The New Legends Stage came to an end this morning and we say goodbye to more teams before heading into the New Champions Stage.
Getting down to the pointy end of the FACEIT London tournament and the top performing teams are starting to show through. The gap in time between Counter-Strike Majors can mean a lot happens and teams who play well may drop off by the next Major. That certainly can be said for Cloud 9 who were the reigning champions from ELEAGUE Boston but failed to make it to the Quarter Finals this time around.
Some more surprises came not just in who is going home but in how close some of the teams were to joining them. FaZe Clan and MIBR are still considered top teams in the Counter-Strike scene and yet they could have very nearly been knocked out, with one match making the difference. Teams that are moving onto the Quarter Finals and teams that are going home are below:
Unfortunately, not all tournaments go off without any issues and FACEIT London has been no exception to that.
Throughout the New Challengers Stage, there were plenty of technical issues that seemed to mainly affect the live streaming. However, it appears there was much more than that going on behind the scenes. A number of players had brought up a number of problems including a very specific issue with the in-game sound. The problem here was, the player's footsteps had disappeared. In many tactical video games, sound is a critical cue for game-changing decisions and reactions.
The second you hear the enemy team's footsteps near you, you can make a callout and start a rotation. Without the sound cue, we saw many teams struggle to keep up their level of play. Such a small aspect of the game may have caused some teams to go home when they really did not deserve to. The problem is believed to now be fixed but for such a high stakes tournament, let's hope nothing like this happens again.
The New Champions Stage will begin on September 20th with the Grand Finals taking place on September 23rd. The Finals will be live streamed on Twitch, Steam.tv and the in-game watch feature like the previous stages but this time with a live Stadium audience.
