Big Dick Rapha don't give a fuck, chico

I just heard rapha say "The only two things that were left after the Baltimore riots, were Father's Day cards and suntan lotion"

Yes, he recruited them because he thought they were white. He was shocked when he watched their streams and discovered the sad truth.

By the way, I heard that the name of his team might simply be tK (the Klan).

you mean tK = the Kick ?

i know one tK clan in quakelive...

holy sahit that is genius

I had no idea that sparks had been kicked off. Who replaces him?

Whaz

What happened with sparks?

He was born with the wrong colour.

Will he be like that for life?

nope, MJ showed the way

rapha isn't a racist, as an anglo-american he's just genetically predisposed to be successful and he can't let himself be slowed down by a certain strain of black people who, fueled by rap music, live in a culture of violence and blame the system.

nice bait.

I'll have you know I like biggie and tupac and my favourite character in a video game is black. I'm just stating the facts, but the left wing liberal communist anti-christ media has brainwashed you to shoot the messenger.

you are a
master at baiting.

8/8

still didn't watcheded

I called it the first time I watched them scrim on sparks' stream. They had no chemistry. It was difficult to watch at times.

But, did they really kick br1ck?! He's no clan arena master, but he did win the ctf tournament last year, so what gives?

one-upped. ouch gg

cuadicles is very strict about misappropriated appreciations.

He's no clan arena master

I guess nothing is perfect, right? ;)

edit: lol, failed reply to #7

Just Edit, open the "Reply to #" drop-down and select 7. In fact I did this for you, but letting you know you can do it yourself :)

well that was stunningly obvious

Just like placing images here.

This is awkward because I wasn't being sarcastic ;d

Don't worry you will understand in 3 days when we've been on esr for the same length of time ;)

Gotta agree with you about chemistry.

ouch gg

starting to wonder if the shitty player is one of the 3 on the team or the people getting replaced... maybe they're replacing the wrong people

+1

If you look at most of the practice games they played, zero4 was sitting at about 5-5.5k dmg in ctf while everyone else on their team (including sparks) was 7-8k + consistently, additionally on the enemy teams they played people like id were hitting 10k+ dmg sometimes. zero4 is quite clearly the problem, but he's never gonna get replaced because he's in there with rapha like a fucking growth.

I just feel bad for sparks, who's probably booked all his quakecon shit by now and is left without a team. Hopefully someone picks him up (team with flair maybe? kappa) :D

Well I didint watch alot of their games but the few times I did on stream sparks was doing quite ok. One example I clearly remember (and I only remember top notch stuff) is sparks returning the flag on cp9 by hitting 3 clutch rails in a row and making it a tie game vs break.

I know its just one example but my point is that I did not feel like he was dragging the team down in any way.

Then again you dont have to play bad to get kicked off a team, you could have an argument outside the game about strats and shit so there is that.

sparks was always taking sh*t from z4 and cl0ck on stream he was never comfortable and you could tell in hurt his game play. He him and rapha were the most complete players on the team really shocked to see them kick him like that 2mos out from qcon.

Let's be honest they aren't going to win CTF or TDM and they're only hope was for rapha to win duel.

Dont forget that Z4 is playing with 75+ ping, on LAN he is gonna be much stronger.

so was sparks, they were (mostly) practicing on a TX server which is far away from canada as well as cali. I guess you could argue that sparks is more used to it since he plays on 80 ping in europe half the time too, but that still doesn't mean he wouldn't do better in a LAN environment.

and I'm not trying to say that zero4 is a bad player or will be incapable on LAN, merely that in most cases he has been the problem so far and I'm wondering if their decision to keep him on is motivated by that going unnoticed (I doubt it) or if it's just because he's so tight with rapha.

... ZeRo4 plays defense, you can't compare a defenders damage to offensive players, are you new? Compare his damage to the other teams defender, viju, and then you'll see hes been right on par with him. ZeRo4 was not the problem.

These are the last CTF games I've found where sparks was in your team, and you played the full BREAK lineup including viju.

http://www.quakelive.com/r/profile/matches/Ze...001c/ctf/1
viju's dmg: 7699
zero4's dmg: 5376


http://www.quakelive.com/r/profile/matches/Ze...001c/ctf/1
viju's dmg: 6266
zero4's dmg: 5612


http://www.quakelive.com/r/profile/matches/Ze...001c/ctf/1
viju's dmg: 7099
zero4's dmg: 6512 (notice how these two figures are closer and you only lost 4-2?)



I don't know what goes on in your team (I have a brief idea because I can hear you all over sparks' stream), so maybe there's some kind of missing team chemistry I seem to be unaware of (although given that sparks and br1ck have basically both said the same thing about zero4, I doubt they're wrong), but this literally proves my point exactly - zero4's dmg is not on par with anyone in the enemy team, and that includes the defender as you can see from my direct comparisons above. These games aren't even cherrypicked in the sense that they are literally the last three games on zero4's profile that were played with sparks in your team vs the full break lineup. I have omitted no games. :D
Next time if you're trying to make a point, please make sure it supports your argument and not mine - thanks! :-)

You cant compare like that... you can only do so if they play few games switching possition with the same teammates vs same enemy team. I.e. you should watch few games to judge - stats comparing in that case is useless.

I've seen plenty of their games, another issue I haven't mentioned seems to be communication - I remember one instance on tdm @ ragnarok where they actually had to pause the game because cl0ck got mad at sparks for something he said and rapha had to mediate the situation. I don't remember exact details, but it's things like this that I said in my post above that could also be potential factors.

As for your "you can't compare like that" statement.... I'm just doing what cl0ck told me to do. :)

Your sample size is almost non existent..

The first one you posted on spider: this is probably the most accurate out of your 3 examples, they both play low d, the difference is viju often attacks and pushes in and zero4 doesnt, but w/e. So you got that one.

Second game you posted on japan: Break does more of a 3o with viju, where zero4 is _ALWAYS_ in the flag room. Viju often sits at high RL with a rail out and is able to dish out tons of damage by railing across courtyards that zero4 doesn't have the opportunity to respond to.

Third game: Infinity we're still trying stuff (pretty sure everyone is).

I guess what im getting at is you either need to draw a sample from literally all of the games we've played vs each other (probably pushing 30-40 by this point) or none at all. It is extremely difficult to compare damages between defensive players as different teams defenders tend to attack more than others. And then there is of course the argument that highest damage doesn't even matter (within reason) in CTF.

The only real thing you can compare is offensive damage in which sparks and I were pretty consistently getting outdamaged by id & dahang.

I agree damage doesn't matter (within reason) in CTF. I recall sparks looking over some of the stats from his games with you guys literally weeks ago, and zero4 had the lowest dmg (in tdm too) out of everyone on the server. I think he even tried to hint at it because he asked for zero4's demo of a CTF game to watch it from his POV.

I would take a larger sample size, but I need to be awake in six hours, so please forgive me if I don't. I'm also kinda too tired to argue. My point was that zero4's damage is consistently lower, and not on par as you originally said. I don't want to debate why his damage is lower, because of three reasons: a) it's a different point to the one I originally made, b) I watch more quake than I play and c) I don't play competitively, so I'd be talking out my ass if I went on anything other than what I've seen and heard when you've actually played, or the hard statistics.

I think the most compelling argument you could put forth is simply that I'm not in your team and I don't understand whatever situation is happening, because honestly you'd be right, I don't. It just seems like you're making excuses, especially because of that hilarious letter you wrote to sparks.

shoutout to cl0ck for actually putting a real reply to this shit. [+] for keepin it real.

Mark is fucken triple OG nigga. c9 best ctf team of all time, Mark quite possibly best flag runner of all time besides maybe Jordon or Andrew.

only in your deluded us centered mind :\

For a defender to have a (big) positive net is sacrosanct. To have a large negative net 3 maps in a row is a valid sample and shows that either BtC are massively better than you guys or your defence is weak.

Try and find 3 maps in a month (never mind in a row) of Spart1e on def with a negative net

you just illustrated two ways in which another defender's defense is better than your defender's defense in order to defend your defender's defense.

No the problem was Whos Next? Offense had to constantly bail their D out and never got enough pressure on BtC flag / viju would often push in for 3 man attacks as there was noone challenging him in MID. In TDM you guys were just outaimmed hard.

sparks wasn't allowed to do what he does best which is being a creative flag runner. He wasn't comfortable playing with z4 & cl0ck and it showed. There was times were he wanted to attack but was called back to base. He was too passive.

No comment.

From what I seen the two weakest players have been cl0ck and zer04 by far. I know cl0ck has "4-5" qcon titles to his name but he isn't playing well atm. With zer04 its hard to judge as he plays alot better on lan and the fact they are playing kgb who will play a lot worse its hard to get a feel how the team will actually do. I would have kept sparks and replaced cl0ck with whaz.

It doesn't matter how badly zero4 plays, rapha said that he helped bring him up when he was still unknown so rapha is ultimate loyal even when z4 is in the wrong.

whaaaaat? :D

yeah, when he was just getting started with duel zero4 gave him tips etc

you think he typed "whaaat? :D" to your first paragraph? :D

You have to give reliable source if you're gonna drop this bomb.

This is a bad thing to say about anyone without clear proofs, you could just have made this up.

I think he mentioned it in an interview mentioned on ESR before...pretty sure it was zero4 but may have been czm

http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/36739-rapha_..._and_ZeRo4

Not a bomb to me.

U sure this is the link you wanted to post? Because i've read the entire interwiev, it's a good one, but there's nothing even remotely controversial.

there's nothing that proves dird's heavy accuses

dird is implying that rapha is loyal to zero4 due to zero4 being his mentor. so kicking zero4 off the team would be unlikely.

The link proves that zero4 was his mentor, but it doesn't prove that causes him to be loyal even when z4 is in the wrong.

It's extrapolating somewhat, but it's believable for sure.

Dird backed up and shamefully edited his post, originally he was claiming zero4 openly said racist things

ok, your original post makes more sense then.

Why is sparks no longer on the team?

wow thats lame.
i guess zero4 forced this decission?

I've heared the unofficial clanname they will use.

Silence! I kick you!

what happened to sparks??????????

if raph isa racist he such a lame =]

What happened exactly? Who got kicked, and what were the reasons?

Anyway nice b8 op. 8/8

They have not been kicked, they resigned after finding out Team Rapha doesnt give out welfare cheques.

watched a few of their early games on sparks' stream and it was clear that cl0ck and zer04 were way underperforming (on top of their coms being bad). haven't watched em at all in the last ~week but mb losing to dahangs team constantly motivated them to scapegoat the black guy.

also what a fucking thread 10/10

Black magic is bad, white magic is good.

and how does brown magic fit into the mix?

In a" jail sell", brown people say sell not cell my nigger. Dropping the sizzoap nigga/er

i 100% did not follow that post

team stormfront to win qcon

I guess this is why he uses keel as a enemy model?

Ill be surprised if this team places top 3 in anything

dem0n sweating

air

embarrassing post

Hi rapha

Maybe it's cause sparks is Canadian? Anyone that gets their milk in plastic bags can't be trusted.

Not for nothing but sparks is the whitest black guy I've ever seen.

lol

ahah

please keep this thread going!

"White people don't understand how hard it is to be not black if you're black"

- Patrice O'Neal

Not surprised. He goes off like a loose cannon sometimes. Beat Shane in FFA once and he immediately started in on the "holohoax", crime statistics and basketball americans. I saw then the rumors were true. A racist ideology fuels him. Shane "The Inner City Abortionist" Hendrixson.

I've estimated that more than half his Quake winnings have been donated to Planned Parenthood.

Yeah fuck killing babies

Yeah fuck killing babies

http://www.esreality.com/?a=newpost&type=13

That was amazing :D

So that’s where MS got its inspiration from...

Fun fact: at 0:49 there's a crest with angel and a castle on the left. It's the crest of city I'm living in: Torun, Poland.

http://4imgs.com/1063/sys/prod/51075_3_0_0.JPG

No Nigga Jesus rap song would be complete without at least a reference to Poland.

Nothing says ghetto quite like Poland.

/kill

"ain't gunna be no jungle bunnies on my team!"

"I gave him that name sparks"
"after i tied him to muh chevy and drug him down the street"
"sparks flying everywhere off his gold teeth."

www.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Byrd,_Jr.

gobotz, you might want to change your password...looks like jamalz hacked your account

Sparks was noticed by this email:

Justin,


So there is no easy way to do this and I am a fan of ripping off the band-aid. We have decided to release you from the team in order to acquire whaz. The decision was solely based on a clear conflict of personalities within the team and has absolutely nothing to do with your skills. As far as your skills, you strengthened us way more than we even thought you would after asking you to join.

The decision to let you go from the team is more or less stemming from what we feel is an irreconcilable discrepancy surrounding general, fundamental quake strategy, and our varying viewpoints. I should be clear in saying that in stating this we do not feel as though we are right and you are wrong, we just feel like there is a clear inability to honestly and whole heartedly come to an agreement (between the 4 of us) on the best way to approach our decision making and strategy. We also do not feel like we have the time or energy to rectify it.

In regards to the people that donated and subscribed to your stream- in an effort to win a chance to name our team, I have to talk to Shane and John but we will probably still be willing to honor that. In regards to you still being able to play at Quakecon- I'm quite confident that brick's team would be more than happy to take you in as they need a replacement for Gaven now.


I hope there is no hard feelings, I (we) really do respect you as a player, and think you are a great one at that.

[+]

they don't have an in-game leader?

Translation:

Listen buddy...

We didn't bring you on to think. You just do what we tell you to do.
Since you can't do that....

Cya later.

I heard shit Br1ck needs somebody rofl.

Lololol

: D

That's worse than breaking up with a girl via txt .... ouch!

translation:

this team ain't winning shit, so somebody has gotz to go and that somebody is YOU. we took the best player available(whaz) to give us a chance and it so happens that his former team needs a player now. since they already have a negro on their team, we suggest you play for them. good luck at quakecon, but not too much luck cause we want to win. peace, faggot. keep it 300

v nice email. like whole other ball park level more than what people typically get when cut from a team.

also good to see the cutting wasnt based off a deep-seated hatred of a person on the basis of their skin color as has been reported. classy stuff.

What if I told you that br1ck's team is solely focusing on CTF and taking Fear & Avenged and that it's going to be very hard for sparks to find a team now?

those guys are better than sparks?

No, but br1ck said they are just going to focus on CTF and avoid all the drama from WhosNext? and that they're aren't going to be scriming them either.

I don't see how focusing on CTF & excluding sparks are the same if he's a good player :f why'd they choose those 2 over him -_

i guess the team formed before sparks got kicked.

whaz was in br1cks team but replaced sparks

sure?
i thought whaz said he wont go and suddenly changed his mind.
the question is if team rapha kicked sparks because whaz was available now.

Oh OK~ dunno. he was on br1cks roster last week so I assume he said to them he would go

lol really?
that would be new to me.

Typical american passive aggressive non-message.

Which part was passive?

The whole.

99%, all of it apart from the real message

you are great, u rock, u make us stronger, u r even better than we thought, bla bla bla, it's not u, but us and our chemistry... we don't like what we have to say, but FUCK OFF!

The start definitely doesn't seem passive to me.

Plus, being direct doesn't mean you have to be an asshole.

The asshole part came from the email itself and the way it tried to come off professional. These guys have each others numbers cl0ck or rapha could have called sparks and let him know that way but didn't have the balls to do it. They also knew that sparks had been streaming a lot and I think there was some rough feelings about getting their games streamed and being slapped around by BtC 99% of the time and egos started to show.

Fair enough. I am not familiar enough with all the context but just the email, at least the beginning, did not seem passive to me.

Hopefully people can still have fun at Qcon.

sif you give a fuck

lan dodger.

This always got my attention, what’s the point in locking out the server and don’t letting anyone watch you play (obviously because you don’t want others to see your tactics) if there’s an idiot streaming the game anyway?

Why are you guys arguing over that text? Is that real?

it is!

NOT......

It's real if you believe it's real

lol i guess most people here dont even know half the story right?
watch more stream!

Oh its real. Sparks posted it and cl0ck confirmed it

Hey Memento, this message is real, at least it is what a certain "bgsparks" posted while being in Fazz's twitch chat. Kind regards

So many great thing about his letter. Starting from the fact that it exists and what that means.
I absolutely love the part where they reiterate it's not because of his quake skills, it's because of him as a person!

Yeah it's like... Don't take this the wrong way, we think you're a great QL player, but... this is completely personal and we don't like you.

l m a o
m
a
o

Actually there's nothing particularly wrong coming out from that vod.

-Sparks wasn't in a real team, he was waiting and hoping to be picked up by some strong team;
-one day cl0ck called him and said they wanted to try with him since in the past he expressed availability;

-Sparks says there never were racial or personal issues, with any one of the team; there just wasn't chemistry, the team work didn't work very well, and they basically didn't have time to change things to make it work, it would have taken too long.

-So they ditched him, and admittedly a personal call would have worked better, but i can see why they sent him a mail instead. Maybe they were trying to be professional (this is exactly what happens in real world professions, and way harsher); maybe they didn't want to deal with remarks or discussions; this may look funny, but let's be real, gamers are a bunch of nerds with little social skills in average, i mean, just look at every pro players interviews, 90% of times they look like misfits, immature teenagers that don't know what to do outside their small social circles or in front of an unknown person.

They tried two weeks, saw it didn't work as hoped, and then replaced him, like it commonly happens.

The main issue seems to be the letter. And it isn't an issue. Have you ever been fired, like, in the real world? Prepare for a world of butt hurtness, then.

Actually, the letter even tries to be as soft and complimentative as it can. Sure the result is goofy, and very few people can write good in a formal style without experience. But there's nothing wrong, or passive aggressive, or whatever some people are seeing in it.

If you claim that letter is bad written, write something better for that specific occasion, if you can (not referring to you op, it's impersonal "you" )

Really, all that story is made up drama.

Nothing happened, and if Sparks was white, this thread wouldn't even exist.

I wouldn't write. I would call.

How did you get a personal email like this, wasnt this just between zero4 and sparks?

Sparks said that this email was written with the same prose that an English major would write in



l m a o

Team [ex-Rapha] is getting stronger by the day, in few weeks thy might win the damn thing.

LOL WTF NIGGA PLEEEASE

e: he got suspended for 10 days .. cops got suspended for about 2 weeks when they shoot homeless people for no reason right?

what a stupid little shit.

He isn't. The clan just tests recruits for marijuana and crack cocaine.

this thread needs more scowl and jamerio

JUSTICE FOR JUSTIN

inb4 he sings this on stream to rapha

VQ3 CTF is about as interesting as watching paint dry, they probably did him a favor.

hit tha blunt and watch stream= now is magicaly cpm =]

imagine when you hit the blunt and watch cpm..

i have done this @ lan 2003. prison almost becuase i tried to rail a bitch irl =/ homies got my back thoh. explained it all to cops. we all had laughed. good day

what are you guys on in here.

i was just on my way to pickup my kfc and watermelon... and that grape drank!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UayQTu2kH-U

Remember kids, if you fire someone, make sure they're the same color as you

This is not "someone" this is 2 guys.

Yes, but would we be having this thread if they were white?

Rapha is white. So if he kicks 2 white guys, of course he is not racist (the goal of this thread lol).

Then he could be discriminating against white people.

If he kicked two white guys, nobody would make the assumption that he is racist. Thats the point im trying to make, he probably has legitimate reasons but people are connecting it to racisim.

I don't think anybody seriously accuses him of being racist.

have u ever seen this movie the 'white men cannt jump'

Nope.

Apparently Obama released a statement saying that if he was a quake player when he was younger, this could've been him.

there are no niggas in bible --> Bible is racist

Jesus called everybody brother and he was sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit.

Think about it.

Rapha is Jesus? Mind Blown.

Rapha is Mr T?

quite the contrary
http://esreality.com/post/2735252/is-rapha-a-racist/#pid2735384

offiicial statement from rapha?

hoping for official statement from sparks aswell. he has fans still.

the only one who cares seems to be cl0ck

About what? Drama invented and developed in a esr thread? About something that never happened? Sure why not. I want an official statement from CNN too.

paging Jamerio - u know what to do

I want to shake some hands

great drama

From the practice ive seen. z4 is the weak link. His aim is not to par with the rest (maybe itll change on lan). He always need help on D and it inders the offense since they cant wait in the enemy base to create some kind of run. In tdm same thing his aim is shit.

Woha, I finally get to do this!

Hi Sparks!

it was a good one too :p

Sparks is alive!

so you part on bad terms?

Not sure. No one has seen or heard from him since the e-mail was sent. Hope not.

understandable.
he put so much effort into preparing for this years quakecon as well as streaming, not to forget the donations and getting subscribers.
he spend a fucking bunch of time into playing quake instead of spending it with his wife or other stuff .. it appeared to me he kinda went "all in".
and now out of the sudden he stands there with kinda empty hands.
finding a proper team is more and more difficult and even if he finds one, there is only little time left to practice with that new team.
i can imagine he realised that all this time is kinda wasted now since the chance of success to win at least something at QC is like nothing.
i would take a timeout, too.

wait sparks is married?

soon to be

i thought i heard him say it once.
but i can be mistaken.
but lives together with a female.

How is that supposed to be anyone's fault? Living off of quake is a dumb move, it works only if you're living in Russia, or if you're living with your parents everywhere else in the world.

the only one that earned a lot of money in quake is Fatality, and even he can't live off of those solely.

Oh fuck that.

Afaik Sparks runs his own company, and is far from not having a life. Him going full in here it's about the passion. And I can understand very well if he's extra pissed.

Then he has even less reasons to be extra pissed, no? He wasn't treated bad by his own admission, it was just that it was told him via letter instead of direct call.

No biggie, honestly. Getting dumped by a gf via text, or receiving a mail from your boss saying you can just avoid returning to work the next monday, now that's bothersome.

Good for him, for having extra sources of outcome. If that happened to a Strenx, it would have a different impact, economically speaking.

What you say does not make sense to me. I would be pissed to be kicked off a team, or dumped by a gf, or fired, especially if I invested a lot of emotion and time. The fact it happened with a letter instead of a call is not really the point, but might add a bit of bitterness to the mix.

To be fair, it's hard to think clearly with your foot in your mouth. ;)

>Afaik Sparks runs his own company

and yet no 75$ to spare for gtav

Too bad, I watched sparks stream a few times and I noticed a few arguements, especially about TDM tactics.

I hope he will find another team and take revenge :)

This thread is most enjoyable.

I'm surprised to see all the draft league drama, Quake is serious business in 2015?!

#GoodGame #WhitePower

Z4 is the better player anyways, z4 won many tournaments when compared to the 2 kids.

The real question is is Rapha going to win Quakecon?

Yeah

What does it have to do with anything!?

I think you're in the wrong thread, sir http://www.esreality.net/post/2734703/quakecon-2015-hype/

This threads a joke anyway.

Nah, the real question is what are id/Bethesda going to do to fill that 6hr void they'll have this year.

Spinning Carmac head

That release email was disgusting, it didn't have an ounce of honesty.

It is so passive aggressive douchey styled.

I don't even know Sparks but now I hope he finds a team and spanks Clock, simply because of this email :D

Yeah, they should of said shouve it up your ass nigger you suck.

We dunn need cha non more nigga.

Kool Kwake Klan

Due to the controversy around ZeRo4 in this thread, I decided to look at the results from team 2014 (ZeRo4, DaHanG, whaz, br1ck) at Quakecon 2014 against the best 3 other teams (welp, unknown, SAKE). The damage stats aren’t available in the youtube videos, so I only report the K/D ratios:

Ahahahah the music conveys everything I wanted to say times a thousand.

my god I feel bad for the time you wasted gathering this useless compilation...

Well excuse me for bringing some data into a discussion. It took me like 30 minutes, that's not a big deal. ;)

I also found it interesting because it points out just how close the tournament was among the top 4. The overall champions scored 15 caps while conceding 14, and won 3 overtimes.

Thanks for that but not all kills are equal. Sometimes 1 kill is worth 10, which is why raw data never tells the full story.

Not all kills are but when your D is having a - K/D ratio that's never a good thing. It's a waste of resources.

Of course it doesn't tell the whole story, I never implied it did. I think it's useful for discussion though. I concluded that he was "worse", but that's only in regard to K/D. It might also mean that his playstyle is different (e.g. he prefers letting the opposing attacking players run with low health into his base instead of fragging them himself).

I don't really get why people are so keen to dismiss data instead of explaining it... but the latter is obviously the harder thing to do.

he might just give up more items to his team so they can attack with armor, or play more aggressive himself. haven't seen demos, but those would be possibilities.

Yes, good point and also if he's the captain that is coordinating the teamwork, that makes him more valuable as well. All these ctf players going to qcon are deadly as fuck and fast as fuck on these maps, so it's teamwork and strategy that is the really important part. Also being able to recognize a weakness in the middle of the game and adjust a strategy would be great too. You can't do that type of stuff if your teammates aren't listening so that probably why z4 got pissed.

retribution sums it up sufficiently. k\d ratio alone will not tell you much.

your life definitely has a purpose.

Posts: 10423

in the ugly face

well, registering at 2002, this site actually used to be fun ages ago, now there's nothing left but just mindless peasants like you wasting bandwidth with your irrelevant crap. but do continue.

Is it true that you left this site because of a certain user from Wales?

god no. the remnants of the user from wales were the last thing about this site worth making fun of.

dunno. content disappeared, first came the 3 minutes photoshop +whores, then the clueless mouthy game experts, then zhu with his life struggles, and the end of esr was pretty much on the horizon. quake is in a dull place, so i don't really have anything to do here.

but it was fun, for a long time.

Someone should write the history of esr. Sort of an highlight, a summary.

it was 52/37 on infinity.

The role and play style of each main defender also varies a lot, which makes the K/D stat an unfair parameter to judge performance.

For example I've seen American teams involve their main defenders more into ceasing PU area's (mid) and full out 4 man attacks compared to European teams.

Also ZeRo4 seems to be more agressive and take more risks compared to the safer play style of Zyrinx.

I have also seen 200/200 defenders (that stack means not many attacks were performed I guess) jump into mid and have that stack completely destroyed by the enemy team. Some defenders take that risk and if it pays off, then people would consider it a good play. If you get cought by a shaft and a rail, then it is a stupid play.

In early Quake Live it wasn't weird to see base defs have 50/10 KD or even better, because having solid positions was pretty much the standard. Then it moved to more dynamic positions, where basedefs got more involved in battle. This also means that when you kill a basedef and he happens to spawn a few times in midfield or at a spot where the enemy was waiting, you will be a free kill.

A good example of map where that is common is Japanese Castles, where spawns at the enemy side are usually followed attacking the enemy base, instead of moving back if you are a defender. This results in the usual 50/35 KD or even 45/40 as a basedef.

And it's not just the defender position now, just look at the K/D ratio of toxjq in some of Meltdown's games. Apparently they've chosen to let him attack aggressively into insanely high K/D ratio's, similar to what a lot of Scandinavian teams did back then. You win the game with caps, not perfectly balanced K/D ratio's.

He only was the main defender on 2 out of 8 maps, so it would be more interesting to analyze how he played the 2nd def / high def / RA role.

For example, he played Stonekeep twice in some sort of 2nd def role and he got K/Ds of 49/28 and 53/62, respectively. At first sight, it seems like he played the role very differently in those two instances. His team won both matches. It's hard to judge from the youtube videos what is going on because you rarely see his POV.

From my experience as 2nd def it is mostly based on the enemy team, especially the enemy player in the position you are playing as well and how you cope with it.

The two Stonekeeps were played against kgb (defensive/control) and psygib (control/rail heavy) as opposites.

From what I have seen of both players, psygib is more present on mid, which means ZeRo4 has to battle him constantly to not let his team get heavily damaged on mid and in result have weakly stacked attackers.

If both players, like kgb and zero4 probably did on Stonekeep, avoid the constant battling for mid and have a more build up game, you will have a 2nd def with 50/25 or similar K/D ratio, because they are battling the enemy attackers more on their side as to having constant battles on mid shooting 125 hp players down.

I can explain it more in depth as I have been playing the 2nd defender at a high level for over 10 years, but the principle is basically how you react to the opposite enemy player with the same position and if you either mimic him or try to play around it. In both Stonekeeps it looks like a mimic situation, where vs psygib he looks a bit weaker as psygib has better rail aim.

Example: Few years back you had the UK and NL national teams with me + Silencep on NL and deus + adam on UK. Both couples at that time had steady rail accuracy of 60%+ and mimic-ed each other on mid, resulting in K/D's of around 70/80 70/60 with the match ending in 1-0, 0-1 or some sort. Were the negative K/D ratio players worse? Not at all, just the team that got the flag out at a time where no rails were flying around on mid, won the game :-]

This is pretty spot on.

I feel bad for sparks. He seems like a nice guy who deserved a chance to prove he's serious. To kick someone out of the team is OK. But you dont send him a fucking e-mail when you can TALK to him via Phone/Teamspeak any day/any time.

Hope the other team picks him up and he will ROFLSTOMP the shit out of the dinosaurs.

so who's replacing him/them?

sparks is replaced by whaz

not being funny but this is the fucking internet. I would have ESR iM'd him

I think it was bad to drop him but I wouldn't expect a phone call lol

Not sure about Sparks but with Br1ck it's probably just a clash of type A personalities. Z4's team won last year though and if he was barking orders last year, then I'd follow his lead this year too but that's just me. Br1ck seems like he's a leader as well so maybe it's better that they are on two different teams. It makes it more interesting for all of us anyways.

Or rapha is racist.

Yes.

....or rapha is racist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xyhVO-SWfM

These guys are some of the most unfunny comedians in a very long time.

Selfish people get less admiration but better results, hopefully. Else we got ourselves one serious lose-lose situation!

nigga house or nigger house in google maps links to the white house.
try it out

Indeed!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNf606dfCb0

Sparks talks about the situation at 40:00 min here. http://www.twitch.tv/bgsparks/v/5250045

Very embarrassing. Golden boys rapha and whaz have been exposed, even more grimy than fatal1ty. All hail ZorakWar, the new american quake hero.

he says he's committed to a team once he joins, but that his original team couldn't find a fourth...right after learning that br1ck is available?

didn't br1ck pretty much immediately join his new team?

All over a video game lol.

Remember when Fatal1ty had CZM do his racist dirty work?

Wow!

I didn't even know he streamed today!

Thanks for the link!

[...] But I don't really wanna go and play with a pickup team. Because, I mean the competition itself - I know, for those who never went to QuakeCon - it is, it doesn't last very long if you're on the losing end of the bracket. Hum. So and I don't even know how really the duel format would work if if I go with seeding and stuff like that and if I know with a shitty team I have no idea how any of that will work so I doubt that I would go just to participate in duel with a pickup team. I'd wanna go with a good team that has good odds in winning CTF and TDM [...]

If anyone wants to tell spark, he might be interested to know that there simply are no brackets and that everyone gets to play the same amount. It's a Swiss tournament. As for the seeding, it would be safe to assume a team's seeding in duel will be based on the best player of this team.

But in any case if he wants a good chance at winning the team tournaments then a pickup team won't do.

Actually there's nothing particularly wrong coming out from that vod.

-Sparks wasn't in a real team, he was waiting and hoping to be picked up by some strong team;
-one day cl0ck called him and said they wanted to try with him since in the past he expressed availability;

-Sparks says there never were racial or personal issues, with any one of the team; there just wasn't chemistry, the team work didn't work very well, and they basically didn't have time to change things to make it work, it would have taken too long.

-So they ditched him, and admittedly a personal call would have worked better, but i can see why they sent him a mail instead. Maybe they were trying to be professional (this is exactly what happens in real world professions, and way harsher); maybe they didn't want to deal with remarks or discussions; this may look funny, but let's be real, gamers are a bunch of nerds with little social skills in average, i mean, just look at every pro players interviews, 90% of times they look like misfits, immature teenagers that don't know what to do outside their small social circles or in front of an unknown person.

They tried two weeks, saw it didn't work as hoped, and then replaced him, like it commonly happens.

The main issue seems to be the letter. And it isn't an issue. Have you ever been fired, like, in the real world? Prepare for a world of butt hurtness, then.

Actually, the letter even tries to be as soft and complimentative as it can. Sure the result is goofy, and very few people can write good in a formal style without experience. But there's nothing wrong, or passive aggressive, or whatever some people are seeing in it.

If you claim that letter is bad written, write something better for that specific occasion, if you can (not referring to you op, it's impersonal "you" )

Really, all that story is made up drama.

Nothing happened, and if Sparks was white, this thread wouldn't even exist.

Obviously you missed the point of the thread. Which wasn't about a black or white issuse ...

I watched the vod and sparks seemed really pissed off about the whole situation. Especially about the letter and how they never really gave him a real chance on the team. As soon as whaz said he would be going they replaced sparks. Feels like he was the best player at that time on the team.

He says they all were really friendly with one another leading up to this and considered them all friends. Says the only contact he had from any of them while he was sick was from the letter he got. Says he will never join another team with any of them again.

Says if he doesn't go to QC he'll try to find away to refund all the money he got for his trip. Says the plane ticket was booked but the hotel wasn't.

I feel bad for sparks, guy has dedicated a lot of time to practicing both his team and duel game lately. With this being most likely the last quakelive tournament ever, I think he would have wanted to put in a good performance. He has also dedicated a lot of time to his stream and covering events like HOQ and shit.

It would be a real pity if he didn't make it to Quakecon.

With this being most likely the last quakelive tournament ever

That was qcon 2014.

I feel with the oncoming doom announcement they will prob have a doom tournament next year as that would be their flagship game, unless by some miracle they announce a new quake in that time.

"With this being most likely the last quakelive tournament ever"

If I had a nickel...

start a donation thread

"Obviously you missed the point of the thread. Which wasn't about a black or white issuse "

Then you obviously missed even the thread's title.

What is joke?
Baby don't hurt me.
Don't hurt me.
No more.

The difference between reading something and reading into something.

Going full autism makes you not look smart?

hah yes, they create drama to have thing to talk about. maybe ql is get boring.

Protip: nobody seriously thought rapha is racist.
and the low blow from cl0ck/zero4/rapha is still very real, sparks explained his side quite reasonably in that vod.

"nobody seriously thought rapha is racist"

damn right

I played ctf at quakecon 2010 and placed 3rd with br1ck, jones, and rapha. These days I don't play quake at all and haven't really touched it much since that tournament, but I do stay current on the scene. I keep in contact with br1ck on an almost daily basis. Up until recently due to quakecon preparations I've played LoL with rapha on a very regular basis. Even last year during the grand final of the ctf tournament I was on mumble with welp (rapha/cl0ck/id_/psygib) and got to listen to their comms vs 2014 (zero4/br1ck/dahang/whaz).

The problem with the team was not br1ck nor sparks. The problem is cl0ck. Br1ck and ZeRo4 just came off a first place finish at the previous quakecon and rapha and cl0ck were runner up to them. You would think mixing 2 halves of each team would yield great results right? Not the case in this situation. Cl0ck is not on the same level as the other players. He hides behind his previous wins from the q3 days with cloud9. He was a good player back then, but that was about 10 years ago. These days in QL he's pretty much a washup compared to the likes of players who also play offense such as id_, whaz, sparks, dahang. Even the likes of sanity, avenged, or fear could do a better job than cl0ck.

What works in his favor though is his friendship with rapha and zero4 and cl0ck uses that to his advantage to shift blame to the 4th player on the team when things don't work, in this case being br1ck and sparks. It's very obvious from the way he operates that he's willing to go to great lengths to ensure his spot in the team. He even shifted blame on to rapha after their 2nd place finish last year. He told br1ck that his removal from the team was zero4's decision and he himself (cl0ck) had nothing to do with it. This is obviously a lie to save face. He probably had sparks on speed dial at this point. Br1ck ends up being replaced with sparks, they enter honeymoon phase and do well for a few games and then everything goes to shit again. Why? Most likely cl0ck's inefficiencies crept up again.

Then you have whaz who joins forces with br1ck after his removal from cl0ck's team. He constantly tells br1ck he has no intentions of leaving his side should cl0ck try to poach him, but as soon as sparks is let go he wastes no time in kicking br1ck to the curb. You're no different than cl0ck.


Cl0ck probably knows he's 4th wheel but is too proud to remove himself in favor of a better player because of his history and results YEARS ago. He convinces his teammates that sparks/br1ck are the issue and they most likely agree because they are blinded by their friendship and loyalty to their friend.

If you want to remove a player for performance reasons then you need to look at yourself cl0ck. Don't lie to sparks and br1ck and the community to hide the fact that you are the problem. It's disgusting that you're being this conniving and sneaky just to play with your friends. You're going to cost them a good amount of money.

this!

Hi br1ck.

I've made my peace with this a long time ago, don't try to drag me into this. And btw, No rapha is not a racist.

lol like we should trust the black guy

Hi raffer.












))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Not a jokester, are you?

Can you read?

"I played ctf at quakecon 2010 and placed 3rd with br1ck, jones, and rapha"

3rd Place: United States QUAD (rapha, jones, Br1ck, sdahaghi) @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuakeCon#2010

this nerd can read rofl

Fight me pussy

these people are so fucking stupid it makes my head hurt

cpm3a 1v1?

Cool story bro.

According to your theory clock is the weakest player so when they lose he tries to blame somebody else. So far so good. But then how is kicking some other player going to change anything? The problem remains the same.

These guys (especially rapha) watch each others practice demos. If they lose because of one specific player they would know. And they would know that kicking some other player who is not the problem is not going to fix anything.

You claim to be friends with them, but you're basically badmouthing the whole team. Are you really who you claim to be? Just wondering.

According to the letter they disagreed on strategy. Reading between the lines they didn't get along. What's so hard to understand about this?

U Jelly??

my guess is that this was rapha's strategy for eliminating a duel opponent. lure them onto your team then eject them when it's too close for them to find another team. strategically it's straight out of the art of war.

Honestly after viewing several of sparks streams while scrimming the real underlying problem comes down to communication. cl0ck is, quite frankly, a very poor communicator. He gets frustrated and either stops communicating or pops off at his teammates. To do either of these during a match is just completely ridiculous and severely detrimental to the teams morale and chance of succeeding. This will not work in a team game, or in any aspect of life that requires teamwork. Unfortunately the problem was incorrectly diagnosed.

I suppose this sort of thing is bound to happen when everyone in the scene knows each other, yet they're all trying to play on a pseudo-professional level. If I were the other three in the team I would not be taking the game so seriously as to want to fire more than one player. In a healthier, more competitive scene this would be appropriate - it certainly isn't when the guy being fired is, at least in his own words, fully committed to the point of taking donations and buying tickets etc. The fact that sparks and br1ck are very competent players indicates that the others are too bent on having a completely harmonious team, which in my experience is not always the best thing. Sometimes tensions between cooperating parties can actually lead to a better outcome. It does appear that they are ignoring their own deficiencies due to personal connections, not to mention personal interest. I hope it was worth it.

This is just the speculative opinion of an uninvolved party. There are also two sides to every story.

Cooller said repeatedly on russian stream during last team competition at qcon that clock's aim is way not on par with the players from top teams.

And that, quote, "clock is the anchor".

link

My aim was horrible last year no doubt.. could never get in to a rhythm leading up to or at the event. Dunno if this is true considering he wasn't even at the event/playing in it or vs me or my team.

Time to hang it up old man.

No doubt man, no doubt.

Jordan came back lol

The problem is that with any team, you have to find some compromise.

I just get the feeling that z4, rapha and cl0ck are stuck in there ways and strats. I am not sure why they couldn't just take on board what sparks or br1ck brought to the table and adapt it into their game.

sparks has been practicing on TDM pickups a lot lately and learning how EU's approach TDM, that and he has been speccing and casting some high level TDM through HOQ, i mean gaining info on the likes of avg, ukn, 102 approach their game would be invaluable to any team. If anyone on that team was in a good position to bring a fresh outlook on TDM strategy it would have been sparks.

I feel they lost some really valuable input in that team.

As for this thread, I think we can all safely assume rapha is not a racist. This is more a political / ego drivien / team dynamic issue.

Just what I was thinking Sparks already mentioned on his stream.

We'll see how their team dynamic changes with Whaz on their side. Then we'll truly see who was, is the weak chain.

If it will turn out that Sparks was kicked no apparent reason other than ego/someone saving his ass and blaming on him etc. etc. I'd be pissed and willing to impale Rapha's team on a spear.

So sad for sparks, but this is not surprising for NA. Once you get to med-high level, people are extremely two-faced. The 'golden boys' of quake are no exception, look at that awful letter Sparks got.

This is why team modes fail over in NA. The egos are high, while the skill is not. Euros accept there is a team aspect, NA players mentality is "I'm the best, the team will follow". Instead of four people working together, it's four egos trying to be the best individually.

It's such an awful gut feeling too, is he even going to Quakecon? Flying from Canada is bad enough, his flight is $800 (it would be $400 if he lived in USA)

That letter was typical corporate america, I think cl0ck does some office paper pushing so it's pretty obvious why it's written like a jaded 40 year old human resources rep.

As bubbles would say "that's greasy"

Very correct observation, but it's probably not only Americans that fail to understand that individual statistics is heavily reliant on tactics.

You often hear commentators and people praise players for very high net or damage, and considering lower scoring players the "weaker link".

They fail to recognise that higher net often is a result of gaining more support in the area you cover or covering less action heavy areas, while high damage often comes from covering more action heavy areas.

Of course there is some individual skill in it, and you probably assign positions according to individual skill. But what skill is then most important, raw aim, great awareness of team players and opponents, good timing and running of items?

I say the best team is a combination of these skills, and the best players excells in each aspect.

This is imo why 102 has so good dynamics and high top level, each players abuse their comparative advantage.

Sorry for the lecture, certain you didnt need it, but it's become so rare to here people comment on these factors with quake live becoming so aim heavy.

You and rehe beasted noctis while me and ash sucked. Don't bullshit people ;D

rekt is a special case :D

team modes fail in NA because nobody in NA has played anything competitive outside duel since 2002? 2003?. I remember seeing some 2v2 tournament in 2007ish where there was drama because of nomadic, but that's about it. Clan Arena/Ra3 and Duel, all that NA quake has ever done. I suppose CTF had a strong following throughout the years, but because Q3 based CTF is literally the bottom of the Quake barrel (even clan arena is more entertaining) I never really took any notice of it, and quite frankly, nobody else should either.

a possible reason why br1ck got kicked out :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRIW1vfggvs

Wow. 34 to -1 on cure.... is that the biggest disparage beween two duelers at a major pro quake duel event?

not even close

What's the best then??¿!!?!?!?!? I could see strenx gettingn50 or 60 ahead on aero or tox vs noobr.

dunno, probably a k1llsen game. All I know is that even I got higher victories at lan. In the groups you often have very unbalanced matchups.

yeah I could imagine you on aeon or tox vs an unknown.... 50 +

br1ck excels in team games. They already had a dueler - rapha.

Nothing says 'I'm racist' more than br1cking a black dude's desk and leaving a note.


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there's a rehepapp in there somewhere

so, I've read the whole thread from start to end, even noticed Lethe's input, but no Jamerio. WTF?

Also, I'm with down with my nigga sparks. Fuck Z4. Shitty has-been.

[img1]


APPROVE MY IMAGE PEOPLE NEED TO SEE THIS :D

nice cropping

:D i'm sorry i was too excited to do a proper job

D R A M A
R
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Does this ugly Rapha kid even have a real job? I heard he only made 200k in total quakes earning in the span of 10 years. Damn. might as well invested those braincells & youth on the corporate market.

Hah 20k a year off vidgia games would be nice

is not nice if time was take away. could have corporate career in that time. esport is waste of time and money. cooler is only smart one who leave and take real job over kid game. this is why he is cooler!

No its still very nice. Just not as nice as Possible alternatives.

this thread should be deleted : (

found the german

think he said the n-word on stream

Omagash the earth will stop turning now and the world will collapse

The earth is flat and doesn't turn anyway.