Team MolotoX are the Left 4 Dead champions of last Sunday’s Cyber Games Festival. They defeated Wallhackers (wH.) in the finals with a combined score of 2222 (MolotoX) to 1163 (wH.).
Team Vertex took the third-place spot by defeating Pandemonium (PdM) in the third-place playoff match, with a combined score of 2268 (Vertex) to 1752 (PdM).
“It was the most exciting competition to be honest,” said Ian “mGMUSE” Ang, a team member of MolotoX. “But the rules were retarded.”
Many of the participating teams shared mGMUSE‘s displeasure with the unusual rules implemented by the organisers for the Left 4 Dead competition. Teams had a 40-minute time limit to play out their matches.
Also, rather than playing the Versus campaign maps in sequence, the matches were played using a “mapcycle” sequence in which both teams could select a maximum of three maps from any of the Versus campaigns that they wished to play.
The combined scores taken from all the maps played in the mapcycle would then be used to determine the winner.
In practice, however, most of the matches would end at the second map of the mapcycle because there was simply insufficient time to play out the third map without exceeding the time limit.
The semi-final match between Pandemonium and MolotoX ran into this problem. The game had to be stopped while Pandemonium were still in the process of completing the finale on No Mercy 5.
Both teams had played Blood Harvest 1 and Blood Harvest 5 for the first two maps of their mapcycle, with MolotoX taking a commanding 1500 point lead.
Had Pandemonium managed to survive the No Mercy 5 finale with all four survivors escaping, and somehow managed to incapacitate all of MolotoX’s survivors when it was Pandemonium’s turn to play as the Infected, they would have earned enough points to cancel out MolotoX’s advantage and take the lead.
“Having a time limit is really unfair because it will affect the way teams normally play,” said Muhammad “Duck” Khairun, team leader of Pandemonium. “Playing as the Survivors is hard enough already. Now we have to worry about the time limit also.”
The other semi-final match between Vertex and Wallhackers was marred by a dispute that occured during the first map, Death Toll 5.
While playing as the Survivors, all four members of Wallhackers had successfully managed to escape on the rescue vehicle when it arrived. However, during the ending movie cutscene, one of the Wallhackers, eCon, was mysteriously incapacitated for no reason, possibly due to a game-related bug.
This affected their score multiplier (x3 for three survivors escaped, instead of x4 for four survivors escaped), and resulted in a 1371 score for Wallhackers when it should have been a 2168 score.
Vertex could only score 200 points on the same Death Toll 5 map, as their Survivors were completely wiped out by Wallhackers’ Infected.
For the second map in the mapcycle, No Mercy 5, Vertex played a near-perfect round as the Survivors with all four members escaping on the rescue vehicle. They each had plenty of health and were still carrying their medpacks. The score for Vertex on No Mercy 5 was 2280.
Wallhackers suffered an early setback during their turn as Survivors when one of their members, Reaper’s Scythe, was the victim of an instant-death Smoker pull on the No Mercy 5 roof. The remaining three Survivors still managed to survive the finale and summon the rescue vehicle, but could only score 764 points as one of their members was incapacitated at the rescue vehicle at the last moment.
It turned out that the bug that occured to Wallhackers earlier on Death Toll 5 would become a decisive factor in determining the winner.
The Death Toll 5 score was calculated incorrectly due to a gameplay bug, but the marshalls could not decide whether to accept the 1371 score (x3 multiplier) or the 2168 score (x4 multiplier).
Accepting the 1371 score on Death Toll 5 meant that Vertex would be the winners of the semi-final match. Accepting the 2168 score meant that Wallhackers would emerge as the winners instead.
Glen “Maddcap” Seetoh, the team leader of Wallhackers, said that the inexperience of the game marshalls and their lack of knowledge about the game was what lead to their inability in settling the dispute of the Death Toll 5 scores.
“I really can’t blame them though,” Maddcap said. “They are just NUS students who volunteered to be marshallers for the competition.”
“They were only interested in the final scores, and didn’t bother about what actually happened during gameplay.”
After a 30 minute delay, the chief marshal decided to settle the match with a tiebreaker game on Blood Harvest 1. The scores on Blood Harvest 1 were final; they were not cumulative with the previous scores on the Death Toll 5 and No Mercy 5 maps.
The tiebreaker match ended with the score of 1052 (Wallhackers) to 90 (Vertex). Wallhackers had successfully managed to wipeout Vertex’s Survivors after one of the Vertex players made a critical mistake by falling over one of the ledges at the fenced area near the Saferoom of Blood Harvest 1.
Feedback has been submitted about the unusual rules for the L4D competition at the Cyber Games Festival. The Director of the Cyber Games Festival has acknowledged the feedback, and apologised for “any unhappiness caused due to flaws in the rules”.
Update: corrected some inaccuracies in the match report. It was Reaper’s Scythe, not Darnoez who was incapacitated by the instant-death Smoker pull at No Mercy 5. Also, mGMUSE is not the team leader of MolotoX. Changed the wording in paragraph 3 to reflect that.
Update 2: corrected the No Mercy 5 report again. Only one Wallhacker was incapacitated at the rescue vehicle, not two.
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