good interview.

Raw movement skills and fragging power (cypher) vs a CPU brain that doesn't know the word "mistake" (rapha).

I'd be uncomfortable too.

that's a pretty shitty CPU if it doesn't even know such a basic word :/

it works out pretty well for the said cpu tho doesn't it

HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of ERROR.

I've got a 9001

OH SHI-

go cypher \o/


















j/k go noctis, he'll win.

emo metal \o/












































/o\

all emos are gay. all gays nowadays are emos, so...?




























:D more women for us!!!!

i thought u re a woman

shemale

n00b

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9OO0S5w2k

ahahhaahahahahahah

It's fun to say we play C P M A \o/
It's fun to say we play C P M A \o/
They have everything for young men to enjoy
you can hang out with all the trolls
It's fun to say we play C P M A \o/
It's fun to say we play C P M A \o/
You can pretend to be mean, you can have a good meal
You can do whatever you feel

rapha will rape him

rape who? your mom? oh, good to know.............................

not before marriage.

$$$

Cooller will one day succeed Vladimir Putin as the next Tsar of Russia. Funny though, isn't it, the term 'Tsar' comes from Bulgaria?

Bulgarian Elephants are the best friends of Soviet Elephants.

ESWC = $$$

Matches I'm looking forward to:

Cooller vs. Strenx (Schooling time again French boy)

Noctis vs. K1llsen (Should be intense + I love both)

Cypher vs. Stermy or Stermy vs. L1nkje (Will be very fast games)

av3k vs. DaHanG or Av3k vs. Fazz (Again, fast games)

Overall, I'd love to watch:

Av3k vs. Rapha
DaHanG vs. Strenx
Noctis vs. DaHanG
Cooller vs. Noctis
K1llsen vs. Fazz

$hut the fuck up

Fuck the shut up.

Up the shut fuck.

when I read that I heard it to the tune of "Smack my Bitch Up" by Prodigy

=D

And a + for you my good man!

"I stop believing in myself when I'm playing him, it gives him much advantage." yeppp ;/

GREAT IVIEW!!!!!!!

I'm sorry. I so easily forget about peasant-politics. Don't listen to me. Listen to Wu-Tang Clan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3NbhQ-Lkgc and; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl7dbmWcVeY.

Maybe some day i'll play this Rapha.

i know im telling u this each time i c your post but still

u have to stop doing that crack man

he's not on crack, he's on mushrooms and we are all just fictional characters in his trip, so enjoy it while it lasts : D

"What I need is only to practise, and have a cold and calm head. Otherwise it's impossible to win for me, in CPMA Q3 times I was really confident because I practised much, and it always gave me a lot of confidence. Now I'm not so hungry for practicing, will try to fix it."

"Also I would like to say thanks to razer for being such nice guys :)"

But, but I thought it was razer's fault? At least alot of esreality retards insisted on it although they don't have any insight. Haha gratification feels great.

I would like to see Cypher from 2008 in this eswc

sth like this
http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=1604757

:p

interesting yet
czm is not talking it
the fact that he said he's in his best shape doesn't fit the fact that he was sooo slow, and czm was not a slow player in 2004-2005

--------C
-------o-o
--cccooooooller
-----l ----- l
----l----d----l
---e-a------a-e
--r------------- r :DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

You're hereby sentenced to spend the rest of your life in a nazi concentration camp FOR DOING IT WRONG!!!

anyone planning on making fixtures? :D

bump

cypher is a good kid

rapha is a God kid

"because maybe he knows about me more than I do about myself"

Worst shit I've ever read.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rJAw-fuYHk

haha u re french i believe u

Not necessarily. Cypher is a player that relies on his natural talents. While rapha, due to his singular focus on the win, appears to be rather analytical. So maybe he really does have a better analytical grip on cyphers's game than cypher himself does.

Point is though that's nothing to be afraid of. A composed and confident cypher is up to rapha at least, and should be able to beat him. No matter what rapha seems to "know" or not.

Yep, and if he is aware of his artist within, he can win anything, AMARITE?

Sure can he win anything. He's likely the most talented quake player out there.

You should teach him how to configurate his life to get the maximum advantages.

obviously, 'cause Cypher only plays 4 steps ahead. So to him, it would seem that Rapha is in his own mind.

cypher likes to play risky
how many times did we see cypher delaying an important item at the point of losing it?
in order to beat rapha he needs to change his game a bit, by fakeing the delay on MH and RA (staying there AFTER pickup) or by doing as few delays as possible against rapha -rapha doesn't expect this, should catch him off guard many times
also many times by using the option to delay RA and MH you lose important time that you could use to chase-frag-keep your opponent low, and even if you do frag your opponent this way, you don't do many frags, which allows your opponent for easy comebacks
also I'd try to time by instinct instead by the clock, because this might brings down a bit your confidence on the timing=increase your attention and awarness on the items time (many times because the clock is saying to you that you have enough time for one more chase, you get sucked in the chase and lose the item, if you know when the item is gonna spawn by aproximation, it does not get out of your head and so you come for the pickup sooner)

we need to bring cypher here so you can explain to him how stuff works

you did not say anything about the idea of fakeing the delay though

"bring cypher here"
funny guy

i played him once and lost ztn by 1 frag iirc. but that was loooong time ago.

also what the fuck

let's take last cypher-rapha confrontation in a relative strong competition @ IEM Hannover, for example
dm13, first minutes
-cypher spawns at YA @ PG, picks up RL then he picks up mega, meanwhile rapha picks up RA and goes on the jumpad @ SG
-cypher RJ at RL, denying rapha to pick up the weapon and shoots a few rockets on the entrance
rapha got till now 100 armor (RA) + maybe some shards @ SG
cypher had 180 health + 50 armor, but he RJed once so his health and armor lowered a bit, not much but now cypher SHOULD go for the other YA, to stack enough armor to allow him to attack RA (wrote YA, fuck)
what does he do instead? he goes for the shards (get sucked by details!), permitting rapha to put his rockets between cypher and the YA at the LG (rapha who positioned himself in defending position on the upper platform (RL)), he pushes rapha away from the platform and then he goes for the YA, when there was not enough time anymore to position himself for the RA pickup
so he gives rapha enough time to go back to the RA position, so rapha picks up the RA and then picks up MH

way to fuck up your chances and lose the control, after a very good spawn on dm13, and this was not thanks to rapha's great positioning (it was pretty obvious that after rapha will come for the RL) but because cypher doing two mistakes (two) already:
1. going for the shards when he should go for the YA imediately
2. chosing to left the positioning on the RA to pick up YA when there was not enough time left
and as two mistakes are never enough, he decided to go for the mega by rocket jumping(!) on the RL upper platform, instead trying to inflict damage or fight his way to the meag, and then he suddenly woke up that "hey! I am not stacked enough anymore to fight my way to the mega", so he has to try to inflict some damage from the upper position on rapha picking up the mega

this is just an example on the match on dm13, the match cypher won against rapha, don't wanna talk about the mistakes he made when he lost matches, I could write a book on these

what does it mean? if cypher would have gone this way after picking up the 1st mega: YA @ LG, RA then MH again, he would have not lost the control; the very first cause of him losing the control right there was the fact that he made a delay on the YA @LG, when he went for the shards at PG first, and he knew by the clock the time RA will appear, unfortunately he did not calculate the time he needed to position himself in order to go for RA and this is usually happening when you think by the numbers instead using your guts and when you play against rapha who knows that you are a bit sloppy on picking up the items because you don't think in terms of "I picked up RA, now I have about 10 seconds to pick up YA or to go for the chase, after then I have to position myself properly in order to pick up the RA again", but you think like "ok, at 1:25 I go for the RA which appears at 1:30, so till then I fuck around a bit"

sometimes doing the most obvious thing isn't the best way to go. especially vs someone calculated as rapha. you can't just presume that he doesn't know what's the best move at certain point, but he sometimes chooses pure position and relies on his aim, rather than getting himself in a situation to steal an item but get buried under rocket spam. ofcourse he makes mistakes, but not as obvious as you think.

cypher played some crazy freestyle and managed to catch rapha off guard more than once.

after second map, rapha got a crazy good start on all 3 remaining ones iirc.

GL doing that analysis on lan against rapha on the go....

heh
all the scandal around here because I did not say the obvious "imo"
whatever

and yes, you are right that analysing by watching a demo a thousand times and playing it is a different business, but this does not mean that players do not make mistakes and that a proper analysis (not necessarily mine, a proper one) can't give you at least a few ideas on how to beat your opponent :)

but maybe some pro players have too much ego so they can't stand a critical analysis, independent of its quality, this was happening many many times on some many domains of activity, I think Oscar Wilde was putting this matter into equation pretty fair, in his essays when he said "without the critical faculty, there is no artistic creation at all" and these critics aren't usually done by the same guys who create, because this is exactly the point, well, according to his opinion most of the times critics have a better knowledge on the matter than creators do, but whatever
I went way too much offtopic but I know that there is the well know habit of saying "what?? you think you can do better??" which I did not say that I can do better, but I had to reply to Lethe's ironical and pretty lame imo reply, by saying that I played cypher in 2009 and the match was very close, so at least I might know SOME about the game, even if I am not shining and even if I am wrong with the sentences I was putting before abt how should cypher play

if I recall corectly even today there was a discussion on the stream saying that rapha watched tons and tons of demos when he could not play, analysing the matches, etc, let me guess, if he would have been stateing his opinion before he become a well known player, people would have been laughing at him too
this does not mean that you don't may criticising/saying your opinion on the matter, after all I did not jump into some extreme statements by whining or saying that pro players are stupid or other excruciating thing :) , but this is esr I suppose

Of course you can analyze your opponents in many ways like you say. I agree to that. I was just not agreeing to your dm13 example :) Yes afterwards you can analyze like you did, but in reality it will not help you even if it's the same opponent + same map two days later.

Players might make other choices in so many different variables.
For instance they want to trick their opponent by just going for another route this time after the first spawn just to disoriantate. They might also have analyzed the other player or just practised the map a bit more and learned a better way to get as many items as possible the first 20 seconds, and/or perhaps create and ambush after studying a player and noticed they always go a certain route. Another a bit out of the box reason your example is flawed could be that one of the players has a bad day and just does not think straight? Or be nervous and make wrong decisions because this time you play this player it's the grand final? Etc etc :)

I see
I think that the main reason me and other people think different on this matter is that usually whenever people see a frag in a match between the pro players they think: wow, great move, good positioning, etc., while me on the other hand I think: wrong move, pretty obvious that they think about the guy who makes the frag while I think to the guy who got fragged, as I was more in this situation, especially from my occasional encounters with pro players

talking about mistakes, just a fast mention, on my dm13 example, right after rapha got MH and he got the control, where I ended my statement, he went for the YA @ PG, which permitted cypher to pick up the mega and get back in control -there was no question about rapha not knowing where cypher was, as they were shooting each other a bit at the mega, so maybe he forgot abt RA, but then I ask myself, aren't these tiny details exactly the things which makes the difference? the explanation on the difference between spectating the demo and playing I could turn the other way around too, with two arguments: 1) I am usually more focused when I play than when I watch a demo, in fact sometimes I have to restart the demo at some point because I find it hard to concentrate, for sure harder than when I play and 2) the example I came with out on dm13 comes from a random pickup match, so I did not search like crazy, and the things I wrote about are the things I have seen and were intriguing me at my first view already (so I did restarted the demo a few times but only to be 100% correct on the description and to put things which I did not like in order)

talking about the facts I mentioned with the guy I am more focused on in a match, in my opinion about 75% the frags I see are caused by wrong move of the guy who get fragged and only the rest of 25% are frags caused whether by a great move of the guy who makes the frag or by superior to extraordinary aim or by pure luck

but well this is my way of thinking more in a critical matter than in a "positive"/positioning analysing way

doh, got tired of so much write :))))

The reason why rapha is so fucking good is that he is aware of nearly every item spawning to the tick. So you failed m8 :=)

yeah, "every item"
I time all items on the map too, excepting the MG

"So you failed m8"
nope, you just failed to understand what I said, it's a different kind of fail

every good player delays item to the point of losing it, it just shows confidence in their game.

There is one observation about rapha's play since I have been watching him play about for about 3.5 years, even before he was famous: his ability to choose fights always in a location where he can back off and replenish with a spawned item or go for the kill is eerily good, in all maps. I have seen other people doing it in their favorite map or two but not as uniformly as rapha.

"every good player delays item to the point of losing it, it just shows confidence in their game"
exactly my point
too much confidence on timing is not good
and most of the pro players if not all delay items from time to time, cypher do it a lot more often

Rapha is a position god.

He uses timing as the backbone for his game. Since he knows when everything is spawning then he inevitably knows where the enemy is or will be (if hes trying to get some items)

Thus he can position himself according to what the enemy will try to do. Most times they will be out of control so he is thinking they will try to spam or steal items.

This is where rapha shines. He will position himself so that if you try to spam the item, he wont go for it but will go for YOU and you die.

Or if you go for the item he will get there first or spam you until you take more damage than if you didnt go for the item.

The way to beat rapha is to not lose the first frags so that you have to chase him down. That will never work. Try to get the first frag and get map control to be EVEN, then slowly out aim him at items while trying not to lose map control (losing items is fine as long as you don't become super weak)

there were some signups here on the last couple of months and is getting noticeable sadly for posts like this and the ones from ffx

any quake3 or older player (which is 99% of esr) knows when every major item is spawning therefore that's not the reason, and ofc not obvious tactics like that one.

I'm not talking just about timing 'of items'

Rapha has the timing down about how fast you can get to places. Like if you are at grenade launcher on ztn and try to go to RL YA, rapha knows or can 'feel' how long it will take for you to get there and how fast he can set up a trap or be in the correct position to ruin your shit when you reach there.

This way he will be able to predict your next movements, or to just leave that ya and head straight for teleporter at RA to own you. With this knowledge he can set up his position very quickly to 'time YOU' and then own you at that YA or just take it.

This also works for other stuff he does, he has that built in clock into his strafing/movement.

or by doing as few delays as possible against rapha -rapha doesn't expect this, should catch him off guard many times

He'd have to delay items and be 6 steps ahead in order to catch rapha off guard. :P

Rapha and strenx are my favourite players to watch. Robotic tactics and robotic aim... It makes me think of science fiction which is cool =)

lol xD

I always thought of rapha as Gandalf, especially after his 2 map loss against cypher and I thought all hope was lost.... Then this happened...




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44kBN340vd4

YOU... SHALL... NOT... TIME ARMORS AND THINK 5 STEPS AHEAD BETTER THAN ME!

lol

I only think of robotic aim and tactics when watching strenx (and stermy to some degree), but I have to say that strenx is definitely getting better. If other aspects of his game continues improving to the same level as his aim, he will be dominating.

I won't say rapha's aim is robotic, and I can't say that for his tactics considering if they are so robotic then he shouldn't be as successful as he is. If anything I say his tactics are the opposite of robotic. imo of course.

"I don't know much reasons" haha so golden

Cypher is the closest to getting ahead of rapha. Just from the snippet above it seems that cypher is on the right track to defeating rapha's calculated mental game.

Av3k I don't know his playing style well enough to say where he is in regard to the others in the tournament. He looked great at DH- I've never seen someone so successful with aggressive +forward Quake before.

Even though I'll root for rapha, I'll always be glad to see someone else worthy beat him because when they do, it means we get some badass quake out of it. Not only that but as much as rapha hates to lose, you know he'll be back stronger the first chance he gets.

i thought cypher doesnt afraid of anything :( but he afraid of yankman