Interview with WePlay! Dota Underlords Open caster – SUNSfan

Shannon “SUNSfan” Scotten was one out of five talented shoutcasters to cover, comment, and analyze WePlay! Dota Underlords Open on the go – and he did a great job. We’ve talked to him about his impressions of the tournament, his thoughts about the possible ways to improve the game, and the idea of changing the flow of the tournament with sudden patches.

How was your stay in Ukraine? How did you like it this time?

• Great! I felt much better and was much happier this time honestly. I’m not a cold-blooded person.

What surprised you the most? Even though you are the third time here.

• I wouldn’t say anything surprised me really. The only thing that took me by surprise was the weather, but apart from that, nothing. I mean, there’re certain countries I don’t look forward to visiting, there’re ones I do. But this one… Even though it’s really far and I do not like to travel very much, once I’m here – I feel like home.

What are your thoughts about the event overall? Did it go as you expected?

• It surely did normally. And it probably was a risk for WePlay!, as it was the first proper Underlords tournament. I don’t know if it satisfied you with the viewership – I haven’t looked at the numbers personally. It’s really early on for the game and we’ll see if it continues to grow. But in terms of production, in terms of silliness that I’m really into – that was great.

How did you feel about the disruption that happened when the patch hit?

• There were two aspects to it. There was an update in the middle of the tournament – I think it spices things up. And for me personally, considering the Dota 2 times with patches coming right before or in the middle of the tournaments as well, it gives me a lot more things to talk about in terms of theory-crafting because you never know how the things are actually going to progress.

  But sometimes it can be really bad and not benefit the viewer base. For this one, it seems like everyone – including myself – really liked the update. They’ve balanced a lot of stuff, they’ve put something new. It’s actually very interesting since they’ve drastically changed some of the items, the way they work at a base level. And it turned out really well.

  Spectating has become far more entertaining, the casting has become easier to make it hype. But obviously, it is difficult to grasp everything that is happening because, in this game, you have to be watching eight people playing at the same time. That’s a big challenge from a casting perspective. Each game I’m learning something new about what I should be doing. But overall, the patch did spice the things up, and I’m a big fan of that happening.

Do you have any general advice to the people who didn’t make it to top-8?

• Not specifically, because patch changed the game the next day essentially – right in the middle of the tournament, so it was really hard to keep up. I would say to them the same thing I’d say to people who didn’t make it to the tournament, to begin with. Just watch broadcasts, watch streams of high-level players – and you’ll start to pick up little nuances here and there. Eventually, once you’ve collected the small details, put them together, and executed yourself in your gameplay – that’s how you really improve.

  It just comes down to that. This game doesn’t require almost any mechanical skill. It’s mostly IQ – so just learning the game helps a lot. Whatever you can find regarding the possible ways to play is the easiest way to improve.

We’ve asked our players who would they choose as their Godfathers among our talents/casters. Most of them asked for you – six out of top-8. And only one asked for swim.

• That’s pretty surprising actually! I would definitely not have expected that. Swim is more known for games like this and he’s done a lot more in the similar field of casting card games. It’s not really a card game, but it’s the same realm. And Joel Larsson is a legend, am I right? And I’m only experienced in Dota – it’s just the lore, everything else is unrelated. So it’s surprising, yet cool to see the demand for me.

What do you think about Shamans in general with the recent patch and about Shadow Shaman particularly? What should they change?

• I think it’s a priority we were up to. I like the idea of making Enigma of lower-tier maybe or adding a different Shaman that’s easier to get as well. I might also suggest something other people have already suggested – let’s make the Shaman tag only require two characters. And then make it even stronger with four Shamans. Right now, it’s not really easy to get three Shamans to work in a composition together. But if you do two and four with the latter just increasing the chance of getting hexed – that sounds more reasonable to me.

  And for Shadow Shaman – his issue is less about him being Shaman (although it is a negative right now) but rather about him being super weak. I think that you could do the boring thing and add the stats, but I would like them to change him up a little bit, maybe give him other skill from Dota. I was thinking about the Ether Shock and just giving him this AoE blast. Couldn’t hurt because he is unpickable right now unless you go for four Trolls – this is the only scenario.

  There’s a lot of cool things they could do and not just increase the stats because Shadow Shaman in the long history of Dota has been actually good for a long time. So there’s a lot they could use. And they could add talents– that would be legit. They could introduce Underlords to the game, which in return, might upset a lot of people. But if they do it in an elegant way, that could work.