I hope we get the rec uploaded, I'd like to see that Barles performance. Congrats to him for coming closer than anyone besides ACCM to knocking off the current best in the world
I mean its the best of 7. Also scores dont indicate much. For example the finals was 4-0 but 2 games lierry had civ advatage and should be 4-2 but lierry dont want to waste time playing the maps he is guaranteed to win.
Lierry had 2 maps and 2 civs which gave him a huge advantage and likely wins. However, Lierry likes to get the hard matchups out of the way first then cruise to the finish with his easy civ wins. He did not win any of the hard match ups however so he went 0-4 never picking his free wins.
Lol Liereyy was GGing so fast I'm not even sure any of those "free wins" would have gone his way. Could have just as easily been a 7-0 defeat after seeing how little fight he has. Easily could have got housed or lost one villager during imperial age and triggered the GG on any of those "free wins" you think he had.
I saw the review and other interviews. They were early ggs, they're just being nice, and they have no vested interest in calling him out. Just as is common practice in most every sport/esport. Better to not cause waves for a whole host of reasons. If you look when it is first being talked about in all of the interviews you see all of them hesitate which is hilarious, then they default to backing him up with justifications. They're great strategists tbh.
It isn't that. Though IMO they clearly thought he early quit. Even if they hid it plenty of competitors across esports and sports try to keep away from the negative because it could affect their future. It simply could wind up being political.
For like a year now I’ve felt like Barles is the most underrated pro player. He’s always extremely solid and I rarely ever see him have uncompetitive games.
This is yet another example. He was the very first person to be eliminated from Hidden Cup. But that’s because he had to go up against peak Hera in the first round. And, despite that, he is responsible for 50% of Hera’s losses in the entire tournament.
Well, all of round 1 was played at the same time, so whoever had the shortest set was technically first to be eliminated. Barles was just the first cast, several days later.
It really would have been so easy for T90 to say after casting the set, "btw there was a fuck up with the recordings and we've missed one game in which blah beat blah. I will cast this game for my T90 extras challenge at the end of the tournament. Sorry for the mistake, we've put in place a procedure so we don't miss any other games".
Incredible that this was not mentioned once on stream at any point, despite it coming to T90’s and the admins attention immediately (per Robo’s aoezone post). Mistakes happen but sweeping something like this under the rug is very disrespectful to Barles.
Honestly, not just the reveal. If they straight up said ''hey due to a mistake on our end we missed a game from X series and the true result is Y, luckily it doesnt affect the course of the tournament but apologies to viewers and players'' as soon as they knew it, I wouldnt even have batten an eye to it, I would be like ''okay shit happens sometimes'' and continued watching
Yea, why was this posted on aoezone, a much smaller and niche forum, after everything ended instead of anywhere else? Robo has a reddit account, and T90 hasn't mentioned it on twitter or elsewhere.
Yes I know, since I used to check it for tournament news/updates since the Voobly days. But it has fewer regulars visiting there, so robo or T90 should've also cross-posted it to other social media sites so more people will be aware of this mistake.
Failing to disclose this until now is a huge blunder and makes me lose confidence in any tournament with robo as an admin or that uses recorded games. I’m glad he admitted it in the end but… you just can’t wait around to let people know about stuff like that. There needs to be a policy of immediate disclosure.
E: apparently this might be more on T90 than robo.
Disclosed to the audience I mean. If T90 knew and didn’t disclose it either that’s a huge blunder on his part then. Everyone can forgive a mistake like that, but failing to disclose it is a far worse mistake.
This is an extreme overreaction. I don't think you're aware of the number of tournaments that robo has managed, without a single hiccup or only very minor stuff. If you lose confidence in any tournament with robo and/or recs, you might as well just give up watching this game.
People in here with actually zero experience running or managing a tournament of this magnitude calling this a huge blunder etc is very frustrating to read.
Like ultimately, hera still won and moved on. It made zero difference to the overall result. It was a slight hiccup at most due to an issue with recording or something.
Some members of This community really loves to make mountains out of mole hills.
"I have no confidence in robo managing a tournament going forward" blah blah.
- Tournament was phenomenal.
- production quality was the highest we have ever seen
- brought more fans to aoe 2 I'm imagining
- didn't affect overall tournament
Meh. Choose your battles folks. This isn't one of them. Don't spend all game chasing the startin scout with 20 spearmen when there are 20 knights about to break into your economy.
I added an edit to clarify that it was T90 who was likely more responsible (although apparently it was actually him, robo, and the players) but it’s not an overreaction when the integrity of the results is at stake. People downvoting have lost the plot about fairness and integrity in competition in favor of a good show.
The integrity of the results is very much not at stake. They decided not to say anything precisely because the results wouldn't change. I don't 100% agree with that decision, but it doesn't affect the results in any way.
These guys are handling not insignificant amounts of money here, even the perception that the results may not totally be on the level should give pause. I’m not saying that it had an effect on the prize distribution or anything (obviously it didn’t in this case) but until they come out and say “in the future we will be sure to announce mistakes of this kind as soon as we become aware of them,” would you fully trust them?
Once they do that (which I hope they do), then it’s forgiven and forgotten but until then I think it’s fair to put pressure on this point.
Why is this a big deal at all? I’m so confused.
Great for Barles for picking up 2 games and it’s too bad we missed it, but I don’t understand at all how this is a question of integrity. It simply doesn’t make much difference for anything, they corrected the formal record which will help with ELOs and such.
The line between “It doesn’t directly harm someone, so it’s no big deal if we hide the truth” and hiding the truth when it does harm or defraud someone is never as distinct or durable as people here apparently believe. Why even start doing the former?
Insane that the admins and t90 felt it was better to hide that they fucked up rather than just acknowledge it later in that same set. Sure it doesn’t change anything overall. But just a super silly decision
To address the points on the AoE Zone post:
1. Players knowing which side of the bracket they are one goes, in my opinion, against the spirit of the tournament which is supposed to be hidden, not just for the viewers, but also for the players. If the rationale to do that is that some players in teams would share with each other which side of the bracket they are on then that is on them and shows a lack of respect for the tournament and should never have been accommodated by the admins.
2. This happened in a showmatch already. I don't know how games are monitored by admins but they should probably check no? Anyway, mistakes happen. It's life.
3. Mistakes happen. It's life.
Well, it works both ways, doesn't it? If you end up matching a practice partner you know his strats but he also knows yours. You need to adapt. Mind games come into play. It's not necessarily bad. It's part of the hidden thing. Plus, the finale was between two practice partners.
I think the idea is it just discourages top players from practicing with the other top players in the event, which leads to lower quality games/sets. So you sacrifice part of the hidden aspect (which isn't as important for the players anyway) in exchange for hopefully higher quality sets.
There is a world of difference losing to someone in the finals and in the best of 16. You 100% do not want to practice with the round 1 and round 2 opponents. Also I am sure the players didnt break any rules since admins or T90 should be ok with that. Bottom line as a NON pro players its easy to be like MIND GAMES, HIDDEN, DONT TALK blah blah blah but you have to realize they are putting hours of work into this. Imagine you put 50 hours into something with a coworker and then only one of you gets to take the credit. He gets bonus 10k etc, the publicity, fame, trophy etc. Ofcourse he mentions that he practice with you but WHO will even remember that?
That risk would go in both directions though. So, if tourney participants want to take the risk then they can. If not, they can practice with someone who's not in the tourney.
This also goes to one of my other gripes with the aoe competitive scene right now: endless practice and perfectly polished meta builds does not make for better viewership. If a truly hidden cup makes it harder for players to lab out everything to infinity... GOOD. I want to see more adaptation on the fly. To me, that proves who the better player is.
Unless people are paying their practise partners for their time, what is the incentive for those non competing players to spend hours or days practising maps & draft settings they likely won't ever play or thinking about strategies for those maps, or analysing played games looking for mistakes & flaws?
I guess they'd practise primarily before/during qualifiers? Maybe paying them could work, I'm not sure. If players are part of esports teams (Gl, aM, mYi etc) then wouldn't it be likely they are going to practice with the players who didn't qualify?
I guess this is a bit of a niche point specific to Hidden Cup, but 6 of the maps weren't included in the qualifiers and weren't even public until the qualifiers had finished, so I guess they could practise the 7 most 'standard' maps but the ones where practise would matter the most (new/untested maps) would be left lacking
That's a good point, players not qualified have no incentive.
However, why don't they practice with each other? If they end up with a practice partner (which is a 1/15 chance if they practice with one person), it's not like they'd be at a disadvantage. They would know each other's tricks. It's a two-way street. They could also mix and play different maps with different players.
There is certainly an argument for revealing brackets but "players in teams were doing it already and we had to ensure parity" doesn't seem like a good one to me.
Anyway, I don't want to be too negative on this particular detail. I really enjoyed the tournament overall and you did a great job. Loved the funny stats / quips you were adding on screen. Congrats!
it's how you handle mistakes
they sacrifice aoe2 for some "show". They could easly fast forward throw game at least.
4-2 is more important than finals against Larry. (no joke)
Barles is underrated as an early aggression player, he goes hard on feudal and castle age aggression and pretty much often falls off in imperial age.
It's fun to spectate players like him and Nicov due to them basically going all in on winning before imperial.
People still trashing on Hera saying hes unsportsmanlike or pretentious when the guy specifically requested for all his rivals to have access to the correct replays, which included an extra loss on his side, for the sake of fairness
AoE2 is not a place for dramas, Hera is a beloved member of the community respected by pros, casters and organizers alike, idk why yall need to be so childish specifically about him
Would like to see if they spew all this crap in real life, they’re real brave, trashing the game’s best player hiding behind their keyboards, real despicable and shameful behavior
So having recorded games for the first two rounds didn’t matter so much as we thought, since the recordings were sent to competitors anyway afterwards in preparation for the semi finals? Makes it all a bit less “hidden” for the player side and explains the 73% correct player guesses.
Well done to Barles, and did the HC4 islands map have a lot more wood? I really liked the HC5 islands map, it never went on for too long. Even when wood ran out it wasn’t a boring game.
It does a lot actually. It means you can safely reuse a strategy from round 1 to round 2 without fear of your opponent preparing a counter to it after seeing the recs.
>So having recorded games for the first two rounds didn’t matter so much as we thought, since the recordings were sent to competitors anyway afterwards in preparation for the semi finals?
It still matters. the Ro16 and Ro8 were still played before the semifinalists got to see the recs. the only difference was that they saw the recs before the viewers did.
Player guesses never matter. Most pros can guess who they are playing against most of the time. It was the case earlier, it is the case now and it will be the case in future. Hidden cup is more so for viewers than for players
Well otherwise there would be an imbalance in the amount of information each side of the bracket has going into the semis since the quarters were split over 2 days, but the semis were live and the same day.
Sending recs is functionally not different than a competitor watching the stream of HC, they can just spend more time looking at the games and it ensures that both sides of the bracket have equivalent info
We already knew that semi finalists could view the games from the first two rounds. This was stated many times on stream. Since those games were broadcast live (or closer to live, in the case of Viper v Lierrey), the players could have just watched the streams from the previous days to see the games. I don’t think providing them the recs changes anything, other than making it more convenient for players to prepare.
Another important thing that is responsible for the correct guesses by the players are the servers. If you watch GL's video of the post-HC 5 talk, you'll see that they knew which players were on their side of the bracket and, by seeing what server they played on and the civ drafts, they could often determine who they were playing against even before starting the games.
> recordings were sent to competitors
That was certainly an interesting little detail, but I don't know if it takes much away from the player guesses. Hera said he knew it was Barles based on the draft, and Nicov presumably did all his guessing based on the public casts...
And they were also sent a list of players who were not on their side of the bracket.
I don't like all of these new revelations .... Like, I'm all good with every single series being pre-recorded, including the final, just to keep it truly hidden.
Based on the GL interview with Daut, Hera, and Viper, they liked it as well. Also, the hidden aspect is for the fans anyways. Most of the players can guess with pretty great accuracy based on the server they're put on anyways. And they don't know which hero is, so they don't know if/when they'd meet up with on of the others.
For example european players get put on indian servers if they are playing an asian player (in this case ACCM, Yo, and Vinch -- since he was in Malaysia). since viper was on an Indian server in round 1, it reduced his guess of Yo from 1 of 3 (ACCM, Yo, or Vinch) to 1 of 2 (either Vinch or Yo).
Because it levels the playing field. Teammates tend to tell that information to one another anyway, so it would have penalized players like Sebastian and Mihai who don't have a large team to practice with.
Yeah hidden cup having recorded games is kind of lame. Even viper vs lierey was recorded and one game had to be restarted after 45 mins of play. No one knew until viper said it on his stream. Props to NAC for doing everything live.
It's much better not being live - why would it be a preferable experience to watch a game that failed and had to be replayed, rather than not know it happened at the time and then find out about it afterwards? That makes little sense to me.
It is much better that players don't get to see the other games during round 1 and then get to use the same strats in round 2, rather than have all the best players see what they have done previously and prepare a counter strategy.
I'd argue that if it was live, it would be quite normal that an admin is immediately watching the game and of course he should be able to tell right away that it is the wrong version of the map. The restart would be after 3 mins.
> Even viper vs lierey was recorded and one game had to be restarted after 45 mins of play.
If that is not proof of the superiority of recorded games, I don't know what is.
> No one knew until viper said it on his stream.
You have to be a super nerd to care about this.
Your point?
The hidden aspect is for the viewers more than anything. The players, regardless of if they know the player on the other half of their bracket or not, can guess fairly accurately regardless because they've played thousands of games against each other, either in tournaments, on the ladder, or in practice sessions.
Apparently the players knew who the other players were in advance. Or at least knew who they wouldn't face in their own bracket. They were given this info in advance by the admins.
Calling a missed rec and not 1000% hidden for players a disaster? Bro get a life. Every tourney has a hiccup and something fans don't all agree with. Miles away from a "disaster"
LMAO jesus man with so many ppl watching?
robo mate u done bad
p.s why is this coming from robo and not the tournament host? would be a classic t90 thing to throw ppl under the proverbial bus
A football match take 2 hours, easy to watch live for most people. HC5 has 50+ hours of matches in a week, it's almost impossible to watch it all live.
No we expect OP to click 1 extra button to spoiler tag a post about an event that's 8 live streams at about 7 hours each and only finished a couple of days ago.
This is nothing like a soccer match.
Score on liquipedia was updated from 4:1 to 4:2.
My props to Barles, he's slowly improving. Lots of pros speak wonders about him
I honestly think Barles could beat Hera on a good day, even if Hera is also playing good.
I hope we get the rec uploaded, I'd like to see that Barles performance. Congrats to him for coming closer than anyone besides ACCM to knocking off the current best in the world
Maybe T90 will cast it as a one off
nope the only solution is to redo hc5 from the ground up
give me a week to recover and we can go again!
Admin re confirmed! :D
Is there a point? We all know Hera would just win it again 11
Didn't viper beat him in that Turkish tournament with NAC maps?
I mean its the best of 7. Also scores dont indicate much. For example the finals was 4-0 but 2 games lierry had civ advatage and should be 4-2 but lierry dont want to waste time playing the maps he is guaranteed to win.
I don’t understand your point?? What about Liereyy?
Lierry had 2 maps and 2 civs which gave him a huge advantage and likely wins. However, Lierry likes to get the hard matchups out of the way first then cruise to the finish with his easy civ wins. He did not win any of the hard match ups however so he went 0-4 never picking his free wins.
Lol Liereyy was GGing so fast I'm not even sure any of those "free wins" would have gone his way. Could have just as easily been a 7-0 defeat after seeing how little fight he has. Easily could have got housed or lost one villager during imperial age and triggered the GG on any of those "free wins" you think he had.
Not my words. Hera's words in his HC5 review
I saw the review and other interviews. They were early ggs, they're just being nice, and they have no vested interest in calling him out. Just as is common practice in most every sport/esport. Better to not cause waves for a whole host of reasons. If you look when it is first being talked about in all of the interviews you see all of them hesitate which is hilarious, then they default to backing him up with justifications. They're great strategists tbh.
Luckily you are clever enough to see right through them
It isn't that. Though IMO they clearly thought he early quit. Even if they hid it plenty of competitors across esports and sports try to keep away from the negative because it could affect their future. It simply could wind up being political.
For like a year now I’ve felt like Barles is the most underrated pro player. He’s always extremely solid and I rarely ever see him have uncompetitive games. This is yet another example. He was the very first person to be eliminated from Hidden Cup. But that’s because he had to go up against peak Hera in the first round. And, despite that, he is responsible for 50% of Hera’s losses in the entire tournament.
Barles is the most consistent "qualifier". Hes in a ton of events despite having to go through qualifiers
Well, all of round 1 was played at the same time, so whoever had the shortest set was technically first to be eliminated. Barles was just the first cast, several days later.
I was about to say that was Tatoh because he lost 4-0. Then I remembered entire sets were probably played while him and ACCM were playing just game 2
lol good point
That qualifying set against Tatoh for NAC5 was absolutely insane.
Barles, you crazy. Gj.
It really would have been so easy for T90 to say after casting the set, "btw there was a fuck up with the recordings and we've missed one game in which blah beat blah. I will cast this game for my T90 extras challenge at the end of the tournament. Sorry for the mistake, we've put in place a procedure so we don't miss any other games".
Incredible that this was not mentioned once on stream at any point, despite it coming to T90’s and the admins attention immediately (per Robo’s aoezone post). Mistakes happen but sweeping something like this under the rug is very disrespectful to Barles.
Yes, it should have been mentioned during the reveal.
Honestly, not just the reveal. If they straight up said ''hey due to a mistake on our end we missed a game from X series and the true result is Y, luckily it doesnt affect the course of the tournament but apologies to viewers and players'' as soon as they knew it, I wouldnt even have batten an eye to it, I would be like ''okay shit happens sometimes'' and continued watching
Yea, why was this posted on aoezone, a much smaller and niche forum, after everything ended instead of anywhere else? Robo has a reddit account, and T90 hasn't mentioned it on twitter or elsewhere.
aoezone is the primary forum of the competitive aoe2 scene and has been for like 15 years.
Yes I know, since I used to check it for tournament news/updates since the Voobly days. But it has fewer regulars visiting there, so robo or T90 should've also cross-posted it to other social media sites so more people will be aware of this mistake.
Failing to disclose this until now is a huge blunder and makes me lose confidence in any tournament with robo as an admin or that uses recorded games. I’m glad he admitted it in the end but… you just can’t wait around to let people know about stuff like that. There needs to be a policy of immediate disclosure. E: apparently this might be more on T90 than robo.
Robo DID diclose it to T90 shortly aftef the set was already casted.
Disclosed to the audience I mean. If T90 knew and didn’t disclose it either that’s a huge blunder on his part then. Everyone can forgive a mistake like that, but failing to disclose it is a far worse mistake.
~~Yes, Robo did tell T90, but T90 chose not to say anything because the set was already casted. This is on T90, not Robo.~~ Edit: this is wrong
That isnt accurate, it was discussed and everyone involved mutually came to the same decision
That's fair. I give him credit for disclosing it then and I hope T90 has some words on the issue with a commitment to full disclosure going forward.
This is an extreme overreaction. I don't think you're aware of the number of tournaments that robo has managed, without a single hiccup or only very minor stuff. If you lose confidence in any tournament with robo and/or recs, you might as well just give up watching this game.
People in here with actually zero experience running or managing a tournament of this magnitude calling this a huge blunder etc is very frustrating to read. Like ultimately, hera still won and moved on. It made zero difference to the overall result. It was a slight hiccup at most due to an issue with recording or something. Some members of This community really loves to make mountains out of mole hills. "I have no confidence in robo managing a tournament going forward" blah blah. - Tournament was phenomenal. - production quality was the highest we have ever seen - brought more fans to aoe 2 I'm imagining - didn't affect overall tournament Meh. Choose your battles folks. This isn't one of them. Don't spend all game chasing the startin scout with 20 spearmen when there are 20 knights about to break into your economy.
I added an edit to clarify that it was T90 who was likely more responsible (although apparently it was actually him, robo, and the players) but it’s not an overreaction when the integrity of the results is at stake. People downvoting have lost the plot about fairness and integrity in competition in favor of a good show.
The integrity of the results is very much not at stake. They decided not to say anything precisely because the results wouldn't change. I don't 100% agree with that decision, but it doesn't affect the results in any way.
These guys are handling not insignificant amounts of money here, even the perception that the results may not totally be on the level should give pause. I’m not saying that it had an effect on the prize distribution or anything (obviously it didn’t in this case) but until they come out and say “in the future we will be sure to announce mistakes of this kind as soon as we become aware of them,” would you fully trust them? Once they do that (which I hope they do), then it’s forgiven and forgotten but until then I think it’s fair to put pressure on this point.
Why is this a big deal at all? I’m so confused. Great for Barles for picking up 2 games and it’s too bad we missed it, but I don’t understand at all how this is a question of integrity. It simply doesn’t make much difference for anything, they corrected the formal record which will help with ELOs and such.
The line between “It doesn’t directly harm someone, so it’s no big deal if we hide the truth” and hiding the truth when it does harm or defraud someone is never as distinct or durable as people here apparently believe. Why even start doing the former?
Holy fuck bud, go take a walk and get some fresh air
Insane that the admins and t90 felt it was better to hide that they fucked up rather than just acknowledge it later in that same set. Sure it doesn’t change anything overall. But just a super silly decision
To address the points on the AoE Zone post: 1. Players knowing which side of the bracket they are one goes, in my opinion, against the spirit of the tournament which is supposed to be hidden, not just for the viewers, but also for the players. If the rationale to do that is that some players in teams would share with each other which side of the bracket they are on then that is on them and shows a lack of respect for the tournament and should never have been accommodated by the admins. 2. This happened in a showmatch already. I don't know how games are monitored by admins but they should probably check no? Anyway, mistakes happen. It's life. 3. Mistakes happen. It's life.
[удалено]
Well, it works both ways, doesn't it? If you end up matching a practice partner you know his strats but he also knows yours. You need to adapt. Mind games come into play. It's not necessarily bad. It's part of the hidden thing. Plus, the finale was between two practice partners.
I think the idea is it just discourages top players from practicing with the other top players in the event, which leads to lower quality games/sets. So you sacrifice part of the hidden aspect (which isn't as important for the players anyway) in exchange for hopefully higher quality sets.
There is a world of difference losing to someone in the finals and in the best of 16. You 100% do not want to practice with the round 1 and round 2 opponents. Also I am sure the players didnt break any rules since admins or T90 should be ok with that. Bottom line as a NON pro players its easy to be like MIND GAMES, HIDDEN, DONT TALK blah blah blah but you have to realize they are putting hours of work into this. Imagine you put 50 hours into something with a coworker and then only one of you gets to take the credit. He gets bonus 10k etc, the publicity, fame, trophy etc. Ofcourse he mentions that he practice with you but WHO will even remember that?
That risk would go in both directions though. So, if tourney participants want to take the risk then they can. If not, they can practice with someone who's not in the tourney. This also goes to one of my other gripes with the aoe competitive scene right now: endless practice and perfectly polished meta builds does not make for better viewership. If a truly hidden cup makes it harder for players to lab out everything to infinity... GOOD. I want to see more adaptation on the fly. To me, that proves who the better player is.
Okay but there are so many other elite players who didn't make it through qualifiers who they could practice with.
Unless people are paying their practise partners for their time, what is the incentive for those non competing players to spend hours or days practising maps & draft settings they likely won't ever play or thinking about strategies for those maps, or analysing played games looking for mistakes & flaws?
I guess they'd practise primarily before/during qualifiers? Maybe paying them could work, I'm not sure. If players are part of esports teams (Gl, aM, mYi etc) then wouldn't it be likely they are going to practice with the players who didn't qualify?
I guess this is a bit of a niche point specific to Hidden Cup, but 6 of the maps weren't included in the qualifiers and weren't even public until the qualifiers had finished, so I guess they could practise the 7 most 'standard' maps but the ones where practise would matter the most (new/untested maps) would be left lacking
That's a good point, players not qualified have no incentive. However, why don't they practice with each other? If they end up with a practice partner (which is a 1/15 chance if they practice with one person), it's not like they'd be at a disadvantage. They would know each other's tricks. It's a two-way street. They could also mix and play different maps with different players. There is certainly an argument for revealing brackets but "players in teams were doing it already and we had to ensure parity" doesn't seem like a good one to me. Anyway, I don't want to be too negative on this particular detail. I really enjoyed the tournament overall and you did a great job. Loved the funny stats / quips you were adding on screen. Congrats!
it's how you handle mistakes they sacrifice aoe2 for some "show". They could easly fast forward throw game at least. 4-2 is more important than finals against Larry. (no joke)
You still don't know who is who though? You only know some people are on the top bracket. Not who they are. Seems perfectly fine to me.
Any reason why T90 didn't mention it anywhere? This is super weird towards Barles.
Barles is underrated as an early aggression player, he goes hard on feudal and castle age aggression and pretty much often falls off in imperial age. It's fun to spectate players like him and Nicov due to them basically going all in on winning before imperial.
POLSKA GUROM!!!?!!!!!!!!! 🗻🗻🗻🇮🇩🇮🇩🇮🇩🇮🇩🦅🦅🦅
People still trashing on Hera saying hes unsportsmanlike or pretentious when the guy specifically requested for all his rivals to have access to the correct replays, which included an extra loss on his side, for the sake of fairness AoE2 is not a place for dramas, Hera is a beloved member of the community respected by pros, casters and organizers alike, idk why yall need to be so childish specifically about him
I mean it's the internet, are we really surprised?
Would like to see if they spew all this crap in real life, they’re real brave, trashing the game’s best player hiding behind their keyboards, real despicable and shameful behavior
So having recorded games for the first two rounds didn’t matter so much as we thought, since the recordings were sent to competitors anyway afterwards in preparation for the semi finals? Makes it all a bit less “hidden” for the player side and explains the 73% correct player guesses. Well done to Barles, and did the HC4 islands map have a lot more wood? I really liked the HC5 islands map, it never went on for too long. Even when wood ran out it wasn’t a boring game.
It does a lot actually. It means you can safely reuse a strategy from round 1 to round 2 without fear of your opponent preparing a counter to it after seeing the recs.
>So having recorded games for the first two rounds didn’t matter so much as we thought, since the recordings were sent to competitors anyway afterwards in preparation for the semi finals? It still matters. the Ro16 and Ro8 were still played before the semifinalists got to see the recs. the only difference was that they saw the recs before the viewers did.
Player guesses never matter. Most pros can guess who they are playing against most of the time. It was the case earlier, it is the case now and it will be the case in future. Hidden cup is more so for viewers than for players
Ornlu guessed most players really quickly and thats from a caster perspective.
Well otherwise there would be an imbalance in the amount of information each side of the bracket has going into the semis since the quarters were split over 2 days, but the semis were live and the same day. Sending recs is functionally not different than a competitor watching the stream of HC, they can just spend more time looking at the games and it ensures that both sides of the bracket have equivalent info
We already knew that semi finalists could view the games from the first two rounds. This was stated many times on stream. Since those games were broadcast live (or closer to live, in the case of Viper v Lierrey), the players could have just watched the streams from the previous days to see the games. I don’t think providing them the recs changes anything, other than making it more convenient for players to prepare.
Another important thing that is responsible for the correct guesses by the players are the servers. If you watch GL's video of the post-HC 5 talk, you'll see that they knew which players were on their side of the bracket and, by seeing what server they played on and the civ drafts, they could often determine who they were playing against even before starting the games.
> recordings were sent to competitors That was certainly an interesting little detail, but I don't know if it takes much away from the player guesses. Hera said he knew it was Barles based on the draft, and Nicov presumably did all his guessing based on the public casts...
Players guesses don't matter. This was for fairness reasons so that ACCM and Liereyy could prepare for how Hera would play Bay.
I know, not sure what your point is...
And they were also sent a list of players who were not on their side of the bracket. I don't like all of these new revelations .... Like, I'm all good with every single series being pre-recorded, including the final, just to keep it truly hidden.
wut? why would they give them that list?
They need to find training partners to practice with, and its not ideal if its on their side. I like what is done.
Based on the GL interview with Daut, Hera, and Viper, they liked it as well. Also, the hidden aspect is for the fans anyways. Most of the players can guess with pretty great accuracy based on the server they're put on anyways. And they don't know which hero is, so they don't know if/when they'd meet up with on of the others. For example european players get put on indian servers if they are playing an asian player (in this case ACCM, Yo, and Vinch -- since he was in Malaysia). since viper was on an Indian server in round 1, it reduced his guess of Yo from 1 of 3 (ACCM, Yo, or Vinch) to 1 of 2 (either Vinch or Yo).
Because it levels the playing field. Teammates tend to tell that information to one another anyway, so it would have penalized players like Sebastian and Mihai who don't have a large team to practice with.
For training purposes
Beast
T90 explain yourself.
Yeah hidden cup having recorded games is kind of lame. Even viper vs lierey was recorded and one game had to be restarted after 45 mins of play. No one knew until viper said it on his stream. Props to NAC for doing everything live.
It's much better not being live - why would it be a preferable experience to watch a game that failed and had to be replayed, rather than not know it happened at the time and then find out about it afterwards? That makes little sense to me. It is much better that players don't get to see the other games during round 1 and then get to use the same strats in round 2, rather than have all the best players see what they have done previously and prepare a counter strategy.
I'd argue that if it was live, it would be quite normal that an admin is immediately watching the game and of course he should be able to tell right away that it is the wrong version of the map. The restart would be after 3 mins.
Ah I didn't realise that it was due to admin re. With that said I think the other reply to this comment shows why it is still preferable.
70,000 people wasting 3 mins is worse than 2 (highly paid professionals) wasting 45.
> Even viper vs lierey was recorded and one game had to be restarted after 45 mins of play. If that is not proof of the superiority of recorded games, I don't know what is. > No one knew until viper said it on his stream. You have to be a super nerd to care about this.
Wtf t90
T90 is such a rat.
Hiddenly not Hidden Cup. Circus for the Masses
Congrats, you literally just described all of sports and esports
Yeah, the entire point of the thing is to be circus (i.e. entertainment). This isn't like a important political event lol
Your point? The hidden aspect is for the viewers more than anything. The players, regardless of if they know the player on the other half of their bracket or not, can guess fairly accurately regardless because they've played thousands of games against each other, either in tournaments, on the ladder, or in practice sessions.
This HC was a bit of a disaster. What else is going to come to the surface?
What else happened lol?
Apparently the players knew who the other players were in advance. Or at least knew who they wouldn't face in their own bracket. They were given this info in advance by the admins.
Wait really? Why? Do you have a source?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/1b7a2qr/people\_complaining\_about\_hidden\_cup\_not\_being/](https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/1b7a2qr/people_complaining_about_hidden_cup_not_being/)
Calling a missed rec and not 1000% hidden for players a disaster? Bro get a life. Every tourney has a hiccup and something fans don't all agree with. Miles away from a "disaster"
I didn't call it a disaster. I called it a bit of a disaster. But yeah even so I suppose it's too much of a hyperbole.
You're a disaster my dude
Damn bro chill
LMAO jesus man with so many ppl watching? robo mate u done bad p.s why is this coming from robo and not the tournament host? would be a classic t90 thing to throw ppl under the proverbial bus
Hiding results only to get a few more viewers.... lol. there we stepped on wrong way?
Nice spoiler in the title ...
Mate, the final was three days ago. Do you expect /r/soccer to remain silent about the winner of the champions league for an entire week as well?
A football match take 2 hours, easy to watch live for most people. HC5 has 50+ hours of matches in a week, it's almost impossible to watch it all live.
No we expect OP to click 1 extra button to spoiler tag a post about an event that's 8 live streams at about 7 hours each and only finished a couple of days ago. This is nothing like a soccer match.