EPTMy Blogs/Feelings
Seems like people have been expecting blogs after every LAN, and I guess for 2015, it’s so far been true. However, I probably won’t be able to meet these expectations. Honestly, with every blog I write I feel like I’m damaging my relationships with people in the scene (except current players). Though I do get a little scared/worried sometimes for myself, generally I still don’t give a fuck. But I know that my actions may hurt my team/organization or perhaps even other people that are close to me, so there are some things I sometimes leave out. I really hate leaving things out, so that may stop me from writing some blogs.
Though I can’t say I’m living in rainbow land, I know that there’s nothing else I would rather do but play DotA competitively. I’m sure one day when I look back I’ll be truly happy with what I’ve done (I just hate myself atm though xD). It was very “difficult” at first, I knew I was upsetting my parents, people in real life thought I was retarded (now people online think that yay), and I didn’t have any money (It wasn’t really difficult, I never cared for money back then, and I had blind confidence in myself to succeed). But now when I stop to think about life, I realize that I have fans that are happy because I’m simply alive being me. My parents/friends are proud of me and brag to their friends whenever they can. I make enough money to do basically anything that I would want to do.
Anyway I wrote the above paragraph because everytime I write a blog, I get flamed for complaining, when I live in good conditions. I think it’s absolutely stupid to not look towards improvement just because it could be worse. It’s like all first world countries halting progress because it's ridiculous to get better when Africa is so far behind.
Playing this game I’ve dealt with many shady/toxic people, Marco Fernandez being the most obvious one (focused on him with AUI in a previous blog). There’s a lot of things that can discourage people from working in this scene (not talking about just players). People are fucked over all the time and it's very difficult to talk about these things to the public or even to others in the scene.
Though all of this has been slowly improving overtime, it’s still in a pretty dark place for many. I commend the people who work hard in this scene when they barely get any benefits for it (please don’t turn lazy/toxic accordingly though xD).
I haven’t touched on players for awhile now and I won’t for this blog either. But to the extremely toxic players in this scene, you guys may be ok at this game, but soon no one will play with you. Your garbage attitude/mentality may not be widespread known yet, but top teams will never touch you, and maybe soon the public will know about your shit xD.
I apologize for not really talking about anything, I’m not really in the right place to talk about a lot of the things that go on behind the scenes in DotA. Maybe one day I can talk about other things and not just tournaments.
Ok time for the real stuff
2015 Rescurer MARS TV DOTA LEAGUE WOoo
Venue
Private Practice Area
One thing that MDL had that was AMAZINGGG that no tournament ever had was a private area in the venue for EACH team to practice in. Every team had their own private room with 5 computers to play in. Hopefully TI will have something like this implemented because it's honestly so important.
It’s nice knowing that you can always go to the venue and there will always be computers available for you. Not only that but it’s important that teammates sit near each other and can talk in private about strategies, watch games, and play together. The booths were entirely private but it didn’t feel like you were in a cage. This meant that there weren’t random cameras pointed at us, and we wouldn’t be distracted from people walking around or asking us for interviews.
The room wasn’t half assedly done either. Our room had the same computers/monitors as the main stage computers and had 5 NeedForSeat chairs. There was a lot of trash lying around at the DAC practice room. And although our room had even more trash, at least we knew it was our trash xD. I can’t stress enough how important it is to have these. Sometimes I would just go to the booth alone and be emo, it was good stuff.
Play Area Set Up
There were some issues with the play area set up. None of the issues made it unplayable but I still don’t think these issues should have a place in high end tournament DotA. One issue was that the monitors were 60 Hz. When it comes to FPS games like CSGO, it would literally be unplayable using these monitors. In Smash Bros, they use CRT because they have faster refresh rates than flat screen TVs. Although this doesn’t apply as heavily in DotA, a standard of having 144 Hz BenQ monitors should soon come into place. I know some players like Arteezy found it very difficult to cope with the monitors initially.
These monitors also had no mechanism for vertical adjustments. For me personally, it was fine this time around, because the table height was just right and I had a chair to adjust my height (usually I bring mousepads/boxes to adjust monitor height in this case) but this isn’t acceptable either way.
Computers didn’t die during the tournament so that’s always good xD. The chairs were needforseat for every computer, something not even TI has been able to provide. However, I do want to mention that there are two types of NeedForSeat chairs, one had adjustable armrests in every direction and not just vertical and those are by far better than the normal ones. The Cloud9 branded chair has multiple ways to adjust the armrest and it actually helps so much.
Honestly the leg room situation at DAC was absolutely ridiculous. There were diagonal table legs right in front of the players, making it so the players couldn’t put their legs under the table at all. For the MDL booth tables, the same issue occured but to a much lesser extent. The legs were vertical so N0tail and Bone could wrap their legs around it. Not ideal but at least it was playable. The same problem was going to occur at the Summit 3 but they cut up and redesigned the desks so this wouldn’t be a problem.
The booth setup for this tournament was the same as DAC. Sound cancelling booth with sound cancelling headsets on top of it. There was also some sort of “club” music being played in the booth to make it harder to hear the casters. This setup may not be as pretty as the TI one but I think it’s honestly really good. You can even argue it’s better than the TI setup because you can still feel the crowd there. One issue I had was that the sound cancelling headset is way too easy to turn off and honestly I’m quite terrified of potential cheating due to CSGO shit.
Private Areas
There were a lot of private places in the venue for teams to talk in between games. As I’ve stressed in other blogs this is extremely important. No one wants to be asked for an autograph in between games when we are trying to focus. I would never blame fans for asking though since they may not have another chance, it’s more on the tournament to carefully arrange for these places.
There could still be some improvements, I think having a VIP area where people in the scene could watch the games without being bothered would be ideal. Usually pros don’t watch the games in front of the stage because they would be asked for things as they are watching. Though I think DAC/TI have been the only two tournaments that had an area set up.
Usually Chinese tournaments have private washrooms but they are very unclean or it's just a fucking hole (IT’S LITERALLY A HOLE). You guys might think oh, a washroom is a washroom but when you go to China there’s a good chance you might get food poisoning. Me/Bone/Fata all had food poisoning at MDL. I actually had problems on my playdays so thank god I had a private “VIP” washroom to go to. My ass still hurts though
. Flights/Organization
For me the biggest flaw in this tournament was how things were organized initially. Honestly coming into MDL I had high hopes because I had faith in Mali since DAC but the week before MDL I started to lose hope rapidly xD (this tourney ended up being ownage though). It was quite stressful to book my flight personally. I wanted a direct flight if it was possible/not too expensive but I wasn’t given the difference in price between direct/indirect flight. You can’t just ask “hey you want direct or indirect flight?” well of fucking course I want direct but what the hell's the price difference, what does this even mean in life.
Empire had all their flights booked wrong because all the flights had the wrong player name (Lol?). I actually almost missed my flight because my last name and first name were swapped and I was panicking. Luckily (or sadly), the same thing happened to me at DAC so I thought about this last minute and got in.
Fata went to the airport and the flight attendant asked which flight he wanted to check in to. He actually had two flights booked for him on the same day xD. I had two rooms under my name when I arrived at the hotel, well we just easily cancelled one, but still, its kinda messy.
The worse of all was our manager’s flight was booked wrong. He ended up coming 2 days later than scheduled. Well personally for Cloud 9 it wasn’t too much of an issue which I will explain later on. But had this happened to any team but C9 it would have been a huge disaster.
Staff
I wanted to dedicate a whole session to this because it was the combination of the staff and the private rooms that made this tournament the best chinese tournament I’ve ever played in by far. As I've tweeted before and I believe it holds true for many western teams is that “everytime I go to China something terrible happens.”
PPD did some blog about DAC being an amazing tournament but honestly he can only say that because Charlie Yang owns or something. Charlie personally never wants to go to China ever again. I’m sure he will personally hire a standin manager if the team wants to go.
Pre Event
For this tournament Cloud 9 went a few days early, secret went 2 days early and Empire went 1 day early. There were 4 western teams in this tournament and 3 dedicated translators Xiituzi, Orrin, and Scarlet (new translator in training) to baby sit these teams. Of course our boy Mali who works for MarsTV was there if we needed him.
I apologize if I end up missing out on talking about a bunch of things because I could only talk from my own perspective. C9 only dealt with Xiituzi for the most part and occasionally the other translators too. Scarlet actually started calling me Taxi Boy because when I had food poisoning I would often go back to the hotel T_T.
Anyway I would like to give Xiituzi a big shoutout because she actually destroyed this tournament xD. She flew over a day earlier than C9 (who arrived first) to adjust to jetlag and find food places for the teams. She ended up acting as our standin manager because Conrad couldn’t arrive as early as we could and in addition to that his flight was booked wrong. He actually came after we had already played our first set of games.
When teams arrived they usually went to WYWK (chinese Lan Cafe chain) to play. Xiituzi would take care of the team's water and food supplies and when it came to N0tail (pocky supplies). At one point she also helped us find scrims against the Chinese teams as well. Anyway things were pretty gucci the first few days we got there.
On the final day though things got fucked. Misery/1437 left their passports at the hotel (you actually need to have it to play at the LAN center, this is a common westerner mistake). It was Empire’s first time playing a Chinese lan and you actually need to register all your steam accounts into the perfect world server. I usually turn off my steam guard every time I go to China just incase. The Great Firewall of China blocks gmail and other email sites that could make it fucking obnoxious to register your account into perfectworld. I remember at WEC I had to call my friend up who was sleeping and give him all my passwords so he could turn off steam guard for me. Anyway Empire had their emails blocked so it was a pain registering them apparently.
This was the day before the first set of matches and I started to get food poisoning on this day too. I went back to the hotel like 4 times that day FUCKK. For the other days Xiituzi would be at the Lan Cafe to help the teams alone but on this day Scarlett came too. I would always bother her to get me a taxi back to the hotel. Fata also had the same issue the day before. Xiituzi had stomach medicine and headache medicine for N0tail on her so it wasn’t too bad. It worked really well for Fata but it wasn’t as legit for me T_T. Playing the matches with a bad stomach was quite brutal for me but thank god there was a clean “VIP” washroom there so it wasn’t too bad.
The day before the matches became quite stressful (maybe its cuz we won 1 scrim out of 6 yolo), my team was whining that food came 1 hour later than expected as well (I bought bread myself lol). Except for the final day (before the matches) Xiituzi was there alone taking care of both C9 and Secret. And when Empire arrived there was potentially 18 people to care of. There was a chinese helper there on the final day so it wasn’t as bad but I still felt like things weren’t carefully planned out. I think it may sound reasonable for 1 person (potentially with a helper for one day) to take care of everyone but this doesn’t account for potential emergencies.
Managers had to attend a rehearsal at the venue on the final day so 16 people were just left at the LAN center for a few hours without anyone looking after them. Keep in mind that not a single one of us speak the language so things could potentially get bad.
Some other shit happened but I cant SAY LMFaooo
Main Event
The main event was quite chill for us. There were a few times where we talked to Orrin while we were setting up on stage. That guys pretty legit. It’s actually so nice to know that there are multiple people at an event that speak natural english and actually care about this game. Usually for chinese events only like one person speaks good english and the rest don’t speak good english or play the game. I believe this event had like 5 of them (Mali, Orrin, Scarlet, Xiituzi, and one more which I don’t know the name of T_T).
The admins for our game was actually so legit. Not only was he not sleeping (literally the only admin to not sleep during the games), but N0tail made like hand gestures to get him to turn on and off the AC multiple times during the games.
Speaking of admins though, the way we tossed the coin for ban/pick was still stupid. At least this time they didn’t ask both teams whether they wanted heads/tails like last time. But this time we had to flip once for side/pick for g1 then we had to redo the toss for g3. I find this so stupid. You should only need to flip once. There’s no way this makes any sense.
Anyway the venue had food for all the players and a convenience store inside so me and N0tail could buy pocky and call ourselves fat as we eat it happily. We would always ask Xiituzi to order what we ate at the lan center instead though, we liked that food better. EHOME actually ate our food thinking it was for everyone so we had to redo our food order that day T_T. It was the first day of matches and Conrad was still flying over so we didn’t have anyone to look after the food.
Xiituzi would also get us a starbucks run every morning. On the second day Misery said “I would go to the venue and have a starbucks handed to me, very nice.”
One day Secret was asked if they needed anything and Kuroky randomly said he wanted hot tea. Xiituzi went to the convenience store afterwards and borrowed their kettle to make tea for him. What the fuck.
Oh also there was an extremely overactive happy fan there. It made me happy that you listen to FELT and follow me so well but please chill out! If I’m alone I can deal with it just fine but if I’m with other peeps I can start getting really mad…
Final Thoughts
I try to be open to the fans about stuffz but well somethings I just won’t talk about and there are other things that I do want to talk about but I don’t feel like I can. Maybe one day I can talk about some toxic player/organization drama but for now I’ll stick with tournaments xD.
Overall I really enjoyed playing in MDL, I think C9 got a lot stronger playing this tournament and I hope that will show at ESL. It’s a single elimination tournament (oh wait its a DOUBLE ELIM SEEDING TOURNY into SINGLE ELIM LMFAO) so maybe well just have a bad series but I have strong faith this time around.
MDL was great this time mainly because of the staff and the private practice rooms for the teams. The only major concern for me was the lack of organization when it came to booking flights and stuff. Perhaps things may have turn out to be a disaster of the staff wasn’t legit enough to handle the problems from all this. I’m looking forward to the next MDL hopefully it will be an even greater event.
Ok my writing probably got to more shit because I was in a rush to finish this towards the end. Daily reminder that I really do love my fans. Sometimes when I’m emo at a LAN I would go out to the crowd and just talk to the viewers there, it really does give me energy. That spirit bomb shit ain’t a joke.
Anyway my writing actually turned to shit towards the end because I started rushing so I can go play my pubs. But thanks for reading!
Shoutout to Kizzles Harrison Chang, good Luck in HOTS dude.
