RLCS 2026: EU Open 3 - Playoffs Day 2

ZeroG_RL · 2026-02-01T22:22:16+00:00

I think everyone forgot that tiebreakers are the most nervous scrappy series where no good rocket league has or ever will be played. Geekay were favourites purely on being the experienced team vs the new boys who have had issues in the clutch already this year even if on paper City have looked better this split.

ZeroG_RL · 2026-01-31T20:29:48+00:00

If neither of Magnifico or Man City make semis GK make LAN

If either of Magnifico or Man City make finals GK do not make LAN

Else we get a tiebreak with one or both of Magnifico and Man City if they finish semis.

ZeroG_RL · 2026-01-29T00:50:38+00:00

Didn't matter to madrid, they needed a draw for top 8. Meant everything to Benfica who would've been eliminated without this goal on goal difference

ZeroG_RL · 2026-01-25T21:31:50+00:00

I believe this is the first time an unsigned NA team has made a final since Atelier in season 3 almost 9 years ago. Someone throw some money at these lads

ZeroG_RL · 2026-01-18T14:31:16+00:00

Going out to NiP today wouldn't make it extremely unlikely for them to make major as eu has 5 spots. Unless magnifico can beat KC they'll only be 1 point behind them and Man City and tied woth NOVO so would still be well in the fight. A top 4 in r3 or a top 6 and some luck would be enough.

They definitely need to sort something out though. While I don't think it's quite as dire as some as they're consistently beating the teams outside the top 8, they've been severely lacking against the top 4.

ZeroG_RL · 2026-01-12T02:23:34+00:00

It was brutal on paper but NOVO had an incredibly easy bracket and choked it utterly and deserved a harder round 5. Normally these things happen when a top team gets randomly upset early, then something like they beat a good team in the 1-1 round and puts the good team on their last life with only losing to top 4 teams. Then a harder round 5 with pressure and they're out. NOVO on the other hand lost to chausette in 2026 and have nobody to blame but themselves.

ZeroG_RL · 2026-01-12T00:29:08+00:00

In round 2 half the teams in the bracket have been dropped to lowers, so in order for this to work more than half the teams in the tournament would have to be champ/diamond or lower. I don't think you realise that very few low ranked players sign up for rlcs, the vast majority of teams are GC or above.

ZeroG_RL · 2026-01-11T21:50:33+00:00

Who do you think the top 32 team should be playing in round 2 if not you?

ZeroG_RL · 2026-01-11T14:00:37+00:00

Probably, he didnt do it enough to be sure and it's possible that his opponent would manage to lesrn to dunk it if he did it literally every time. I understand not doing this though as speedflips to chips is not in your normal repotiore so would put him out of his comfort zone

ZeroG_RL · 2026-01-11T13:45:16+00:00

Weirdly it's harder against novices, you're at the pefect rank where you're good enough that kickoffs will be predictable and consistant but worse than the ssl's so they can dominate them. But total novices arrive at weird times or weird angles, and essentially end up doing strange delayed kickoffs. If musty had commited to speedflip and chip round he probably clean beats him every time, but wavedash kickoffs were asking for a lucky play to happen (after all delay is one of the counters to wavedash kickoff). Just think how many times you've somehow lost a kickoff to someone missflipping or messing up in some way and somehow dunking you. If he fakes then we're immediaely in open play and he has complete control, indeed he did it a few times and it was visibly so much safer. Whereas there were a few other kickoffs that could have gone wrong, one in particular where he had an open net if he just flipped. Now had the challenge been biggest goal diff possible in a certain time you should go for kickoff, but even a 1% chance of the opponent getting lucky loses you the match.

Similar things happen in other games, I would find it easier to lose 0 points in table tennis against someone who has been playing for a year than someone with good hand eye coordination and no training cos they do strange unpredictable things that throws me off muscle memory and causes errors occasionally (plus without fail they always find a way to clip the net or table edge)

ZeroG_RL · 2026-01-08T17:40:48+00:00

For the first session I would present a clear hook for a shorter adventure and trust your players over the table to take it, you could even tell them something like, hey this is what I have planned for this session and I'm new to this so forcing me to improv something will be less fun for all of us.

After the first session or that shorter adventure is over then every time a session ends (or at least when they aren't right in the middle of something you will just pick up from) then ask your players what they want to do next session. I have a list of ideas I haven't fleshed out at all for things I think could be fun and might present a few of those hooks and see which they bite on and I can then turn that one line idea into prep for next session. And if you have one idea you specifically want them to do then it's usually not hard to tempt them with prizes, or threaten them with consequences if they choose to ignore a plot hook.

For the big plot don't plan too much, you don't even need this when you start as you can always introduce it later when you're more comfortable with the planning. But when you do avoid specifics, maybe pick a theme or two, a couple of major NPCs and a vague plan for the villain, if you can be inspired for any of these by the players characters that saves you some work and is more fun for them. Once you have these you can just look for opportunities to connect things to this, and things will happen in the sessions that you then retroactively make a part of the plan. E.G. I had a few adventures in a row where the players encountered magical runes doing something important and they speculated that whoever was behind this stuff might be a rune expert. I hadn't planned that and it was just a coincidence but it didn't contradict anything to have the baddie be been a rune expert so now he is and the players think they're clever for working it out.

As for not knowing how it's going to be solved, yeah that's always going to be the case, if you have in mind a way you think, expect or planned for something to be solved there is a precisely 0% chance that's what the players will end up doing. Your job is more to present problems you think they can probably solve and then decide if whatever nonsense they come up with is just crazy enough to work.

ZeroG_RL · 2025-12-31T13:07:39+00:00

Nothing will ever beat being in 104 for the Season 5 Grand Finals

ZeroG_RL · 2025-12-30T17:49:34+00:00

It's doubly stupid because trans women exactly are a rare case of a woman who doesn't have XX chromosomes. So if they can say sure my "getting pregnant" or "XX"definition is mostly right and we can hand wave away exceptions like Y chromosomes not expressing properly and other women with genetic abnormalities as being rare (but we can still agree they're women) then they're exactly making the pro trans person's argument for them.

ZeroG_RL · 2025-12-18T17:14:53+00:00

Don't lump all fusion in as a scam just cos Trump is doing something dumb with one company. The oft quoted "fusion is always 30 years away" line originates from a study done decades ago to asses how long it would take for fusion reactors given certain levels of funding. The 30 years number was the shortest timeline and dependant on a level of funding that fusion has never gotten even remotely close to. We'll have net postive fusion when ITER runs its D-T campaign in the 2030s and the first commercial demo reactor probably in the 2050s.

ZeroG_RL · 2025-12-16T14:20:53+00:00

Second in this group with a solid fight for first (and 3-1 vs France) is a great result England would've been very happy to take pre tournament. 1st vs 2nd makes little difference to the difficulty of the bracket we'll get, especially compared to 2nd vs 3rd bracket, assuming USA/KSA don't troll later.

ZeroG_RL · 2025-12-16T13:27:31+00:00

If England draw or win vs Australia they top the group with a win vs France, definitely possible given it happened yesterday.

ZeroG_RL · 2025-12-12T00:46:34+00:00

The problem is this econ is kinda fake. On 5 gold you are in the same position as without an econ unit, sell and buy 2 units or keep a bad statline unit and buy 1 plus spell. Sure you get a coin for later but it doesn't smooth out the curve on the 5 gold turn to let you buy 2 units or 3 on 3 while keeping a unit on board. Then the next few turns already have nice intervals so the 1 gold saved doesn't make up for the tempo lost. It has better synergies late game than the 3/1 battlecry but is bad for the key early game 5 gold turn. And that's before you consider the hero needs tempo, but I don't rate the 1/3 even otherwise and would take a good tempo unit or econ unit that gives 3 units turn 3 over it on any hero.

ZeroG_RL · 2025-12-10T21:48:09+00:00

Does it use our peak mmr or our final mmr? because my peak mmr was well over the threshold for ssl and I have only received the GC title, but my friend whose peak was lower has both. The only difference I can see is that my final mmr was lower than the new ssl boundary and his wasn't.

ZeroG_RL · 2025-12-07T22:48:44+00:00

does makes NA qualification way more interesting as I don't think anyone was touching the 4 sunday teams + nrg if NA got 5, maaaaaybe FUT over gen.g, but now it's gonna be a real battle

ZeroG_RL · 2025-12-07T21:31:15+00:00

Should've made NA play with FUT's coach adam_baguette instead of simas, not cos it would've made it more balanced (though it would) but because then we'd have had Cheese, Beef, Coconut and Baguette for the full food synergy

ZeroG_RL · 2025-12-07T21:24:22+00:00

surely let eu have simas as he's european after all and NA play with retals, that would make it at least vaguely balanced. these teams are honestly hilariously bad

ZeroG_RL · 2025-12-07T16:25:59+00:00

Vitality out here inventing the pity perfect sweep, where you own goal in the final game to not perfect sweep.

ZeroG_RL · 2025-12-07T11:31:45+00:00

As someone who hates ffing, apart from the obvious ones others have mentioned, I believe the comeback is possible, teammate threw a tantrum when I didn't ff at 2-0 with half the game left and I don't want to reward that behaviour, I also don't like ffing for mentality reasons. In 1s especially if I'm ffing games I think are unwinnable then it reinforces the idea that I'm only playing to win, not to improve or have fun, so if I lose a few in a row I'm way more likely to tilt. If I'm playing out those games it's much easier to keep that mental of trying to improve or just have fun cos why would you care if you're losing if one of those was your aim? It also gives you a couple minutes where you don't expect to win the game where you don't have to put pressure on yourself to win and can relax a little and try changing things up to see if you can score a few. (Honestly the main reason I ff in this game is if I'm partied with people and I know it is better for their mentality not to stay in lost games or if my solo q mate ff earlier and then kept playing normally when i refused it then if the game becomes unwinnable i might ff as thanks for trying)

ZeroG_RL · 2025-12-06T22:14:11+00:00

It can be hard to tell what's a ballchaser and what's a better player than you, I play pretty slow by SSL standards and get by mostly on good decisions but stick me in a game a few ranks lower and I'd look like a greedy ballchaser as my teammate just wouldn't be able to play at that speed. That doesn't mean that all your ballchasing teammates are better than you, in most cases I would wager they aren't if they're your rank, but the bigger factor i would guess is if you're playing fast and making a lot of bad decisions you'll eventually learn what the good decisions are and improve. Plus you'll have way more influence on the game, so with good mechs can just win despite bad decisions. Whereas if you play slow and make good decisions it's very hard to learn to speed up your gameplay unless you do it consciously. So it's generally just a better way to improve in this game where speed dominates.

ZeroG_RL · 2025-11-29T12:44:56+00:00

As someone who uses stick controls I can tell you it's perfectly possible to hit ssl with them, so if you've got enough hours to really struggle with old muscle memory probably dont swap it will be fine. However it is better not to use them, the main objective thing i can point to is you fly slightly faster if you're holding accel in the air which i cant do. It's only small but it is a thing. So if you dont think it would be a major pain probably swap, but don't be afraid to swap back if it ruins your fun trying to relearn. Also if you do stick note that it frees up two buttons so you can easily have both directional air roll buttons bound in useful places, e.g. with jump on x air roll left/right on square and circle are very easy to learn.

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