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The eSports community has shaped Starcraft 2 since before it launched back in 2010. It's cultivated a community highly focused around the competition, being the best and fair competition. Over the years we've learned what the best formats are to determine the best Starcraft 2 player in a reasonable fashion.
This is another Starcraft 2 tournament but before we begin I want to make one thing clear:
This is not a fair competition
Challenge Wars is a new tournament series about having fun. Both the players and the viewers are encouraged to abandon the shackles of reason as we dive into formats that any sane person would know are a little off. At the end of the day, this tournament exists for those who are tired of only seeing double elimination brackets, group stage play and tournaments that blend together because they all look like the same thing.
Some of the tournaments you'll see in Challenge Wars will be more reasonable but with an interesting twist you've never seen before. Some of them will be wonky and force players and viewers to really think about what's going to happen. Some of them will make you question if you can even classify this as a tournament because of how ridiculous the ideas are, but my sincerest hope is that all of them will make you gasp, laugh, cheer, jeer and ultimately remember to have fun.
We're kicking off the announcement of Challenge Wars with the first event in the tournament series. This event is called...
GGLetsRE is an 8-man single-elimination tournament with a twist. The format for the overall tournament is pretty straightforward, but the format for each match is a little different.
- Players will veto down to one map and play game 1 on that map.
- The loser of game 1 will pick a time in the last 7 minutes of game 1 to resume from replay from.
- Players play out from there and this becomes game 2.
- Repeat this process until the series is done.
- Because games will be shorter than usual, Ro8 will be a Bo5, Semi-finals Bo7, Finals Bo9.
In case you didn't follow, this means instead of playing a fresh new game on a new map, the loser gets an opportunity to fix what they felt was the biggest mistake they made in the last 7 minutes of the game.
I'm also looking forward to seeing what the final replay for each series looks like when players have had a chance to "fix" their big mistakes a few times.
The event will take place on Saturday, Oct 15 5:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) over on:
The Prize pool will be $500 and will have open donations for anyone that would like to increase it. Stay tuned for more info.
The player lineup will be a mix of top North American and European talent. Stay tuned for more player reveals.
Credit to PSISTORM Gaming, @techcore, @kenzi131, Adela Sznajder, R1CH and Helena Kristiansson for the photos Casting will be done by Ravi " feardragon" Pareek and a Jared PiG Krensel. Credit to @techcore and @kenzi131 for the photos
When someone from EU plays against someone from NA, how will you decide server preference? Server preference is always a difficult thing when working with players of different regions in a tournament that isn't biased toward on region. Because this event is not made to be the most "fair" tournament in the first place, we'll end up just doing a coin toss of some kind to determine which region game 1 is played on and alternate servers from there. This rule may be revisited before the tournament.
Is the tournament called Challenge Wars or GGLetsRE? This tournament is called GGLetsRE, but the tournament series is called Challenge Wars. The term series implying this is the first of many unique, one-off format events to come. As of right now there's no intention to repeat any of the tournament ideas.
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Australia18228 Posts
Interesting format, I wonder if we'll see early ggs so they can pick from better positions
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Seems pretty cool, good luck
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Well, it's original I'll give ya that. Definitely going to see some Idra GGs in this.
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This is really cool, it will be interesting to see how both players react to the resume from replay, does the winning player do the same thing? Change it up? #mindgames
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On October 08 2016 00:24 Ctone23 wrote: This is really cool, it will be interesting to see how both players react to the resume from replay, does the winning player do the same thing? Change it up? #mindgames The most exciting part about this to me is that like 75% of the players told me, "this seems broken, you'd obviously just do ____". Except ____ was different for almost every single player.
Isn't that sick? Players are really confident they know the right way to play this but they all disagree with each other. That's exciting to me.
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Interesting, will there be any qualifiers of some sort?
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On October 08 2016 01:28 KiF1rE wrote: Interesting, will there be any qualifiers of some sort? Unfortunately not for this one. This one I'm hand picking and inviting the players, but some of the future ones might.
I did invites because I think a lot of the ideas, like this one, really rely on having players who embrace the idea and have fun with it. I also wanted to get a variety in terms of play style(some late game oriented, some early game oriented, some cheesey, some hyper standard, etc.)
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This adds another dimension to the game. If you're behind, even if you think you could make a come-back it's better to forfeit I think, since your opponent is almost guaranteed to win the game after, and if you lose you probably will have to start from a position far behind, which might lead to the undesirable position of loading into the game and insta-forfeiting to go 14 minutes back where you stand a chance.
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On October 08 2016 04:53 ZigguratOfUr wrote: This adds another dimension to the game. If you're behind, even if you think you could make a come-back it's better to forfeit I think, since your opponent is almost guaranteed to win the game after, and if you lose you probably will have to start from a position far behind, which might lead to the undesirable position of loading into the game and insta-forfeiting to go 14 minutes back where you stand a chance. To jump off of that, I hope the games played are not too long other wise we're likely going to see the same strat like three times. Say the game was 15 minutes long, the strata would be more or less locked in place unless someone did double lose strat. Also, I realize it's not meant to be fair, but I could see people forfeiting a game or playing badly on purpose to get the final rewind moment. Like if you're 2-1, you would play poorly on purpose and then get an advantage (potentially).
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Announcing our 3rd player: Nerchio!
Yes I know the text is on a different level. I'm a commentator not a graphic designer.
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haha omg this sounds so amazing, sickest format
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Quick updates. Two more players are announced and they are....MaSa and Welmu!
In addition, the co-caster has been revealed! It's going to be the one and only PiG! A master of analysis who seems like a natural fit for the event.
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Neat. What a weird idea to put a bunch of money behind. I wonder how it will go?
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At least this is something new. Not sure if I missed it but is there any sort of extra pot bonus? Just curious
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On October 13 2016 04:30 BBW_in_3D wrote: At least this is something new. Not sure if I missed it but is there any sort of extra pot bonus? Just curious I will have open donations to increase the prize pool. I'm just figuring out the best way to do them(matcherino or just handle it myself). Advantage of matcherino is it's an easier process but they take a small cut, whereas if I just take contributions to a paypal it's everything minus paypal transaction fees.
Also, unfortunately some last second things came up and both Scarlett and Harstem will be unable to participate. I'll be finding and announcing replacements shortly.
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The 3rd, 4th and 5th players announced: Dayshi, Bly, & Elazer.
Bracket: http://challonge.com/ggletsre
The 8th player will be announced soon! Stay tuned!
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On October 08 2016 00:50 feardragon wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2016 00:24 Ctone23 wrote: This is really cool, it will be interesting to see how both players react to the resume from replay, does the winning player do the same thing? Change it up? #mindgames The most exciting part about this to me is that like 75% of the players told me, "this seems broken, you'd obviously just do ____". Except ____ was different for almost every single player. Isn't that sick? Players are really confident they know the right way to play this but they all disagree with each other. That's exciting to me. Yeah it's a great format because not only is there prize money involved, it's a specific way of practicing and improving their skills / reactions. To me, resume from replay is associated more with players dropping out of a match, and not really for practice. Awesome to see this type of event pop up.
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Announcing the 8th and final player, Optimus!
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Haha this reminds me of some OGSL games, it a great idea to run a tournament with this kind of idea!
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