CW eSports

Is PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Ready to Become a Competitive eSport?

When PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, also referred to as PUBG, was released in March, it was instantly a huge success. Many new players joined the game, as well as popular Twitch streamers. These streamers playing the game attracted even more gamers to play. Today, PUBG has surpassed nearly every Steam game record there is. It broke the “most concurrent players” record that was previously held by Dota 2 within just a few months of release. It has also set the Guinness World Record for the following achievements:

Most actively played game on Steam
Most concurrent players for a Steam Early Access game
Most concurrent players on Steam for a non-Valve video game
First non-Valve video game to be the most played game on Steam

The game is a 100-player “battle royale”-style game, with the sole objective of being the last person alive. Players start off the match by parachuting out of a cargo plane. Once you find an optimal landing spot, you must scavenge through buildings and warehouses to find randomly-placed weapons, medical kits, and armor. A force field that surrounds the entire 8x8km play area periodically shrinks in size, forcing players into closer, tighter areas. Players outside of the field will take damage and eventually die. This is to prevent people from hiding through the whole match, or forcing you to do tedious searches for any remaining players. This mechanic also keeps the game exciting, making sure that there are always enemies nearby. For a while, the game only had a third-person viewpoint, meaning that the camera is placed above and behind the player’s head. While unique in comparison to most other shooting games, this feature can be exploited at times, allowing you to see over walls, around objects, and into windows without ever exposing yourself to possible enemy fire. However, a first-person viewpoint was recently added to the game, making it more in-line with other traditional shooters.

With its outstanding statistics and massive playerbase, many fans want eSport-style PUBG “tournaments”, like League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has. This would be a great idea, and there is certainly an audience that would watch it, but there are a few problems that needed to be sorted out first. To start, there are 100 players per match. If you cut that amount in half, or even a quarter, that’s still too many players to watch at once. How will tournament spectators pick a single person to show on the online stream at a time? They will surely miss other important events on other players’ screens. Also, the randomness factor of the game can decrease the amount of skill professional players need to have. Unlike CS:GO, where all players generally have the same “tier” of weapons most of the time, weapons and supplies in PUBG are spawned randomly. Therefore, a player could theoretically airdrop next to a building and luckily find a bunch of good supplies, while another more skilled player could airdrop somewhere else and find less supplies, and then be killed by the first player simply because he didn’t have a weapon or enough ammo.

PUBG will definitely become a popular eSports game, it’s just a matter of when. The addition of a first-person mode is a step in the right direction, removing the exploits that third-person mode provides. If someone can create a system to fix the spectating issue, PUBG will be a very fun and entertaining game to watch.

Sources

Duwe, Scott. “PUBG set 7 Guinness World Records this year.” Dot eSports, 17 Nov. 2017, dotesports.com/pubg/pubg-guinness-world-records-seven-awards-18788. Accessed 26 Nov. 2017.

“Official Merch Store Now Open.” Bluehole, Inc., 15 Aug. 2017, http://www.playbattlegrounds.com/news/85.pu. Accessed 26 Nov. 2017.

Operation Hydra Ends + New Matchmaking System

Operation Hydra came to a close on November 13, 2017 after running for just under six months beginning on May 23, 2017. This is the eighth Operation in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, following Operation Wildfire which ended in the summer of last year.

Operations are always welcome sights in the game, as they add different maps and fun new game modes to play. Playing the same Active Duty maps over and over can become repetitive, so Operations, which add seven or eight new maps, can liven the game up and force gamers to play it again. However, after a few weeks, the hype usually dies down and people return to playing the older maps. Operations also add the possibility for players to obtain free skins from rarer collections, such as the Cobblestone collection and the Gods and Monsters collection. Usually, you can’t get skins from these collections in standard weekly drops, but you can obtain these special items by completing Operation “campaign” missions or by doing special tasks while in a match. A unique in-game Operation coin is also added to your inventory after buying the Operation pass for $5.99, which you can “level-up” by completing said missions and tasks. Operation Hydra was the first time a fourth-tier, “diamond”-level coin was available.

Although Hydra is over, some of the game modes and maps that it added were officially put into the game. Agency is now an official map inside of Competitive matchmaking, and Shipped, Austria, and Insertion inside of Casual. Wingman and Flying Scoutsman game modes were also added. The least played maps, including Dust, Vertigo, Aztec, and Militia, were removed.

A new matchmaking system called “Trust Factor” has also been added in the latest update. It expands upon Prime Matchmaking, the system that was added last year which reduced the chances of you being matched against a smurf, someone who plays on a new account to be matched against lower-ranked players, but is actually much higher ranked on a second account. It also reduced the number of encounters with hackers you had, as every Prime account needs a unique phone number to be attached to it. Prime did actually help the quality of games you got queued into. However, it has never left the beta stage, and has now been combined with the new Trust Factor mechanic. Your Trust will increase if you generally are a positive member of the CS:GO community with a high amount of play time and a low number of reports. Players with a similar Trust rating, who, in theory, should be similar types of players, will have a higher chance of being queued together. Prime accounts also get an automatic boost in Trust. It’s a new system and we will have to wait a while to see if it improves as more data is gathered on players. Valve is also planning continued tweaks on the system.

Do you think Trust Factor will be a better system than Prime? Do you miss the falling fun of Vertigo? Leave your feedback in the comments section below!

Sources

Ketchua. “CS:GO Operation Hydra Event Brings New Maps & Modes.” Gosu Noob, 24 May 2017, http://www.gosunoob.com/news/cs-go-operation-hydra-event-brings-new-maps-modes/. Accessed 17 Nov. 2017.

Skin Trading 101

Starting with the Arms Deal Update on August 14, 2013, letting players be able to buy, trade, and collect different “skins” for their in-game weapons has become a huge part of the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community. Skin trading has now grown to become profitable business for websites and bulk buyers. In the post below, we’ll look at some of the traits each skin has, and the rarity and uniqueness of each.

Most skins come from Cases. Cases are in-game items that are given to random players at the end of a match. Each case is based on a certain Collection of skins, which is a group of skins, ranging from common skins to rarer skins. Every case costs $2.49 to open, and will give a random skin from its collection.

Each skin has a weapon quality, based on the rarity of the skin. These qualities are (in order from least to most rare): Consumer Grade, Industrial Grade, Mil-Spec, Restricted, Classified, Covert, and Exceedingly Rare. Mil-Spec and Restricted skins are the most common drops from cases. Higher-tier skins are dropped far less frequently, but are usually more valuable.

You can also receive skins by using a Trade Up Contract, a special item in-game that allows you to insert ten skins of the same quality and get one skin from the next quality tier back.

Every skin also has an individual condition and wear value associated with it. The conditions gauge how “worn” the skin looks, from little to no scratches all the way to large scratches and entire sections of artwork missing. These conditions are (in order from least to most worn): Factory New, Minimal Wear, Field-Tested, Well-Worn, and Battle-Scarred. Skins in a condition worse than Field-Tested are usually less desirable by players, with a few exceptions. The skin’s wear value, also called a float, is a decimal number between 0 and 1 that is the numerical representation of the amount of wear that particular skin has. The lower the float, the less worn the skin will look. A Factory New M4A4 | Dragon King with a float value of 0.0007 will be more valuable than an identical Dragon King with a 0.06 float.

Certain skins don’t have set artwork. Instead, they use a section of artwork from a pattern texture file built into the game. For example, here’s the texture file used for Slaughter skins:

Every time a new Slaughter skin is created, either while obtaining it from a case or using the Trade Up Contract, the game applies a certain section of this pattern to the skin. Depending on what section of the pattern it receives, it can increase or decrease the value of the skin greatly.

If you’re lucky while opening a case, you may receive a variation of a normal skin with a StatTrak™ module equipped to it. These modules record the number of kills you get with that weapon. StatTrak™ skins are usually worth around double what the non-StatTrak™ variant costs, if not more.

Besides cases, other ways to obtain skins are to purchase them from the Steam Community Market, or to use third-party websites such as OPSkins.com or CS.Money. When doing so, be sure to download the Steam app on your phone and enable the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator. If you don’t, any trades you make will be held for 7 days before the trade is approved. You can find out how to enable Steam Guard here.

While you’re trading with other players, they probably will want to see the specific item you’re trading them. In that case, you can use Metjm to generation a screenshot of your skin. Simply go to your Steam inventory, find the item you want to screenshot, right-click the “Inspect in-game” button, copy-paste the link into the site, and click “Screen it!” It will generate an easy-to-share screenshot of your item which includes the name of it, its float value, and pattern ID.

Another way to customize your skins is to use Stickers. Stickers are in-game items that you can place on the weapon itself. They are usually related to professional players, teams, and events, but there are a handful that aren’t. Stickers are mainly cosmetic, as they normally don’t add much value to the skin itself, but a few old, scarce stickers can be very expensive, such as stickers from the EMS Katowice 2014 Major.

Finally, as with all things that have monetary value, there are scammers out there who will try to steal your skins away from you through many different methods. Enabling Steam Guard on your account will help prevent you from being “accidentally” scammed, but there are other ways that scammers will try to con you into traded them your skins for nothing in return. You can find a list of the most commonly used scams on the GOTrade subreddit.

Collecting skins for your favorite weapons can be a fun experience. CSGOStash is a great place is start browsing skins. Now that you know more about what to look for, go and find your favorites!

Sources

Ducky_CSGO. “AWP | Dragon Lore.” Gamebanana, 8 Aug. 2015, gamebanana.com/skins/141594. Accessed 10 Nov. 2017.

FRiZZoh. “CS:GO | Knife Patterns.” Steam, 15 Apr. 2014, steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=247406953. Accessed 10 Nov. 2017.

“Types of Skins on CS:GO.” csgo.cash, csgo.cash/en/blog/csgo-gloves. Accessed 10 Nov. 2017.

New Sound Occlusion Changes in CS:GO + Epicenter 2017 Premier Tournament

Sound is an important aspect of all Counter-Strike games, both old and new. Last week, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive received a new update which added better “sound occlusion” to the game.

The surround sound in CS:GO has long been complained about as not being accurate enough to pinpoint where a sound is coming from in a vertical direction. One of the biggest problems of Nuke, one of the most banned maps in tournaments, is the fact that both of the bombsites on that map are stacked on top of each other. This makes it harder to distinguish where footsteps and gunshots and coming from. The HRTF update in December of 2016 improved the game’s sound a bit by modifying the volume and frequency of the sound waves going into each ear and differing them so it’s easier to locate where that specific sound is coming from.

Sound occlusion goes one step further by modifying sounds based on where you’re located and where the sound is coming from. If there are any objects or walls between you and the sound source, the sound will be muffled, lessened, or amplified, depending on what material the object is made out of. Varying the sound of footsteps, for example, should make it a lot easier to tell where the player is coming from, as you’ll be able to tell more easily where the player is from how his footsteps sound like. 3kliksphillip does a wonderful job of demonstrating the new sound occlusion feature:

In other news, the Epicenter 2017 tournament wrapped up last week. The grand final was between SK Gaming, seen as the best team in the world, and Virtus.Pro, a former championship-level team who has been in a slump from earlier this year. On the road to the finals, VP had to beat G2 Esports, a team comprised of the best French players, including Kenny ‘kennyS’ Schrub, considered to be the best AWPer of all time, and FaZe Clan, who have won two premier tournaments in a row, ESL One: New York 2017 and ELeague Premier 2017 after acquiring Ladislav ‘GuardiaN’ Kovács and Olof ‘olofmeister’ Kajbjer. They narrowly won against both teams and made it to the finals, where they lost against SK three matches to two in a best-of-five. Even though Virtus.Pro didn’t win the tournament, they certainly showed some good form. In particular, their AWPer, Jarosław “pashaBiceps“ Jarząbkowski, played much better than in other recent tournaments, even against other star AWPers like kennyS and GuardiaN. If they continue to play at this level, they could once again become a contender at the ELeague Major in January of next year.

How do you think the new sound changes will affect CS:GO’s gameplay? Already picked out your favorite teams for the ELeague Major in January? Leave it in the comments section down below!

Sources

“Sound Occlusion Analyzed.” YouTube, uploaded by 3kliksphilip, 31 Oct. 2017, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP10XiDXaE8. Accessed 3 Nov. 2017.

Thomas, Robert. “Epicenter 2017 saw Virtus Pro and SK Gaming victorious.” Real Sport, 1 Nov. 2017, realsport101.com/news/sports/esports/csgo/epicenter-2017-saw-virtus-pro-and-sk-gaming-victorious/. Accessed 3 Nov. 2017.

Revisiting the New Dust II

The new version of Dust II has been officially out for just over a week now, and we’re finally starting to see some of the community’s feedback regarding the new changes. There have been numerous bugfixes and improvements after the map was launched, which included clipping fixes, texture changes, and object adjustments. A lot of the old Dust II grenade throws no longer work in this version of the map, so let’s go through a few of the main areas of the map and see what has changed.

Bombsite B:
The height of the exit of Upper Tunnels leading onto the bombsite has been increased, leading to the illusion that the hallway has been narrowed, when, in reality, it’s the same width as the pre-update exit. Using smoke grenades when playing on the Terrorist team pushing out onto the bombsite is now a lot more important, as the boxes right outside of the exit have been made easier to jump on to. This gives the CTs a great crossfire between the player standing on the box and another player who usually plays somewhere on the bombsite. The top of the box can be an awkward and somewhat dangerous position to check when pushing out of the Tunnels, so bouncing a smoke grenade off the left side of the hallway while running out will block the view of the bombsite player, allowing your team to focus on the enemy defender on the box.

Bombsite A:
The pathway that leads from CT spawn to bombsite A and Long A has also been widened. This change makes it not possible to “smoke the cross” using a single smoke grenade anymore. Players, usually on the Terrorist team, will now have to use a pair of smoke grenades or one smoke grenade and a flashbang to safely cross onto the bombsite. If you don’t use two grenades, a competent Counter-Terrorist AWPer may be able to hit players as they jump across the gap in the single smoke plume.

The car by Long A has been moved slightly, and the walls that previously surrounded it were removed. Having an AWPer stand at the car position is now a great spot to defend Long A from. Players have yet to figure out an easy Molotov throw that Terrorists can do from the exit of Long A, but one will surely be coming.

Long A:
Similar to Upper Tunnels, the height of Long Doors has been increased. This prevents the flashbang throw that Terrorists would use on the previous version of Dust II to help push out onto Long A. Instead, you can throw a flashbang around the corner of Long Doors and either throw it normally or do a running throw and have it bounce off the skybox into Long.

The new Dust II is still fairly new, and we have yet to see it played in a professional game. Once Dust II inevitably gets moved back into the Active Duty pool, we certainly will see a lot more of how it gets played. Do you have a new and interesting grenade throw? Feel free to share it in the comments section below!

Sources

“CS:GO – The Return of Dust II.” Valve Corporation, http://www.counter-strike.net/dust2. Accessed 27 Oct. 2017.

Valve Announces the Next CS:GO Major to be Held in January, 2018.

Valve announced a week ago that the next Major will start on January 12, 2018, and will run through the 28th. ELeague will be the host of this tournament, unlike the previous one which was held in Kraków, Poland by PGL, a European host based in Bucharest, Romania. Gambit eSports, the champions of Kraków, will be up to defend their title in the most important, prestigious type of tournament professional CS:GO players hope to win.

Many people didn’t like the PGL Kraków Major this past July for a few reasons, but mainly because of technical and logistical issues. Twice during the Major, the video stream that broadcasted live matches went down, including the time when the American team Cloud9 was facing off against BIG. Cloud9 fans watching the game on Twitch.tv were unable to see the majority of that match because the stream was down but the game was already live and couldn’t be paused. The next day, fans were kicked out of the Tauron Arena before the last match of the day, between BIG and Immortals, was played. The PGL staff didn’t expect that the previous matches would run so far into the evening, that by the time that match was ready to be started, their time reservations for the arena had already run out, and everyone had to leave.

Following the issues that occurred during the PGL Major, most people are pleased to hear that ELeague will be hosting the upcoming tournament. ELeague is an eSports division of the American cable channel Turner Broadcasting System, also known as TBS. ELeague matches are fairly unique, as a lot of them are regularly shown on their TV station, unlike other tournament hosts who typically only stream to online audiences using Youtube or Twitch. Being that ELeague is also part of a larger company, they can provide the normal Major prize pool of $1,000,000, compared to other premier tournaments that may have a $250,000 or $500,000 pool. ELeague has already hosted a Major before back in January of this year, so we kind of know what to expect from them in this coming tournament.

Another Major means more in-game stickers and graffiti will be added so you can represent your favorite team during the tournament, as well as the next Pick-’em Challenge. Both the in-game item sales and Pick’em Challenge raise money for the players, their organizations, and the tournament host. Participating in a Major can also push lesser-known teams such as Renegades or Heroic into the spotlight, especially if they defeat elite teams.

The ELeague Major will take place in Boston, Massachusetts, with the top eight teams from PGL Kraków automatically qualified for the tournament. The remaining eight spots will be filled by a qualifying session that will take place the week before the Major.

Who do you predict will win? What kinds of upsets will we have this time? Do you have a specific team you’re rooting for? Let me know in the comments section down below!

Sources

“Photo Galleries.” ELeague, 28 Jan. 2017, http://www.eleague.com/major-2017/gallery/#ElsQcQlzXkqO. Accessed 20 Oct. 2017.

Counter-Strike’s Classic Map “Dust II” Receives a Facelift

The most iconic Counter-Strike map in history received a few tweaks and a graphical revision on October 10, 2017. People have been speculating about this particular update for a while now, being that other CS:GO maps like Inferno and Nuke were also revamped fairly recently. Valve began to post spoiler images on the official CS:GO Twitter account a few days ago, and finally released this update to the public for us to test and provide feedback.

Dust II is a Counter-Strike classic, known for its balanced gameplay and a player’s ability to navigate around the map. Both the Counter-Terrorists and Terrorists have about the same amount of map control at the beginning of each round, not being overly skewed to a certain team, such as how the Terrorists can always beat the Counter-Terrorists to Bombsite B on Canals during the start of the round. The layout of Dust II is a grid shape, having four corner “quadrants” and a central passageway connecting them to each other. It’s still one of the most played maps in the community, despite it not currently being in the Active Duty map pool and not being played by professional players in the past two Majors.

The new graphical changes are a welcome sight, as the former 2012 version of Dust II looked very dated and “bland” compared to the other maps. Now there’s a lot more detail in wall, ground, and building textures, and the overall art style of the map has been modernized to look similar to the newest version of Inferno. Texture resolutions “have been quadrupled” according to Valve. Dark corners which previously could’ve camouflaged a Counter-Terrorist player model have been eliminated. Telephone and scaffold poles which could’ve absorbed damage from shots have also been moved or removed entirely. Some props scattered around the bombsites, such as the cars by either site, have been adjusted to allow better player movement around and on top of them.

However, a well-known issue in Dust II still hasn’t been addressed. The double-doors at the bottom of Mid and near Bombsite B are still able to be shot through. This allows for the same infamous possibility to instantly kill spawning players by shooting through the door from the Terrorist’s spawnpoint to the bottom of Mid with a high-penetration weapon, such as an AWP or AK-47. Forcing a Counter-Terrorist to use his only smoke grenade to minimize this risk before he even reaches the bombsite he’s defending isn’t ideal.

Also with these map changes comes the fact that Dust II will probably get re-added to the Active Duty map pool, allowing it to be played by pro players at tournaments again. We will have to wait a few weeks to see how these changes affect the current gameplay style of the map engrained in people’s minds, but as of right now, I’m really enjoying the update Valve has created for it. What do you think? Do you like the changes? Leave your feedback in the comment section down below!

Sources

“CS:GO – The Return of Dust II.” Valve Corporation, http://www.counter-strike.net/dust2/. Accessed 13 Oct. 2017.

Rocket League’s Autumn Update

Player-requested features as well as a new Arena and additional customizations!

Rocket League received the much anticipated Autumn Update on September 28, 2017. It added a new arena, player banners, new customizations for your car, and transparent goalposts, as well as the start of Competitive Season 6.

Players have been wanting transparent goalposts for a long time, and they finally have been added. One of the main complaints about the old-style goalposts is that they restricted your view of the ball if it happened to fall straight down from above the goal. If you are the goalie, opaque goalposts made it harder to see where the ball is, the angle that it’s coming from, and where you would have to be to block it. With it being transparent now, it’s a lot easier to defend your goal. Aerial blocks should become a lot more common as players get used to this new change.

Player banners is another major new feature in the update. Every person can now have their own personal banner to customize their name tags with. There are free banners you can earn just by playing, or more fancy banners you obtain by unlocking crates. Along with being another item that you can buy and trade, it allows for players to earn new rewards after each Season is over, unlocking better banners the higher your Competitive rank is.

“Farmstead” is a new Seasonal arena that was added in the update. It’s a smaller-than-normal arena set in the middle of a farm. Being small, it’s quite a bit different than normal arenas. Really long aerial shots aren’t really needed, and a lot less boost is required to drive quickly around the arena. The scenery outside the arena is very nice and relaxing though. We will see how people decide to play on this map as time goes on.

More free items to customize your vehicle with has been added, as well as an additional crate you can unlock for rarer items, including antennas, toppers, and goal explosions. The new rocket trails that were added in the update has been temporarily disabled because of them causing performance issues on the PC version.

The last major feature is the start of Competitive Season 6. Everyone’s competitive rank has been reset, and you must play ten “placement matches” in order to regain it. While some people may dislike this reset, especially if they took a lot of time to get to high rank, this might help lower-ranked players get placed in a higher rank than they previously were.

How do you think transparent goalposts will affect normal gameplay? Do you think Farmstead will be a popular map? Leave your thoughts down below!

Sources

Brackett, Crystal. “Rocket league anniversary update launches today in celebration of its second birthday.” COG Connected, 5 July 2017, cogconnected.com/2017/07/rocket-league-anniversary-update-launches-today/. Accessed 06 Oct. 2017.

pastapadre. “Details on the next free content update for Rocket League.” Pastapadre, 13 Sep. 2017, http://www.pastapadre.com/2017/09/13/details-on-the-next-free-content-update-for-rocket-league. Accessed 06 Oct. 2017.

Team Liquid – The Next NA Superteam?

Team Liquid was one of the finalists at ESL One New York 2017 two weeks ago, losing to Faze three matches to zero in the Grand Finals. However, they played surprisingly well, managing to beat Astralis, former Major champions, and SK Gaming, arguably the #1 ranked team in the world right now.

Liquid didn’t qualify for the PGL Kraków Major back in July of this year. They lost to BIG, a newer CS:GO team based in Germany. This was surprising, as Liquid qualified for both the ESL One New York tournament last year and the previous Major in Atlanta earlier this year. Once Liquid acquired Russell “Twistzz” Van Dulken and Peter “stanislaw” Jarguz in early 2017, replacing former players Pimp and Hiko, they haven’t really accomplished much until recently.

Twistzz is considered one of the best players in the North American scene at the moment. During the past few months, he has shown himself to be a talented N.A. rifler, consistently getting a decent amount of kills during matches, keeping up with or sometimes beating Liquid’s star rifler, Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski. His accuracy and skill with all of the rifles are great, pulling off an ace with one in a Virtus.Pro vs. Liquid match at New York, killing the entire VP lineup within a few seconds.

EliGE, said to be N.A.’s “Chosen One” by eSports historian Duncan “Thorin” Shields, didn’t perform as well as Twistzz did in the Grand Finals between them and Faze, but he’s considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, North American player right now. The number of high-kill matches he has and his amazing spray control rivals some of the best European CS:GO riflers, such as NiKo from Faze and shox from G2. His consistency makes him a very skilled player who normally carries Liquid to better placings in tournaments.

Joshua “jdm64” Marzano, the main AWPer for Liquid, has been with them for just over a year now. While he’s not on the list of “best AWPers of all time”, he certainly is one of the best AWPers in North America. His style of AWPing isn’t the super aggressive style of like a GuardiaN or Snax-type AWPer, but he uses a more passive form of AWPing most of the time. He knows the best angles to hold with the AWP, and will watch them until an enemy is seen. After taking a shot at an enemy or two, he’ll fall back to the next safe angle to watch them from, unlike some aggressive AWPers who may continue to fire at enemies unnecessarily. Because of his passive style, he also uses the double-zoom property of the AWP fairly often, watching a small gap in a while or corner and waiting for Terrorists to peek out. If he needs to be aggressive though, he can certainly do that as well. He doesn’t have the flick speed of GuardiaN, for example, but he’s fairly fast and quite accurate, especially when he uses that double-zoom.

Stanislaw and Nicholas “Nitr0” Cannella played averagely but weren’t the stars of the team. Stanislaw played well as a lurker at times, and Nitr0 got some nice kills, but we’re still waiting for them to join their fellow teammates as really solid, dependable fraggers.

During their performance at ESL One, Team Liquid showed massive potential to become the #1 North American team, and if their skill level keeps rising, to possibly join the ranks of some of the top teams in the world one day, competing with Astralis and G2. If EliGE and Twistzz can continue to produce the stats they currently are and Stan and Nitr0 can continue to improve, there’s no telling how far this team can go.

Sources

Chiu, Stephen. “Liquid enters the ELEAGUE Major after another chaotic year.” Slingshot Media, 17 Jan. 2017, slingshotesports.com/2017/01/17/team-liquid-eleague-major-chaotic-year-tempest-counter-strike/. Accessed 29 Sep. 2017.

The New Faze Clan: A Team of Legends?

Faze Clan won against Team Liquid in the grand finals of ESL One New York 2017 this past weekend, dominantly beating them in three straight matches. Recently acquiring Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovács from Natus Vincere and Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer Gustafsson from fnatic after the PGL Kraków Major, their roster is filled with veteran players from across Europe. Faze lost horribly during the PGL Major, scoring last place out of 16 teams. However, with this new roster, they are surely going to play much better, as they just showed us at ESL One.

They currently have some of the most talented CS:GO players on their team:

Olofmeister is a famous rifler coming from fnatic, who was considered the best player in the world in 2015. His consistently high kill-death ratios, skill with all of the weapons, and ability to clutch rounds made him a very scary player to fight against. Being able to use both the AWP and the various rifles, it makes a versatile player who can take on any role within the team when the need arises.

Nikola “NiKo“ Kovač is a Bosnian player who transferred to Faze from mousesports, a tier-2 CS:GO team primarily based in Germany. He is known for his incredible aim and game sense, a “Snax”-ish type player. Since being transferred over to Faze, he has seen great success. He was voted the MVP of the recent ESL One tournament.

Guardian is a legendary Slovakian AWPer, who was just transferred from Na’Vi after being with them for four years. He was considered the best AWPer in the world for a few months in 2015. He has fallen off a bit, and isn’t the AWP god that he was back then, but he is still a very skilled and dangerous AWPer.

Håvard “rain” Nygaard is the longest lasting player in the Faze Clan lineup, being with them since the beginning of 2016. He currently plays as Faze’s entry-fragger. Finn “karrigan” Andersen is their in-game leader. While they don’t have as much of the “star” status as does Niko or olofmeister, they both are very skilled riflers who understands their role within the team.

Always having good placings at other tournaments, Faze losing so badly at the Kraków Major shocked everyone. They definitely needed to figure out what was going wrong within the team. The new roster changes seemed to have breathed new life into Faze, and they have already started off strong at ESL One and at ELeague earlier this month. If Guardian and Niko can continue to play at the level they’re at right now, SK Gaming and Astralis have a new contender to worry about at the upcoming IEM Oakland 2017 tournament.

Sources

Villanueva, Jamie. “FaZe Clan sweep Team Liquid to win ESL One New York.” Dot Esports, 17 Sep. 2017, dotesports.com/counter-strike/news/faze-win-esl-ny-2017-17438. Accessed 22 Sep. 2017.