So far, the results of this tournament have already clearly shown that the top NA players of last year were unskilled. Their only saving grace was exploring a broken agent, chamber. Starting with the primary fraud Yay - going from a nearly undisputed number 1 duelist to outside the top 10 in this event. The second-best NA duelist, cryocells also played similar agents in a similar style so naturally, a similar fall from grace should be expected. Other NA players have even chosen to avoid international competition out of fear of being exposed - Marved, the Guard roster, and more. Entire NA teams that revolved around the broken agent (ex Optic) have proven to be significantly worse too. They went from winning masters events to barely scraping an 8th-place finish.
I think it's fair to conclude that NA's achievements in 2022 were an outlier caused by bad game design.
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