Esports Today 8/25/2015: Comeback Kids

[Rob Zacny]

Esports Today August 25, 2015:



Comeback Kids
Fnatic recapture Counter-Strike glory at ESL One Cologne while CLG finally get their League of Legends championship. Andrew is probably wrong about Rocket League.

Opening - ESL One Cologne - CS:GO
6:17 - League of Legends Finals
21:19 - Rocket League Tournament
30:07 - Esports Tomorrow

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, Rocket League

• Listen on the Episode Page
• Listen on Soundcloud
• Listen in iTunes

 

Crib Sheet

 

CSGO Grand Finals: Fnatic vs. EnVyUs

&

NA LCS Final: CLG vs. TSM

EU LCS Final:

Rocket League Final: Cosmic Aftershock vs. Kings of Urban (stay for the end)

 

The Fnatic CSGO hype video:

[ewokskick]

If you haven't watched it yet, you need to watch the Fnatic hype video they linked.  OMG.

 

Edit: here is a list of the top 8 awkward esports videos from ESEX.  It's all pretty amazing.  http://esportsexpress.com/2015/03/top-8-awkward-esports-videos/

[sclpls]

It's obviously early days for Rocket League as an e-sport so it is definitely too early to say how it will turn out. However I can appreciate a good Slatepitch, so I'll try my hand at going up to bat for Andrew's skepticism.

 

The vaunted approachable presentation of Rocket League that so many people have cited as a reason Rocket League should be a successful e-sport might in fact be the reason it will never take off as one.

Having a high skill ceiling in a game isn't sufficient for an e-sport to become popular, you also need an audience that appreciates the high level play. By targeting a demographic of players that is looking for something more approachable than your standard competitive multiplayer game, Rocket League has filled its servers with a reliable amount of people having fun playing their game, but has not filled them with the sort of players that will obsess over trying to organize the most efficient plays possible. Instead the game has more of a friendly couch co-op type vibe. These are not the sort of players that you can count on to reliably tune in to watch competitive matches between the best players. As such, for all the excitement the matches generate, Rocket League won't really take off.

 

Okay, having dispensed with that exercise in sophistry, I will say that the grand finals between Cosmic Aftershock and Kings of Urban was so much fun to watch, and I am excited about checking out future tournaments.

[AndrewGroen]

Rob how could you not share that Fnatic hype video with me. I HAD TO FIND OUT LIKE THIS? That thing is so amazing I'm almost wondering if it's some kind of Swedish metajoke that I don't understand. Either way...I'm going to have to do some soul searching as to whether this makes Fnatic's CSGO squad my favorite team or my bloodsworn enemies.

[Badfinger]

Rob I'm taking you to task about League of Legends!

I'm not, just sharing stuff. Enjoyed the podcast this week as always.

 

Dragon is strategically much different than it's been in previous seasons, because it's not worth that big chunk of gold anymore. It gives almost no gold and only grants local experience. Killing the dragon provides two things. One, it gives you permanent passive stat increases. Two, it provides a path to victory through killing the dragon 5 times, which doubles all the previous stat bonuses AND provides on-attack true damage to everyone who is alive at the time the buff is granted for three minutes. If you can't force objectives or win fights at that point, the game might never end.

 

"Team wipe"? I think you mean "Ace".

 

You mentioned regional stylistic play differences, which could possibly explain how LGD and QG were approaching things so meticulously and cautiously. The historical view of the Chinese meta is fight. Fight all the time. Get kills for the sake of getting kills, dive two towers, dive towers in two different lanes at the same time. I haven't watched too much LPL this season, so I don't know how the influx of Korean talent has changed the strategic level of play, but the traditional view is the Chinese teams were much more raw at the strategic, objective-focused level than Korea (for sure) and even teams in the West. They made up for it by being so overwhelmingly aggressive that if you couldn't extricate yourself from unheard of ganks in other regions, they would just kill you and snowball off the back of their superior team fighting coordination where their map coordination might be lacking. The fact that the engages were so cautious marks an interesting departure from the Chinese meta more so than an indicator of it. Which is cool!

[Rob Zacny]

No, this is a pretty important clarification, I appreciate it. I clearly need to brush up on my League since I stopped covering it so much.

[seamus2389]

You mentioned regional stylistic play differences, which could possibly explain how LGD and QG were approaching things so meticulously and cautiously. The historical view of the Chinese meta is fight. Fight all the time. Get kills for the sake of getting kills, dive two towers, dive towers in two different lanes at the same time. I haven't watched too much LPL this season, so I don't know how the influx of Korean talent has changed the strategic level of play, but the traditional view is the Chinese teams were much more raw at the strategic, objective-focused level than Korea (for sure) and even teams in the West. They made up for it by being so overwhelmingly aggressive that if you couldn't extricate yourself from unheard of ganks in other regions, they would just kill you and snowball off the back of their superior team fighting coordination where their map coordination might be lacking. The fact that the engages were so cautious marks an interesting departure from the Chinese meta more so than an indicator of it. Which is cool!

 

China has changed alot.  Forsekinn( a caster covering China) did an AMA on twitter last week worth reading to get an idea of what is going on in China.

 

What do you think is the biggest misconception about the LPL?

That the LPL's primary meta is to teamfight. The LPL is about trading objectives - if they think they can make a better trade, they will pull the trigger.

 

Kelsey Moser who covers China and EU also has and AMA from last month worth reading.

 

China also had a pretty elaborate and kinda odd opening cermony for the finals involving masks and breaking dancing.

 

[jennegatron]

We have events with 18 million dollar prize pools and they show esports on espn, why doesn't anyone respect us????

 

 

 Forsekinn

 

....oh.

[Rob Zacny]

Pretty sure it's "Froskurinn". No idea if this was a gag or a Freudian slip. Well done either way!

[jennegatron]

"Froskurinn" is much better!

[Badfinger]

China has changed alot.  Froskurinn( a caster covering China) did an AMA on twitter last week worth reading to get an idea of what is going on in China.

 

 

Kelsey Moser who covers China and EU also has and AMA from last month worth reading.

 

China also had a pretty elaborate and kinda odd opening cermony for the finals involving masks and breaking dancing.

 

 

 

Well I certainly hope it was a Freudian slip, because Froskurinn is a lady.

 

Here's her answers for the pertinent part of that question.

What is China's biggest weakness from a meta perspective? Biggest strength?

Well, let’s define the LPL meta currently: Trading.

LPL teams prioritize trading objectives and majority use teamfighting or skirmishing as their tool to do so, but the brilliance and true strength of the regions top teams is their ability to identify when they can and cannot fight for an objective and thus make a trade.

Example: Sivir has been a priority pick in the LPL this split since day one. She’s actually fallen out of popularity most recently. What does Sivir offer teams? She’s excellent in siege with her insane waveclear due to Q and W. She empowers rotations with her ultimate. She empowers teamfighting and kiting with her ultimate used to augment positioning and posturing for objectives.

Sivir empowers teams to be Monster Objective (fighting) and Structure Objective (rotations) oriented with R.

What happened very early is that LPL teams (OMG and EDG to start) would lane swap Sivir and siege as much “Standing Gold” as quickly as possible. In short: they’d take the towers immediately and use the ADC as a pushing machine – refining a build path of BF -> Pick Axe -> Upgraded Berserkers instead of the iEdge (because you can’t crit towers – itemize efficiency for pushing) and use all the global structure gold to beat the clock of the game and ramp their power spike.

From there, they’d immediately look to fight knowing the surplus tower gold they got early ramped them ahead of the other team. On the flip side, the other teams – like Qiao Gu – are incredibly perceptive in identifying what they can and cannot fight for. Don’t get me wrong, if an LPL team thinks they’re close to even footing with you, they’ll go for the 50/50 outplay every time, but if they’re behind, LPL teams will play the map.

Vici made an entire style about “running away” and trading towers for other objectives.

So the LPL strength is in recognizing when they can and cannot fight and making sure they don't give away the entire map for free, majority of the top teams are relatively patient.

Their weakness is still in their overcommit to fights. As stated above, if a LPL team thinks they’re close to 50/50 fight, they will take it – especially over Baron – which can lead to a huge swing in power. Also, a lot of teams have issues drafting more than one composition or style and should be exposed against more diverse meta regions.

And then:

 

LPL is a region where teams think they are mechanically strong and confident in there [sic] team play. That means if both teams are the same strength they will always fight.

 

Part of that is a very Korean-style meta (Heavy Sivir emphasis, objective rotation). Part of that is certainly not. Emphasizing skirmishing to win objectives is a very Chinese meta. The last line is very telling. If you want to watch virtual hero persons stab each other early and often, Chinese League is still the league you want to watch.

[Spud]

I downloaded Rocket League for PS4 a number of weeks ago but still haven't played it. The more I hear, the more everybody is convincing me it's great.

[AndrewGroen]

I downloaded Rocket League for PS4 a number of weeks ago but still haven't played it. The more I hear, the more everybody is convincing me it's great.

Yeah, give it ten minutes and it'll show you what it's got. It's not a game that takes very long to prove its concept. The conversation on the show may not have sounded like it, but I adore the game. Play it every day.

[seamus2389]

Pretty sure it's "Froskurinn". No idea if this was a gag or a Freudian slip. Well done either way!

 

Possibly a Freudian slip cause the spelling I was going for was foreskurin. 

[ewokskick]

There is a player in dota named MyNuts which is probably as bad as foreskinn would have been.