Home Blog Page 1920

CSGO: kassad leaves 100 Thieves

Bhavya Shah
-
0
CSGO: kassad leaves 100 Thieves

In a relatively unpleasant and surprising move, 100 Thieves has parted ways with CS:GO division’s head coach Aleksandar “kassad” Trifunovic. Aleksandar revealed that the team was drifting apart and were stagnant since early 2019. He also emphasized how the opinions on their approach to solving problems also didn’t align.

In a TwitLonger statement, he said, “I know this came as a suprise to everyone, but the truth is that we have been drifting apart in more ways than one for a while now. I was personally generally unhappy with our progress and stagnation on the same level ever since the start of the last year. The biggest difference in opinions was about how to approach and more importantly how to solve the problems that we had for a while now.”

“There is no ‘bad blood’ between us, it’s just towards the end our visions for the future of the team and how to reach the next level didn’t align, sometimes that happens and it’s perfectly alright. It sucks in some ways, but it is the best way to move forward. I also wanna thank 100T for providing everything for us in the past 6 months, truly one of the greatest orgs.”

33-year-old Serbian has a long history with Aaron “AZR” Ward and Justin “jks” Savage throughout their journey from Renegades to 100 Thieves. He has been there all the way from being underdogs to semi-finale finish at major.

Under his guidance, the lineup secured a 5th-6th position at ESL Pro League Season 8, quarter-finale finish at IEM Katowice Major 2019, and semi-finale finish at StarLadder Berlin Major 2019. Recently, Chet “ImAPet” Singh also departed Evil Geniuses over conflicts with Tarik “tarik” Celik and Peter “Stanislaw” Jarguz.

Valorant patch notes for 0.49 released, ranked mode coming soon

Sonu Banerjee
-
0
Valorant patch notes for 0.49 released, ranked mode coming soon

Riot devs seem to be actively working on their way for VALORANT to become the leading title in the world of competitive shooters as they’re about to release a new patch for the game within only a few days of releasing the previous patch. 

Through a tweet recently Riot had revealed that they’re about to close down servers for implementing the upcoming patch. Moments later, they’ve also released the full patch notes for VALORANT 0.49. 

The patch lists several changes to the game. From hero fixes and map changes to multiple quality of life changes, 0.49 has everything a fan would look for, including a ranked competitive mode for VALORANT which will go live after confirming the “stability” of the patch, as confirmed by Riot dev Nick Wu in a Livestream on Twitch.

Omen got a major change in his mechanics, who “now immediately becomes vulnerable and no longer appears dark after he leaves his alternate shadow form.” Another change Omen received was “The attenuation radius of the arrival sound on Omen’s From the Shadows has been reduced to 2250.” To put it simply, “you have to be closer to Omen to echolocate where he’s teleporting to.” 

Some bug fixes were applied to heroes like Phoenix and Viper. A bug including Cypher’s cage was also fixed which Riot declared through a tweet later.

The map updates included several changes to all maps, and multiple fixes to the geometries of the three maps – Bind, Haven and Split to “fix exploits and help optimize gameplay.”

Changes were also made to the observer mode of the game, including a “ghost mode” which enables players to fly across the map similar to that of the “noclip” mode from CSGO. This mode requires a custom server with cheats enabled to execute.

The UI and HUD of the game were improved with better visuals and some minor fixes.

The game received several quality of life changes which addressed the issues the community had been wanting. Players will now be able to exit custom games by simply the click of a button in the ESC menu. 

There’s also a penalty system implemented for players who abandon games. “Players who abandon matchmade games, or dodge agent selects, will now experience penalties that prevent them from queuing for a period of time. Frequent offenders will experience higher queue time penalties. Leaving ruins the match for everyone else, and should only be a last resort.”

Apart from all these, several bugs of the game and the game client were fixed according to the patch notes, including the major bug which made both teams win a round each.

The full details of the patch notes can be found in VALORANT’s official blog.

Watch: CSGO BOT Vladimir pulls off insane 1v4 to clutch around

Sonu Banerjee
-
0
Watch: CSGO BOT Vladimir pulls off insane 1v4 to clutch around

Bots in CSGO don’t exactly have a good reputation when it comes to killing (or harming) opponents. It’s not rare for players to rush in and die just to be able to take control of the bot who has the AWP. But BOT Vladimir wants to change the stereotypes against his fellow bots as he pulls off an insane 1v4 in a clip which has surfaced on Reddit.

Comment
by u/mark201200 from discussion Bot Vladimir coming in clutch with the 4K to give us the lead
in GlobalOffensive

u/Lassebender was in a game when one guy from his team disconnected and was replaced by a bot. Usually, this would upset most of the players but BOT Vladimir wasn’t there to joke around.

The scoreline showed 14-14 when the bot was holding a position near the B site alone with an M4A4 and a lot of courage. A terrorist wanted to flank the CTs through their spawn but Vladimir gunned him down in an instant. Underestimating the solo bot, another terrorist pushed through with an intent to score an easy kill on the bot, but was shot down as well. The remaining two terrorists wanted to take revenge for their fallen teammates but BOT Vladimir seemed to be on fire as he killed both of them while taking only a hint of damage as he stood firm with 78 HP still remaining.

The entire Reddit community was not only amused but also shocked at what BOT Vladimir had done. The Reddit post quickly gained popularity and is currently standing at over 13k upvotes.

Comment
by u/Kishhhy from discussion Bot Vladimir coming in clutch with the 4K to give us the lead
in GlobalOffensive

BOT Vladimir has sure sent us a message from the bot community – to not underestimate them. Can bots finally be getting better than humans at this game? We don’t have the answer just yet but BOT Vladimir here is certainly better than your average matchmaking teammate.

Dignitas upset fnatic in Swedish derby at ESL One: Road to Rio

Kanishka Thakur
-
0
Dignitas upset fnatic in Swedish derby at ESL One: Road to Rio

The ESL One Road to Rio was back in action after a day off and we saw Fnatic compete against Dignitas in the best of 3 series. Dignitas did not perform quite well in this tournament and we have seen Fnatic playing one of their best matches recently except for the Ence game in this tournament. It was a very interesting game as it was an all Swedish matchup and all the players were familiar with each other and their game style. With Fnatic recently becoming the #1 team in the world and the odds favoring them in this matchup. However, we saw Dignitas upset them in a best of three series winning 2-1(17-19 on train, 25-22 on overpass and 16-14 on dust2).

The first map of the game was Train which was Dignitas’ pick but we have seen how Fnatic have been really good on this map recently and they started on a good note by winning the first pistol round on the CT side with Jesper ‘JW’ Wecksell’s 2 quick kills from his USP. The buy round saw ‘Xizt’ getting a quad kill and securing the round for his team. The first half actually saw some great plays coming from the T side Dignitas but unfortunately, the half going 8-7 in favor of Fnatic.

The second half started with Fnatic showing how good they are in their pistol rounds and won the round quite comfortably. Although Dignitas did not hold back and with the heroics of ‘GeT_Right’ they did win some very important rounds and actually started to lead the map 12-11. Fnatic really struggled to close out the map and the score went to 15-15 and into overtime, which saw Fnatic barely closing out the map 19-17.

The second map of the game was Overpass and the first round saw pistol kills going back and forth but in the end, Christopher ‘GeT_RighT’ Alesund Clutching a 1v1 with his USP and giving an early-round to his team. Although Fnatic did comeback in the half with the help of ‘JW’ and ‘KRIMZ’ taking 14 and 11 kills just in the first half and giving their team a decent half of 9-6.

Later on we saw Dignitas winning the second half pistol round with a well executed A site play and giving them a chance to comeback in this map and the game. The buy round from Fnatic did not either go their way but they actually won the eco round with the brilliance of Ludvig ‘Brollan’ Brolin and he taking some insane kills from his deagle. Dignitas did comeback in the game with their T side plays and yet again took the game into overtime with a score of 15-15.

The overtime saw Fnatic winning all the rounds in the first half and making it 18-15 but Dignitas replying back with an incredible second half and equalizing the scoreline 18-18 and taking it to 2nd overtime. The rounds were going back and forth and both the teams gave their best to win this map and the match actually went into the 3rd overtime where Dignitas finally won the game 25-22 with Håkon ‘hallzerk’ Fjærli clutching a 1v2 with his AWP and closing out the map and taking it to the third and final map of the game Dust2.

The third map of the game was Dust2 and it began with Fnatic picking up the round with a CT side retake on the A site and securing the round. Fnatic won an eco round having just USP on all five players and ‘Brollan’ clutching a 1v2 and giving them the round. After that it was a different story altogether as we saw a very different Dignitas as they just played some top level counter strike and closed the half 10-5.

Later on the second half started with Fnatic yet again picking up the pistol round with each of them picking up kills from their glocks and taking the score to 6-10. But Dignitas were on another level today and Patrik ‘f0rest’ Lindberg just went crazy on this map and picked some amazing kills and lead his team to 14-7. Fnatic did try to comeback in this map by pulling up some rounds but Dignitas finally closed out the map 16-14 and the series 2-1 and proved that experience does matter after all.

The all Swedish matchup saw Dignitas coming out on top and taking the series and breaking their losing streak in this tournament. We will now see Fnatic compete against Heretics on Tuesday and Dignitas will take on Vitality on the next day.

Cloud9 drops its Dota 2 roster Once again, only after 3 months

Varun Gavankar
-
0
Cloud9 drops its Dota 2 roster Once again, only after 3 months

The organisation made a comeback to Dota 2 after a break of close to three years back in later January 2020. However, the roster belonging to North America, it was initially registered in Southeast Region and played ESL One Los Angeles qualifiers from the SEA. Failing to make a dent in their first assessment they immediately returned to their roots, North America.

the final iteration had its own vintage players Jacky “EternaLEnVy” Mao, Johan “pieliedie” Astrom, Rasmus “MISERY” Filipsen to claim back their lost prestige. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

The roster also had Marcus “Ace” Hoelgaard who started his noticeable run into the Dota scenario with Cloud9 accompanied by the last piece of the puzzle Jingjun “Sneyking” Wu who flew along with EternaLEnVy from Fighting Pandas.

Cloud9 competed in four tournaments since its reincarnation. Although, they failed to show any impressive results in any of those and at the recently concluded BTS Pro Series Americas, the squad had a 0-10 losing streak but somehow managed to work it out at the end of group stage games, barely making it to playoffs. Nevertheless, the blue and white colours of C9 were let down in the first round of the lower bracket itself and that it the farthest the team has made in any of the events.

“Cloud9 is announcing today our departure from the competitive DOTA 2 circuit. Effective immediately, all members of our roster are available to be signed by other organizations,” added the organization on their official website.

Cloud9 Team Manager, Ysabel Noukky Müller stated: “It was great working with these players and I want to thank them for being professional throughout and buying into our vision and company values. We’re confident that success will follow them as their careers progress.”

VALORANT Servers Down Globally for Scheduled Maintenance

Pranav Nalawade
-
0
VALORANT Servers Down Globally for Scheduled Maintenance

Through a tweet on Tuesday, Riot announced that they’re planning to temporarily shut down VALORANT servers across Europe and North America.

This is in accordance with the latest patch notes for VALORANT released minutes earlier than this tweet.

The servers will be down for almost 6 hours across the EU and NA. For Europe, the servers will be down on April 29 from 3:30 AM CEST to 9 AM CEST. For America, the servers will be down from 4:30 AM PDT to 10 AM PDT.

Valorant possibility makes two teams get points in the same round, trick or bug?

Sonu Banerjee
-
0
Valorant possibility makes two teams get points in the same round, trick or bug?

VALORANT was Riot Games’ first take on the competitive shooter genre and made its closed-beta debut with a blast on April 7th, with the official release scheduled for summer 2020.

Although VALORANT had gained an insane amount of popularity worldwide, it wasn’t free from flaws. Some minor bugs had surfaced previously across social media platforms but almost none of them were massively game-changing. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the bug that 100 Thieves streamer “Classify” encountered recently which can potentially change the outcome of the game and make the unworthy team come out on top.

Through a tweet the streamer expressed his reaction to the major bug. In the attached clip, he is seen spectating one of his teammates as he tried to defuse the spike at the last moment. He seemed to have gotten the defuse in time but was shot to death the instant his defuse bar filled up. The “Flawless” banner appearing on the top of the screen indicated that the attackers had emerged victorious, but the scoreline dictated otherwise. The score jumped directly from 1-2 to 2-3 as if both the teams had won a round each.

Theoretically this should only be possible when both the defuse and the kill happens at the exact same tick, and VALORANT servers being 128 tick should make this sort of scenario occur only once in a blue moon. Still, Riot devs should figure out a way to solve this bug and only give the round win to the deserved team.

The incident also spread to Reddit and while players had different opinions as to who should be awarded the round win, some of them mentioned encountering similar problems in the game. One of them also stated how oddly it affected the game economy.

Comment
by u/Yoduh99 from discussion If you defuse and die at literally the same time, the game will get confused on who won…
in VALORANT

These sorts of glitches are certainly not welcome in a competitive shooter like VALORANT, but since it’s just the closed beta stage of the game some bugs are likely to be found. In fact, this is what beta tests are for, to dish out bugs and to refine the small things required to make the game perfect. Hopefully, any remaining bugs will be washed off by the time Riot decides to give VALORANT an official launch.

Dota 2 7.26b released: HUGE gameplay changes

Sonu Banerjee
-
0
Dota 2 7.26b released: HUGE gameplay changes

A new patch 7.26b for Dota 2 has just been released, and it will potentially change the way laning stage will be handled from now on.

The two patches 7.26 and 7.26a were released in quick succession, with only a few days of room in between. Looks like players will have to adapt to a new form of meta once again, as the new patch released by Icefrog includes several changes that can change the way Dota 2 will be played.

The changes in this new patch is bound to have an elaborate effect on both the early and late stages of a game. The most notable change is the drastic change in the deny mechanics of the game. Not only will denies not grant any gold to the denier whatsoever, but it’ll also give more experience to the enemies. This change will make one sided stomps a bit more difficult and players will emphasize denies less from now on.

Melee creeps bounties are increased by 5 and more importantly, the neutral creep bounties are increased back 10% – a change which will be beneficial for the team falling behind as they can now resort to the jungle to come back considerably faster.

Another major change that can be overlooked is the change to reliable gold mechanics. The only way to earn reliable gold from now on will be the passive gold income. So from now on make sure to spend the extra unreliable gold before you die to not let it waste.

There are also other gameplay and item changes in the new patch. The changes as mentioned in the official blog post are listed below:

GENERAL

-Denies no longer grant gold

-Deny XP given to enemies increased from 40% to 50%

-Melee Creeps base bounty increased by +5

-Neutral Creeps base bounty values increased back 10%

-All talents are now about 20% weaker

-Towers now grant +1 HP Regen Aura for Tier 1 Towers, and +3 for Tier2/3/4 Towers

-XP required to reach level 9/10/11/12/13 increased from 780/810/840/870/900 to 890/930/970/1010/1050

-Reliable gold is now given only for passive income

-AoE Gold increased from 45 + 0.027*NW to 45 + 0.033*NW

-Neutral item drop times for T1-4 changed from 7/15/25/40 to 7/17/27/37

-Tier 2+ towers health increased by 500 and damage by 25

Items

HEALING SALVE

  • Duration increased from 8 to 10 seconds (same overall heal)

GLOVES OF HASTE

  • Cost increased from 400 to 450

BLADES OF ATTACK

  • Cost increased from 430 to 450

RING OF BASILIUS

  • Recipe cost increased from 175 to 200

HOOD OF DEFIANCE

  • Now has a 200 gold recipe

Dota 2: Collector’s Cache submission deadline extended, TI 10 soon?

Sonu Banerjee
-
0
Dota 2: Collector’s Cache submission deadline extended, TI 10 soon?

The final submission deadlines for The International 2020 has been extended by one week to May 3, 2020. It was previously scheduled to be on April 27th and the extension was announced today.

The International Collector’s Cache is an in-game treasure for Dota 2 that accompanies each year’s Battle Pass. They contain exclusive in-game cosmetics for heroes which cannot be traded or marketed. The contents of the Collector’s Cache are made by Dota 2 players themselves, which go through a voting process in the workshop and are finally hand-picked by Valve themselves to be included in the game.

Both the 2018 and 2019 Battle Passes had included not one but two Collector’s Caches each, both consisting of exclusive community-made items for the Dota 2 heroes. The Collector’s Cache contents are primarily set on a theme for each year’s Battle Pass itself.

The postponing of the submission deadlines implies that artists will now have even more time to refine their work, or to simply create more submissions for the event. Players of the game too, will have more time to decide and vote for which skin they want to have in-game.

But can it further imply something more?

Yes, The International Battle Pass 2020 is likely on the horizon and might be released soon.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, The International 2020 was more than likely to be delayed. The current worldwide lockdown means that Valve might be working with fewer employees and that too, not in an office environment. The result would be an inevitable delay in giving the finishing touches to the Battle Pass, which is understandable at a time like this.

But the real question is however, why one week? Valve should have a very good idea on when the Battle Pass 2020 will be ready for launch, and if the date was far away the submission deadlines for the Collector’s Cache would also see a greater extension to provide even more room for artists to submit more skins to the workshop, making the Collector’s Caches more attractive to buyers with better skins.

The extension of the submission deadline by only seven days heavily implies only a small delay in the Battle Pass release. Fans of the game can expect to see the Battle Pass release in near future, if not today.

Coronavirus: Esports leagues experience a huge spike in viewership

Prateek Jain
-
0
Coronavirus: Esports leagues experience a huge spike in viewership

As most of the population of the world is stuck at home due to Nationwide Lockdown measures adopted by governments around the world more people are moving towards gaming. With many opting to sit down and watch games on their devices, some of the biggest esports leagues in the world are seeing a big spike in viewership.

Photo: Riot Games

Several professional tournaments for League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have witnessed a big spike in viewership since the start of lockdown measures.

The 11th season of the ESL Pro League of CSGO which concluded on April 12th set a new record of 489,120 concurrent viewers across all platforms a new high for the CSGO league. ESL termed this season as “the most successful season in the competition’s history.” According to ESL, Season 11 saw a 215.5% increase in average-minute-audience (AMA) viewership to 164,494 for Season 11, up from 52,140 for Season 10, which concluded in late 2019. ESL also confirmed that the total hours watched were up by 113.2% compared to last year.

Similarly, the League of Legends European Championship also set a new concurrent viewers record with 476,599 people tuning in to watch a week three match between eventual finalists G2 Esports and Fnatic. The final match also hit an impressive peak of 807,033 viewers, a 76.18% higher than the previous 2020 record. The league’s average minute audience was up 10% compared to last spring and according to the LEC, this was the most-watched regular-season game in the history of LEC.

Whereas, according to an analytics firm the Korean League of Legends Championship (LCK) set a record of 1,074,561 peak concurrent viewers tuning in to watch T1 sweep Gen.g to win their ninth LCK title in the championship match.

With many live events canceled for the year, these professional gaming leagues were uniquely situated and quickly adapt to an online-only structure in order to keep going. Since then they have managed to fill the void left by the cancellation of live events, which in-turn helped these leagues in setting new viewership records.

Source.

1...1,9191,9201,921...2,196Page 1,920 of 2,196