The end of v3?

Natural Selection post.

Watching the ENSL is like watching a highly strategized EPL - basically Europeans at war with each other, minus the ball, plus weapons and aliens. Just a few hours ago I had privileged access to a scrim played between v3 and random pub players, then sat in HLTV for the finals of division 2, v3 versus sR.

Why the emphasis on team names? It's something that we Singapore players lack - a huge player base. Admittedly we did drove away many noobs to prevent our 'monopoly' from being dominated, but now that most of the veterans are gone after repelling the influx of newbies, the Singapore community is as good as dead.

It wasn't a bad thing though, since we emphasized on having high standards of playing and skills, more than just laming around with overpowered upgrades and completely devastating the other team leaving us nothing more than pubgods who are unable to improve themselves. It's somewhat a painful process for newbies to become as good as the veterans; 0.1% may take just a month to become as good, if not better, while most others belonging to at least 75% of the population, discouraged from the steep learning curve and the overzealous defending of the veterans on standards higher than any Korean, give up halfway.

Anyway, watching ENSL makes you want to dive into the fun and prove yourself worthy. Call it a revival. It's seriously nostalgic when you watch a marine run around the map during a scrim, and even though you could hear a skulk creeping up on him through his ears, he doesn't, and he gets killed.

"Fuck, I could hear that bitch! Are you deaf?"

Natural Selection is a very special game when it's played competitively. Unlike *cough* camperstrike *cough* where everything is decided by one or two 'star' players, having the team cover each other properly, or just spamming headshots, Natural Selection demands a lot in terms of being capable to make sound decisions yourself, heavily prioritizing your actions to save the most time for the most productivity, getting to a point faster than anybody can and of course, doing your part in a team. Natural Selection is not a one man game - it requires each and every person on the team to know how to act accordingly even when not given orders to, and making sure that each person work out to complement one another and the team towards victory.

So at the very end, if defeat follows, everybody is at fault, no matter how many you killed or how many times you died.

v3, known for their good planning before matches, screwed up badly today. Reason stated by Ivan, the clan leader, was simply because the good players weren't there. Halfway through the first round, v3 marines forgot to keep sR aliens' resources under control, eventually resulting in mass Fades blinking around the map with fully upped Focus, killing everybody.

Second round I was wanking.

Third round, I witnessed one of v3's weaker players rage quitting the game AND the clan, due to another v3's bitching about how badly it went and blaming it on him. One of v3's better players substituted him after that and gave some hope to a now totally demoralised team, only to screw up badly again.

Three v3 members quit due to incessant bitching, while 3 more are leaving this season, which leaves 5 of them as a clan - 1 short to play competitively.

A pity really, since Ivan told me he has been working hard this season, trying to get past the division finals, only to be held back by the better players scheduling their time for the match but not turning up. Oh did I mention that v3 players are actually very friendly people from the other side of the world?

A pity indeed.