kuza that pretty much describes every evening for me too, don't feel too bad :-/

Smaka pretty much summed it up. In between his advice you need to find a happy medium of where you want to be skill wise in the game and what your schedule allows. If you want to be invite, you will most likely need to invest a lot more time into the game. While individual skill can come faster to some than others - learning to playing smart, making proper calls, and how to play as a TRUE team is something that takes time and dedication. Finding a core group of players to either grow with, or if you are lucky enough to get on an already established team that can teach you are your best bet.

I'd love one more shot at invite, but realistically i'll never make it back. I typically play 1 or so hours a night, 3 nights a week which for me works perfect on my open team. So really i play anywhere from 5-8 hours any given week. A lot of main/invite players (at least the ones i have paid attention to on my friends list) average 20+ hours a week...some going all the way to 30+. When you sit back and look at that, to some it can almost be a full time job. I work 50+ hours, am married with a kid...and even then i struggle to get on some nights when my team needs me...so once again, be realistic with what you can contribute without over committing yourself.

i don't think the roster switch at halftime is what's being looked down upon. Like any smart team, you knew you needed to make a change to have a chance to make a comeback....so that's exactly what you did. It's the perception you guys made of yourselves before the season started that has some people pissed off. When you guys said "playing for fun" it was the impression that you were going to offclass, joke around, and who cares about what our record is, we don't care if we win etc etc. I know you probably don't believe this, but we knew exactly what was going to happen in the viaduct match before it even happened. As soon as we were up 2-0 you went on scout and went bananas. We totally expected that, partly because deep down we knew you guys are competitive, and partly because there was some bad blood between blink & powah. Neither team wanted to lose and it was a great close game...no different than last night.

Let me be the first to say i have no issues with anyone on budsquad, nor the outcome of the match last night. I think what you guys do with your streams to promote the community and raise money is great. At the end of the day though, you guys are competitive players and will always have competitive pride. Your team is honestly no different than any other team...most of the guys on our team have known each other for years too. You guys simply have a larger fanbase that knows of your friendship due to your popularity in the community & stream. Everyone wants to play with their friends and "have fun"...but of course everyone has more fun when they win. That's exactly why we came straight out and said we were playing serious from the start - to avoid this exact type of backlash (and we still got shit for being honest, don't worry). That's exactly what you guys are getting in this thread, and i'm sure you know that.

Ya just wait...anyone remember the shit show open finals was last season??

Leaves - qf originally wanted to play main or at least IM, we made that well known. Our goal was never to sandbag open. We even actively looked for a dead roster we could hijack from someone (which is the only way to sort of break the current system). Even if you can find a roster, i believe there is still a certain amount of players and matches that the current roster has to play in before you can start the people you actually want to play. Since we couldn't find a dead team to take over, we literally had no other choice than to play in open if we wanted stay together.

It's no secret that tic is our carry - anyone on our team will tell you that. chriz, cringe, and i have been mostly inactive/backup for the past few seasons so we wanted another shot to come back and give it one last go. cringe and i haven't even started in invite since seasons 9 & 5, and are way past our prime. Neither of us are "invite" caliber anymore and we have no problem admitting that. Still, I understand why people gave us shit for this and i can't blame anyone for having that opinion...but we were at least up front with everyone and said we were going to be playing our mains. Our goal was/is to stick together and move up the ranks. As far as i know we plan on playing together still except sal, who is making a team with some of his other close friends for next season.

Personally i wanted meat to win mainly because both our matches with them had roster issues. We had 2 backups the first time we played them, and they had switched 2 positions due to a backup the 2nd time. I honestly thought they were the best team in open all season and i wanted one final match with both teams having their starting 6. Regardless, they will be successful wherever they go from here and i really hope they stick it out. This is an open team that literally came out of nowhere and was scrimming/beating main teams all season, went 16-0, and came within inches of beating budsquad on their mains while playing with 2 backups. That speaks volumes as to what they have accomplished in just 3 months together as a team.

jmitchell & syckness - two insanely talented players

slardel - in his prime, arguably the best overall player in the game, was always insane playing against him.

dion & reptile combo- everyone forgets about dion but he was one of the first great medics...him and reptile were a scary pair.

destro/casey/brandon/amr/chad hero holstein - still the funnest group of guys i ever played with RIP wolfpack

Solid team and they hate blink, it's like a win/win situation!

Whatever dude she doesn't even know how to air strafe. You're lucky open sucks and finals are online otherwise i'd punch you in yo face at LAN

Come MGE me and say that to my face

no one watches your stream shitty, go back to open

london, i'll co-cast with you if you would like a partner.

According to the bracket it's 9:30 i believe

http://play.esea.net/index.php?s=league&d=bracket&id=5344

Preds for tomorrow night:

UP vs Flash Sharks

UP yet again come out with a huge win, and this time by an even more impressive margin. freestate went beast mode the last 2 matches putting up huge numbers, with sin not far behind almost achieving his final form. When heavies do this much work it makes a world of difference for the rest of the team, and allows them to pretty much single out targets and pick them off...which is exactly what they've been doing. Flash lost to the meat market, which wasn't a huge shock..it was the fact they lost 4-1 that surprised me. They have been doing great in scrims lately, and it's not like they got thoroughly outplayed (kills and dmg were super close). This was just one of those matches where meat markets blobbing & baiting ability overwhelmed them. A good lesson to be learned for going forward. For this match, they need to keep block alive and let him do his thing - especially on a mid like coal plant. Their scouts can really capitalize and make a mess of things if they can play around him and not let him die. I expect flash sharks to make a rebound this time and put an end to the UP comeback dream. 4-2 Flash sharks

lonely hearts vs. budsquad - MATCH OF THE WEEK / REMAINDER OF OPEN PLAYOFFS

lonely hearts continue their journey back through the lower bracket with a solid win off the yomies. With a gluckless roster, they had a scary first half which saw them quickly going down 0-3. Someone must have gave a hell of a half time speech as the entire team came out possessed. Just as easy as they got wiped the first half, they sloshed the yomies 5-0 in the 2nd. romeo started playing out of his mind, and backup scout invizible performed very well after an initial struggle. Their heavies also came through putting up some nice dmg numbers and making some solid picks. I've been saying this for a while, but lonely hearts are the most solid team in open. They've been beating everyone in scrims including beating the top IM & Main teams. There is no reason they shouldn't make it to the finals - they just simply need to play as a team and stop making rambo frag video plays.

the buds took a loss to a very crappy match on metalworks. Both qf and buds did not look anywhere near as good as they could have played...with odd wipes happening on both sides, players out of position everywhere, and some unfortunate connection issues at the end. It was pretty much a 60 minute dm shitfest. To add insult to injury, they lost to a back cap...what kind of good looking dickhead does that?? Anyways, this is the perfect rebound map for the buds playstyle. They will be able to abuse the powah factor if they can protect him properly. I see no reason why they wouldn't run sean scout with auzzie since he will be way more effective as proven on viaduct earlier in the season. cyzer will need to be less aggressive to prevent getting picked. He simply needs to let others make plays off his huge dmg, which he has been very consistent at all season. However, they need to figure out a way to contain the shermanator/romeo combo...and if they think it's by powah's sniping they may be in for a bit of a wake up call, as sherm himself is a beast of a sniper.

Interesting side note - if Lonely Hearts win, they will then most likely play flash sharks, meat, then qf... giving them redemption shots at the teams that beat them this season. To go along with that...if the buds win they'll also (mostly likely) face the same 3 teams, which are also the only teams that beat them as well. This would allow either team to come full circle and exact revenge to win the title.

I really hope someone casts this, if not i may have to make a twitch acct just to do it myself. This will be a crazy match with some incredible plays from the top players in open - however, i just see loenly hearts squeaking this one out as they seem to REAALLLY want to prove themselves as the top contender. 4-3 Lonely Hearts.

He deserves that trophy, probably the best roamer play (if not single individual player) at a LAN that I've seen.

great games

If that's true, they could go that route as a definite option. I didn't even know who invizible was until last night...romeo said he's pretty much a pub scout that has never played comp (corrected by freakin's post below). I'd say he had a pretty impressive debut. Still i would much faster bench one of their soldiers, as making Sherman sit out would be crazy since he's their best player.

I would have called for a Lonely Hearts upset, if it wasn't for the fact it's a koth map. If they do auzzie/seanbud on scout vs romeo/sherman that will be insane to watch. The wildcard is how LH will deal with a sniper on such a sniper friendly map. I'll do a full set of preds for next weeks matches over the weekend.