ForwardSlashDownPoke

I'm guessing your day was similar to my day, and some of the bigger tournaments (if any) would have been on the PC, and there may have not even been money involved in some of the biggest tournies. Fighting game tournaments were around when you were younger, as well as when I was, but I only learned about them in retrospect and they involved like 12 people playing at a super high level and just deciding who broke the game in the best possible way with crazy fast in game mechanics. Street Fighter 2 tournaments have been around since I think the primordial soup days of humanity.

I think alot of people don't understand how solid the fighting system is. You can one shot many of the otherwise unkillable bad guys with the hidden blade being used as a counter in direct combat, but the timing is pretty tight. You can obviously disarm people if you fight with just your fists and counter (again, with tight timing). You can throw sand in peoples faces, use those little smoke grenades to stun people for easy kills, and you can also grab people putting Ezio behind them while holding his blade to their neck for another 1 shot kill if done right. The fighting system isn't necessarily worse off than Odyssey, but it's pretty obvious that Odyssey's parkour/climbing is superior by 100 fold. Having access to thousands of different weapons and a leveling system doesn't make the combat in Odyssey necessarily better than ACII's.

I study law, and the answer to your question is that there is an immeasurable amount of things that can be done. With our society in general, there are areas of which applicable laws (already on the books) can be applied, the legislative branch could get involved to create NEW laws, or other remedies that can happen as well. That's with everywhere in society, but with e-sports the situation is identical. There's RICO Act laws on the books (Organized Crime) in the United States that could potentially, and very likely, applicable to rigging tournaments that have a financial or seriously beneficial prize to the winner regardless of whether the prize money may be considered low by comparison to something like an $18 million dollar jackpot for first place. There's also conspiracy statutes, wire fraud, pre-meditated wire fraud, the FBI has an "illegal sports betting and gambling" division (not a task force) -- believe it or not that was not dissolved but EXPANDED from its original mission statements -- and the list goes on indefinitely because e-sports are in alot of countries potentially creating even stiffer penalties in other areas. On that same token, however, there could be no penalties AT ALL in certain countries, as they could be some of the most significant influencers in regards to an organized crime footprint in e-sports. With other countries not acting, then you have the US and Western countries that could create laws, or simply enforce laws already on the books. For the record, an FBI "task force" is temporary, but the expanded version of the "illegal sports betting and gambling" division is allegedly permanent. The people in the organization according to news reports had limited knowledge of what was happening and were (paraphrasing here): 'attending international and/or interpol conferences with experts to educate themselves with more information on the matter'. One thing that a person could probably do in this scenario outside of the above criminal stuff is just sue the team mates, possibly the coaches or the venue itself -- but that could get into contract law; however contract law can be trumped in alot of circumstances. Meaning you could have technically waived your rights to sue the venue, team management, coaches or team members in a situation where matches were determined to have been rigged. That would be a contract, but in many cases you can still sue as many scenarios would supersede the alleged "contract" -- which nobody ever reads anyway. If you can't sue, a victim could potentially look into whistleblower laws in the United States, or get a literary agent and/or book contract to expose the scam in a book with heavy promotions pushing the situation into the court of public opinion, which is basically where it already is but, unfortunately, with limited viewers.

I think the game still holds up to modern standards even with the new breed of Assassins Creed games with Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla. Its parkour simply is not as refined as the newer games, so you just have to get used to it if you want to play it again -- but I'm curious whether you played the original 2 or the HD remake (which is entirely superior)? The original is probably going to feel pretty terrible, but the HD remake is still good. Best way to play the game in all honesty is use the parkour system on a limited basis and at your preference, meaning: * If you want to collect things like the feathers, find the emblems, etcetera, then you will obviously have to climb a bit more. * You don't need to use the parkour system to do the missions in the game as if you were holding some military vantage point, so you can approach missions in a couple different ways usually. * It's best to use the parkour to unlock all of the vantage points to access more of the map. Use the parkour system only when necessary, upgrade your guy as much as possible, get the best weapons, and learn how to fight as best as possible. Great game. Lots of fun.

Oh, I was specifically referring, not necessarily to a legitimate "loss" in a competition -- but a pre-determined outcome in a tournament via match fixing where one (or more) member(s) of your team agree to throw the match at the recommendation of organized crime or an outside betting syndicate. The stress of pure competition, I think, can be healthy.

Emotional in the sense that it could make alot of dudes completely flip their lid; and my example was just with a third place slot. A thrown match for a first place slot worth $20 million dollars would obviously be far more outrageous and rage inducing.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for the Switch is hands down the best Mario Kart game ever made and it's followed up by Mario Kart 7 (3DS). Online competitive play is hard though.

Yeah some of those dudes in the shooters are military guys just using basic law enforcement tactics at some of the higher profile games. "Camping" isn't really a thing in the sense of it being bad; it's more or less "taking control of a strategically important area", and it can take patience and skill to get people off of some of those areas because the maps are just designed that way. But I do it all the time, you just need map knowledge. A video game is the same as real life in terms of something like a high point that militaries would use as an advantage. If you are on a high point, you have observation of a large swath of the battlefield and people occupying those positions can kind of pick shots at you at will -- and if they are teamed up with people, you are better off not even trying to take certain positions from them. Skills in those areas cover a large swath of areas such as pure patience, recognizing the skill level of opponents online, strategic isolation of your opponents in some cases, guerilla warfare tactics, knowing which spots to try and take, and knowing who to trade with and when. Another thing you need is a headset, so you can hear subtleties online. If you are going to try an exchange, perhaps at a critical section of the map which could change the direction of the game, with an elite opponent, it's good to know if he's got a spotter near him in an overt or stealth position. Sometimes if a person, or two people, are controlling a power weapon spawn area: You can catch one of the occupants getting bored with controlling that area and then going back out into the field -- so you can then challenge the solo guy for the area and power weapon, changing the game. But that comes with actual patience, and almost a very stealthy ability to surveil your opponents before making a move. Think about the opposite of "camping", which is endlessly free roaming the map and leaving yourself wide open to fire from a whole range of different firing angles.

There are leaderboards outside of the online leaderboards yes, and with that said, there are all types of the leaderboards. But the most accurate are the actual IN-GAME leaderboards, believe it or not, and regardless of the frauds you may encounter. One of the things developers do these days with online leaderboards (go look at it yourself) is they automatically upload the videos of the world record holders or #1 ranks in the world; good examples being some recent Pac-Man releases, as well as Mega Man 11. If you go into the leaderboards on Mega Man 11, you can watch the mandatory recorded footage of the #1 Rank in the World doing a boss run or something. I think most of the top players on the original Pac-Man (such as PS4 version) who are in top 5 basically just duplicated the old arcade world records where you get the same amount of points you did back in the day, and there's a cap on it because the game was not meant to be beaten. Pac-Man actually breaks down and one side of the screen actually turns into coding stuff as you approach; I wouldn't call it the "end" of the game -- but the limits on the game perhaps even the developers did not anticipate.

Not sure if I already said this but I was playing Geometry Wars 1 the other day and the #1 Rank in the World had like 500 quintillion points; which is simply impossible without cheating. Leaderboards like some of the old Gears of War games are easy. If someone has 800 BILLION POINTS -- and many of them do -- with something like 10 kills or even a measly 10,000 kills -- they are mathematically proven frauds because I understand how the math works. You physically cannot get 800 billion points with 10 thousand kills on a game where the legitimate top players have like 250 thousand kills (legit) in ranked and don't even come within light years of a single billion points. On Gears 2: 1) You get 175 points for a "gib" or a kill where you get the kill on your opponent without: a) Knocking them down. b) Or Without anyone hitting them with a single bullet, melee or doing any sort of damage. 2) You can get assist points which have a cap per kill. Meaning you can hit someone with alot of damage, then your team mate can get the kill, but you will still get some points. It's been a while, but the highest amount of assist points (per somebody elses kill) is something like 105 points or so. 3) You get like 10 points for stealing somebodies kill if the person you killed is knocked down. 4) You get 50 points for a revive on a team mater. 5) You get 50 points for a knockdown and if nobody else touched the person you knocked down with any form of damage and you get the kill, you will get an additional 110 points. 6) I think you got 100 points for surviving a round as the leader in Guardian/Ranked; which was extremely hard with random people. So people with a gazillion points will get something like 10 thousand points, which is actually peanuts, just to cover their tracks making it seem like they got some extraordinary amount of kills, but they didn't. All you do is go through the entire top 100 on and look at their knockdowns, revives, and kills then you can see in seconds if they are a fraud or not then just move on to next person. It's staggeringly easy to filter out the frauds online, although cheating has involved. I also stinged the fake players on gears and asked how they got so many points and they said they just hacked the point count to give them something like 500 million points per kill instead of 175 points. Very clear and obvious fraud. Some of the dudes won't admit their frauds and will argue for the rest of their lives that they placed top 10 all time on a top video gaming title for years arguing that they were a fantastic team mate that built up their stats on mostly assist points. All lies, and I've seen these people -- even after being perpetually caught on video cheating -- still pass it off as if they are real. On that Karl Jobst guys youtube channel you can see people who were VERY CLEARLY caught cheating without a doubt, and they still try to weasel their way back into the competitive scene with certain language basically gas lighting people (trying to play head games), lying, or saying what you saw wasn't real or wasn't them, blah blah. Pretty simple: Nobody in the history of the entire Gears of War franchise from Gears of War 1 to 5 has ever became a #1 rank in the world or a top player by building up their stats with 800 billions assist points. They hack the point count and its that simple.

No because they didn't exist in large part when I was in school, and online gaming didn't even really exist when I was in school outside of the latter part of school. People in the 2002 era, like me, are some of the first mainstream online gamers for consoles. PC gaming obviously had online gaming in popular fashion well before console gaming, but alot of the elites at that time didn't really want to scramble with hackers and frauds so they went in password protected rooms and servers -- which is something that people still do today even on consoles. There were one or two small very unknown consoles that had some online gaming components to them prior to the stuff going mainstream around 2002 or so, but nobody that I knew of really had that stuff as a kid so it was likely a TINY minority and the sales figures would likely show both low numbers and a failed console if you went back and looked at those. SOCOM US Navy Seals (the original) for the Playstation 2 was really the inception of mainstream online gaming for consoles, which came out on August 27th, 2002 -- which I personally got at launch day (and was pretty good at the game, actually). The Playstation 2 obviously had an un-filled slot on the back of the console which alot of people weren't even sure was ever going to be utilized, but it was, and the first time to get the "network adapter" -- which brought SOCOM online -- was with the first SOCOM game in 2002. Once the network adapter came out for PS2, obviously there were a bunch of additional titles that offered online multiplayer. Shortly after the PS2 launched its online gaming component, Xbox Live itself was launched on November 15th, 2002 -- and here we are today with Playstation and Xbox having massive online play, but 2002 is where it started.

There's alot that goes on in the whole thing. But I will say that the better you are does not indicate that you will earn more. One of the toughest competitive fields out there is fighting games -- but also speed running. Speed runners often develop some of the best skills in gaming and don't earn a single penny; they just do it for fun. There's tournaments and/or "demonstrations" (the latter word of which is more accurate) for speed running and I'm pretty sure money involved in that goes to charity.

I have never played in a tournament where a prize pool is $40 million dollars, so I don't have personal experience with that issue, but I BELIEVE that the $40 million dollars is the pool of prizes that can be won based on who places in what particular position at the end of the tournament; meaning first place could take home X amount of dollars, second place would take home X amount of dollars, and that would all be coming from the same prize pool -- meaning the first place winner would not win a total of $40 million dollars... But so far as I understand: The team who places first in a tournament of something like $40 million dollars is going to win a whopping amount of money (multi-million dollar jackpot) for placing first. I think a team won $18 million at one point. But actually, $40 million dollars was the largest prize pool in e-sports history last year. The largest prize pool ever has updated this year, which is for the game Dota 2, with a prize pool of $47.73 million dollars. Based on some of my descriptions in other threads involving possible organized crime and fraud in e-sports, as well as simply incompetent team mates, I don't think I would have a personal interest in engaging in tournaments of that caliber. I've pointed out in other threads that the FBI investigated Counter Strike for match fixing in the North American league and it was PROVEN that there was match fixing, with some of the players on a team agreeing in written format to throw matches. Think about playing in a prize pool of $47 million dollars and you have a shot at even taking third in the tournament, but your team mates have been paid off by some crime syndicate (in theory) to throw the match without your knowledge -- making you miss out on something like a personal $8 million dollars.

I was saying this in other E-Sports topics, but financial rewards for tournaments can range from anywhere to a few hundred dollars to a prize pool of $40 million dollars. UFC fighters make alot less than people think (it's nothing like boxing); and many people don't train to be the best exclusively for the money. I have, without a doubt, been the best at some games and did not earn a single penny. Not bragging; I'm just saying that the treasure of being the best player on the planet (at a given game) is actually quite invaluable. People that train around 8-10 hours daily (not necessarily 7 days a week) are in just about every genre. It's all very sporadic and everybody is different, kind of like weight lifting. Some people can lift real hard like 3 or 4 times a week and make gains, where others prefer 5 days a week literally every week. Alot of people prefer 6 and some prefer training every day. It also depends on if you're still trying to improve, because really great players or athletes can get to a certain threshhold where they only have to train to outrageously hard levels for a certain time, then just keep their skills or body in a maintenance phase where they can slow things back down or speed things back up, if they are (for example) preparing for a tournament in e-sports, or preparing for a World Title shot in the UFC against a very skilled opponent.

Virtually never; no.

Many e-sports players do, in fact, train throughout an entire day. But there has to some sort of precautions to prevent mental burnout. In reference to the last post in thread: I've known alot of players that practice for longer than 6 hours. Some of them stream it.

Yes, I agree, and that's what I was intending to point out above. There's so many "team" shifting, or I'm guessing what is actually re-branding in some cases, that "trades" -- like in pro-football -- would be unnecessary. I've seen fighting game people having been on well over 6 to 10 teams in just a matter of years.

Any game I've ever played online with some sort of rankings seems to have some sort of competitive field; but that doesn't mean it involves tournaments. If you were good at it, you can just go for the #1 Rank in the World on it, which is harder than winning tournaments most of the time.

I can get in to some of it, but I can't cover everything I've fished out because it could be considered advertising cheats when in fact I don't cheat at all. It could also give people ideas they've never thought of, because the corruption and fraud is pretty bad. There are some books written on how pro (physical) sports are rigged, and the author of one of those books did indeed write about e-sports involving fraud in his latest book.

I would just get a competitive title and play online at first.

Yeah they all talk smack; it's part of the game. Ever watch pro-Hockey? That's all they do is fight and talk smack. If the mics were hot in pro-football, you would hear the smack talk constantly. It's not different with e-sports or online gaming. There's females watching the stuff, and some of the dudes literally want to discredit you, ruin your life, and embarrass you for the rest of your life on the internet. That's how ruthless the sports industry is and just how it works. I have been blessed to get the better end of the deal and rack up 56 competitive gaming #1 ranks and a bunch of world records, so I'm satisfied, but still going for more. That's what I said in the other topic: Alot of the WORLD CLASS level stuff, not just casual or mid-tier e-sports or physical athletics, is psychology, mind games and head games. The head games destroy some people, or kind of how a Triple H, Brock Lesnar or a top WWE/Pro Wrestler walks out to the ring as a heel in the arena with all the fans booing and smack talk; it literally just rolls off their back. And that's not a saying, it really does just mean nothing to them. Their mentality is entirely different in the WWE. They adore their fans, and they are there, as well as paid, to entertain the people that they appreciate. So they are obviously very large and tough men (that often know how to fight or grapple for real), who happen to be very convincing actors. So they just act like a bad guy and understand that they are working up the crowd intentionally. E-Sports isn't identical to that metaphor, but you can have the same level of very nasty hatred, even when you're a great person. Sometimes smack talk is actually a legitimate technique that can be used to break down your opponent mentally as you're engaging them, which gets them to second guess themselves, but usually while you're beating them. In tournaments, it is often not allowed however.

It just comes down to fun at first. If you play a competitive title for just a couple hours a day and are having fun, that can lead to getting good, then ultimately playing in tournaments for money.

There's a ton of fraud. It has been endless based on what I've seen.

There's only a handful of people that get promoted to that level, and let's just say that those people are generally aligned with a certain type of ideological thinking, and I'll leave it there. It's not related to skill entirely. Some skilled people get the promotions, other highly talented people the system tries to squash. In the next 5 to 10 years, the e-sports industry will either be one of the largest international crime syndicates on the planet, or it will shut down in major areas, or it will downsize back to the way it was 10 to 20 years ago, or it will boom.

So the methods for cheating and exploiting a video game are endless, like I said in another topic, but they are not un-beatable by any stretch of the imagination. This may sound extreme: But arrests just need to be made. If people are going into a tournament involving thousands or millions of dollars -- heck, even over something like $500 dollars in some jurisdictions is considered grand theft -- and rigging the tournament; that's actually pre-meditated wire fraud which could also involve some conspiracy crimes if 2 or more people are involved. The idea of leaderboards not being accurate is more of a myth these days, because developers have tightened up on them, but if you have any questions on any game; you're welcome to ask. Understanding how the leaderboards work can take extensive knowledge of the game, but keep in mind these things: 1) Frauds can be easy to identify, therefore you would just ignore them if they take over something like the top 5; meaning the 6th guy would be the legit number 1 rank. The several top people on the leaderboards (something like top 6) on a game called Geometry Wars had something like 500 quintillion plus points; which is hacking and fake stats. Not sure why grown men want to see their name at the top of a leaderboard holding a phony world record; but to each their own. 2) There's also different gameplay modes. Some may be hacked; others are not. 3) Many games have All time, weekly, monthly or even daily leaderboards. The smaller leaderboards can be tougher to clutch on a highly competitive title, are generally UNHACKED, and often hold more value if the all time leaderboards are hacked. 4) Stat tracking on a piece of paper outside of the game is unnecessary because the game does it for you, and if you are playing without cheating, the tracking is in fact going to be accurate. If you know of a case where this is not so, you're welcome to bring it to my attention as I'd be interested. But the deal is just because someone else is cheating doesn't mean that stats are registering improperly for legit people. The issue is just that the cheaters stats may outweigh legit people. Sometimes people will spend years cheating and you can still overtake their spot, which is satisfying.