Overwatch

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Illuzion Gaming Team

December 11, 2017 | No comments

Hey guys, it’s been a rough past few weeks, but finals are coming to a close, and everything else can be focused on a bit more. Recently, our Overwatch team, Boosted Animals, which won Season 3s division 2 finals for the Overwatch University League (OWUL) got picked up by a friend of mine’s budding eSports organization, Illuzion Gaming. He’ll help make sure we’re on track and deal with all the technical stuff, and we finished our tryouts for new subs, with a few promising candidates. Make sure to follow along with us at Ulfsark, Fanout, Rzaney Gaming, Jerry23dr, etc.

 

Make sure to keep an eye out for us. I know we’re not quite a Tier 2 team, but we’re doing our best to improve!

ABC

Advanced eSports 1: Crosshair Placement

December 11, 2017 | No comments

Hey guys, this is the first advanced eSports blog post, and it’s gonna be a video I put together for you all. Crosshair placement is one of the most important aiming practices you can do, but very few people know how to practice effectively. Here I give a full comprehensive guide for any aspiring players to improve their aim, which can be applied to any and all shooters. Next time on the advanced eSports section, I’ll talk about aiming angles and how to utilize them effectively. Enjoy!

The Basics of eSports 4: Efficient Practice

November 14, 2017 | No comments

When it comes to any sort of competitive hobby, it’s not enough to just grind out games through quantity. You NEED to practice effectively, or you won’t make any progress at all. If you have no idea what to work on, there’s no way to improve. This fact is true of any and every eSport, and this conversation happens at every level of gameplay.  Read the rest of this entry »

Overwatch University League Season 3, Division 2 (Master[3500] – Grandmaster[4000])Winners!

November 14, 2017 | No comments

With season 3 of Overwatch’s University League(OWUL) wrapped up, I wanted to share the Video on Demand(VoD) of one of our players’ perspectives. He’s the only one with a good enough computer + internet to record our games for later usage, but you’ll get the whole competitive experience from a Damage Per Second(DPS) player’s perspective. You’ll hear me with the nasally voice playing primarily D Va and Zarya as our team’s off-tank player. Our team’s the Boosted Animals (an in-house joke from one of our discord servers), facing against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s(RPI) team.

 

You can check out the OWUL’s website here if you’re interested in trying out or making your own team and you think you’ve got what it takes.

Week of October 29th: The (League)Legend Returns

November 7, 2017 | No comments

With Worlds 2017 wrapped up(no spoilers! Here’s the start of the opening ceremony before the games), it’s time to talk League of Legends. Recently, my friend group and I have gotten back into League of Legends. We’ve certainly played League off and on since we all stopped playing it competitively as a five man ranked team 3 years ago, however, with one of our newer members starting to learn League, we’ve dived back in head first. As with Minecraft, I’ve decided that if I ever got back into League I’d play it for the purely casual aspects of it, enjoying the experience and avoiding unnecessary stress from trying to climb on the ranked ladder. As a result, it’s been a much more enjoyable experience, and our skill from playing competitively before has stuck around through thick and thin, albeit a bit rough nowadays.

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The Basics of eSports 3: Knowledge Vs Skill(Intuition vs Reaction)

October 30, 2017 | No comments

Game Knowledge refers to the mental interactions and experiences between the player and the game. Knowing cooldowns, what items to buy, where to go, your role, what everything does, etc. is game knowledge. Intuition refers to the utilization and practice of game knowledge in gaining an advantage, usually predicting an opponents move, knowing their power spikes and strengths or weaknesses. Intuition allows players to make plays without necessarily having the skill to pull them off by analyzing patterns and coming up with a strategic plan. It might refer to having a point and click(low skill/interaction), but extremely powerful ability that must be timed appropriately in a fight, but otherwise be useless if used incorrectly.

Skill (often called ‘mechanics’) refers to the physical interactions and experiences between the player and the game. Being able to aim correctly, react to/dodge opponents moves, land certain abilities, and quickly outplay opponents are all parts of skill. Read the rest of this entry »

The Basics of eSports 2: Knowing Your Playing Field

October 21, 2017 | No comments

Part 1, Communication basics here.

Just like with traditional sports, eSports are played on a specific playing field that players are confined to. Some maps do this with invisible/impassable walls, and others with cliffs or insta-death locations. Games have very defined out of bounds areas due to the nature of video games, which means there’s no need for out of bounds rules that traditional sports like soccer or American football utilize. If players find a way to exit out of these zones, more often than not, they’ll fall through the map eternally, resulting in many games using a death floor in order to prevent infinite falls/loops.  Competitive games are usually in a state of “perpetual beta” much like internet browsers are, constantly evolving and changing to meet the needs of the fan base.

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The Basics of eSports 1: Communication

October 6, 2017 | No comments

Part 2: Knowing your playing field here.

Unfortunately for the introverts out there, communication is an absolute must in team oriented competitive games(which are often the biggest eSports due to the dynamism provided from having multiple players working in conjunction). While there are certainly games that don’t require having a partner/teammates such as real time strategy(RTS) games like Starcraft, fighting games like Street Fighter/SSB Melee, or even speed-running, most big eSports titles will involve communication in some way. Most professional teams in eSports are starting to adopt coaches to make communication as efficient as it can be. South Korea has a leg up on the rest of the world in this regard. Their background in eSports from the Starcraft era, along with their infrastructure and cultural appeal for eSports, has come to fruition in the modern day.

So what is communication?

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eSports: A Primer

September 15, 2017 | No comments

What are eSports (also written e-Sports, or electronic Sports) you might ask? In a nutshell, eSports refers to competitive video gaming. While many would agree this simple description doesn’t even scratch the surface, we’ll begin with using that for the purposes of this blog.

eSports basics here.

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