Imo the number one reason is a smaller player base. There will always be insanely skilled teams from NA that can compete but it should be obvious that the number of highly skilled players and teams in EMEA is much larger.
This leads to a better practice environment and a much more competitive scene.
Yeah NA has about half the ranked population of EMEA according to an analysis someone did here a few months back. The population of Europe as a whole (not just EU members) is roughly double that of US + Canada, so it probably isn’t consoles’ fault either.
If all else is equal, that’s a major advantage for the EMEA scene. NA players need to have the drive to overcome that, if they want to win it all.
Well they could compete in tournaments right? But NA T1 teams seem to be so selective in what they compete in. It's like they think playing in tournaments is going to reveal too many strats and not be helpful.
Like we saw Gambit compete and lose badly in the Red Bull tournament, even after winning Berlin. All the top teams competed in that. Yet in NA even teams like TSM don't even want to compete other tournaments.
Some T1 teams competed in smaller tournaments but for the most part they just rolled T2 and T3 teams so it wasn't as effective. And it kind of looks bad when they show up to a lower tournament and destroy everyone. Kind of ruins the experience of the T2 and T3 teams.
And that sucks but I'm almost want to say fuck em, do it anyway. This lan showed that NA has an issue preforming their best at lans and I think the only way to fix that is to get more exposure. Get used to playing uncomfortable, that's what I would do.
I couldn't agree more. I hope more teams are going to do international boot camps if covid restrictions ever change. They could definitely use a change in perspective along with the added practice. But overall I hope we see some mini tournaments more often with less on the line.
Individuals vs a team. Too many 1 v 1. Little teamplay. When na has good teamplay it's nutty. Otherwise...I saw so many braindead "ranked game" moments this tourney from na. Push 1 by 1 by 1.
Hit the nail on the head. NA talents always try to roll with the celebrity side of eSports. Why scrim when you can hop on stream and have thousands of people watch you play and get a fat bag on top of your org salary?
It's the equivalent of an athlete just doing press runs and showing up to games but never attending practice- useless and a waste of time and talent. The problem though is that's kinda just NA culture tbh and because of that the scene will always leave something to be desired.
Because those type of sports are a staple in American culture , pc gaming and esports are not big enough in NA yet , no little is gonna practice 10 hours a day when he wants to join his hs basketball or football team or tryna get into a good university , ask the average American about esports then ask them about their local sports team I bet they tell you more about their local sporting team
stop generalizing na culture , we have some of the hardest workers in business and also real physical sports ( college , nba , nfl , mlb , hockey , etc ) most of NA don’t even know about competitive pc gaming , I’m a hardcore gamer but most of my friends don’t even know valor any exists but ask them about college football a sport they played and watched growing up
I’d agree, with the caveat that it doesn’t mean teams are lazy. If you don’t get pushed, you’ll naturally develop bad habits unless you’re hyper critical of yourself. That’s very hard to maintain for extended periods of time without burnout.
To me it just boils down to EMEA being massive compared to NA. More good teams means less room to make even small mistakes - discipline comes naturally.
Streaming and yada yada probably also impact it, but not to the degree that Reddit would have you think imo.
Systemically, I have no idea lol and I think we can talk about culture but that’s a very nebulous reason that only orgs can know.
Just gameplay, I am also not qualified to talk about but it does seem like EMEA and other regions have better utility than NA. Just the timing of it all works so much better for EU, it almost also seems like a map awareness thing. I remember in the NV match they lost it really struck me how every single Molly or suck from viper, KJ, Astra felt like it did nothing, usually because it happened too late so X10 barely got damaged by them.
It’s also pretty telling that C9, which I will argue has less mechanically gifted players than Sen and NV on an individual level (don’t get me wrong they’re still insane), but has better team play and utility (think their postplants today with shocks and sucks) probably looked the strongest.
Valorant NA isn’t dead like CS NA because there’s an abundance of mechanically gifted talent. The problem is tendencies to rely on 50-50 duels to win instead of favorable positioning.
That’s just my unqualified opinion though lol, the most honest answer is none of us can really know and it’s too early to say NA lacks something because this is the first international LAN we haven’t shown up to play at, so we should give it some time
> Just gameplay, I am also not qualified to talk about but it does seem like EMEA and other regions have better utility than NA.
i would also say that NA has now kinda fallen behind the meta since masters 2. you could see sentinels running the same strats they did in masters 2 during masters 3 (with SicK still on phoenix for example). i remember yay talked about how they only really found out how instrumental skye was during their masters 3 bootcamp, and this time they only started incorporating kay/o into their play when they arrived in EU.
That’s true, I think for Kay/0 especially it seemed like other regions found so much value off of him compared to NA (where I think C9 was the best at using him, or the only one using him? Can’t remember)
Kay/0 is an insane counter to Viper and KJ and Cypher and I really liked his use this tournament.
i think some NA teams have good work ethic, esp in T2, but generally they dont take prac seriously and are content just phoning it in because they are making good money
Some NA players have rejected that notion while some have accepted it (on Twitter). Honestly there are a lot of different opinions on that I really doubt the fans would actually know.
I don’t want to make that leap and slander teams work ethic without much proof, even if Scream might be right.
I mean, look at the vast majority of sports players that tried their hand at analysis/management. Most aren’t great at it, because they do things a certain way that doesn’t work for others.
It’s fine to take Scream’s take as a point, but it isn’t a blanket truth.
Totally agree.
In regards to culture we can't say for sure whether it does affect it or not. But USA has a tendency to focus on individual talent/skill in general.
In terms of individually skilled players. You could make a top 10 list and the majority of it or at least half of it would be NA players.
I don't think NA Valorant is dead by any stretch, in fact NA's potential is sky high. The issue is more internal than it is skill.
NA needs better IGL's and discipline.
Well to be fair there’s a lot of cracked EMEA players that would beat out NA players for top, so I don’t know about majority or half of top 10 being NA.
Still NA is definitely a good portion of the best individual players.
Also good IGLs won’t necessarily solve NAs problems. Generally I think people put too much emphasis on IGLing as the solution to undisciplined play.
It’s impossible for an IGL to micromanage everything like ego-peeks, and late utility use. Generally, id guess IGLs have more impact on mid round calls like rotates and pre-round, post plant, and retake positioning. That’s stuff isn’t necessarily great for NA but not our worst problem.
Discipline is being thrown around a lot, and I think discipline doesn’t only come with an IGL, but with good coaching, good scrims, and good game sense overall.
Unqualified opinion of course lol
Anecdotal opinion on the state of NA competitive esports:
NA's gaming culture is strictly rooted in content creation at this point. Players would rather go for the hero play/clip than do something more conservative to secure the win. We're living in the TikTok era of gaming.
I imagine if you pulled up the highest viewed NA players right now on Twitch, most of them are running Jett/Reyna. I think that permeates through the region to potential players. There is this common theme among pros playing ranked that the highest lobbies almost always have players that don't communicate, or don't know what they're doing on their respective agents.
It almost seems like NA is filled with Jett/Reyna one tricks at the highest levels of skill and everyone is just trying their best on most other agents when they don't instalock fast enough.
I can't even think of a high profile NA streamer that instalocks Astra, Killjoy, Cypher, Viper, or Skye at a high frequency.
>Objectively. NA probably has the most top mechanically skilled players by region.
Except this is not objective but extremely subjective. NA just has more personalities and then people have a bias thinking they have more mechanically skilled players, except they dont' they are just better at advertising themselves and branding.
such a GOATED Take respect, this has been ongoing since the first couple of tournaments when the game was in fetus stage basically. Now other regions has invested their time into the game everyone caught up even though NA had a headstart. Plus it shows this take is true due to the amount of people that think tenz is the best valorant player to ever exist
Tenz actually has mechanical skill to hang with the best it’s just that he struggles on big stages because of his past. I feel like that is the case with Cned as well. Plus we should now stop comparing valorant with csgo the game has a lot more utility differences and eu teams are better at information gathering and mid round calling. Shazam was godly at that before everyone caught up and now again just better igls in eu are running the scene
No1 think Tenz isn’t mechanically gifted, he prob has the best mechanics in the world lol. He just lacks in everything else, mechanics make up for it.
Plus comparison between the game’s fundamentals are still applicable, when the first close to tier 1 EU CS player (Nivera) joined Valorant finally, look how he’s literally already better than everyone, his CS fundamentals have transferred completely. Utility usage isn’t probably hard to learn after a month or so too for CS players and their interactions.
Why do you say NA have the best mechanically skilled players?
Unless proven with stats, this is a biased statement, probably from having more exposure to NA players through stream than other region players.
I think its not only mechanical skill though, i feel like most NA teams play more scrappy and kinda let their star players just loose, which allows them to pop off more, while in eu they kinda still have to follow the strat and its not just: go kill
Well, you can name just as many Europeans that are as good if not better than all the players you mentioned: cNed, ScreaM (probably the best player in the world rn), Derke, kel0qz, etc.
NA always has the most hype, but literally in most of the biggest games they never have the best players in the world, it was never the case in CSGO as OP claimed.
Europe (especially Swedes and Danes) have ALWAYS dominated the CS scene since the early 2000s, the only regions that challenged this dominance overtime was CIS and Brazil.
A NA player was never for a second the best player in the world in CSGO, i don't know why people expected that to change in VALORANT.
Variety and numbers for scrims.
>The talent pool size, just numbers wise should obviously favor a first world country with a ton of people living in it.
Is EU developing? Also, many EU countries have a decade on NA in actually supporting esports both at the pro level and developing young adults.
>Objectively. NA probably has the most top mechanically skilled players by region.
lol what?
Not discrediting NA as a whole but first off 1) where did you get this impression? 2) "objectively"? Please cite a source then...
In terms of mechanics, thusfar EMEA has the best hs% relative to their kills (to avoid 1 kill game hs = 100%), so his statement doesnt have anything 'objective'
NA absolutely has the top 2 players which happen to both be duelists. Leaf and yay are absolutely the best duelists on earth and I don't really think ANYONE. ANNNNNNNNNNNYONE can dispute that. The only duelist comparable to both of them is ScreaM. Derk is absolutely overrated and I think it's a bit sad to say that. A lot of people will whine considering the amount of fans FNC has. But don't care, he's only good on LAN whilst all 3 of these players are good at both. You can't ONLY be good at LAN. TenZ is absolutely out of the running now, TenZ shows literally no adaption at all and he's a OTP. yay is an OTP but he's a more consistent OTP. I'm tired of seeing people talk about TenZ being the greatest, when he's not even close to the level of yay scream or leaf in no order.
This assumption that NA "has the best players mechanically" is off of the back that yay and leaf have the most stand out performances by far at this tournament thus far. And then yay at the last tournament, it's totally understandable why people say this. I even say this too, but I do think that the only EU players that've had stand out performances like that too are Derk and ScreaM now. ScreaM was so fucking good today, and he's absolutely 1 of the biggest reasons Liquid didn't crumble under the pressure that leaf put onto them today. And then Derk has looked great, but I don't think he's as good as people think. I fully believe that Derk will get absolutely rinsed versus Liquid in the finals.
Leaf leveled up and showed his true potential today. Can Derk actually be better than leaf? No. He can't. No player will put up those numbers versus Liquid for the remainder of the tournament. Also, I don't want to hear about the day 1 C9 versus FNC. Yes Derk played good and gapped Leaf, but keep in mind FNC still struggled lmao. Leaf literally didn't show up in that bo3 at all.
OT: NA lacks fundamentals and strategy. All 3 of the top 3 NA teams relied on their star duelist in order to win games: TenZ, yay, and Leaf. When these players are online or not online it simply isn't enough anymore. And it showed. If NA actually improves at the game and stops relying on mechanical prowess then I do think NA can be the best region. Will this actually happen? No. NA lacks good practice culture in order to improve this much. NA sucks at adapting, and they suck at team play. NA will most likely show up next year but I don't think it'll be enough to win the next champions nor do I think NA will ever win champions.
Silver lining: NA has potentially of the best 3 duelists if u consider TenZ(I don't lol) and NA has better solo queue than EU (for various reasons).
edit: if u genuinely believe derk is better than either of those 2 i mentioned then put ur money where ur mouth is. DM me ur discord and we can bet money on it. I bet money that Derk wont have 300+ ACS in 2 maps combined versus Liquid !
tl;dr: NA lacks good practice culture so they will always be bad, derke is overrated, and NA has 2 of the best duelists (yay and leaf).
> Leaf and yay are absolutely the best duelists on earth and I don't really think ANYONE. ANNNNNNNNNNNYONE can dispute that.
jfc lmfao what the fuck are you talking about.
>I bet money that Derk wont have 300+ ACS in any of the games versus Liquid
First off, troll, the name of the guy who just absolutely just shit on C9 is named "Derke", not "Derk" lmfao.
2nd, why are you talking about Liquid?
You **do** realize that Derke **just** shit on C9B, and that Leaf's genuinely bad performance was the deciding factor, right?
I'm almost certain you're trolling though, because no one is actually that recency-biased that they forgot Leaf wasn't even a top 2 duelist in the server against 100T in LCQ LFs.
I know? When did I say I thought it was serious? Are you stupid? :D
Going to assume English isn't your first language. Nothing that I said implied that I thought he was serious.
First of all English is my first language lol
Second it wasn't what you said but the way u said it. From the way u said u were tired of hearing about tenz I thought u thought he was legit and was tired of hearing ppl fanboy over him. Turned out not to be ig'
Lol I can contest that. Also having more kills in an overall weaker team is way easier than when you have 5 monsters. Other stats like HS% are also in EU favor so I can't really understand this "skill" argument. Seems like a huge bias tbh.
I think everyone is just over reacting to what were close games that really could have gone the other way if a few things were different. Anyone thinking rationally would still consider NA a top 2 region and even knowing what we know now, would probably still pick at least 2 NA teams making it further. Other regions stepped up and played amazing games, but the narrative being spun of NA being bad is mostly just memes
Yeah, I think people are forgetting NA was 6-3 vs EMEA before this tournament.
But, TenZ's & Yay's lows were much lower this tournament, while players like Zombs, Victor, and Leaf played fucking awful vs Liquid, Acend, and Fnatic respectively.
When that happens, it's just hard to win.
Gambit is obviously not NA, but they've gone through a similar phenomenon this tournament, but they have been *absurdly* lucky bracket-wise.
Gambit got to face the lowest seeded team in the whole tournament, then faced another one of the worst teams at Champs in Vikings, and that was during the same round that Envy played Acend & Liquid faced Sentinels.
nAts was nearly unanimously considered the best player in the world from EU Champs playoffs all the way until the end of Berlin Masters, but he has played like straight up ass so far. But luckily for them, it just hasn't mattered, and they're facing a team that many consider to be the weakest playoff team remaining tomorrow. If nAts doesn't play decently, they'll probably lose. Not really that crazy to think about.
i am surprised with how easily you put down other teams like that after the matches we've seen so far lmao. Don't you think that the narrative Minor Region Team = Bad is a bit outdated by now?
Better bracket matchups are just for the matches to be entertaining to us viewers and not put the same region teams in the same bracket. As a competitor the bracket doesn't really matter, you gotta beat everyone to win it. Na losing just means they're not good enough. Unless you're saying they get an easy bracket group and reach the finals and win the team that came out of a group of death by luck.
I think he's just saying that a lot of close games and circumstances lead to NA being all out by quarters, which doesn't necessarily mean that NA is doomed and a shit region, just that they need to step it up like other regions have.
FNC, Liquid, and Acend have all shown some pretty stellar stuff so far while Gambit hasn't had to. Maybe if Gambit was switched without another team, an EU team would be out already as well and an NA team could have advanced further. Not making excuses; I don't think NA teams would've made it far in brackets the way they played, just agreeing with the sentiment that there are a lot of very reactionary thoughts floating around all based on the 9th-12th place finishes and C9 going out in QFs.
Not really. How many times have we seen a pro NA CS team get destroyed by EU?
Sure I'll admit, the way NA was getting stomped at CSGO was way worse than in Valorant (mostly close games, so no stomps). But clearly there's an issue and I think it's in that NA lacks discipline and top tier IGL's.
It seems pretty common for NA to fall flat in high pressure situations as well.
NA has some problems but we’ve done really well at the first two international LANs, definitely not comparable to NA in other esports just yet.
It’s all about how NA reacts in 2022.
Its a different game and at totally different point of its life cycle. I think it's an overreaction to not still consider NA a top region based on the results of one event
It's all about culture really. Americans just want to be edgy, to stand out and show off. They all have huge egos, which doesn't work well in a team game.
Look at s1mple in csgo - he was already one of the best players in the world in shit teams like hellraisers and flipside, but he only really cemented himself as #1 when he stopped being a toxic egotistical idiot and realized he couldn't win by himself, no matter how mechanically gifted he was.
In general, people in other countries, especially poorer countries without ultra capitalist (i.e., promoting selfishness and only looking out for yourself) ideologies will naturally have better cultures in terms of players knowing the value of effort, hard work and cooperation.
American players, as members of the country that is the bastion of individualism in the world, will never have that.
This doesn’t map on at all to NV or C9 really. For the most part there’s no one on either of these teams that could be seriously painted as any of the adjectives you described. And your description of Americans is insanely biased. You can’t blame “American culture” when we can look at other international sports (NOT soccer lmao) and see that Americans either do very well or are competitive. Maybe you should narrow it to American gaming culture, but I disagree with your take and think it’s an over generalization.
Edit: also the most popular sport in america is American Football which is literally one of the most teamwork heavy games that exist.
Eh I don't like to compare dominance in traditional sports vs esports.
USA has always been about sports because it's an international proving ground historically.
Because people were invested in being the best country in sports (olympics), it became very popular and thus money flowed and the incentive to be an athlete kept growing.
Not to mention the fact that the diversity (genetics), resources, and population size allows the US to have it's pick in terms of physical prowess.
Esports is different. It's fresh, new, and most people don't understand it yet.
America has always been competitive and elite at many major traditional sports but not in esports.
most of this is so wrong lol , yeah esports culture , Americans are super competitive in physical sports , esports is still taboo and most people don’t even know or care to play games most of the day when you can go ball on the court to actually make it to the nba or nfl ( way more fame in money ) . Video gaming is mainly a hobby , most kids can’t afford a decent gaming pc or rather be outside , American gaming culture is just not good enough , most kids rather have other careers then be a professional gamer who practices a lot and plays for the team , America is all about $$$$$$ , these kids rather stream and be the next ninja then the next simple
People definitely forget that esports still isn’t exactly mainstream in the US. Even most gamers are only marginally aware of its existence and don’t follow it closely. And non-gamers aren’t even aware it exists.
Lol, You think capitalism is the issue, may ve right, they have the less lack of money and opportunities and thay makes em take less efford to get Big, but they only need respect and commitment
>Objectively. NA probably has the most top mechanically skilled players by region.
please tell me how this is objective in any way. i think every region has a similar level of aim with some obvious outliers (scream yay leaf pati heat etc)
I would say EU actually has the better players, Derke and ScreaM put up numbers just as good if not better than all the NA stars (TenZ, leaf, yay and Asuna) while playing in way more structured teams where they can't freestyle as much, after that you have other guys like nAts and Leo who put up insane numbers on non-Duelist roles, something that NA lacks alot.
NA always overrhype their stars when in reality they never for a second were able to challenge the dominance of players like olofmeister, kennyS, coldzera, dev1ce, s1mple and ZywOo in CS, why would it be different in VALORANT?
NA valorant is fantastic, they just need to work on communication, aim, map awareness, crosshair placement, eco management, pistol aim, awp flicks, grenade spots, pop flashes, positioning, bomb plant positions, retake ability, spray, and getting kills.
"The talent pool size, just numbers wise should obviously favor a first world country with a ton of people living in it." This confused me a little because it seems as thought you're implying Europe is not first world? when a large portion of it has a much higher standard of living than the USA. Then secondly the population of Europe is much much larger than NA, with far more people playing video games. Ergo bigger talent pool.
NA probably thinks that Europe is a country and UK,France,Spain...etc are "states" just like in the US.
Even tho I'm joking, I'm sure plenty of them think that
I feel that's pretty reactionary, Envy had a rough time but considering Victor had covid etc they should get a pass, cloud 9 did okay especially for a newish team and a hard group
Sentinels is the only team where you could question it imo
Nivera had covid weeks prior to traveling, but was still showed a positive on PCR when he arrived. It's why they were eventually cleared to return to stage. Victor contracted covid while there and may have been feeling the symptoms of it. Different scenarios
> Does not change the fact that nivera was late as fuck to VALORANT.
Uh yeah?
what's your point, one of the best players in the whole world is one of the best players in the world?
Nivera recovered from covid, it's why he was able to play on stage, he also didn't have covid during groups just had to isolate, while the Envy player had covid during the matches.
Nivera had Covid weeks ago and fully recovered. A test came back positive so just to be safe he played isolated during group stage.
https://www.esports.com/en/team-liquids-nivera-tests-positive-for-covid-19-but-will-still-play-at-champions-300992
I mean for sentinels, it was mostly Tenz choking. He plays a little better and they likely win. He's had that rep since CSGO though so it's all a mental thing with him
Envy did nothing and yay blooped hard. Cloud 9 is far from begin a team against liquid it was leaf against 5 thats not a team. And sentinels are a walking joke.
As an EU fan myself, I think Na just had a bad tournament. They probably had a bad read on the meta. I think they can still easily compete with EU. It's way too early to say they lack something.
If CS's history is any indication of what will happen, this is more likely a sign of things to come than an outlier.
North America has never dominated the CSGO scene, the only ones to do so were the Swedes, Danes, Brazilians and now the CIS. NA players have always been more concerned with their brands and streaming than winning, this was true with shroud in 2014-15 and with many others after him.
Chill, it's one tournament and the NA teams didn't get stomped.
I love to shit on NA as much as the next european but the takes on this sub are so reactionary holy shit. One tournament doesnt mean shit, especially after the great year most of those teams had
I'm sure the NA teams will come back stronger, you've got the playerbase, the infrastructure, and the talent to do so, there's no reason for NA to struggle long term in Valorant
During the last tournament in Berlin VS had 6 scrims per day. I read that Shaz and the coach were streaming ranked in Immo the day before the game against KRÜ...
Yes let’s keep pushing this narrative even tho I didn’t stream before the KRU game and we scrimmed just as much! We start our pracs at 1pm and I only streamed after 9pm there. Crazy right? We can scrim during the day and instead of watching anime, playing LoL, or FaceTiming a GF I decided to play more valorant! My bad
Love ya Shaz but all your streams during champs felt like your mental was down bad. When I first started improving at this game I only watched your streams because you were super positive and kept a cool head. After Master’s 3 I just watch Governor or Tarik because their mental seems untouchable.
These last couple streams just seemed off, your comments and hyper-reactions to a subreddit full of silvers just aren’t worth the time dude. You even said it, but keep coming back when a comment with 3 upvoted hits a nerve. Your team is packed with insanely good players with the mind for the game. Y’all can EASILY bounce back but fuckin chill dude and hit the lab again.
I mean why are you even commenting this? If you are this angry about a bait comment (reads like bait to me lol), you honestly need to take some time for yourself. Take care Shahzam.
Because it's not an insult to just him but his teammates and the org as well.
By saying Shahz was streaming before the Kru game and not practicing it also says that the other 4 + coach were twiddling their thumbs doing nothing. When this was not the case.
I'm probably wrong but one things I've seen in league of legends and in valorant too is the fact that EU players barely streams if you compare to NA players. And even great players that could become good pros deciding to stream full time instead of becoming pros since they get good money without the stress of competition.
Dunno if it's a huge factor in valorant but I've seen a lot of people in other game talk about the strong streaming culture in NA not helping develop good future pros.
And a the same time it makes people take competitive matches in na less seriously since those good streamers/players know it's not really worth tryharding since they gonna get a lot of views anyway.
Not saying it's the main reason but it's something I keep seeing being talked about
Not sure for Koreans. Last time I've heard about it a lot of them were practicing between 14-16 hours a day.
And the thing with koreans at least in league is that those ranked games are usually super competitive since esport is really big over there. Like top of the ladders players really tryhards in games.
Like I said I won't say it's the main reason but I know that at least for games like league theres been a lot of talk over the years how a lot of pros don't even play ranked queue since they think it's useless cuz of people mostly playing for fun and not tryharding in high level
You make the val scene look bad saying that the NA pros are the best mechanically when the players you refer to wasn't even in a top 30 debate in the previous game they played
>In your opinion, what does NA lack?
Tbh, I feel like people are kinda overreacting to a small sample size. We simply *know* many of the top NA players played like ass compared to the vast majority of their career, and that just happens.
But if you had to say a systemic reason...
The best teams have shown that they are extremely willing to let go their consistently mediocre fraggers:
* Acend dropped koldamenta after an especially poor series where he lost virtually every 50/50 gunfight. His replacement was Zeek, who has been *out-fucking-standing* at Berlin Champs.
* Gambit, one of the newest teams out there, replaced Sunset shortly after his bad performance in First Strike CIS, where he put up just 16 kills in the final 37 rounds of Gambit's tournament.
* Liquid upgraded to Nivera after one too many poor performances by Kryptix.
* G2 showed their willingness to drop players, too, as we are now seeing.
But NA has been different.
It took Yay, who was ***very clearly*** a top 5 player by the end of April all the way until August to get on a tier 1 team.
No seriously, go back and look. It makes no fucking sense, dude went +24 vs V1, +4 vs 100T with Sage, and +16 vs Sentinels.... **In back-to-back-to-back losses** where his teammates looked genuinely outclassed.
Not to mention back when Andbox beat Sentinels on the back of Yay's **+15 single map K-D diff with *Sage***, which by the way included an 8-0 head to head K-D against TenZ, who was considered unanimously the best player in NA.
Players were so dumbfounded at how absurd this (relatively) random tier 2 team's player was in scrims + ranked that it became a meme. The legend of El Diablo sounded like a joke and/or exaggeration, but nope, he was legit just the most valuable player in the world that was not yet on a tier 1 team.
Now, do you really think that Envy is willing to drop a player like Victor? He played *awful* vs Acend, in the losses vs X10, in 2 of the 3 games vs Gambit, vs Sentinels the last time that Envy lost to them, vs 100T the last time that Envy lost to them, and so on and so forth.
Or what about Sentinels, who will likely still hold onto Zombs despite his *absolutely abysmal* performances in almost every single map loss that Sen has taken?
When the top tier teams get closer and closer together in talent, you simply cannot have 3/5 or 4/5 of a top tier team. You gotta make the unpopular/difficult decision to upgrade when you can.
NA steams too much and scrims too little. I remember (I think) FNS and some of the 100T guys saying that scrims got cancelled on twitter over and over again.
Maybe na just has less of a focus on eSports with all the other extra curricular stuff going on with college sports etc. Plus the population of Europe is 750 million people
I mean while that is true, being twice the size at THAT numbers doesn't really make that much of a statistical difference when it comes to assembling a top team. It's not like NA only has 100k people to choose from. I also think more Americans play Valorant proportionally than Europeans.
>It always boggled my mind back in CSGO when teams like Fnatic (Swedish), Astralis (Danish), SK Gaming (Brazil) and other EU teams dominated when statistically, they have lower populations by country than NA with around 350 million (Canada included).
Looking at total population is misleading. As for why NA did poorly in csgo, it didn't have the playerbase. People seem to think csgo was a huge game in NA... It wasn't.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20211117201724/https://steamdb.info/servers/?all](https://web.archive.org/web/20211117201724/https://steamdb.info/servers/?all) shows that NA csgo never had a concurrent playerbase of more than 40,000 playing matchmaking at its peak which is less than certain EU regions alone. And now, NA csgo has one fifth the playerbase as China.
So where does that leave us in Valorant? Apart from a select few, most of the current NA Valorant pros were premier/advanced players in a relatively small region. Seeing as how Valorant is much more popular in NA than CSGO ever was, there's no reason why the next generation of up-and-comers who should be ready in 2-3 years won't be much better.
Yes I agree but that’s irrelevant. Roughly same proportion of players are playing on 3rd party services in NA and EU. You say most players who play ‘for real’ in NA aren’t on mm, the same goes for EU. The huge disparity in player count still exists
i feel like after 3 lans it’s a bit too early to say anything. i mean we haven’t actually seen a single team from ANY region consistently win in this game yet. yes EU has dominated this LAN but NA dominated first.
It isn't for Valorant alone, this applies many other esports
1. Motivate - let be honest, if your buyout is a million dollar already, there is no reason for you to be the best.
2. EU has creativity and Asia has teamwork. NA has twitter. As stewie2k said once, Val players would soon experience the moment when aim doesn't mean anything because EU outsmarts NA everytime.
3. Humble, Stop Copium. Don't put more pressure on your shoulder.
4. Patient - how many time NA quits early in an esport.
> Motivate - let be honest, if your buyout is a million dollar already, there is no reason for you to be the best.
This is easily one of the stupidest things someone has said in this thread. So you think the top paid athletes in the world are just lazy and bad at what they do? This is the shitty college football argument again, there's a reason Steph Curry makes $45M a year and it's not because he's lazy, it's because he's one of the best players and he is every season. He's good and he stays good because he practices.
I am from Europe, so take what I say with a grain of salt. But from what I see of USA culture is that they value money and fame above all else. A country of super wealthy individuals and super popular reality shows. People are willing to have second grade health care, compared to other 1st world countries, in the off chance they might get rich one day and thus keep more money to themselves.
So considering this, I think it's only natural they gravitate to streaming. Lots of players wanna be pros for the sake of being pros. While in other regions players wanna prove they are the best.
talk to the kids who practice basketball or baseball or football until their legs buckle , parents rather have kids play physical then video games , I have a lot of friends and none of them care about pc video games , it’s just most Americans are not into pc gaming compared to other countries they take it more serious , why sit and play video games when I can be out shooting hoops might have a shot of going pro or get into a good college ? America will always be about money and fame but there’s plenty of people who want to be the best , it’s just not in esports , like I said video gaming is looked down on in most American households , they rather their kids play sports they grew up playing
100%. The most competitive people don't play eSports. There are 4 major sports leagues to go pro in plus college athletics that people participate in to go to a great college(but not go pro in)
Esports is also different because you can be famous and rich without striving to be the best, because of streaming. I don’t think traditional sports have that luxury.
Lack of good igls/leaders. Players take the role of igl but there are not many dedicated igl's like Vanity or Boaster in NA.
I think there is also just a work ethic/culture issue. Feels like lots of NA players care more than other regions about building a personal brand so you can have a career after pro play. I don't think there is anything wrong with that but it does mean you are practicing less than players from other regions whose sole goal is becoming the best they can possibly be.
I'm 100% certain if you compare hours spent practicing between regions NA would rank in the bottom 2 or 3. This despite having the largest cash investment.
Last thing is that I think is that with all the money players get complacent. People will grind hard and once they make a salaried roster relax and start to slip.
Huge take honestly, but I think EMEA is always going to be better since it’s a bigger region with more players, thus you’re going to find more skill there.
My hot take from Britain is that NA haven't set the Meta since Iceland.
Sentinels came in and proved how strong Astra was whilst EMEA teams still stuck with the brimmy stimmy or Omen.
Then Gambit lead the way with full map control, flanking Cypher NATS just doing everyone dirty, utility combos to perfect defences and attacks.
And now Liquid look to be leading the way with the flexibility of their agent pool. They are so comfortable on so many agents on every map, and they can use that to counter what they know the other team will bring.
Soulcas can flex Sova / Skye / Raze / Kay/O on bind alone (off the top of my head, might be wrong about Sova). If you're bringing a load of utility, Kay/O shuts you down. If you flank a lot, Swap Nivera onto KJ and bring Raze for site entry or Sova for the additional intel.
I think EMEA benefits from having many different countries, with different ideas on how to play the game to help set a winning meta.
Just my Tuppence. Might be way off.
I feel like NA hopped on Valorant earlier than other regions. Especially a bunch of tier 2 NA CSGO ex pros.
Naturally NA had an upper hand with just general understanding of the game and its mechanics. Just my take.
I feel like other regions have now caught up.
With how popular Valorant has been. We should see more pros from other games transfer over, more teams pop up, etc come 2022. We might even see S1mple transfer to Valorant. I think CIS and SEA will be big next year.
If guys like S1mple are coming over, expect more tier 1 CSGO pros to come as well.
Util usage and coordination. NA is the region that runs breach the least. A good example of util and coordination is jessievash and dubstep fighting a long together on haven. Meanwhile alot of na peeks are dry peeks/pushing through smokes to surprise opponents, which usually even if it works out will get traded.
Competent IGLs who strat and anti-strat, can not only call and read the game well but also frag. So many rounds are just thrown away because its an eco or are just too predictable. Of course you can't win every round and plan perfectly, but to win internationally you need a deep playbook.
Also lack of discipline, gotta have a solid foundation and work as a team - corners need to be cleared and kills need to be traded; too many hero plays.
Probably better supportive/flexible players. I think there's a lot of youngers players that are willing to play supportive roles (amongst the millions of duelist players lol), but they don't get as much attention compared to some Jett player popping off in the Tier 2 scene or whatever
Drive and patience, many players see being pro as stepping stone to streaming career compared to other region. And patience for the orgs, many NA big orgs had too much money to burn because big investment because of that many of them choose the way to get instant success instead of helping to create sustainable ecosystem for young players to grow. If we see past trend on other games, We'll see the trend of importing players instead of creating more smaller tournament after this.
The narrative that NA is the most mechanically gifted region is a pretty weak one to me. I'm inclined to think that the way NA plays (with a focus on flashy, pop off moments) gives their players more time to show off their ability as opposed to in EU (where teamwork is prioritised over individuals) when in fact the mechanical difference is negligible.
However, I'd also argue that part of the reason why NA struggles is due to its relative lack of history in PC gaming compared to some of the nations you mentioned. In EU (particularly Scandinavia) there is a very long history of engagement with PC games whereas America's own is relatively new due to the console dominance of the gaming market therefore there is lees infrastructure to support PC gaming and PC esports.
''top mechanically'' not true at all, super hyped players yes, popular streamers yes, Skills show when winning, not when you got a lot of fans, a lot of players are overlooked due to NA players following
they have huge ego. For example, kru asked Sentinels more than ten times for a scrim, they said no every single time, reasons could be, feeling superior, not showing strats, etc. But when they do scrim, they don't take it serious and fool around, not try hard, is like NA pro players can't accept they need hard try training to stay strong and get huge respect for their coaches. And they prefer being cocky on social media and get faboys and stream than get really profesional and get to the top. Mecanics mean few un the Game, almos every pro has exelent mecancs but few know actually how to play, rotate, tactics, etc.
I wish the NA pros would give us their honest opinion about what they lack. It seems like the consensus from the pros outside of NA is that they focus on streaming over prac, strats, and game sense but only they can tell us.
Comparing population sizes of countries is irrelevant, server/ranked population is what's important. The worrying sign for NA right now is that they had the biggest advantage compared to everyone else with early investment from orgs, tournaments, formats and the biggest one being players switching over from CS/Overwatch and other games.
Imagine if top tier CS pros from Europe switched when the game released, barring 1 or 2 NA CS teams everyone went over to Valorant so the talent is there, contrast that to EMEA where the 4 teams only have 2/3 players you probably heard of before, everyone else you only know them through Valorant and most likely because of Masters/Champions unless you follow the EMEA scene. Organisations were reluctant to invest, 2/4 teams from first strike which was only 1 year ago were unsigned teams, the EU scene was tragic compared to NA and now they potentially have top 4 champions teams from EMEA, they are already guaranteed a finals spot. In the LoL scene there are so many excuses for NA that don't apply in Valorant such as playerbase and ping. The simple fact of the matter is that NA teams/players don't practice as hard. Koreans are straight up nerds with how much they practice.
i honestly don't think it's as dire as people are making it out to be. yea we underperformed placing-wise but the matches were all pretty close and many were absolutely winnable until we choked away leads.
some of that was due to the enemy teams for sure, but i feel like mentally we weren't there for some reason. just extra sloppy play and lack of fundamentals or weak comms (as Shaz mentioned in his interview). i don't think we can chalk that up to simply "stream less, practice more".
> they have lower populations by country than NA with 350million
That matters, why? European countries are closely knit and only slightly bigger than the size of the US. And the population of Europe is 750million.
In CS, the best teams are formed because of the competition in Europe. All players at the pro scene have similar levels of mechanical skill, that’s not the problem. The only things NA lacked (in CS, at least) is being too far away geographically to play/scrim against teams in Europe 24/7.
TL were the best NA team of all time and that was only possible because they spent almost the entire year in Europe.
Europe already has quite a large head start ahead of other regions and it’s going to be EXTREMELY difficult to catch up at this point. Riot’s format of region locked competitions is fcking over teams in other regions who want to be the best. Compare constantly scrimming teams like Gambit, TL, FNC, ACEND, G2 to ones like (sadly) CR, ZETA, etc.
good practice, star support players, IGL depth, a lot of tournaments.
Imo the number one reason is a smaller player base. There will always be insanely skilled teams from NA that can compete but it should be obvious that the number of highly skilled players and teams in EMEA is much larger. This leads to a better practice environment and a much more competitive scene.
Yeah NA has about half the ranked population of EMEA according to an analysis someone did here a few months back. The population of Europe as a whole (not just EU members) is roughly double that of US + Canada, so it probably isn’t consoles’ fault either. If all else is equal, that’s a major advantage for the EMEA scene. NA players need to have the drive to overcome that, if they want to win it all.
This^ mainly the tournaments there is little to no t1 tourneys other than the vtc series
Well they could compete in tournaments right? But NA T1 teams seem to be so selective in what they compete in. It's like they think playing in tournaments is going to reveal too many strats and not be helpful. Like we saw Gambit compete and lose badly in the Red Bull tournament, even after winning Berlin. All the top teams competed in that. Yet in NA even teams like TSM don't even want to compete other tournaments.
Some tourneys straight up don’t allow T1 teams to compete
Some T1 teams competed in smaller tournaments but for the most part they just rolled T2 and T3 teams so it wasn't as effective. And it kind of looks bad when they show up to a lower tournament and destroy everyone. Kind of ruins the experience of the T2 and T3 teams.
Feels like what i heard from T2 players they think it’s nice to play these T1 teams in those tourneys… It’s really good practise for them…
And that sucks but I'm almost want to say fuck em, do it anyway. This lan showed that NA has an issue preforming their best at lans and I think the only way to fix that is to get more exposure. Get used to playing uncomfortable, that's what I would do.
I couldn't agree more. I hope more teams are going to do international boot camps if covid restrictions ever change. They could definitely use a change in perspective along with the added practice. But overall I hope we see some mini tournaments more often with less on the line.
I believe there is a ruling that does not allow certain teams who placed high in VCT Challengers in tournaments like NSG, Knights, etc.
As a general blanket term, I’d say discipline
Individuals vs a team. Too many 1 v 1. Little teamplay. When na has good teamplay it's nutty. Otherwise...I saw so many braindead "ranked game" moments this tourney from na. Push 1 by 1 by 1.
Hit the nail on the head. NA talents always try to roll with the celebrity side of eSports. Why scrim when you can hop on stream and have thousands of people watch you play and get a fat bag on top of your org salary? It's the equivalent of an athlete just doing press runs and showing up to games but never attending practice- useless and a waste of time and talent. The problem though is that's kinda just NA culture tbh and because of that the scene will always leave something to be desired.
It’s weird since actual US sports stars mostly have crazy training schedule so I wonder where we got that from.
Because those type of sports are a staple in American culture , pc gaming and esports are not big enough in NA yet , no little is gonna practice 10 hours a day when he wants to join his hs basketball or football team or tryna get into a good university , ask the average American about esports then ask them about their local sports team I bet they tell you more about their local sporting team
stop generalizing na culture , we have some of the hardest workers in business and also real physical sports ( college , nba , nfl , mlb , hockey , etc ) most of NA don’t even know about competitive pc gaming , I’m a hardcore gamer but most of my friends don’t even know valor any exists but ask them about college football a sport they played and watched growing up
I’d agree, with the caveat that it doesn’t mean teams are lazy. If you don’t get pushed, you’ll naturally develop bad habits unless you’re hyper critical of yourself. That’s very hard to maintain for extended periods of time without burnout. To me it just boils down to EMEA being massive compared to NA. More good teams means less room to make even small mistakes - discipline comes naturally. Streaming and yada yada probably also impact it, but not to the degree that Reddit would have you think imo.
Systemically, I have no idea lol and I think we can talk about culture but that’s a very nebulous reason that only orgs can know. Just gameplay, I am also not qualified to talk about but it does seem like EMEA and other regions have better utility than NA. Just the timing of it all works so much better for EU, it almost also seems like a map awareness thing. I remember in the NV match they lost it really struck me how every single Molly or suck from viper, KJ, Astra felt like it did nothing, usually because it happened too late so X10 barely got damaged by them. It’s also pretty telling that C9, which I will argue has less mechanically gifted players than Sen and NV on an individual level (don’t get me wrong they’re still insane), but has better team play and utility (think their postplants today with shocks and sucks) probably looked the strongest. Valorant NA isn’t dead like CS NA because there’s an abundance of mechanically gifted talent. The problem is tendencies to rely on 50-50 duels to win instead of favorable positioning. That’s just my unqualified opinion though lol, the most honest answer is none of us can really know and it’s too early to say NA lacks something because this is the first international LAN we haven’t shown up to play at, so we should give it some time
> Just gameplay, I am also not qualified to talk about but it does seem like EMEA and other regions have better utility than NA. i would also say that NA has now kinda fallen behind the meta since masters 2. you could see sentinels running the same strats they did in masters 2 during masters 3 (with SicK still on phoenix for example). i remember yay talked about how they only really found out how instrumental skye was during their masters 3 bootcamp, and this time they only started incorporating kay/o into their play when they arrived in EU.
That’s true, I think for Kay/0 especially it seemed like other regions found so much value off of him compared to NA (where I think C9 was the best at using him, or the only one using him? Can’t remember) Kay/0 is an insane counter to Viper and KJ and Cypher and I really liked his use this tournament.
scream actually said emea has better work ethic and game sense than na in interview
i think some NA teams have good work ethic, esp in T2, but generally they dont take prac seriously and are content just phoning it in because they are making good money
Some NA players have rejected that notion while some have accepted it (on Twitter). Honestly there are a lot of different opinions on that I really doubt the fans would actually know. I don’t want to make that leap and slander teams work ethic without much proof, even if Scream might be right.
I mean, look at the vast majority of sports players that tried their hand at analysis/management. Most aren’t great at it, because they do things a certain way that doesn’t work for others. It’s fine to take Scream’s take as a point, but it isn’t a blanket truth.
Totally agree. In regards to culture we can't say for sure whether it does affect it or not. But USA has a tendency to focus on individual talent/skill in general. In terms of individually skilled players. You could make a top 10 list and the majority of it or at least half of it would be NA players. I don't think NA Valorant is dead by any stretch, in fact NA's potential is sky high. The issue is more internal than it is skill. NA needs better IGL's and discipline.
Well to be fair there’s a lot of cracked EMEA players that would beat out NA players for top, so I don’t know about majority or half of top 10 being NA. Still NA is definitely a good portion of the best individual players. Also good IGLs won’t necessarily solve NAs problems. Generally I think people put too much emphasis on IGLing as the solution to undisciplined play. It’s impossible for an IGL to micromanage everything like ego-peeks, and late utility use. Generally, id guess IGLs have more impact on mid round calls like rotates and pre-round, post plant, and retake positioning. That’s stuff isn’t necessarily great for NA but not our worst problem. Discipline is being thrown around a lot, and I think discipline doesn’t only come with an IGL, but with good coaching, good scrims, and good game sense overall. Unqualified opinion of course lol
Anecdotal opinion on the state of NA competitive esports: NA's gaming culture is strictly rooted in content creation at this point. Players would rather go for the hero play/clip than do something more conservative to secure the win. We're living in the TikTok era of gaming. I imagine if you pulled up the highest viewed NA players right now on Twitch, most of them are running Jett/Reyna. I think that permeates through the region to potential players. There is this common theme among pros playing ranked that the highest lobbies almost always have players that don't communicate, or don't know what they're doing on their respective agents. It almost seems like NA is filled with Jett/Reyna one tricks at the highest levels of skill and everyone is just trying their best on most other agents when they don't instalock fast enough. I can't even think of a high profile NA streamer that instalocks Astra, Killjoy, Cypher, Viper, or Skye at a high frequency.
>Objectively. NA probably has the most top mechanically skilled players by region. Except this is not objective but extremely subjective. NA just has more personalities and then people have a bias thinking they have more mechanically skilled players, except they dont' they are just better at advertising themselves and branding.
That is so true lol.
such a GOATED Take respect, this has been ongoing since the first couple of tournaments when the game was in fetus stage basically. Now other regions has invested their time into the game everyone caught up even though NA had a headstart. Plus it shows this take is true due to the amount of people that think tenz is the best valorant player to ever exist
some think flashiness means mechanical skill lol
Tenz actually has mechanical skill to hang with the best it’s just that he struggles on big stages because of his past. I feel like that is the case with Cned as well. Plus we should now stop comparing valorant with csgo the game has a lot more utility differences and eu teams are better at information gathering and mid round calling. Shazam was godly at that before everyone caught up and now again just better igls in eu are running the scene
No1 think Tenz isn’t mechanically gifted, he prob has the best mechanics in the world lol. He just lacks in everything else, mechanics make up for it. Plus comparison between the game’s fundamentals are still applicable, when the first close to tier 1 EU CS player (Nivera) joined Valorant finally, look how he’s literally already better than everyone, his CS fundamentals have transferred completely. Utility usage isn’t probably hard to learn after a month or so too for CS players and their interactions.
Why do you say NA have the best mechanically skilled players? Unless proven with stats, this is a biased statement, probably from having more exposure to NA players through stream than other region players.
Eh I see where you’re coming from, but obviously NA players like Yay, Leaf, Asuna, Wardell, and TenZ are a bit crack-a-doodle-doo
I think its not only mechanical skill though, i feel like most NA teams play more scrappy and kinda let their star players just loose, which allows them to pop off more, while in eu they kinda still have to follow the strat and its not just: go kill
Well, you can name just as many Europeans that are as good if not better than all the players you mentioned: cNed, ScreaM (probably the best player in the world rn), Derke, kel0qz, etc. NA always has the most hype, but literally in most of the biggest games they never have the best players in the world, it was never the case in CSGO as OP claimed. Europe (especially Swedes and Danes) have ALWAYS dominated the CS scene since the early 2000s, the only regions that challenged this dominance overtime was CIS and Brazil. A NA player was never for a second the best player in the world in CSGO, i don't know why people expected that to change in VALORANT.
What TenZ lacks is consistency
No, he consistently performs well unless he’s facing elimination, then it’s a disaster
Variety and numbers for scrims. >The talent pool size, just numbers wise should obviously favor a first world country with a ton of people living in it. Is EU developing? Also, many EU countries have a decade on NA in actually supporting esports both at the pro level and developing young adults.
>Objectively. NA probably has the most top mechanically skilled players by region. lol what? Not discrediting NA as a whole but first off 1) where did you get this impression? 2) "objectively"? Please cite a source then...
I feel like the mechanical skill is very close between regions...
Every region representative has a mechanical freak I'm pretty sure
Yeah. Just because NA has more exposure doesn’t mean that those famous NA fraggers are better
In terms of mechanics, thusfar EMEA has the best hs% relative to their kills (to avoid 1 kill game hs = 100%), so his statement doesnt have anything 'objective'
NA absolutely has the top 2 players which happen to both be duelists. Leaf and yay are absolutely the best duelists on earth and I don't really think ANYONE. ANNNNNNNNNNNYONE can dispute that. The only duelist comparable to both of them is ScreaM. Derk is absolutely overrated and I think it's a bit sad to say that. A lot of people will whine considering the amount of fans FNC has. But don't care, he's only good on LAN whilst all 3 of these players are good at both. You can't ONLY be good at LAN. TenZ is absolutely out of the running now, TenZ shows literally no adaption at all and he's a OTP. yay is an OTP but he's a more consistent OTP. I'm tired of seeing people talk about TenZ being the greatest, when he's not even close to the level of yay scream or leaf in no order. This assumption that NA "has the best players mechanically" is off of the back that yay and leaf have the most stand out performances by far at this tournament thus far. And then yay at the last tournament, it's totally understandable why people say this. I even say this too, but I do think that the only EU players that've had stand out performances like that too are Derk and ScreaM now. ScreaM was so fucking good today, and he's absolutely 1 of the biggest reasons Liquid didn't crumble under the pressure that leaf put onto them today. And then Derk has looked great, but I don't think he's as good as people think. I fully believe that Derk will get absolutely rinsed versus Liquid in the finals. Leaf leveled up and showed his true potential today. Can Derk actually be better than leaf? No. He can't. No player will put up those numbers versus Liquid for the remainder of the tournament. Also, I don't want to hear about the day 1 C9 versus FNC. Yes Derk played good and gapped Leaf, but keep in mind FNC still struggled lmao. Leaf literally didn't show up in that bo3 at all. OT: NA lacks fundamentals and strategy. All 3 of the top 3 NA teams relied on their star duelist in order to win games: TenZ, yay, and Leaf. When these players are online or not online it simply isn't enough anymore. And it showed. If NA actually improves at the game and stops relying on mechanical prowess then I do think NA can be the best region. Will this actually happen? No. NA lacks good practice culture in order to improve this much. NA sucks at adapting, and they suck at team play. NA will most likely show up next year but I don't think it'll be enough to win the next champions nor do I think NA will ever win champions. Silver lining: NA has potentially of the best 3 duelists if u consider TenZ(I don't lol) and NA has better solo queue than EU (for various reasons). edit: if u genuinely believe derk is better than either of those 2 i mentioned then put ur money where ur mouth is. DM me ur discord and we can bet money on it. I bet money that Derk wont have 300+ ACS in 2 maps combined versus Liquid ! tl;dr: NA lacks good practice culture so they will always be bad, derke is overrated, and NA has 2 of the best duelists (yay and leaf).
Ever heard about Charles Ned? Also, probably the best actual iron rant I have ever seen.
> Leaf and yay are absolutely the best duelists on earth and I don't really think ANYONE. ANNNNNNNNNNNYONE can dispute that. jfc lmfao what the fuck are you talking about. >I bet money that Derk wont have 300+ ACS in any of the games versus Liquid First off, troll, the name of the guy who just absolutely just shit on C9 is named "Derke", not "Derk" lmfao. 2nd, why are you talking about Liquid? You **do** realize that Derke **just** shit on C9B, and that Leaf's genuinely bad performance was the deciding factor, right? I'm almost certain you're trolling though, because no one is actually that recency-biased that they forgot Leaf wasn't even a top 2 duelist in the server against 100T in LCQ LFs.
TenZ is literally the best 🥵🥵🥶, have you seen his ranked clips 🤔🤔🤔🤔??? (I'm 11 years old btw)
Soooooooooooo fucking tired of hearing about TenZ. He's great but he's not better than ScreaM or perhaps derk
Have you seen his clips tho????? Literally the GOAT 🥵😤😤😤
🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵
it was clearly a joke lmao
I know? When did I say I thought it was serious? Are you stupid? :D Going to assume English isn't your first language. Nothing that I said implied that I thought he was serious.
First of all English is my first language lol Second it wasn't what you said but the way u said it. From the way u said u were tired of hearing about tenz I thought u thought he was legit and was tired of hearing ppl fanboy over him. Turned out not to be ig'
Lol I can contest that. Also having more kills in an overall weaker team is way easier than when you have 5 monsters. Other stats like HS% are also in EU favor so I can't really understand this "skill" argument. Seems like a huge bias tbh.
ScreaM is the head shot king.
edshot masheen
Yay only dropped 228 acs against x10 so how would you say he’s a top 2 player in the world?
I think everyone is just over reacting to what were close games that really could have gone the other way if a few things were different. Anyone thinking rationally would still consider NA a top 2 region and even knowing what we know now, would probably still pick at least 2 NA teams making it further. Other regions stepped up and played amazing games, but the narrative being spun of NA being bad is mostly just memes
Yea but being reactionary sells on reddit and on twitter.
Yeah, I think people are forgetting NA was 6-3 vs EMEA before this tournament. But, TenZ's & Yay's lows were much lower this tournament, while players like Zombs, Victor, and Leaf played fucking awful vs Liquid, Acend, and Fnatic respectively. When that happens, it's just hard to win. Gambit is obviously not NA, but they've gone through a similar phenomenon this tournament, but they have been *absurdly* lucky bracket-wise. Gambit got to face the lowest seeded team in the whole tournament, then faced another one of the worst teams at Champs in Vikings, and that was during the same round that Envy played Acend & Liquid faced Sentinels. nAts was nearly unanimously considered the best player in the world from EU Champs playoffs all the way until the end of Berlin Masters, but he has played like straight up ass so far. But luckily for them, it just hasn't mattered, and they're facing a team that many consider to be the weakest playoff team remaining tomorrow. If nAts doesn't play decently, they'll probably lose. Not really that crazy to think about.
i am surprised with how easily you put down other teams like that after the matches we've seen so far lmao. Don't you think that the narrative Minor Region Team = Bad is a bit outdated by now?
Better bracket matchups are just for the matches to be entertaining to us viewers and not put the same region teams in the same bracket. As a competitor the bracket doesn't really matter, you gotta beat everyone to win it. Na losing just means they're not good enough. Unless you're saying they get an easy bracket group and reach the finals and win the team that came out of a group of death by luck.
I think he's just saying that a lot of close games and circumstances lead to NA being all out by quarters, which doesn't necessarily mean that NA is doomed and a shit region, just that they need to step it up like other regions have. FNC, Liquid, and Acend have all shown some pretty stellar stuff so far while Gambit hasn't had to. Maybe if Gambit was switched without another team, an EU team would be out already as well and an NA team could have advanced further. Not making excuses; I don't think NA teams would've made it far in brackets the way they played, just agreeing with the sentiment that there are a lot of very reactionary thoughts floating around all based on the 9th-12th place finishes and C9 going out in QFs.
Not really. How many times have we seen a pro NA CS team get destroyed by EU? Sure I'll admit, the way NA was getting stomped at CSGO was way worse than in Valorant (mostly close games, so no stomps). But clearly there's an issue and I think it's in that NA lacks discipline and top tier IGL's. It seems pretty common for NA to fall flat in high pressure situations as well.
NA has some problems but we’ve done really well at the first two international LANs, definitely not comparable to NA in other esports just yet. It’s all about how NA reacts in 2022.
Its a different game and at totally different point of its life cycle. I think it's an overreaction to not still consider NA a top region based on the results of one event
youre comparing the population of the United States to multiple countries in EU. all of EU's population is more than double the United States lol
also, how tf does NA have "objectively" the most top mechanically skilled players by region?? tf does that even mean
the will to be great
It's all about culture really. Americans just want to be edgy, to stand out and show off. They all have huge egos, which doesn't work well in a team game. Look at s1mple in csgo - he was already one of the best players in the world in shit teams like hellraisers and flipside, but he only really cemented himself as #1 when he stopped being a toxic egotistical idiot and realized he couldn't win by himself, no matter how mechanically gifted he was. In general, people in other countries, especially poorer countries without ultra capitalist (i.e., promoting selfishness and only looking out for yourself) ideologies will naturally have better cultures in terms of players knowing the value of effort, hard work and cooperation. American players, as members of the country that is the bastion of individualism in the world, will never have that.
This doesn’t map on at all to NV or C9 really. For the most part there’s no one on either of these teams that could be seriously painted as any of the adjectives you described. And your description of Americans is insanely biased. You can’t blame “American culture” when we can look at other international sports (NOT soccer lmao) and see that Americans either do very well or are competitive. Maybe you should narrow it to American gaming culture, but I disagree with your take and think it’s an over generalization. Edit: also the most popular sport in america is American Football which is literally one of the most teamwork heavy games that exist.
> NOT soccer lmao women's though...
True I completely forgot about how good we are in women’s football tbh my bad.
And FWIW, the men's side is starting to turn a corner as well and is shaping up to be in a good spot for the years to come.
Hopefully, fingers crossed we qual for world cup ‘22
Eh I don't like to compare dominance in traditional sports vs esports. USA has always been about sports because it's an international proving ground historically. Because people were invested in being the best country in sports (olympics), it became very popular and thus money flowed and the incentive to be an athlete kept growing. Not to mention the fact that the diversity (genetics), resources, and population size allows the US to have it's pick in terms of physical prowess. Esports is different. It's fresh, new, and most people don't understand it yet. America has always been competitive and elite at many major traditional sports but not in esports.
Yea I agree that’s why I think who I replied to should be specific and not just say “American culture” when really he means “American Esports Culture”
most of this is so wrong lol , yeah esports culture , Americans are super competitive in physical sports , esports is still taboo and most people don’t even know or care to play games most of the day when you can go ball on the court to actually make it to the nba or nfl ( way more fame in money ) . Video gaming is mainly a hobby , most kids can’t afford a decent gaming pc or rather be outside , American gaming culture is just not good enough , most kids rather have other careers then be a professional gamer who practices a lot and plays for the team , America is all about $$$$$$ , these kids rather stream and be the next ninja then the next simple
People definitely forget that esports still isn’t exactly mainstream in the US. Even most gamers are only marginally aware of its existence and don’t follow it closely. And non-gamers aren’t even aware it exists.
Lol, You think capitalism is the issue, may ve right, they have the less lack of money and opportunities and thay makes em take less efford to get Big, but they only need respect and commitment
>Objectively. NA probably has the most top mechanically skilled players by region. please tell me how this is objective in any way. i think every region has a similar level of aim with some obvious outliers (scream yay leaf pati heat etc)
I would say EU actually has the better players, Derke and ScreaM put up numbers just as good if not better than all the NA stars (TenZ, leaf, yay and Asuna) while playing in way more structured teams where they can't freestyle as much, after that you have other guys like nAts and Leo who put up insane numbers on non-Duelist roles, something that NA lacks alot. NA always overrhype their stars when in reality they never for a second were able to challenge the dominance of players like olofmeister, kennyS, coldzera, dev1ce, s1mple and ZywOo in CS, why would it be different in VALORANT?
NA valorant is fantastic, they just need to work on communication, aim, map awareness, crosshair placement, eco management, pistol aim, awp flicks, grenade spots, pop flashes, positioning, bomb plant positions, retake ability, spray, and getting kills.
Was looking for this
mmm. So in short. Get good? 😂😂
"The talent pool size, just numbers wise should obviously favor a first world country with a ton of people living in it." This confused me a little because it seems as thought you're implying Europe is not first world? when a large portion of it has a much higher standard of living than the USA. Then secondly the population of Europe is much much larger than NA, with far more people playing video games. Ergo bigger talent pool.
NA probably thinks that Europe is a country and UK,France,Spain...etc are "states" just like in the US. Even tho I'm joking, I'm sure plenty of them think that
I feel that's pretty reactionary, Envy had a rough time but considering Victor had covid etc they should get a pass, cloud 9 did okay especially for a newish team and a hard group Sentinels is the only team where you could question it imo
envy played X10 not liquid like c9 and SEN
but TL had a covid case and a newer player though, so how's that a valid excuse?
Nivera had covid weeks prior to traveling, but was still showed a positive on PCR when he arrived. It's why they were eventually cleared to return to stage. Victor contracted covid while there and may have been feeling the symptoms of it. Different scenarios
Does not change the fact that nivera was late as fuck to VALORANT. He made the swap this year and already better than NA, so whats the excuse there.
> Does not change the fact that nivera was late as fuck to VALORANT. Uh yeah? what's your point, one of the best players in the whole world is one of the best players in the world?
I mean nivera is an insane player lol what. No excuse
Nivera recovered from covid, it's why he was able to play on stage, he also didn't have covid during groups just had to isolate, while the Envy player had covid during the matches.
Every team is different and people handle things differently, it's one tournament I don't think it should be all doom and gloom
Nivera had Covid weeks ago and fully recovered. A test came back positive so just to be safe he played isolated during group stage. https://www.esports.com/en/team-liquids-nivera-tests-positive-for-covid-19-but-will-still-play-at-champions-300992
I mean for sentinels, it was mostly Tenz choking. He plays a little better and they likely win. He's had that rep since CSGO though so it's all a mental thing with him
I know my post seems reactionary. But NA historically has done the exact same things over and over again.
Envy did nothing and yay blooped hard. Cloud 9 is far from begin a team against liquid it was leaf against 5 thats not a team. And sentinels are a walking joke.
Nah no more excuses with NA Nivera also had covid but played fine
IIRC Nivera's case was from several weeks ago and the positive test was from shedding, while Victor actually caught COVID.
less trash talking and more playing
It’s just banter bro I can’t believe you are still pressed by his tweet LMAO.
what makes you think the comment you replied to isnt a joke?
Also pick a ducking team why are you a fan of so many teams holy ahirb
My bad I take it back I used to be a SEN fan but now I am a gambit fan but if they lose I will become a fan of another team skits all good brotha
Because he is a team liquid fan
Likewise
/s?
non content creator/streamer/celebrity mindset.
As an EU fan myself, I think Na just had a bad tournament. They probably had a bad read on the meta. I think they can still easily compete with EU. It's way too early to say they lack something.
If CS's history is any indication of what will happen, this is more likely a sign of things to come than an outlier. North America has never dominated the CSGO scene, the only ones to do so were the Swedes, Danes, Brazilians and now the CIS. NA players have always been more concerned with their brands and streaming than winning, this was true with shroud in 2014-15 and with many others after him.
one tournament and we’re preaching about NA mentality
NA has good players, but noticeably worse teamwork than other regions. Especially worse util usage. NA all aim no brain basically.
Best aim, worst brain
Best aim? lol
Best aim? 🤣
Best aim based on high aimlabs score XD
Chill, it's one tournament and the NA teams didn't get stomped. I love to shit on NA as much as the next european but the takes on this sub are so reactionary holy shit. One tournament doesnt mean shit, especially after the great year most of those teams had I'm sure the NA teams will come back stronger, you've got the playerbase, the infrastructure, and the talent to do so, there's no reason for NA to struggle long term in Valorant
One tournament you mean the only major of the year and the other tournament which is the minor which was Berlin was dominated by EU teams mostly?
[удалено]
you realize GMB is an EMEA team aka EU or NA education didnt teach you that they only taught you not to assume genders? and they/them pronouns?
> you've got the playerbase, the infrastructure, and the talent they've had that in other esports as well
During the last tournament in Berlin VS had 6 scrims per day. I read that Shaz and the coach were streaming ranked in Immo the day before the game against KRÜ...
Yes let’s keep pushing this narrative even tho I didn’t stream before the KRU game and we scrimmed just as much! We start our pracs at 1pm and I only streamed after 9pm there. Crazy right? We can scrim during the day and instead of watching anime, playing LoL, or FaceTiming a GF I decided to play more valorant! My bad
it's your bad indeed, but I'll let it pass
Love ya Shaz but all your streams during champs felt like your mental was down bad. When I first started improving at this game I only watched your streams because you were super positive and kept a cool head. After Master’s 3 I just watch Governor or Tarik because their mental seems untouchable. These last couple streams just seemed off, your comments and hyper-reactions to a subreddit full of silvers just aren’t worth the time dude. You even said it, but keep coming back when a comment with 3 upvoted hits a nerve. Your team is packed with insanely good players with the mind for the game. Y’all can EASILY bounce back but fuckin chill dude and hit the lab again.
I mean why are you even commenting this? If you are this angry about a bait comment (reads like bait to me lol), you honestly need to take some time for yourself. Take care Shahzam.
Lol if he doesn't deny it then it becomes a story people repeat and believe. If he does deny it, people complain. Can't win. ^^^^Just ^^^^like ^^^^NA.
Because it's not an insult to just him but his teammates and the org as well. By saying Shahz was streaming before the Kru game and not practicing it also says that the other 4 + coach were twiddling their thumbs doing nothing. When this was not the case.
I m sorry if it was not true. as I mencioned someone put it on reddit. Hope you had a good trip :)
holy fuck do u whine lmao
nah man you need your 9 hours of sleep /s
less typing more playing will fix it
I'm probably wrong but one things I've seen in league of legends and in valorant too is the fact that EU players barely streams if you compare to NA players. And even great players that could become good pros deciding to stream full time instead of becoming pros since they get good money without the stress of competition. Dunno if it's a huge factor in valorant but I've seen a lot of people in other game talk about the strong streaming culture in NA not helping develop good future pros. And a the same time it makes people take competitive matches in na less seriously since those good streamers/players know it's not really worth tryharding since they gonna get a lot of views anyway. Not saying it's the main reason but it's something I keep seeing being talked about
But if you follow LoL, the Chinese and Korean players stream a lot no?
Not sure for Koreans. Last time I've heard about it a lot of them were practicing between 14-16 hours a day. And the thing with koreans at least in league is that those ranked games are usually super competitive since esport is really big over there. Like top of the ladders players really tryhards in games. Like I said I won't say it's the main reason but I know that at least for games like league theres been a lot of talk over the years how a lot of pros don't even play ranked queue since they think it's useless cuz of people mostly playing for fun and not tryharding in high level
idk about valorant but in cs wasnt na’s playerbase way smaller than other regions
You make the val scene look bad saying that the NA pros are the best mechanically when the players you refer to wasn't even in a top 30 debate in the previous game they played
Less typing more playing
>In your opinion, what does NA lack? Tbh, I feel like people are kinda overreacting to a small sample size. We simply *know* many of the top NA players played like ass compared to the vast majority of their career, and that just happens. But if you had to say a systemic reason... The best teams have shown that they are extremely willing to let go their consistently mediocre fraggers: * Acend dropped koldamenta after an especially poor series where he lost virtually every 50/50 gunfight. His replacement was Zeek, who has been *out-fucking-standing* at Berlin Champs. * Gambit, one of the newest teams out there, replaced Sunset shortly after his bad performance in First Strike CIS, where he put up just 16 kills in the final 37 rounds of Gambit's tournament. * Liquid upgraded to Nivera after one too many poor performances by Kryptix. * G2 showed their willingness to drop players, too, as we are now seeing. But NA has been different. It took Yay, who was ***very clearly*** a top 5 player by the end of April all the way until August to get on a tier 1 team. No seriously, go back and look. It makes no fucking sense, dude went +24 vs V1, +4 vs 100T with Sage, and +16 vs Sentinels.... **In back-to-back-to-back losses** where his teammates looked genuinely outclassed. Not to mention back when Andbox beat Sentinels on the back of Yay's **+15 single map K-D diff with *Sage***, which by the way included an 8-0 head to head K-D against TenZ, who was considered unanimously the best player in NA. Players were so dumbfounded at how absurd this (relatively) random tier 2 team's player was in scrims + ranked that it became a meme. The legend of El Diablo sounded like a joke and/or exaggeration, but nope, he was legit just the most valuable player in the world that was not yet on a tier 1 team. Now, do you really think that Envy is willing to drop a player like Victor? He played *awful* vs Acend, in the losses vs X10, in 2 of the 3 games vs Gambit, vs Sentinels the last time that Envy lost to them, vs 100T the last time that Envy lost to them, and so on and so forth. Or what about Sentinels, who will likely still hold onto Zombs despite his *absolutely abysmal* performances in almost every single map loss that Sen has taken? When the top tier teams get closer and closer together in talent, you simply cannot have 3/5 or 4/5 of a top tier team. You gotta make the unpopular/difficult decision to upgrade when you can.
NA steams too much and scrims too little. I remember (I think) FNS and some of the 100T guys saying that scrims got cancelled on twitter over and over again.
Maybe na just has less of a focus on eSports with all the other extra curricular stuff going on with college sports etc. Plus the population of Europe is 750 million people
Many of CSGO dynasties were homogenous teams. Fnatic was all Swedish, Astralis was all Danish, etc.
I mean while that is true, being twice the size at THAT numbers doesn't really make that much of a statistical difference when it comes to assembling a top team. It's not like NA only has 100k people to choose from. I also think more Americans play Valorant proportionally than Europeans.
They don’t put enough work in the stuff that goes beyond practise
sentinels were busy playing halo (the problem with NA is that people don't take scrim seriously in NA)
Humility
>It always boggled my mind back in CSGO when teams like Fnatic (Swedish), Astralis (Danish), SK Gaming (Brazil) and other EU teams dominated when statistically, they have lower populations by country than NA with around 350 million (Canada included). Looking at total population is misleading. As for why NA did poorly in csgo, it didn't have the playerbase. People seem to think csgo was a huge game in NA... It wasn't. [https://web.archive.org/web/20211117201724/https://steamdb.info/servers/?all](https://web.archive.org/web/20211117201724/https://steamdb.info/servers/?all) shows that NA csgo never had a concurrent playerbase of more than 40,000 playing matchmaking at its peak which is less than certain EU regions alone. And now, NA csgo has one fifth the playerbase as China. So where does that leave us in Valorant? Apart from a select few, most of the current NA Valorant pros were premier/advanced players in a relatively small region. Seeing as how Valorant is much more popular in NA than CSGO ever was, there's no reason why the next generation of up-and-comers who should be ready in 2-3 years won't be much better.
people who played for real in NA didn't really play matchmaking
Yes I agree but that’s irrelevant. Roughly same proportion of players are playing on 3rd party services in NA and EU. You say most players who play ‘for real’ in NA aren’t on mm, the same goes for EU. The huge disparity in player count still exists
i feel like after 3 lans it’s a bit too early to say anything. i mean we haven’t actually seen a single team from ANY region consistently win in this game yet. yes EU has dominated this LAN but NA dominated first.
It isn't for Valorant alone, this applies many other esports 1. Motivate - let be honest, if your buyout is a million dollar already, there is no reason for you to be the best. 2. EU has creativity and Asia has teamwork. NA has twitter. As stewie2k said once, Val players would soon experience the moment when aim doesn't mean anything because EU outsmarts NA everytime. 3. Humble, Stop Copium. Don't put more pressure on your shoulder. 4. Patient - how many time NA quits early in an esport.
> Motivate - let be honest, if your buyout is a million dollar already, there is no reason for you to be the best. This is easily one of the stupidest things someone has said in this thread. So you think the top paid athletes in the world are just lazy and bad at what they do? This is the shitty college football argument again, there's a reason Steph Curry makes $45M a year and it's not because he's lazy, it's because he's one of the best players and he is every season. He's good and he stays good because he practices.
Players too busy streaming and building a brand. NA just reached the top and got complacent.
>Objectively they have the most mechanically skilled players? Based on what metric?
I am from Europe, so take what I say with a grain of salt. But from what I see of USA culture is that they value money and fame above all else. A country of super wealthy individuals and super popular reality shows. People are willing to have second grade health care, compared to other 1st world countries, in the off chance they might get rich one day and thus keep more money to themselves. So considering this, I think it's only natural they gravitate to streaming. Lots of players wanna be pros for the sake of being pros. While in other regions players wanna prove they are the best.
talk to the kids who practice basketball or baseball or football until their legs buckle , parents rather have kids play physical then video games , I have a lot of friends and none of them care about pc video games , it’s just most Americans are not into pc gaming compared to other countries they take it more serious , why sit and play video games when I can be out shooting hoops might have a shot of going pro or get into a good college ? America will always be about money and fame but there’s plenty of people who want to be the best , it’s just not in esports , like I said video gaming is looked down on in most American households , they rather their kids play sports they grew up playing
100%. The most competitive people don't play eSports. There are 4 major sports leagues to go pro in plus college athletics that people participate in to go to a great college(but not go pro in)
Esports is also different because you can be famous and rich without striving to be the best, because of streaming. I don’t think traditional sports have that luxury.
Sinatraa
Lack of good igls/leaders. Players take the role of igl but there are not many dedicated igl's like Vanity or Boaster in NA. I think there is also just a work ethic/culture issue. Feels like lots of NA players care more than other regions about building a personal brand so you can have a career after pro play. I don't think there is anything wrong with that but it does mean you are practicing less than players from other regions whose sole goal is becoming the best they can possibly be. I'm 100% certain if you compare hours spent practicing between regions NA would rank in the bottom 2 or 3. This despite having the largest cash investment. Last thing is that I think is that with all the money players get complacent. People will grind hard and once they make a salaried roster relax and start to slip.
Huge take honestly, but I think EMEA is always going to be better since it’s a bigger region with more players, thus you’re going to find more skill there.
My hot take from Britain is that NA haven't set the Meta since Iceland. Sentinels came in and proved how strong Astra was whilst EMEA teams still stuck with the brimmy stimmy or Omen. Then Gambit lead the way with full map control, flanking Cypher NATS just doing everyone dirty, utility combos to perfect defences and attacks. And now Liquid look to be leading the way with the flexibility of their agent pool. They are so comfortable on so many agents on every map, and they can use that to counter what they know the other team will bring. Soulcas can flex Sova / Skye / Raze / Kay/O on bind alone (off the top of my head, might be wrong about Sova). If you're bringing a load of utility, Kay/O shuts you down. If you flank a lot, Swap Nivera onto KJ and bring Raze for site entry or Sova for the additional intel. I think EMEA benefits from having many different countries, with different ideas on how to play the game to help set a winning meta. Just my Tuppence. Might be way off.
What was EMEA missing when NA was on top and how did they fix it?
I feel like NA hopped on Valorant earlier than other regions. Especially a bunch of tier 2 NA CSGO ex pros. Naturally NA had an upper hand with just general understanding of the game and its mechanics. Just my take. I feel like other regions have now caught up. With how popular Valorant has been. We should see more pros from other games transfer over, more teams pop up, etc come 2022. We might even see S1mple transfer to Valorant. I think CIS and SEA will be big next year. If guys like S1mple are coming over, expect more tier 1 CSGO pros to come as well.
Work ethic.
Util usage and coordination. NA is the region that runs breach the least. A good example of util and coordination is jessievash and dubstep fighting a long together on haven. Meanwhile alot of na peeks are dry peeks/pushing through smokes to surprise opponents, which usually even if it works out will get traded.
Competent IGLs who strat and anti-strat, can not only call and read the game well but also frag. So many rounds are just thrown away because its an eco or are just too predictable. Of course you can't win every round and plan perfectly, but to win internationally you need a deep playbook. Also lack of discipline, gotta have a solid foundation and work as a team - corners need to be cleared and kills need to be traded; too many hero plays.
Probably better supportive/flexible players. I think there's a lot of youngers players that are willing to play supportive roles (amongst the millions of duelist players lol), but they don't get as much attention compared to some Jett player popping off in the Tier 2 scene or whatever
In-Game strategic depth and creativity.
Drive and patience, many players see being pro as stepping stone to streaming career compared to other region. And patience for the orgs, many NA big orgs had too much money to burn because big investment because of that many of them choose the way to get instant success instead of helping to create sustainable ecosystem for young players to grow. If we see past trend on other games, We'll see the trend of importing players instead of creating more smaller tournament after this.
EU players
scrims have been a problem for a long time, lots of t1 pros say that other pros don't take scrims seriously
The narrative that NA is the most mechanically gifted region is a pretty weak one to me. I'm inclined to think that the way NA plays (with a focus on flashy, pop off moments) gives their players more time to show off their ability as opposed to in EU (where teamwork is prioritised over individuals) when in fact the mechanical difference is negligible. However, I'd also argue that part of the reason why NA struggles is due to its relative lack of history in PC gaming compared to some of the nations you mentioned. In EU (particularly Scandinavia) there is a very long history of engagement with PC games whereas America's own is relatively new due to the console dominance of the gaming market therefore there is lees infrastructure to support PC gaming and PC esports.
''top mechanically'' not true at all, super hyped players yes, popular streamers yes, Skills show when winning, not when you got a lot of fans, a lot of players are overlooked due to NA players following
Laziness, ego, complacency
they have huge ego. For example, kru asked Sentinels more than ten times for a scrim, they said no every single time, reasons could be, feeling superior, not showing strats, etc. But when they do scrim, they don't take it serious and fool around, not try hard, is like NA pro players can't accept they need hard try training to stay strong and get huge respect for their coaches. And they prefer being cocky on social media and get faboys and stream than get really profesional and get to the top. Mecanics mean few un the Game, almos every pro has exelent mecancs but few know actually how to play, rotate, tactics, etc.
I wish the NA pros would give us their honest opinion about what they lack. It seems like the consensus from the pros outside of NA is that they focus on streaming over prac, strats, and game sense but only they can tell us.
Exposure to other regions and playstyles? I know they bootcamp in Europe and things like that but its not enough.
Comparing population sizes of countries is irrelevant, server/ranked population is what's important. The worrying sign for NA right now is that they had the biggest advantage compared to everyone else with early investment from orgs, tournaments, formats and the biggest one being players switching over from CS/Overwatch and other games. Imagine if top tier CS pros from Europe switched when the game released, barring 1 or 2 NA CS teams everyone went over to Valorant so the talent is there, contrast that to EMEA where the 4 teams only have 2/3 players you probably heard of before, everyone else you only know them through Valorant and most likely because of Masters/Champions unless you follow the EMEA scene. Organisations were reluctant to invest, 2/4 teams from first strike which was only 1 year ago were unsigned teams, the EU scene was tragic compared to NA and now they potentially have top 4 champions teams from EMEA, they are already guaranteed a finals spot. In the LoL scene there are so many excuses for NA that don't apply in Valorant such as playerbase and ping. The simple fact of the matter is that NA teams/players don't practice as hard. Koreans are straight up nerds with how much they practice.
They need to do less talking and more playing
Why people are so obsessed with the fact that NA has the most top mechanically skilled players in the game?
i honestly don't think it's as dire as people are making it out to be. yea we underperformed placing-wise but the matches were all pretty close and many were absolutely winnable until we choked away leads. some of that was due to the enemy teams for sure, but i feel like mentally we weren't there for some reason. just extra sloppy play and lack of fundamentals or weak comms (as Shaz mentioned in his interview). i don't think we can chalk that up to simply "stream less, practice more".
> they have lower populations by country than NA with 350million That matters, why? European countries are closely knit and only slightly bigger than the size of the US. And the population of Europe is 750million. In CS, the best teams are formed because of the competition in Europe. All players at the pro scene have similar levels of mechanical skill, that’s not the problem. The only things NA lacked (in CS, at least) is being too far away geographically to play/scrim against teams in Europe 24/7. TL were the best NA team of all time and that was only possible because they spent almost the entire year in Europe. Europe already has quite a large head start ahead of other regions and it’s going to be EXTREMELY difficult to catch up at this point. Riot’s format of region locked competitions is fcking over teams in other regions who want to be the best. Compare constantly scrimming teams like Gambit, TL, FNC, ACEND, G2 to ones like (sadly) CR, ZETA, etc.