Right from the get go I knew it was going to be an extremely difficult day for me. The first practice game which I had as against dahang, where I got completely destroyed, was my first taste of how the top duelers play. I'd never encountered that level of positioning around the map and item control before against anyone in Australia.
In the first group stage match I played chance where I lost the first map (lost world) 7 - 2 and the second map (toxicity) by a large margin. After that I played rapha and lost each map by large margins also. The third match was against cl0ck, and they were a lot closer than the previous games, but he managed to come through with the wins in the last two minutes with better positioning and item control.
I felt I could have performed a little better on the day. The night before the games I'd only had 1 hour sleep and needed to have a can of red bull at lunch time to keep myself going. However I don't think it would have made too much of a difference as my positioning/timing skills aren't nearly as good as someone like rapha. I think if I'd been feeling better the best I would have done is possibly take a map of chance and cl0ck and generally playing a bit more alert and smarter.
Although I am disappointed with not winning any maps, there is a lot that I've managed to learn about my own game that will help in future competitions, and it has given me something I know I can practice and continue to improve. I also wasn't nervous at all in any of the games and played each player the same way I would play anyone, so that's a big improvement for me as I used to get very nervous at lans or big online competitions and my aim would fail me a lot. This time my aim was strong, and I was able to keep up with all the players I played with on the day.
As for the TDM, a team was formed with me, ventz, scoot and zero4. We managed to win our first group stage match against "im prteyttyy easted" which had the following players: FienD, dkt, adrenal1ne, KLAOVhwn. I struggled a bit with some of the maps as I've hardly played tdm in quakelive, and all my tdm teamplay experience is from Q3. I learned a lot in the 3 matches we played on the day however. Scoot and zero4 have played a lot of tdm and were the backbone of the team.
We lost our next games fairly easily against iCE cLIMBERS (Stermy, fox, l1nkin, tox) and BallerSsS (strenx, draven, Cypher, Cooller) which was expected as we were just a quickly formed team of duelers.
One of the biggest things I've noticed since being at Quakecon is the standard for duelers. Most of the non-pro duelers in America would be easily considered top 5 in Australia, and the same for the European players. Even though I didn't perform as well as I would have liked to in both tdm and duel, it has been a very good learning experience and I hope that I can continue to compete overseas and improve as a player.
I'd just like to say thank you to team Voxe for everything they have done for me. I'm very proud to be representing the team for Quake Live and I hope I will get to see more overseas action soon! All that's left for me now watching the rest of the duel and tdm games and hopefully get some good practice in the mean time.
Thanks for reading.
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