Back home from Starladder today! We actually wanted to go back yesterday but there were no good tickets so we decided to stay and practice in Kiev instead. We ended up playing against MVP which was nice, they are always very serious so really good to practice against.
Me and Bulldog on the way to a restaurant
Going back to the tournament, we started out winning against VP but then lost to LGD in the semi finals and eventually to OG in the loser bracket. I haven’t watched the replays yet so hard to say what went wrong but the game that annoys me the most is the loss when we had Chen, LC and Sylla. It really felt like we had the game where we wanted after the early game but then we got too eager to push and just went in and died and lost our advantage. In a way I’m very happy that we at least won one game in both the series that we lost because it shows that we are very close to winning as well, but at the same time it’s very annoying to be so close but yet so far away. Both series we lost at the Shanghai major was also 1-2.. ^^
Having some drinks together with EGM and Loda while trying to forget our loss 😀
When we got eliminated we went to a restaurant we got recommended from Starladder that was quite close to the hotel we were staying at. We really enjoyed it, especially the desert! We had ice cream that they made in front of us while we were there in a way they used in the 17th or 18th century. They told us that back then it would take someone like 8 hours to make this ice cream but today they can make it faster (in about 10 minutes) because instead of using snow to make it cold they can use liquid nitrogen. Was a really cool experience and the food was very good!
The making of the ice cream! Was really fun to see! 🙂They poured some liquid nitrogen into the wine to keep it cold 😀
Watched NiP play vs Navi in the Dreamhack Masters grand finals yesterday (CS:GO event). Really happy to see NiP win their first major tournament in 18 months! They’ve been practicing hard to try to get back into shape so very happy for them that it finally paid off. Even though I hardly play any CS:GO it’s still very fun to watch!
The finished ice cream!
Hopefully a new patch comes out soon along with the invites for the Manilla Major. Even though we didn’t perform well at Starladder I still hope we get an invite because we won 2 big LAN events the past 4 months as well as finishing top8 in the last Major. Not very likely but one can hope at least! 🙂 If we don’t get an invite the next official is gonna be the qualifiers, otherwise the next official is in Moscow when we are playing the Epicenter tournament.
It’s quite chill to go to a tournament like this one. We’ve been here many times before so we are familiar with the country and it’s the same arena that we’ve been to the other times we’ve been here as well. Feels good to be able to only focus on the tournament and not have to think about anything else.
Professional green screen! 😀
EGM has been staying at our team house the past week since we applied for the Russian visa together in Gothenburg. Me, EGM and Bummi went to watch a movie last Saturday together (Kung Fu Panda 3) and after that we went home to my and Bummi’s place and chilled. We streamed a hack ‘n’ slash game a bit and after that we played some Dota with me controlling the mouse and EGM controlling the keyboard.. 😀 Actually went better then expected! We won the first game but lost the second.
Been taking photos for the event today and played some pubs in our practice room. First game is tomorrow vs. VP after the first series is done so it will probably be around 12-13 CET. Guess you have to stay tuned and see if the first series is a 2-0 or a 2-1.
Bulldog chilling with his phoneMe and Loda messing around with face-swap.. 😀S4 during photo shoot
Finally got back home yesterday. When we arrived at the airport around noon last Sunday we were told by Lufthansa that the flight we were supposed to take got stuck in Beijing so we had to wait around 12 hours for it to arrive in Shanghai. We got a hotel to stay at during the day and Kelly found a mall that we went to so overall the day was successful! Finished the day with eating “Hot pot”!
Looks a bit like me..? 😀
So let’s get back to the event. Last blog post I wrote was just after our group stage finished and for me at that time the event had been quite good. I’ve gotten some comments about the last post and I want to point out again that what I experience is from a players perspective and not as an observer or caster. If you are having problems watching the stream or the casters are having problems it doesn’t effect us in most cases. I know there was problems with the stream from day 1 and I agree that that isn’t acceptable.
First day of the main event
There isn’t much to say about the days between the group stage and the main event. We just were at the hotel, playing pubs or practicing against other teams. Watching replays, trying to analyze what the others have been doing and we especially watched Liquid since we knew we were gonna face them in the first round.
Moving forward to the main event we got on a bus at around 8:15 am that took us to the event. After we got there we were taken to a “pre-game room” where we could sit and chill while we were waiting for our game to begin. If you didn’t play the first match you could watch the current game on the TV or warm up on the computers that were there with your SSD. For me, this is where it starts to go downhill. As you can see in the picture below, noting was plugged in. Sure, there wasn’t any game going on so we couldn’t watch anything anyway but the room was just sad. We didn’t have any computers the first day either so we just sat there waiting for us to be able to go on the stage and setup.
The arena was nice, I like that we could go in from back-stage and go to the stage from there. When you are about to play you want to be able to focus on just the game and having a back-stage passage helps. I think these events should have scheduled signing though to make it possible for the audience to get autographs and meet the players. Anyway, we got into the booth and started to make sure our gear was working. They had a “local” audio system build in and (when it worked) it worked really good. We noticed that EGM’s microphone didn’t work and after some time they had fixed it. Liquid on the other hand were in their booth a bit later, I think they went to smoke before they entered the stage. They said that they didn’t have time to test the audio but after the first draft we had to pause the game for like 15 minutes because one of their microphones didn’t work. In the end of the day, it isn’t Liquid’s fault for not testing it even if it would have been quite good if they had done it, but I don’t understand how these things keep happening. Does the people that set up the audio don’t test it? During one of our other matches we had to pause again, it was either versus EHOME or Complexity, because apparently one of the players had bumped into the audio on their back into the booth so it stopped working. It’s so annoying to have to pause the game – sometimes you even forget where the opponents are on the map so you have to remind each other when the game starts again.
Some from the Chinese “Alliance Fan Club” took us out for dinner. Was quite a fancy restaurant, the food was really good!
I felt we could easily have won against both Liquid and Complexity but the competition is very hard so just a small thing can change the whole outcome of the game. The draft we had the last game vs. Complexity with Dark Seer jungle, panda mid and Spectre safelane was something we had practice before and it worked out really well. You could see that it was a good strategy when we managed to come back from 1-8 to 10-11 in kills. Unfortunately we picked it against an OD/Potm combo and we didn’t have anything to help out S4 with in the middle lane and there isn’t much he can do about it either. I should probably be quite happy with finishing 7/8th place, we even just won two events straight, but after the group stage and how the practice has been going I felt we could also have won the whole event. But it’s like at the last Starladder tournament where we almost got eliminated in the group stage but ended up 1st place. Small things makes all the difference.
It really sucks to hear what has happened at the hotel even after the event was finished, that they cleared out the practice rooms where people had their belongings and gear (which after that got lost/stolen). It feels like almost all problems comes down to bad communication and that they don’t seem to have someone responsible for different areas (maybe they do but it doesn’t feel like it ^^). What’s sad though is that for every person that fucked something up there were 100 that worked their asses of to try to make the event as good as possible but it’s easy to forget those people. Bonnie who was hired as a translator had to take a big role in the production since they realized it was impossible to make the stream go smooth with switching scenes etc if you can’t talk both English and Chinese. It feels good though for the next event after reading Valve’s statement where they said they will be more involved next time – I’m sure it will be better!
The problem for me that came with that so many complained on social media about everything and nothing is that the hype somewhat disappeared. One of the days when I was checking reddit 80% of the posts where links to tweets about how bad the event was. I guess it sums up about how the tournament was in general though.. 😀
Next tournament for us right now is Epicenter in Moscow in early May. Might pop up some other tournament before that but it seems like we won’t be playing so many officials in the upcoming weeks. Epicenter looks to be really good though so really hyped for that!
Joakim Akterhall 