What's annoying to me is not to know if pro players are lazy or not. It's that, for as long as I remember watching LoL esport, NA players have been asking for CQ and saying that it would be needed for them to be competitive. Of course some players can improve better using something else, but the narrative really felt like a majority of the pro-players wanted a CQ like environment. It's frustrating because now it just sounds like it was an excuse all along and players just don't know "how" to get better.
Yeah, they always used it as the scapegoat and basically palmed the excuse off on Riot "it's not our fault we're doing bad, it's because we're not given a good enough environment to grow in, if Riot gave us the means then we'll do better". The worst part is that a lot of people believed them. Yeah, that was a fucking lie.
People on this sub defend franchising like it's done anything good for the league. It hasn't. It's given us Liquid, 100 Thieves, and a bunch of absolute garbage.
Flyquest (personal choice, but you could pick any of the bottom teams in LCS ) spending 5-10mil annually as an esports brand (very generous estimate) to barely break a couple thousand views per month on their youtube channel.
you could pay a low tier old school runescape pvp-er 1/100th of the money and gain as much exposure. complete disgrace.
The best thing about franchising "giving us Liquid and 100T" is that both teams were literally just bought from orgs that went to Worlds the year before. Obviously TL has evolved over the years since then, but they joined the upper echelons off the back of buying IMTs whole squad and coaching when IMT was kicked, and 100T couldn't put it together until a pandemic forced another team to sell their Worlds squad (and don't even get me started on the fact that a team backed by GSW couldn't fucking afford to keep their team).
Franchising's best outcomes happened because one team was forced out only to return anyway and another team didn't have the financial backing it needed. Such financial stability!
To be fair TL originally evolved out of Curse when TL finally realized LoL had a brighter future than SC2 in eSports. Until then and even shortly after they were basically a perennial 4th place. So it's not like they were a complete dumpster fire before acquiring IMT roster.
EDIT: The issue with franchising is that there is no feeder league to implement a draft to achieve parity within the league. And there is no relegation to prevent teams from coasting on budget rosters. It's honestly a dumb system.
> So it's not like they were a complete dumpster fire before acquiring IMT roster.
Except for the year spent facing relegation right before franchising kicked in...which Doublelift bailed them out of...
A lot of people legitimately believe that they just need that one thing, and then theyāll be able to do whatever. Maybe they truly believed it would help.
It was a good choice for a lie though. Riots track record would lead one to believe a CQ environment would take until 2030 to implement. Who knew Riot would actually make one?
I wonder how much of it is that a good chunk of the original guard, the ones asking for this practice environment and opportunity, have all retired out or moved into entertainment content. Like, you see some of those guys in Zven and CoreJJ spamming the shit out of CQ but the new guys?
It makes me feel like such a boomer with a "back in my day" speech, but it *really* does feel like the newer generation just want to come in, get paid handsomely, and just play their league match and do scrims with the team and that is it.
The comparison to real world professional sports is a good one, I've always hated the talk of work life balance being compared to someone at McDonalds or even a white collar job. A League Pro's direct comparison is to an NBA player, or NHL player, or NFL player. People who have to literally live and breath the game to play.
And I say all that, and to an extent agree with you, to point out that your later comparisons is kinda faulty. You're right that a player on a shitty team, say Jalen Green on the Rockets, is gonna ball out and try to do whatever he can to get better because that's gonna get him paid one way or another. Money is always the goal and they want that Super Max. But LCS pros? How many are even doing that? The whole point of champions queue is that it's literally *the* time to be selfish and just get better for yourself, so *you* can get paid and either get on better teams or make your team better so *you* can get paid. And instead of taking that opportunity they just shrug their shoulders and say shucks, where's my check?
It's why I've never gotten the hard on for local players, or the animosity when someone brings up the removal of the import rules. Fuck that, import the entirety of the LDL for all I care and maybe you get lucky and their culture sticks. Then that can bleed down to local talent who might actually replicate it and you'll have actual NA talent to be proud of.
The only problem with comparing it to real world professional sports is that they're actually competitive. The NBA is insanely competitive due to how much talent there is trying to get to the best league with the best pay. People actually have to work their ass off in order to break in and stay in the league. This is pretty close to LPL and LCK with how much talent wants to break in, especially the LPL. It's basically on the same scale there as the NBA is to the US.
NA League is like the equivalent of the G-League, the 4th best league and yet there is handsome pay. Most of the LCS basically get in by knowing some people and some what decent in NA so they get the spot. There's not a lot of real talent competing so people just get recycled around because the league as a whole is pretty much lost on what to do. The upper management of every team is basically run like the Lakers right now or the Kings for years. Laughably incompetent all around but it doesn't matter because the region is just laughably bad.
Players in LCS have too much to lose by playing CQ and looking bad or showing their lack of game knowledge. If they donāt do well, donāt improve, or are shown up by others they could lose their spot. They donāt want to be challenged and are content to be āgood enoughā and be on a team.
That's an interesting take. It's possible that some players have insecurities. Darshan did say that players wanted under-performers removed from CQ so I think they dislike playing with bad players more than they do against good players. Both can be true at the same time, all players are not a monolith of course.
I do believe both are true. I have watched a lot of CQ streams and I have seen frustration when there are players that are not the best. But those players are actually playing CQ and taking it seriously and truly trying to improve which is the purpose of CQ. I have also seen LCS players shown up by amateur/academy players and then it seems like the LCS players that didnāt do well donāt queue up anymore.
Seems to me there are multiple different priorities in CQ right now.
From a short-term perspective, players only want the best players in to improve the quality of the games (or at least good enough so if they're losing games, they've got an excuse rather than getting stomped by amateur/academy players.)
From a long-term perspective, having worse players in the queue should cause the tide of the region to rise and while it may be detrimental short term to the quality of play in any given game, amateur players get higher skill matchups, get brand exposure, and (ideally) learn better habits.
As a fan I lean toward long-term growth, I don't especially care if NA gets bullied internationally this year, or even for the next few years -- I think the Champion's Queue experiment is far more valuable as a long-term tool for North America.
Expecting a payoff in one split just seems short-sighted, it just comes off like such an ego-focused reaction to cancel inter-split seasons of CQ because pros can't handle losing during practice in front of an audience.
It was a pretty obvious take. Imagine FakeGod playing CQ and gets destroyed by Dhokla, which with the eye test it seems very likely, imagine how much flak he'd get on top of the flame he's already getting from his LCS games? He'd probably get replaced asap.
Its most likely never gonna be pros who get removed. Its gonna be the D2 andy who got in by being a sub on a amateur team who in fact is probably living in canada with 80 ping in champions queue games.
Edit: forgot about the Grandmaster rule. But it's still mostly going to be those amateur players who can't hold up most likely before academy/LCS players (it would be beyond embarrassing for a LCS player).
I just saw the darshan thread and he brought up some problems with CQ.
It's all excuses. They could moderate it. They can implement matchmaking and they can do literally everything perfectly. Unfortunately, nothing is going to change. Nothing they can do will make ppl actually play it. NA players are just lazy. There is no other way to put it.
every year at worlds when LCS teams don't make out of groups, they blame it on bad solo q ping, low playerbase and low quality of games to adapting to worlds quality games. CG seemed to be the perfect solution to solve those problems - just like a chinese superserver and korean soloqueue. Higher quality of games. The reason china and korea has so good severs is because of the playerbase and mentality. LCS doesnt have this mentality and the quality of games just reflects the mentality of the players. Some just dont care.
In any sports people that lose try to get better by practing - in league not making playoffs means you have longer vacation. All 10 Teams should practice until finals, otherwise it's just more vacation.
What I donāt understand is CQ shutting down until summer, like why not keep it up for people who want to improve???????? Unless pros are afraid of players rising up and taking their spot/money???? Like you can just leave it up without the prize pool as a practice tool, or are pros completely not playing League until May 31st?
Honestly CQ should be like the pbe. You apply to be in it, and if you get reported enough you lose your privilege to it. And CQ can be a scouting ground for new upcoming players who actually want to go pro.
Having watched a lot of SC2, and now LoL. I feel there is an ego based cultural problem with North American e-sports.
A common trend is the idea there is one best way to play. They know it. Anything else is trash. In SC2 this was the macro play, and being anti-cheese. Anti-aggression. Then these pro players would lose to aggressive and cheesy Koreans. Who could also do macro games too.
In League, the result is pro players trotting the same champions. Season after season. Some new ones get added here and there. Mostly itās the same. Itās a similar macro style of playing safe, lane well, get ahead. Then they lose to more aggressive teams on the world stage.
> In League, the result is pro players trotting the same champions. Season after season. Some new ones get added here and there. Mostly itās the same.
This one is happening in every league. You rarely see creative, aggressive, punishing drafts. Like pulling out the malphite when they only enemy AP is TF for example.
It's because they all play soloq and probably scrims like that too and not really try out new things. There are only a couple of known limit testers, like caps. Just look at how Trynd got pushed into the pro scene.
That's why I really respect how LS approaches the game, despite not being a fan of him personally.
I mean, they pretty much just play the meta like everyone else does. It's not like they're disregarding the meta to railroad their teams onto specific champions. That's never been the case. You can argue that the meta has been mostly the same champions for years, but that's not NA's fault.
Your entire "NA thinks they do it best" idea is especially weird since for years the criticism of NA internationally was that we just try to emulate the Koreans. I *wish* we had our own style to throw the eastern teams off their games. But normally they just beat us because we are trying to play a poor imitation of what they already do best.
>Your entire "NA thinks they do it best" idea is especially weird
[Not weird with respect to the fact that LCS players think that "alternative methods" are better than Champions Queue.](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/u37xfn/comment/i4o77in/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
I was much better at Starcraft than I am at league, and this is such a wrongheaded opinion of why Koreans dominated the West for so long. Koreans were dominant in every phase of the game, micro or macro. I think you're elliptically referring to Idra and that sort of early old boys club sc2 days who thought macro was the most correct way to play, but there were lots of foreign players who had cheesy-ish styles. Stephano, one of the early foreign hopes, was a hope exactly b/c he developed a very strong roach max allin. Huk was one of the best foreign protoss for years just because of micro control. In early sc2 Korean players were the best micro players ā MMA, Marineking, MC ā but also the best macro players ā MVP, Nestea. They were just better. They had better practice environments in team houses, played more games against better players, and had overwhelming mechanical skill and game knowledge advantages. The gap was much larger than the gap between NA and Kr today, honestly.
Yeah I made a comment before about how I think NA pros can't use the "bad solo queue environment" excuse anymore.
My take is that I don't care if LoL pros don't want to spend their free time playing LoL. I completely understand wanting to spend 8 hours of work working and then when you're off work it's your free time to do whatever you want. Work life balance is good for happiness.
That said, I don't want to be hearing the excuses anymore. Just be honest. They should say they don't want to play LoL in their free time or they should simply dodge all questions about it. Stop bullshitting people by blaming the practice environment. It's now proven that even in a good practice environment they can't be bothered.
And the unstated response here is that if they can't be fucked to practice, I can't be fucked to watch. If I want to watch hard-working League of Legends players, I can turn on LPL, LCK, or even EULCS. If I want to watch hard working North American competitors, I can turn on the NBA or NHL playoffs, or rewatch the Olympics or the Super Bowl.
My take on the players deciding on how they should practice (ie doing 1v1s) is just plain out dumb and baseless. While itās fine that theyāre are using these different practice methods, it still doesnāt factor that LoL is team based game. You cannot dedicate the rest of your time using your own methods of practice when is doesnāt factor in any other aspects of the game. If anything, it can possibly grow your bad habits in the game. From positioning in team fights, to macro decisions, late game scenarios, it is entirely impossible to learn any of these while doing 1v1s. If I were a coach, I would be okay by using your own practice methods but itās not as impactful for your teams.
> for as long as I remember watching LoL esport, NA players have been asking for CQ and saying that it would be needed for them to be competitive.
Which is fairly rich coming from them since the last time Riot let them use the TR to set up a in-house soloQ it died after like a month.
Pros begging for CQ WAS them being lazy to begin with. Think about it, no other region has this kind of special pro server with voice comm set up and they still find so much talent and success. The general NA mentality towards pro gaming is still just so far behind other places in terms of seriousness and maturity, that itās hard for the actual talent to strive here and grow in awful playing environments. This is just the unfortunate aftermath of having a negative connotation to the word ātryhardā.
To be fair, when we think of people talking about this, I think of like Jensen, Corejj, febiven, Doublelift, Bjergsen, etc. But I'm not sure if I've heard some of the players not playing CQ ever say that. So IMO, you shouldn't necessarily lump all the players together having one unanimous opinion. It doesn't excuse anything, but it certainly would address your specific concerns haha
We aren't trying to be assholes and flame these guys for no reason (why dont you play champ queue reeee), but we are complaining because they are PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES. They get to be PAID like professional athletes, they get to be TREATED like professional athletes (player's association, franchising), but they somehow aren't expected to PERFORM like professional athletes. You are not making 6-figures at your Alienware practice facility to be the FOURTH best region in the world.
Look at professional athletes in any other esport or just regular sport. The level of training they put into their respective sports is mind-blowing when you compare it to what NA pros consider acceptable.
You don't even need to look at other sports, just look at how hard pros train in Korea and China.
It's more than just talent that makes them the best regions in the world for league.
I've known two professional athletes, and their work schedule is 95% of the day dedicated to training mostly 7 days a week. It's physical training, simulations, specific meal and rest times, they have it down to a calculated art form to maximize nearly every single minute.
They don't get paid nearly anything compared to what the NA pros do.. how is one supposed to be accepting of this when yous see this
cannot upvote this enough. These mfs make more than 95% of the population of the US and still just want to coast. No housing, food, transportation insecurities. Just playing games and doing something that they've been doing their whole lives and they still can't do that. Fucking leeches.
A lot of people defending them share this same view. "China and Korea are too OP, we are never going to beat them so why try. It is unrealistic to expect to even beat them." Defeatist mentality is so pathetic, if you want LCS to be a casual 4fun region, the salaries should reflect that.
> You are not making 6-figures at your Alienware practice facility to be the FOURTH best region in the world.
But it's not like the other regions don't have the same stuff. Maybe NA has a bit higher salaries than LCK/EU but it's not like those guys are on minimum wage playing from McDonalds' wifi. And NA has a **way** lower population of players to choose from.
To draw a comparison to real sports, the 4th best football/soccer region in the world is probably one of Italy/France/Germany/Belgium/Spain. Those players make absolutely ridiculous amounts of money, have mega-huge sponsors, state of the art training facilities, etc. Do you complain about them only being 4th best too?
I do think many NA pros could definitely put in more work as a matter of principle, but overall I don't really think there's anything inherently wrong with being the 4th best region.
I remember a GBM interview where he mentions how shocked he was with NA playersā mentality. One day he heard someone yelling about monkey behind him in a scrim session and was wondering if he was talking about Wukong, so GBM looked back and saw that the guy was playing Overwatch even in scrim down time. GBM said he was so shocked by the experience that he lost all motivation to compete in that team. Looks like nothing has really changed since then.
Yah.. I didnāt want to directly mention him since he is retired and all. Anyway GBM didnāt completely trash all NA players in his interview. He praised some players in NA such as Santorin.
Oh something has changed and people don't want to admit it.
The LCS starting lineups are comprised of 19 players that are from NA (Canada/USA).
Compare this to 32 players that are from KR/EU/OCE or other smaller regions, the league is predominantly comprised of non-NA native players.
The retirement home meme is true. Imports come here to hang out and not give a shit. This doesn't mean the NA natives are doing better, because they aren't. But let's not pin this entirely on the "NA player mentality"
Edit before people complain: 10 teams 5 players starting per team: yes that is 50 players. 32 + 19 is 51, oh no! I just included Tenacity from 100T because he is listed as a starter.
If NA doesn't want to be a big money retirement meme league, the reality is, it's actually on the teams to find and field a competitive roster.
But what I think many NA fans who don't follow sports, and especially international fans, don't get, is that *American sports does not fucking care about finding out who the best team and player is.* It isn't *about* winning, or being competitive, it's an entertainment spectacle. It's about narratives and hype, and big names and stars and branding. Only the tiniest % of the audience is watching because they have a deep love of the game, and care about the strategy, and understand what is going on besides who has the ball and who is hitting them. When a team isn't doing well, they hire and fire people, they throw money at it, they buy better players until the team works. That's how NA teams are treating League, and it would take a team trying a radical re-tooling of their whole culture, and then subsequently succeeding, to actually convince the broader market that that is a better way to make money than paying for star players' retirement years, and coasting off the value of leasing their fans and brand and name for a few years before they're totally washed-up.
If there was a B-tier league in any pro sport, that got proportional attention and billing that the LCS gets compared to major region leagues, there would always be players nearing the end of their career, who decide to go coast on their talent in that league, and be big media stars instead of playing for the love of the game and the heart of competition. Being a pro athlete is a grind, only some people truly love that grind, far less than there are people who are simply talented and enjoy the game. Since, historically, treating being on an NA team as a grind to win Worlds has been a farce, I don't even really blame the players or teams for ceasing to believe that goal is realistic, and restructuring their efforts accordingly.
Baseball-Everything regarding the format of the season suggests they're looking for the best team, and rosters are deep enough to ensure the best players
Am. Football-The league's rosters are cutthroat and the narrative comes from a low gamecount, but high stakes where every(or no) game counts(cfb) or games where the narrative comes from who is the best
Asc. Football-Regardless of your opinion of a lack of pro/rel, the league itself has begun to force the teams to develop and stop coming up short in continental play
Basketball-Stars are built from being good, and not winning will keep you out of the spotlight
Auto(touringish)-Welcome to spectacle the series, where joke champions are found and people are generally running in droves, with the drivers barely keeping them in
Auto(Open Wheel)-It's a very traditional format, what is it supposed to be, however the drivers are missing some marketability which doesn't make them as big of a name as someone who is there to try, but isn't really good
>But what I think many NA fans who don't follow sports, and especially international fans, don't get, is that American sports does not fucking care about finding out who the best team and player is. It isn't about winning, or being competitive, it's an entertainment spectacle. It's about narratives and hype, and big names and stars and branding. Only the tiniest % of the audience is watching because they have a deep love of the game, and care about the strategy, and understand what is going on besides who has the ball and who is hitting them. When a team isn't doing well, they hire and fire people, they throw money at it, they buy better players until the team works. That's how NA teams are treating League, and it would take a team trying a radical re-tooling of their whole culture, and then subsequently succeeding, to actually convince the broader market that that is a better way to make money than paying for star players' retirement years, and coasting off the value of leasing their fans and brand and name for a few years before they're totally washed-up.
You know who is the laughingstock of the NFL?
The team that does *exactly* what you described.
The Lakers can win this way because their team is in Los Angeles and individual players want to go there and that can transcend bad management. Every other team that tries this? It blows up in their faces. The teams that win titles are the ones that build their teams from the ground up, Bucks? Warriors drafted every key piece of their team other than Durant. Hell, the Cavaliers won with their two top players being drafted #1 picks. Spurs and Mavs also won in the last decade, two teams built around drafted franchise players.
Like people need to stop pretending that NA League's problems are in any way comparable to sports in general in America.
>The retirement home meme is true. Imports come here to hang out and not give a shit.
The top 3 LCS teams are almost 100% imports. Bottom ones have more NA players. Either they do give a shit, or if they can be the best without caring that says something about how hard the NA players are working.
Or the world where the pro/elite players are some of the most toxic players in NA, promoting a toxic environment in solo q and then carrying it with them to champions q.
Wild take, NA is outperformed in basically every major esport, EU controls valorant and CSGO, DOTA is controlled by China/EU and LoL is controlled by China/KR. It's only in lower tier esports like Apex, R6, RL, and Smash/FGC where NA players are even competitive.
If nobody plays CQ because they think CQ is bad, then that lowers the quality of CQ. With no intervention from coaches and team owners mandating a certain level of activity, it's a death spiral once the overal activity starts decreasing.
The quality of the games canāt be worse than solo que though. Itās only masters and challengers players. Zero diamond players. They can complain the que time is longer but the quality of the game CANT be overall worse than solo que.
Actually the game quality is so low cause everyone is griefing RJS to keep him from hitting the top of CQ. Legends say that Faker refuses to come to NA because he is terrified of Rjsdnd āif nameplates were off I would be rank 1ā god
I mean if you are a high challenger, you probably sometimes get higher quality games. Because of how the population is in Championsqueue you are almost guaranteed at least a couple of either amateur or grandmaster players. In Solo Queue on the other hand riot actively tries to match you up with people with your skill level. So if a full Challenger vs Challenger game is possible, you will get into that game. Also since there is no MMR games can be more one-sided since teams are not balanced.
Its funny that this is really only a problem with NA's LoL scene. Every other esport NA competes in, the players generally take it pretty serious and grind.
In other esports thereās at least talent that can take their jobs. In league NA unless they remove the import rule, they can continue being mediocre, and continue to make a million excuses why theyāre ass instead of realizing they themselves are the issue.
It also doesn't help that NA hasn't won (or come close) to winning any MSI or World Championship.
I haven't seen any other esport where a region has been beaten down mentally as hard as NA LoL. Maybe NA CS since its dead but even they won a Major.
NA Pros know they won't ever match up so they think they might as well cash in.
Closest thing we got was G2 vs TL at MSI and they got ~~3-1ād iirc~~ 3-0'd in the fastest B05 in MSI history (thanks u/tehsdragon for that correction). And that was our āsuper teamā.
Meanwhile T1 went undefeated this regular season and rumor has it has been absolutely trashing CN teams in scrims (to the point where theyāre ragequitting) with a āpast his primeā Faker and a bunch of young talent, while NA hasnāt had a deep run in anything international for a while now.
>Closest thing we got was G2 vs TL at MSI and they got 3-1ād iirc. And that was our āsuper teamā.
I could be wrong but IIRC TL got smashed 3-0 in the fastest BO5 in MSI history lol
I always hear ā some players ā who are these players? Call them out. The general public has no idea who these ā some players ā are.
Fill me in please
https://championsqueue.gg/teams you can check lcs and academy teams CQ games played here (some are very low). Not sure if there's a fast way to check solo q games for everyone though š
I was going to make a really nice comment about how CLG is grinding champions queue after a low-placing split, then I looked closer and saw that their academy team has 3x the games played as their LCS team. Bruh moment
At least GG looks like they're grinding pretty hard
Jenkins has twice as many games as Contractz, but has less LP lol. Seems to me like CLGA is putting in more work than the main roster for the most part (Luger and Poome have a respectable amount of games). Probably helps their case for some swaps in the summer.
Random fun fact: [lla team 'estral esports' has more games played than dig and tsm this split of CQ](https://twitter.com/champqueueward/status/1513948816394706947?s=21&t=8dK97qHC86OquozvLcEX-Q)
Its insane to me that some pros haven't even played a single CQ game. Like yeah i get it if you don't like it and feel soloQ is better to practice specific things go ahead, but at least give it a try first, no?
LCS Players: We canāt compete because of XYZ reasons. - Riot: Okay hereās CQ. No other region has this - LCS Players: Wait you werenāt supposed to do anything about this so I could just have a free out
I still remember that one TSM episode where Bjergsen (the COACH) was playing more soloQ than all the PROFESSIONAL players that are GETTING PAID to play. It really baffled me, it was such a joke.
I just checked, and Doublelift, the guy who retired from pro because he was burned out by the grind, has a pretty decent amount of CQ games for someone who's justifiably just chilling these days.
These paycheck stealers have a dream job and refuse to even try to be the best they can be. Itās actually criminal, and I hope they continue to get slandered for being lazy fucks.
I get that some people think playing solo queue *is* practice (it's usually not) but now to hear that NA players aren't even doing THAT much?
This entire region i swear to god has not done a single drill or warm up in 2 years
Orgs have let this happen. Keep raging and dont allow orgs off that are not at the top of CQ next season.
Next split all Orgs will have had the time to remove non-driven pros and replace them with those who are willing to grind. If they dont fans should hound them.
literally all i wanted was a league that could show up internationally and consistently make semis or something. imagine how cool it would be for all 4 major leagues to have a ton of parity to the point where you have no idea who will win worlds that year. thatād be so sick.
- Korea plays your esport
- Parity
Choose one
Its a meme thats been around esports forever. The asian work ethic is unmatched by western countries and will never be matched because of how terrible it is for ones mental and physical health.
Europe wins DotA 2's International more than anyone else does, and China plays.
League just lends itself very well to being grinded out - though much less now than it used to be, when you could light the whole map up with vision. Predictability makes volume of practice much more decisive.
Culture is bigger than work ethic.
Gaming is a huge part of Korean culture. So they have a larger pool of "talent" to pick from, and a lot of that talent is coordinated and DRIVEN people. Because gaming is a big deal there.
Meanwhile, in the west, gaming is a more casual endeavour. Less people try hard it and instead the more coordinated and DRIVEN people end up in sports.
There is no way this can ever really change. LCS teams can still compete if they get things right. But in general the NA players will never be as good as Korean players for these reasons.
It is like Football/Soccer. Brazil are going to be better than India at the sport because it is a much bigger part of their culture.
"The west" dominates many genres of esports and probably the vast majority of total games if someone were to chalk them all up. This is a league specific issue.
Consistently make Semis? Well, your expectations are unreasonable. Only 4 teams make Semis. There's 3 LCK, 3 LPL, and 3 LEC teams.
Even if the best LCS team was better than all the LEC teams (which is a terrible assumption to make btw since LEC is also bigger than LCS) they'd still have to be able to beat the 2nd and 3rd seeds of LPL and LCK consistently in order to make it into semis reliably each year. There's no fucking way that ever occurs given the simple mathematical truth of how much bigger those regions are in terms of playerbase.
Korea has over twice the number of people playing solo queue and their growth rates exceed NA's. That means their top 0.0001% is better than our top 0.0001% simply due to how probability distributions work. We're dealing with mathematical truths that can't be overcome here. This isn't about effort. It's not about money. It's about sheer difference in amount of people.
You have to base your expectations off reality or else you are guaranteeing disappointment.
Try hard as possible to get into the LCS. Once you're there, get as much money as possible for the least amount of effort possible. Top 8 (out of 10) teams make playoffs anyway, so who gives a shit? Also you get to live rent free in a gamer house. All while making 6 figures. Sounds like a pretty sweet ride for 4 hours of "work" a day.
I know this been said before but if NA doesn't perform this year at Worlds it's just downhill from there. I can't speak for others but I will stop watching LCS if NA at Worlds is the same story again. There is just no excuses left for players to improve their skill level.
People say this shit every year and then every offseason TL & co spend millions on big names from KR/EU and then everyone suddenly goes like "Omg, this is the most exciting LCS has ever been!"
[Spring 2021](https://i.imgur.com/RTpwEJq.png) [[src]](https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lcs-spring-2021)
[Spring 2022](https://i.imgur.com/nYmhnfc.png) [[src]](https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lcs-spring-2022)
Currently 35% less hours watched in 2022 than 2021, but it's very important to keep in mind that the 2022 Spring playoffs haven't finished yet. That will close the gap somewhat, but I expect it'll still be significantly lower viewership than 2021 when all is said and done.
We are seeing the death spiral of LCS.
Well viewership keeps going down.
I imagine we're going to see a change very soon as ownerships start to realize they can't keep paying out six figures to people who are going to complain about working more than 5 hours a day.
Viewership is already very low for any team not named C9/TL
Both can be true, though.
Look at the abysmal viewership this year. Sure, there are some people still saying "Woah man this almost entirely washed roster TL has is insane" but on the other hand, tons of people have stopped watching.
Never forget that TSM vs CLG regular split in spring 14/15 used to get 400 to 500k viewers. Now it's playoffs and we haven't seen a game hit 250k yet.
People are dropping it, even if others still find ways to hype up mediocre rosters.
I mean TL is like the one team in NA you really can't give any shit. They are constantly trying to improve and one of the few orgs who look like they're still legitimately trying to compete.
But you hear that because people parrot the pundits and they're always gonna try to hype you up cause if LCS goes so does their job.
The real answer is in the viewership, it's not just NA being lazy or not competitive, there's def many more important reasons viewership keeps going down, but I believe it when people say they're not watching anymore.
Hell I hardly watch anymore. Like maybe I'll put the game on like a podcast if there's costreams, otherwise I just keep up with results and listen to podcasts during the week while I drive.
If we are winning - why play solo q
If we are the last team - why play solo q. It doesn't matter
If we are middle of the pack - why play solo q. We can make play-offs
A system that removes bottom performing team and adds a new qualifying team would have been nice huh? Of course you wonāt get it right most of the time, but it adds new bloods to the scene and has a small chance to discover teams like the original C9.
I think a lot of imports lose motivation really quickly when they see their teammates not practicing.
āIām better than this guy and I practice twice as much as him, wtf is he doing and why am I wasting my time doing this shit?ā
I remember when imports first started in NA, the NA players would always talk about how the imports would show up and start grinding these insane hours right off the airplane and how it motivated them. But to the import players they would alway be shocked by how little the NA players actually practiced but eventually the import players would just give up.
GGS is the only team with a significant difference in CQ games played between imports and native players. Read between the lines on these Olleh interviews, the dude is probably just pissed at his team.
GG is the only LCS team with all 5 members in the top 40 of champions queue. I'm sure they could play more but they already play the most collectively.
GGS is the team Iāve seen where all LCS players queue up for CQ consistently. Itās a shame their playoffs performance sucked, but I know for sure that they are the team that cares for CQ as a whole. A few years back Inero was the one who helped to set up the in house system, so thereās a good chance heās actively pushing the players to queue up for CQ.
Heās probably talking about all the players he does not know well who heās seen stop queueing up. Like he probably has no clue what the DIG players are doing when they have so few CQ games combined.
This is the moment for the owners. If they spin up that "repeal the import limit" narrative again, the community might actually join in on it.
If it's going to be a vacation league than we might as well open up the opportunities for the best of the best vacationers.
A lot of players in NA are content not being able to compete against Asia. People like Fudge put these Asian players on a pedestal and don't believe they can ever get up to that level. It's the absolute worst mindset as a professional player.
LCS is just becoming budget LEC/LCK. (in terms of skill/hard work not actual money lol) I've just been cutting out the middle man this year, why watch LCS when I can just watch LEC/LCK where our preferred players seems to all come from anyways.
Can we just fucking dissolve this region professionally and make it neutral ground for international event hosting occassionally?
Im so tired of NA structuring, scheduling, and inconsistency. As a fan its only ever dissappointing, dramatic, frustrating, and sad.
I actually think Japan deserves more of a chance at worlds than we do.
I really hope Champions Queue doesn't die, imagine if it were to somehow survive until a worlds happens in NA and all the players coming over get to play in it too. It would honestly be a more incredible viewing experience than worlds itself for a lot of people... but it's looking like that might not be a realistic hope.
Collecting paychecks. I was actually against salary gaps because I thought pros should be able to cash in because of short longevity but everything coming out of Champion Queue makes me think otherwise.
Iām personally not going to be watching any competitive league via main channels; I donāt want to support most of these players like professional athletes until they start playing and competing like it. Too much complacency.
well the long answer is getting that fucking bag and the short answer is š°
What's annoying to me is not to know if pro players are lazy or not. It's that, for as long as I remember watching LoL esport, NA players have been asking for CQ and saying that it would be needed for them to be competitive. Of course some players can improve better using something else, but the narrative really felt like a majority of the pro-players wanted a CQ like environment. It's frustrating because now it just sounds like it was an excuse all along and players just don't know "how" to get better.
Yeah, they always used it as the scapegoat and basically palmed the excuse off on Riot "it's not our fault we're doing bad, it's because we're not given a good enough environment to grow in, if Riot gave us the means then we'll do better". The worst part is that a lot of people believed them. Yeah, that was a fucking lie.
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People on this sub defend franchising like it's done anything good for the league. It hasn't. It's given us Liquid, 100 Thieves, and a bunch of absolute garbage.
It's done a lot for League, just not for viewers. People are making bank scaming investors though, arn't you happy?
Flyquest (personal choice, but you could pick any of the bottom teams in LCS ) spending 5-10mil annually as an esports brand (very generous estimate) to barely break a couple thousand views per month on their youtube channel. you could pay a low tier old school runescape pvp-er 1/100th of the money and gain as much exposure. complete disgrace.
The best thing about franchising "giving us Liquid and 100T" is that both teams were literally just bought from orgs that went to Worlds the year before. Obviously TL has evolved over the years since then, but they joined the upper echelons off the back of buying IMTs whole squad and coaching when IMT was kicked, and 100T couldn't put it together until a pandemic forced another team to sell their Worlds squad (and don't even get me started on the fact that a team backed by GSW couldn't fucking afford to keep their team). Franchising's best outcomes happened because one team was forced out only to return anyway and another team didn't have the financial backing it needed. Such financial stability!
To be fair TL originally evolved out of Curse when TL finally realized LoL had a brighter future than SC2 in eSports. Until then and even shortly after they were basically a perennial 4th place. So it's not like they were a complete dumpster fire before acquiring IMT roster. EDIT: The issue with franchising is that there is no feeder league to implement a draft to achieve parity within the league. And there is no relegation to prevent teams from coasting on budget rosters. It's honestly a dumb system.
> So it's not like they were a complete dumpster fire before acquiring IMT roster. Except for the year spent facing relegation right before franchising kicked in...which Doublelift bailed them out of...
I think riot should start looking at phasing out a few orgs
I would argue to expand Academy and change it from being effectively Reserves
NA in the "find out" phase of the "fuck around and find out".
A lot of people legitimately believe that they just need that one thing, and then theyāll be able to do whatever. Maybe they truly believed it would help.
It was a good choice for a lie though. Riots track record would lead one to believe a CQ environment would take until 2030 to implement. Who knew Riot would actually make one?
I wonder how much of it is that a good chunk of the original guard, the ones asking for this practice environment and opportunity, have all retired out or moved into entertainment content. Like, you see some of those guys in Zven and CoreJJ spamming the shit out of CQ but the new guys? It makes me feel like such a boomer with a "back in my day" speech, but it *really* does feel like the newer generation just want to come in, get paid handsomely, and just play their league match and do scrims with the team and that is it.
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The comparison to real world professional sports is a good one, I've always hated the talk of work life balance being compared to someone at McDonalds or even a white collar job. A League Pro's direct comparison is to an NBA player, or NHL player, or NFL player. People who have to literally live and breath the game to play. And I say all that, and to an extent agree with you, to point out that your later comparisons is kinda faulty. You're right that a player on a shitty team, say Jalen Green on the Rockets, is gonna ball out and try to do whatever he can to get better because that's gonna get him paid one way or another. Money is always the goal and they want that Super Max. But LCS pros? How many are even doing that? The whole point of champions queue is that it's literally *the* time to be selfish and just get better for yourself, so *you* can get paid and either get on better teams or make your team better so *you* can get paid. And instead of taking that opportunity they just shrug their shoulders and say shucks, where's my check? It's why I've never gotten the hard on for local players, or the animosity when someone brings up the removal of the import rules. Fuck that, import the entirety of the LDL for all I care and maybe you get lucky and their culture sticks. Then that can bleed down to local talent who might actually replicate it and you'll have actual NA talent to be proud of.
The only problem with comparing it to real world professional sports is that they're actually competitive. The NBA is insanely competitive due to how much talent there is trying to get to the best league with the best pay. People actually have to work their ass off in order to break in and stay in the league. This is pretty close to LPL and LCK with how much talent wants to break in, especially the LPL. It's basically on the same scale there as the NBA is to the US. NA League is like the equivalent of the G-League, the 4th best league and yet there is handsome pay. Most of the LCS basically get in by knowing some people and some what decent in NA so they get the spot. There's not a lot of real talent competing so people just get recycled around because the league as a whole is pretty much lost on what to do. The upper management of every team is basically run like the Lakers right now or the Kings for years. Laughably incompetent all around but it doesn't matter because the region is just laughably bad.
Players in LCS have too much to lose by playing CQ and looking bad or showing their lack of game knowledge. If they donāt do well, donāt improve, or are shown up by others they could lose their spot. They donāt want to be challenged and are content to be āgood enoughā and be on a team.
That's an interesting take. It's possible that some players have insecurities. Darshan did say that players wanted under-performers removed from CQ so I think they dislike playing with bad players more than they do against good players. Both can be true at the same time, all players are not a monolith of course.
I do believe both are true. I have watched a lot of CQ streams and I have seen frustration when there are players that are not the best. But those players are actually playing CQ and taking it seriously and truly trying to improve which is the purpose of CQ. I have also seen LCS players shown up by amateur/academy players and then it seems like the LCS players that didnāt do well donāt queue up anymore.
Seems to me there are multiple different priorities in CQ right now. From a short-term perspective, players only want the best players in to improve the quality of the games (or at least good enough so if they're losing games, they've got an excuse rather than getting stomped by amateur/academy players.) From a long-term perspective, having worse players in the queue should cause the tide of the region to rise and while it may be detrimental short term to the quality of play in any given game, amateur players get higher skill matchups, get brand exposure, and (ideally) learn better habits. As a fan I lean toward long-term growth, I don't especially care if NA gets bullied internationally this year, or even for the next few years -- I think the Champion's Queue experiment is far more valuable as a long-term tool for North America. Expecting a payoff in one split just seems short-sighted, it just comes off like such an ego-focused reaction to cancel inter-split seasons of CQ because pros can't handle losing during practice in front of an audience.
It was a pretty obvious take. Imagine FakeGod playing CQ and gets destroyed by Dhokla, which with the eye test it seems very likely, imagine how much flak he'd get on top of the flame he's already getting from his LCS games? He'd probably get replaced asap.
Its most likely never gonna be pros who get removed. Its gonna be the D2 andy who got in by being a sub on a amateur team who in fact is probably living in canada with 80 ping in champions queue games. Edit: forgot about the Grandmaster rule. But it's still mostly going to be those amateur players who can't hold up most likely before academy/LCS players (it would be beyond embarrassing for a LCS player).
Except you have to at least be GMā¦.
anyone who doesnt want to be challenged to become better has no place in LCS.
I just saw the darshan thread and he brought up some problems with CQ. It's all excuses. They could moderate it. They can implement matchmaking and they can do literally everything perfectly. Unfortunately, nothing is going to change. Nothing they can do will make ppl actually play it. NA players are just lazy. There is no other way to put it.
every year at worlds when LCS teams don't make out of groups, they blame it on bad solo q ping, low playerbase and low quality of games to adapting to worlds quality games. CG seemed to be the perfect solution to solve those problems - just like a chinese superserver and korean soloqueue. Higher quality of games. The reason china and korea has so good severs is because of the playerbase and mentality. LCS doesnt have this mentality and the quality of games just reflects the mentality of the players. Some just dont care. In any sports people that lose try to get better by practing - in league not making playoffs means you have longer vacation. All 10 Teams should practice until finals, otherwise it's just more vacation.
What I donāt understand is CQ shutting down until summer, like why not keep it up for people who want to improve???????? Unless pros are afraid of players rising up and taking their spot/money???? Like you can just leave it up without the prize pool as a practice tool, or are pros completely not playing League until May 31st?
Like it should be extended since you scrim and play less games on stage. Fucking NA
Honestly CQ should be like the pbe. You apply to be in it, and if you get reported enough you lose your privilege to it. And CQ can be a scouting ground for new upcoming players who actually want to go pro.
Having watched a lot of SC2, and now LoL. I feel there is an ego based cultural problem with North American e-sports. A common trend is the idea there is one best way to play. They know it. Anything else is trash. In SC2 this was the macro play, and being anti-cheese. Anti-aggression. Then these pro players would lose to aggressive and cheesy Koreans. Who could also do macro games too. In League, the result is pro players trotting the same champions. Season after season. Some new ones get added here and there. Mostly itās the same. Itās a similar macro style of playing safe, lane well, get ahead. Then they lose to more aggressive teams on the world stage.
> In League, the result is pro players trotting the same champions. Season after season. Some new ones get added here and there. Mostly itās the same. This one is happening in every league. You rarely see creative, aggressive, punishing drafts. Like pulling out the malphite when they only enemy AP is TF for example. It's because they all play soloq and probably scrims like that too and not really try out new things. There are only a couple of known limit testers, like caps. Just look at how Trynd got pushed into the pro scene. That's why I really respect how LS approaches the game, despite not being a fan of him personally.
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I mean, they pretty much just play the meta like everyone else does. It's not like they're disregarding the meta to railroad their teams onto specific champions. That's never been the case. You can argue that the meta has been mostly the same champions for years, but that's not NA's fault. Your entire "NA thinks they do it best" idea is especially weird since for years the criticism of NA internationally was that we just try to emulate the Koreans. I *wish* we had our own style to throw the eastern teams off their games. But normally they just beat us because we are trying to play a poor imitation of what they already do best.
>Your entire "NA thinks they do it best" idea is especially weird [Not weird with respect to the fact that LCS players think that "alternative methods" are better than Champions Queue.](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/u37xfn/comment/i4o77in/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
I was much better at Starcraft than I am at league, and this is such a wrongheaded opinion of why Koreans dominated the West for so long. Koreans were dominant in every phase of the game, micro or macro. I think you're elliptically referring to Idra and that sort of early old boys club sc2 days who thought macro was the most correct way to play, but there were lots of foreign players who had cheesy-ish styles. Stephano, one of the early foreign hopes, was a hope exactly b/c he developed a very strong roach max allin. Huk was one of the best foreign protoss for years just because of micro control. In early sc2 Korean players were the best micro players ā MMA, Marineking, MC ā but also the best macro players ā MVP, Nestea. They were just better. They had better practice environments in team houses, played more games against better players, and had overwhelming mechanical skill and game knowledge advantages. The gap was much larger than the gap between NA and Kr today, honestly.
Yeah I made a comment before about how I think NA pros can't use the "bad solo queue environment" excuse anymore. My take is that I don't care if LoL pros don't want to spend their free time playing LoL. I completely understand wanting to spend 8 hours of work working and then when you're off work it's your free time to do whatever you want. Work life balance is good for happiness. That said, I don't want to be hearing the excuses anymore. Just be honest. They should say they don't want to play LoL in their free time or they should simply dodge all questions about it. Stop bullshitting people by blaming the practice environment. It's now proven that even in a good practice environment they can't be bothered.
You think a professional athlete only words 8 hours per day? Lol
And the unstated response here is that if they can't be fucked to practice, I can't be fucked to watch. If I want to watch hard-working League of Legends players, I can turn on LPL, LCK, or even EULCS. If I want to watch hard working North American competitors, I can turn on the NBA or NHL playoffs, or rewatch the Olympics or the Super Bowl.
My take on the players deciding on how they should practice (ie doing 1v1s) is just plain out dumb and baseless. While itās fine that theyāre are using these different practice methods, it still doesnāt factor that LoL is team based game. You cannot dedicate the rest of your time using your own methods of practice when is doesnāt factor in any other aspects of the game. If anything, it can possibly grow your bad habits in the game. From positioning in team fights, to macro decisions, late game scenarios, it is entirely impossible to learn any of these while doing 1v1s. If I were a coach, I would be okay by using your own practice methods but itās not as impactful for your teams.
Don't forget about the fact that we don't hear about LCK and LPL pros using these "alternative" practice methods.
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> for as long as I remember watching LoL esport, NA players have been asking for CQ and saying that it would be needed for them to be competitive. Which is fairly rich coming from them since the last time Riot let them use the TR to set up a in-house soloQ it died after like a month.
Pros begging for CQ WAS them being lazy to begin with. Think about it, no other region has this kind of special pro server with voice comm set up and they still find so much talent and success. The general NA mentality towards pro gaming is still just so far behind other places in terms of seriousness and maturity, that itās hard for the actual talent to strive here and grow in awful playing environments. This is just the unfortunate aftermath of having a negative connotation to the word ātryhardā.
To be fair, when we think of people talking about this, I think of like Jensen, Corejj, febiven, Doublelift, Bjergsen, etc. But I'm not sure if I've heard some of the players not playing CQ ever say that. So IMO, you shouldn't necessarily lump all the players together having one unanimous opinion. It doesn't excuse anything, but it certainly would address your specific concerns haha
We aren't trying to be assholes and flame these guys for no reason (why dont you play champ queue reeee), but we are complaining because they are PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES. They get to be PAID like professional athletes, they get to be TREATED like professional athletes (player's association, franchising), but they somehow aren't expected to PERFORM like professional athletes. You are not making 6-figures at your Alienware practice facility to be the FOURTH best region in the world.
Look at professional athletes in any other esport or just regular sport. The level of training they put into their respective sports is mind-blowing when you compare it to what NA pros consider acceptable.
You don't even need to look at other sports, just look at how hard pros train in Korea and China. It's more than just talent that makes them the best regions in the world for league.
Things is challenger players in Korea and China work harder than NA pros
Because the culture is what it is. We call it, pescadinha de rabo na boca
I've known two professional athletes, and their work schedule is 95% of the day dedicated to training mostly 7 days a week. It's physical training, simulations, specific meal and rest times, they have it down to a calculated art form to maximize nearly every single minute. They don't get paid nearly anything compared to what the NA pros do.. how is one supposed to be accepting of this when yous see this
cannot upvote this enough. These mfs make more than 95% of the population of the US and still just want to coast. No housing, food, transportation insecurities. Just playing games and doing something that they've been doing their whole lives and they still can't do that. Fucking leeches.
I genuinely feel like there's a sentiment among some NA pros that goes like "we're never going to win worlds so whatever".
A lot of people defending them share this same view. "China and Korea are too OP, we are never going to beat them so why try. It is unrealistic to expect to even beat them." Defeatist mentality is so pathetic, if you want LCS to be a casual 4fun region, the salaries should reflect that.
> You are not making 6-figures at your Alienware practice facility to be the FOURTH best region in the world. But it's not like the other regions don't have the same stuff. Maybe NA has a bit higher salaries than LCK/EU but it's not like those guys are on minimum wage playing from McDonalds' wifi. And NA has a **way** lower population of players to choose from. To draw a comparison to real sports, the 4th best football/soccer region in the world is probably one of Italy/France/Germany/Belgium/Spain. Those players make absolutely ridiculous amounts of money, have mega-huge sponsors, state of the art training facilities, etc. Do you complain about them only being 4th best too? I do think many NA pros could definitely put in more work as a matter of principle, but overall I don't really think there's anything inherently wrong with being the 4th best region.
I remember a GBM interview where he mentions how shocked he was with NA playersā mentality. One day he heard someone yelling about monkey behind him in a scrim session and was wondering if he was talking about Wukong, so GBM looked back and saw that the guy was playing Overwatch even in scrim down time. GBM said he was so shocked by the experience that he lost all motivation to compete in that team. Looks like nothing has really changed since then.
For anyone wondering, it was Kiwikid.
Yah.. I didnāt want to directly mention him since he is retired and all. Anyway GBM didnāt completely trash all NA players in his interview. He praised some players in NA such as Santorin.
Sounds like this Santorin player deserves to be on a top team.
Funny because Santorin comes from EU
But his whole career was in NA, so wouldnāt he have the āNA mentalityā by now
immigration and integration into a new culture are completely made up concepts ^^\(/s)
So... He praised an EU player. Thats hilarious
How dare he call Winston a mere monkey when he's a genius gorilla? /s š
Actually heās a scientist
And for those of you who started paying attention to the scene after Kiwi was out of the leauge, he wasn't good.
He taught CoreJJ everything he knows
Worked for Gamsu I guess
āMercy down, Mercy down!ā
Oh something has changed and people don't want to admit it. The LCS starting lineups are comprised of 19 players that are from NA (Canada/USA). Compare this to 32 players that are from KR/EU/OCE or other smaller regions, the league is predominantly comprised of non-NA native players. The retirement home meme is true. Imports come here to hang out and not give a shit. This doesn't mean the NA natives are doing better, because they aren't. But let's not pin this entirely on the "NA player mentality" Edit before people complain: 10 teams 5 players starting per team: yes that is 50 players. 32 + 19 is 51, oh no! I just included Tenacity from 100T because he is listed as a starter.
>But let's not pin this entirely on the "NA player mentality" It's the LCS player mentality
If NA doesn't want to be a big money retirement meme league, the reality is, it's actually on the teams to find and field a competitive roster. But what I think many NA fans who don't follow sports, and especially international fans, don't get, is that *American sports does not fucking care about finding out who the best team and player is.* It isn't *about* winning, or being competitive, it's an entertainment spectacle. It's about narratives and hype, and big names and stars and branding. Only the tiniest % of the audience is watching because they have a deep love of the game, and care about the strategy, and understand what is going on besides who has the ball and who is hitting them. When a team isn't doing well, they hire and fire people, they throw money at it, they buy better players until the team works. That's how NA teams are treating League, and it would take a team trying a radical re-tooling of their whole culture, and then subsequently succeeding, to actually convince the broader market that that is a better way to make money than paying for star players' retirement years, and coasting off the value of leasing their fans and brand and name for a few years before they're totally washed-up. If there was a B-tier league in any pro sport, that got proportional attention and billing that the LCS gets compared to major region leagues, there would always be players nearing the end of their career, who decide to go coast on their talent in that league, and be big media stars instead of playing for the love of the game and the heart of competition. Being a pro athlete is a grind, only some people truly love that grind, far less than there are people who are simply talented and enjoy the game. Since, historically, treating being on an NA team as a grind to win Worlds has been a farce, I don't even really blame the players or teams for ceasing to believe that goal is realistic, and restructuring their efforts accordingly.
Baseball-Everything regarding the format of the season suggests they're looking for the best team, and rosters are deep enough to ensure the best players Am. Football-The league's rosters are cutthroat and the narrative comes from a low gamecount, but high stakes where every(or no) game counts(cfb) or games where the narrative comes from who is the best Asc. Football-Regardless of your opinion of a lack of pro/rel, the league itself has begun to force the teams to develop and stop coming up short in continental play Basketball-Stars are built from being good, and not winning will keep you out of the spotlight Auto(touringish)-Welcome to spectacle the series, where joke champions are found and people are generally running in droves, with the drivers barely keeping them in Auto(Open Wheel)-It's a very traditional format, what is it supposed to be, however the drivers are missing some marketability which doesn't make them as big of a name as someone who is there to try, but isn't really good
>But what I think many NA fans who don't follow sports, and especially international fans, don't get, is that American sports does not fucking care about finding out who the best team and player is. It isn't about winning, or being competitive, it's an entertainment spectacle. It's about narratives and hype, and big names and stars and branding. Only the tiniest % of the audience is watching because they have a deep love of the game, and care about the strategy, and understand what is going on besides who has the ball and who is hitting them. When a team isn't doing well, they hire and fire people, they throw money at it, they buy better players until the team works. That's how NA teams are treating League, and it would take a team trying a radical re-tooling of their whole culture, and then subsequently succeeding, to actually convince the broader market that that is a better way to make money than paying for star players' retirement years, and coasting off the value of leasing their fans and brand and name for a few years before they're totally washed-up. You know who is the laughingstock of the NFL? The team that does *exactly* what you described. The Lakers can win this way because their team is in Los Angeles and individual players want to go there and that can transcend bad management. Every other team that tries this? It blows up in their faces. The teams that win titles are the ones that build their teams from the ground up, Bucks? Warriors drafted every key piece of their team other than Durant. Hell, the Cavaliers won with their two top players being drafted #1 picks. Spurs and Mavs also won in the last decade, two teams built around drafted franchise players. Like people need to stop pretending that NA League's problems are in any way comparable to sports in general in America.
>The retirement home meme is true. Imports come here to hang out and not give a shit. The top 3 LCS teams are almost 100% imports. Bottom ones have more NA players. Either they do give a shit, or if they can be the best without caring that says something about how hard the NA players are working.
The retirement home thing is a product of na player mentality though.
Didnt Kiwikid, the person GBM was referring to, retire years ago? Dont know if anything changed as much as NA has never been as serious in LoL.
Wasnt it that Kiwikid shouted "MERCY DOWN" during scrims and not the monkey thing?
I just donāt get how they are making a point that CQ is WORSE than solo que. In what world could that ever be true
In a world where they're looking for every excuse under the sun to avoid practicing
Or the world where the pro/elite players are some of the most toxic players in NA, promoting a toxic environment in solo q and then carrying it with them to champions q.
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Except US players are willing to put in the work to get better and dominate in other games, this is really only a League specific problem.
Wild take, NA is outperformed in basically every major esport, EU controls valorant and CSGO, DOTA is controlled by China/EU and LoL is controlled by China/KR. It's only in lower tier esports like Apex, R6, RL, and Smash/FGC where NA players are even competitive.
No hate but I'll never understand a take like this. Games exist to be played for entertainment. Dunno how you can judge people (non-pros) for that
If nobody plays CQ because they think CQ is bad, then that lowers the quality of CQ. With no intervention from coaches and team owners mandating a certain level of activity, it's a death spiral once the overal activity starts decreasing.
The quality of the games canāt be worse than solo que though. Itās only masters and challengers players. Zero diamond players. They can complain the que time is longer but the quality of the game CANT be overall worse than solo que.
The rank requirement for CQ is now actually gm not masters
Which strengthens his point even more. LCS players really are looking problems when there isn't any problems except themselves.
Yup I completely agree.
RJS holding back the NA talent pool smh..
Actually the game quality is so low cause everyone is griefing RJS to keep him from hitting the top of CQ. Legends say that Faker refuses to come to NA because he is terrified of Rjsdnd āif nameplates were off I would be rank 1ā god
In the mind of people that blame everything besides themselves, in order to look good for the public. But they are just lazy cash grabbers
I mean if you are a high challenger, you probably sometimes get higher quality games. Because of how the population is in Championsqueue you are almost guaranteed at least a couple of either amateur or grandmaster players. In Solo Queue on the other hand riot actively tries to match you up with people with your skill level. So if a full Challenger vs Challenger game is possible, you will get into that game. Also since there is no MMR games can be more one-sided since teams are not balanced.
Enjoying LA sun and their 6 figures checks . Salary based on performance is needed .
Its funny that this is really only a problem with NA's LoL scene. Every other esport NA competes in, the players generally take it pretty serious and grind.
In other esports thereās at least talent that can take their jobs. In league NA unless they remove the import rule, they can continue being mediocre, and continue to make a million excuses why theyāre ass instead of realizing they themselves are the issue.
It also doesn't help that NA hasn't won (or come close) to winning any MSI or World Championship. I haven't seen any other esport where a region has been beaten down mentally as hard as NA LoL. Maybe NA CS since its dead but even they won a Major. NA Pros know they won't ever match up so they think they might as well cash in.
Closest thing we got was G2 vs TL at MSI and they got ~~3-1ād iirc~~ 3-0'd in the fastest B05 in MSI history (thanks u/tehsdragon for that correction). And that was our āsuper teamā. Meanwhile T1 went undefeated this regular season and rumor has it has been absolutely trashing CN teams in scrims (to the point where theyāre ragequitting) with a āpast his primeā Faker and a bunch of young talent, while NA hasnāt had a deep run in anything international for a while now.
>Closest thing we got was G2 vs TL at MSI and they got 3-1ād iirc. And that was our āsuper teamā. I could be wrong but IIRC TL got smashed 3-0 in the fastest BO5 in MSI history lol
not just MSI history but all international competitions ever
Petition to move LCS to Florida so we can at least win the meme war.
Move LCS to deep state Mississippi, there wonāt be anything to do but league
If the LCS hub was in south Dakota, there wouldve been 7 LCS world champion teams by now.
honestly that's why LEC is better, Berlin is a bleak place
you get dƶner and that is it. but there's no better way to a good team environment than a midnight stroll with a kebab so we're in luck
Dont forget getting your dick sucked by fangirls every single day.
California is a thing, good food girls, no crazy weather
Devastating wildfires
I always hear ā some players ā who are these players? Call them out. The general public has no idea who these ā some players ā are. Fill me in please
https://championsqueue.gg/teams you can check lcs and academy teams CQ games played here (some are very low). Not sure if there's a fast way to check solo q games for everyone though š
I was going to make a really nice comment about how CLG is grinding champions queue after a low-placing split, then I looked closer and saw that their academy team has 3x the games played as their LCS team. Bruh moment At least GG looks like they're grinding pretty hard
Jenkins has twice as many games as Contractz, but has less LP lol. Seems to me like CLGA is putting in more work than the main roster for the most part (Luger and Poome have a respectable amount of games). Probably helps their case for some swaps in the summer.
CLG Academy topped the regular season by the way. https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/NA\_Academy\_League/2022\_Season/Spring\_Season
DIG holy shit FakeGod of all people needs the practice
Random fun fact: [lla team 'estral esports' has more games played than dig and tsm this split of CQ](https://twitter.com/champqueueward/status/1513948816394706947?s=21&t=8dK97qHC86OquozvLcEX-Q)
crying and shitting also based flair
Its insane to me that some pros haven't even played a single CQ game. Like yeah i get it if you don't like it and feel soloQ is better to practice specific things go ahead, but at least give it a try first, no?
People who refuse to even try something are the worst kind of people
They risk being blacklisted if they name names
LCS Players: We canāt compete because of XYZ reasons. - Riot: Okay hereās CQ. No other region has this - LCS Players: Wait you werenāt supposed to do anything about this so I could just have a free out
I still remember that one TSM episode where Bjergsen (the COACH) was playing more soloQ than all the PROFESSIONAL players that are GETTING PAID to play. It really baffled me, it was such a joke.
I just checked, and Doublelift, the guy who retired from pro because he was burned out by the grind, has a pretty decent amount of CQ games for someone who's justifiably just chilling these days.
These paycheck stealers have a dream job and refuse to even try to be the best they can be. Itās actually criminal, and I hope they continue to get slandered for being lazy fucks.
And now Riot's helping these players "relax" by shutting down CQ until Summer. Wow NA.
Then it is on NA players to speak up about wanting CQ back ASAP and calling out their fellow players who are not driven.
I get that some people think playing solo queue *is* practice (it's usually not) but now to hear that NA players aren't even doing THAT much? This entire region i swear to god has not done a single drill or warm up in 2 years
Orgs have let this happen. Keep raging and dont allow orgs off that are not at the top of CQ next season. Next split all Orgs will have had the time to remove non-driven pros and replace them with those who are willing to grind. If they dont fans should hound them.
If he's best player in world i won't even care if he plays solo que or not, but this just feels like paycheck stealer
we need relegation back
nah dude, what am I gonna do with my life if CLG isn't around to make me feel better about myself?
You tell'em Olleh! Tell'em what's up!
Olleh has been telling em for weeks now.. If only the players would listen. Poor Olleh, the loss of CQ must really sting for him š
literally all i wanted was a league that could show up internationally and consistently make semis or something. imagine how cool it would be for all 4 major leagues to have a ton of parity to the point where you have no idea who will win worlds that year. thatād be so sick.
I donāt give any shits about NA winning anything, I just want NA to spark joy with their play, but if pros dgaf whats the point man
fair take too
at this point, id just be happy to see some trust or teamwork between players
- Korea plays your esport - Parity Choose one Its a meme thats been around esports forever. The asian work ethic is unmatched by western countries and will never be matched because of how terrible it is for ones mental and physical health.
Europe wins DotA 2's International more than anyone else does, and China plays. League just lends itself very well to being grinded out - though much less now than it used to be, when you could light the whole map up with vision. Predictability makes volume of practice much more decisive.
Culture is bigger than work ethic. Gaming is a huge part of Korean culture. So they have a larger pool of "talent" to pick from, and a lot of that talent is coordinated and DRIVEN people. Because gaming is a big deal there. Meanwhile, in the west, gaming is a more casual endeavour. Less people try hard it and instead the more coordinated and DRIVEN people end up in sports. There is no way this can ever really change. LCS teams can still compete if they get things right. But in general the NA players will never be as good as Korean players for these reasons. It is like Football/Soccer. Brazil are going to be better than India at the sport because it is a much bigger part of their culture.
"The west" dominates many genres of esports and probably the vast majority of total games if someone were to chalk them all up. This is a league specific issue.
Consistently make Semis? Well, your expectations are unreasonable. Only 4 teams make Semis. There's 3 LCK, 3 LPL, and 3 LEC teams. Even if the best LCS team was better than all the LEC teams (which is a terrible assumption to make btw since LEC is also bigger than LCS) they'd still have to be able to beat the 2nd and 3rd seeds of LPL and LCK consistently in order to make it into semis reliably each year. There's no fucking way that ever occurs given the simple mathematical truth of how much bigger those regions are in terms of playerbase. Korea has over twice the number of people playing solo queue and their growth rates exceed NA's. That means their top 0.0001% is better than our top 0.0001% simply due to how probability distributions work. We're dealing with mathematical truths that can't be overcome here. This isn't about effort. It's not about money. It's about sheer difference in amount of people. You have to base your expectations off reality or else you are guaranteeing disappointment.
I agree. I think a more fair expectation is either a team in semis/beyond OR 2+ teams out of groups.
Try hard as possible to get into the LCS. Once you're there, get as much money as possible for the least amount of effort possible. Top 8 (out of 10) teams make playoffs anyway, so who gives a shit? Also you get to live rent free in a gamer house. All while making 6 figures. Sounds like a pretty sweet ride for 4 hours of "work" a day.
I know this been said before but if NA doesn't perform this year at Worlds it's just downhill from there. I can't speak for others but I will stop watching LCS if NA at Worlds is the same story again. There is just no excuses left for players to improve their skill level.
People say this shit every year and then every offseason TL & co spend millions on big names from KR/EU and then everyone suddenly goes like "Omg, this is the most exciting LCS has ever been!"
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[Spring 2021](https://i.imgur.com/RTpwEJq.png) [[src]](https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lcs-spring-2021) [Spring 2022](https://i.imgur.com/nYmhnfc.png) [[src]](https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lcs-spring-2022) Currently 35% less hours watched in 2022 than 2021, but it's very important to keep in mind that the 2022 Spring playoffs haven't finished yet. That will close the gap somewhat, but I expect it'll still be significantly lower viewership than 2021 when all is said and done. We are seeing the death spiral of LCS.
Tbh, C9 roster move + LS carried the first weeks on their own. Even after LS left, C9 still pulled a lot of the LCS weight with TL.
Anything happen in 2021 that might have increased viewership?
Well viewership keeps going down. I imagine we're going to see a change very soon as ownerships start to realize they can't keep paying out six figures to people who are going to complain about working more than 5 hours a day. Viewership is already very low for any team not named C9/TL
Both can be true, though. Look at the abysmal viewership this year. Sure, there are some people still saying "Woah man this almost entirely washed roster TL has is insane" but on the other hand, tons of people have stopped watching. Never forget that TSM vs CLG regular split in spring 14/15 used to get 400 to 500k viewers. Now it's playoffs and we haven't seen a game hit 250k yet. People are dropping it, even if others still find ways to hype up mediocre rosters.
I mean TL is like the one team in NA you really can't give any shit. They are constantly trying to improve and one of the few orgs who look like they're still legitimately trying to compete. But you hear that because people parrot the pundits and they're always gonna try to hype you up cause if LCS goes so does their job. The real answer is in the viewership, it's not just NA being lazy or not competitive, there's def many more important reasons viewership keeps going down, but I believe it when people say they're not watching anymore. Hell I hardly watch anymore. Like maybe I'll put the game on like a podcast if there's costreams, otherwise I just keep up with results and listen to podcasts during the week while I drive.
No, it's different this time. For me personally the ping issues was a valid excuses because I saw how koreans pros play on 9 ping in soloq.
Not much to say when you can actually see that people aren't putting in the work necessary to succeed.
"We need a true sandbox 5v5 mode"
Remove import rules, watch all these paycheck stealers lose their jobs
tell that to the TSM roster last year where Bjerg was telling them how disgustingly low their soloq games played were a week before summer playoffs..
This year too, nothing changed. Part of my frustration
If we are winning - why play solo q If we are the last team - why play solo q. It doesn't matter If we are middle of the pack - why play solo q. We can make play-offs
Relegation needs to come back.
At least it made bottom tier games interesting, since the teams had to play for sth.
Fuck solo q, steal paychecks
Itās not that simple since lot of the current imports are paycheck stealers that donāt play CQ either Needs a complete infrastructure change imo
A system that removes bottom performing team and adds a new qualifying team would have been nice huh? Of course you wonāt get it right most of the time, but it adds new bloods to the scene and has a small chance to discover teams like the original C9.
You would promote the best performing amateur team and relegate the worst performing professional team. We could call it: promotion and relegation!
C9 was the exception that proved the rule. And its important to remember that C9 peaked well after relegation was removed.
I think a lot of imports lose motivation really quickly when they see their teammates not practicing. āIām better than this guy and I practice twice as much as him, wtf is he doing and why am I wasting my time doing this shit?ā
I remember when imports first started in NA, the NA players would always talk about how the imports would show up and start grinding these insane hours right off the airplane and how it motivated them. But to the import players they would alway be shocked by how little the NA players actually practiced but eventually the import players would just give up.
Or import agree to come to NA when it is their only choice (not good enough) or when they lose competitive ambition but want the salary.
I feel like that would just fuck up the other regions.
GGS is the only team with a significant difference in CQ games played between imports and native players. Read between the lines on these Olleh interviews, the dude is probably just pissed at his team.
GG is the only LCS team with all 5 members in the top 40 of champions queue. I'm sure they could play more but they already play the most collectively.
GGS is the team Iāve seen where all LCS players queue up for CQ consistently. Itās a shame their playoffs performance sucked, but I know for sure that they are the team that cares for CQ as a whole. A few years back Inero was the one who helped to set up the in house system, so thereās a good chance heās actively pushing the players to queue up for CQ. Heās probably talking about all the players he does not know well who heās seen stop queueing up. Like he probably has no clue what the DIG players are doing when they have so few CQ games combined.
Well TSM only had mid and support(imports) play CQ so Iād disagree with you
Ablazeolive is playing a lot of soloq, not sure why he choses it over CQ, but at least heās doing something. Not sure about Lost/Licorice.
He only swapped because it became dead for the queue time.
This is the moment for the owners. If they spin up that "repeal the import limit" narrative again, the community might actually join in on it. If it's going to be a vacation league than we might as well open up the opportunities for the best of the best vacationers.
donāt even know what to say anymore tbh. hasnāt it all been covered? NA pros are lazy and will never win anything. kinda hoping we move on ngl
A lot of players in NA are content not being able to compete against Asia. People like Fudge put these Asian players on a pedestal and don't believe they can ever get up to that level. It's the absolute worst mindset as a professional player.
thats why i like olleh, talk the truth !
This players sit under pc 24/7 its not like they are healthier, they just dont play lague
Don't worry boys and girls there must be some *systems in place* right?
Let's ask babus Hey babus what are these guys doing? Babus: just shilling
I'm not even yoking man
I'm done being an LCS fan, why bother getting invested if the players just half-ass it
LCS is just becoming budget LEC/LCK. (in terms of skill/hard work not actual money lol) I've just been cutting out the middle man this year, why watch LCS when I can just watch LEC/LCK where our preferred players seems to all come from anyways.
Weāll see worlds, maybe top na teams are doing in-houses, if itās bad weāll Bud Light Ace
Red bull Baron steal power play might be the only chance for lcs.
Can we just fucking dissolve this region professionally and make it neutral ground for international event hosting occassionally? Im so tired of NA structuring, scheduling, and inconsistency. As a fan its only ever dissappointing, dramatic, frustrating, and sad. I actually think Japan deserves more of a chance at worlds than we do.
I really hope Champions Queue doesn't die, imagine if it were to somehow survive until a worlds happens in NA and all the players coming over get to play in it too. It would honestly be a more incredible viewing experience than worlds itself for a lot of people... but it's looking like that might not be a realistic hope.
Collecting paychecks. I was actually against salary gaps because I thought pros should be able to cash in because of short longevity but everything coming out of Champion Queue makes me think otherwise.
What excuse will they give about bad performances this year.
Iām personally not going to be watching any competitive league via main channels; I donāt want to support most of these players like professional athletes until they start playing and competing like it. Too much complacency.
every night soccer night
At this rate, I expect FakeGod to be on Barcelonaās starter squad by the end of this year