Board 8 > How exactly are you supposed to "follow" esports?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Recently found out that esports is a good substitution for hockey (why so difficult to watch without cable), which I've been sorely missing. It quite clearly appears that Evo is the biggest event to watch out for, already viewed several of those streams. That's only once a year though. Combo Breaker seems like another big one? I'm only basing that off seeing Sonicfox there, who immediately became my favorite player.

Then there's a bunch of smaller grade tournament stuff, gonna consider that the minor leagues. I prefer to watch the big leagues.

Is there like, a schedule for the big events, and how many "big" events are there?
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I see you're into fighting games so check out Wednesday Night Fights and Team Spooky streams
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It depends on the game. As you said, evo is only once a year. League of Legends on the other hand has games every thursday/friday (EU) and saturday/sunday (NA) with a yearly world championship. I don't watch it myself but I've heard Overwatch has a decent league too.

Would be easier if you could name some games whose pro scene you'd be interested in.
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Yeah it varies vastly depending on the game.
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Fighting games (And EVO) are probably the smallest of the big events tbh.
Here is a good website to see a lot of esports information

https://liquipedia.net/
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Shaduln posted...

Yeah it varies vastly depending on the game.

Oh right, I forgot to mention that I'm mainly interested in FighterZ, since that's the only esports game I'm familiar with. Although I do enjoy watching other fighting games as well.

Not sure how I'd feel about the other genres. I personally don't like playing first person games, however watching pro level Overwatch might be entertaining.
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The biggest Dota 2 tournament of the year is happening right now. Even if you don't play the game or have any interest in the genre I would suggest watching a game or two. You probably won't have any idea what's going on but watching pro Dota is what inspired me to actually start playing it.

I think watching MOBAs is the closest you'll get to watching real sports.
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Shaduln posted...

Yeah it varies vastly depending on the game.

Mostly this. Scenes that are more developer-backed/driven (League of Legends, Overwatch, etc) tend to be vastly more straightforward to follow than community-driven scenes (mostly fighting games)

For example, basically all of the information to keep track of competitive Overwatch is available at https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/

Liquidpedia is probably the best source for fighting game scenes, but I know very little about them.
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Adding to my last post the best place for fighting game news/tournaments is Shoryuken

http://shoryuken.com/tournament-calendar/
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Very useful information, thanks guys.

Are all of these streamed exclusively on twitch? I've mostly caught the recordings on youtube, which is what I prefer to do so I can rewind and such. Do they have specific channels that collect the streams?

Or should I just give in and get a twitch account already
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Yeah they're basically all streamed on twitch. Twitch is free so you don't need an account to watch anything. The ads get blocked by adblock so you don't really need to worry about that either.

Twitch is owned by Amazon so if you have Amazon Prime you can link your twitch account to get some extra benefits.
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If you like hockey, maybe look into rocket league, I know it's soccer with cars but the layout of the arena in which they play makes it tactically more like hockey than soccer.
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you don't need a twitch account to watch streams and the chat is garbage during big streams anyway.

If you don't care about the grassroots stuff, you figure out what you enjoy watching, find some players that you think are fun to watch, and follow them on social media - they'll make you aware of the big events that they're competing in.

And I'll also throw my hat in to the liquipedia page. Good all around resource.
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Emeraldegg posted...

If you like hockey, maybe look into rocket league, I know it's soccer with cars but the layout of the arena in which they play makes it tactically more like hockey than soccer.

+1

Plus the demolitions
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https://dbfzworldtour.com/schedule/

This might be worth following.
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skullbone posted...

The biggest Dota 2 tournament of the year is happening right now. Even if you don't play the game or have any interest in the genre I would suggest watching a game or two. You probably won't have any idea what's going on but watching pro Dota is what inspired me to actually start playing it.

I think watching MOBAs is the closest you'll get to watching real sports.

Just to piggyback on this, they do offer a "Newcomer" stream for this tournament targeted at folks who've never watched before, so if you are interested at all I would definitely recommend starting there.

https://www.twitch.tv/dota2ti_newcomer
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