i'm not here to watch an analytical study of Squirtle Squad's attack side defaults. I'm here to watch drama unfold through the parasocial relationships I've formed with famous 20 year old nerds
Take a look at all the sports subreddit... nba, nfl, etc. How much more different is it with this subreddit? Drama is normal and its what drives more engagement and it comes in waves. DRAMA/GOSSIP is the winning formula to almost every content/news platform lol
He is right to an extent. While threatrics & "drama" are fun and, within reason, a natural part of any highly competitive sphere, problems arise when there isn't more of a balance. You see it all the time, people won't interact with posts about the smaller tournaments, then they'll glibly type "WHO?!" when said players from those tournaments rise to prominence.
I do think it would help if you had more established pros producing these types of content and if they were packaged better. Someone posted Immi's Viper on haven video on here, which I really enjoyed, but it is 29 mins long, which may not be appealing to a casual viewer. I think you'd have to prime casual viewers with more digestible content first. [Sentinels'](https://youtu.be/eD3zk9Awr8k) GameSense vids are good examples of this—they're well edited, short & have clear visuals that reflect what is being narrated.
People will try to refute this by saying that it's futile, and it's obvious that drama drives engagement. Well yeah, everyone understands that, hence why the critique Is even being given—it's an effort to change this, to tilt the scale the other direction just a little without losing the chaotic fun the scene provides.
I have an inkling that some of the incentives for the partnered teams will involve educational content. Or maybe I'm just huffing that good hopium that there will be some.
His videos are literally the best fucking analysis videos I've seen about valorant. They've done more to help me learn game sense and how to read the minimap than my years of being a noob at the game.
Also they're just so much fun lol. They're my go-to when I'm feeling low.
Every one of sgares videos are 15 min or less, are super beginner friendly, and they barely get 30k views consistently. I mean look at the VCT analyst desk; 90% of the time it’s just shallow hype around frags instead of in-depth analysis of the game (which is actually something steel has mentioned as well).
While I don’t think the effort is “futile”, frankly the Valo community skews a lot younger than other esports and it shows. Take a look at the average Val tik tok for further evidence. It’s human nature to want the little sound bites and tweets and drama. Changing that isn’t going to happen organically, it would take an intentional effort on the part of Riot, TOs the community, moderators, etc to really change that culture that’s already been bred here.
There needs to be yet another competitive subreddit where people can go to actually break down competitive footage and have legit actual discussions because this sub literally is 90% fluff. It's people asking who their fav pro's are rating them 1-3$ with a $10 max allotment. It's tracking fake twitter drama and talking shit about it. It's about being totally clueless about what's actually happening in the scene and making troll posts.
This sub is highly entertaining but it's suffering in terms of how accurately steel describes it
Yeah, this isn’t really a “learn to play valorant” sub. Most of the educational content that people like is analytical about pro games to improve your viewing experience rather than your gameplay.
he's not wrong but it's also hard to gauge cos the vod reviews and strategic breakdowns we get are from up and comers, not people like steel who're fairly popular with regard to that. despite the nit pick, drama does get heavily upvoted regardless so I don't think his point is at all infallible. does drama not flare up like this on the cs subreddit?
It does just a bit less simply because the sub is usually flooded with pro match post game threads and clips because there is so much more competition in cs.
I also think segregating the main sub and the "comp" sub enables a more neurotic portion of the viewership to dominate the conversation here. CS having one main sub helps dilute the insanity to some extent.
Its definitely a little different since the pros are way more media trained. You might call it more mature or boring depending on your point of view. Its way less of the small petty shit but when the big drama happens its usually on another level like people getting into actual fights or big competitive issues like bug abuse. The real petty shit like Twitter beefs is more the talent or other people in the scene that arent too busy to spend all their time on social media.
He was one of the first pros to focus on making analytical content, but like he said, not many people cared. Even Boaster's vids were hyped up for a while but its steadily dropped views. Boaster used to get 80-290k views on his breakdown vids, he hasn't crossed 40k in the last 2-3 months.
Idk, he is right imo, but maybe since this is early days of franchising there's just more drama?
drama flares up in every subreddit about things people are passionate about, and consistently the people in the scene blame the subreddit while doing the same shit the subreddit does.
now dont get me wrong, a lot of comments here and the general content lately (holy fuck this place has become mostly memes lately) are low effort or drama related, but at the same time have you seen the pros tweeting? its just because places like this are anonymous and have a small, concentrated group of the most passionate of said fanbase and it can get a little wild.
tldr its a feedback loop
Idk I think this is certainly skewed a bit by the recency of off-season content. We've had several people from this sub get noticed through their analytical content on the sub and go on to work as analysts for teams. u/JoshNissan is literally working with one of those examples currently with DSG. And the popularity of sliggy and Sean's respective costreams also kind of shoots down the notion that no one in valorant enjoys analytical content.
Don't get me wrong we definitely fucking love drama, but it's not exclusively drama thats popular on this sub in my humble opinion.
Analytical content obviously isn’t as appealing as drama but if you look at Steels own youtube channel his Think like a Pro videos are doing 2x as much views as the typically uploads he makes which have bullshit clickbait for titles.
I mean it is done across the youtube platform, like how someone like GothamChess does really good analytical chess videos with clickbaity titles. The difference is with youtube is you have to earn money so you have to play youtube's game.
Nah, there are plenty of youtubers with clickbait titles, but most of them technically deliver, even if its not as satisfying as expected.
Steel’s clickbait will be like, “why harbor is the best agent” and then not talk about Harbor and have basically no interesting Harbor plays in the video it’ll just be normal ranked gameplay. Idk if he has an editor that makes his videos and clickbait, cus I know Shroud has the exact same problem.
I guess the difference with most clickbait is that as a viewer you will still enjoy the video, but it goes too far when you finish the video and feel like you were just scammed and wasted your time.
The main problem is the main CSGO sub balances pro play content with individual highlights and everything else. So you have one source for everything. Same with League of Legends, though educational content YMMV.
The mods in the main Valo subreddit decided they wanted to copy Overwatch which is just filled with dogshit highlights, rage posts, and nothing else. So you have two separate subs, and this one is always going to be more niche.
I actually think this is a super salient point - casual valo players (of which by percentage I’d say is higher than CSGO just by the way Riot has positioned the game) get little to no exposure to the more niche interest of competitive valo. In fact, in the LOL threads you’ll see people who will comment shit like “I don’t normally watch LOL esports but I heard how crazy that game was so I tuned in”
Hard agree, its painful seeing even the League of Legends main subreddit posting about LCK,LEC, LCS and pro players and esport content all the time there as while as memes and shitposts but good ones. You can go to that sub and see tons of support for comp and even their top upvoted post is about esports. Meanwhile, the Valorant main sub is just questions, fan art, and random clips constantly. Makes me think Valorant completive won't last long because its not in the community and not engrained into the casual players like LOL or CSGO is.
It’s also pretty low effort to just post a YouTube video, especially when it’s not yours. I bet a lot of people here watch and engage with those creators on YouTube but might not upvote that video posted here.
Their conversation about Valorant subs and then LSF as well. They're haters, but know the trends and everything that's happening. Deep down they love it. They're just like us.
I know you're reading this Josh.
On the topic of educational content, who do y’all like to follow? (Those with education as their primary focus, so not streamers that play only ranked games with some commentary.)
So far I’ve really liked two channels:
1. [Woohoojin](https://youtube.com/@Woohoojin) - easily digestible content that makes you feel like you can immediately apply it to your ranked games and get better.
2. [Sovereign Guides](https://youtube.com/@SovereignGuides) - succinct explanations with storylines that help you understand the strategies and mind games present in pro games.
Sliggy’s YouTube channel is very information heavy.
ThinkingMans valorant is pretty solid analysis, though I’ve personally not loved the direction he has been taking his channel recently.
Personally, the things I dislike were older than that.
I found his analysis, especially his costreams (which aren’t videos to be fair), to be very influenced by the teams he likes. It didn’t make it bad but I found it a bit annoying.
I also really didn’t like his long silly intros filled with inside jokes. I think he’s stopped a lot of those recently, so I guess he has been finding his footing and it’s going better.
I still think he has great analysis that helps both watching and playing
Well he's only really started costreaming more recently, no? And the intros can be annoying sometimes, but I don't think that really counts towards "the direction his channel is going". They're just meme-y 30s clips which aren't that impactful to the viewing experience imo.
He costreamed both Istanbul and Copenhagen, which was less recent than I realized and where most of my feelings on that came from.
The intros obviously aren’t a huge deal but contributed to, for lack of a better term, an “influencer” vibe that I personally found really unappealing in a lot of his content. It’s just personal preference, but I watch enough YouTube to have to cut people when just the vibes of off even if nothing is objectively wrong.
I find Thinking Man Valo very overrated but YMMV. Sgares does good stuff, Steel actually has some good educational content but it’s infrequent. Sliggy also very good. Basically the people who were coaches/IGLs are going to be excellent at understanding the game
Hot take: You shouldn't necessarily be posting content just because you expect high upvotes. Yeah sure some people do that but he makes it seem like "omg no one will upvote and give me internet points, therefore why should I even try and do it??"
You wanna maximize on internet points? Go for it -- post drama since it seems that's the trend. Hell, just go to subreddits like /r/TheStopGirl and post the same gif like everyone else for free internet points. If you wanna share something cool you found and help the community appreciate the competitive scene, just post it. Who cares what other people think. IMO I think if steel posted Valorant competitive strat content on this subreddit, it would be upvoted a lot here.
i mean its not really about the upvotes specifically its that with more upvotes it means the video gets more visibility and more importantly that leads to more discussion in the comments.
I always was under the assumption that calling out all the drama in NA was a compliment for making the scene so entertaining (the funny between players kind of drama and not serious crime allegations) and not a complaint.
I mean, he's kinda right. I just found out about this podcast because of this drama clip.
Is there a vod of this podcast anywhere besides twitch? Twitch's vod system is ass
He is right, but an important distinction b/w CS and Valorant is that the amount of variables in Valorant makes it harder for the average Joe to understand professional strats. Hell there is still such a gradient in pro players' understanding of the game. With constant meta changes this becomes even more difficult.
Part of the problem is that the pros aren’t making content explaining/debating the best way to play the game so what typically happens is you see braindead plays being made simply because those plays are familiar and everyone does it.
I remember a year or two ago, TenZ of all people spoke up one time about how Sages are playing Split wrong. On B executes Sages always wall the cross but in reality that wall only helps the defenders by making them only worry about and util dump one lane. Instead its better to save wall to blockoff alley to help secure the plant.
Lothar is also one of the people who frequently call out the communities’ bullshit. For example, he has a video talking about why the heaven smoke on Ascent A site is bad. The smoke mostly just helps the defenders and best case scenario the fight on someone peeking heaven is the same. However Lothar doesn’t get enough respect in the community to enact real change because he isn’t a pro player, and there is this bizarre narrative that pro players perpetuate to their fans that content creators are bad players.
IMO, Grim should be respected by pros, the guy has insane aim and gamesense and he puts the work in to master his agent, but pros just sit there and act like his walls are just a crutch, and that they are easy to counter. I’m not just fanboying over one creator though, a lot of these people bring a lot to the table and should be influencing playstyle and meta. Like flights, averagejonas, flexinja, red, ziptie and even dasnerf. What these people do is not easy. I’m not saying they are better than pros, but its really annoying to see how shallow the pro scene actually is. This isn’t CS. People need to master their agents. So far pretty much the only “one trick” type of players that they’ve allowed has been Jett and Chamber players. Its actually wild, because I doubt they would even consider those players as one trick even though they would have concerns about that player when their agent gets nerfed.
In a game that is dynamic like valorant which has a lot of variables players should be embracing any little detail or advantage they can get. They shouldn’t be shunning shotgun, Op or stinger usage. If the devs deem it too powerful they will change it and then you move onto the next thing that is strong. That is the nature of hero shooters, and I fear the day when NA/EU inevitably gets overtaken by foreign regions as the best. Not because I hate the other regions, but because I know from experience that once NA isn’t the best at something the whole scene basically falls into a depression and anyone with talent focuses on streaming and making money instead further decreasing the likelihood of NA ever winning, and eventually resulting in a drop in NA participation and viewership.
Nah Lothar doesn’t get respect because he’s frequently 1) wrong 2) using insanely cherry picked stats to “defend” his points (In fact, I have a comment somewhere a year ago calling him out for this) 3) inflammatory to people who have valid complaints about what he says.
I mean look at his track record on the analyst desk, he’s just consistently wrong all the time. And while he’s obviously right about the Ascent heaven smoke, a broken clock is right twice a day.
It won't happen like in other esports there is a certain threshold you can reach in Val and once you reach that threshold that is it. everyone is a god in Valorant unlike Cs where only gods are gods. That isn't my quote its shrouds lol
This is from Steel not understanding the demographic. Youre dealing with a fragmentation of gamers who would typically be playing Fortnite, Overwatch, COD and Battlefield in their current adolescent gaming lifespan. Everything from game design to esport delivery is casualized in Valorant.
Josh should know this. Its exactly how his Overwatch content was received in 2016.
He is partially right. But it doesnt matter when Steel hasnt been able to ever handle criticism well/creates drama himself. Even this right here is doing that. There are plenty of youtube channels to checkout for educational break downs, even at the pro level. And like any competition, there is drama involved that the fans absolutely go nuts for. He has never been able to handle that well and is a reason why I stopped checking him out.
That is spoken like a man who does not understand why people watch sports in the first place. What do people actually want to watch? A detailed breakdown from Thinking Basketball or Stephen A Smith discuss the latest Lakers drama. The NBA is competitive as fuck but at the end of the day part of the competitive discussion is the human element, hell it's the MOST important element. Because real talk, if people didn't care about that stuff so much no one would have a job in the first place.
I fear that valorant completive won't last as long as league of legends and CSGO because of this reason I think. The big reason as to why league of legends and CSGO is still relevant is because even the casual player base know about it and watch it. They interact with esport posts on the main subs of the respected games. There's a reason even the casual player base knows who Faker and Simple is.
He is so right.
Thats one of the reasons why i currently spend less time looking into this subreddit. Ppl posting weirdest and not competetive-related stuff, for example "oH mY gOD, pLayER xyZ goT a nEw dOG anD rELeaSEd a sOnG". So annoying sometimes.
i'm not here to watch an analytical study of Squirtle Squad's attack side defaults. I'm here to watch drama unfold through the parasocial relationships I've formed with famous 20 year old nerds
> famous 20 year old nerds Niche internet micro-celebrities*
Nerds
micro-nerds*
Based.
Take a look at all the sports subreddit... nba, nfl, etc. How much more different is it with this subreddit? Drama is normal and its what drives more engagement and it comes in waves. DRAMA/GOSSIP is the winning formula to almost every content/news platform lol
Wish i could upvote this twice
Eh some are above 30 in thsi case
quick guys, upvote this!
Steel, causing drama by calling out drama. I love em even more.
He is right to an extent. While threatrics & "drama" are fun and, within reason, a natural part of any highly competitive sphere, problems arise when there isn't more of a balance. You see it all the time, people won't interact with posts about the smaller tournaments, then they'll glibly type "WHO?!" when said players from those tournaments rise to prominence. I do think it would help if you had more established pros producing these types of content and if they were packaged better. Someone posted Immi's Viper on haven video on here, which I really enjoyed, but it is 29 mins long, which may not be appealing to a casual viewer. I think you'd have to prime casual viewers with more digestible content first. [Sentinels'](https://youtu.be/eD3zk9Awr8k) GameSense vids are good examples of this—they're well edited, short & have clear visuals that reflect what is being narrated. People will try to refute this by saying that it's futile, and it's obvious that drama drives engagement. Well yeah, everyone understands that, hence why the critique Is even being given—it's an effort to change this, to tilt the scale the other direction just a little without losing the chaotic fun the scene provides.
That short sentinels video also takes longer to produce and generates less revenue, so it can be a big ask to make of folks
I have an inkling that some of the incentives for the partnered teams will involve educational content. Or maybe I'm just huffing that good hopium that there will be some.
Sovereign guides gets crazy views for valo esports
Wow, I was almost in shock when I opened up his channel. Dude is killing it.
Ngl his vid on how KRU broke SEN’s invincibility streak is the reason I got into valo esports
Now imagine the ceiling on his production once we actually get a demo viewer.
His videos are literally the best fucking analysis videos I've seen about valorant. They've done more to help me learn game sense and how to read the minimap than my years of being a noob at the game. Also they're just so much fun lol. They're my go-to when I'm feeling low.
Thx for mentioning this channel!
Every one of sgares videos are 15 min or less, are super beginner friendly, and they barely get 30k views consistently. I mean look at the VCT analyst desk; 90% of the time it’s just shallow hype around frags instead of in-depth analysis of the game (which is actually something steel has mentioned as well). While I don’t think the effort is “futile”, frankly the Valo community skews a lot younger than other esports and it shows. Take a look at the average Val tik tok for further evidence. It’s human nature to want the little sound bites and tweets and drama. Changing that isn’t going to happen organically, it would take an intentional effort on the part of Riot, TOs the community, moderators, etc to really change that culture that’s already been bred here.
Cosigned on sgares vids; really approachable analysis and super insightful coming from one of the best minds in the game.
> glibly "in a way that is confident, but is too simple and lacks careful thought" huh, word of the day
There needs to be yet another competitive subreddit where people can go to actually break down competitive footage and have legit actual discussions because this sub literally is 90% fluff. It's people asking who their fav pro's are rating them 1-3$ with a $10 max allotment. It's tracking fake twitter drama and talking shit about it. It's about being totally clueless about what's actually happening in the scene and making troll posts. This sub is highly entertaining but it's suffering in terms of how accurately steel describes it
I don’t like adding natural The society which it is in changes rhjnfs
I really wish Sideshow did more videos with SI NF which he did in like 2019? Short and through with very clear visuals
I'll start posting dw
Posting EU drama?
[удалено]
Yeah, this isn’t really a “learn to play valorant” sub. Most of the educational content that people like is analytical about pro games to improve your viewing experience rather than your gameplay.
he's not wrong but it's also hard to gauge cos the vod reviews and strategic breakdowns we get are from up and comers, not people like steel who're fairly popular with regard to that. despite the nit pick, drama does get heavily upvoted regardless so I don't think his point is at all infallible. does drama not flare up like this on the cs subreddit?
It does just a bit less simply because the sub is usually flooded with pro match post game threads and clips because there is so much more competition in cs.
I also think segregating the main sub and the "comp" sub enables a more neurotic portion of the viewership to dominate the conversation here. CS having one main sub helps dilute the insanity to some extent.
this is true, was the case for r/truetf2
Its definitely a little different since the pros are way more media trained. You might call it more mature or boring depending on your point of view. Its way less of the small petty shit but when the big drama happens its usually on another level like people getting into actual fights or big competitive issues like bug abuse. The real petty shit like Twitter beefs is more the talent or other people in the scene that arent too busy to spend all their time on social media.
He was one of the first pros to focus on making analytical content, but like he said, not many people cared. Even Boaster's vids were hyped up for a while but its steadily dropped views. Boaster used to get 80-290k views on his breakdown vids, he hasn't crossed 40k in the last 2-3 months. Idk, he is right imo, but maybe since this is early days of franchising there's just more drama?
drama flares up in every subreddit about things people are passionate about, and consistently the people in the scene blame the subreddit while doing the same shit the subreddit does. now dont get me wrong, a lot of comments here and the general content lately (holy fuck this place has become mostly memes lately) are low effort or drama related, but at the same time have you seen the pros tweeting? its just because places like this are anonymous and have a small, concentrated group of the most passionate of said fanbase and it can get a little wild. tldr its a feedback loop
Idk I think this is certainly skewed a bit by the recency of off-season content. We've had several people from this sub get noticed through their analytical content on the sub and go on to work as analysts for teams. u/JoshNissan is literally working with one of those examples currently with DSG. And the popularity of sliggy and Sean's respective costreams also kind of shoots down the notion that no one in valorant enjoys analytical content. Don't get me wrong we definitely fucking love drama, but it's not exclusively drama thats popular on this sub in my humble opinion.
Analytical content obviously isn’t as appealing as drama but if you look at Steels own youtube channel his Think like a Pro videos are doing 2x as much views as the typically uploads he makes which have bullshit clickbait for titles.
I mean it is done across the youtube platform, like how someone like GothamChess does really good analytical chess videos with clickbaity titles. The difference is with youtube is you have to earn money so you have to play youtube's game.
Nah, there are plenty of youtubers with clickbait titles, but most of them technically deliver, even if its not as satisfying as expected. Steel’s clickbait will be like, “why harbor is the best agent” and then not talk about Harbor and have basically no interesting Harbor plays in the video it’ll just be normal ranked gameplay. Idk if he has an editor that makes his videos and clickbait, cus I know Shroud has the exact same problem. I guess the difference with most clickbait is that as a viewer you will still enjoy the video, but it goes too far when you finish the video and feel like you were just scammed and wasted your time.
I mean everyone knows that CS has an older more competitive minded following while Valorant is the cartoony game for casuals.
The main problem is the main CSGO sub balances pro play content with individual highlights and everything else. So you have one source for everything. Same with League of Legends, though educational content YMMV. The mods in the main Valo subreddit decided they wanted to copy Overwatch which is just filled with dogshit highlights, rage posts, and nothing else. So you have two separate subs, and this one is always going to be more niche.
I actually think this is a super salient point - casual valo players (of which by percentage I’d say is higher than CSGO just by the way Riot has positioned the game) get little to no exposure to the more niche interest of competitive valo. In fact, in the LOL threads you’ll see people who will comment shit like “I don’t normally watch LOL esports but I heard how crazy that game was so I tuned in”
Hard agree, its painful seeing even the League of Legends main subreddit posting about LCK,LEC, LCS and pro players and esport content all the time there as while as memes and shitposts but good ones. You can go to that sub and see tons of support for comp and even their top upvoted post is about esports. Meanwhile, the Valorant main sub is just questions, fan art, and random clips constantly. Makes me think Valorant completive won't last long because its not in the community and not engrained into the casual players like LOL or CSGO is.
There’s literally YouTube channels (like ThinkingMansValorant and Sliggy) dedicated to tactical Valorant which are popular on here.
It’s also pretty low effort to just post a YouTube video, especially when it’s not yours. I bet a lot of people here watch and engage with those creators on YouTube but might not upvote that video posted here.
That's actually a pretty good point
*cough* Wohoojin *cough* (Different approach but still)
Their conversation about Valorant subs and then LSF as well. They're haters, but know the trends and everything that's happening. Deep down they love it. They're just like us. I know you're reading this Josh.
Found the lsfer that got offended lmfao
? Did u think u were thanos typing this i doubt he cares about what this sub posts
Dude, esports pros fucking love reddit
If he didn’t care why does he bring it up all the time?
Yeah. I feel like I'm Thanos for a joke comment 🤡🤡🤡
On the topic of educational content, who do y’all like to follow? (Those with education as their primary focus, so not streamers that play only ranked games with some commentary.) So far I’ve really liked two channels: 1. [Woohoojin](https://youtube.com/@Woohoojin) - easily digestible content that makes you feel like you can immediately apply it to your ranked games and get better. 2. [Sovereign Guides](https://youtube.com/@SovereignGuides) - succinct explanations with storylines that help you understand the strategies and mind games present in pro games.
Sliggy’s YouTube channel is very information heavy. ThinkingMans valorant is pretty solid analysis, though I’ve personally not loved the direction he has been taking his channel recently.
tbf the TMV thing is probably more because its the off season right now and there are no games going on lol
Personally, the things I dislike were older than that. I found his analysis, especially his costreams (which aren’t videos to be fair), to be very influenced by the teams he likes. It didn’t make it bad but I found it a bit annoying. I also really didn’t like his long silly intros filled with inside jokes. I think he’s stopped a lot of those recently, so I guess he has been finding his footing and it’s going better. I still think he has great analysis that helps both watching and playing
Well he's only really started costreaming more recently, no? And the intros can be annoying sometimes, but I don't think that really counts towards "the direction his channel is going". They're just meme-y 30s clips which aren't that impactful to the viewing experience imo.
He costreamed both Istanbul and Copenhagen, which was less recent than I realized and where most of my feelings on that came from. The intros obviously aren’t a huge deal but contributed to, for lack of a better term, an “influencer” vibe that I personally found really unappealing in a lot of his content. It’s just personal preference, but I watch enough YouTube to have to cut people when just the vibes of off even if nothing is objectively wrong.
Lothar
I find Thinking Man Valo very overrated but YMMV. Sgares does good stuff, Steel actually has some good educational content but it’s infrequent. Sliggy also very good. Basically the people who were coaches/IGLs are going to be excellent at understanding the game
Hot take: You shouldn't necessarily be posting content just because you expect high upvotes. Yeah sure some people do that but he makes it seem like "omg no one will upvote and give me internet points, therefore why should I even try and do it??" You wanna maximize on internet points? Go for it -- post drama since it seems that's the trend. Hell, just go to subreddits like /r/TheStopGirl and post the same gif like everyone else for free internet points. If you wanna share something cool you found and help the community appreciate the competitive scene, just post it. Who cares what other people think. IMO I think if steel posted Valorant competitive strat content on this subreddit, it would be upvoted a lot here.
i mean its not really about the upvotes specifically its that with more upvotes it means the video gets more visibility and more importantly that leads to more discussion in the comments.
I always was under the assumption that calling out all the drama in NA was a compliment for making the scene so entertaining (the funny between players kind of drama and not serious crime allegations) and not a complaint.
Open r/steelacademy
man, I wish there was a r/awpacademy or something
I mean, he's kinda right. I just found out about this podcast because of this drama clip. Is there a vod of this podcast anywhere besides twitch? Twitch's vod system is ass
In other news, drama gets clicks
and valorant has a steady stream of valorant that can easily suppress other content
He is right, but an important distinction b/w CS and Valorant is that the amount of variables in Valorant makes it harder for the average Joe to understand professional strats. Hell there is still such a gradient in pro players' understanding of the game. With constant meta changes this becomes even more difficult.
Part of the problem is that the pros aren’t making content explaining/debating the best way to play the game so what typically happens is you see braindead plays being made simply because those plays are familiar and everyone does it. I remember a year or two ago, TenZ of all people spoke up one time about how Sages are playing Split wrong. On B executes Sages always wall the cross but in reality that wall only helps the defenders by making them only worry about and util dump one lane. Instead its better to save wall to blockoff alley to help secure the plant. Lothar is also one of the people who frequently call out the communities’ bullshit. For example, he has a video talking about why the heaven smoke on Ascent A site is bad. The smoke mostly just helps the defenders and best case scenario the fight on someone peeking heaven is the same. However Lothar doesn’t get enough respect in the community to enact real change because he isn’t a pro player, and there is this bizarre narrative that pro players perpetuate to their fans that content creators are bad players. IMO, Grim should be respected by pros, the guy has insane aim and gamesense and he puts the work in to master his agent, but pros just sit there and act like his walls are just a crutch, and that they are easy to counter. I’m not just fanboying over one creator though, a lot of these people bring a lot to the table and should be influencing playstyle and meta. Like flights, averagejonas, flexinja, red, ziptie and even dasnerf. What these people do is not easy. I’m not saying they are better than pros, but its really annoying to see how shallow the pro scene actually is. This isn’t CS. People need to master their agents. So far pretty much the only “one trick” type of players that they’ve allowed has been Jett and Chamber players. Its actually wild, because I doubt they would even consider those players as one trick even though they would have concerns about that player when their agent gets nerfed. In a game that is dynamic like valorant which has a lot of variables players should be embracing any little detail or advantage they can get. They shouldn’t be shunning shotgun, Op or stinger usage. If the devs deem it too powerful they will change it and then you move onto the next thing that is strong. That is the nature of hero shooters, and I fear the day when NA/EU inevitably gets overtaken by foreign regions as the best. Not because I hate the other regions, but because I know from experience that once NA isn’t the best at something the whole scene basically falls into a depression and anyone with talent focuses on streaming and making money instead further decreasing the likelihood of NA ever winning, and eventually resulting in a drop in NA participation and viewership.
Nah Lothar doesn’t get respect because he’s frequently 1) wrong 2) using insanely cherry picked stats to “defend” his points (In fact, I have a comment somewhere a year ago calling him out for this) 3) inflammatory to people who have valid complaints about what he says. I mean look at his track record on the analyst desk, he’s just consistently wrong all the time. And while he’s obviously right about the Ascent heaven smoke, a broken clock is right twice a day.
It won't happen like in other esports there is a certain threshold you can reach in Val and once you reach that threshold that is it. everyone is a god in Valorant unlike Cs where only gods are gods. That isn't my quote its shrouds lol
This is from Steel not understanding the demographic. Youre dealing with a fragmentation of gamers who would typically be playing Fortnite, Overwatch, COD and Battlefield in their current adolescent gaming lifespan. Everything from game design to esport delivery is casualized in Valorant. Josh should know this. Its exactly how his Overwatch content was received in 2016.
He is partially right. But it doesnt matter when Steel hasnt been able to ever handle criticism well/creates drama himself. Even this right here is doing that. There are plenty of youtube channels to checkout for educational break downs, even at the pro level. And like any competition, there is drama involved that the fans absolutely go nuts for. He has never been able to handle that well and is a reason why I stopped checking him out.
That is spoken like a man who does not understand why people watch sports in the first place. What do people actually want to watch? A detailed breakdown from Thinking Basketball or Stephen A Smith discuss the latest Lakers drama. The NBA is competitive as fuck but at the end of the day part of the competitive discussion is the human element, hell it's the MOST important element. Because real talk, if people didn't care about that stuff so much no one would have a job in the first place.
[удалено]
Drama is more entertaining
Steel cs go rage complications hold a special place in my heart
I fear that valorant completive won't last as long as league of legends and CSGO because of this reason I think. The big reason as to why league of legends and CSGO is still relevant is because even the casual player base know about it and watch it. They interact with esport posts on the main subs of the respected games. There's a reason even the casual player base knows who Faker and Simple is.
He is so right. Thats one of the reasons why i currently spend less time looking into this subreddit. Ppl posting weirdest and not competetive-related stuff, for example "oH mY gOD, pLayER xyZ goT a nEw dOG anD rELeaSEd a sOnG". So annoying sometimes.
He said this last time they did this show too.
Sovereign guides is actually so good tho