I can't speak for him, but I can only assume he's betting on ow becoming big and therefore being a viable opportunity to do what he's best at, even if he has to catch back on the different game-play.
Not sure what will happen now that Quake Champions got announced, but I assume Quake pros will eventually move to it, especially when it's more clear what the 'Bethesda support' is.
If I were him, I'd keep focusing on ow until the situation is more clear. If he can win there, or even if it's just about learning something different regarding heroes abilities etc, it's all in his bag of experience.
Also, refrain from feeling betrayed or anything. This is his job, and he has to do what's best for him. What we should all hope is that Quake becomes big again for him and the other pros to make a living out of it, but until then what else do you want from them? I don't see anyone blaming czm for being a math professor, so why caring if cypher plays ow?
Are we being awfully understanding and overly impartial by nature?
Please, Cypher's choice is irrelevant, it has nothing to do with which country he lives in. I doubt that you have first-hand experience about what it's like to make a living in a country with EU prices and 1/4 EU salaries. I do. I was on the other side as well, working abroad in an economically much-much better place and still came to this conclusion;
you would be surprised how many young people would choose "sitting in front of a monitor stoned and playing whatever shit that might pay in the future" vs. real work in a serious field, regardless of where they reside.
He's just lazy / wants money without being responsible for something. No problems with that, I don't really care tbh, gl to him with that (as short-lived as it may be) but comparing it to czm's Princeton Ph.D. and scientific research is just making me cringe as they are on a completely different scale.
The scale difference is obvious but irrelevant. My point was that what cypher - or any other pro - does once he stops playing Quake, is none of our business. We can be sad they decided to leave Quake / that quake wasn't a big enough business for them to stay. We can hope they come back at some point. But anything beyond that is just nonsense. It's their life, and they do whatever they can/want to do.
you made a comparison that had nothing to do with the point of the original post.
your comparison is that the parallel of princeton math is more important and bigger in scale than getting high while playing DOTAwatch.
memento's point was that whatever they do isn't our business.
If you put it that way, then follow it thoroughly; czm's math Ph.D. has nothing to do with a stoned Cypher, hence it was unnecessary to mention it in parallel in the original post. So originally it's not me, who made that comparison, but Memento.
My first reply to that (#32) was a sarcastic remark, addressed both to Cypher (for playing OW) and mainly to Memento for being overly diplomatic (and for making that silly comparison).
The truth of it that in reality I couldn't really care less about ANY pro's personal life and activities (if you exclude the sole case of "oh, he doesn't play anymore, bummer, the scene got even smaller" - and my interest stops there). I have mine, I don't need a complete stranger's as well.
I guess MY point is the one that didn't came across, not Memento's.
I think the wise choice would definitely be to collect donations or sponsors, and go to qcon - if not for the love of the current state of the game, then to get closed beta access for Q5.
Especially now that ID mentioned "a long closed beta", which in my opinion gives 6 months head start = an unfair advantage like we saw in OW.
(After thinking) A player of cyphers caliber would probably automatically be invited anyways. :-)
Since he doesn't have a sponsor and flying across the globe and staying at a hotel for a few days costs money, I don't think he'd bother going to QuakeCon unless he 95% knows he can win it. Not sure about the costs, but 3000$ for third place means any result worse than top3 probably renders the participation a waste of time and money, and he didn't do exactly well last year. If he went, he would have to start playing Quake at least 2-3 weeks in advance to be in decent shape, which would require to stop playing overwatch, which is in full drive atm (isn't he already in a team with Cooller?). Plus I mean to remember him saying in multiple interviews in the last few years that he's kinda tired of Quake.
With regards to Quake Champions, I'd assume that's still at least a year or so away, and he doesn't need to fly across the globe to try it out. Doesn't id have offices in Moscow and Germany?
He currently plays for Anox in Overwatch. And yes, cooller is on that team also. You can see their 'roles' here. Cypher is a 'fragger' and cooller is a 'support'.
That team hasn't won much prize money - yet?
If you click on cypher and look at his personal Overwatch prize money, he hasn't won much either - yet?
he said he's hoping for the new quake to be 1v1 and he's kind of scared of "classes" but yet he's playing a team game with like 21 different classes... WTF cypher, stop being so emo...
Have you heard about an actual prison in China where arrestants were forced to make $$$ for prison's high level bureucracy by endlessly farming and trading items in WOW?
I could imagine the lvl of critisism Rapha already has in his life for his gaming priorities, why would someone do it on a site for gamers?
"Look here, Shane, son. I've got a piece of advice for you and dontcha even try to get upset, boy. There's a big shining world where manly men in red squared t-shirs chop mighty trees in a big rock candy mountain and then eat a meritorious half-burned goat's ass for lunch while sipping from a bucket of rightful sour iron-tasty beer. And this big shining world is surrounded by them da-aa-amn hippies. We will gather all these hippies in Grand Canyon. And we will napalm them hippies's asses from the choppers with the blessed singing of the good old Johnny Cash, son. Because that's what we do with them hippies. And you gotta choose a side, son. Because we're flying today. So, where do you belong, Shane, alongside those filthy damn hippies in the Canyon, or with us, flying high and bombing and burning with the blessing of good ol Johnny singing?"
I think Quake Pros competing in OW could be a good thing for Quake (if the next Quake is any good for competitions, that's a big IF).
oW seems like a popular game so if the tourneys are watched by a lot of people, then Quake Pros will get notoriety out of it because you know they are probably going to be good at OW and win a lot. I say that because the skill ceiling for Quake is so high and they played Quake for so long against each other, pushing each other's skill level so high that i think each QL player, like Rapha, Cypher, Cooller, Winz, Dahang etc will be a star in OW.
So then when Q5 comes out and if it's any good, the Quake Pros might be able to help bring an audience and players to the game. And they might even have some money to travel to the tourneys.
Yeah, that's the thing that I wasn't too sure about. However maybe the Quake players would have still have an edge because they can aim with unbelievable accuracy and also think fast under lots of pressure.
What's with the assumption people here have about Quake3 duelers being the best.
We all know CSGO requires more precision than QL. That's synonym with players having better accuracy than QL players. TF2 requires better timing (when exactly is the correct time to go all in) and better team coordination. Therefore, those two are a better background to have for Overwatch than QL is, if not for every other FPS game.
Since this thread is about cypher, the only thing he does right now is playing OW, playing as an attacker (carry). In his position he is nowhere near the best in the world. What happened then?
Or take dahang and cooller. Both dedicated to OW, both relegated to playing support because players from other games took the positions in which execution matters the most.
Or think about the actual results. Quake players have constantly lost to TF2, CSGO and MOBA players. The only one who has won something was winz, which was an online cup playing Lucio (passive support). http://wiki.teamliquid.net/overwatch/Portal:Tournaments#tab-2
If Quake3/Quake Live has one edge over other games in terms of execution, that would be strafe jumping. However, games these days aren't based on it, so it's a skill that doesn't matter. Well, the other would be dueling itself, but FPS dueling is just a niche within a niche, without any competition outside Quakecon once a year
I'm new to watching OW.... just started watching the 300k tourney qualifiers on faceit. But all the dark horse teams that are suddenly playing on sundays in the quarter finals have quake players. I believe they are Liquid (dahang and id), Anox (Cypher and Cooller) and Rogue ( I think) (with Winz). All these teams are suddenly becoming good and they all have Quake players that seem to have just started concentrating on the game.
Also, it seems one of the reasons people don't play quake is because the game is hard. I think that pure duelers like cypher have little team experience and that is a weakness, but cooller, winz, dahang and id are all have experience playing on teams at the pro level.
They are rising in the ranks, so let's see what happens. I'd like to see a team of all QL players, esp Meltdown team from last year. Probably won't happen but that would be fun to watch.
AKM can't even be considered a quake player.
And winz played support and got carried by the other teammates
Also, Anox features Cypher and Cooller, two quakers better than Winz. They got steamrolled by Rogue, Winz's team. This shows it's not about the quakers, it's about the TF2 and csgo players carrying the quakers
It was a nice surprise, but it's not reaaally a victory for quakers of sorts.
Akm and winz are only 1/3 of the team. So if we follow your train of thought, with 2/3 coming from TF2 and CSGO then it has to be interpreted TF2 and CSGO players won the championship.
Then, Akm is not much of a quake player; cant be considered his background. The only one with a quake background was winz. And still winz's background is not only quake, unlike cypher or cooller, because winz never went pro at quake and winz played and won in a shit ton of other games, such as UT, shootmania, etc. etc. If you want, it could be said him winning is a victory for old school FPS gaming as a whole (despite him being 1/6 of the team), but certainly he does not represent pro quake duelers as his main/only background.
Ok, fair enough, but ANOX just steamrolled a respected team 'MELTY' and then beat Misfits 2-0 and are going to Atlanta for 300k tourney. Misfits were ranked #1 in europe (now #3). :)
I'm just saying, years and years of playing Q3/QL, and the incredible accuracy and strategy and perfect execution required to win... I think it made these guys really strong gamers.
Today Cypher destroyed Melty, and I think Misfits really targeted him when they played Anox, which probably allowed his other flank player, Kensi to have almost free reign basically and he shot up the other team like sitting ducks in a lot of cases.