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51137 Posts
Obviously I put up this discussion in relation to this: http://www.hltv.org/news/14099-titan-leave-gaming-house
We know from a Korean background they are a great success, but what about from an FPS standpoint? Is it necessary to have players live and breathe CS in order to maximize results and success or is the boot camp every now and then good enough to be the best?
Curious of what people think on this subject.
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Players practice more when they're in team houses, so there's that, regardless of the game. Some players (like f0rest) don't practice as much as they should.
In theory proximity doesn't matter when it comes to discussing tactics, but it seems to be really helpful in SC2 so that might also help in cs.
They also get practice playing in the sort of setup that they'll have in the tournament - 5 players on a table side by side, with limited elbow space, tilted keyboards, IGL seated in the middle looking at teammates' screens, etc.
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I am speaking based on my intuition, but while I think it's great to have all the players in one place for practice, I am less certain whether living and working in one physical location is the best model. Different people have different personalities, and generally I'd say it's better to give the players more private living space (perhaps more than just a bedroom), and have them come to work (i.e. practice) at a dedicated facility at set hours of the day (i.e. much like how most people go to work every day). This way everyone follows a strict practice schedule, while at the same time the potential for interpersonal conflicts is somewhat attenuated.
Of course, if a team is really lucky and all the players have non-clashing personalities, a gaming house may work out, but overall I don't think it's worth the risk.
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It had disastrous results for C9 atleast. They bootcamped for one month and they completely burned themselves on counterstrike and in the end they still had not progressed.
I think it works best in the way NiP do it (used to do it? I remember the serie on youtube they had about the gaming house, don't know if they still do that), where they go to the gaming house from time to time to bootcamp, but take time to rest at home too. You can't risk being burned out on csgo, as effective and focused training is much better than just "pugging" with your team.
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I think that the benefit is not as big since one huge part of an RTS gaming house is the possibilty to have good opponents to discuss your play with. It's not like fnatic and NiP will sit down and assess each others plays. TY and Flash most certainly will though, since they're on the same team. The largest benefit in training in any game is the possibility to train with opponents that are as good or better then yourself, this makes a gaming house a good idea in an 1vs1 RTS as you then have a close and good connection with alot of skilled players. The opponent in CS:GO would not be in the same house, probably not as eager to share information and as such you wouldn't get the same benefit. So the difference is probably in the way the leagues work and beacuse it's a team based game.
Looking at MOBA's alot of Korean LoL/Dota2 teams are part of gaming houses, but bear in mind that up untill now they've usually had many teams under the same roof (i.e Samsung Blue/White, CJ Entus Frost/Blaze, and so on) which would not be the case in CS:GO. The Korean teams in the MOBA-games also play in a very different teamleague setup then do the western FPS-teams.
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I think the biggest benefit of team houses is that it forces all the members of a team to adhere same schedule including practice times etc. which helps at using your time more efficiently to get better. However, if the players have high self-discipline and can follow a schedule with same regularity from their own homes, then the benefits of living in a team house aren't that major anymore.
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Canada4481 Posts
On January 30 2015 11:55 Roggay wrote: It had disastrous results for C9 atleast. They bootcamped for one month and they completely burned themselves on counterstrike and in the end they still had not progressed.
I think it works best in the way NiP do it (used to do it? I remember the serie on youtube they had about the gaming house, don't know if they still do that), where they go to the gaming house from time to time to bootcamp, but take time to rest at home too. You can't risk being burned out on csgo, as effective and focused training is much better than just "pugging" with your team. They have more than just a house now. It's a mansion and looks huuuuuge!
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With a coach and a manager ready to whip them into regimented practice and legitimately work hard? Absolutely.
5 players in a mansion treating it like a frat-house A-la EG? Nope.
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It's similar to programmers: It's not necessary anymore to physically go to work and sit in an office for 8 hours a day to do the work. It's still better (in most cases).
I just think that a lot of teams in team oriented games like CS:GO, LoL and DotA make one mistake when doing teamhouses: They don't have anyone to play against apart from occasional scrims, so most of it is laddering against pubs.
When I did training with my Planetside 2 team, we didn't learn much playing against randoms, but we learned a lot when splitting in half and trying out stuff, e.g. "What if we enter the building from this angle? What if we come from the other side? What if we try it with this composition?". For games with fixed number of players, you need to have the full number on both sides to effectively try out many variants and most teams don't have 5 players that can appear on a whim and try things with you, you can only do maybe 2v3 or 3v3 if you have a reserve around and while it does give you a feeling for stuff, it isn't really realistic enough for professional play. If you have 10 players in a team house and they're willing to grab the other 5 players whenever they see an opportunity and spend hours experimenting and trying variants rather than ladder and stomp pubs, training effectiveness will skyrocket. Grabbing those 5 other players is easiest when you sit right next to them. The availability of training partners is what makes SC2 team houses so effective (if that opportunity is used).
To come back to the above example: If I sit at work 8 hours and never talk to my colleagues, yeah, I might as well sit at home 8 hours and work from there. It's still easier to quickly grab a coworker and ask him about some part of the code I'm unfamiliar with or that I'm working on and that might need improvement if I'm sitting close to my coworkers, because going through messenger or email is a roadblock that gets removed by proximity.
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It has so far been impossible to have the ultimate success of being the worlds best team in CS:GO while living in a gaming house. I say this based on the history of teams who have tried it, but they all failed and gave up on it. Those coming from League, Starcraft and maybe even Dota will have a hard time understanding this, but it has been proven throughout CS's long history.
Teams who have tried gaming houses in CS:GO but ultimately gave up on living there long term include NiP and pretty much every French team ever. Instead, what you should do is have a house where you can go to bootcamp for a few days before a big tournament. But even that might not be for the better. I know that Fnatic in particular don't like bootcamping at all and hardly ever do it.
But why does it work in other games but not in CS? Probably a whole range of factors, but the most important one is probably players having to leave their social life behind to live in a house far away from where their friends and girlfriends are. Not being able to have any privacy, not being able to have sex or masturbate without your friends around... In general, not being able to live a regular life outside of CS.
There's so many reasons why gaming houses are a bad idea and only really work if your group of players are either young boys and not grown men, or if they come from a culture where results and practice is valued higher than happiness and comfort.
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A gaming house without a solid practice regime is of no use. Coaches are of utmost importance in practice houses and regular schedules as well as teams striving for improvement rather than spamming games for 6-8 hours without much improvement.
There are so many examples of teams in the CS GO scene that perform well even without living in a gaming house 24x7 (VP , Fnatic , NIP , LDLC). Hence , a gaming house may help to improve a team tremendously but it isn't necessary.
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Having spent time in the ROOT house...
It's helpful. You've got easy access to people you can talk to and you're more motivated to train, not just because it's good to have other people around also practising but you don't want to appear weak and let them see you play Dark souls all the time or whatever. It's a fine place to be.
But ideally you have strict discipline as well as team building and practice regimes brought upon by coaches and senior players who command authority and respect from the players there and that just does not happen outside of Korea. The Foreign E-sports scene just doesn't have the sponsorships necessary for that to become a normal thing so expect years more of really informal team housing to be the norm.
I should probably add that I've never experienced the Korean Team house environment and if I were given an opportunity to I would certainly take it out of curiosity if nothing else. It's worth pointing out that not everyone benefits from a teamhouse. Someone like Petraeus or Naniwa is dedicated enough to put in the long hours by himself without external pressure. And there's loads of players who have done reasonably well after having been part of one before, like stardust, hyun, polt, bomber, violet, taeja, nestea (when he was good), MC to name a few.
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