News / H2H8 Results

The votes are in!
Another H2H has come to a close. After six intense rounds and a controversial conclusion, the qualifying matches led to a Grand Final between reigning champs Heaven's Gallery and the brand new Team Spacecrab. Two fantastic parks were submitted, capping off a season of exceptional quality - but only one team can take the trophy! The votes are in, and Your H2H8 Champions, with a final record of 4W - 3L - are Team Spacecrab!




Check out Team Spacecrab's H2H8 parks:

With a stellar record in previous H2H iterations, Heaven's fearless leader came close to winning yet again. Unfortunately, their final effort wasn't enough, and despite some outstanding showpieces the star has fallen for our second-place finishers. With a final record of 4W - 3L - Heaven's Gallery




Check out Heaven's Gallery's H2H8 parks:

After a Disney-filled season, Strangelove found themselves in the #1 seed at the end of the Round Robin. While they weren't able to capitalize on their lead, new captain G Force led a strong effort and came out with a podium placement.
With a final record of 4W - 2L - Strangelove




Check out Strangelove's H2H8 parks:

With returning captain Nin on board, The Replacements came on strong during the RR. A no-show in the semis left them just out of the medals, but with several exceptionally strong parks the latest batch of Replacements can be proud of their work.
With a final record of 3W - 3L - The Replacements




Check out The Replacement's H2H8 parks here

When Alex's Ultra Realists emerged from the draft, plenty of members commented that they would be an interesting one to follow. The UR squad did not disappoint, delivering a string of mold-breaking and memorable efforts.
With a final record of 2W - 3L - Ultra Realists




Check out Ultra Realists' H2H8 parks here

After a controversial R1, Louis' Icons had a rollercoaster of RR results. A notweorthy victory in a replay of the "Bedroom Park" incident was their season highlight, but the longest-lasting impact of their H2H will almost certainly be Louis' ignominous exit during R5.
With a final record of 1W - 4L - Icons




Check out Icon's H2H8 parks here

Remeber to leave your thoughts on every last one of these parks - the level of workmanship, dedication to detail, and storytelling is always just that little bit higher during H2H. Normal site activity will resume immediately - but keep an eye peeled for the Summer news bulletin and information on H2H Awards!


Thanks to all our participants and the community for supporting another successful H2H.

thanks everyone for an amazing season! I had a blast and we put out some phenomenal work. I'm proud of my team and all the buddies I've made along the way. great post btw, I love seeing everyones seasons layed out like that.

 

huge congrats to crabs- you absolutely deserved the win!

 

LLNE

Yeah, H2H8 was a huge win for NE... so much stellar content! Thanks for everyone who had a share! It'll be exciting to see over the next few years to see who will emerge as Spotlight park contenders, who were molded by the H2H experience. I foresee the spotlight accolade being handed out quite a bit in the foreseeable future.

 

I know there were mixed feelings about parks venturing into new fields, but I think OpenRCT, custom pallets and custom rides/vehicles is the boost the game needs to keeping things fresh and interesting.

 

Two thumbs up guys!!!!

I hope this season will be reminded for the wonderful quality of parks we got and can all be proud of and not the drama coming from multiple teams. Congrats Crabs for a well deserved win.

 

I personally, although it might not seem like it, have learned a lot in this season and i hope i will be able to develop myself into plaing a bigger role in the next one.

Good game! Congrats to the Spacecrabs.

H2H was an awesome experience for me to build with great people. Despite I only built 9%, I still think I did a lot for the team and that was great. Thanks for the fun, thanks for the great parks and thanks for the experience!

Congrats Crabs! The reign of Heaven is over. It was quite a bumpy H2H with a lot of drama, at times I wished it was over. But it delivered some awesome parks which is the most important fact to remember in the end. 

The reign of Heaven is over.

 

 

Fred, does this mean we're all eternally fucked?

Joking aside, I am amazed at the consistent quality of parks all season long, the fact that the top three teams all finished with very similar records says a lot about the consistent quality teams we had as well. I don't think we had any team that was really much better than any other team, and it made for a great season with a ton of cool matches.

 

For me personally, my season was pretty good. Being a floater was an interesting experience to say the least. I felt because I could build on every park that I had to put 100% effort in, which is probably why I ended up building so much. It was a fantastic opportunity to work with literally every one of my team members though, and I wouldn't trade it for anything now (even if I might have in the middle of the season). Speaking of my team, what a great bunch of people. We never had any major internal disagreements, and worked really well together. We weren't completely without drama as some people think however, as we had dust ups and lots of tension between us and outsiders, as I'm sure most teams had at one point or another. The way we pulled together in the finals to produce, in my biased opinion, one of the best parks of the entire season, was a really great experience overall. Yeah, we didn't all build on it, but everyone except Coupon (who has irl stuff going on) was involved in it in one way or another. I cannot believe how much I learned about building parks and creating atmosphere from my team, it's been a great experience that I would literally trade sleep for (like I did almost the entire season ). With my life in the stage it's in right now, there's a real possibility this might be my one and only H2H. Thanks to my team members for making it pretty fucking awesome.

Regarding the competition as a whole, I know there are people who were extremely disappointed by it and by the actions of different parties, and that feel disillusioned with the administration and/or the community here. We are all so passionate about this hobby of ours, that it's understandable we have flare ups and arguments sometimes. But we should try, in those moments, to remember that we're all friends here (or at least trying to be ), and that the people on the other side of the computer screen have real lives and feelings and whatnot that might be really affected by what happens here because of the passion they have for the game. Fuck, with the world the way it is right now, building global communities is going to be really important to avoid the isolationism that's popping up all over the place. Let's try to not let any of the differences we've had over the past few months kill the immense sense of community that this place offers. The best way to do this, imo, is to just get back to doing what we all do best: building awesome RCT.

Cheers!

Congratulations Crabs! I wrote a speech a few days ago, but I can't access it until Saturday... So more words from me later.

Congrats Spacecrabs ! I'm still speechless about Zerzura. The more I look at it and the more I'm amazed. A well deserved victory.

 

 

 

Fred, does this mean we're all eternally fucked?

 

 

 

No it means you guys are being prepared to getting fried  

Regarding the competition as a whole, I know there are people who were extremely disappointed by it and by the actions of different parties, and that feel disillusioned with the administration and/or the community here. We are all so passionate about this hobby of ours, that it's understandable we have flare ups and arguments sometimes. But we should try, in those moments, to remember that we're all friends here (or at least trying to be ), and that the people on the other side of the computer screen have real lives and feelings and whatnot that might be really affected by what happens here because of the passion they have for the game. Fuck, with the world the way it is right now, building global communities is going to be really important to avoid the isolationism that's popping up all over the place. Let's try to not let any of the differences we've had over the past few months kill the immense sense of community that this place offers. The best way to do this, imo, is to just get back to doing what we all do best: building awesome RCT.

Cheers!

 

Congrats HG on the second place finish! Even if yall didnt get your third championship, still a solid run over the last three seasons.  At the beginning of the season, I was surprised with how many "risky" picks Liam went with, but it paid off.  Open has really seemed to give returning veteran parkmakers a second wind (myself included), and it was great seeing new work from Steve, CP6, Roomie, and Six Frags.  Going to set aside a couple hours one of these days to catch up on reviews and do little things for all the parks I've missed reviewing this season.  

 

Looks like ][ntamin's drafting strategy payed off, with snagging Tolsimir, faas, and dirt who I'm sure Liam wanted to draft.  Have a sneaking suspicion he thought he could snag me as last pick of the draft as well :P Initially I was hoping he would draft me, having been on Heaven's Kitchen H2H6.  However I couldn't have been happier with the team I ended up with.  From our initial chats, planning our parks and getting to know each other, I knew the season was going to be something special, regardless of what the outcome was.  It looked bleak at times, whether it was being down 1-2 after our top picks had built, being in a must-win from the bottom third of our draft, having 20% of Romon done a week before, followed by having 20% or less of Mobray done a week before, and I'm still in shock we were able to pull it off every time.  Super proud of all my teammates, it was a joy watching each of our parks come together.  Even though the response has dwindled I think Zerzura will go down as a modern day RCT classic.  

 

To each of my teammates: 

][ntamin - Wouldn't even be here if he hadn't drafted me in the 10th round.  I had already come to terms with being on the replacement list, in which case I probably would've had my name removed out of pride lol.  On top of that, he had the faith in me to basically say on the first day he could see me leading a park.  I don't even think I even believed in myself to finish anything at that point! 

 

Fisch - He was one of the main driving creative forces of our team, especially with how he planned and set the tone for Ghibli and Mobray. Throughout Haystack he was our biggest cheerleader, giving us constant feedback and endless new ideas from his own experience as a ski teacher.  For this along with his object making (done literally while poolside in Nice) he deserves a lot of credit for the success of the park.  I've improved a lot as a builder and artist for the effort he gave with feedback in MP and voice chat, and from learning his style and copying his buildings in Mobray.  Will miss giving him shit about his sex sprees and vacations!

 

Tolsimir - Between doing most of Winkelheim and almost majority of Mobray in the last week, as well as resident boatmaster, Tolsimir has been a silent MVP contender for us.  Mindblown at the high level of architecture he created in the crunch of the last couple days in Mobray, and had a great time marathon building with him the last week.  The Spacecrab signature style we developed in our parks is owed much to him with his objects we used in multiple parks as well as his pallette making.  

 

BG - Wish we could've talked more and built together during the contest, but nonetheless appreciate the feedback he also gave throughout Haystack.  His vision and building style were key in both Dig Site and Zerzura which imo (and in lots of others eyes too) were our best parks.  He's made it a point that we all should keep building together and I'm very much looking forward to that.

 

dr dirt - I honestly didn't know much about him going into the contest as his H2H work was always with other people, but was instantly blown away from the moment he started building on Dig Site.  I feel like I blinked and 75% of the park was already done.  It was great having someone on the team I could shamelessly nerd out about the "science" of rct and history of NE with.  He has incredible artistic instincts, and whenever he brought up that something might potentially be a problem, or could be better, he was always right.  I was often reluctant to rebuild when he critiqued in Haystack, but the reason he did it was he saw the potential for what it could be even when it wasn't in its final form.  I've learned a lot from you and hope we can finally build together soon!

 

faas - His humor and ability to keep us from losing our shit and fighting everyone on the other teams was key to our chemistry.  Loved watching his unreal building speed in Romon in real time, and his *cute* (sorry :P) architecture in the outdoor area was the highlight of the park for me.  In Winkelheim, Romon, and Zerzura, his attention to detail and little things brought each park to life.

 

disneylandian - One of the many skiiers and New England natives on the team who helped us solidify the Haystack concept and inspired us to give the park a personal touch.  Although he only ended up building on Dig Site, throughout the contest he contributed conceptually with ideas for building immersive worlds with backstories to them.  Whenever you're back from your adventures we should meet up! 

 

Coupon - Although its a shame we didn't get to see more of him, his contributions to Haystack were key.  While I think I held my own with my share, his lodge was really the centerpiece of the park and brought it all together.  He's also low key hilarious and I appreciate the energy and fun he brought to our MP sessions, along with the easter eggs we all snuck into the park.  Glad to be linkedin friends with you and hope our career paths intersect eventually! :D

 

spacek - We've all talked about his obviously incredible CTRs, and it was always a great day to see new ones in action in our parks.  In particular on Haystack I was extra motivated to keep building getting to see the skiiers and snowboarders in motion.  Whether people like it or not he's taken the game to new levels and is finding new ways to make it fresh and interesting.  On top of that we also shared many fun talks about skiing and whenever shit went down we'd always get some quality home-made memeage in our discord (some of which need to be made public and others which will never see the light of day lol) 

 

saxman - Thanks for being a great friend and great rct partner in crime.  I'm not sure if I can build anymore without having him reassuring me that whatever I'm building isn't shit, or telling him to check out whatever ridiculous idea I just thought of, or fixing whatever broken mess of paths and questionable hacks I made.  He really was the team dad, selflessly fixing whatever needed to be fixed and picking up the slack whenever we needed an extra person to step in (which seemed to be always lol). There were times where I was too depressed or sick to get out of bed, let alone build a park, and his determination and work ethic all while raising an entire human child inspired me to fight through it.  Hope we can be irl friends soon if you move to MA!

 

Overall, H2H was a challenging experience for me having to re-learn how to rct almost from scratch, but a worthwhile one, even though I didn't expect the time and emotional commitment when I signed up on a whim.  Sounds weird but one of the reasons I always end up quitting again is I have an existential crisis of what am I accomplishing by spending so much time on this game, which leads to well why I am doing music, or literally anything creative.  Think each of us felt that with Louisgate and feedback and reviews dropping off that it was starting to feel pointless.  But our team ended up sticking it out specifically for the team experience and creating something cool and having a good time with people you care about.  That lesson has changed how I approach music and replaced the egotistical, recognition and status seeking mentality I had.  Additionally, the insane meticulousness needed to get any sort of acceptability on this site has improved my music composition and made it way more natural for me.  I'll probably be disappearing back off into musicianland for quite a bit (have 3.5 albums in the queue!) but I thank you all for the inspiration and learning experiences. 

 

To everyone that participated, even if you didn't do as well as you wanted in the contest, don't sell yourself short.  We're used to high quality level especially recently and if you can make even a silver level park, you can translate that creativity to recording a crazy album, painting something cool, building a bridge, writing a book, or really anything you want in life.  

Extremely impressive season with consistent high quality parks. You guys should all be proud of yourselves. The drama was there, but much tamer than we've had in previous seasons. Thanks to OpenRCT2, and thanks to all of you. This is a good moment for the community.

The Loser's Speech
So, no three-peat for me! It turns out that Heaven's End really is Heaven's End. Ironic huh? Honestly I'd say that losing the final was my preferred outcome. Winning three seasons in a row is just a bit much, and it would become too much of a 'thing'. It's hard to explain. The team goal every season is to build seven parks. We built seven parks, and seven awesome ones at that. I think I could say that this is my preferred outcome. That doesn't mean that I had us lose on purpose though. With every park I tried my hardest to make the park the best version of itself it could be. Metropolis was a bonus park in an inconsequential bonus round, but I put a lot of hours into it. I knew there was a good chance that the Replacements couldn't come up with anything serious in the semis, but I made sure that our park would justify us getting a spot in the final. And if we make the final, we're fucking playing it too. If we win, great. If we lose, great. Sadly the R5 debacle did cause some motivation issues in our team too, and we struggled with the park concept. For quite a while I didn't think our park could become as good as it did, simply because there wasn't enough time and enough consensus on what the park should be. That we in the end had a park that could compete with the very best (if we can steal a double digit amount of %, it competed!), like Zerzura, makes me very proud of Six Frags and the others. They pulled off a miracle. Major props.

Anyway, I've thought about ending the Heaven's series with something called Heaven's End for years now. I'm glad we had a park concept that I could impose this name on. It doesn't necessarily symbolise the loss in the final, but more that I want to retire the Heaven's brand. The trilogy is complete. Loyalty to the brand has brought me pride, but also held me back in some ways. I've enjoyed the continuity over the past three seasons, but more and more do I want some more freedom. I would've loved to pick Fisch or Leon in my team, but since I knew I had to get Steve it was never really an option. Coming up with new cool team names was also never an option. I was willing to do it one more time and I loved it, but it's enough now. Expect something radically different in H2H9! It's possible that I end up with some previous collaborators again, but I'm keeping all possibilities open.

Spacecrabs, congratulations on being the new champions, although some of you already were champions. You were the instant favourites after Dig Site 4, then declined a bit, but in the end you had undoubtedly the strongest season of all teams. Going off my experiences in Heaven's Atlas (and Parkmenistan), you've got some of the very best brainstorming power on the team and it showed in every park. Every park was highly creative, and across the season they were very varied. However, there was also a certain consistency to them, a signature style in a way. In the future, I think I'll be able to identify parks as typically Spacecrab-styled. This is just another quality that cements Team Spacecrab as the rightful H2H8. ][ntamin, well done. Congratulations again!

Was a blast to follow along the competition, the 5th H2H that I've watched from the sidelines and I'd say it's near the top. Congrats Team Spacecrab and all of the other teams, who all submitted excellent parks. 

The Winner's Speech

(With apologies to Liam)

Thanks all for your congratulations!  It hadn't really dawned on me until Semis was submitted, but the Crabs really have become a fantastic team of cohesive, supportive members excited to work with each other.  I don't think we ever had a moment where somebody just wasn't interested anymore; the enthusiasm and excitement to continue crabbin' really pushed everybody to work well together and build with the best interests of the team in mind. 

I'd love to say we won because of my excellent leadership and incredible strength as a builder, but that probably couldn't be further from the truth.  The Crab Chemistry was great from the start, and by the time we finished up the RR I doubt I was even necessary.  I owe the whole team a big thanks for being excited to work with each other and open to whatever made parks better.  My role was basically to know when a light-touch approach to leadership was all we needed and support the parks as best I could by making readmes, giving feedback, and hosting maps.

One thing I can say about our squad's success is that we happened to get extremely lucky on people's availability.  A few of my picks turned out to have way more time available than they had initially predicted; Saxman and Belgian were both able to work around their family schedule, Dirt was able to balance medical exams and REEC worldbuilding, and Coups and Cam both stepped up to work a little outside of when they had said they might be able to originally.  That really opened up the possibilities for us and made for a hugely optimistic team chat, as everyone kept finding ways to make their time work.  Without that key - and very unpredictable - advantage, I'm not sure we'd have made it this far.

Saxman is my MVP without a doubt.  Even without his contributions on literally every map we submitted, his energy, willingness to contribute anything and everything we needed, and general positive vibes were really the core of the team's personality.  The guy is massively dedicated to his friends, and we're all lucky enough to now be counted as those.  He managed to rope in his entire family; his newborn daughter now wears a whole bunch of crab-themed merch as our official mascot.  Saxman is really the spirit of the crabs.  (Also, we'd probably have about 3 less parks finished without him.  Floater of the year 100%.  It was insane to watch him just work non-stop on every. single. map.)

I also owe a huge thanks to Spacek for his time spent on CTRs.  He signed on hoping to make a name for himself as a builder, and in the end he only came out with a 7% share on one park even though he was a key contributor on, again, every map we built.  He wasn't initially on my draft list, but saxman and others were so enthusiastic about working with him I figured the worst that could happen was NE as a whole got some cool new rides.  We did, but along the way Spacek's stuff contributed an enormous amount of life and atmosphere to the parks.  Haystack, Mobray's, Zerzura, wouldn't be the same awesome viewing experiences without the CTRs and I really have a new level of appreciation for that aspect of building now.

 

Dirt, Belgian, Cam, Coups, Disney and Tolsimir - all proved excellent builders and excited about supporting the team's parks any way they could.  Shout-outs to Cam for custom music.  I think part of our momentum - a huge factor in the attrition of H2H - was that the season turned into a team of people building the parks they always wanted to.  I think Tolsimir is happy with his 4 seasons park; I really appreciate his decision to give not-heaven a try and see how it went. I know Cam+Coups are super excited to finally get the ski resort park done right.  

Special mention as well to Faas, who was perhaps the Crab with the most to be sour about after the draft; he was on trade notice for a while and got bumped off the lead role on a park in the schedule, then got asked to work on the one park concept he specifically mentioned not being interested in - an indoor park.  Luckily for the rest of the crabs he's an easy-going guy who was totally on board for the Romon outdoor section once I found him some good reference, and without his warp-speed, high-quality build there we may have forfeited r5.  Cheers!

Finally my vice-cap and top pick Fisch - big thanks for driving some of our strongest park concepts and really pushing the builds forward.  He was fired-up for the team; sometimes it spilled over into leaping to our parks' defense, but mostly it was just being really excited for our progress.  I think the balance between us was important to the team atmosphere.

 

It's been an incredible ride, and I certainly never expected to do this well coming in.  I am, after all, the lowest-scoring, least-experienced captain.  All of the success is down to the Crabs themselves and their incredible efforts to keep the team's progress and the fun crab camaraderie going.

To our opponents: Well contested, in the final and all throughout the contest.  This has been a really strong H2H in the sense that no round really felt like a team had given less than their best, and I've been consistently impressed with how much originality and concept-focused building the contest pulled out of people who normally stick to stuff that's a little more down-to-earth.  I am disappointed there was drama and I wish a few things had played out differently, but H2H is drama by definition.  We should be able to appreciate the parks and the effort people put in without getting tied down in the circumstances.  

Will there be a second Spacecrabs?  Only time will tell, of course, but in the space between now and the next edition of H2H I think we can certainly expect some Crab Projects.  The team connections have been strong enough that we're all excited to keep on building together even without an opponent, so keep your eyes open.