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GUIDES
Simple Radar
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Someone tell FNS his meme is in danger
If you thought FNS’ time on Cloud9 was short, just wait until you see how many FNS’ gr1k’s stay on HEROIC was.
Ah, the VRS. That complex and frustrating system we all love to hate.
It’s riddled with issues, that’s for sure, but it seems Valve are slowly patching it into a more stable and sensible state.
This week brought two examples of that effort, with them rolling out significant updates.
The first change addressed how early stages of multi-phase tournaments contributed very little to VRS point gains or losses. This was mainly because those stages had minimal (or no) prize pools, as their main purpose is to qualify teams for later rounds.
Valve has now smoothed out that flaw by updating the rulebook: “Event stages that can be connected to later event stages now add to their prize pool a portion of the final stage’s prize pool”.
Now, you might ask: ‘Alright nerds, but what does this actually mean in practice?’
Well, it means that Play-In stages and qualifiers will now carry significantly more weight in the VRS. As a result, they become much more appealing to teams who previously might’ve skipped them in favor of some random local LAN with a 5k prize pool.
It didn’t make much sense that a win at EPIC.LAN was worth more than a win in Stage 1 of IEM Cologne, did it?
The second change - not as impactful, but still a welcome one - now requires a player to have played in at least five of the past ten matches to be listed as part of a team’s active VRS roster.
While this might not seem like a big deal, it helps avoid awkward situations where short-term stand-ins, who only played a couple of games, end up being registered as full team members in the system.
Think back to when FaZe used s1mple and skullz as stand-ins at IEM Dallas. Under the old rules, they were considered part of the official team in the VRS.
But Valve didn’t stop there.
In what must’ve been an absolute crunch week - surely leaving the one poor Valve employee assigned to the VRS on the edge of burnout - they pushed out yet another update, this time regarding the Major slots.
And the big news? There are no news.
After months of teasing us with a “TBD” in the rulebook, Valve finally revealed the regional allocation for Stage 1 of the StarLadder Budapest Major, and it’s exactly the same as before: 6 slots for Europe, 6 for the Americas, and 4 for Asia.
Thanks for nothing.
Finally, we just couldn’t wrap up this VRS chronicle without the weekly NIP tweet crying about something. To be fair, they actually have a point this time. It seems they’ve found themselves in the sweet spot to not play CS.
As Xizt and Snappi pointed out, NIP - ranked #14 in EU and #19 worldwide - are just a little too low to get invites to the big events, yet too high to qualify for the smaller ones.
Basically, they’re too good for tier 2, but not quite good enough for tier 1, forcing them to rely on teams above them turning down invites just to play anything meaningful. Now that we think about it, maybe it’s not such a bad thing not having to watch NIP play…
But don’t worry, Ninjas, we’ve got the perfect solution for your problem.
Just play better.
Elliott’s sticking around for another episode of Overtime on Inferno this week, plus we have a special, surprise guest on the show too.
On this week’s episode, our three hosts have a heated discussion about the GOAT of CS. Sort of. Plus:
Usually, when there’s a roster merry-go-round, teams who lose their star replace them with a slightly worse star, and there’s a cascading effect.
The second team will get a slightly worse player from a slightly worse team, then that team will get one from a slightly worse team, and… you get the point.
FUT, however, decided to just cut out the middleman.
First of all, it should be mentioned that FUT are now the team with the old NAVI Junior guys. Things were going extremely well for the academy team, and that only ends in two ways: Gambit in 2021, or signing for another team.
There’s just one problem. Their best player was makazze, who went to replace the outgoing jL on NAVI. He’s not even much worse than jL right now, if at all, but for the sake of the point, let’s say he is.
So who do NAVI Jr - now FUT - replace makazze with?
An upcoming Ukrainian guy we haven’t heard of yet? Maybe some experienced star to add some nous to a young squad? Maybe a genuine star?
Erm… not quite. Experienced? Ish. But everything else we’re not convinced misutaaa ticks the boxes on.
Okay, misutaaa was already there, so it’s not like they signed him specifically for this team. He was just a guy already on file.
That said, replacing makazze with misutaaa is one of the least inspiring moves ever, and one that makes us less excited for this team on inception.
Eesh.
BLAST Bounty got underway this week, and for a format that promises a serious threat of upset wins… there hasn’t really been any. At all.
Seriously, the two biggest upsets might be that Passion UA and TNL took maps off Spirit and NAVI. Those maps were also the only two maps lost by the higher-ranked teams in the entire first days, so what exactly is going wrong here?
Looking at the games, not everyone has had a clear favourite.
NIP could have easily got the better of paiN, but they didn’t. fnatic probably should have took down Legacy even with a new player, but they didn’t. Even Liquid, who came into the event following a stinker of a match against VP Prodigy made it past ECSTATIC in two maps.
Well it was more like three maps, but that first map was NIP vs. AMKAL levels of awful.
And yes, we aren’t joking. We weren’t sure Liquid should be considered favourites, considering how poor they are right now.
But the supposed favourites have just reigned supreme in Bounty Season 2, and we know that’s not BLAST’s fault, but it has made the event feel a little bit bland. Add on to that the fact that it’s an online event right now, and the blandness is more apparent than any of the great CS that might be being played in it.
Not even FaZe, who looked primed for an upset loss to BetBoom, were challenged in what was a stable BO3 for them. Miserable.
At least BIG and MIBR were quickly put in their places, so it’s not all bad.
Do you ever look at a roster announcement and think, “There’s more to that than they’re saying?” If so, then this decision from HEROIC to bench gr1ks is a prime candidate for some speculation.
Benching him after just over a month with the roster, the Belarussian departs HEROIC’s roster having played just two events, FISSURE Playground 1 and IEM Cologne.
Sure, he didn’t play fantastically during that time. An impressive showing in a 2-0 win over VP was the highlight, but a win over VP doesn’t really say much nowadays. And so whilst he may not have been the same kind of hit-the-ground-running kind of star molodoy has been for FURIA, he still showed promise.
The announcement itself is slightly weird as well. The only reason given for the benching is that gr1ks’ “playstyle didn’t fully align with how the team is shaping up”… Okay?
Given that gr1ks is just 19 and hasn’t had much chance to adapt to what they might want out of him, this feels like a strange cop out from them. We don’t like to speculate - we really do - but we think there just might be a little more to this one.
Whether there is or not, we just hope this doesn’t affect his career too much.
He turned down other teams to join his countrymen tN1R on HEROIC, it would be a shame for him to end up fading away as a result of that choice.
His replacement, in case you are wondering, is Alkaren, an AWPer from Spirit Academy that has signed on loan for the next year, with the option for HEROIC to make the signing permanent. Given that Alkaren hasn’t exactly been anything special for Spirit Academy, we think HEROIC’s luck as a team might be starting to run out.
Oh, and because we know you definitely are wondering, the answer is 0.71. gr1ks lasted 0.76 FNS’ on HEROIC.
To echo our sentiments on misutaaa replacing makazze on FUT: Eesh.
