Esports – Page 12 – Rivals of Aether

Season 5 Online Rankings: #50 – 41

By SBS — March 1, 2021

50. Vivi

Vivi, formally known as Prime, made their first appearance on the RCS Top 50 in Season 4. Vivi attended five of the six eligible events this season, racking up impressive wins on the likes of MSB, Mystic Deer, and more with their signature Ranno.

49. Zachial

Zachial piloted their Orcane with some impressive consistency throughout Season 5, while cracking Top 32 in RCS Fire and not placing below 49th in their five events.

“I LOVE CASUAL SCRUB WOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

48. OoDaShadowTheft

OoDaShadowTheft makes their debut on the Rivals Top 50. After first picking up the game in 2016, OoDaShadowTheft did not catch the competitive bug until 2019, where they contacted and subsequently trained with Guard, a top Clairen mentor in the Rivals Academy server. OoDaShadowTheft attributes their rapid growth to this experience, and was able to secure several Top 50 wins with impressive consistency throughout all six events of Season 5.

47. Mystic Deer

Mystic Deer is our first player to have multiple Top 32 placements in eligible events. Mystic Deer is a Xbox player that has migrated to the PC version of the game with a keen love of the outdoors and the gym. Mystic Deer works in the airline industry and is excited to use this benefit travel to majors once they return. We are very excited to see the rise of Mystic Deer first hand!

“I will always be me. Nothing more, nothing less.”

46. Akashi

Akashi is no stranger to the Rivals Top 50 with his iconic Absa as his co-pilot. While securing a Top 32 finish in RCS Water and even taking down Giga Bowser this season, Akashi turned his focus to improving his stream for our time on an online platform. He remained active and intent on studying the game, entering five of the eligible events while holding down commentary on the sixth. His kind soul and infectious attitude are always highlights of our events. We hope to see him on the mic more often as events continue into future seasons!

45. Oogapooki

Oogapooki makes their first Top 50 appearance after years of online tournaments. Oogapooki has never been to an offline tournament before, so the prospect of a completely online season was perfect. He made Top 32 twice this season, with a breakout performance at RCS fire, placing 17th after key wins over Ceroas and Zora before falling to CakeAssault in a nail-biter finish. Outside of Rivals, Oogapooki works as a video editor for various Twitch streamers, while being in front of the camera on occasion for his own stream.

44. Menace13

Menace13 has been well known in the Rivals community since his first event in 2016. Menace13 is hyper-involved with seemingly every aspect of the community as he juggles competing, T.O. responsibilities, seeding most major tournaments for the community, statistics tracking, and beta-testing the game. With all of this on his plate, Menace 13 managed to place in the Top 32 of two of our six eligible events, all while earning impressive wins over players such as Levin and OoDaShadowTheft and placing 2nd in the RCS Finals Tetherball Doubles event. If you ever need any questions answered about the game, listen to Dan, “Ask Menace, he’ll know.”

43. Danzello

Danzello’s Zetterburn made an appearance at every Elemental Major and the RCS Finals this season. Danzello secured victories over players such as Lucius and Menace13 during the regular season, before eventually finding a huge win over Windows in the Finals. With sporadic upsets throughout the season and stunningly flashy combos Danzello has proven time and time again that he can pose a threat to anyone’s bracket run.

42. Bookworm

Bookworm is widely recognized as one of the best Elliana’s in the game. As one of the heads of the Wisconsin/Illinois local scene, she was heavily involved in the organizing and running of brackets before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Reina has taken her talents online and has remained a constant bracket threat this season with two Top 32 finishes and victories over players such as Ceroas and Wai, all while aiming some of that work ethic towards new hobbies such as voice acting, cosplay, and story writing.

41. Tapscott

Tapscott only entered two of our Elemental Majors, but was able to perform well at each. Known for his Orcane, Tapscott brought out a new secondary Wrastor this season to spice things up a bit. In his two events, Tapscott was able to notably take down Windows, darai, and Minty along the way.

View more articles in the Season Five Online NA Rankings Series:

Categories: Announcement, Community, Esports, News | Comments: 1

Season 5 Online Top 50 – Introduction

By SBS — February 28, 2021

Each year we look back on the previous competitive season and the players who influenced our scene by creating a Top 50 Players list. Season 5 (July 2020 – January 2021) was a particularly interesting season, with players forced to adapt to an entirely online circuit. Even with these new challenges the year featured record breaking events happening left and right. Our minimum attendance this season was a whopping 374, with four of our events counting over 450 players! The RCS Finals proved to be our largest event ever, with 608 unique entrants, 21 hours of streaming, and four events over a three day period.

We recognize that this year is indeed different in nature due to the complexities of online and the shorter season resulting from COVID uncertainty in early 2019. Less eligible events than Season 4 and online results made our rankings a bit more difficult than previous years, however we count ourselves lucky to have such a dedicated community. Competitors, Tournament Organizers, volunteers, commentators, and spectators fueled a Season 5 that changed and molded itself before our very eyes. The fluidity and willingness to overcome obstacles together made Season 5 one for the books. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.

Before we delve into the rankings this year, here’s an introduction on how the list was formed along with our events list and hidden bosses.

View more articles in the Season Five Online NA Rankings Series:

Player Qualifications

Two years ago during season 4 we saw events from the RCS circuit and grassroots community alike shape the Top 50 rankings. It was noted that, while it would have been nearly impossible to predict the massive success of non-RCS events, some transparency as to which events would be counted would be nice.

To address that issue in Season 5, we announced every event that would count towards the rankings at the start of the season. This method was ideal for players to enter events without fear of having unrelated performances affect their placements. However there were some events that popped up, such as Kingpin 4, that would have made great additions to the season. With this in mind, our next season could introduce applications for Tournament Organizers to include their event in rankings as their signups open, without being an official RCS event. This method would allow more fluidity to our season, while keeping players in the loop as events are announced.

For the Season 5 Online Rankings, we only considered players with 2 or more events from the list below to be eligible for the Rivals Top 50.

Season 5 Ranking Events
ROCS Finals
RCS Fire
RCS Air
RCS Earth
RCS Water
RCS Finals

Methodology

This year, we brought back the panel system from Seasons 3 and 4, ranking players based on a combination of their best wins/worst losses and their placements at eligible events. Disqualifications from losers bracket were considered as losses for the player that DQd, while not giving their opponent an artificial bump beyond their better placement. Finally, players who entered the minimum number of events (two) were scrutinized more heavily than others due to the lack of data to go off of. In the end, neither the considerations for DQs, nor the minimum event considerations affected player placements too heavily.

The age-old debate of offline or online was no longer a concern due to our exclusively online season. All events carried the same weight except for the RCS Finals, which was weighted heavier due to the high stakes and the fact that it was our grand finale. It is important to note that the ROCS Finals was originally meant to carry the same weight as a RCS Major when the potential for offline tournaments still existed, so it is considered to be equal to our Elemental Majors.

Once this ranking system was completed, a council made additional adjustments to the order based on head-to-head results, activity, and other data. This group consisted of players and Tournament Organizers from across the country in order to accurately represent the various regions of North America: Junior, Menace13, MSB, Renzo, SBS, and Sparx21. Protagify was brought in for a third party review once the list was completed.

Hidden Bosses

Players given the title of Hidden Boss were recognized by the panel as major threats to tournaments this season that just didn’t quite meet the requirements to be ranked.

Adi, Heyodogo, LBO, NCB

Categories: Community, Esports, News | Comments: 1

EU Rivals Championship Series Season 5 Wrap-Up

By SBS — January 28, 2021

Season 5 of the European Rivals Championship Series concluded this month with our first ever region-specific Finals event making its way online. The EU RCS Finals brought out new the 2020 talent, with a few newer faces seizing the opportunity to make a name for themselves.

Some amazing sets with both Doubles and Singles live-streamed made this weekend one to remember. Read on for a recap featuring highlights, event breakdown, and more.

VODS

Let’s start with the VoDs in case you’re here to avoid spoilers. You can find everything we had on stream throughout RCS Season 5 over at our official channel. Singles and Doubles are available now.

EU RCS Finals | Singles

EU RCS Finals | Doubles

THE CHAMP

Congratulations to Fireicey for winning the RCS Championship!

Fireicey cemented himself as a household name after claiming the EU RCS Season 4 title and traveling to Genesis 7. Fireicey started Season 5 off with some familiar competition from Transco, Falling in RCS Fire and Air, before finding his first Major win at RCS Earth. Things looked a bit dicey as Fireicey dropped into losers side just before top 8, paving to way for a monstrous Sunday run, losing only 3 games in 6 sets to secure his victory.

Fireicey also went on to win an impressive doubles bracket with his teammate, OliveOily. Congratulations to our EU Champion!

I won the EU RCS Finals! Glad I could end the season on a strong note and win the big prize.

Wasn’t feeling too great at the start of the day, but thanks to some support from Fat I managed to play myself up. pic.twitter.com/XJSoZzRxsQ

— Fireicey (@Fir3icey) January 24, 2021

SINGLES MAIN EVENT RESULTS

Just before Top 8, alki and Shayd achieved game 5 stunners to knock top seeds Fireicey and Japal into losers. This opened the door for Z0nyx to make a run of a lifetime, reaching the winners side of Grand Finals before eventually falling to a seemingly unstoppable Fireicey coming from the Losers side.

Standing	Player	Character
1st	Fireicey
2nd	Z0nyx
3rd	alki
4th	Japal
5th	Shayd
5th	DJ Dacus (Sportsfreund)
7th	Jimbenator
7th	Hukon

Full Standings >

DOUBLES RESULTS

OliveOily and Fireicey ran though a difficult Doubles bracket, dropping a few games early on but securing perfect victories in Winners Finals and Grand Finals.

Standing	Player	Character
1st	OliveOily / Fireicey
2nd	FullMetal / Slimepuffen
3rd	DJ Dacus (Sportsfreund) / Dima Richman

Full Standings >

VOLUNTEERS

A special shout-out to Frikinin for taking up the responsibility of head T.O. during RCS Season 5. This is not an easy job and he stepped up to the plate to create a wonderful competitive environment while working with production czar, Readek, who held down some amazing streams on our official Twitch throughout the Season. In addition to streaming, Readek helped out Frikinin and OliveOily with event seeding, and put extra care into creating a universal stream tool while adding region specific aspects for the EU RCS events!

Finally, thank you to all of the wonderful commentators who helped bring the hype to the RCS Finals: Cyberstorm, Raven, Zakip, Hermoise, Guidobaldo, Defileus, Slimepuffen.

We hope you enjoyed the final event of the season. We hope to bring you more events soon, thank you!

Categories: Community, Esports, Events, News | Comments: 1

AU Rivals Championship Series Season 5 Wrap-Up

By SBS — January 26, 2021

Season 5 of the Australian Rivals Championship Series concluded this month with our first ever region-specific Finals event making its way online. The AU RCS Finals brought out the new and old guard alike, as Australian Titans met one final time.

Some amazing sets with a live-streamed Top 8, and two special side events made this weekend one to remember. Read on for a recap featuring highlights, event breakdown, and more.