Summer's over and Cloud9 has found their form once again. Here's all you need to know about what happened this summer for Cloud9. By Scribe It was a rough winter for Cloud9 and going into summer, things weren't looking too well for the team. The organization replaced Ryan "freakazoid" Abadir with Alec "Slemmy" White to try and bring a more tactical approach to the team's play. While the team's strategies improved temporarily, the lack of fragging power from White led the team to look elsewhere. C9 dropped White in favour of snatching Timothy "autimatic" Ta from Team SoloMid. The move had some fans worried about a return to an "all aim, no brain" style of play the team had resorted to since losing tactical mastermind Sean "seang@res" Gares. Instead, the team surged in the rankings with stunning results online and surprising results on LAN. So how did Cloud9 do this summer? Here's a quick breakdown: Since swapping White out for Ta, C9 have dominated online competition. The team's 40-7 online record is near spotless. The team also managed to finish first at the CyberPowerPC Summer 2016 Pro Series online tourney. So far, OpTic Gaming is the only team to be able to win more than 2 maps against Cloud9 online with 4 wins total since Ta was brought on. EchoFox, NRG and Liquid are the only other teams to take a map off C9, with one win each. Even with White, C9 still put up an impressive 20-7 record online and a 1st place finish in the iBUYPOWER Summer Invitational 2016 online tourney. However, Cloud9 couldn't translate that online success with White offline, with the team failing to qualify for the ESL One Cologne 2016 Major and only notable finishes on LAN being 3rd-4th at Dreamhack Austin and 5th-6th at the ECS Season 1 Finals. The team also competed in ELEAGUE and the ESL Pro League Season 3 finals with White, finishing 5th-8th and 7th-8th respectively. With Ta, the team has managed to pull off surprising results on LAN. The team started off strong with a controversial second place finish at Northern Arena 2016 and then followed up with a 3rd-4th finish at the StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season 2 finals. The team also finished in second place at Dreamhack ZOWIE Open Bucharest 2016. It took only three LAN events with Cloud9 for Ta to achieve the same number of wins White had on LAN with C9 in five offline events. Against international teams, C9 has an 11-7 record offline. Of the 24 maps Cloud9 has played on LAN since adding Ta, only 6 of them have been against North American and Brazilian teams. Despite some rough stretches, Cloud9 has managed to bounce back in full force with a revitalized lineup. Based on C9's impressive online record and their steady improvement on LAN, Ta hit the ground running and seems to be meshing well with the team. Jake "Stewie2K" Yip has developed into one of North America's breakout stars, putting up impressive numbers in matches. Despite months of fan criticism and sub-par play, Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert has returned to his old form and is playing well on the scoreboard while both Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham and Mike "shroud" Grzesiek have stayed consistent. It will be a true test of the roster to see if Cloud9 can keep up the stellar play in the months leading up to the next Major in January.
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OpTic gaming is quickly rising in both North American and global rankings. Is their star about to fade or are they just getting started? By Scribe
OpTic Gaming shocked Counter Strike: Global Offensive fans with major upsets in the Big Apple at ESL One: New York. The Green Wall edged out Cloud 9 in the event qualifiers and then stopped both Astralis and G2 dead in their tracks before being knocked out in a narrow match against Virtus Pro. It was the team's first LAN with the new roster featuring Tarik “tarik” Celik, who was signed in August but missed Northern Arena in Toronto in September. OpTic have managed to pick up big wins against international teams and regional teams in the past and with another strong showing at ESL One, the team has moved up in the rankings at a breakneck pace. They now sit as one of the top three North American teams alongside Cloud9 and Team Liquid (not including South American teams such as SK Gaming and Immortals). But what's keeping OpTic Gaming from claiming the undisputed top spot in N.A. from the other two? Since bringing Celik into the team, OpTic have gone 29-10 over 39 maps online playing with their current roster while Liquid have a 21-16 record over 37 maps since replacing Aleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev with Jacob "Pimp" Winneche in August. Cloud9 on the otherhand have been dominating since picking up Timothy "autimatic" Ta, going an impressive 40-7 over 47 maps online, with four of the losses coming from OpTic. While the numbers are skewed in C9's favour due to playing more matches with Ta, OG will still need to match Cloud9's reign online if they hope to take the throne. The core of OpTic's lineup has experience together on LAN, however they've yet to fully show dominance offline. A strong showing in New York adds to middle-of-the-road results at Northern Arena and a dismal finish at ESL One: Cologne 2016 for the core of the roster as of late. Meanwhile, the core of Liquid's lineup have shown they can compete in offline tournaments with a second place finish at Cologne 2016 with Kostyliev and a semi-finals finish in New York with the current lineup. Cloud9 has also proven themselves with two offline second-place finishes at DreamHack Open Bucharest 2016 and Northern Arena, as well as a semi-finals finish at the StarSeries Season Two Finals with their new roster. OpTic is a team that has the potential to do greater things, both online and offline. With the addition of Celik, and given some more time to prove themselves further, OG could develop into the next #1 team in North America and a force to be reckoned with globally.
LAN events are a vital part of the eSports scene. What should fans and players expect from organizers when someone breaks the rules? Image credit: Northern Arena
Northern Arena 2016 isn't the first Counter Strike: Global Offensive LAN tournament to run into some issues, and it certainly won't be the last. The four-day event in Toronto faced lengthy delays, stream quality problems and poor equipment. These were all overshadowed by drama surrounding players breaking Northern Arena rules and how admins handled the situation.
The official rules and regulations of Northern Arena state that players must wear the provided noise-cancelling headphones during matches
The offense that caused the most uproar happened between Cloud 9 and Immortals on the third map in the best-of-three Finals match. In the clip below posted to Reddit by user /u/sidipi, Immortals player Henrique 'hen1' Teles is seen playing without his noise-cancelling headphones during the first two rounds on Overpass before putting them on at the start of the third round. Noise-cancelling headphones are used to prevent the players from hearing casters while playing to prevent them from gaining info on things such as the other team's positions and strategies. Despite being behind the Immortals computers, a tournament admin failed to ask Teles to put his headphones back on. Northern Arena admin "Lejuke", who was behind the Cloud 9 computers during the finals, released a video the day after Northern Arena trying to explain what had happened. In it, he details how he asked for the pause after Cloud 9's manager informed him that Teles had no headphones on. After reviewing the footage, he said he contacted the tournament manager and discussed the situation before bringing in Immortals' team captain Wilton "zews" Prado and Cloud 9's team captain Jordan 'n0thing' Gilbert. Prado argued that Teles can't understand English and that he wouldn't have been able to understand the casters anyways, Lejuke said. "As an admin my first thought was to restart all the rounds (on Overpass), so to make it 0-0," Lejuke stated. "It was not fair, it was not (in) the rules, so we restart everything." In a response on Reddit, Lejuke says that Prado stated if the map was restarted, that Immortals would forfeit the match and refuse to play. The tournament manager, he said, decided that the situation had no effect on the game and the map was resumed at a 2-0 scoreline for the Immortals. The Brazilian squad would go on to win Overpass 16-11, defeating Cloud 9 two maps to one in the finals.
So, what should players, teams and fans come to expect from tournament organizers and admins when situations like this come up?
Two things: consistent and firm enforcement, and clearer rules. In a Facebook post apologizing for the incident, Immortals CEO Noah Whinston stressed the need for consistent rule enforcement and admins taking responsibility for rulings instead of players. “Immortals as an esports organization believes that situations like these show the necessity of consistent rule enforcement," Winston said. "Admins should not be consulting players on rules interpretation and enforcement, and the inconsistent application of the rules up until this point in the tournament was a contributing factor to what occurred." There was another incident earlier in the tournament during a group stage match between Team Solomid and Echo Fox. Echo Fox's Shahzeb 'ShahZaM' Khan, Ronnie 'ryx' Bylicki and Sean 'seang@res' Gares were not wearing noise-cancelling headphones during the match. However, they were wearing over-ear headsets on top of the earbuds they were wearing. Gares explained in a Reddit post that admins had told them it was not necessary to wear the headphones that match. He says admins decided the team was not required to wear them in a previous match against Optic Gaming, despite it being against tournament rules. In the post, Gares also says he was not able to fully hear the casters during the matches. Put simply, if the rules state that players must wear noise-cancelling headphones during matches, admins need to make sure that all players abide by that rule in all matches. Northern Arena rules state that violations can result in verbal warnings, game and match forfeits and disqualification. However, there is no specific penalty for when a player is caught without their headphones on, and no specific ruling for when a violation occurs, how rounds that have already taken place should be handled. Instead, Northern Arena rules state that players should avoid stopping the game by any means and should instead ask for an investigation at the end of the half. In this situation, Cloud 9 would have had to play the entire 15 rounds of the half before they would have been able to make an appeal if tournament rules were followed. Organizers need to take time to ensure they have detailed rule sets so that when scenarios like what happened at Northern Arena come up, they're prepared and can get the matches back on track. Both admins and organizers need to do their due diligence and enforce the rules themselves, instead of pushing the responsibility onto the players. By failing to do these things, tournament organizers make it harder on themselves, and more importantly, harder on players, teams and fans. |
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