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On June 06 2015 00:49 hariooo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2015 00:43 Azarkon wrote:On June 06 2015 00:29 hariooo wrote:On June 05 2015 23:48 Azarkon wrote:
Chinese tears flooding the thread. Six teams go in, one team comes out. 3/4 Western teams survive.
But it ought to have been obvious this was going to occur when you saw Secret, EG, Empire, etc. destroy the competition. Talent breeds talent. When a region is able to produce 1 top team, it's able to produce others via imitation.
Last year, EG and DK were neck and neck all the way through to TI. In theory, it ought to have been a narrow TI, but because European teams went their own way on the meta instead of following EG, they got crushed.
This year, the best Chinese team, VG, does not know how to beat the best Western teams. It's a line of dominoes - when the first one falls, the rest also fall.
I think the Koreans have a shot of placing higher than the Chinese this year, minus VG. With regards to the bolded, there's the obvious counter-example of EG and nadoto. Overall this is some scrubby analysis either way. EG has raised the level of NADoto a lot. That's why your average European tier 2 team wasn't able to demolish the competition in the NA qualifiers. But the issue with NADoto is that there are barely any sponsors and local tournaments. EG is able to do what it's able to do primarily because it's the only well-funded NADoto team and because it attends European tournaments. Even so, I think EG got cut down to size this year due to Secret poaching Arteezy and Zai. Tier 2? Average europe players who've never achieved anything (outside of PLD) with 2 NA players makes a tier 2 Europe team now? holy shit does that make VP/Navi tier 1 and C9/Secret/Empire tier -4?
Tinker's results before the NA qualifiers was around the level of tier 2 European teams: http://www.gosugamers.net/dota2/teams/8912-team-tinker/matches They were certainly not 'omg this team is going to lose to complexity aren't they' level.
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United States3789 Posts
On June 06 2015 00:49 hariooo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2015 00:43 Azarkon wrote:On June 06 2015 00:29 hariooo wrote:On June 05 2015 23:48 Azarkon wrote:
Chinese tears flooding the thread. Six teams go in, one team comes out. 3/4 Western teams survive.
But it ought to have been obvious this was going to occur when you saw Secret, EG, Empire, etc. destroy the competition. Talent breeds talent. When a region is able to produce 1 top team, it's able to produce others via imitation.
Last year, EG and DK were neck and neck all the way through to TI. In theory, it ought to have been a narrow TI, but because European teams went their own way on the meta instead of following EG, they got crushed.
This year, the best Chinese team, VG, does not know how to beat the best Western teams. It's a line of dominoes - when the first one falls, the rest also fall.
I think the Koreans have a shot of placing higher than the Chinese this year, minus VG. With regards to the bolded, there's the obvious counter-example of EG and nadoto. Overall this is some scrubby analysis either way. EG has raised the level of NADoto a lot. That's why your average European tier 2 team wasn't able to demolish the competition in the NA qualifiers. But the issue with NADoto is that there are barely any sponsors and local tournaments. EG is able to do what it's able to do primarily because it's the only well-funded NADoto team and because it attends European tournaments. Even so, I think EG got cut down to size this year due to Secret poaching Arteezy and Zai. Tier 2? Average europe players who've never achieved anything (outside of PLD) with 2 NA players makes a tier 2 Europe team now? holy shit does that make VP/Navi tier 1 and C9/Secret/Empire tier -4?
Is it negative because their actual rank is infinite but it can't be displayed as anything but a random negative number? [/dumb programming joke]
While I don't agree much with Ark. I'm beginning to understand the sensibility in his increasing respect for the Korean scene.
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opterown
Australia54784 Posts
Most of the tournaments have been short-term qualifiers into LAN finals, nothing like the huge extended group stage play of WPC into the big LAN finals. I think it actually made a huge difference. Not happy that they seem to have collapsed.
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On June 06 2015 00:56 Azarkon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2015 00:49 hariooo wrote:On June 06 2015 00:43 Azarkon wrote:On June 06 2015 00:29 hariooo wrote:On June 05 2015 23:48 Azarkon wrote:
Chinese tears flooding the thread. Six teams go in, one team comes out. 3/4 Western teams survive.
But it ought to have been obvious this was going to occur when you saw Secret, EG, Empire, etc. destroy the competition. Talent breeds talent. When a region is able to produce 1 top team, it's able to produce others via imitation.
Last year, EG and DK were neck and neck all the way through to TI. In theory, it ought to have been a narrow TI, but because European teams went their own way on the meta instead of following EG, they got crushed.
This year, the best Chinese team, VG, does not know how to beat the best Western teams. It's a line of dominoes - when the first one falls, the rest also fall.
I think the Koreans have a shot of placing higher than the Chinese this year, minus VG. With regards to the bolded, there's the obvious counter-example of EG and nadoto. Overall this is some scrubby analysis either way. EG has raised the level of NADoto a lot. That's why your average European tier 2 team wasn't able to demolish the competition in the NA qualifiers. But the issue with NADoto is that there are barely any sponsors and local tournaments. EG is able to do what it's able to do primarily because it's the only well-funded NADoto team and because it attends European tournaments. Even so, I think EG got cut down to size this year due to Secret poaching Arteezy and Zai. Tier 2? Average europe players who've never achieved anything (outside of PLD) with 2 NA players makes a tier 2 Europe team now? holy shit does that make VP/Navi tier 1 and C9/Secret/Empire tier -4? Tinker's results before the NA qualifiers was around the level of tier 2 European teams: http://www.gosugamers.net/dota2/teams/8912-team-tinker/matches They were certainly not 'omg this team is going to lose to complexity aren't they' level.
I think complexity just overperformed at exactly the right moment. If this EG halo effect was real complexity wouldn't have had such shitty performance leading up to the qualifiers. They would have been consistently good. http://www.gosugamers.net/dota2/teams/2353-complexity-gaming-dota2/matches?page=2
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On June 06 2015 00:56 opterown wrote:
Most of the tournaments have been short-term qualifiers into LAN finals, nothing like the huge extended group stage play of WPC into the big LAN finals. I think it actually made a huge difference. Not happy that they seem to have collapsed.
It's a valid explanation, but at the same time, a damning criticism of players' attitudes.
Just because there isn't a huge ongoing tournament, doesn't equate to you slacking off till three months before TI. Procrastination never leads to success at this level of competition.
So while I do think the lack of WPC ACE made a difference, I don't think it's a worthy excuse. The Koreans managed to get ahead of the rest of SEA with practically no tournaments in Korea. It's all about personal initiative, in the end.
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United States47024 Posts
As much as I hate to say it, LGD basically stopping practice for a week and a half because Maybe went to see his girlfriend kind of reinforces that point, lol.
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On June 06 2015 01:07 hariooo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2015 00:56 Azarkon wrote:On June 06 2015 00:49 hariooo wrote:On June 06 2015 00:43 Azarkon wrote:On June 06 2015 00:29 hariooo wrote:On June 05 2015 23:48 Azarkon wrote:
Chinese tears flooding the thread. Six teams go in, one team comes out. 3/4 Western teams survive.
But it ought to have been obvious this was going to occur when you saw Secret, EG, Empire, etc. destroy the competition. Talent breeds talent. When a region is able to produce 1 top team, it's able to produce others via imitation.
Last year, EG and DK were neck and neck all the way through to TI. In theory, it ought to have been a narrow TI, but because European teams went their own way on the meta instead of following EG, they got crushed.
This year, the best Chinese team, VG, does not know how to beat the best Western teams. It's a line of dominoes - when the first one falls, the rest also fall.
I think the Koreans have a shot of placing higher than the Chinese this year, minus VG. With regards to the bolded, there's the obvious counter-example of EG and nadoto. Overall this is some scrubby analysis either way. EG has raised the level of NADoto a lot. That's why your average European tier 2 team wasn't able to demolish the competition in the NA qualifiers. But the issue with NADoto is that there are barely any sponsors and local tournaments. EG is able to do what it's able to do primarily because it's the only well-funded NADoto team and because it attends European tournaments. Even so, I think EG got cut down to size this year due to Secret poaching Arteezy and Zai. Tier 2? Average europe players who've never achieved anything (outside of PLD) with 2 NA players makes a tier 2 Europe team now? holy shit does that make VP/Navi tier 1 and C9/Secret/Empire tier -4? Tinker's results before the NA qualifiers was around the level of tier 2 European teams: http://www.gosugamers.net/dota2/teams/8912-team-tinker/matches They were certainly not 'omg this team is going to lose to complexity aren't they' level. I think complexity just overperformed at exactly the right moment. If this EG halo effect was real complexity wouldn't have had such shitty performance leading up to the qualifiers. They would have been consistently good. http://www.gosugamers.net/dota2/teams/2353-complexity-gaming-dota2/matches?page=2
Complexity only acquired their current roster on May 7th, 2015. The NA favorites going into the NA qualifiers were actually NAR, Summer's Rift, and Void Boys. It isn't just Complexity that beat Mouz. They were actually knocked out by NAR. Void Boys were, according to PPD and Arteezy, the 'best' NA team before they lost their star players to visa. Towards this end, I think there were three NA teams capable of beating Mouz at the qualifiers.
EG halo exists, just doesn't fix all the other issues with NADoto, including the fact that there are no committed sponsors besides EG. How are NA teams going to compete with full-time teams when they're playing in an amateur setting?
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As usual, you mix good points with ones that just aren't true. Yes, most of the Chinese top teams seem to have turned incredibly lax and overall, the West has a decent edge right now. The 3 top contenders for TI5 look to be VG, EG and Secret.
On June 05 2015 23:48 Azarkon wrote:
Chinese tears flooding the thread. Six teams go in, one team comes out. 3/4 Western teams survive.
But it ought to have been obvious this was going to occur when you saw Secret, EG, Empire, etc. destroy the competition. Talent breeds talent. When a region is able to produce 1 top team, it's able to produce others via imitation.
Very odd claim. Did VG's dominance (or Newbee's in China for that matter) during the second half of 2014 inspire the other Chinese teams to greater heights? Nope, they were all just falling further and further behind, leading to the DAC fiasco. Neither has EG's excellence done overly much for the NA scene. While their T2 teams may be better than they used to be, they don't even have a second team worth taking seriously anymore.
Obviously good competition helps a scene, but a top team doesn't magically make the rest of its scene good.
Last year, EG and DK were neck and neck all the way through to TI. In theory, it ought to have been a narrow TI, but because European teams went their own way on the meta instead of following EG, they got crushed.
What you're implying here just isn't true. Last year wasn't even close to being a neck and neck race between the Western and the Eastern hope. EG and DK played twice. Yes, they each took one of those encounters (DK winning SL9, EG the Summit), but to imply from this that the scenes were close to each other is just horribly misleading. China stomped the west all year in pretty much every encounter, in tournaments that mostly had 1-2 Chinese teams and all of the top Western teams. China didn't even need the team who would turn out to be their final boss (Newbee) for that.
China was way, way ahead of the west last year, it was obvious to anyone actually following the tournaments and TI4's results shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone.
This year, the best Chinese team, VG, does not know how to beat the best Western teams. It's a line of dominoes - when the first one falls, the rest also fall.
VG loled all over Western teams for months after TI4. Chinese teams minus VG are falling because they're just not very good right now. Not because of VG.
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On June 06 2015 01:13 TheYango wrote:
As much as I hate to say it, LGD basically stopping practice for a week and a half because Maybe went to see his girlfriend kind of reinforces that point, lol.
In a interview today Fy also said they haven't been practicing much between all the LANs they attend.
However, they will all (by that I mean all teams participating in TI) practice for TI vigorously and China will definitely spend more time practicing than the west.
Will it matter? Will there even be a Chinese team in the grand final? We don't know but big teams realize these LANs are just foreplay to TI and TI in the grand scheme of things is all that matters. Winning these LANs is just a bonus.
This is why we see VG go to many LANs to get the feel of the meta and EG attending only few LANs trying to not burn out.
They're 2 different approaches and both have its strengths and weaknesses, only time will tell which is better.
In theory Secret is in the worst position to win a TI between the big teams because they're hitting their form now and they're putting a big mark on their back come TI. Maybe they perform like Alliance and live up to the expectations or maybe they crash and burn like 2014 DK did.
Time will tell but people are reading too much into current happenings as if not realizing TI is 2 months away and A LOT can change.
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The learning curve to browsing liquiddota is basically the time it takes to figure out that Azarkon's posts are meant for entertainment only
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On June 06 2015 01:34 Orome wrote:
Very odd claim. Did VG's dominance (or Newbee's in China for that matter) during the second half of 2014 inspire the other Chinese teams to greater heights? Nope, they were all just falling further and further behind, leading to the DAC fiasco. Neither has EG's excellence done overly much for the NA scene. While their T2 teams may be better than they used to be, they don't even have a second team worth taking seriously anymore.
I think what you're missing is the fact that while VG is the top team by Chinese standards, they are actually not top 2 by international standards. They have a losing record vs. Secret, EG, and Empire. You're talking as though VG is the best team in the world when in fact they're 4th best by recent results.
I'm talking about internationally top teams existing in a region raising the level of play. Obviously NoT is not raising the level of play in Peru despite being the best team in their region, etc.
What you're implying here just isn't true. Last year wasn't even close to being a neck and neck race between the Western and the Eastern hope. EG and DK played twice. Yes, they each took one of those encounters (DK winning SL9, EG the Summit), but to imply from this that the scenes were close to each other is just horribly misleading. China stomped the west all year in pretty much every encounter, in tournaments that mostly had 1-2 Chinese teams and all of the top Western teams. China didn't even need the team who would turn out to be their final boss (Newbee) for that.
China was way, way ahead of the west last year, it was obvious to anyone actually following the tournaments and TI4's results shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone.
Whatever you believe the gap to have been last year - and I disagree with it being large - this gap didn't actually open till after DK's rise to the top. The C9 MLG victory vs. DK is normally seen as Arteezy's rise to fame, but along with the Nexon invitationals, it was actually of utmost importance for another phenomenon: DK's destruction of Alliance, the team that went 28-1 vs. Chinese teams in 2013.
From the time DK smashed Alliance, Western Dota was on the defensive, culminating in DK's flawless victory at SL. The fall of the first domino - ie Alliance - led to the fall of the rest. Only EG, which went its own way, managed to keep up with the Chinese teams, while the rest of the Western teams were floundering in the wake of Alliance's fall.
At the actual TI, NA teams overperformed initially - which I believe was the effect of the EG halo. Liquid and Nar'Vi both took games off of top EU and Chinese teams, while top EU teams eg Alliance and Fnatic flat out bombed.
VG loled all over Western teams for months after TI4. Chinese teams minus VG are falling because they're just not very good right now. Not because of VG.
They did, and at the time, in case you forgot, iG ALSO performed well vs. Western teams. In fact, even Ehome won that one tournament with EG, didn't they? In the period after TI 4, and till DAC, Chinese teams all performed well vs. Western teams, making people believe it was going to be another TI 4 at TI 5. But then DAC occurred, and the Chinese analogue to Alliance's fall occurred with Newbee and VG getting smashed by EG.
Of course, what sealed the deal was 6.84, which changed the way the game was played. With VG not yet showing that they're able to beat Secret/EG/Empire in 6.84 in a BoX, the rest of the Chinese scene is floundering because they simply don't know what to do vs. Secret/EG/Empire.
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Damn, that's one sick narrative. I'm actually very entertained how hard you're trying to turn Dota into an epic Hollywood-type clash between the two scenes. Unfortunately it doesn't even come close to being a good fit for the actual results.
DK at MLG wasn't the great Chinese hope wrestling the 'leading Dota scene' torch from Alliance's hands. At the time, DK was at their lowest point since forming (apart from the first few weeks, but why would we count those). 6.79 had hit, DK was struggling horribly in China, switching drafters (Mushi -> Burning) and came to SL9 with the goal to get a feel for the patch and learn as much as possible.
They went back after MLG and promptly failed to win the next Chinese tournament (I belive vs iG), prompting Burning to write emo 'winning a tournament is not in my destiny' things on his weibo. They weren't the big Chinese hope bringing back their secret wisdom on how to defeat the West. They arguably weren't even the best Chinese team at that point.
Teams are good because they have a good captain, good drafter, good players, because they practice hard and work well together. Playing against tough competition helps a team, so yes, having other top teams to practice against helps as well. But it doesn't go further than that.
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On June 06 2015 01:39 Azimuth wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2015 01:13 TheYango wrote:
As much as I hate to say it, LGD basically stopping practice for a week and a half because Maybe went to see his girlfriend kind of reinforces that point, lol. In a interview today Fy also said they haven't been practicing much between all the LANs they attend. However, they will all (by that I mean all teams participating in TI) practice for TI vigorously and China will definitely spend more time practicing than the west. Will it matter? Will there even be a Chinese team in the grand final? We don't know but big teams realize these LANs are just foreplay to TI and TI in the grand scheme of things is all that matters. Winning these LANs is just a bonus. This is why we see VG go to many LANs to get the feel of the meta and EG attending only few LANs trying to not burn out. They're 2 different approaches and both have its strengths and weaknesses, only time will tell which is better. In theory Secret is in the worst position to win a TI between the big teams because they're hitting their form now and they're putting a big mark on their back come TI. Maybe they perform like Alliance and live up to the expectations or maybe they crash and burn like 2014 DK did. Time will tell but people are reading too much into current happenings as if not realizing TI is 2 months away and A LOT can change.
I think what's great about regional analysis is that it is fairly useful for seeing which region's going to do well at TI, over individual team analysis which is difficult to get correct. Few people saw Newbee winning TI 4, but a lot of people saw China doing well because they were doing well before the tournament as a region. Same with TI 1 and TI 3 - the region that was ahead before TI, was ahead during TI.
The only TI that didn't follow this principle was TI 2, when regional parity was very difficult to judge because the only games that were being played were online games, so a lot of us, including me, didn't see China's win coming. Still, in 3/4 of the last TIs, the region that was ahead stayed ahead.
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Also did you just say Empire's superior to VG? You can't be serious lol...
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On June 06 2015 01:52 Azarkon wrote:
They did, and at the time, in case you forgot, iG ALSO performed well vs. Western teams. In fact, even Ehome won that one tournament with EG, didn't they? In the period after TI 4, and till DAC, Chinese teams all performed well vs. Western teams, making people believe it was going to be another TI 4 at TI 5. But then DAC occurred, and the Chinese analogue to Alliance's fall occurred with Newbee and VG getting smashed by EG.
I am not sure where this impression is coming from. After TI4, western teams went to China twice. First time was the first event after TI4, WEC, where EG and c9 placed ahead of all Chinese teams and faced each other in the finals. 2nd event was WCA some time later, where again c9 was in the finals (ahead of LGD, iG, VG for example) and got defeated by Newbee. VG was the only Chinese team really that competed internationally because they won all the qualifiers. iG certainly didn't do anything against western teams during that period.
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On June 06 2015 02:16 spudde123 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2015 01:52 Azarkon wrote:
They did, and at the time, in case you forgot, iG ALSO performed well vs. Western teams. In fact, even Ehome won that one tournament with EG, didn't they? In the period after TI 4, and till DAC, Chinese teams all performed well vs. Western teams, making people believe it was going to be another TI 4 at TI 5. But then DAC occurred, and the Chinese analogue to Alliance's fall occurred with Newbee and VG getting smashed by EG.
I am not sure where this impression is coming from. After TI4, western teams went to China twice. First time was the first event after TI4, WEC, where EG and c9 placed ahead of all Chinese teams and faced each other in the finals. 2nd event was WCA some time later, where again c9 was in the finals (ahead of LGD, iG, VG for example) and got defeated by Newbee. VG was the only Chinese team really that competed internationally because they won all the qualifiers. iG certainly didn't do anything against western teams during that period.
Technically the first Chinese event with westerners was i-League 2, where I think VP and another EU team got utterly stomped and ended up in last place, and VG won.
But yeah, VG and occasionally Newbee were really the only teams doing well in international tournaments.
Reality is post TI4 up to DAC, every tournament was essentially VG vs EG in international tournament finals, with an occasional showing from Newbee and C9 (amusingly, despite all the hype, Secret's first final in an international tournament was Redbull).
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On June 06 2015 02:07 Orome wrote:
Damn, that's one sick narrative. I'm actually very entertained how hard you're trying to turn Dota into an epic Hollywood-type clash between the two scenes. Unfortunately it doesn't even come close to being a good fit for the actual results.
DK at MLG wasn't the great Chinese hope wrestling the 'leading Dota scene' torch from Alliance's hands. At the time, DK was at their lowest point since forming (apart from the first few weeks, but why would we count those). 6.79 had hit, DK was struggling horribly in China, switching drafters (Mushi -> Burning) and came to SL9 with the goal to get a feel for the patch and learn as much as possible.
They went back after MLG and promptly failed to win the next Chinese tournament (I belive vs iG), prompting Burning to write emo 'winning a tournament is not in my destiny' things on his weibo. They weren't the big Chinese hope bringing back their secret wisdom on how to defeat the West. They arguably weren't even the best Chinese team at that point.
Teams are good because they have a good captain, good drafter, good players, because they practice hard and work well together. Playing against tough competition helps a team, so yes, having other top teams to practice against helps as well. But it doesn't go further than that.
I'm going to put it this way: the performance of the very top team in a region is rarely as divergent as people want to believe. The default view ought to be that a region's performance is within the normal curve of its very top team. Only in special cases, where there are obvious infrastructural differences between the very top team and the other teams in a region, is it valid to speak of a divergence.
What I'm basically arguing is that knee-jerk reactions about how 'it's just Na'Vi, it's just Alliance, it's just DK, it's just Secret, it's just VG,' etc. are getting out of hand. Just because EG is a special case does not make the rest of the regional top teams special cases.
The fact of the matter is, in practically every eSport in existence, regional performance is a damn well proxy for team performance. In Starcraft, Korean top players win because Korea is regionally ahead. In LoL, Korean and Chinese top teams win because Korea and China are regionally ahead. In Dota 2, the region that performs well prior to a TI ends up winning the TI. Regional models are stable.
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I guess nani, scarlett and stephano never existed either
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On June 06 2015 02:31 Sn0_Man wrote:
I guess nani, scarlett and stephano never existed either
Naniwa, Scarlett, and Stephano were, in retrospect, all within the curve of Western SC 2. Recall that during Stephano's time, other Western players eg Thorzain, Naniwa, Hasuobs, Nerchio, and people I surely have already forgotten were also taking games and tournaments off of Koreans. It wasn't a case of Stephano being above every Korean, and then every Korean being above every other Western player. In fact, Stephano for all the hype we gave him was never favored vs. the very top Koreans. He was the top of the Western skill curve, but only towards the top of the Korean skill curve.
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when u say in retrospect i guess u mean in revisionism yes
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EPT
