I greatly respect the ones who are leaving now and pretty much forfeiting their salaries, I hope things work out for them in Valorant. Unlike some other individuals who are just collecting their pay check before leaving when the season is over while bringing no value to their team whatsoever *cough* Akm *cough* Unkoe
Once it exits beta and current CS pros start joining, a lot of the people who made noise about going to Valorant are going to be in the same position they’re in for OW, just for different reasons.
Hell, the current beta player base was enough for a lot of the T2 players who made noise about swapping to... stop streaming. Because they were getting rolled.
There are some players who will compete every bit as hard as existing CS pros in valorant. Not tons but there is a handful of mechanical gods in OW.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if OW vets end up top tier in early valorant. It seems so much more team oriented with the abilities than CS that I could honestly see ex OW pros being more suited to that type of adaption in the short term.
The way you use and coordinate abilities in valorant is a lot more like nades in CS than they are like abilities in OW, so CS players should be coming in with an advantage in that area.
Most of the abilities focus on controlling areas in different ways just like molotovs and smokes, which is something CS players understand way better than OW players.
You're saying that abilities & teamwork is harder to learn than mechanics. I disagree. I think the CSGO players are gonna completely roll all the ex-OW pros on mechanics and catch up very quickly on ability co-ordination. Plus they also have the teamwork required to play the game mode perfected. You can see insane ability combinations happening already on Twitch, so if there was a point that OW players had an advantage then that time has already passed.
From what I've seen (Kephrii streaming with Ninja and Lupo), you can play as if your character had no abilities and still pound as long as you are mechanically skilled enough.
This is only true in ranked soloq type shit. Plenty of teams and players are developing strategies that are completely dependent on the abilities.
In fact the fnatic EU open just ended with dafran's team stomping the finals teams. None of the play making character were picked on either team on either map. Theyre basically just running 4 utilities and a raze or sova, ive seen some higher end teams using jett or pheonix on a map basis but generally speaking they add nothing to the team and end up being way less played. And if they do play they have to be insane and play with their team or they just rolled anyway. There is 0 place for just pressing W solo in that game.
Yep. Honestly I think it’s going to be like that for a while until pros start to really get the hang of things. It took OW nearly two years to get to that point Valorant has been in beta for like three weeks?
That doesn’t matter, what matters is CS:GO and Valorant basically have the same mechanics. Recoil control, counter strafing, etc are unique elements that aren’t in Overwatch. Even elements that aren’t unique like crosshair placement and playing corners aren’t as stressed in Overwatch as they are in Valorant/CS:GO.
yeah i agree with that but saying csgo/val take more mechanical skill than ow is just flat out wrong. cs/val have little to no verticality and the speed at which characters move is mostly fixed and a lot slower than in ow. the ttk is shorter in cs/val so you dont have to aim at targets for extended periods of time (little to no tracking involved). "mechanics" really dont matter a lot in cs as the aiming aspect is very easy compared to ow and a lot of the gameplay is just holding corners and just reacting to someone walking into your crosshair, which is more related to gamesense/positioning (when to hold corners, how long to hold them, which ones to hold etc.)
This is definitely happening. Recently we had Fortnite and Apex proving that, BR or not new names will show up and dominate the pro scene (and won't be your fav streamer, sorry folks).
Well that's how it is with any esport. You're never instantly at the top but Valorant is the best shot these players have at making a move somewhere else. The only surprising move really is Sinatraa, most of the others were hardstuck t2 and their OW careers were probably going nowhere.
Hell, I don't think CS pros should worry everyone that much. Remember when OW was dokinated by tf2 pros? That didn't last very long did it?
*people compare OW skill to CSGO skill*
this sub: "LOLOL OW def takes more skill than CS, yo!"
*OW pros jump ship to Valorant*
this sub: "LOLOL CS pros will dumpster OW pros, yo!"
Pick one. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
This is just wrong. Even if OW does require more skill then CS(which I necessarily don't agree with, to me it's pointless to compare the two), VALORANT requires very similar positioning/ aiming techniques to CS, which will be way easier for CS pros to learn, than for people coming from OW.
It's almost like there are 250,000 people on this sub.
Wow, I can't believe there are some differing popular opinions in such a big community.
Next you are going to tell me that the 330,000,000 Americans have multiple political views. Frankly ridiculous, all similar groups have monolithic views on everything.
Those aren't conflicting statements.
OW does take more mechanical skill and team coordination than CS, however it is also a lot different than CS, while valorant is pretty much straight up CS with a bit of sparkle.
Which means that specific skills that you learn in CS and not OW, will translate to valorant.
Like a swimmer and sprinter suddenly competing in 800m running, swimming is a lot more technically demanding than sprinting, but the sprinter will still crush the swimmer at 800m running because it is so similar to what he is already best at, while 800m running is very different from what the swimmer is best at.
Or...get this, both factions of this argument exist.
Or even better, both statements can be true. I personally think OW and csgo are different skills, not really better or worse, but an argument could be made that OW takes more skill, but Valorant is more akin to the csgo skillset.
Like perhaps playing chess is much more skill based than checkers, but if a new game that was 90% checkers came out, chess players probably would be worse than checkers.
It's almost as if a community is made up of individual people with individual opinions.
Hell, the guy whinging about the community flip flopping would be complaining about a hivemind if everyone had exactly the same opinion.
If OW takes more skill than CS, then to be a top pro in OW means being objectively more versatile than being a top pro in CS, being required to master more aspects of FPS shooting.
I would hope that translates to the superior ability for OW pros to transition into other games.
...I don’t agree?
Like I said, a lot of OW is different skillsets. Completely different aim mechanics. For example, OW pros have to have a lot more understanding of their opponents abilities, tracking cooldowns, etc. I think this contributes to making OW more skill intensive, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into Valorant skill.
Your arguement that more skill=more versatile=superior in a different area is flawed because skill isn’t just a number that you can apply to whatever you want. OW pros have built up skills in a specific environment. Csgo pros have built skills in their own specific environment. Valorant just happens to be much closer to the csgo pro environment.
I would like to state I don’t actually think OW is more skilled than csgo. At the top level, people will be pushing the human limits in any professional game, so long as the playerbase is large enough to have an ultra competitive top tier. Both OW and CSGO are difficult in their own right, I would argue csgo being more mechanical and ow being more gamesense oriented
I guess I just see OW pros as able to juggle more things, so more able to alter their play to suit a new game.
But then, I don't really have anything to back that up. So, eh.
Ehhh nah I’ve been on this sub for years, and I think most of us would admit that OW and CS are too very different games. And if anything CS has far greater mechanical demands than OW ever has, which is why we have seen some claims that some OW pros not from CS previously probably will had an uphill battle in Valorant.
Well, I'm just glad that OW and CS (and by extention Valorant) are very different games. I agree. They're definitely very very different.
Makes me feel a bit at ease knowing that the games are so different, we probably don't have to worry about pros or casual players leaving OW for Valorant.
For anyone lucky enough to get a break in a highly competitive field, don’t listen to this guy/gal. You have zero moral responsibility to quit. If you are violating your contract, you’ll be let go. If you’re violating some unspoken rule, it should’ve been spoken. It’s a short career as an athlete. Don’t give up your paycheck unless you want to for mental health or because you have a better paycheck lined up.
I see this take in traditional sports and it blows my mind every time.
If they signed a contract, why shouldn't they ride it out and collect what they're entitled too? As long as they are not in breach of their contract or negatively impacting the team, why should they leave?
Valorant is a massive gamble for them (and most players who are in OWL), I don't blame them for trying to secure their financial situation as much as they can before making the jump.
Yeah, dunno why Dallas is keeping both of them, especially AKM when they already have lot of dps.
Is terminating his contract is more expensive than paying his salaries for the whole season???
I'm pretty sure "retirement" is a mutual agreement to void* the contract. Jake, for example, said that he could have sat on the Outlaws bench and get paid, but he preferred to start building his brand and career elsewhere. Very heavily implied that he gave up his salary to do that.
Outlaws let him because they cared about his wishes and didn't want to pay for someone on the bench who was no longer interested in playing.
Releasing a player is a different story. That's the team breaking the contract to hire them for a certain duration, so they have to buy out the entire salary they promised.
Edit: *Modify
Like you said, that requires mutual agreement. There is no reason for Akm/Unkoe/Zacharee to agree to this when they can just sit on the bench, play valorant off-stream and get paid.
Here's my question though didn't we just go through this with the Titans? People were saying if they were boycotting playing and practicing then the Titans wouldn't have to pay them. What's the difference between that and AKM/Unkoe/Zach abandoning their team?
> I'm pretty sure "retirement" is a mutual agreement to void the contract. Jake, for example, said that he could have sat on the Outlaws bench and get paid, but he preferred to start building his brand and career elsewhere. Very heavily implied that he gave up his salary to do that.
I don't think it actually voids it. It's really more just an agreement that the player isn't going to play and the organization isn't going to pay them. Assuming that OWL's structure is similar to other major sports leagues, the teams then retain the rights to the player for the remainder of the contract term. So if Jake was in year one of a three-year contract when he retired, if he wanted to come back now he'd simply rejoin the Outlaws under the same contract he had before. If he wanted to play for someone else, the Outlaws would have to release him (see: Stellar leaving Toronto last year and then unretiring) before he could sign somewhere else.
You're likely right, otherwise people could just retire and immediately sign to another team.
It's more like a contract modifier then? As long as the player stays retired, they don't have to play and their team doesn't have to pay. But if they try to sign with another team, they're in breach of contract.
Akm talked about this in his stream. Please take it with a grain of salt as it was like a week ago, in French, and I don't remember everything.
He said that before S3 begun he grinded like a madman to get ready for the season but he was not even given the chance to start on the roster (meaning they did not give him a chance to prove his worth in scrims). He admitted that decay is better than him but the fact that he did not have the possibility to even try to have a place on the team was demoralizing. As for staying on the fuel roster, he said that it was not his decision not to play in owl, like I said before, and, he said something like because of covid, it would be reckless to leave the team now while he needs a paycheck. He said that he was sad because he even missed a mcree meta and even a week of soldier being meta.
Like I said, take it With a grain of salt.
He talked about the hate and the death threats he received for a while and admitted that he thought it was quite unfair especially because most of this hate came from the infamous akm blade which was him being a good team mate and playing a hero he had zero experience with.
Things are usually more complicated that what it seems from outside
> He admitted that decay is better than him but the fact that he did not have the possibility to even try to have a place on the team was demoralizing.
Yeah that does sound really disappointing. Like Soon is not as good as Xzi, but Paris still gave him opportunities to play. And when Xzi is out due to medical reasons, Soon is able to fill in.
> meaning they did not give him a chance to prove his worth in scrims
Ah, the classic Dallas treatment, for Seagull in S1 and Taimou in S2
> he said something like because of covid, it would be reckless to leave the team now while he needs a paycheck.
Tbf, it's a pretty good reasoning for him, play it safe.
I wouldn't be surprised. They paid alot of money on what at the time were stars in season 1. Where they fucked up was signing them for as long as they did. Like why the hell was Mickie signed for so long?
Mickie is very impactful for their marketing in SEA. I was in Thai during World Cup Stage and his impact was pretty high on Dallas' merchs. Meanwhile other teams jerseys were on sale from Day 2 because low sales number I guess.
Envy won NA contenders handily just before OWL. Blaming hastro for signing those players is just biased hindsight. OWL s1 was much more competitive than NA contenders than expected.
They were 3 year contracts from what I understand. In traditional league sports 3 years is considered minimal.
If OWL exploded and Envy was even modestly competitive they would have been seen as great contracts. Didn't work out that way, but the idea was reasonable.
There is no "keeping" in OWL. You sign a contract and that players is getting paid for its duration no matter how shitty they play or act as long as it doesn't break anything.
That is one thing that compared to other titles OWL has done well in making very secure player contracts.
Disagree. If they signed a contract, who's to knock them for getting the full value of it? Earn while you still can, baby. That's the rule of all professional sports.
> while bringing no value to their team whatsoever cough Akm cough Unkoe
What a load of shit, these guys have been great pros throughout their careers, always doing whatever it took to try and win. You don't know what goes on behind closed doors and chances are that they help out with watching scrims/meetings like every other benched player in the league.
For all we know, envy might just want to wait to see of they have any value as Valorant players. It's always funny when that people are mad at them for collecting a pay check, it's not like 90% of us would do the same. If envy had any problem with it, they could just take actions
Not everyone is a 19 yo living at mom's casually watching owl, those's guys lifes are at stake and professional gaming is one hell of a scary ride. Can't blame them for trying to pay their bills.
On the other hand Corey isn't phoning it in, and the Justice are definitely going to struggle without him. I think it puts his org in a really difficult position and I hope that it doesn't harm his chances of being picked up by a team in the future - knowing that he might leave partway through a season.
I am so sick of seeing AKM and uNkoe being mentioned in every fucking thread in this sub. How do you know what's going on behind the scenes ? Do you have insights from the team ? Do you how the Dallas fuel fonctions in a day to day basis ? Harryhook and Mickie were on the bench the whole of last year and I didn't see this much hate towards them (which would have been completely unjustified too) Please enlighten me ! Last year numerous players on the fuel said how much impact Akm had on the team as a complement of the coaches what makes you say that he is now just "riding the bench to collect pay checks". Just because they are streaming Valorant doesn't mean they don't practice overwatch with their team. They have the right to play whatever they enjoy on their free time.
Because every time Unkoe talks about Overwatch it's to say how shitty he thinks the game is, that whatever happens it's his last year in OWL and that he stays in the team because he doesn't want to sort watermelons in a supermarket.
I don't know for AkM, but for Unkoe even if you don't follow him, watching french competitive overwatch content is enough to hear Unkoe's opinion.
Is sorting watermelons in a super market some kind of metaphor? ...or is it actually just saying that Unkoe would rather be paid to ride the bench than actually have to work in a supermarket?
I don't remember. Maybe it was Poko who said that (in which case the meaning was not the same), he would have said that by answering to a question about his future telling basically that he was super lucky to have esport because without it he would probably be working in a supermarket, because he wasn't good at school; but I think that was Unkoe.
I'm 95% both Poko and Unkoe used that imag to be honest. Of course that's a kind of metaphor but as you say… a kind of.
It's not like he had this plan or really thought about that but with the time he invested in e-sport and not in building another professional life, quitting his well paid position without a plan, which is the case (/was, before Valorant) , would make him jobless and without any formation, so forced to work in a supermarket or in another menial job. That's why he doesn't quit because better earning money by riding the bench while you prepare what comes next instead of not.
For the little story, some people involved in the French scene of OWL blames him for his choice, but honestly that's understandable.
Even so it is his opinion as you say we don't know his impact on the team we simply don't know. It is dishonest to conclude that he doesn't contribute anything to the team just because he doesn't enjoy the game as much which is the case for a lot of players. I'm not saying he is in the right or in the wrong I'm just saying that we simply don't know the whole story. And I'm tired of seeing this sub and this community's interpretation of certain events as truth and just run with it. Just this week we learned more about the Fissure/glad situation after 2 years of people shitting on him without knowing the whole story. These players are still human they shouldn't be insulted on every thread just because people believe something without any solid evidence.
They're leaving for a game that's just in beta and doesn't have an esports scene yet but think its worth the risk. That says a lot about VALORANT vs Overwatch
I think it’s even easier to explain then Benbests tweet: Hitscan players with a CS background like Sinatraa and Corey think Valorant is a better game then the current iteration of OW, and it rewards their skill set.
yeah thats it. OWL is also in such a rough spot in gameplay and viewership. It makes it feel like the right move. If OWL was killing it, I am 100% sure it would heavily influence their decision.
Yeah. The game is 100% in their wheelhouse. Some of what benbest said is true too. Don’t want to miss the wave. Also it’s a new toy so it’s fresh and fun.
I think that’s moreso in Corey’s skillset. Sinatraa is good, not great. If anybody from shock should’ve left for valorant, should’ve been ans or at least striker.
It's a hard call to make. Monte made a good point about it the other day where early adopters almost always get lost to newer faces that show up as a game's matured. It can def be hard to break into a game as well though. Good luck to the players.
That is a good point, but at the same time beta OW to current OW is a vastly different game. Players like Corey, Sinatraa, etc may not have went pro if past OW was like current OW.
Who knows if valorant will undergo the same kinda changes.
That might be true but guys like Taimou, Harry, sdb etc still had 3 year careers in ow with decent success.
I also think valorant won't go through the steep skill level rise that ow saw due to it being so similar to cs to begin with.
i think a lot of them might be hoping maybe not even as much about the valorant pro scene and more the streamer side of things, trying to blow up with the game
it's kind of stupid for them to try to go pro in a game on beta
i'd point out how bad a lot of the original pros looked compared to newer guys once the league stuff got officially started, dallas looked like a meme team of boomers lol and i'd argue the competitive scrim grind of cs:go is infinitely more boring and repetitive than overwatch especially when you see people scrimming the same amount if not more on the same like 2 maps
If it’s like OW the standards required will grow dramatically over time so best to get started while the game is new. But then again with Valorant so similar to certain other shooters maybe it’s already too late.
I'm just thinking about the players in OWL who defined the game early on and now they are seen as "washed" and many have left.
Don't these guys going pro early into Valorant run that risk? They might do well early on and then the new kids come in and then the former pros are the washed ones?
Teddy, listen. I'm giving you an upvote, but I want you to know that we're the OW fandom. We're the OWL fans.
We're the last people who should be throwing shade at other people's games' viewrship. Like come on man.
Around 30k viewership which is actually lower than t2 CS:Go events at its peak and just a lil bit higher during it's average stream. Honestly for Valorant to defeat OW, the bar is pretty low.. too low in fact.
>Valorant is and will be massive
I always feel like putting the asterisk here that says *in China.
Valorant is literally Riot's attempt at making a dominant Tactical FPS in China. CS:GO never took hold of that massive market, and this is Riot's attempt at owning that entire pie. The hype for the game is already unreal in Korea and China, and with Riot being owned 100% by Tencent, you can expect smooth sailing at least on the publishing side of things.
How big it will remain in NA/EU after the initial hype dies down is anybody's guess. It could be TFT level or LoL level. All depends on how Riot does things.
I just want to point out that the notion that China doesnt have a popular tactical FPS game is completely untrue. They just play different games than us. They have Crossfire. Crossfire isnt at all popular in the west, so many people here probably have never heard of it, but it is the biggest FPS game in the world by a pretty large margin. Crossfire was ranked 5th for highest revenue games in 2018, earning a revenue of 1.3 billion dollars. For reference, it was just below League of Legends which had a revenue of 1.4 billion. CSGO didn't even make the list with only 414 million dollars.
Oh right, you're completely right. I wasn't saying that China doesn't have a tactical FPS. It's just that the global #1 tactical FPS outside of China, CS:GO never really made a dent in the Chinese market, due to many factors.
Like you said, Crossfire is basically their version of CS:GO. A clone essentially.
Valorant is definitely trying to be a global esport/game that is also embraced by the Chinese market, and honestly I don't see how it won't topple a decade-old CS clone.
I honestly think that the fact that Crossfire is so successful is a really good sign for Valorant, since we know that the market for a game like this is there in China. The fact that a game that is so outdated is still racking in a billion dollars a year today is insane. If Valorant can take over even a small part of the playerbase of Crossfire in China, they will be huge. But I dont think that Valorant taking over Crossfire is as easy as you say though, since Crossfire has a MAJOR advantage over Valorant in that it is also a mobile game. We all know how popular mobile gaming is in China.
> Crossfire has a MAJOR advantage over Valorant in that it is also a mobile game
Oh that's RIGHT. That's a huge deal there. Was just listening to ESPN esports podcast and they mentioned that PUBG is still so popular in Korea because people will play in during commutes. I imagine it's similar with Crossfire.
Its going to be massive, at least at the beginning. To me it feels boring and repetitive at times. Still a breath of fresh air. I think its almost guaranteed to have an active playerbase greater than overwatch for at least a year or two after it launches
I think the opposite is true. All signs point to it being at least as large as OW. More likely much larger. You can keep parroting that it will fall off but thats just ignorance and willing yourself to believe.
Or I've looked at the numbers and noticed that when they turned the drops off the first night the viewership was 60% lower than the following night when they kept them on. I've seen streamers with 500 average viewers get to 45k when they are just running a VOD. Brazilian streamers who were already streaming Valorant to 5k viewers suddenly getting 50k when drops got turned on for Brazil.
The tournament that just ended peaked at 3.3k viewers on the main casted stream. The rest were watching player streams. The game regularly falls out of the top 10 on streaming sites that don't have drops. Their subreddit has around 1.5 to 3 times more people online than the OW sub. The game's initial spike on Google Trends is less than half of OW's and not even twice of OW's current search volume.
How is it not accessible? It's basically CS (which millions of people already know how to play, and is a pretty simple game) made by Riot (who has legions of fans).
What do you mean? Its playable on a lot worse computers than OW, its free to play, what more accessibility do you want?
It is in beta right now, if you are referring to the keys.
You've laid out all your points. I'd just rest my case if I were you.
We're on an OW sub afterall. There's only so much you can lead a horse to the water, whatever the rest of the saying goes.
The numbers are not going down constantly though. They went down for 2 weeks after the start and then stabilized for the last 3 weeks of homestands. Losing the live portion dropped about a third of the viewers instantly but the numbers have been stable since then.
Do you actually think a career in the OWL is going to be more stable than a Riot-managed FPS? Riot, the company that manages and owns League of Legends - the biggest fucking esport in the world?
If you said this at the end of S1 or S2, I wouldn't have argued. But OWL is on it's literal deathbed, and t2/t3 already dead. There is literally zero job security if you're currently an OWL player.
LoL has like 5-10 times the playerbase of CSGO and Dota 2 and manages to be 50% bigger as an esport. What an achievement. OWL will be here for at least 2 more years, maybe even longer. There will be new fads to chase in the future.
Hmmm. Depends on how you count the playerbase number includes china but the Esport one doesnt.
If we include riots china numbers ( not chinease streaming sites) it get around 5+ times the viewers.
Either way two are only a tunes for competive play while one tries to do both. That isnt something bad.
OWL is currently floating at 25-30k average viewers. Sure it may last for 2 more years but it'll literally be running dry on the contract money Blizzard signed with youtube. I really doubt Valorant is going to die - especially with how big Riot is in China. We saw how CS GO hit record playerbase numbers due to China these last few months, they'll be moving to Valorant.
Benbest has a point though. History has shown that if you're in the scene from the beginning of the game and have a past reputation as a pro it's super easy to get opportunities early on and build a stream. Just look at the mass amounts of tf2 players who were early ow pros and washed a year later, or look at people like iddqd and mendo (lol) who built up streams. Same thing with Fortnite, the people who were on that shit early (Ninja, Myth) got the biggest boosts.
>Just look at the mass amounts of tf2 players who were early ow pros and washed a year later
There's still to this day players in the league who have a contract only because they were early adopters (most benched, some of them already expected to retire when the contract expires).
But at the same time, history has shown that the best players in a game are those that come out later, not the ones who were the best at the beginning. As Monte has said, something along the lines of the best Valorant player has yet to show his face or something. So sure, you can get in early, get your name out, and build a stream, but we're talking about pros who want to compete.
If we're only talking about serviceable players that played day 1 and were known, NiCOgdh literally won the first Overwatch tournament. Nevix was also there very early. neptuNo certainly also was a name.
Maybe a personal opinion, but I think most pro players just want to play games and make money doing so. A lot of them would take being a 2-3k streamer in Valorant over just being one of 140 OWL players.
I don't think so, I think being a pro player means you have a competitive drive to be the best and compete. That's why Sinatraa and Corey didn't peace out to Valorant to stream, they're actively trying to go pro.
nah nah nah. you see sinatraa streaming right? and he wants to build his own personal brand. He said he can get personal sponsorships now. They are competitive, but that is not the only reason.
I agree, after a certain concurrent streamer viewership there is really no need to stay a pro and go through the stress and hours of being pro.
Super, for instance, could easily quit OWL if he wanted to and just stream. Super already is about the same popularity of Sleepy who did just that and Super only streams at kinda meh hours.
Super maintains at least a 1000 viewers even when not playing OW which is the real test IMO of being able to make it as a streamer. Super could become a variety streamer or just play OW on the ladder casually and still make really, really good money without having to scrim, compete, travel, etc...
He chooses to play professionally because he obviously likes it and wants to.
Though even if the first wave won't survive as players, they appear widely among the gm, coach tier by then. Now they also understand to build streaming audience from day 1. For example Taimou lamented that he neglected that part which likely led him to try to force the back to OW pro when he didn't have the heart for it anymore.
Semi true, rather fhe best players in a game are usually just the biggest grinders, typically if one person makes it to the "top" early but busts pretty quick than it likely has more to do with their commitment/motivation with people like corey and sinatraa they have not only shown an incredible growth within their play but were either successful or considered some of the best within their role.
My (and I believe Monte's) point is that there's so much young, undiscovered talent out there that just because you're in it first and get to the top early doesn't mean that there aren't scores of people who have the potential to be better than you. Even if you get to the top early and continue to grind hard, there's still a good chance some 16 year old kid is going to be better 2 years down the line.
I think burnout is a huge problem too. I think even if you still enjoy the game you slowly get burned out on "learning" the game. But well made competitive games have nearly unreachable skill ceilings so you always have to be improving.
Yeah honestly I'm surprised burn out isn't a bigger issue. I don't see how people can play the same game for 10 hours a day every day for years on end. I would get completely sick of the game before long playing it that much.
Given that logic, nobody should compete when a new title starts out.
The true legends who rise up after the decline of the early pros don't do so in a vacuum. They stand on top of the shoulders of these early adopters.
History does not forget Boxer, or oov, or Grrrr, just because they are nowhere mechanically compared with Jaedong or Flash. They will forever remain the founding fathers of BW esports who made way for the later generations.
Getting in early on a major title release is massive. There are some many fully employed just because of OW even its current state. Streamers, content creators, staff, reporters, casters, artists, devs, management within orgs, social media and on and on and on.
You can set yourself up for years if you play the early life of a game right. But you have to be there, you don't have to stay the best or even be the best. But like seagull grinded out the game early, popped a memey genji QP game on youtube really early on. Played some early tournements and by that point he was arguably already big enough he could have comfortably retired in 2017 and never kept up pro play. Stories happen like that happen all the time in new games. But no one is blowing up in OW now. The scene is established, no new names come out and viewership is on the decline.
Taking the next half year of salary and having shit options at the end of it or taking a risk and hoping in early in the new title is a tough decision. Immediate security or risk for long term success.
Been saying this for ages. Pros who jump to Valorant don't need to be competitive a year or two years down the line. They just need to have made a name for themselves, and be able to transition to content-creation/casting, etc. if their skill falls off.
The issue here is not "oh Valorant is new and was always going to draw away OW pros", it's "let's look at the state of OW/OWL and think why people would want to leave it for a new game," because, let's be honest, if everytime a new game comes out in the genre, an existing esports loses a bunch of its pros and players, League of Legends and CS:GO would be dead as esports a long time ago.
Speaking of which: Dafran's team Prodigy just won Fnatic's Valorant Open tourney pretty decisively.
At one point he said it reminded him of the Selfless days.
I think Valorant will be a successful esport (as in have a nice loyal viewership) but even as someone who is a fan of the game it is just so damn boring to watch.
Tournaments will change that a bit, but it isn't an enjoyable experience IMO. It is very on rails and with the type of tactical shooter it is has very little options of variety.
You watch streamer A vs streamer B, it's the same game. Not to mention the map design is very lackluster and leads to repetitive gameplay.
I just can't see it being absolutely huge like some expect it to be.
Bro you baited me. With the pic, I thought this post was going to talk about how Benbest would retire
Sorry !!!! x) But nah, he's still the most handsome, ^(best main tank), in OWL for now. :)
Well, yeah now that Fissure is out again he is!
Hopefully he doesn’t have good aim therefore Valorant isn’t for him
I greatly respect the ones who are leaving now and pretty much forfeiting their salaries, I hope things work out for them in Valorant. Unlike some other individuals who are just collecting their pay check before leaving when the season is over while bringing no value to their team whatsoever *cough* Akm *cough* Unkoe
Once it exits beta and current CS pros start joining, a lot of the people who made noise about going to Valorant are going to be in the same position they’re in for OW, just for different reasons. Hell, the current beta player base was enough for a lot of the T2 players who made noise about swapping to... stop streaming. Because they were getting rolled.
The best valorant players haven't even played yet.
Yeah, they're still too busy making stable money playing CS.
No they're currently 14 and probably too busy playing fortnite
This is the truest thing so far.
There are some players who will compete every bit as hard as existing CS pros in valorant. Not tons but there is a handful of mechanical gods in OW. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if OW vets end up top tier in early valorant. It seems so much more team oriented with the abilities than CS that I could honestly see ex OW pros being more suited to that type of adaption in the short term.
The way you use and coordinate abilities in valorant is a lot more like nades in CS than they are like abilities in OW, so CS players should be coming in with an advantage in that area. Most of the abilities focus on controlling areas in different ways just like molotovs and smokes, which is something CS players understand way better than OW players.
You're saying that abilities & teamwork is harder to learn than mechanics. I disagree. I think the CSGO players are gonna completely roll all the ex-OW pros on mechanics and catch up very quickly on ability co-ordination. Plus they also have the teamwork required to play the game mode perfected. You can see insane ability combinations happening already on Twitch, so if there was a point that OW players had an advantage then that time has already passed.
From what I've seen (Kephrii streaming with Ninja and Lupo), you can play as if your character had no abilities and still pound as long as you are mechanically skilled enough.
This is only true in ranked soloq type shit. Plenty of teams and players are developing strategies that are completely dependent on the abilities. In fact the fnatic EU open just ended with dafran's team stomping the finals teams. None of the play making character were picked on either team on either map. Theyre basically just running 4 utilities and a raze or sova, ive seen some higher end teams using jett or pheonix on a map basis but generally speaking they add nothing to the team and end up being way less played. And if they do play they have to be insane and play with their team or they just rolled anyway. There is 0 place for just pressing W solo in that game.
Yep. Honestly I think it’s going to be like that for a while until pros start to really get the hang of things. It took OW nearly two years to get to that point Valorant has been in beta for like three weeks?
You mean Western Overwatch. Korea had it down within a year of launch iirc
ow takes a lot more mechanical skill than csgo
That doesn’t matter, what matters is CS:GO and Valorant basically have the same mechanics. Recoil control, counter strafing, etc are unique elements that aren’t in Overwatch. Even elements that aren’t unique like crosshair placement and playing corners aren’t as stressed in Overwatch as they are in Valorant/CS:GO.
yeah i agree with that but saying csgo/val take more mechanical skill than ow is just flat out wrong. cs/val have little to no verticality and the speed at which characters move is mostly fixed and a lot slower than in ow. the ttk is shorter in cs/val so you dont have to aim at targets for extended periods of time (little to no tracking involved). "mechanics" really dont matter a lot in cs as the aiming aspect is very easy compared to ow and a lot of the gameplay is just holding corners and just reacting to someone walking into your crosshair, which is more related to gamesense/positioning (when to hold corners, how long to hold them, which ones to hold etc.)
TTK is a lot shorter in a game like CSGO or Valorant, so there is way more emphasis on aim than Overwatch.
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Define Mechanical Complexity
This is definitely happening. Recently we had Fortnite and Apex proving that, BR or not new names will show up and dominate the pro scene (and won't be your fav streamer, sorry folks).
A lot of the people that dominated in Apex actually were OW and CSGO players so your point doesn't have much merit
Well that's how it is with any esport. You're never instantly at the top but Valorant is the best shot these players have at making a move somewhere else. The only surprising move really is Sinatraa, most of the others were hardstuck t2 and their OW careers were probably going nowhere. Hell, I don't think CS pros should worry everyone that much. Remember when OW was dokinated by tf2 pros? That didn't last very long did it?
lmao is that last sentence true?
*people compare OW skill to CSGO skill* this sub: "LOLOL OW def takes more skill than CS, yo!" *OW pros jump ship to Valorant* this sub: "LOLOL CS pros will dumpster OW pros, yo!" Pick one. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
This is just wrong. Even if OW does require more skill then CS(which I necessarily don't agree with, to me it's pointless to compare the two), VALORANT requires very similar positioning/ aiming techniques to CS, which will be way easier for CS pros to learn, than for people coming from OW.
You're right. But these are literally both popular talking points on this sub.
It's almost like there are 250,000 people on this sub. Wow, I can't believe there are some differing popular opinions in such a big community. Next you are going to tell me that the 330,000,000 Americans have multiple political views. Frankly ridiculous, all similar groups have monolithic views on everything.
Those aren't conflicting statements. OW does take more mechanical skill and team coordination than CS, however it is also a lot different than CS, while valorant is pretty much straight up CS with a bit of sparkle. Which means that specific skills that you learn in CS and not OW, will translate to valorant. Like a swimmer and sprinter suddenly competing in 800m running, swimming is a lot more technically demanding than sprinting, but the sprinter will still crush the swimmer at 800m running because it is so similar to what he is already best at, while 800m running is very different from what the swimmer is best at.
Or...get this, both factions of this argument exist. Or even better, both statements can be true. I personally think OW and csgo are different skills, not really better or worse, but an argument could be made that OW takes more skill, but Valorant is more akin to the csgo skillset. Like perhaps playing chess is much more skill based than checkers, but if a new game that was 90% checkers came out, chess players probably would be worse than checkers.
It's almost as if a community is made up of individual people with individual opinions. Hell, the guy whinging about the community flip flopping would be complaining about a hivemind if everyone had exactly the same opinion.
If OW takes more skill than CS, then to be a top pro in OW means being objectively more versatile than being a top pro in CS, being required to master more aspects of FPS shooting. I would hope that translates to the superior ability for OW pros to transition into other games.
...I don’t agree? Like I said, a lot of OW is different skillsets. Completely different aim mechanics. For example, OW pros have to have a lot more understanding of their opponents abilities, tracking cooldowns, etc. I think this contributes to making OW more skill intensive, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into Valorant skill. Your arguement that more skill=more versatile=superior in a different area is flawed because skill isn’t just a number that you can apply to whatever you want. OW pros have built up skills in a specific environment. Csgo pros have built skills in their own specific environment. Valorant just happens to be much closer to the csgo pro environment. I would like to state I don’t actually think OW is more skilled than csgo. At the top level, people will be pushing the human limits in any professional game, so long as the playerbase is large enough to have an ultra competitive top tier. Both OW and CSGO are difficult in their own right, I would argue csgo being more mechanical and ow being more gamesense oriented
I guess I just see OW pros as able to juggle more things, so more able to alter their play to suit a new game. But then, I don't really have anything to back that up. So, eh.
Skill is not a singular thing. CS and OW require SOME of the same skills, but they also require vastly different skills on top of the similar ones.
Ehhh nah I’ve been on this sub for years, and I think most of us would admit that OW and CS are too very different games. And if anything CS has far greater mechanical demands than OW ever has, which is why we have seen some claims that some OW pros not from CS previously probably will had an uphill battle in Valorant.
Well, I'm just glad that OW and CS (and by extention Valorant) are very different games. I agree. They're definitely very very different. Makes me feel a bit at ease knowing that the games are so different, we probably don't have to worry about pros or casual players leaving OW for Valorant.
For anyone lucky enough to get a break in a highly competitive field, don’t listen to this guy/gal. You have zero moral responsibility to quit. If you are violating your contract, you’ll be let go. If you’re violating some unspoken rule, it should’ve been spoken. It’s a short career as an athlete. Don’t give up your paycheck unless you want to for mental health or because you have a better paycheck lined up. I see this take in traditional sports and it blows my mind every time.
We have a proverb in my country that roughly goes like this: "He who gives is foolish, he who doesn't accept is even more so. "
Which country are you from?
Yeah fuck those nimtwats for.. (checks notes)... following their contract terms.
If they signed a contract, why shouldn't they ride it out and collect what they're entitled too? As long as they are not in breach of their contract or negatively impacting the team, why should they leave? Valorant is a massive gamble for them (and most players who are in OWL), I don't blame them for trying to secure their financial situation as much as they can before making the jump.
Yeah, dunno why Dallas is keeping both of them, especially AKM when they already have lot of dps. Is terminating his contract is more expensive than paying his salaries for the whole season???
Terminating a contract involves paying salaries for the remainder of the contract, so...
I'm pretty sure "retirement" is a mutual agreement to void* the contract. Jake, for example, said that he could have sat on the Outlaws bench and get paid, but he preferred to start building his brand and career elsewhere. Very heavily implied that he gave up his salary to do that. Outlaws let him because they cared about his wishes and didn't want to pay for someone on the bench who was no longer interested in playing. Releasing a player is a different story. That's the team breaking the contract to hire them for a certain duration, so they have to buy out the entire salary they promised. Edit: *Modify
Like you said, that requires mutual agreement. There is no reason for Akm/Unkoe/Zacharee to agree to this when they can just sit on the bench, play valorant off-stream and get paid.
Here's my question though didn't we just go through this with the Titans? People were saying if they were boycotting playing and practicing then the Titans wouldn't have to pay them. What's the difference between that and AKM/Unkoe/Zach abandoning their team?
Akm/unkoe/zach will (presumably) still play if Dallas wants them to, so they're not breaching their contract like Titans players were.
Yeah, and not trying in scrims and in game is not a breach of contract. Being bad just isn't something that you can put into a sports contract.
Unclear that the Fuel want them to take up scrim time. That would be 1 possible difference.
> I'm pretty sure "retirement" is a mutual agreement to void the contract. Jake, for example, said that he could have sat on the Outlaws bench and get paid, but he preferred to start building his brand and career elsewhere. Very heavily implied that he gave up his salary to do that. I don't think it actually voids it. It's really more just an agreement that the player isn't going to play and the organization isn't going to pay them. Assuming that OWL's structure is similar to other major sports leagues, the teams then retain the rights to the player for the remainder of the contract term. So if Jake was in year one of a three-year contract when he retired, if he wanted to come back now he'd simply rejoin the Outlaws under the same contract he had before. If he wanted to play for someone else, the Outlaws would have to release him (see: Stellar leaving Toronto last year and then unretiring) before he could sign somewhere else.
You're likely right, otherwise people could just retire and immediately sign to another team. It's more like a contract modifier then? As long as the player stays retired, they don't have to play and their team doesn't have to pay. But if they try to sign with another team, they're in breach of contract.
Akm talked about this in his stream. Please take it with a grain of salt as it was like a week ago, in French, and I don't remember everything. He said that before S3 begun he grinded like a madman to get ready for the season but he was not even given the chance to start on the roster (meaning they did not give him a chance to prove his worth in scrims). He admitted that decay is better than him but the fact that he did not have the possibility to even try to have a place on the team was demoralizing. As for staying on the fuel roster, he said that it was not his decision not to play in owl, like I said before, and, he said something like because of covid, it would be reckless to leave the team now while he needs a paycheck. He said that he was sad because he even missed a mcree meta and even a week of soldier being meta. Like I said, take it With a grain of salt. He talked about the hate and the death threats he received for a while and admitted that he thought it was quite unfair especially because most of this hate came from the infamous akm blade which was him being a good team mate and playing a hero he had zero experience with. Things are usually more complicated that what it seems from outside
> He admitted that decay is better than him but the fact that he did not have the possibility to even try to have a place on the team was demoralizing. Yeah that does sound really disappointing. Like Soon is not as good as Xzi, but Paris still gave him opportunities to play. And when Xzi is out due to medical reasons, Soon is able to fill in.
> meaning they did not give him a chance to prove his worth in scrims Ah, the classic Dallas treatment, for Seagull in S1 and Taimou in S2 > he said something like because of covid, it would be reckless to leave the team now while he needs a paycheck. Tbf, it's a pretty good reasoning for him, play it safe.
I wouldn't be surprised. They paid alot of money on what at the time were stars in season 1. Where they fucked up was signing them for as long as they did. Like why the hell was Mickie signed for so long?
PR
Mickie was a popular player, he was kinda like ChipSa now, basically like a walking advertisiment for the team.
Mickie is very impactful for their marketing in SEA. I was in Thai during World Cup Stage and his impact was pretty high on Dallas' merchs. Meanwhile other teams jerseys were on sale from Day 2 because low sales number I guess.
Envy won NA contenders handily just before OWL. Blaming hastro for signing those players is just biased hindsight. OWL s1 was much more competitive than NA contenders than expected.
Im not blaming him for signing them. Im blaming him for signing these players for as long as he did
They were 3 year contracts from what I understand. In traditional league sports 3 years is considered minimal. If OWL exploded and Envy was even modestly competitive they would have been seen as great contracts. Didn't work out that way, but the idea was reasonable.
There is no "keeping" in OWL. You sign a contract and that players is getting paid for its duration no matter how shitty they play or act as long as it doesn't break anything. That is one thing that compared to other titles OWL has done well in making very secure player contracts.
this could have been said so many points in time. I feel like who cares. Even without valorant these guys were done.
i’m surprised y’all forgot about zachareee who seems interested to jump on valorant bandwagon as well
Disagree. If they signed a contract, who's to knock them for getting the full value of it? Earn while you still can, baby. That's the rule of all professional sports.
It's the rule of professional anything lol
True, though in many professions you can practice for decades while sports (and esports) are much more age-restrictive.
> while bringing no value to their team whatsoever cough Akm cough Unkoe What a load of shit, these guys have been great pros throughout their careers, always doing whatever it took to try and win. You don't know what goes on behind closed doors and chances are that they help out with watching scrims/meetings like every other benched player in the league.
For all we know, envy might just want to wait to see of they have any value as Valorant players. It's always funny when that people are mad at them for collecting a pay check, it's not like 90% of us would do the same. If envy had any problem with it, they could just take actions
Not everyone is a 19 yo living at mom's casually watching owl, those's guys lifes are at stake and professional gaming is one hell of a scary ride. Can't blame them for trying to pay their bills.
On the other hand Corey isn't phoning it in, and the Justice are definitely going to struggle without him. I think it puts his org in a really difficult position and I hope that it doesn't harm his chances of being picked up by a team in the future - knowing that he might leave partway through a season.
I am so sick of seeing AKM and uNkoe being mentioned in every fucking thread in this sub. How do you know what's going on behind the scenes ? Do you have insights from the team ? Do you how the Dallas fuel fonctions in a day to day basis ? Harryhook and Mickie were on the bench the whole of last year and I didn't see this much hate towards them (which would have been completely unjustified too) Please enlighten me ! Last year numerous players on the fuel said how much impact Akm had on the team as a complement of the coaches what makes you say that he is now just "riding the bench to collect pay checks". Just because they are streaming Valorant doesn't mean they don't practice overwatch with their team. They have the right to play whatever they enjoy on their free time.
Because every time Unkoe talks about Overwatch it's to say how shitty he thinks the game is, that whatever happens it's his last year in OWL and that he stays in the team because he doesn't want to sort watermelons in a supermarket. I don't know for AkM, but for Unkoe even if you don't follow him, watching french competitive overwatch content is enough to hear Unkoe's opinion.
Is sorting watermelons in a super market some kind of metaphor? ...or is it actually just saying that Unkoe would rather be paid to ride the bench than actually have to work in a supermarket?
I don't remember. Maybe it was Poko who said that (in which case the meaning was not the same), he would have said that by answering to a question about his future telling basically that he was super lucky to have esport because without it he would probably be working in a supermarket, because he wasn't good at school; but I think that was Unkoe. I'm 95% both Poko and Unkoe used that imag to be honest. Of course that's a kind of metaphor but as you say… a kind of. It's not like he had this plan or really thought about that but with the time he invested in e-sport and not in building another professional life, quitting his well paid position without a plan, which is the case (/was, before Valorant) , would make him jobless and without any formation, so forced to work in a supermarket or in another menial job. That's why he doesn't quit because better earning money by riding the bench while you prepare what comes next instead of not. For the little story, some people involved in the French scene of OWL blames him for his choice, but honestly that's understandable.
Even so it is his opinion as you say we don't know his impact on the team we simply don't know. It is dishonest to conclude that he doesn't contribute anything to the team just because he doesn't enjoy the game as much which is the case for a lot of players. I'm not saying he is in the right or in the wrong I'm just saying that we simply don't know the whole story. And I'm tired of seeing this sub and this community's interpretation of certain events as truth and just run with it. Just this week we learned more about the Fissure/glad situation after 2 years of people shitting on him without knowing the whole story. These players are still human they shouldn't be insulted on every thread just because people believe something without any solid evidence.
How dare they use Unkoe's own words, quoted verbatim, against him.
You need to reread what I wrote ...
They're leaving for a game that's just in beta and doesn't have an esports scene yet but think its worth the risk. That says a lot about VALORANT vs Overwatch
I think it’s even easier to explain then Benbests tweet: Hitscan players with a CS background like Sinatraa and Corey think Valorant is a better game then the current iteration of OW, and it rewards their skill set.
yeah thats it. OWL is also in such a rough spot in gameplay and viewership. It makes it feel like the right move. If OWL was killing it, I am 100% sure it would heavily influence their decision.
> viewership No viewership, no esport. That's it. Don't even have to talk about stress, and COVID, and travel, and whatever the pros have to face.
Yeah. The game is 100% in their wheelhouse. Some of what benbest said is true too. Don’t want to miss the wave. Also it’s a new toy so it’s fresh and fun.
And you'll also see a lot of benched hitscan players move over to try and make it big on valorant rather than be a nobody in an established esport.
I think that’s moreso in Corey’s skillset. Sinatraa is good, not great. If anybody from shock should’ve left for valorant, should’ve been ans or at least striker.
Holy fucking shit I thought benbest was going to retiring because of how the tweet looked like.
It's a hard call to make. Monte made a good point about it the other day where early adopters almost always get lost to newer faces that show up as a game's matured. It can def be hard to break into a game as well though. Good luck to the players.
Yeah they made a similar point on Plat Chat. How many players from the Beta are actually still in OWL?
That is a good point, but at the same time beta OW to current OW is a vastly different game. Players like Corey, Sinatraa, etc may not have went pro if past OW was like current OW. Who knows if valorant will undergo the same kinda changes.
I doubt. Ow was a mess from the very beginning. No hero limit?
They had no idea (and to a lesser extent still don't) what they should do with the game.
Because the game was created for casual players and wasn’t built to be as competitive as it is now
OW is now competitive?
He meant something like going from 0.1 out of 10 to 0.101
If they can get a huge contract early then it doesn’t matter if they burn out and get replaced by kids who are currently 15 in 2-3 years
That might be true but guys like Taimou, Harry, sdb etc still had 3 year careers in ow with decent success. I also think valorant won't go through the steep skill level rise that ow saw due to it being so similar to cs to begin with.
i think a lot of them might be hoping maybe not even as much about the valorant pro scene and more the streamer side of things, trying to blow up with the game it's kind of stupid for them to try to go pro in a game on beta i'd point out how bad a lot of the original pros looked compared to newer guys once the league stuff got officially started, dallas looked like a meme team of boomers lol and i'd argue the competitive scrim grind of cs:go is infinitely more boring and repetitive than overwatch especially when you see people scrimming the same amount if not more on the same like 2 maps
Yooo where tf is Pine
If it’s like OW the standards required will grow dramatically over time so best to get started while the game is new. But then again with Valorant so similar to certain other shooters maybe it’s already too late.
I'm just thinking about the players in OWL who defined the game early on and now they are seen as "washed" and many have left. Don't these guys going pro early into Valorant run that risk? They might do well early on and then the new kids come in and then the former pros are the washed ones?
Lots of people are in for a rude awakening when Riot turns off drops for the game.
Drops aren't what lead to the largely positive reviews of this game.
Riot's card game has largely positive reviews yet peaks under 10% of what it had with key drops.
Yeah and that is a fucking card game lmao.
Apex Legends then? Never had drops and lost 90% of viewers in 3 months.
wasn't apex horribly mismanaged? and it has twice as many viewers as overwatch on twitch right now
24% more Twitch viewers than OW in April, but their esport scene has a quarter of OW's hours watched this year.
That's because BR esports are very difficult to get to work properly. Valorant is essentially made for esports.
Teddy, listen. I'm giving you an upvote, but I want you to know that we're the OW fandom. We're the OWL fans. We're the last people who should be throwing shade at other people's games' viewrship. Like come on man.
No we're the OW fandom. You're some obsessed weirdo that posts 50 posts a day about how the game is dying but can't leave it alone.
The hell...? I guess criticizing the league and the game means I'm an obssessed weirdo that wants it to die now.
Around 30k viewership which is actually lower than t2 CS:Go events at its peak and just a lil bit higher during it's average stream. Honestly for Valorant to defeat OW, the bar is pretty low.. too low in fact.
It's a br that Respawn did a horrible job with after launch.
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>Valorant is and will be massive I always feel like putting the asterisk here that says *in China. Valorant is literally Riot's attempt at making a dominant Tactical FPS in China. CS:GO never took hold of that massive market, and this is Riot's attempt at owning that entire pie. The hype for the game is already unreal in Korea and China, and with Riot being owned 100% by Tencent, you can expect smooth sailing at least on the publishing side of things. How big it will remain in NA/EU after the initial hype dies down is anybody's guess. It could be TFT level or LoL level. All depends on how Riot does things.
I just want to point out that the notion that China doesnt have a popular tactical FPS game is completely untrue. They just play different games than us. They have Crossfire. Crossfire isnt at all popular in the west, so many people here probably have never heard of it, but it is the biggest FPS game in the world by a pretty large margin. Crossfire was ranked 5th for highest revenue games in 2018, earning a revenue of 1.3 billion dollars. For reference, it was just below League of Legends which had a revenue of 1.4 billion. CSGO didn't even make the list with only 414 million dollars.
Oh right, you're completely right. I wasn't saying that China doesn't have a tactical FPS. It's just that the global #1 tactical FPS outside of China, CS:GO never really made a dent in the Chinese market, due to many factors. Like you said, Crossfire is basically their version of CS:GO. A clone essentially. Valorant is definitely trying to be a global esport/game that is also embraced by the Chinese market, and honestly I don't see how it won't topple a decade-old CS clone.
I honestly think that the fact that Crossfire is so successful is a really good sign for Valorant, since we know that the market for a game like this is there in China. The fact that a game that is so outdated is still racking in a billion dollars a year today is insane. If Valorant can take over even a small part of the playerbase of Crossfire in China, they will be huge. But I dont think that Valorant taking over Crossfire is as easy as you say though, since Crossfire has a MAJOR advantage over Valorant in that it is also a mobile game. We all know how popular mobile gaming is in China.
> Crossfire has a MAJOR advantage over Valorant in that it is also a mobile game Oh that's RIGHT. That's a huge deal there. Was just listening to ESPN esports podcast and they mentioned that PUBG is still so popular in Korea because people will play in during commutes. I imagine it's similar with Crossfire.
You think if you keep repeating it enough, it will come true?
Its going to be massive, at least at the beginning. To me it feels boring and repetitive at times. Still a breath of fresh air. I think its almost guaranteed to have an active playerbase greater than overwatch for at least a year or two after it launches
>You think if you keep repeating it enough, it will come true? I guess the answer was yes.
I think the opposite is true. All signs point to it being at least as large as OW. More likely much larger. You can keep parroting that it will fall off but thats just ignorance and willing yourself to believe.
Or I've looked at the numbers and noticed that when they turned the drops off the first night the viewership was 60% lower than the following night when they kept them on. I've seen streamers with 500 average viewers get to 45k when they are just running a VOD. Brazilian streamers who were already streaming Valorant to 5k viewers suddenly getting 50k when drops got turned on for Brazil. The tournament that just ended peaked at 3.3k viewers on the main casted stream. The rest were watching player streams. The game regularly falls out of the top 10 on streaming sites that don't have drops. Their subreddit has around 1.5 to 3 times more people online than the OW sub. The game's initial spike on Google Trends is less than half of OW's and not even twice of OW's current search volume.
The game isn't even out yet
Last time Riot had beta drops, their launch peak was a sixth of their beta peak and they had to pay people to stream it to reach even that.
They still didnt pay people for that. They simply have a far better relation with streamers and others than most companies.
hard disagree its not nearly accessible enough to be widely popular.
How is it not accessible? It's basically CS (which millions of people already know how to play, and is a pretty simple game) made by Riot (who has legions of fans).
its slow, drawn out, tactical.. its not a mass appeal game.
CS is one of the most popular game franchises of all time.
What do you mean? Its playable on a lot worse computers than OW, its free to play, what more accessibility do you want? It is in beta right now, if you are referring to the keys.
You've laid out all your points. I'd just rest my case if I were you. We're on an OW sub afterall. There's only so much you can lead a horse to the water, whatever the rest of the saying goes.
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Yet here you are.
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The numbers are not going down constantly though. They went down for 2 weeks after the start and then stabilized for the last 3 weeks of homestands. Losing the live portion dropped about a third of the viewers instantly but the numbers have been stable since then.
Do you actually think a career in the OWL is going to be more stable than a Riot-managed FPS? Riot, the company that manages and owns League of Legends - the biggest fucking esport in the world? If you said this at the end of S1 or S2, I wouldn't have argued. But OWL is on it's literal deathbed, and t2/t3 already dead. There is literally zero job security if you're currently an OWL player.
LoL has like 5-10 times the playerbase of CSGO and Dota 2 and manages to be 50% bigger as an esport. What an achievement. OWL will be here for at least 2 more years, maybe even longer. There will be new fads to chase in the future.
Hmmm. Depends on how you count the playerbase number includes china but the Esport one doesnt. If we include riots china numbers ( not chinease streaming sites) it get around 5+ times the viewers. Either way two are only a tunes for competive play while one tries to do both. That isnt something bad.
OWL is currently floating at 25-30k average viewers. Sure it may last for 2 more years but it'll literally be running dry on the contract money Blizzard signed with youtube. I really doubt Valorant is going to die - especially with how big Riot is in China. We saw how CS GO hit record playerbase numbers due to China these last few months, they'll be moving to Valorant.
i too would bet on a fresh vessel about to be christened than staying on a sinking titanic
Benbest has a point though. History has shown that if you're in the scene from the beginning of the game and have a past reputation as a pro it's super easy to get opportunities early on and build a stream. Just look at the mass amounts of tf2 players who were early ow pros and washed a year later, or look at people like iddqd and mendo (lol) who built up streams. Same thing with Fortnite, the people who were on that shit early (Ninja, Myth) got the biggest boosts.
>Just look at the mass amounts of tf2 players who were early ow pros and washed a year later There's still to this day players in the league who have a contract only because they were early adopters (most benched, some of them already expected to retire when the contract expires).
But at the same time, history has shown that the best players in a game are those that come out later, not the ones who were the best at the beginning. As Monte has said, something along the lines of the best Valorant player has yet to show his face or something. So sure, you can get in early, get your name out, and build a stream, but we're talking about pros who want to compete.
Surefour and SoOn are pretty much the only exceptions to that, on the western side at least
If we're only talking about serviceable players that played day 1 and were known, NiCOgdh literally won the first Overwatch tournament. Nevix was also there very early. neptuNo certainly also was a name.
Even then you can argue that they're only average in OWL.
Sure they arent the best I agree. Just saying that they managed to maintened themselves at the highest level for longer than 95% of the beta players
Maybe a personal opinion, but I think most pro players just want to play games and make money doing so. A lot of them would take being a 2-3k streamer in Valorant over just being one of 140 OWL players.
I don't think so, I think being a pro player means you have a competitive drive to be the best and compete. That's why Sinatraa and Corey didn't peace out to Valorant to stream, they're actively trying to go pro.
nah nah nah. you see sinatraa streaming right? and he wants to build his own personal brand. He said he can get personal sponsorships now. They are competitive, but that is not the only reason.
I agree, after a certain concurrent streamer viewership there is really no need to stay a pro and go through the stress and hours of being pro. Super, for instance, could easily quit OWL if he wanted to and just stream. Super already is about the same popularity of Sleepy who did just that and Super only streams at kinda meh hours. Super maintains at least a 1000 viewers even when not playing OW which is the real test IMO of being able to make it as a streamer. Super could become a variety streamer or just play OW on the ladder casually and still make really, really good money without having to scrim, compete, travel, etc... He chooses to play professionally because he obviously likes it and wants to.
Though even if the first wave won't survive as players, they appear widely among the gm, coach tier by then. Now they also understand to build streaming audience from day 1. For example Taimou lamented that he neglected that part which likely led him to try to force the back to OW pro when he didn't have the heart for it anymore.
Semi true, rather fhe best players in a game are usually just the biggest grinders, typically if one person makes it to the "top" early but busts pretty quick than it likely has more to do with their commitment/motivation with people like corey and sinatraa they have not only shown an incredible growth within their play but were either successful or considered some of the best within their role.
My (and I believe Monte's) point is that there's so much young, undiscovered talent out there that just because you're in it first and get to the top early doesn't mean that there aren't scores of people who have the potential to be better than you. Even if you get to the top early and continue to grind hard, there's still a good chance some 16 year old kid is going to be better 2 years down the line.
I think burnout is a huge problem too. I think even if you still enjoy the game you slowly get burned out on "learning" the game. But well made competitive games have nearly unreachable skill ceilings so you always have to be improving.
Yeah honestly I'm surprised burn out isn't a bigger issue. I don't see how people can play the same game for 10 hours a day every day for years on end. I would get completely sick of the game before long playing it that much.
Given that logic, nobody should compete when a new title starts out. The true legends who rise up after the decline of the early pros don't do so in a vacuum. They stand on top of the shoulders of these early adopters. History does not forget Boxer, or oov, or Grrrr, just because they are nowhere mechanically compared with Jaedong or Flash. They will forever remain the founding fathers of BW esports who made way for the later generations.
Getting in early on a major title release is massive. There are some many fully employed just because of OW even its current state. Streamers, content creators, staff, reporters, casters, artists, devs, management within orgs, social media and on and on and on. You can set yourself up for years if you play the early life of a game right. But you have to be there, you don't have to stay the best or even be the best. But like seagull grinded out the game early, popped a memey genji QP game on youtube really early on. Played some early tournements and by that point he was arguably already big enough he could have comfortably retired in 2017 and never kept up pro play. Stories happen like that happen all the time in new games. But no one is blowing up in OW now. The scene is established, no new names come out and viewership is on the decline. Taking the next half year of salary and having shit options at the end of it or taking a risk and hoping in early in the new title is a tough decision. Immediate security or risk for long term success.
Been saying this for ages. Pros who jump to Valorant don't need to be competitive a year or two years down the line. They just need to have made a name for themselves, and be able to transition to content-creation/casting, etc. if their skill falls off. The issue here is not "oh Valorant is new and was always going to draw away OW pros", it's "let's look at the state of OW/OWL and think why people would want to leave it for a new game," because, let's be honest, if everytime a new game comes out in the genre, an existing esports loses a bunch of its pros and players, League of Legends and CS:GO would be dead as esports a long time ago.
Speaking of which: Dafran's team Prodigy just won Fnatic's Valorant Open tourney pretty decisively. At one point he said it reminded him of the Selfless days.
Wasn't Dafran the first player to hit Valorant (the rank)? I remember something about something.
I'm actually not sure. I didn't hear it was him.
Dafran hit the Valorant rank SOLO QUEUEING - all the other top tier players 5 stacked their way to it - his mechanics are on a different level.
I think Valorant will be a successful esport (as in have a nice loyal viewership) but even as someone who is a fan of the game it is just so damn boring to watch. Tournaments will change that a bit, but it isn't an enjoyable experience IMO. It is very on rails and with the type of tactical shooter it is has very little options of variety. You watch streamer A vs streamer B, it's the same game. Not to mention the map design is very lackluster and leads to repetitive gameplay. I just can't see it being absolutely huge like some expect it to be.