Hidden Cup V

 

About three and a half years ago, I wrote about the Twitch/YouTube streamer T90Official who covers all things Age of Empires II. Since finding his channel and then many others, I have been watching Age of Empires II content almost daily. There are so many great personalities who have built wonderful online communities in their chats on whatever platform they have been on over the years. While there are tens of thousands of players, the competitive scene is fairly small when it comes to the S-Tier tournaments. This means you know most, if not all, of the players competing. You've seen their gameplay, you know their preferences when it comes to civilization and map picks, and you could probably identify most of them if you watched a game without their name being on the screen. Well, that's what you'd think, but T90 has been running a tournament that has proven even the experts of the game may not know the players as well as they think they do. And that is the whole premise of the Hidden Cup tournaments.

The fifth iteration of Hidden Cup just started this week and runs daily through Sunday, March 3rd. In this tournament, the 16 players that were either invited or fought their way through the qualifiers compete in a single elimination tournament. The hook is that the commentators, the audience, and the top 16 competitors don't know the real identity of the players in each match. Each player is assigned a hero from the game's campaigns and then there is a random draw for seeding. This means the favorites to win the tournament could possibly compete in the first round. *Spoilers* I think we may have already seen a top 4 pairing in one of the first three days of round one.

Half of the fun of this tournament is trying to guess who each of the competitors are. With every insane quick-wall or foolish castle placement that goes unfinished, chat erupts with specific player names. Obviously the same player can't be playing in multiple first round matches, so most guesses are incorrect. To give us all some help, T90 compiled data about preferred player colors, unit formation percentages, and even how they type "gg" at the end of a game. Even with the incredible detail he has gone through this time around, it hasn't helped much so far. There have been a couple of heroes who have almost certainly been identified because of very specific quirks they have that nobody else does. But for the rest, it's been so hard because the game has become so optimized that many players have very, very similar play styles.

If you're an Age of Empires II fan, you're probably already aware of this series. But if you're a person who used to play the game 25 years ago when it came out or started playing as newer versions have come out over the years, this is certainly some of the most entertaining AoE content that I've ever seen. Hell, even if you've never played or watched the game before, if you like RTS (real time strategy) games or esports in general, tune into T90Official's channel this week and check it out. You won't be disappointed.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cribbage with Grandpas

Image
Cribbage with Grandpas is a Cribbage app you can play on mobile devices. There are plenty of free cribbage apps out there, but I like this implementation a lot more. It's available on both  Android  and  Apple  for just a few dollars and gives you the ability to make custom Grandpa avatars to play against. Besides just the way your grandfather looks, you can also choose personality traits, the setting in which you play, and the snack that he has sitting near him. He'll tell jokes and make comments throughout the game, which makes it just that much more immersive.  Is it necessary to pay to have these things? Absolutely not. Does it add a lot to the experience? Absolutely.  As with other Cribbage apps, there are different difficulty levels so even if you've never played before you can get better and still have a challenge. One thing I really like is that you have to score your cards yourself by selecting them. If you happen to miss something, Grandpa will let you know that
Read more

Social Media Break

Image
I'm struggling right now. I'm searching for direction, trying figure out what I want to do in my life. I'm working on being a better person and want to get more fulfillment out of the work that I do. Instead of focusing and creating a plan, I spend way too much time on social media. It's easy to get lost in the lives of others, hilarious memes, constant "breaking news" updates, and the seemingly non-stop political coverage that is this time period's blood sport. So for at least the month of February, I'll be taking a break from Twitter and Facebook (they're the only platforms I use). I've already deleted the apps off of my phone in an effort to help break the chains, so to speak. The hope is that I better use the time that I used to spend just mindlessly scanning through those feeds. Other than using that time towards working out whatever it is that I'm going through right now, there are a bunch of other things that will easily fill
Read more

Changing Jobs . . . Again

Image
If it feels like I just wrote a post about changing jobs, this isn't a Groundhog Day situation because I did in October  of 2022. I'm changing jobs for the second time in less than a year, and while that kind of frowned upon in the professional world, it's an incredible opportunity for me. I've spent the past 10 months with the  Emergency Medical Services and Preparedness Section  as a Management Analyst III doing fiscal work and special projects in Smyrna. My tenure with that office will end just two days shy of 11 months. Staying there at least a year would have been optimal, well not leaving at all would have been the best case scenario, but I couldn't pass up applying for my new position. There were a lot of factors that went into the decision to even apply and even more that had to be considered before accepting if it got offered to me. My time in my current section has been an absolute whirlwind and as I like to put it "a crash course in fiscal and grant
Read more