloud my judgment) I believe the way to go would be to use a straight YES-NO function to assign a value to each team and then use the spreadsheet to maximize the total sum of that value across the 4 chosen teams. I like this because if a particular team is popular relative to other options for a player it should get chosen and doesn't rest everything in the hands of the single most popular team. Theoretically just picking the biggest number and eliminating illegal options could result in the least popular team sneaking in. But would it even matter? How do things shake out?
CRITERIA: Most YES Votes
Pick Biggest - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1640 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1640 votes
CRITERIA: Fewest NO Votes
Pick Biggest - MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet, MKP&Huk - 777 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 777 votes
CRITERIA: Most YES-NO Votes
Pick Biggest - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 863 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 863 votes
CRITERIA: Most YES-(NO/2) Votes
Pick Biggest - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1251.5 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1251.5 votes
Ok, so it turns out as the numbers stood it doesn't actually matter what criteria you chose among any that I've considered. They all come out with precisely the same teams. On the plus side those teams all include my desired team!
For starters we have the restriction that there will be no same-race teams. This was handed down by MLG in the announcement post so I'm going to assume it's non-negotiable. I also happen to like the restriction if only to stop a double 6-pool from happening. At any rate, with the racial split of the players (3 terran, 3 protoss, 2 zerg) this actually significantly reduces the options. The only way to work it out with the given restriction is to have one ZT team, one ZP team, and 2 TP teams. (You can't have two ZT teams since that would leave three P for the remaining two teams. The same logic applies to two ZP teams. The only remaining option is the given one.)
After that you need to decide what the most important factor is. Each team is getting a number of YES votes and a number of NO votes. The way I see it you can use one of those as your main criteria, or the other one, or you can build a function between the two of them. The simplest would be a straight subtraction. I might go with something where the YES votes were weighted as worth twice as much as a NO vote, for example. You can also try to maximize the total sum of your main criteria across the four teams or you could try to maximize the main criteria on a team by team basis to fill in our 4 legal team options.
Answer the following questions to see where you'd fall on that spectrum:
- Should the team with the most YES votes get included no matter what?
- Should the team with the most NO votes get excluded no matter what?
- Should the team with the biggest YES-NO spread get included no matter what?
- Should you try to make the most people very happy or should you try to make everyone as happy as possible even if no one gets what they really want?
Picking the biggest number, eliminating all now illegal teams (ones containing a chosen player or ones in a race combination which is no longer legal), and iterating is pretty easy. Maximizing the total sum is less so. I feel like I should know how to do this sort of thing from my C&O days. Simplex method or something. I couldn't think of how to do it right away and let my mind wander a bit. I started thinking about how I'd write a program for it and what sort of pruning function I could use to pare down the search tree. Then I thought about how big the tree would even be... Turns out there's only 36 possible combinations. Oh. Well then, I'll just build a spreadsheet!
Before looking at how things shake out (to avoid allowing a potential MKP&Huk team cloud my judgment) I believe the way to go would be to use a straight YES-NO function to assign a value to each team and then use the spreadsheet to maximize the total sum of that value across the 4 chosen teams. I like this because if a particular team is popular relative to other options for a player it should get chosen and doesn't rest everything in the hands of the single most popular team. Theoretically just picking the biggest number and eliminating illegal options could result in the least popular team sneaking in. But would it even matter? How do things shake out?
CRITERIA: Most YES Votes
Pick Biggest - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1640 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1640 votes
CRITERIA: Fewest NO Votes
Pick Biggest - MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet, MKP&Huk - 777 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 777 votes
CRITERIA: Most YES-NO Votes
Pick Biggest - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 863 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 863 votes
CRITERIA: Most YES-(NO/2) Votes
Pick Biggest - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1251.5 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1251.5 votes
Ok, so it turns out as the numbers stood it doesn't actually matter what criteria you chose among any that I've considered. They all come out with precisely the same teams. On the plus side those teams all include my desired team!
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
StarCraft II: 2v2s!
The first MLG spring arena event for StarCraft II is this weekend and they just announced a bonus event that weekend which might actually be more exciting than the main event if only for the novelty of it. The spring arena will only have 8 players and the main event should be filled with awesome games as the players get to put in a lot of preparation given that they know they'll be playing all 7 of the other players. What else can you do with precisely 8 players? You can break them into teams of 2 and play a little single elimination 2v2 tournament!
I think this is going to be really cool because it's unlikely these guys have done much prep work for it at all. They're currently holding a poll at the MLG site to determine the teams so even if they wanted to practice right now they couldn't! I would imagine some of these guys might play 2v2s for fun now and then but I can't imagine it's worth their time in general to put a lot of effort into it compared to their standard 1v1 games. As such I would think we could see some wacky strategies coming out of the games. Or maybe a lot of 6 pools... At least they've set it up so two players of the same race can't be on the same team so there can't be a double 6 pool. With 3 protoss, 3 terran, and 2 zerg players there's still a lot of team combinations possible. Personally I voted up for MarineKingPrime teaming with Huk and voted down every other combination containing either player in the hopes my top 2 might team up. It is the leading pair out of the gates but they have to change their states rules for choosing teams as right now the teams would be MKP&Huk, MKP&DRG, DRG&MC, and DRG&Huk. Pretty sure DRG can't play on 3 of the 4 teams at the same time so they've actually got a more complex optimization problem on hand. I wonder if they've got someone to work it out or if I should volunteer...
I think this is going to be really cool because it's unlikely these guys have done much prep work for it at all. They're currently holding a poll at the MLG site to determine the teams so even if they wanted to practice right now they couldn't! I would imagine some of these guys might play 2v2s for fun now and then but I can't imagine it's worth their time in general to put a lot of effort into it compared to their standard 1v1 games. As such I would think we could see some wacky strategies coming out of the games. Or maybe a lot of 6 pools... At least they've set it up so two players of the same race can't be on the same team so there can't be a double 6 pool. With 3 protoss, 3 terran, and 2 zerg players there's still a lot of team combinations possible. Personally I voted up for MarineKingPrime teaming with Huk and voted down every other combination containing either player in the hopes my top 2 might team up. It is the leading pair out of the gates but they have to change their states rules for choosing teams as right now the teams would be MKP&Huk, MKP&DRG, DRG&MC, and DRG&Huk. Pretty sure DRG can't play on 3 of the 4 teams at the same time so they've actually got a more complex optimization problem on hand. I wonder if they've got someone to work it out or if I should volunteer...
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Spring StarCraft II Arena I
MLG announced the format for the first Spring Arena today and it sounds pretty great. It's an 8 player event with the top 8 from the last MLG getting the invites. (One of them dropped out so #9 is going as well.) They're going to play a round robin to start so there's going to be a ton of great matches. Especially since each competitor knows exactly who they're up against and has quite a lot of time to come up with specific game plans for beating each other.
Interestingly enough they're bringing in more analysts than players! They're going to have 6 commentators, an observer (who controls the camera on the main stream) and 3 race specific experts. I'm not sure how the race specific experts are going to work out (part of me things if they were that expert they'd be playing in the event but part of me accepts that someone can know a lot of the strategy without having the in-game control to pull it off at the very top of the world) but it's an interesting idea and I'm curious to see it in action.
They're going to be running 7 streams at once! At most 2 games at a time (with only 8 players it would be tricky to pull off more than that for any stretch of time) but they're going to stream both player's viewpoints from every game. Watching MarineKingPrime's screen to see what he's looking at when he does his crazy micro could be pretty great.
Interestingly enough they're bringing in more analysts than players! They're going to have 6 commentators, an observer (who controls the camera on the main stream) and 3 race specific experts. I'm not sure how the race specific experts are going to work out (part of me things if they were that expert they'd be playing in the event but part of me accepts that someone can know a lot of the strategy without having the in-game control to pull it off at the very top of the world) but it's an interesting idea and I'm curious to see it in action.
They're going to be running 7 streams at once! At most 2 games at a time (with only 8 players it would be tricky to pull off more than that for any stretch of time) but they're going to stream both player's viewpoints from every game. Watching MarineKingPrime's screen to see what he's looking at when he does his crazy micro could be pretty great.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
MLG Columbus Conclusion
The last game has been played and we have a winner! MarineKingPrime followed up his win at the winter arena with a win at the winter championships in Columbus. He didn't lose a match this weekend with an 8-0 overall record. (Having a bye into the pool play and then not losing in the double elimination bracket means not playing very many matches!)
The events had a pretty wide split in terms of winning nations:
StarCraft II - South Korea
Halo:Reach - USA
King of Fighters XIII - Mexico
Soul Calibur V - France
Mortal Kombat - USA
I was happy to see Johnny Cage get played in a MK match. He still has the crotch punch!
The events had a pretty wide split in terms of winning nations:
StarCraft II - South Korea
Halo:Reach - USA
King of Fighters XIII - Mexico
Soul Calibur V - France
Mortal Kombat - USA
I was happy to see Johnny Cage get played in a MK match. He still has the crotch punch!
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Fighter Demographics
There tend to be long delays in the SC2 coverage between games at MLG events. It takes a few minutes to set up the next game in a match and between matches it takes even longer to get the casters into the next match. Normally I'd just flip to another SC2 stream but this weekend I've been checking out the fighter games which seem to have absolutely no downtown between games and a low amount between matches. As such I've caught a bit of talking about the fighting communities but not all that much...
One interesting thing I heard was that a bunch of players flew in from Thailand to play in the King of Fighters tournament. The casters mentioned this because no one had any clue what kind of players these guys were because they didn't stream their games on the internet so no one had seen them play. I watched one of these guys lose near the end of the losers bracket which I believe put him 5th place for a $1000 prize. Pretty sweet, but I looked at the price of a flight from Thailand to Columbus and it's a lot closer to 2k than 1k. And I believe the top 4 (which has not yet been played out) are all from the US. But I figured there were still two other fighting games to go so maybe those guys would be able to make more of that money back in those.
I've watched three matches of Soul Calibur today (I used to play a little of previous versions in the arcade so at least I have some understanding about what's going on) and was really surprised by the demographics of the people playing. 5 of those 6 players were African American and the 6th was an Asian woman. I've watched a lot of SC2 events in the last year and I'm struggling to remember ever seeing anyone who wasn't a Caucasian or Asian (mostly Korean) male. There was one Caucasian female in the open bracket of an MLG event last year but she didn't do terribly well. Obviously the Soul Calibur sample size is really small compare to the StarCraft one but it's still really a stark contrast.
Even looking at the crowds for the SC2 event (there don't seem to be anyone watching the fighters at the event) it's overwhelmingly male. It's almost exclusively Caucasian/Asian. 42% of video game players are female so it has to be something about the culture of an event or of SC2 in general that's keeping the women away. I don't have any ideas or answers here. Just sad observations.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Lack of Gaming Desire
Recently I haven't actually played a lot of games. I have games I want to play but I can't find the motivation to actually play them. Other than a few games of League of Legends each night I haven't really played anything in a while. I have been re-reading some pretty good books, though, which have Game in the name at least... (Ender's Game series and Hunger Games series)
I used to look forward to the weekend as a time to play a ton of games. Now? I just want to sleep in. This weekend I also want to watch a lot of streamed games from the MLG Columbus event. In StarCraft II I'm going to keep rooting for the guys I cheered for at the winter arena... Huk, MarineKing, and Idra. Huk and MarineKing are already 3-0 in their pools and will only need to defeat the two people from the open bracket tomorrow to make it to the top 6. Idra is in the open bracket and has yet to play a game since he has 4 byes by virtue of playing in the winter arena. One interesting name, who is hopefully going to be Idra's first match, is TheLittleOne. I thought he'd retired from professional play but it seems he came out to this event. He was my favourite player in the beta since he played random! He doesn't play random anymore (looks like he's playing Zerg today) but he still seemed like a pretty cool dude. I hope he does well.
I've also watched a surprising number of King of Fighters games. It turns out there's just a ton of action in the fighting games! They were playing 3v3 matches and you played a best 3 out of 5 overall so there's a lot of fights per match. I don't know anything about the game or any of the characters but it was still pretty interesting to watch. I'm looking forward to Mortal Kombat tomorrow even though I doubt the game resembles the one I used to play on the SNES way back in the day. I hope Johnny Cage is still in the game and still has a crotch punch!
I used to look forward to the weekend as a time to play a ton of games. Now? I just want to sleep in. This weekend I also want to watch a lot of streamed games from the MLG Columbus event. In StarCraft II I'm going to keep rooting for the guys I cheered for at the winter arena... Huk, MarineKing, and Idra. Huk and MarineKing are already 3-0 in their pools and will only need to defeat the two people from the open bracket tomorrow to make it to the top 6. Idra is in the open bracket and has yet to play a game since he has 4 byes by virtue of playing in the winter arena. One interesting name, who is hopefully going to be Idra's first match, is TheLittleOne. I thought he'd retired from professional play but it seems he came out to this event. He was my favourite player in the beta since he played random! He doesn't play random anymore (looks like he's playing Zerg today) but he still seemed like a pretty cool dude. I hope he does well.
I've also watched a surprising number of King of Fighters games. It turns out there's just a ton of action in the fighting games! They were playing 3v3 matches and you played a best 3 out of 5 overall so there's a lot of fights per match. I don't know anything about the game or any of the characters but it was still pretty interesting to watch. I'm looking forward to Mortal Kombat tomorrow even though I doubt the game resembles the one I used to play on the SNES way back in the day. I hope Johnny Cage is still in the game and still has a crotch punch!
Sunday, March 18, 2012
MLG Columbus Games
MLG has recently finalized the format and rules for the five events they're running as part of MLG Columbus. Starcraft 2 and Halo Reach are returning as per usual but they're going with a bit of a fighting theme for the other three events. Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur V, and King of Fighters XIII. I'm sad that League of Legends isn't around this time but am a little intrigued to see some fighting games since I don't believe any have run at any of the MLGs I've paid attention to.
The prize pools are interesting. 76k (and 8 full trips to the next arena) for SC2. 59k for Halo. 33.4k for MK. 16.7k for SCV. 16.7k for KoF. Starcraft is clearly the biggest draw but the fighting games combine for more than Halo and I have to assume that the fields for the fighting games are going to be softer than the SC2 field for sure and likely the Halo field as well since there have been a lot of MLGs with Halo. I'm imagining some decent fighting gamers around Columbus could have aspirations for some real cash next weekend. (They appear to have scheduled things so that you could sign up for all 3 fighting events.)
I found the rules to be interesting as well. Mortal Kombat has a character and two maps banned. Soul Calibur has a fighting style and original characters banned. (I don't even know what those are.) King of Fighters doesn't seem to have any odd bans. Are these things banned because people perceive them to be overpowered? Unfun? Too complicated? Just the fact that they've even had to ban some things made me question how appropriate those games may be for a big event...
But then I got to thinking about Starcraft and how the tournament community has impact the maps used. GSL and MLG both alter the maps that can be used in some pretty significant ways. If a map has some spawn points which aren't symmetric they ban those starting locations. A lot of maps have been altered to include neutral submerged supply depots at the bottom of ramps. (This prevents Protoss players from building two pylons at the bottom of a zerg ramp which would keep them from expanding.) And they've pretty much universally removed all of the gold mineral patches from their maps. (They did this because Terran mules were too good on the gold bases.) Blizzard even nerfed mules by making them only return a normal amount of minerals from gold bases in response to these map changes!
So maybe having the tournament ban things is actually a good step toward balance? The people who play the game competitively probably have a better idea of game balance than the people who design the game. As long as they're able to objectively approach the things they ban for the good of the game instead of for the good of themselves, anyway.
The prize pools are interesting. 76k (and 8 full trips to the next arena) for SC2. 59k for Halo. 33.4k for MK. 16.7k for SCV. 16.7k for KoF. Starcraft is clearly the biggest draw but the fighting games combine for more than Halo and I have to assume that the fields for the fighting games are going to be softer than the SC2 field for sure and likely the Halo field as well since there have been a lot of MLGs with Halo. I'm imagining some decent fighting gamers around Columbus could have aspirations for some real cash next weekend. (They appear to have scheduled things so that you could sign up for all 3 fighting events.)
I found the rules to be interesting as well. Mortal Kombat has a character and two maps banned. Soul Calibur has a fighting style and original characters banned. (I don't even know what those are.) King of Fighters doesn't seem to have any odd bans. Are these things banned because people perceive them to be overpowered? Unfun? Too complicated? Just the fact that they've even had to ban some things made me question how appropriate those games may be for a big event...
But then I got to thinking about Starcraft and how the tournament community has impact the maps used. GSL and MLG both alter the maps that can be used in some pretty significant ways. If a map has some spawn points which aren't symmetric they ban those starting locations. A lot of maps have been altered to include neutral submerged supply depots at the bottom of ramps. (This prevents Protoss players from building two pylons at the bottom of a zerg ramp which would keep them from expanding.) And they've pretty much universally removed all of the gold mineral patches from their maps. (They did this because Terran mules were too good on the gold bases.) Blizzard even nerfed mules by making them only return a normal amount of minerals from gold bases in response to these map changes!
So maybe having the tournament ban things is actually a good step toward balance? The people who play the game competitively probably have a better idea of game balance than the people who design the game. As long as they're able to objectively approach the things they ban for the good of the game instead of for the good of themselves, anyway.
Friday, March 09, 2012
StarCraft II MLG Winter Championship Format
There is a big MLG event coming up in 2 weeks time. They recently announced the format for the SC2 tournament and I found it to be intriguing. They have 256 competitors so my first instinct would be that they'd just play a big seeded double elimination bracket. But it turns out that would be _far_ too simplistic. Instead they're running 4 brackets and a round robin pool section with people entering at various times.
To start with the 32 people who played in the winter arena get byes. The top 16 from the winter arena get to bypass the first 6 rounds and start in the pool section. The bottom 16 get to bypass the first 4 rounds and will only need to win 2 matches to make it to the pool section. The remaining 224 players play a double elimination bracket with the 16 people with byes slotting in during round 5. Eventually you stop the open winners bracket when there are 8 people left and send them into pool play. Similarly with the open losers bracket you get down to 8 people and then stop.
Pool play now has 24 people which are broken down into 4 groups of 6. Each group plays a round robin and then they get ranked 1 through 6. There are 4 groups so you have 4 #1s, 4 #2s, etc... Advance the #1s to the championship winner's bracket semifinals. These people have to win only 3 more matches to win the event. Then build out a championship losers bracket with the 8 prior losers playing in 4 matches in round 1. The winner of those matches play the #6s. The winner of those matches play the #5s. The winner of those matches play the #4s. And so on and so on with the #1 losers dropping down as appropriate to fit the bracket. Winner of that bracket plays the winner of the championship bracket in a best of 5 or best of 9 for all the marbles.
What I find interesting about this is that someone can lose in pool play, still end up #1, and win the winner's bracket with a loss on their record. That's not something that could happen in a straight double elimination. It also means there will be a lot of matches amongst the 'name' players. Top 16 from the winter arena along with 8 more who play well at the start of the weekend each play 5 matches with no chance of elimination. The winter arena was great but there were only 2 Idra matches, for example. He's not guaranteed to make pool play but he only needs 2 wins to make it there. Then they're all guaranteed at least one more match in the loser's bracket so the top names all get 6 matches streamed. This has to be a good deal for MLG and for fans.
It's interesting that anyone could have signed up for the open bracket if they were willing to buy a pass. Show up, go on a run, win some cash. The thought is alluring, much like the Magic Pro Tour used to be. Clearly not something I could do, but intriguing nonetheless. Of course they have pretty bad odds of making it very far. After winning 4 matches against other open players they'd then have to beat two of the winter arena competitors to make it into pool play. And there's no bomb draws or mana screw to save you in StarCraft II!
They also posted rewards for finishing well at the event. Top 8 get byes into the spring arena #1 and the 9th through 80th players get to play in the qualifiers for it. Which gets me thinking about how hard it is for someone to fall out of the events. Everyone at the winter arena gets a good number of byes. By the time they could get into the loser's bracket 182 people will have been eliminated. They're guaranteed to be in the top 74! So going to the winter arena and then showing up at the championship is enough to get you on the fast track to qualifying for the spring arena... I think this is a good thing since it allows people to get to know the same players and develop people to cheer for.
On the flip side, one good event is good enough to get rolling. This is particularly useful considering a lot of the best players live on the other side of the world and don't make it over to MLG events all that often. Come over once, do well, and you're on the fast track to getting free flights back. Seems pretty sweet!
To start with the 32 people who played in the winter arena get byes. The top 16 from the winter arena get to bypass the first 6 rounds and start in the pool section. The bottom 16 get to bypass the first 4 rounds and will only need to win 2 matches to make it to the pool section. The remaining 224 players play a double elimination bracket with the 16 people with byes slotting in during round 5. Eventually you stop the open winners bracket when there are 8 people left and send them into pool play. Similarly with the open losers bracket you get down to 8 people and then stop.
Pool play now has 24 people which are broken down into 4 groups of 6. Each group plays a round robin and then they get ranked 1 through 6. There are 4 groups so you have 4 #1s, 4 #2s, etc... Advance the #1s to the championship winner's bracket semifinals. These people have to win only 3 more matches to win the event. Then build out a championship losers bracket with the 8 prior losers playing in 4 matches in round 1. The winner of those matches play the #6s. The winner of those matches play the #5s. The winner of those matches play the #4s. And so on and so on with the #1 losers dropping down as appropriate to fit the bracket. Winner of that bracket plays the winner of the championship bracket in a best of 5 or best of 9 for all the marbles.
What I find interesting about this is that someone can lose in pool play, still end up #1, and win the winner's bracket with a loss on their record. That's not something that could happen in a straight double elimination. It also means there will be a lot of matches amongst the 'name' players. Top 16 from the winter arena along with 8 more who play well at the start of the weekend each play 5 matches with no chance of elimination. The winter arena was great but there were only 2 Idra matches, for example. He's not guaranteed to make pool play but he only needs 2 wins to make it there. Then they're all guaranteed at least one more match in the loser's bracket so the top names all get 6 matches streamed. This has to be a good deal for MLG and for fans.
It's interesting that anyone could have signed up for the open bracket if they were willing to buy a pass. Show up, go on a run, win some cash. The thought is alluring, much like the Magic Pro Tour used to be. Clearly not something I could do, but intriguing nonetheless. Of course they have pretty bad odds of making it very far. After winning 4 matches against other open players they'd then have to beat two of the winter arena competitors to make it into pool play. And there's no bomb draws or mana screw to save you in StarCraft II!
They also posted rewards for finishing well at the event. Top 8 get byes into the spring arena #1 and the 9th through 80th players get to play in the qualifiers for it. Which gets me thinking about how hard it is for someone to fall out of the events. Everyone at the winter arena gets a good number of byes. By the time they could get into the loser's bracket 182 people will have been eliminated. They're guaranteed to be in the top 74! So going to the winter arena and then showing up at the championship is enough to get you on the fast track to qualifying for the spring arena... I think this is a good thing since it allows people to get to know the same players and develop people to cheer for.
On the flip side, one good event is good enough to get rolling. This is particularly useful considering a lot of the best players live on the other side of the world and don't make it over to MLG events all that often. Come over once, do well, and you're on the fast track to getting free flights back. Seems pretty sweet!
Sunday, February 26, 2012
StarCraft II Winter Arena Conclusion
The final day at the MLG Winter Arena was pretty amazing. They were down to the final six players at the start of the day and there were some pretty fantastic games in the last few matches. The winner's bracket finals came down to Huk against MarineKing so I was pretty happy. Huk had played very well the last two days but seemed to have lost something today as he quickly got steamrollered by MarineKing. This knocked Huk down to the loser's bracket finals where he played against DongRaeGu who the commentators were saying is probably the best player in the world right now. (He made the GSL finals right before flying to New York for this event.) He also quickly steamrollered Huk which set up the final of MKP vs DRG. MarineKing won the first game and was in a good position to win the tournament if he could win either of the next two games. He didn't which meant they'd end up playing a best of 7 with DongRaeGu already up 2-1. MarineKing then pulled off three wins in a row including a great bunker rush in game 5 followed by an incredibly timed late game push in game 6. Definitely a fantastic match and I'm particularly happy about the outcome. Now that I've spoiled the ending for you you should consider watching the VODs when they become available to the public in a week or so.
The MLG guys were saying the Winter Arena was a huge success and they're planning on having two more during the Spring season. On the down side the finals were practically unwatchable at one point. The main stream actually crashed during the third game of the finals so we (Tmiv came over to watch the last couple matches) ended up missing the critical part of the game which was a little annoying. They ended up fixing it such that we were able to watch on 480P most of the time after that and a little bit on 720P but I still wish they could have managed to set it up such that we could have watched on 1080P the whole time. On the plus side they seemed to have fixed their log in issues as I only had to log in once all day and it worked on all the streams. (Well, I had to log in a second time after I refreshed my browser during the crash but that's not too unexpected.)
I actually blew out my download limit with all the streaming of games I've done this month (16G alone between Friday and Saturday) so if I'm going to tune in again in the future I should probably look into getting a better internet setup...
The MLG guys were saying the Winter Arena was a huge success and they're planning on having two more during the Spring season. On the down side the finals were practically unwatchable at one point. The main stream actually crashed during the third game of the finals so we (Tmiv came over to watch the last couple matches) ended up missing the critical part of the game which was a little annoying. They ended up fixing it such that we were able to watch on 480P most of the time after that and a little bit on 720P but I still wish they could have managed to set it up such that we could have watched on 1080P the whole time. On the plus side they seemed to have fixed their log in issues as I only had to log in once all day and it worked on all the streams. (Well, I had to log in a second time after I refreshed my browser during the crash but that's not too unexpected.)
I actually blew out my download limit with all the streaming of games I've done this month (16G alone between Friday and Saturday) so if I'm going to tune in again in the future I should probably look into getting a better internet setup...
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