Tldr, c9 left because na cs is a money pit. Then when Russia did Russia things and gambit had to release there rosters cloud 9 acquired the gambit roster and has built from there

Sounds like cope tbh
You can't really say winning an international lan event where the top 4 teams were Navi, drx, loud and Fnatic doesn't hold up to a regular. There was like no big upsets that heavily changed the results single Elim had basically no effect

Imagine a soccer team being top 4 at a football would cup

You know why

Fair fair, but at least unlike yay, ardiis could actually put up numbers against tier 2 teams...

Depends a fair bit on whether it's being calculated off vlr's rating system or strait acs. Both have their merit, but if your looking from the perspective of straight acs there's 3 duelists in the top 5 (ardiis, keznit and whyz). Aswell in the group stage both are influenced heavily by who's in your group

Nah it's worse, this is a 1 team game. Fnatic just clears

I don't know my ranked games always go better with a few cold ones. I can't imagine a few drinks would hamper Angel or redgars ability to blind to into the enemy

Vodka redbull clears

Pre-match drinks with the team > mid game nicotine injection

Give sayf a beer

Liquid win this, loud is in shambles

Idk Ardiis English is kind of questionable, translating from scouse to English is a full time job for fns

Prosciutto gets hard diffed by Serrano, granted wouldn't say I've put it on a pizza

To be fair kind of impossible to make a sequel for these kind of games. Especially games as old as csgo and overwatch that came right before the games as a live service model. If you change to much you lose your cult fan base, you keep the core of the game the same and your 'new release' is basically a major update (which to be fair is what most game releases used to be)

The necessary knowledge (and to and extent skill) floor to be able to pick up counterstrike means it has fuck all chance of breaking into newer markets. Valorants more intuitive utility and basic movement make it significantly easier to pick up and approach to a new demographic that wasn't born in the days of 1.6

Also tier 2 esports is still a money pit in CS, it just takes longer for orgs to realize since there's still something shiny at the end of it.

Sounds like the difference between this year and last year's call of duty tbh

Trust me it exists, it might involve dfm dropping their roster for bonkers because the teams better, completely rebranding their org to bonkers because it's a better brand and the LCQ into champions run of a multiple lifetime. But dammit that world exists somewhere

On my way to run the sim on an Intel super server until I find the one possible universe bonkers win

Give jett a frame 1 jump cancel hitbox

The bit I kind of left because it would have gone from happy potter to game of thrones was that hopefully with pushing personalities and tier 2 players other revenue like streaming and social media influencing opens up as an option to support a career in Val.

Knew I should have made it a 10 second tik tok and not a post in forum

Sell orgs on sponsor and brand exposure not prize money, integrate the T1 and T2 calendar, get T1 players vs tier 2 players/teams you don't need a whole event for it, make it a show match

Time to find out if there's a word limit

I survived overwatch and heavily followed the games tier 2 scene (I know I wasted a lot of my time) but here's what you need to make it work.

Tier 2 brings value to the scene in 2 ways
-It creates storyline and history for new talents entering the scene giving them brands and personality that's marketable to sponsors for either a VCT team or Val in general

-provides stability for upcoming players to persue the dream of playing in VCT

To create a history and brands you need to make story's worth giving a fuck about. You do this with event's and opportunities the break players from the tier 2 bubble into the main VCT audience. To do this you need events, not necessarily big ones with massive prise pools and financial investment. Think show matches with no stakes but high profile names against tier 2 teams. "VCT emea split 1 All-stars plays VCL split 1 winner Istanbul wildcats" so stakes, just exposure. But this also needs content surrounding it, invest money into produced content surrounding tier 2 teams e.g. "how M80 use breach on ascent to disrupt the meta" it's clicky, throw it on tik tok for the I pad babys brings attention to the tier 2 team and highlights a playstyle or prominent figure that fans will remember. To steal something that overwatch league actually did well this year press season to fill the gap of a long off season a bit run a pro-am VCT teams vs challengers teams. If a VCT team lose, great you have a story for the upcoming VCT season and hype for some tier 2 talent. If the VCT teams stomp then ohh well that's what's meant to happen, another great example of this was the Overwatch world cup which was hype as fuck but also created the story for so many of it's biggest tier 2 players (great off season tournament)

Stability for players is a lot harder to do achieve borderline impossible so here's some ideas.

• tier 2 should not have an off season, no matter what it is run some cheap events from riot /3rd party run events. As long as there's an open Qualifyer and the main event streams to the main VCT feeds it's all you need.
• events need to have budget set aside for direct VCT marketing that makes them more appealing to an org trying to sell to sponsors than a prize pool would be. Drop $1000 of the prize pool and allocate the budget to have every team get some form of product placement desk segment/brand activation on the main broadcast. Idk have a the guard from the guard ride a horse on a stick in a race against one a faze power wheels car driven by the head coach.
  -Provide more to orgs than just a prize pool, sponsors pay the bills no prize pool winnings.

Also some easy stuff.
Combine the main emea VCL's into 1 league with cis and mena sperate that feed into one playoffs bracket for the each split. (Yeah its a pain to sell sponsors on because of how emea works, but at least you have decent product to sell).

Anyway here's my rough idea of a skeleton calendar to run:
Mid January,
VCL split 1 starts during VCT off season (online)
VCL playoffs into VCL VCT Pro-Am mid to late Feb (online like weekend event)
March
VCT starts split 1
VCL split 2 starts
VCL split 2 playoffs
VCT group stage ends
1 week gap
All starts show match vs VCL split 2 champs(online because it's cheaper maybe fly them in to lan) probably do this as the opening game of VCT playoffs and not before the finals
Late April
VCT split 1 playoffs
May
Masters 1
June
VCT split 2 starts
VCL split 3 starts
July
VCL playoffs
Late July
VCL split 3 champs vs VCT split 2 All-stars
VCT playoffs
August
Masters 2
Early September
Last chance qualifiers/world cup qualifiers
Early October champs
Off season start*
Mid November
world cup lan finals time 3 emea nations, 3 na nations, 3 apac nations and 1 China representative

December-January
*Red bull home ground, LATAM cup, summit invitational, (the good thing about a regional off season is a number of events can run at one time)

For a bit of context, deffo was much more of a utility usage and structured player on gambit (part of why we only really saw him brain off click heads when he went over to CN) would slot in much better to angel's system than cNed who came from a very loose ascend team

Navi, solve the chemistry issues with trying to integrate cNed

That's some solid sentinel's future copium, I respect it

Bleed kind of get ruined by military service and player age requirements. From what I remember hearing only 3/5 are able to play in VCT next year. (I think juicy is to young and one other has to do mandatory military service)

To properly answer the question the answer is yes. The guard (aswell as gentle m8s and bleed) are able to change their roster like any over VCT org (this has been mentioned to be a reason as to why ascension is before champs so that it is equal for the ascension teams and the partnership teams)

Nah bob is just not on a good team, still statistically deadlifts all of xsets games

By the sounds of the announcement they aren't dropped they're just available for VCT teams (potentially without a buyout) meaning that players will likely stay if not picked up by VCT teams (granted doesn't confirm what the contract status is on them getting paid or not)

I mean overwatch was extremely popular in china aswell as cross fire. So odds are there will be a fair few fps fans who carry over. Would be giga hype if in a magical world babybay who is an ex Overwatch and ex cross fire play (actually played a cross fire Lan in china during that time) somehow made it but there's like 0.0001% odds on that

Doesn't make much sense, if you make a fnatic skin. All of fnatic would likely use that skin (because marketing for the org) then you can't have Derke win a clutch with a specific vandal then have everyone go buy 'Derke vandal skin' then you get the profits no revenue sharing necessary

Surely bonkers can win ascension next year so that they can add a bonk bat melee. EZ money for riot and the revenue splitting would almost allow bonkers to send their whole coaching staff to an event

Does he have a spot, probably not. Dgzin probably will stay on furia. He has a chance to get a spot with mibr but they also might rotate heat back in. Whivh puts him in competition with every other Brazilian jett to get a chance of playing for loud if the aspas rumors end up coming to a head. At which point would you take him over askia or pollo probably not

She'll be right Ardiis is the only player to get angel to stop smoking the crack pipe and play the game. Man can just head back to the FPX core

To be fair, lcq was a hard raze meta on most maps and without tenz being able to play raze. Zekken kind of had to. Then it's an easier rotation if you also have him off role onto jett. Odds are zekken is still pretty flexible

The fpx story line is strait up at better one than the paper rex story, would not have been better if the series went the other way

Nah Johnqt to karmine corp, you heard it here probably not 1st. French Canadian igl

Can I put a bet that T1 go on a run but choke the final and come second. You know for traditions sake

Did someone not tell you that's the 3rd Chinese seed run it down mid with a dream fpx not the master Berlin fpx. Them getting past T1 would be a giga upset

Heat > tenz

The champs skins aren't going to live up to the hype of the previous years

I'll be honest, more interesting titles which give you a rough idea how the games went. I'm all for it

I respect the belief that nrg somehow pulls champs out of their arse. But also without fns there's only like 2 igl's left across the entire game

What are your tier 2 standouts now that ascension is over in all regions. Who should get picked up and where should they go. e.g. karmine corp need to sign Enzo asap but koalanoob might struggle to find a team since every NA team has a jett they're highly committed to, shirt of tenz going to make content and a spot opening on Sen.

Buyout bcj and Zander from e g. and m80 respectively. Brings in a new calling structure with 2 vocal former igl players.

Bonkers duh

Idk what they're on about jemkin 0-14 qwertyy went 0-16. 16>14 therefore qwertyy > jemkin

Big rip, man retired instead of going to the lost cause that is riots approach to OCE. Can't blame him to be fair

Odds are it would really depend on the offers they're getting, if 100 thieves come in and drop a bag and half for johnqt I couldn't imagine a world where playing a whole extra year in ascension makes more sense than taking a big pay check plus the brand value of being on a clout org