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Rob Zacny

Esports Today 9/3/2015

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Esports Today September 3, 2015:

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The Gauntlet
Rob and Andrew chat about Heroes of the Storm's big international tournament at PAX, then talk to The Score's Kelsey Moser to get caught up on the state of Chinese and Korean LoL. Also dicussed: Cloud9's miracle run at the Regional Finals, and KT's Proleague stand.

 

Opening - Heroes of the Storm

10:19 - League of Legends (Korea, China, NA Regionals)

29:22 - StarCraft 2 (Proleague, Red Bull)

41:50 - Esports Tomorrow

Heroes of the Storm, League of Legends, StarCraft 2

 

Crib Sheet

 

NA Regionals VODs

(the one worth watching)

Heroes of the Storm MSI tournament final day

at Red Bull

 

Kelsey Moser on Twitter

What's going on with EDG

Analysis of Qiao Gu

 

 

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Thank you! I didnt think you were going to cover Heroes of the Storm when there's so much out there.

The MSI hosting, presentationw as indeed problematic. They stuck to the close view all the time, never going to the zoomed out or the even futher wide view where you can see everyone moving on most of the map.

(also all alternate skins and mounts can make it very hard to read which hero is which and I hope tournament play is going te require players to use the default skins and us mounts like the carpet, card or coin)

And team liquid's performance is such a clear, clean cut example of a team going tilt, it could be used as *the* textbook example.

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The LoL interview got a bit too inside baseball for me.  I basically couldn't follow it.  I'm sure it is harder to keep things accessible with guests, especially ones with such deep knowledge.  I don't know, though, the CS:GO person who came on the show was really good for listeners who haven't followed the game like me.  This was pretty hard to follow.  I think it might be because you follow LoL more closely than CS:GO so the topic you bring up are deeper and Kelsey Moser is obviously very knowledgeable.  I guess is is a hard line to walk when you cover more games than any given listener probably follows. 

 

Some possible solutions:

 

1. The ideal is just to make them accessible for listeners of any experience/knowledge level with the game.

2. Or, make some or all of the interviews intentionally in depth and put them at the end of an episode and sign post that you're going to try to go in depth on a topic.

3. Something else?  Maybe I just need to stop being a baby?

 

On a positive note, as someone who barely follows Starcraft, the discussion of the patch was pretty interesting.  I think you all are spot on about Blizzard's willingness to make big changes being a good sign.  Hopefully it will breath new life in SC2.

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That was an interesting interview! I appreciate you asking about the tenor of the fights and kill counts relative to the other regions. Your comments on a previous episode sounded like you had some insight, but it still feel like part of that was generated from conversation. It was a nice feeling.

 

I honestly had some trouble following it as well. I think it has something to do with the fact that the names are all so similar. LGD, QG, EDG, VG. The words run together. I also thought some of the answers were broad but in specific contexts. (eg - what defines an "early game" or "mid game", what are rotations, why does one team excel in a certain area, rather than just that they are noted to do so.) That compounds with coaching drama that's hard to grasp even if you are following the scene.

 

Ewoks, I'd say there's a bit of Column 3 in that I didn't think this conversation was particularly more esoteric in its generalities than CS:GO or Dota conversation, but at the same time that you're probably working with a glossary of terms that's just different enough from other LoMas that it's not understood vocab, while not being hyperspecific enough that someone would think to define it on a general podcast. You also don't have familiar player or team names to grab on to as your rock to follow the topic. She mentioned Acorn and Flame, and I'm not sure it was completely clear that they are both players who share the same position on LGD (The team that won the China auto-bid). I feel the same in DOTA. I read the DOTA Silly Season thread and see people gasp when team rosters are released and I go "Huh, this is an interesting bunch of grouped letters that have no context to me. But someone is enthused! Perhaps one day they will tell me why."

 

Maybe we should collaborate and do our own primer or glossary or something?

 

 

I love that Tempo Storm was a Heroes of the Storm competitor. It is hilarious to me that we're getting crossover between games and team names. In the same vein I am amused that Team Solo Mid has CS:GO and Hearthstone teams but doesn't have a DOTA team. I would love, at some point, to see a study on the actual organizations that have teams. IE TSM the esports group, EG the group, MVP the group. How they really work, where their resources go, how the teams coexist, etc.

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There's also a thing with MVP: Black and their use of secret bug knowledge first here https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/3dysue/did_mvp_black_purposely_exploit_against_virtuspro/

then there's this at about 41:25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPcAbUcTRhwEh

MVP black studied tempo storm (only tempo storm they told in reviews) then on the day of their match against tempo storm, mvp black told the judges minutes before the matches would start about a bug with one of tempo storms heroes in their roster. The organisation banned the hero from the tournament outright, tempo storm didnt have any time to think up solutions or back up draft strategies, and mvp basically got a free extra ban in their matches against tempo storm, by waiting until the most, well, d-ish time to tell about it. Because they knew about it, didnt tell about it before the torurnament, didnt tell it at the start of the tournament, didnt tell about it when the hero was used the day before in the tournament against other teams.

I guess they learned from the first time how to be a lil' more subtle about playing the meta-meta-game.

 

The podcast in the youtube video also went on about some other reasons why the tournament was hard to follow. From how it wasnt advertised at all, to technical issues to some casters not knowing the teams to some not even knowing the game.

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Heroes of the Storm as an eSport is an interesting thing. It seems to me to be the clearest sign of the draft determining the game, with it being rare for a bit of a more unconventional draft to be successful. I'm also not sure that HotS is a particularly interesting game to watch. The aspects that make it more interesting to play - shorter games, emphasis on teamfights, less individual play and more team play - make the game less interesting to watch, in my opinion. The games usually end up being very quick and being a burst of action all in one go, rather than a longer game with spikes of action. I watched a game of LoL the other day and despite having never played it I did find it a bit more interesting to watch as the game slowly ramps towards a climax.

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Ewoks, I'd say there's a bit of Column 3 in that I didn't think this conversation was particularly more esoteric in its generalities than CS:GO or Dota conversation, but at the same time that you're probably working with a glossary of terms that's just different enough from other LoMas that it's not understood vocab, while not being hyperspecific enough that someone would think to define it on a general podcast. You also don't have familiar player or team names to grab on to as your rock to follow the topic. She mentioned Acorn and Flame, and I'm not sure it was completely clear that they are both players who share the same position on LGD (The team that won the China auto-bid). I feel the same in DOTA. I read the DOTA Silly Season thread and see people gasp when team rosters are released and I go "Huh, this is an interesting bunch of grouped letters that have no context to me. But someone is enthused! Perhaps one day they will tell me why."

 

Yeah, I'm sure it's mostly just this.  It's be cool to get a glossary of basic terms or something for different games somewhere so I could follow along.  I think it's always going to be hard to follow an interview for a game you don't follow, but maybe with something like that it'd be a bit easier.

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Hey folks, just wanted to jump in here to let you know we saw the comments about the LoL interview being tough to follow and maybe a bit too inside baseball. We'll take that under consideration and try harder in the future to make sure we're making that extra effort to be accessible. That's a huge part of our mission, but it can be tough to not get excited about a conversation and want to dive into it as deep as possible.

 

Thanks for all the comments! If there's ever anything we can do better please do let us know. :-D

 

Andrew

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Hey folks, just wanted to jump in here to let you know we saw the comments about the LoL interview being tough to follow and maybe a bit too inside baseball. We'll take that under consideration and try harder in the future to make sure we're making that extra effort to be accessible. That's a huge part of our mission, but it can be tough to not get excited about a conversation and want to dive into it as deep as possible.

 

Thanks for all the comments! If there's ever anything we can do better please do let us know. :-D

 

Andrew

 

To clarify my comments then, I absolutely would not want you to hold back because it might get into the nitty gritty. I want the DOTA or CS:GO interview that has that same level of depth. I just want more interjection with clarification on terms, teams, and names. I would rather miss out due to not knowing enough than have someone with knowledge miss out.

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