As Astralis walk away with their second major title after an arduous three weeks of play. The FACEIT London Major 2018 featured many storylines as the 24 teams battled it out for their share of the $1 Million, valve sponsored prize pool. This piece aims to outline 4 of the important stories from the event and discuss the ramifications and resulting effects.
The Danes who Disappeared:
On the back of their win at Dreamhack Stockholm, North was tipped as a team to place deep in the major. Contrasting this win to their final placing at the major tells a story that is perhaps all too familiar for fans of the team. Sent home at the hands Hellraisers, Team Spirit and Vega Squadron in the New Challengers stage, placing them 17th-19th overall, it came as a harsh surprise for many who had faith in the Danish squad. North looked incredibly flat during the major spell, not able to claim the opening kills in a majority of rounds, especially with T-sides not up to scratch considering how sharp they were one week prior. A talking point that has arisen surrounds the stylistic matchup, that is North who has been known as a methodical team who plays off information and how teams such as Vega Squadron and Team Spirit can take advantage of this with their aggressive styles but also that fact that North doesn’t have a lot of experience against them or the research done. MSL’s comments about ‘watching 150 Astralis demos’ lend itself how important preparation is to success for North.
Something that is a constant struggle for North comes at the hands of MSL’s style of operating a team combined with the caliber of players at his disposal. A trend is that North will make games competitive against the top level elite teams due to their research and practice, occasionally winning series and the odd event. However, the North unit has not been able to demonstrate a consistent level against these top-tier teams and solidify themselves as top-tier opposition. Looking at the other side of the coin, with all of North’s focus on these top elite tier teams, and like with other top teams in general — lesser teams can abuse North through unpredictability and anti-strating which has proven to yield wins as seen at the major. North appear forever trapped; nipping at the toes of those above teams above, but also haphazardly fighting off the teams below — the gatekeepers of mediocrity.
With rumours of roster changes lurking, it’s unclear how North want to approach their future, especially off the back of a win in Stockholm. Whether it looks to take the route of more firepower in order to compensate when strategy fails them, or instead change of leadership and overhauling the game plan. Time will tell.
Finally FaZeD:
FaZe Clan came into the Major at the New Legends Stage, courtesy of their placing as the ELEAGUE Boston Major — an event that was arguably theirs to lose. A repeat of PGL Krakow looked imminent as FaZe dropped their opening two maps against BIG and Na’Vi. Surviving this scare they fought through Mousesports, Tyloo, and G2, winning convincingly on Mirage 3 times and in a close OT with G2 as the final round matchups were BO3. The word from the team indicated that NiKo had taken the IGL role from Karrigan after going down 0–2 and this switch up supposedly saved them from elimination.
Whilst FaZe did make it to the playoffs, and put up the closest fight in terms of scoreline against eventual winners, Astralis; their performance felt flat and underwhelming considering the team. Despite sounding like a broken record, the general consensus is that FaZe Clan have missed their era and not lived up to the potential of the roster too many times now. Since ESL ONE Belo Horizonte, which they won, they have only placed top 4 once more at ESL One Cologne. This was now 4 months ago and time has been ticking as FaZe’s options are running out with this current team and direction.
Karrigan is praised as one of the top level in-game leaders, particularly for his prowess in managing the personality of star players. A roster like FaZe has not been tested without such an individual thus far, but with internal tensions rising surrounding FaZe’s inability to win tournaments and with information on star players taking over the possibility of change is on the cards for FaZe Clan who have shown they have the chops and money.
Player Break Dilemma:
Much discussion arose around the timing of the major in relation to the player break. For at least the last 4 Majors, the player break took place sometime after the major championship finals, therefore having many tournaments beforehand to build up narratives, paint an idea of form in some teams and ensure players and squads alike were warmed up — however, the player break for this event took place before the major with Dreamhack Stockholm finishing a couple days before as the teaser for what the landscape of Counterstrike was going to look like.
In turn, a debate on how beneficial or not this choice was sparked — with the general consensus from the players and talent being it was counter-intuitive. For players, it was a choice of taking the break for what it was, and have the downtime from the busy season and sacrifice their form or to keep up with playing throughout the break and gain the edge over other teams and individuals. As talent and industry commentators have also discussed, the quality of Counter-Strike is not at its peak, despite the major being the pinnacle of the games calendar. As such, teams took an array of approaches; some opting to enjoy the break, some finishing up early to get back into the game sooner and in the case of BIG, for example, having their break a few weeks prior and training through the player break in order to be in the best shape possible.
It became apparent in the first stage the scrappy, mistake-riddled Counter-Strike that was being played and it came up again in the first day of the New Legends stage. This being that the teams who should have been more polished were losing rounds, individuals were not as sharp as they could have been and games became a lot closer as a result. Of course, as the event went on, these things grew less and less important as teams had begun to fire on all cylinders.
There are however few arguments in favour of pre-major player breaks and going forward this will likely be in the minds of players and tournament organisers alike.
Fishing for formats:
Swiss system featuring Buchholz and a single elimination playoff bracket. The first half sounds a little bit like an exotic cheese, but nonetheless, this was the tournament format for the FACEIT London Major. Since ELEAGUE Atlanta 2017, the CS:GO Majors have used swiss system group stages, that is; you play teams with the same win:loss ratio and you cannot face the same team twice. Win 3 and you’re through, lose 3 and you’re out. Whilst this system works to a degree and arguably better than GSL and round-robin style, issues have arisen due to seeding of these teams. Of course ingrained in the majors are features such as being ‘legends’ and this dictates first round seeding — rather than global rankings. Of course, it cannot take into considering multiple upsets but what swiss fundamentally does is matchup teams that are similar in strength until they go through or get eliminated. Buchholz is an additional seeding system that is implemented after enough rounds played to further reduce randomness in matchups, opting to match up teams with like scores but contrasting it to the scores of teams they versed along the way. Of course, HLTV.org offered a piece outlining these things earlier in the year and now we’ve seen it be implemented for the first time.
Whilst the playoffs were mostly reasonable, it is due to the ‘Best of 1’ component within the Swiss system that teams can deploy strategies to optimize their chance of success. BO1, BO3, and BO5 are all unique and relevant disciplines of Counter-Strike but they should be deployed in such a way that each is tested fairly to determine the top teams of the world. Broken down a lot of the individual aspects of the system work, but together there are flaws that stand out. One is that a team can win three best of ones, bomb out in the playoffs and automatically requalify for the next major in 6 months. This does not promote the highest quality of gameplay, hence the discussion for fixes. A widely agreed solution is the make as many games as possible a BO3, thus favouring teams with the deeper map pools, greater endurance, and wider strategy books. However, where does this leave room for BO1 and should teams at the Major Championship be tested in BO1 games? Would this put too much strain on teams and scheduling for a 24 team tournament?
If anything, tournament organisers should be encouraged to push the envelope with their formats and allow for the community and other TOs to see what formats work, what aspects within work and so forth. It’s all well and true to say one particular system doesn’t work but if it is the lesser of two evils, surely its best to keep it? In terms of what offers the best level of Counter-Strike, BO3 is certainly the best choice where possible, and double elimination playoff brackets is a widely untested thing in Counter-Strike but could prove interesting. With steps being made in refining the Major Championship format such as introducing Buchholz or tweaks to how teams qualify and get relegated, change is certainly on the table — but the infrastructure for more drawn out events or information and data on these new formats is key to further understanding how to achieve the ideal format.
Stats: HLTV
Images: HLTV, Dreamhack, FACEIT
Twitter: @Uncle_Shhlee
