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Sanya12364 Posts
Writing for Liquid is a process and in the end we publish what we have. So if you want to know about some of the editorial decisions and review of the Awards, I've laid out my thoughts below.
Awards were voted on by various members of the writing staff but each one required a blurb. For whatever reason there weren't many nominations for community/fun awards this year. Instead there were all game play ones and we flamed people in the fun awards.
More Serious Awards
1. Suprising Team
Why not LGD? Nearly everyone thought this team was middle of the pack so a top 8 finish was not surprising. They took down iG but see below why we had some doubts about iG.
2. Disappointment
Why Alliance? It looked like Alliance turned the corner prior to TI4, but team cohesion broke down and Alliance didn't look like a unified team for parts of the group stage.
Why DK? Multiple staff members are DK fans and felt the fourth place was far lower than their early half showed. In addition, the wildly erratic drafts instead of lineups with clear game plans unlike fellow Chinese teams factor into the disappointment.
Why not iG? We place the team as number 1 but there was enough question marks for the team especially in drafting and playing from behind.
Why not Empire? Empire looked lost on 6.81. The general consensus was that Empire dropped from a title contender 2 months ago. 13th was not a disappointment of expectations.
3. Best Gameplay
Why EG vs DK? This game had boring periods of farm, but the split push was DK's weird game plan and EG wanted to gank DK but they benefited from delaying the game too. Both of these two teams execute well. It's not the most exciting game because the teams dodged each other for minutes.
Why not C9 vs VG? Poor decision-making marked the middle of the game, and the game was never really close. (The power of late game Meepo is under-appreciated. Two months ago dota2://matchid=704062917 is close to even game where outcome is in doubt. We also saw C9 Meepo go toe-to-toe with late game Naga Siren.) C9 had a solid control of this game as soon as Meepo came out of the laning phase unharmed.
4. Most Entertaining
Why DK vs LGD? This has a lot to do with the draft and DK's struggle to overcome it. Most deathball lineups have a high ground pushing mechanism. This DK lineup did not. Most splitpush lineups have two lategame tower demolition heroes. This DK lineup did not. Without any lategame in comparison to LGD, the only avenue of victory is to try to snowball, and DK tried hard and almost won LGD, for the most part, smartly dodged fights. They derped in not going for the last lane of barracks when it was there for the taking, and the iceiceice item buying spree was also quite funny. The comeback from 25k was fast and swift.
Why not C9 vs VG? Mostly because we didn't write it up as a runner up. This one had its share of funny decisions. BH roaming for courier kills. VG blowing lots of cooldowns on a Meepo kill and then take a huge risk at the Roshan Pit. Meepo mis-micro for a death in the middle and giving a fight to VG. C9 giving up a barracks for free. The cog suicide at the fountain at the other end. The game however was never in doubt. (See SingSing's 60 second level 22 death time timer after a buyback and Aui breaking out the Refresher Doom in the penultimate fight.)
That and I absolutely hate C9. C9 is a talent group of individual players with some highly creative ideas. I've flame them for not being able to put it all together once they reach a winning position. If you look at their games, they often allow games to stretch beyond reasonable lengths.(C9 vs iG groups stages is a prime example.) C9 games get hard to watch and C9 isn't kind to its fans.
Joke Awards
Writing style here is quite over the top.
1. Million-dollar Coil
In plays get hype up the game and last year's "million-dollar" coil was one of these widely exaggerated plays. This is more of a commentary of our collective rosy memory and myths of yesteryears. For this year's award winner, Luminous was already diffusing the significance and the skill of the play by calling out Mu for mismanaging mana seconds after the play was over.
Good job, Lumi!
2. Luo Level Lineup
Why "Luo Level Lineup?" Because Luo had all these next level drafts for his team where no-one could understand how to play it. This was supposed to more of a double-edge idea where it can look genius if it works out or extremely hard to play if it doesn't. It ended up being much more of a negative thing. Oops.
3. Flame of the West, kinda
Yeah. So no Western teams eliminated any Chinese teams. Liquid had the distinction of beating a dysfunctional one in the play-ins. And we love showing love to Liquid here, even ironically.
4. EternaLEnVy
Sorry EE for the name of this award.
KingJ, Zhou Yang, has a pretty sad story this year since NewBee screwed him out of playing at The International by kicking him when teams for the qualifiers were being announced. In his Weibo write up of all the Chinese teams, he actually dedicated a disproportionately large paragraphs to how to play NewBee in a bit of justified anger.
We're the bad guys being mean, here. You should laugh at our write up, but actually feel some sympathy for this guy.
5. Trixi Skadi
So, last year Trixi ended up playing a #1 NP and went Skadi instead of damage effectively giving away a game. This year, for this award we went after the obvious "surrender" midas by Arteezy that had an easy punchline.
On a more serious note, if you're going to build a "surrender" item, might as well GG, and in my opinion, Iceiceice deserves the winner, the runner-up, and any honorable mentions in an actual dubious item award.
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The EE award was horrendously misplaced, KingJ is at best 3rd place on the rankings since the only team he got kicked from last year was Newbee. Compare this to say, ZSMJ, who was not only kicked more recently from Newbee, but was also kicked 10 months ago from VG, the second place team at TI4.
As for most of the other issues I blame democracy
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I thought the national socialist party was mostly run by dictators?
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Sanya12364 Posts
A ZSMJ write up would have been boring.
KingJ write up draws attention to someone who didn't get chance to compete at all in Ti4 qualifiers. With joke awards it's much less deserving rather than being funny and making a point at the same time.
Democracy isn't a problem at all. Overriding the vote was easy, as long as you could provide a compelling write up.
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the staff writers already know what i think: down with DK fans and linsanity
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I don't care so much about the awards so didn't comment before, but since there's been a lot of talk about the c9 vs VG game I thought I'd talk about some things you said.
TanGeng wrote:
This one had its share of funny decisions. BH roaming for courier kills. VG blowing lots of cooldowns on a Meepo kill and then take a huge risk at the Roshan Pit. Meepo mis-micro for a death in the middle and giving a fight to VG. C9 giving up a barracks for free. The cog suicide at the fountain at the other end. The game however was never in doubt. (See SingSing's 60 second level 22 death time timer after a buyback and Aui breaking out the Refresher Doom in the penultimate fight.)
From my perspective the entire game for c9 went around finding the right time to fight. They clearly didn't want to fight when it was on VG's terms when VG had all the ultimates up and BKBs off cool down. I don't think BH was only "roaming for courier kills" (did he even kill a single courier in that game?), but his wards, general vision and the time VG had to commit to hunt him down was important in allowing Doom and Meepo for example to farm safely and apply pressure to lanes. The fighting aspect is visible in how c9 takes a fight at the rosh pit, loses it, immediately smokes after it when ults are on cooldown and wipes VG at their t2. Even after that c9 seemed to only want to fight when some BKB's or ults had been wasted (using for example Meepo buybacks to immediately continue the fight and prevent VG from getting free towers).
When VG came for the rax, Luna still had her Aegis and VG was set up with Luna and DP at the front. When c9 finally engaged, the Aegis had just expired and the Exorcism duration had already been largely used. Yes, c9 had great fighting power with the Refresher Doom (with EE playing it, not Aui) and Meepo, but they may have felt that it's a risk to drop your ults onto an Aegis Luna when you might as well let the rax go and wipe them straight after.
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I can't tell who's staff and who's community!!!11
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The nazis are the ones you can't report
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aside from getting the c9 carry wrong (lol) i still see no explanation for snubbing fy entirely
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Sanya12364 Posts
On August 11 2014 18:42 spudde123 wrote:
When VG came for the rax, Luna still had her Aegis and VG was set up with Luna and DP at the front. When c9 finally engaged, the Aegis had just expired and the Exorcism duration had already been largely used. Yes, c9 had great fighting power with the Refresher Doom (with EE playing it, not Aui) and Meepo, but they may have felt that it's a risk to drop your ults onto an Aegis Luna when you might as well let the rax go and wipe them straight after.
Aegis disappeared on the tower.
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On August 11 2014 19:55 TanGeng wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2014 18:42 spudde123 wrote:
When VG came for the rax, Luna still had her Aegis and VG was set up with Luna and DP at the front. When c9 finally engaged, the Aegis had just expired and the Exorcism duration had already been largely used. Yes, c9 had great fighting power with the Refresher Doom (with EE playing it, not Aui) and Meepo, but they may have felt that it's a risk to drop your ults onto an Aegis Luna when you might as well let the rax go and wipe them straight after.
Aegis disappeared on the tower.
Yes, but at that point c9 wasn't in position to defend yet. Some of their players were only tping back or setting up a flank for the fight. They had probably decided that they don't want to fight into the Aegis, and after the Aegis was gone they were not yet in position and the rax was dropping down really fast to Luna+DP so the window to capitalize and stop the raxing after the Aegis is gone is only a few seconds anyway.
And does the rax even matter so much that it has to be pointed out as a "mistake"? Hard to say what exactly was the thought process of c9 or if there were risks that they thought about if they engaged before the rax went down, but they wanted a good engagement and they got it, which put them in a position to end the game. Maybe letting it go wasn't necessary, but how things turned out wasn't bad either.
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Sanya12364 Posts
On August 11 2014 20:04 spudde123 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2014 19:55 TanGeng wrote:On August 11 2014 18:42 spudde123 wrote:
When VG came for the rax, Luna still had her Aegis and VG was set up with Luna and DP at the front. When c9 finally engaged, the Aegis had just expired and the Exorcism duration had already been largely used. Yes, c9 had great fighting power with the Refresher Doom (with EE playing it, not Aui) and Meepo, but they may have felt that it's a risk to drop your ults onto an Aegis Luna when you might as well let the rax go and wipe them straight after.
Aegis disappeared on the tower. Yes, but at that point c9 wasn't in position to defend yet. Some of their players were only tping back or setting up a flank for the fight. They had probably decided that they don't want to fight into the Aegis, and after the Aegis was gone they were not yet in position and the rax was dropping down really fast to Luna+DP so the window to capitalize and stop the raxing after the Aegis is gone is only a few seconds anyway. And does the rax even matter so much that it has to be pointed out as a "mistake"? Hard to say what exactly was the thought process of c9 or if there were risks that they thought about if they engaged before the rax went down, but they wanted a good engagement and they got it, which put them in a position to end the game. Maybe letting it go wasn't necessary, but how things turned out wasn't bad either.
It's not so much a mistake as the game was not in doubt. For the win, Keep a barracks doesn't matter, Lose a barracks doesn't matter. C9 is solidly ahead.
It's just not a necessary play. The only one pushing lanes for C9 that wasn't back was some support guy. Everyone else was in position.
Seriously if SingSing died 3 times in a row and C9 lost/almost lost because of that barracks giveaway, I'd voted it the most entertaining game, no questions. LOL.
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On August 11 2014 20:56 TanGeng wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2014 20:04 spudde123 wrote:On August 11 2014 19:55 TanGeng wrote:On August 11 2014 18:42 spudde123 wrote:
When VG came for the rax, Luna still had her Aegis and VG was set up with Luna and DP at the front. When c9 finally engaged, the Aegis had just expired and the Exorcism duration had already been largely used. Yes, c9 had great fighting power with the Refresher Doom (with EE playing it, not Aui) and Meepo, but they may have felt that it's a risk to drop your ults onto an Aegis Luna when you might as well let the rax go and wipe them straight after.
Aegis disappeared on the tower. Yes, but at that point c9 wasn't in position to defend yet. Some of their players were only tping back or setting up a flank for the fight. They had probably decided that they don't want to fight into the Aegis, and after the Aegis was gone they were not yet in position and the rax was dropping down really fast to Luna+DP so the window to capitalize and stop the raxing after the Aegis is gone is only a few seconds anyway. And does the rax even matter so much that it has to be pointed out as a "mistake"? Hard to say what exactly was the thought process of c9 or if there were risks that they thought about if they engaged before the rax went down, but they wanted a good engagement and they got it, which put them in a position to end the game. Maybe letting it go wasn't necessary, but how things turned out wasn't bad either. It's not so much a mistake as the game was not in doubt. For the win, Keep a barracks doesn't matter, Lose a barracks doesn't matter. C9 is solidly ahead. It's just not a necessary play. The only one pushing lanes for C9 that wasn't back was some support guy. Everyone else was in position. Seriously if SingSing died 3 times in a row and C9 lost/almost lost because of that barracks giveaway, I'd voted it the most entertaining game, no questions. LOL.
Well yea I was not really advocating for it to be "the most entertaining game", I was just talking about what you said to people about the game, "funny decisions" and such.
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EPT
