pls, go to quakecon and make a 2 hour interview with Cooller

Glad to see Rapha is playing again, looks like some sick games vs chance and sparks yesterday :D.

Link to demos or videos?

sparks streamed some of the games. Might be having some vods, dunno.

VODs from sparks' stream:

http://www.twitch.tv/bgsparks/b/638840344

rapha games start around 2 hour mark.

didnt watch 10/10

you talk so much about cooller in these 2 videos about quake, pls just make a reflections video with him :)

coz quake means cooller, and viceversa

dont watch this, it will suck your souls

thorin should drop a mixtape of children songs and stories.

RAPUNZEL narrated by thorinnnnnnn

Yet another "1300 elo getting in the head of a 2600 elo" video ;) Will watch later.

2700

tl'dw: rapha is quake mastermind, and acts like a dr house: every player is a puzzle and he will solve you.

get off ur high horse, ur duel style is far from being sophisticated. yea u can bash a few noobs and surprise a pro once in a while with ur style, but u are pretty far from ever beating a pro lol

Horses can't talk.

:D

That is some flawless logic you have going on there. moron.

is what he posted incorrect?

He implies that a elo 1300 cant understand the game from a 2600 player. Which is stupid.

I implied it will most likely be a pile of uninteresting and recycled drivel, which it unsurprisingly was. You'd realize that it you heard a top level player talk about duel for a considerable period of time. When you're listening to e.g. rapha, the stuff that's actually fresh to hear and insightful isn't "right he's got 100/200 so the next play will be on MH because he's maxed his armour stack" because every caster and every 1800 elo player knows that's the case (incidentally Thorin didn't even get as deep as I did above). It's stuff like "right he should have taken this position X seconds sooner so he probably delayed the MH no to make it clash with RA so the timing of both is roughly Y and Z". Show me where Thorin gets anywhere near that level of anylysis. That is the kind of stuff that enabled rapha to be in the correct position if he were to overcome an aim disadvantage (which isn't really there since roughly 2011 but that's about when Thorin's interest in Quake faded) What he said was "yeah his raw skill wasn't up to par with the other pros so he focused on finding holes in their particular games and pounced on them". Holy smokes my brain lit up like a christmas tree trying to grasp that level of sophistication.

But do not despair. Your "which is stupid" argument works too. Everyone's opinion is equally valid and everyone is a Quake mastermind with item timers on the left and instant access to an opponent's stack. Too bad in the actual game your 1300 elo expert suddenly turns into a 1300 elo player.

Hi! Please allow me to interrupt:)

Imho, Thorin contributed to the community with his video. I wonder why is it hard to read the title which says "Thorin's Thoughts" and there is also a description: "I discuss the approach which made United States of America Shane "rapha" Hendrixson one of the most successful duelers of all-time.".

Most of us are old Quakers here, we all saw a zillion tournaments and analyses, and probably none of us needs you to tell us about how deep he goes into the meta-game in his talks, we can conclude that for ourselves just fine.
You might be right that he didn't say much, or maybe he wasn't even right at some points, dunno, that could be something we could argue about, but the thing is.... I enjoyed his performance. He was talking about Quake (the game we still love) with great passion, and that's something many of us can appreciate here a lot.

Just my two cents.

The community is desperate for content like this as well. You certainly can't expect any of the current top players to produce quality content like this. Most of them lack the level of English required to talk about the game at all, nevermind passionately and well spoken like this for 30 mins. It falls to someone like Thorin, who has the ability and the knowlege, not just of the game but the history of the game, to produce things like this for people to enjoy.

Why aren't others producing content similar to this?

Thorin have no knowledge, he speaks rubbish

He does, it's just that it's from ages ago.

He moved on to games that aren't dead and that's his focus now, He isn't gonna analyse or follow Quake in-depth nowadays because he has no reason to.

No amount of passion, ‘knowledge’ and nice english (quite the stretch btw, have you listened to him?) is gonna make you appealing enough to a specific audience if that audience thinks you don’t have anything meaningful to say.
We’re not the target audience of this btw. Thorin’s a CS guy with a CS audience. For them the video was probably great, and that’s fine.

No, he's an esports guy, which is why his channel isn't limited to one particular game. Of course I listened to him, I enjoyed this specific video a lot.

I think this video is simply something else. It's about building the myth of these characters, and tell in very understandable ways why they were great. If you think of it, this is doing a better job at it than an in depth analysis which you and a handful of other people could understand. Iirc thorin has 40k subscribers in his channel and many are probably not quakers.

That's what I was trying to point out, it's like if he would be bashing a sci-fi novel because the writer doesn't know quantum mechanics at the highest scientific level.
He is a journalist (according to himself) who "writes" about e-sport, and it's surprised me that gienon did not get it.

I fully agree that's what it is. But how is my initial description of it wrong then? I simply said it was not gonna be deep in terms of analysis, without ever passing a value judgment whether it will be good or not. Incidentally I think thorin's probably the best guy to make such videos but they simply don't appeal to me.

Your "tone" WAS judgemental though. Defend yourself all you want, that fact still remains, and that is why people here reacted to your posts.

Your initial description is wrong because it assumes that any meaningful criticism, or commentary can only come from someone equally skilled. None of the best hockey critics, or commentators even got close to the NHL, same goes for some of the scouts, and other people involved in the sport, so it's quite a stupid thing to say. It assumes an inexplicable authority that to be able to comment on player x, the commentator must be close to player x's level.

I'll accept for the sake of argument that it's the case in hockey (it is not in basketball and it sure as hell isn't in something like ski jumping). but what does this have to do with quake? We have numerous examples of top players providing top level analysis (provided they're doing it in their mother tongue) and no examples of 1500 elo players breaking down a pro's game beyond some banalities. Why invoke some other sports?

what about diddy's analysis videos? He's not a top dueler, but he goes into extreme depth

Ddk's videos, as far as I remember, left me with the impression of being superior to the "dry" analysis but nowhere near the insight that rapha brought on the fly EACH TIME he casted something.

I think it supports my point frankly - ddk was a high level player (about 2k elo) and that's about where his analysis stood.

u r right that it's out of place to bring in other sports.. What he says is true in basketball as well tho. Plenty of great coaches, scouts, gms and basketball minds in general never came close to the NBA as players.

Yeah I got a bit lazy and didn't get in enough detail to explain my position. Of course there are basketball figures who didn't play and still rock like the coolest man alive Pop for a quick example.

But it's still the case that their success is due to a vastly different skillset in coaching and playing, while in Quake playing a good meta-game and talking a good meta-game is largely the same thing.

Anyway, I think we agree on this one so there's no point in needlessly spinning our wheels about it if you ask me.

Well you essentially said it yourself in #33, with all information given i.e item timers, player positions and -stacks, quake decision making is fairly easy to understand. The problem lies in getting the Information, processing it and not fucking up in the execution. Therefore there are tons of weak players capable of high level analysis.

You should try games with complete information -like chess, if you want to make that point and even then its not 100% true.

Tl;dr your initial comment was narrow-minded.

The difference between a good dueler is when he watches someone play he has much better feel for what information is available to that player. Time and again I hear casters' erupt with disbelief when a player they're following made a suboptimal decision and think to myself "yeah einstein he'd do what you say in a heartbeat if he knew what you know". I rarely hear that from fazz (although that's partly because he only evaluates crucial moments and doesn't do play by play, then again such mistakes predominantly take place at those crucial moments)

Moreover, because of your post I've finally become able to put my finger on the fact that what I found most interesting about rapha's casts was how he extracted information from seemingly nothing, not what he claimed follows next given all the relevant information. There are a few home-grown logicians and binge demo-watchers who have a solid idea about probability distributions in Quake (on an instinctive level obviously) on this site alone who could do that better than him.

I've had a good deal of experience with complete or perfect information games (I took game theory and advanced game theory in Uni and found all this mental masturbation with logic interesting on a geek level) but I'll be the first one to say that if you believe you can apply game-theoretical principles to Quake you know little about either. Or maybe I'm just not smart enough because lord knows I've tried and in my case it comes down to "who you gonna believe - an elegant theory built on flimsy assumptions or your own eyes after 15 years of playing the game?"

Tl;dr your haste in pointing out my narrow-mindedness was premature but I hear snarkiness is in this season.

You're missing the point i'm afraid. The point is that you claim that one has to be a high level player in order to bring high level analysis. Which is not true because again the analyst (which has the option to look at games ex-post) has all information available. Other than the caster who also has to process it in real time. So while i definately agree that raphas insight on the fly is amazing and far superior to any weak player's it is not the skill discussed here.

Btw i don't think you are narrow-minded, but your initial comment was.

We've reached the nub of the matter - analysing a game with all information available is futile. It only makes sense to analyse it given the information available to the player. My claim is that the better you are as a player, the more accurate you will be at determining what the player knows and is able to assume more or less reliably. Because of that, you'll be able to draw more informed conclusions from what's going on in the game.

Put it differently, analysis is good when it's based not on what's happening in the game but what the player thinks is happening (and what the other player thinks of course). To know what rapha thinks you have to be pretty much on his level. I'm sure I would make a huge mess of it, let alone someone with significantly less duel knowledge.

I disagree. Imo it is possible to break raphas game down and appreciate the various concepts. Concepts of positional advantages, delaying items, shutting out the enemy from chokepoints, you name it. Yes there are tons of concepts, but my point is that you don't have to be able to execute these concepts in your own game. You dont have to be able to take a fight, while keeping in mind the rotation, constantly reassessing your stack, position aim and weaponery that limit your further possibilities. You also don't have to be as good as rapha in getting information, be it getting mh timing out of control or w/e. You need conceptual understanding and appreciate how a player executes it.


So we were able to extract one crucial aspect thorin neglects: rapha is incredibly good at gathering information. Again do i have to be as good as rapha to appreciate that?

thorin talks about a couple other things rapha excels at:

-always having an escape route.
-engineering situations with a defined plan in mind
-reading the opponents next move (somewhat related to our point)
-mental strength: never rages, never throws away frags

One might add:

maintaining positional advantages
executing his plans

and more

You see we were able to point out something rapha does without being able to do it ourselves.

-always having an escape route.
-engineering situations with a defined plan in mind
-reading the opponents next move (somewhat related to our point)
-mental strength: never rages, never throws away frags

all top players excel at this, maybe except staying composed. thorin didnt say even one single word that would describe raphas game in a more advanced way.

basiclly he pointed out what makes a good player good player

Nope. Some top players gamble, they rush as fresh spawn with only Plasma, they take fights that are do or die situations. They rely on their aim even in worse positions, they become impatient, they rush into chokepoints ...

These things rarely happen when rapha plays

And how are things you mentioned linked with my quote? Yes he is very cautiously player, but it doesn't mean cypher doesn't plan and evil has mo escape route. These ate quake duel basics

Yea imo rapha is the master of quake duel basics. Can you tell me what it is that makes rapha so good then?

i personally dont think he is THAT good. in my very controversial opinion, rapha is not one of best players, as there are much better than him. he is however the most stable player, due to his "do not fuck up Shane" gameplay. as you said he is master of duel basics, and thats enough to compete at high level, and as long as his opponent is not in his prime, enough to win tourneys.


but im 1600 elo at best, so probably theres a lot of things to be said about his gamestyle.

On tthe good duelrs commentite well part

Objectively speaking, there is something that sets him apart.

Q: what sets evil apart?
A: flawless execution, great timing in the attack, and strong aim
Hitsu: hur durr every dueler has those

yea right its just that even if compared with other top players he still stands out. Same with rapha. He is just that bit better at reading the opponent and setting up situations and that wins him the games.

no, not every dueller has evil like ability to just kill you no matter the stack. his damage output is over 9000, and actually theres only one player who can match him in this aspect of game(cypher).

not every top dueller has evil's aim ability. just look at rapha or agent, who are known for being much weaker aim wise than other players.

and basiclly whats your point anyway? to show that rapha excels at quake 101?

Yea but does every top dueller have rapha's ability in the points you quoted? If so, why do they not crush him if their aim is superior?

my point is that thorin raised a couple fair points in his analysis that are not trivial or too generic.

they do crush him, if the rest of their game is on. you will not win against rapha using only aim. however if u play proper quake, and aim better you will win. cypher did show it many times.

So rapha plays proper quake and if essentially only cypher can beat him we have to conclude that 90% of top players cannot play proper quake right? Thats a rare way of looking at it but ok.

thats an overstatement. most top players do not play perfect game for full 10 minutes, unlike rapha. and thats why they will lose against him.

He's not wrong on that point. The game is so hard to play at the highest level and it's extremely difficult to do the basics properly every game. Rapha is the best at doing that. If other players can do almost as good at the basics, but reign supreme in other categories of quake duel oriented skills, they win every single time.

Well what is basic and what is not is pretty subjective. I could argue that evil is the master of basics because at the end it comes down to who is the better killer. But it does not matter which way to look at it. Rapha wins because he rarely makes mistakes in his decisions, whether you find that impressive or not is not important.

only the 2nd player with the most tournaments won in history, and he only started at quake live, yeah not that good :/

I think you fail to see all the aspects of his game. Its not only mental stability.

Dear random french anon, just like John Snow, you know nothing.

rapha was one of top players in the end of q3 cpma era, winning tourneys and stuff. afaik he started quaking around 2004, but he didnt have stable connection, so he watched demos only. he also participated in zero4 quake duel school.

know your facts, random french anon.

Hitsu has to be right... i mean damm

As a fellow quake player and fairly knowledgeable person about game theory.
You can definitely use game theory models to better understand (or explain) choices made by the players.
The main problem would be getting all of the exact numbers, but that's not always needed to grasp the concepts ;).

You just need to "dumb things down to a single decision". The problem in Quake (as in other games) is that it's a series of decisions which have quite a few variables.
But if you would for instance make a small array of Good position, Bad position, P1 damage output, P2 damage output. You can analyze quite decently why which player will pick a fight while another might not.

Of course these arrays themselves depend on which weapons they have etc. etc. So it becomes pretty complex pretty fast. But game theory itself works fine.

There are quite a few examples of game theory concerning soccer analyses for penalty kicks. These very specific examples don't tell you all there is about which team is better... But they can still be used ;)

Out of interest, isnt a penalty kick a zerosum game like rock paper scissors? Doesn't this mean that every strategy, in a simple case right left or center, is being mixed with the same equal percentage i.e 1/3?

Well the thing is more that, through game theory, you can see that a certain player prefers to shoot into some corner... And that a certain keeper is effective at stopping things towards some corner....
Which way should the penalty taker go?

Perhaps the vid on http://gametheory101.com/Penalty_Kicks.html can explain it better.

hmmm I just actually skipped through the vid... It's not really what I expected it to be (I figured cuz it was 101 that it would be global on what the concepts are... but he's actually only diving into the math ;/... Kinda like the crap teachers from my past :p)
Perhaps you can find a better source hehe :D

Ah i see they assume that a striker prefers one side, makes sense. Video is fine, thx.

Ah ye you are one of those math people I argued with! :p
(or one that agreed with me, dunno anymore)

Well they just assume preferences in the broad sense.
The math becomes a tad more complicated when the goalie also has preferences etc. (the right equations are given in the video though). The idea remains the same.

A fairly large part of game theory is based upon that idea (players having preferences), other parts include players having non complete knowledge (which is somewhat a vague area), and depending on who you talk to there are more aspects to it ;).

The only really interesting theory is that involving the Nash Equilibrium imho.
Which can be used to explain downsides of individualistic behavior. Where groups as a whole *could* be better of, but they won't!

Yea i agree, Unfortunately i only had one course but it was a fascinating experience all around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYUPc-cfPyc ;)

Basketball? Lots of coaches in basketball have never done shit as players, let alone come close to the very elite level, ahem Phil Jackson.

What does it have to do with Quake? Simple, there is no necessary secret knowledge that player x has, that someone who studies enough cannot come to have a intellectual understanding of. Most Quake players, especially the top ones, are atrocious when it comes to explaining things, outside of a very small exception, I think people have mentioned rapha in this thread, and I'm more inclined to go with czm. Yet, I'm convinced that even czm could not become a top player and was nothing more than average, that his insights would have still be as compelling, because it's not about some magical information he's giving you, it's more about his strengths in the English language, his ability to provide a narrative, and make it sound interesting.

I answered the basketball objection to qwih. Coaching basketball and casting Quake have different respective relations to playing basketball and playing Quake.

Theoretically, maybe. Someone could infer all the nuances of high level duel from a book. Practically? It's verging on impossibility given the fluent nature of decision-making in Quake. My initial point wasn't deductive but empirical - no 1300 elo player so far discovered has enough knowledge to get as deep and therefore as interesting as a 2600 elo player.

Then there's also the question of evolving gameplay which arises as a result of top players trying to get ahead of one another. I know of no way how an outsider could incorporate it in his analysis to an extent matching that of a top player currently involved in novel elements of gameplay.

Most Quake players are atrocious at English necessary to convey complex information, not Quake.

gienon best pole since pope

^7 C'mon...

Good video. Thorin sounds like he's about to have a brain fart from the effort of explaining rapha. its kinda funny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFu0njH0Jjw&t=411

these are so fucking awesome

Where can we donate to fix thorins heating?

Thorin my career will be complete when you do a grilled interview with me <3. Always love your stuff keep em coming !

most wasted potential in quake history

exactly !

Thorin - the poor as fugg british idiot that can't even afford heat in his 1 bedroom efficiency apartment

schizm - the guy that felt the need to comment anonymously on someone else's economic lifestyle on esr.

I don't think it's anonymous since I am legendary here

https://twitter.com/Thooorin/status/575049756780687360

wow that would a major burn if we were 3dr grades

his videos would be godlike with some gameplay clips to make his points

Yeah,

but that would also be massive work right there.
But agree, it sure would be sweet.

it really would be but it's so much more work to find matches and cut up clips that support your points.
i think he's happy getting the exposure he does with his 'thorin's memory and cliche extensions of it' series which means source material which would extend production time for these videos by like a factor of 10 won't ever happen.

well, at least link some matches in the description.. especially rapha's famous analysis vs cooller at ESL

That dogfur coat.

Love how all of these professional content creators knock Thorin's video analysis. If he's done such a shit job why don't you elitist content creators make something? oh wait...

Thanks for the video Thorin, pretty cool to chill out and give a listen. Fuck all em haters.

q:D

q:0===8

q:D

I enjoyed this video a lot, although if you make more legends profiles, you should have a limit of 5-6 players, otherwise it wont mean anything anymore.

But it would be difficult to ta lets take Cooller, the biggest quake legend, or Tox the Q4 god. They haven't done much in quake live (although Cooller's longevity is ultra impressive considering he won the last 125fps beating cypher and evil) but definitely deserve their place in that short list. And even fatal1ty who had an impact in the early VQ3 days, he could be there too. Buthe's not quake specialised enough I guess.

Next evident choice would be Cypher of course, the most naturally talented of them all, making everything seem easy and fluid.

I would say Av3k, Rapha, Cypher, Cooller, Tox, Evil, are a must.

You could also possibly do Strenx, Spart1e, fazz, k1llsen, zero4, dahang, czm,

All those guys brought something unique and interesting to the game.

A few other names I could possibly mention, like the more old school guys but many of those names haven't been muttered in a long time.

l1nkin would be great to analyse, and touch on the TDM/CTF scene.

I agree

from a LAN only point of view, strenx, evil, spart1e, k1llsen, fazz and dahang can't compete

av3k, rapha, cypher, cooller, tox, zero4 are the biggest quake legends imo and the portraits of the other "2nd division" players (but legends in their own right) should be clearly differencieted.

of course, those "great players who never quite reached the top for long", what I call the "2nd division," deserve portraits for what they added to the game and their style, skills... but in a different category (strenx, spart1e, fazz, k1llsen, czm, dahang, evil).

Specially Strenx. With a better mental he could be one of the greats, easily. Insane aim and very good strategy (not emphasized enough for him I feel).

Just going to note that czm belongs in the quake champions division, as he won two international lans (quakecon and cpl) and overall his results are some of the best ever.
http://www.esportsearnings.com/players/1144-c...ts_by_game

Also evil won a dreamhack and kilsen an international esl event. They don't belong in a second division either.

I Wonder What RApha'S Thoughts Are On THorin'S Thoughts About RApha's game?!?!?

Come comment plz :p

I like the soind if that one too. Has a nice ring to it.