Nah.

C O O L L E R
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C O O L L E R
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A L B O R Z
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[-]

:*{

R A P H A
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T I T A N
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R A P H A
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Strenx retirement!

S T R E N X R E T I R E M E N T
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i agree with both of you!

Talking bout keys and other players. He doesnt need keys, he IS the key.

C Y P H E R
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THIS DH WILL BE REMEMBERED AS THE <BEST> ONE

nope. people claim that on almost every event. but honestly i think the last 2 dreamhacks have been better than this one - vo0good show comes to mind or av3k talking about shoes and cellphones. the lineup was also more stacked before and most games endet 3:0. dont get me wrong, it wasnt a bad event or something.. but to be honest it wasnt anything special in every aspect that matters to me.

if poni, strenx, pavel and cooller had gone, it would have been THE ql event :(

2012:
- weaker lineup (same top4 though)
- biased casters ("our american hero rapha", "unfortunately evil had good lg aim and won" etc.)
- audience that has no clue what is the game about (dunno why but that pisses me off)

2013:
- all best players from different continents in one tournament
- faceit casters: ddk + zoot
- bigger prizes + community donations
- arguably higher level of gameplay
- passion, emotions, tears of warriors that lost their battle ;)
- darude sandstorm

The ones in 2010 and 2011 were miles better than this one, as an event and in coverage.

Definitely agree. As a spectator it was nice seeing many players on stream in a casual atmosphere having a good time. You got a nice glimpse of what the event was like. This year, aside from the arena shot they used during downtime, it would be kind of hard to tell if it was a big lan event or just a tourney Faceit put together themselves. It felt kind of sterile, especially how this one qlive was completely disconnected from DH itself, other than the name.

Don't get me wrong, the matches this year were quite enjoyable and I appreciate everyone involved; from the guys that got qlive at DH, to the production crew for all their work doing all they could to cover the event and the players themselves. But I certainly enjoyed previous events more than this one.

I felt the same regarding the disconnect from DH. It was exactly as you say, Dreamhack in name only. Quake was hidden away from the actual event and the result was a total lack of atmosphere in what was a quite frankly, boring setting. It was unrecognisable as being a Dreamhack event.

I also think not being on the main stage for the finals is a huge loss for Quake, it can surely only serve to push the game further away from this kind of event when it is completely isolated from everything else.

Wasn't that IEM? Lots of money behind it.

dreamhack winter 2010 FOR LYFE NIGGA

J A M E R I O
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twister should cast more hes way way way way way way better than either zoot or ddk. also someone needs to put a compressor on zoot for when he starts screaming.

Both compressor and limiter. I thought the guy who was in charge of sound should know and hear that there were problems...but obviously, he doesn't know and didn't hear lol. My ears wanted to blow up everytime Zoot raised voice. :D

I agree!

Indeed, agree on both points (although twister has obviously analyser role and he does it awesomely).
I like Zoot going mental when things go hot, but he needs that compressor, badly, cause the volume level goes like 3 or 4 times louder when he gets 'excited'.

I agree that its cool when zoot (or sometimes ddk) gets excited about what's happening, all cold analysis is not a good commentary imo, it needs passion and zoot and ddk bring that passion. I like casters screaming and omg-ing about some insane moves.

I thought that zoot or ddk + players combination (stermy, twister, phantom, fraze) were cool too because there was on one hand some rather distant analysis from the players and on the other hand more passionate "in the moment" comment from our commentators

Yeah, its fine getting excited. Its just annoying to have sudden 6dB volume boost out of nowhere. I don't think its his fault really, more a technical thing.

maybe thats just me, but i cannot stand stermy casting. hes slow, boring and the accent + nice guy attitute doesnt help either.

in general i agree tho. a combination of an experienced caster whos native + a player can work out extremly well. the player tho has to be either clever+able to express his thoughts (rapha, czm) or charismatic (av3k, vo0) or just plain hilarious (strenx) to add anything to the "primary caster". its pointless to have a co-caster that is just a weaker copy of the other guy or tries to compete with him for the same spot. its works way better if you have 1 guy doing most of the talking and the other adding humor/facts/backgroundinfo/insight and helping with technical stuff like talking to players / finding servers so that the "main caster" can keep on talking.
its actually why zoot/ins is working well. zoot has developed a quite pleasant way to talk and ins throws in hilarious stupidity whenever zoot doesnt know what to say / tells us a lot about the player we dont spectate / keeps track of chat and developements / has actually a lot of bright moments when it comes to strategy and tactics

Zoot & ddk dont use their brain while casting.
Its just a mass of the same phrases over and over triggered by what they see at the moment. The same happens pre-game, when talking about the players.

When I check ddk's youtube vids full of entertaining casual commentary, I just dont understand.

Meh, they are play by play commentators in general so its not for them to sound ridiculously analytical, they both have reaosnably good voices for commentary, ddk probably slightly smoother than zoot however. They have improved immensely imo.

Also i never like listening to someone who has english as their second language because in general they dont commentate well and they are slow to express themselves which gets too much away from the play.

I found when i was casting that ddk and zoots level of commentary was even better than usual, because then they can focus on what they actually do great (play by play, adding excitiment to the game and setting the scene for the game), and then simply ask questions to me/ leave the sort of analysing of the state of the game and all of that to someone who has a lot more experience in duel..

TLDR dont bash those guys, they are good!

Fraze I much appreciated your casts and your general tone, however sometimes you were getting very analytic about an action and getting "reoriented" back in the moment by ddk xD.

It must be frustrating sometimes to get lenghty about an interesting play and not be able to tell everything's that's on your mind because of the pace of the game.

yeah it can do, and i also noticed i was doing that sometimes too but did it anyway hehehehe i always try to finish off what i was saying by reintroducing the action, maybe finishing what i was saying with like ' and now player needs to do this' or ' now this player is in trouble' but the way quake live casting works, sometimes u need more time to say everything u wanted to say hehehe

I didnt say anything about their voices. I said they arent using their brains.

They see the frags, but not the actual game. As if they zombied out into some kind of subconscious casting mode during countdown.
They respond to triggers every time the same way, they become repetetive and after 30mins they talk in loops. Like a decent album you have to listen to every time you watch quake - its enjoyable for some time, then it makes an ok background but after that its nothing but annoying. Watch a few vods.

now only if pavel/strenx/poni/cooller were there. then this would be the ONE. hopefully we can get some action from them at qcon. After all, I think every qcon final EVER has increased the level of play among the top players. You go as far back as qcon 2008 and watch onwards, every final that came afterwards was better. So that's what im reallyyyy looking forward to