This is detestable behavior. I can't think of a single large organization who would have this be their course of action.

FPX has made the decision that they will be forgoing paying Ange1's salary due to him being unable to play. What reason is there that he might not be able to play currently? Well, on February 24th, Russia happened to invade Ukraine, and Ange1 being Ukrainian was in Kiev during that time. Obviously there is no way for him to leave Ukraine during this time as a result of the invasion. He has taken refuge outside of Kiev, however. This is why he is not able to play for FPX currently. FPX has decided that his life is worthless, or at least, not worth what his salary demands. This is extremely disgusting behavior from this organization.

I feel as though in many cases that North American teams are sacrificing their tactical depth in favor of the improvisation that is more probably focused on their star players performing. You look at a team like Gambit, for instance, in no way does their success rely on an individual, and I would even go a step further to say that even if an individual is underperforming, their tactical depth allows for them to still come out on top because the way they approach the game is far more team constrained than it is individually.

And yes, of course, the NA teams are going to play as a team for the most part, but there is an extraordinary level of focus placed on the star players performing essentially improvised stunts that the game can, itself, hinge on. Your own examples are self explanatory there, what happens when Yay underperforms? Envy loses. What happened when Tenz had a bad tournament? Sentinels lost.

And I think it is undeniable that the fan hyper-fixation is absolutely getting into the mindset of both the organizations and the players themselves here. As I said before, the culture is the infection.

Failure it is, I am being hyperbolic here, but my perception moving forward and that of which I'm basing this post off of, is that this issue will be exacerbated in the future.

Refer to my reply to Queuek about the money thing, it's not referencing how hard it is to become a player in the first place, it's referring to guys who already are making salaries comparable to high EU CS teams. I.E., they're not struggling.

Individualism itself is not inherently a bad thing, I was quite specific with my wording there, my issue is with the "hyper-fixation" on individualism that we hold to be the case culturally in the United States period. European teams obviously have star players as you mentioned, though the fixation on those individuals in how the game is played is not the same when compared to North American teams. Scream realizes that very well, considering his own track record.

Money was in reference to the proliferation of exorbitant amounts of money through other avenues, such as streaming. You look at many European teams, and these guys are zoned in on what matters, winning. They aren't at the same time sacrificing their work in-game to stream or do other things, the focus is not lost.

I agree with your other two paragraphs.

Boosting hype to an unattainable level after Iceland, and proceeding to fail internationally ever since is in my eyes falling off pretty hard.

For anyone who's watched any esport for more than a year consistently, Sentinels falling off in the way that they have should be no surprise. Especially considering how new the game is, I don't know how many of you will recall, but after only a couple years after the release and initial competition for CS:GO, 95% of the players who were on top then were not the aforementioned only couple years later. The game is developing strategically at about the pace I expected, i.e. extremely quickly. There haven't been many surprises whatsoever, though one thing that was sort of bizarre is exactly how hard NA has fallen off in only a short amount of time, which I personally believe to be as a result of the culture both surrounding and infecting North American teams in Valorant. Hyper fixation on individualism, personal skill, and most of all, money, which is about the most American thing out there to be frank. The culture in North America, and more specifically the United States, is exactly the reason why we continue to fail to have the same dynastic success that has been seen in Europe throughout many years of Competitive Counter Strike; dynastic meaning spanning for at least or more than a whole year that a team has been able to find continual extremely high level of success. It's something I notice in how many North American professional players conduct themselves firstly, and the bases that many teams here find themselves cultivating. Unless something changes, it's going to be business as usual for this competitive FPS game, Europe, CIS, and Brazilian teams continually finding more success than we do. It's a shame considering that North America has never and I mean never, suffered from a lack of talent. It just seems as though we do not have the predilection for long term success, much of our focus being set on short term prizes, which was clearly displayed in this tournament especially by Sentinels. It's just gross mismanagement that a team would try to win tournaments with their IGL doing the job of the coach, because let's be honest, Shaz is stretched far too thin, and Rawkus is not a coach in the most practical sense. Not to mention that many players coming over from NA CS have finally exposed themselves for who they really are, players who are aware that their career is near its end and wanting to make some money by hopping into this game, exposing its publicity to make it streaming. Yet another example of the mismanagement and short sightedness of North American teams, taking a short term advantage whilst blind to the long game.

Actually super accurate.

Didn't Austria fight several wars for Turkey not to be Europe?

Best team in the world is whoever wins Berlin for the time being. It's clear Sentinels is going to be doing some drastic changes in how they approach the game.

One of the comparisons people have made with Sentinels is to Astralis, of course in the name of overhyping the team to oblivion. Sentinels is not like Prime Astralis, and anyone who watched Astralis rise and maintain the peak of FPS dominance pretty much ever seen, in an era where Team Liquid was a team that was incredibly dominant themselves, know this is stupid. Sentinels is overhyped, and likely will not reach the peak that everyone expected them to, this tournament shows that.

Not to mention, it's about time Sentinels gets a coach. It's a whole job for a reason, because the time investment into coaching properly is insane, and whilst Sentinels were very dominant, the strats have developed to the point now where relying on out aiming the opponent is becoming less viable. Shaz has done a damn good job as the coach and igl, but as the game develops, it's going to become less and less viable, a la the situation with Coldzera and the Brazilians not having a coach in CS.

Would seem so.

Everyone knows what happened after Ence's historic victory over Astralis, is this the same scenario?

Thanks for the reply Yay, do appreciate having your perspective on this, at the end of the day the conversation is important and to throw your input out on account of anything would be stupid to do. I agree wholeheartedly with the first paragraph, the game is different, thank God, and it allows for different playstyles and backgrounds to flourish whereas in another game they might not, and you're totally correct in that people will try different sports to see what they either enjoy/do best at.

As for the second, I think I threw out the word washed a little to hard, considering NA as a scene was on the decline so obviously peoples' careers weren't on the uptrend in it as North American teams. There's plenty that could have changed I'm sure, and at the end of the day the death of NA's CS scene came down to money in the immediate since the future of every team is never stable and especially in NA's case, there wasn't the will to wait it out for a team to come up and revitalize the region. I really appreciate your story about your growth not only as a player, but as a human being, it's a side that we as fans/viewers of the game do not see often, and for good reason at that considering some of the absolute lunatics that would surely come out in force. Nonetheless, I appreciate you spending the time to tell a bit of it.

I agree interregional play is speculated to an extreme currently, but I think the reason for that is that there has been zero, and with the Berlin Major right around the corner, it's something that is going to explode in popularity to speak of. As far as certainty is concerned though, you're correct, the only thing that is certain at the end of the day is change, whether that be in who performs better or worse, or what can be said with objectivity.

Thank you so very much for this response, your writing is actually really good. Apparently best Jet NA is also best writer NA. But aside from that, once again, your response is very insightful. Wish you best of luck in Berlin, you guys have been incredible playing recently.

I don't know if that's the case, it took damn near 20 years for NA cs to finally keel over and die. I simply don't think it'll be possible to beat that sort of longevity, even with support. Not to mention if CS actually starts to die, which there's an argument for it happening, Valve will intervene.

Both did, though Asuna was never a professional. Yay played for Complexity for around a year. I agree though, these new age players coming up in the game, being built by it, are going to take over eventually. Though, most of the pro players that did switch were washed anyway, it's still a massive advantage that won't be gone entirely for maybe another year.

Relative to the legacy, resources, and time that all of the massive European teams have, they are incredibly new. Fnatic has existed forever at this point, Liquid as well, G2 is obvious as well. It's relative to the massive teams from Europe who were on top not even a year ago.

Most of the top European teams were not even in the story with Iceland. It is entirely down to the region catching up quickly on that pro player deficit coming from CS.

The North American region of Valorant will not be on top of the game for very long. The reason for it being on top initially is the reality that North American Counter:Strike is dead. Without this being the case, there wouldn't be much of anything going for NA, much less Valorant. The pool of professional North American CS players was massive for orgs in NA to choose from, able to take over talent that is going to be far ahead of any other region for the near future. Now that some time has passed, we've seen NA really not grow at all as a region basically just leaving Sentinals as the only real bastion for NA dominance abroad considering their run in Iceland. Unfortunately for them though, it's basically been proven with time that the teams they did beat from abroad, I.E. Fnatic and some others, are not even close to being dominant in their region. Fnatic was knocked out by Liquid who just got beaten by a 25th ranked Navi for crying out loud. The supposed to be dominating teams in EU are being destroyed by the new teams such as Ascend who is looking incredible at the moment. Same goes for Gambit, who looks very good.

Point is, though, NA supremacy will go to the wayside once everyone else gets that time to catch up from the huge pro player deficit they were in coming to Valorant in the first place.

EDIT: I was correct.

The thing is, EU hasn't gotten weaker. The teams that have fallen off that you've noted being Liquid, Fnatic, etc, all of those teams had the massive advantage in time and money to be able to get squads together immediately over most of the other teams in the region. Now that time has passed, and players have been picked up, those rosters aren't actually any worse necessarily, it's just that EU has gotten far more competitive altogether. Remember that Europe is still essentially dominated by the CS scene because EU CS isn't dead, and the few pros who did switch were immediately snagged by the biggest orgs. Also remember that CIS basically might as well have not existed at the beginning of Valorant, with how heavily that region skews towards CS to this very day. The region has gotten stronger, more competitive, and will not be down for the count.

Precisely. It's something we've only seen with Iceland. This is why there is zero idea as to what is going to happen in Berlin.

That's not the point, interregional games are games done between teams from two different regions. The road to Berlin is all within a region, Europe plays European teams, CIS plays CIS teams, etc. That's why I didn't say that seeding matters much, or any regional games matter much when you talk about the interregional competition in its entirety. Another thing to note is that there have been no CIS teams to have ever played against any NA teams as of yet. Gambit hasn't, nor has Ascend. Ascend hasn't even played Gambit yet, though as things are looking, Ascend certainly seems to be the favorite in my eyes there.

That's not correct, though. You can say objectively whether or not a region is in fact stronger or weaker than another. Part of my point, however, is that you can't say which region is better currently because they haven't played against each other at all. But once we have far more online inter-regional games, it'll be rather simple to say with objectivity what region has the foreground on the game. For example, CIS is currently dominating CS:GO, which previously it was Europe for basically ever apart from the Boston Major where C9 won.

With how new the game is, there's constantly conversation over which team is better or worse than another. This is fine, it's whatever. But a lot of people need a reality check for this conversation. The current #1 team in EU has never played against a single NA team. In fact, apart from Iceland, almost all of the teams in other regions have never actually played against anyone in NA. And considering it's been a solid amount of time since Iceland's major event, there's absolutely no telling as to what is going to occur when Berlin rolls around. The best part about watching these different regions is their fundamentally different methodology to approaching the game and how it ought to be played. This is going to affect how the inter-regional matches go significantly. Something else that has to be noted is the significant difference in the number of notable professional CS players who swapped from CS to Valorant in NA compared to Europe. As you can imagine, the number is drastically lower in Europe due to the fact that European Counter-Strike is not dead. This idea that CS is dead is very American Centric, considering the NA CS scene is in fact dead. This means that NA has a fairly large advantage over almost all of the other regions, which as a result is going to mean NA will dominate for a period of time. This very well may be shaken up with Berlin, there are plenty of teams that haven't seen an NA team in-game before and vice versa. It's going to be an exciting year for the game competitively for certain. What're your thoughts?

Every single team is overrated at the moment. With how the dynamics are working, there is no team, minus Sentinels, that is possible to maintain any kind of dominance. EU and other regions not playing against NA makes any conversation about who is better right now automatically irrelevant. No way to determine anything until some inter-regional tournaments happen.