ewokskick

Any chance you all might cover a bit of Melee? It's the only game I dabble in as a viewer you all haven't touched on yet. I don't know if either of you follow it at all.

I enjoyed it a whole lot. It's a very decent mystery. I really enjoyed some of the characters in it. The acting was pretty good. It felt kind of like stage acting or soap acting in that it was all a bit melodramatic. That gave it a kind of Twin Peaks flair (and I think some of the score was reminiscent of that too). There were a few things that I think it could have done better/without. I am not entirely sure why he had to call the police chief every hour or so. You basically called him to summarize what you'd done and then he'd send you along. I am not sure it added much to the game. I think it is interesting to compare this game to Her Story as they are both recent FMV games. They both use it very effectively. In my opinion, they have complete opposite strengths. Where Her Story was a realistically acted extremely bad story with unique mechanics. This had less innovative mechanics with more exaggerated acting, but a much better story carried by a suite of great characters. In the end, I think I enjoyed this game more. Her Story is more interesting, but in the end a worse game. This has a more clear vision and execution. Her Story just had an interesting mechanic with iffy follow through. Either way, both games have made me excited about the future of FMV games, as weird as that is to say.

I completely disagree with this. In most of those games, EG had drafted stronger lanes with better initiation and counter initiation. In every game, CDEC only had one way to win. Their ganks had to work and Agressif had to get a lot of farm because they were losing 2 lanes every game. In fact, one of the main ways they figured out the smoke ganks was with their draft. They just picked great counter-initiators like clockwerk, gyro, storm, Naga, and ember. On the other side, CDEC were getting heroes they weren't comfortable with or didn't have a great way to end the game. For example, even if things went better for them in that slark game, how were they going to end the game going high ground into a clock, gyro, ember with a leshrac slark? Those were massive outdrafts. For sure. If you can draft lanes where you get everything you wants, make the other team play heroes they don't like, and counter their play-style that is an outdraft.

Shiki obviously isn't a lesh player. He is the most broken mid hero in the tournament and game 1 of the grand finals they played support leshrac. When it didn't work, they made Shiki play it and Suma1l just crushed him in lane every game. This was the crux of the severe outdrafting that happened. They were forced to use their first pick on a lane they would lose and give up a top tier hero (gyro) that fear played really well. On the question of heroes coming up a lot, I thought a lot of it had to do with versatile heroes. So teams liked to third pick Earthshaker because he is a top tier offlaner and support. QoP was picked a lot since she can play all 3 lanes. Lina can be a mid or a support. Tusk can play 4 position or offlane. In my opinion, many of the common heroes were played in many roles. So the heroes coming up over and over again didn't actually mean the play style and positions were repetitive.

The best part of this to me is how much more hardcore World of Tanks players are than all the rest of us.

The EHOME chants gave me chills. As the most storied organization in dota history, to see them back and hear the chants on the main stage was a big deal. After that, the legendary EHOME coach/manager 71 gave an interview in which he began to cry as he talked about how meaningful it was to him to hear the EHOME chants again after years. Here is the video of it (with some pretty great ROTK footage at the beginning): http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTMwMTc5MTkyOA==.html Here is someone's translation: I really thought it was great how the crowd got behind the chinese teams at this TI. I think their play styles were obviously better than last year which helped. Also, the fact that the Chinese teams were actually underdogs frequently made it fun to root for many of the teams.

I'm pretty sure the USA chants in this case are about the excitement over the first ever American team to win TI. 4 of the 5 players are American. The organization is American. I know that in someways banal nationalism can be subtly harmful, but in general I don't think the excitement was misplaced in this case. I know that EG takes pride in being a north American organization (they were passing out EG American flags) and I know many of the players do too (ppd has flag emotes on his twitch). I think they take pride in the NA dota scene and have done a lot to build it. Fear has been around forever and mentored most American players of notoriety. PPD has funded the NEL prize pool in the past. Universe helped scout and assemble the best talent in America (and is largely responsible for the current EG roster). I think it's fine, fitting even, to celebrate them by chanting USA because these are people that have been pretty invested in the American scene themselves.

"How are they supposed to come back when [X team] has ?" <- do this at least twice a game.

It's mostly just weird how he tweets it out from his professional join dota twitter account. It'd be like if Troy Aikman tweeted out the cover of Debby Does Dallas every week.

They are shattering to the AA ice blast which makes you pop when you get below 11% health. The ice vortex on the ground is also amplifying the magical damage being taken by both the echo slam and ice blast. I believe the echo slam kills one, the fissure kills on and the shatter kills 2.

Link to the play for those who want to relive it.

Don't worry. We all got it wrong. Who had CDEC in the finals? I had EG and LGD in my top 3, but I was wrong about Secret. On a side note, is anyone else hating this deadmau5 DJ Set. It's not so much that the music is bad as it is that it was weird and deflating. Crowd roars for players -> and now a slow building random DJ set. What?

Thirding Wicked + Divine. Phonogram is great too, but the first volume is definitely their least essential. You can read Singles club without it.

Yeah those games were rough and PPD only has a night to figure out the Chinese team fight style. The good news is that I am pretty sure no matter what happens these finals should be better than TI4. As a EG fan I really want then to win, but if not I really like all of these teams. I think Xiao8 is the best captain in the world and really like the rest of LGD. A wildcard winning the whole thing would be absolutely incredible so it's hard not to love this CDEC miracle run. And I am a fan of EG. So, while I obviously want EG to pull the upsets and win, I'm happy with the last 3 teams.

I'm glad to hear RTZ is taking it well. I really do think he is the best player in the world. It feels like S4 really didn't adapt throughout the tournament. I think having him as their drafter at a TI might have been a mistake. The last time he won with Alliance, they were so good that they literally didn't have to adapt. It was inevitable that they would get figured out and have to adapt and they just couldn't go do it. As much as I like S4, he really tanked this TI5 with his draft and play. Either way, I am sure that secret (as we know it) are done with. It'll be interesting to see how hard the shuffle hits the west this time.

Is 2 a League thing? I've never played that game, but it's pretty clear these guys are a lot more interested in that than Dota 2. That doesn't bother me, I kinda like listening to someone who is trying to cover it all even if it means they won't be as into my one specific game as me.

I'm honestly so happy Secret lost. I feel like TI has been a big vindication for the EG players. CDEC's run in the tournament has been an amazing story as well. For LGD B-team that left the organization to TI top 3 in a matter of months. Pretty cool.

EDIT: Wrong thread, I missed Chris's post sorry.

It makes sense. It gives the buyer a reason to believe they are getting an especially good deal. When I was briefly a telemarketer, a lot of the job was to convince people the deal they were getting was unique and special for them.

I highly recommend people watch this 6 video series attempting to explain the GG phenomenon. It's one of the best videos on the topic I've seen. Edit: slime beat me too it. I removed my link, but am leaving my encouragement to watch the videos.

I am a PhD student at UCD. I think I'm the only one of us who goes to UCD. Agreed. We should do it again soon.

Like two Adonis-es

Sylvio looks really interesting. How are you liking it? I've been playing Amnesia 2: A Machine for Pigs. I think I may like it more than the first one. The setting and story are more comprehensible and horror never gives way to annoyance like in the original. I know I am in the minority view on preferring the sequel. I actually think the monsters are the worst parts of games like that. When Outlast and Amnesia give me a monster jump scare it's great, but pretty quickly they just turn into the world's worst stealth games.

People want to play support, but they don't want to be a 5 position. That explains why so many of my games have a witch doctor who can't upgrage courier so he can rush shadowblade or something stupid like that.