First Time Experience in our Company's Sports Fest

Sports Fest is mostly happens in our company every year and it starts for the month of October until December. Our company chooses only three sports that the employees can participate on, its basketball, volleyball and badminton. We can freely choose what game we like to play or you can participate in all that said games.

I mostly participate in Basketball wherein we compete in some of the other teams in the company. But due to the worldwide pandemic that we are facing until right now it stopped two years ago. The global outbreak resulted to the closures of the gyms, parks, stadium and even all basketball courts. The company follows the safety protocols of the government wherein no contact sports are allowed. So no sportsfest happened for two consecutive years.

I assumed that no events that will happen again this year because we are still facing this pandemic right now but the company announces that they will organize an sportsfest event with no contact sports involve. They chose and organize an online game competition which is a Mobile Legends Tournament, because this is the popular game that most of the people here in Philippines usually play. The company announced each area should build their team and participate in the said tournament. So I felt happy and excited after hearing that news because I am also one of the people who are fond of playing that said game. So we built our own team and called it PASIG 2.0.

We expected that there's a lot of teams that will participate in the tournament and we guess it right there are 24 teams participated all in all. That's a lot. There's a lot of great players in the other teams especially the OJT's while us, we are not confident in our team but still we are very excited to play and showcase our skills in the game. After two days of waiting the office sent us the brackets and the schedules of the game and we are about to face the Team of the OJT's the day after.

After we are done for the schedules of the day. I practiced some of my comfort heroes and researched some of the OP heroes that are perfect in the META right now. At exactly 8:00 PM we got invited and gathered in the custom lobby. Most of our opponent had already reached the Mythical Glory (the highest rank in Mobile Legends), which I haven't reach yet.

The game was a best of three series wherein you need to win two games to be declared as winners and will proceed to the next stage of the competition. Sad to say there's no referee or observer that will monitor the game in case there's a player that will be disconnected to the game. After minutes of waiting and discussion, the game already started.

During picking, we didn't know what role we are going to choose. We even skipped to ban one hero during banning. (laughing)
During my turn I chose to pick a gold lane hero which is "Brody" a marksman one of my comfort hero. Our Tank roamer was "Atlas", Exp Lane "Silvanna", Mid-laner mage "Lou-Yi" and our Jungle was "Selena", which was new to me.

During the early stage of the game, we are on the lead and we are the one that dictates the flow of the game. The Atlas and the Lou-Yi duo was a great combination, while me I managed to sustain my lane against the hero "Lesley." I earned and built some items that are needed, in order for me to have more damage when team fights comes. During mid-game, we are still on the lead but when the late game comes we are little by little pushed back towards our base. The "Thamuz, Akai and the Esmeralda" became more tanky and their marksman and mage which is "Cecilion" can freely hit us from the back. They managed to secure the objectives especially the Lords. We are unable to defend our base and lost in the first game.

We started directly our second game after losing in the first game. From being a Gold-Laner I was being told that I will fill the Exp Lane because the Exp-Laner from our previous game will switch into Mid-Lane which was his comfort lane. They picked "Hylos" for the roam, "Irithel" for the Gold "Vale" for Mid-lane and again Jungle "Selena." I chose to pick "Esmeralda" to counter the hero "Yin" from our opponent. During the first minutes of the game our Selena Jungler disconnected from the game for almost 3 minutes and no pause happen because there's no referee assigned. That's a huge gap for us especially to our jungler. It was a disaster for us from early to late game and we lost again.

I thought we are eliminated already because we lost in our first opponents but the Office said that we can still play in the Lower Bracket and we need to win the game so that we can proceed to the next stage. And I felt excited again. So we open our concerns to the office about the referee and the observer thing. The office said that they will provide one in our next match.

A week after it's our scheduled time again to play against a team from Main Office which is called "Turon ni Tyang Amy."
Fast forward, during this game I was assigned to be the Jungler of our team. During our first game, we lost again because they banned our comfort heroes and I think they already stalked us before or they have seen our previous matches.

Custom-Draft Pick Lobby

During game two, they banned again our comfort heroes and forced us again to choose other heroes. At picking I decided to pick the hero "Julian" for Jungler role, "Tigreal" for the Tank roamer, "Irithel" for the Gold-lane, "Balmond" for the Exp lane and "Pharsa" for the Midlaner. Our gameplay was a bit on point in here even though it was a bit hard for me because I'm not used to be a Jungler but it's okay at least we managed to utilize our heroes perfectly. We won in the second game and proceeded to game three, a do or die match.

At third game, they continued their strategy to ban our comfort heroes again. We prioritized to pick the Pharsa for the Midlane, Tigreal Tank, Gatotkaca for the Exp lane, Barats Jungler and Diggie?? ( I was also shocked when my teammate picked this hero instead of a ususal Gold lane hero), but it's okay its just a game.
Game three was a tough game for us because we dont have enough damage during team clashes. Luckily we survived and that crucial set that our tank did was spectacular. We managed to win our third game and proceeded to the next stage of the Lower bracket.

Our next opponent was against "AR DON'T KNOW" from Main Office again. Which was also a great team. They banned our priority and comfort heroes again same as the team that we played against before them. During our game one, I picked again the Julian Jungler. This game, I think we really don't have a chemistry at all not same as our previous games. I did my best to do my role but in the end we still lost to them.

In the second game they overpowered us also in every aspects of the game especially in picking. They had picked there heroes wisely while us we had forced to choose heroes that we don't normally use. In the end we lost again at that's the end of our journey in these tournament.

Ending Thoughts

Despite the fact that we lost our games in these ML tournament, it was still a great experience for me and I am happy for the overall results. I enjoyed the games a lot and I've been able to improve not just my skills on this game but also the essence of camaraderie and team work.

That's the end of my blog for today. Thank you and have a great day ahead.

Rhedren20