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TL:DR DH Winter thumbs down, DL Finals thumbs up. Dota 2 thumbs up, Sc2 thumbs down.
I am an avid starcraft player, I love playing the game and I spend 95% of my time playing sc2 and 5% playing dota2. I consider sc2 the better game than dota2 as well (not saying dota 2 isn't awesome though).
Today was an interesting day because there was a major dota2 finals between fnatic and navi, and later during the day a major sc2 finals between Life and Taeja. If I was to pick which finals was better, I would say that the dota 2 finals blew the sc2 one out of the water.
I'll start with the dota 2 finals first. With the new 6.79 patch appearently changing how the metagame is played, I feel like these games were exciting to watch even though it was a 3-0 sweep. Firstly, that crystal maiden carry play by puppey (I think it was puppey on maiden) was priceless. In the first game, I was laughing out loud at how farmed the crystal maiden was and how OP that made her look.
The 3rd game was also enjoyable too because of what fnatic tried to do to change up their gameplay. Even though it was a complete fail and Navi was unfazed by fnatics tricksy tactics, the 5 man gank in the beginning of the game was quite an eye opener for a casual player like me, who will most likely never do that in a pub game. ever. It really showed the amazing possibilities that a team game such as dota 2 could bring to the table strategically.
And, at the end of it all after getting sweeped 0-3, fnatic and navi shook hands and hugged it out like it was no big deal. True sportsmanship right there.
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Just breezing through some sc2 points that I was disappointed with, the newest patch supposedly nerfed widow mines so that they wouldn't be used 100% in tvz anymore. HOWEVER, Liquid'Taeja has astoundingly won 2 tvz finals in major tournaments with, guess what, widow mines. The lack of versatility in the tvz play was very disappointing to me and it went from being my favorite matchup earlier in the year to watch to being....very blande and boring to watch now.
And then there was the casters + hosts of Dreamhack and some production aspects that I was very turned off by. I have watched almost every major sc2 tournament live this year, including the last 3 dreamhack's. The first dreamhack, I was super pumped up by because Smix was in charge of doing interviews with korean players and I thought it would be cool to get a little insight into their psych during a tournament. And Nathanias had just reached the spotlight as one of the main casters at dreamhack. Being relatively new to the scene he was essentially a wildcard and I had high hopes for him. I remember facing him on ladder before he got big and he seemed like a nice guy, had a respectable mid-high masters rank on ladder, and that made me really pumped to see what he would be able to deliver this year.
Fast forward to this last dreamhack of the year, not much has changed. The interviews Smix does with the koreans, I don't even bother watching anymore. If I didn't know any better, I could make a SAFE assumption that these interviews were carbon copies of each other because the SAME questions get asked, the SAME answers get received. Then a round of applause.
And Nathanias....oh Nathanias....if wild cards could be anything in between a 2 and an king, he would be closer to a 2 in my book. My expectations had him closer to a king, so my disappointment was paramount. I am just going to be blunt here as there is not really any other way to sugercoat it, but his casting is just bland. It's like a salad without dressing, without any eggs, cheese, meat, or any other toppings you would put in it. It is just green leafy salad. I don't want to say more negative things about him though because I think what he is doing is admirable so I will leave it at that.
Lastly, the fricken GD music. I was pumped to hear these electronic dance music songs in the beginning of the year, when they were still fresh and not overplayed. I though hell, it's about time this tournament gets some good music. Fast forward to now, the same fricken GD songs are played every single time, after every victory at dreamhack I feel like it's always a swedish house mafia song, Allesso's "If I lose myself" has been played at EVERY single dreamhack tournament this year. I am convinced that they are using the same exact playlist for winning ceremonies, commercial breaks, and whatever else they use music for. Hell, Darude's sandstorm....it's almost 15 years old, I appreciate a blast to the past when it is played once, or even twice. But when it's played 5+ times in the same year, it just gets old. and boring
 
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your Country52798 Posts
That's nice.
I found the finals amazing to watch (at least, what I managed to catch) so I think you are really a dota 2 player that pretends to like starcraft.
Also I love how you talk about the amazing games in the dota tournament and not the amazing games in the sc2 tournament
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whaaaaaat?
Did you even watch the sc2 portion of dreamhack?
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On December 01 2013 09:51 The_Templar wrote:
That's nice.
I found the finals amazing to watch (at least, what I managed to catch) so I think you are really a dota 2 player that pretends to like starcraft.
Also I love how you talk about the amazing games in the dota tournament and not the amazing games in the sc2 tournament
well ive only played about 150 games of dota 2 and only 6k of sc2, so ya I think my opinion is a bit biased towards dota 2.
ANd that's my point, I just didn't think the games in the sc2 tournament (the ones i saw, and the tvz games) were that amazing compared to the dota 2 games
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haha you fools are still watching sc2 and those childish moba games on dreamhack? Quakelive is the shit man. Amazing finals.
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i only watched a few games sc2, so i dont know a lot about the overall tournament. But boy, do i disagree with what you say.
I dont have as much games played in sc2. I never even played dota 2.
But this tournament was a good tournament. Compared to what i was used to before i stepped a bit away from sc2, this was totally great. Casters improved compared to a year ago. Overall level seemed to have risen.
Aside from that, i don't know how you'd want to compare the 2 games in terms of 'amazingness' objectively. That just seems total nonsense to me. Except of course if you're comparing the effect games had on you personally. In that case, point taken and i wish you best of luck in dota 2.
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The current MMMM meta is still way more entertaining than the meta at the height of the Broodlord+Investor era of last year, even if it lacks some diversity.
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today was the first time i heard nathanias a lot and i think him and apollo were great.
the shitting on casters just never ends
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Personally I don't think casters are nearly as important in Dota 2 as they are in SC2. There aren't any that I think are great and I wouldn't turn a match on or off because of the caster (unless Purge starts casting), whereas I might do that for SC2.
I'm also not really sure why you wrote it like this. At first glance it looks like you are comparing the two parts of the event but your whole discussion of Dota 2 is about the games and not the production while most of your complaints about SC2 were about the production.
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You have no idea how badly I wanted Life to do a 5H timing.
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Guess he likes dota2 more so the games got him hooked, while the sc2 games were meh for him so he focused on other aspects instead. Which is perfectly fine opinion I guess, but it's kinda weird that he compared 2 different things using completely different parameters.
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I'm not sure why you expected anything but biomine in TvZ.
On December 01 2013 10:17 Shauni wrote:
haha you fools are still watching sc2 and those childish moba games on dreamhack? Quakelive is the shit man. Amazing finals.
Are there any vods? I stayed up till 7:00am 2 days ago to listen to dubstep while watching producers pace around an empty auditorium :/ I couldn't do that a second time...
There HAD to be a crowd for the finals...I know Quake Live had its own section, but how visible was it to the public? Could anybody who went there tell me?
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On December 01 2013 10:33 PineapplePizza wrote:I'm not sure why you expected anything but biomine in TvZ. Show nested quote +On December 01 2013 10:17 Shauni wrote:
haha you fools are still watching sc2 and those childish moba games on dreamhack? Quakelive is the shit man. Amazing finals. Are there any vods? I stayed up till 7:00am 2 days ago to listen to dubstep while watching producers pace around an empty auditorium :/ I couldn't do that a second time... There HAD to be a crowd for the finals...I know Quake Live had its own section, but how visible was it to the public? Could anybody who went there tell me?
http://www.twitch.tv/dreamhackql/b/483915210
The final day had barely no breaks so great watch. Especially the finals (skip to 10:05 for them). I dunno about crowd and how big the auditorium is but it seemed pretty packed at the finals, and the stream view was about 13k. Pretty high for quakelive.
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Yes you are right in some points here.
Smix was really annoying, not only asking the same questions over and over again, but also using the same words and expressions. Really bad host imo.
I don't like Nathanias as a caster but I guess it's personal preference.
Darude's first appearence was like a funny/troll thing but I guess people didn't get it and thought it was serious... hence poor guy got zero love from the crowd. His show at the main stage later seems to be decent tho.
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On December 01 2013 10:20 Yorbon wrote:
i only watched a few games sc2, so i dont know a lot about the overall tournament. But boy, do i disagree with what you say.
I dont have as much games played in sc2. I never even played dota 2.
But this tournament was a good tournament. Compared to what i was used to before i stepped a bit away from sc2, this was totally great. Casters improved compared to a year ago. Overall level seemed to have risen.
Aside from that, i don't know how you'd want to compare the 2 games in terms of 'amazingness' objectively. That just seems total nonsense to me. Except of course if you're comparing the effect games had on you personally. In that case, point taken and i wish you best of luck in dota 2.
Well I am glad that other people found the tournament enjoyable to watch. I was comparing the effect the games had on me personally, that is a great way to put it. It's pretty impossible to compare dota 2 and sc2 otherwise
On December 01 2013 10:23 Jerubaal wrote:
Personally I don't think casters are nearly as important in Dota 2 as they are in SC2. There aren't any that I think are great and I wouldn't turn a match on or off because of the caster (unless Purge starts casting), whereas I might do that for SC2.
I'm also not really sure why you wrote it like this. At first glance it looks like you are comparing the two parts of the event but your whole discussion of Dota 2 is about the games and not the production while most of your complaints about SC2 were about the production.
I just wrote this to express my own opinion, not to proove something or argue that one game is better than the other. Just to voice certain things that I found distasteful. I usually mute the sc2 casters whenever I watch the games because of the amount of information I find them to say that, although isn't incorrect, doesn't point out the actual insight of what the decision was behind the action which is where the true gem of sc2 lies. They just voice over a lot of actions at the surface.
I don't mute dota 2 casters simply because although they do a similar job compared to sc2 casters in terms of content, there are 10 heroes out on the map that is hard to keep track of (item progression, farm, what they are doing) and I actually find them helpful because they try their best to cycle through what all the heroes are building towards which helps me understand the team's game plan
On December 01 2013 10:36 silvana wrote:
Yes you are right in some points here.
Smix was really annoying, not only asking the same questions over and over again, but also using the same words and expressions. Really bad host imo.
I don't like Nathanias as a caster but I guess it's personal preference.
Darude's first appearence was like a funny/troll thing but I guess people didn't get it and thought it was serious... hence poor guy got zero love from the crowd. His show at the main stage later seems to be decent tho.
ahhhhh they shoulda made Darude's role more apparent. I thought they were being 100% serious about it
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
A lack in general strategy choice isn't necessarily a bad thing. Look at BW, since at least 2001 the same core compositions were used in each matchup. Zealot/Goon vs Tank/Mine PvT, Lurker/Ling vs Marine/Medic ZvT and Hydra/Ling vs Zealot/Templar in ZvP. The variations in play ultimately came down to build orders, supplementary units and late game tweaks. If you looked at a game from 2001 and then looked at a game in 2010 and simply judged the game by unit compositions you would have thought nothing had changed.
I'm the first to admit that SC2 still has room for improvement, but the SC2 finals were some of the better finals we've had this year. My point is judging by unit composition is a poor way to assess the quality of the games.
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I missed the Dota2 finals but yesterday's games were exciting. From what I read on the LR thread the finals were kind of a let down though. I did catch the SC2 finals though, and those were some exciting games I definitely enjoyed. Maybe I enjoyed them more because I haven't been watching much sc2 and am therefore not tired of seeing the same thing all the time but regardless it was enjoyable.
On December 01 2013 10:17 Shauni wrote:
haha you fools are still watching sc2 and those childish moba games on dreamhack? Quakelive is the shit man. Amazing finals.
There was quake? I missed it? Noooo
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On December 01 2013 12:15 Plexa wrote:
A lack in general strategy choice isn't necessarily a bad thing. Look at BW, since at least 2001 the same core compositions were used in each matchup. Zealot/Goon vs Tank/Mine PvT, Lurker/Ling vs Marine/Medic ZvT and Hydra/Ling vs Zealot/Templar in ZvP. The variations in play ultimately came down to build orders, supplementary units and late game tweaks. If you looked at a game from 2001 and then looked at a game in 2010 and simply judged the game by unit compositions you would have thought nothing had changed.
I'm the first to admit that SC2 still has room for improvement, but the SC2 finals were some of the better finals we've had this year. My point is judging by unit composition is a poor way to assess the quality of the games.
I am by no way dissing the quality of games played at the finals, I just felt for the first time in a long time where it didn't feel very satisfying to watch the dreamhack tournament games. I mean, I guess i shouldn't be dissing on the unit compositions. Really, it's the small variations that make or break the metagame that I thought would happen with the widow mine nerf that simply isn't there.
It brings a lot of stability to the matchup, but it leaves for little room in between for anything other then 3OC builds currently with the occasional 2 base pressure play. For me personally, it is getting a bit boring to watch and really hard to stay motivated to watch tvz games when I know exactly what's going to happen in every game before it even happens
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On December 01 2013 12:15 Plexa wrote:
A lack in general strategy choice isn't necessarily a bad thing. Look at BW, since at least 2001 the same core compositions were used in each matchup. Zealot/Goon vs Tank/Mine PvT, Lurker/Ling vs Marine/Medic ZvT and Hydra/Ling vs Zealot/Templar in ZvP. The variations in play ultimately came down to build orders, supplementary units and late game tweaks. If you looked at a game from 2001 and then looked at a game in 2010 and simply judged the game by unit compositions you would have thought nothing had changed.
I'm the first to admit that SC2 still has room for improvement, but the SC2 finals were some of the better finals we've had this year. My point is judging by unit composition is a poor way to assess the quality of the games.
From what I saw, the sc2 games were absolutely fantastic, and I agree with this assessment. Judging simply by breadth of strategy choice is a bit unfair. That also eliminates creative uses of the compositions, which is something I saw and really enjoyed from this dreamhack. Overall the games from dreamhack were great to watch and the change of sc2 over 3 years is incredible.
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EPT
