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Halo 2 World Tourney Finals - Aussie Champ's View
Remorhaz writes "Some of you may be aware that the finals of the Worldwide Halo 2 tourney over Xbox Live was held on Friday night (10th June) with the 24 Xbox Live Region winners duking it out for ultimate glory. I was there with Cabel (the Australian representative), his brother and Pidge from Microsoft Australia to play the finals - Cabel made it to the grand final round - but didn't take first place unfortunately (congrats to King Tuur from the Netherlands) - but he's done us Aussies extremely proud :) Here's Remorhaz' "writeup of an insider's view of Australia's Halo 2 representative - Cabel's progress to the finals and the night's events at Australian Microsoft HQ."
Ok, I'll bite... got a good link that explains "boosting" in a Halo 2 context (or any other gaming ranking system for that matter)?
Try the http://csports.net/ forums for example.
You can see how ranking is figured out there.
Once how the rankings are computed is understood it's easy to get to a very high ranking as long as you understand and implement it better than most other people. (tracking down higher rated players and catch them on a losing team and then joining the winning team is one of the most useful tactics to boost stats regardless of the specific ranking system).
As far as ranking, being the better player is more difficult than figuring out how to trick ranking systems into thinking that you're a better player.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
I 100% agree with you.
A keyboard + mouse is 10x better than a silly x-box controller for FPS games.
More accurate, faster, better ability for custom controls, and just all around better.
I use a nice mouse and keyboard... but quite honestly I'd take a $10 mouse and $10 keyboard for a FPS over an $80 x-box controller anyday.
1.) With a high sensativity you can still aim perfectly and you won't run out of mousemat. Winner: Keyboard and Mouse
2.) Not counting my movement, fire, and primary fire buttons: I have 5 more buttons on my mouse, a scroll wheel, and probebly 3-5 that I can easily reach on my keyboard. That is considerably more than an X-box controller.
Winner: Keyboard and Mouse
3.) I have never had an optical mouse 'stick' or 'glitch' during a game, ever. I have had a PS controller, a PS-2 controller, and an x-box controller have controller issues (loss of sensativity).
Winner: Keyboard and Mouse
4.) Spend more than $10 on a keyboard and you don't have this problem.
Winner: Tie
So lets look at the 'keyboard/mouse weaknesses' that were pointed out, and see who came out on top.
Keyboard and Mouse: 3
X-box controller: 0
It's pretty obvious to me which is better... and unless you've got some bias in favor of the x-box then it should be obvious to you as well.
A Day in the Life of an International Halo 2 Tournament - Cabel vs. the World!!!
An insiders view of Australias Halo 2 representative - Cabel's progress to the finals.
The scene was set - it was the day of the World Halo 2 Xbox Live Championship Finals. The 24 Xbox Live Region champions had been decided and it was game on for the final series.
This was the worlds first global Xbox Live Halo 2 tournament and the final series was being decided by a playoff on Xbox Live. The global championship rounds were played on Friday June 10th in double elimination rounds. The 24 regional winners were sectioned into four pools of six players each. The top three moved on to the next round, while the bottom three from each group moved into an elimination bracket. Once a regional champion lost twice, they were eliminated. Each round lasted 10 minutes with unlimited kills. All the final matches were played on the new Halo 2 map, Warlock as a Free For All Slayer with standard SMG spawn (what! no BR you say ).
More info at: http://www.xbox.com/halo2/tournament.htm
Earlier in April; Cabel had beaten out a very strong field (including his brother who almost snaked the win ) in a close fought FFA at the BigPond Halo 2 Tournament to be crowned the Australian champ and our representative on the world stage.
I arrived at Microsoft Australia's Headquarters at about 6:45PM with the trusty 'XboxZone Com AU' server in hand. We had thought that given our location in the world that we needed every advantage we could get to overcome the tyranny of distance (or network latency LAG for you simple folks ). Cabel may be playing on the 10Mbit link at MS HQ but nothing compensates for the 200ms delay to most other countries. I offered my server Xbox for Cabel to play on for the night - it was hoped that since this Xbox has been hosting Halo 2 games pretty much non stop 24x7 since early January on a 100Mbit link that its awesome Halo 2 host record/rating (300+ clan matches, 1500+ Big Team Battles, 2000+ large custom games, etc) could steal it host in some important games. Alas it wasn't to be so - each of the finals matches was hosted by a Referee (XboxLiveCommish the guy in white hiding in the corner ) at MS HQ in the states - I suspect Bungie rigged things up so he'd always be host for every round - which is fair I guess with no player getting direct host advantage.
Cabel and his brother Senyo were already there with Pidge and Kumar from Microsoft and after a bit of networking jiggery pokery it was practice time before the first game at 9PM.
It was then Pizza ordering time and since we had to plan ahead for a long night (if we made it to the finals they wouldn't be played till 5AM - so think positive and plan to be needing food for the long haul ). Senyo got to order a crapload of pizzas for the four of us on Microsoft's account - nice
In the first round Cabel's pool included:
ii CaBeL ii - Australia
l Kobegod l - Taiwan
Otcho Boy - Switzerland
ZpiKeY - Norway
Billykater - Austria
GermanFreak - Denmark
Pregame chat in the lobby was pretty friendly and discovering that GermanFreak was in fact NOT from Germany but from Denmark was a bit of a head spin - but hey - whatever makes you happy
Cabel had a slow start but picked up the pace as he went along to eventually catch the leader just at the end equaling on Kills but taking the win on Assists and lower deaths.
Full game stats at: http://www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStats.aspx?gameID= 201030311
Our next round wasn't till midnight so it was going to be a long 3 hour wait - time for some practice, customs and a bit of matchmaking.
Cabel and his brother Senyo also whittled away the hours with some head to head and double teams on the fast link at Microsoft - I couldn't believe how many people quit the games against them or worse tho