This is graal and I know it's almost impossible for players to give an honest opinion without letting their bias get in the way. There's nothing wrong with your opinion being bias, but make it fun and try to add a couple matches from previous GST's that would back up your opinion. I've seen a couple people say that MIX is competetive OR more competitive than idevice, but I can only think of Alumni, GTEAM, and Blackout being real contenders. No need to get all tryhard about it and make it a pointless argument, but as a fan of good matches I would like to see what people consider competitive matches.

Ill start with this one Nessa vs 5pa4. "slowdown guys"

The poll is obviously going to be bias, but what the heck.  

I'm mixed but will admit iDevice is way more competitive. Mixed=Probably about 4/5 decent teams with 1 team far superior to the rest.

iDevice=Has much great teams with similar skill level that makes for some great and entertaining spars.  

The way I see it is that iDevice has more teams that have a shot at winning each time, around 5 per time estimate. However, the top tier teams that are in mixed, even though there are less of them, are much better. Just going to list guild names to help justify this.

iDevice Top Contenders

VIS
Rebellious
Predation
CRZ
Silver
DOT

Any of those teams could have taken the win in my opinion, possibly more, they just had to play better in game. Mixed, by comparison..

Alumni
Blackout
Apostles
SL (maybe, and this spot would have gone to GTEAM in past seasons, before their team got worse)

So Mixed has less teams that have a shot at the belt based on this. However, if I could take Apostles mixed, for example, and put it in the iDevice tournament, I have full confidence they'd win it, or take 2nd at the very least. Same with any of the other mixed teams listed (except Alumni which would win handily no matter which tournament, there's your bias GOAT).

So if competitive is defined as amount of teams that could realistically win, iDevice. If competitive is defined as the most skill among the top teams alone, then Mixed is more competitive.  

One tournament is 32 teams
The other is 64
I wonder which will have a higher number of teams that are able to compete...

The poll will be dumbed down to "Alumni always wins Mixed, so obviously iDevice is more competitive"
This would be much more interesting if you'd ask us to rank teams, regardless of their device. Anyone who does that and doesn't have Mixed teams as the top 3 is crazy, in my opinion at least.

So, if you want to say "iDevice has a large number of teams that are decent and have a chance of winning," then yeah, that makes sense.
However, Mixed has the better teams. Like I said, WAR/Apostles or Blackout would win every time against the iDevice field.

Long story short, if Alumni Mixed team didn't exist then this wouldn't even be a conversation piece.
Also, I don't think there should even be 2 GSTs anymore. We're past the days of keyboardaphobia, no one is still saying "you only won because you strafed."  

Posted by Fulgore

So if competitive is defined as amount of teams that could realistically win, iDevice. If competitive is defined as the most skill among the top teams alone, then Mixed is more competitive.

I want to define competition by videos showing a good competitive match. If you show me a video of a final in which the outcome is an easy 3-0 win then I wouldn't call that competition. If you show me a final where the outcome is 4-3 (looking at reb and vis) then I would say it was competitive. We can argue all day about which one has more competition and we wouldn't get anywhere. If we argue based on videos we still wouldn't get anywhere, but at least there would be a case for people opinion.

My all-time favorite match was actually from mix, the first 5 round final between lia and US came down to ares winning the 5th match by .5. I have watched other mixed matches and I don't recall anything being competitive. people that do the mix have a better chance of putting competitive matches, so then I could understand why they think the way they do.  

If teams like US, Alumni and Deity are the winners of mixed it keeps the prestige of winning mixed a lot higher than iDevice... I think everyone would prefer being in a team that won Mixed over a team that won iDevice. Mixed is much harder to win than iDevice.

But this thread isn't asking which is tougher to win...it's asking which is more competitive and due to iDevice filled with numerous good teams...compared to Mixed with the strongest GST Team it's obvious iDevice is more competitive.  

Posted by Kuz

But this thread isn't asking which is tougher to win...it's asking which is more competitive and due to iDevice filled with numerous good teams...compared to Mixed with the strongest GST Team it's obvious iDevice is more competitive.

I agree with that, yeah

If the question is asking which is tougher to win, based on quantity of competing teams, then it's clearly iDevice
If the question is which is tougher to win, based on quality of competing teams, then it's clearly Mixed

I just dislike when people try to invalidate Mixed as if it's some cakewalk
This isn't 2011, we are consistently beating a high number of very good teams  

Posted by GOAT

I want to define competition by videos showing a good competitive match. If you show me a video of a final in which the outcome is an easy 3-0 win then I wouldn't call that competition. If you show me a final where the outcome is 4-3 (looking at reb and vis) then I would say it was competitive. We can argue all day about which one has more competition and we wouldn't get anywhere. If we argue based on videos we still wouldn't get anywhere, but at least there would be a case for people opinion.

My all-time favorite match was actually from mix, the first 5 round final between lia and US came down to ares winning the 5th match by .5. I have watched other mixed matches and I don't recall anything being competitive. people that do the mix have a better chance of putting competitive matches, so then I could understand why they think the way they do.

The problem is that even though the top tier mixed teams are better, Alumni still will typically win 2-0/3-0 or 3-1. Put Apostles vs. Blackout and nobody could predict the winner with confidence. Alumni is an anomaly in that sense. What Thallen said about ranking teams regardless of which tournament they're in also helps to prove my point here. I'd imagine it'd be something like:

Alumni
Apostles
Blackout
Silver Lion
Predation
Demon
*insert like 6 idev teams here*
GTEAM
*insert a few more idev teams*

And that's the rough picture. While the very top are mixed teams, there are more contenders for idev than there are for mixed.

On a side note, I'd love to see the separate tournaments removed, seeing as how they were made because iDevs at the time trembled to spar vs. PC and how that fear is supposedly gone now.  

Posted by Thallen

Also, I don't think there should even be 2 GSTs anymore. We're past the days of keyboardaphobia, no one is still saying "you only won because you strafed."

This IMO.

As for which is more competitive, I'd have to say Mixed. Just because one team dominates doesn't change the fact that the teams are just better in general.

And for anyone who's inevitably going to say that iDevice's can't compete with PC's, explain Prime's performance in damn near every GST.  

Posted by Thallen

I agree with that, yeah

If the question is asking which is tougher to win, based on quantity of competing teams, then it's clearly iDevice
If the question is which is tougher to win, based on quality of competing teams, then it's clearly Mixed

I just dislike when people try to invalidate Mixed as if it's some cakewalk
This isn't 2011, we are consistently beating a high number of very good teams

In my opinion Alumni mixed is forcing mixed teams to step up their game to compete with them and it's made mixed way more prestigious to win than iDevice.

On a side note I think Predation would beat every mixed team except Alumni and also Alumni iDevice/Silver can beat some too. <--- Just my opinion don't flame please. But Apostles' current team with Tykian, Doll, Wick Red, Prime and Jack once they practice more together I have no doubt they'd be stronger than Predation.

Posted by Klay

This IMO.

As for which is more competitive, I'd have to say Mixed. Just because one team dominates doesn't change the fact that the teams are just better in general.

And for anyone who's inevitably going to say that iDevice's can't compete with PC's, explain Prime's performance in damn near every GST.

Yeah man Prime does good against mixed teams... I think i've even seen him get up to 18 hits against great mixed teams too. So yeah no reason why iDevices can't compete with the mixed people.  

Posted by Fulgore

The problem is that even though the top tier mixed teams are better, Alumni still will typically win 2-0/3-0 or 3-1. Put Apostles vs. Blackout and nobody could predict the winner with confidence. Alumni is an anomaly in that sense. What Thallen said about ranking teams regardless of which tournament they're in also helps to prove my point here. I'd imagine it'd be something like:

Alumni
Apostles
Blackout
Silver Lion
Predation
Demon
*insert like 6 idev teams here*
GTEAM
*insert a few more idev teams*

That's kind of the point of the thread. I want to see the demons vs blackout, the silver lions vs GTEAM.

Posted by Fulgore

On a side note, I'd love to see the separate tournaments removed, seeing as how they were made because iDevs at the time trembled to spar vs. PC and how that fear is supposedly gone now.

My experience with graal people is that they talk a lot of smack until it's time to prove it. But going back to your desegregation comment, it's kind of like me saying, "remove PC's from iClassic" and lets see how good these PC sparrers are. I think it's safe to say iDevice guilds wouldn't do well against PC guilds and PC guilds wouldn't do good against iDevice guilds using idevices themselves. That argument is pointless until one of 2 things happens: 1. a top idevice guild jumps into PC's and dominates the majority of the top PC guilds OR 2. a top PC guild jumps into idevices and dominates the majority of idevice guilds.  

Posted by GOAT

That's kind of the point of the thread. I want to see the demons vs blackout, the silver lions vs GTEAM.



My experience with graal people is that they talk a lot of smack until it's time to prove it. But going back to your desegregation comment, it's kind of like me saying, "remove PC's from iClassic" and lets see how good these PC sparrers are. I think it's safe to say iDevice guilds wouldn't do well against PC guilds and PC guilds wouldn't do good against iDevice guilds using idevices themselves. That argument is pointless until one of 2 things happens: 1. a top idevice guild jumps into PC's and dominates the majority of the top PC guilds OR 2. a top PC guild jumps into idevices and dominates the majority of idevice guilds.

The point of it would be to measure up each side with the device that they're best with. Of course it's stupid to switch a device from someone. I'd personally love to watch things like Rebellious vs. Silver Lion or Predation vs. Apostles or DOT vs. GTEAM etc. etc.

I doubt it will happen though.  

Posted by Kuz

If teams like US, Alumni and Deity are the winners of mixed it keeps the prestige of winning mixed a lot higher than iDevice... I think everyone would prefer being in a team that won Mixed over a team that won iDevice. Mixed is much harder to win than iDevice.

U forgot Northern Sign cmon  

nessa alumni comyts clutch lolz

and blackout alumni match

mixed will look competitive without alumni
prob had a war between apostles and blackout  

I'd rather watch an 8 team mixed tournament vs. a 16 team idev tournament any day. When you boil it down to those kinds of numbers then it's obvious which the more competitive tournament is.