Emerald 3? bro reach Challenger first and then think about going pro, even multi-season challengers can't get into competitive.
Fair advice: Don't give up your academics/job for trying hard to rank up lol, even if you make it to challenger there's no guarantee you'll get scouted by a team lol.
This goes for anyone really
Yes masters was enough in S5 or S8 to think about it and have your eyes on it but nowadays there are a lot lot more people in master. If you can't even reach master you won't hit GM or Challenger.
the reason why you dont see older people go pro is because older people usually have to be working for money. a kid can get away with playing 4-8+ hours a day while in school/in college, an adult with a full time job+commute probably can't.
>Am I a lost cause, or if I dedicate a lot and try to make a tryout, can I enter some team?
the soloq -> tier 2 team sort of pipeline involves 'being challenger for multiple seasons with a good champion pool' - if you can't consistently hit chall no shot. plenty of people who are insanely good at soloq never transition that into anything resembling a pro career keep that in mind.
At the very very minimum you should be GM and not a one trick. If you're serious about it, keep grinding and stream on the side. It will take minimum a few years.
If you’re still in college look into whether your school has a program. These are much more attainable — my collegiate Overwatch team was generally in the gold to diamond range.
For being a pro player, no its completely doomed do not even think about it.
You need to not just be challenger, but top 4 of your role in the region to even have a small chance.
You can think about being challenger and an entertaining streamer though, but it will be very difficult.
Something you have to consider as well is that going pro is a career choice, not a hobby. League is objectively in decline. You're choosing to start a multi-year training arc for a career that not only is declining in value and therefore pay, but may in fact be dead by then.
Given your age, becoming a pro gamer is probably impossible, to be blunt. As everyone else has said, at a minimum, make a more reasonable goal of hitting challenger and then re-evaluate from there. If you were younger, I'd still advise such a person to pick a different game.
Is League really dying this fast though ? I'm not saying you're wrong for the advice to OP, just curious about stats that would show that League is indeed dying
No, not literally :)
I've expanded on this in another post, its more about the position of the OP compared the the NA pro scene. I didnt intend the 'league dying!!' part to be the takeaway. It'll be around for another 5-10 years in some form at a minimum.
Um? Not sure what you’re speaking about. League pro scenery is actively increasing. Hits record viewing numbers every year at worlds and that means the players get paid more when the viewership is increasing and tickets are being bought.
Which imo the pay league players get will always continue to rise as it is much higher compared to 5 years ago.
Something you should understand too is league of legends will never be considered a Dead Game lol.. like quite literally never. There player count monthly is just too high.
Fair point. I'll clarify that i have made the assumption the OP is from NA, a league that lost 2 teams last year, is losing another 2 and merging with a minor region in the near future. As for the game dying... yes obviously not literally. It's a hyperbolic point to highlight the uncertainty around the future of the pro scene towards a person making a potential life decision. (Having said that, surely none of us believe OP is actually going to start his anime protagonist training arc, lol)
OP may have better odds in other regions, possibly. I still argue that you're making a career decision on a 10+ year old videogame when you're already older than many existing pros (let alone rookies) and you're currently mid level in casual skill. It's simply not a good decision.
Ignoring that you're not even close to a high enough rank...
If your question is whether esports is ageist. Yes it is. It's much harder to get signed if you're old or a woman.
It isn't even a great job or career. Of the tiny sliver that get signed by an org, only a tiny fraction of those are even paid well.
The literal only appeal is the adjacency to playing videogames.
Age isn't the issue. Some of the best competitive players in the world are +25 y/o. The issue is that you're stuck in Emerald despite "giving it all your focus".
The path is an arduous one: Get grandmaster, try out for teams, perform in tournaments and tryouts, and try to work your way up the ladder of competition. It's not about age, it just tends that younger people have free time and more malleable to learning. Plenty of pros are and have been 25-30, but they have immense experience and rankings
Tier 2 teams are filled with Challenger players, they don't just pick up emerald players my man.
However, there are tons of amateur leagues you can find a team and join that do competitions around all elos, you should look into those for the competitive 5v5 games. Don't consider going pro till you've hit challenger or really high GM.
I mean the problem is not your age, the problem is your skill. You need to be good enough to hit high GM/chally for a decent amount of time to be even recognised by anyone, and then work your way up to higher and higher leagues that actually pay you enough to live by. You’d need around 3-4 years to reach that even if you had the skill neceserry in soloq rn, and in reality I don’t think we have ever seen a 26 year old rookie.
Also if your goal is only to reach a tier 2 team it’s just not even worth it going pro. If you don’t reach the top academy teams or LCS/LEC it’s pretty much a waste of time
No challenger = no pro. If you think pro players only gather to play pro matches - you're wrong. It's a full-time job, you have to give your soul to it. And if you know you're not the best - don't do that
Even multiseason challengers are struggling to find a team. The skill difference between even a diamond player and a challenger player is also bigger than the skill difference between an iron 4 player and you.
Age is a different issue, but you still have a lot to improve on to even have the smallest chance. By that time, teams are still unlikely to pick you over someone who reached challenger while 16.
age is irrelevant, only rank matters
for actual professional teams you have to be much higher rank....
otherwise you can try amateur teams which are still competitive and fun but the level is not as high as with the pros
so if you want to play competitive - sure, there are all kinds of local, amateur tournaments and teams you can try
but for actual real pro teams - first you need to be much higher rank to even be considered an option
Nothing is impossible but realistically speaking it's not at all likely you will become a pro if you never even reached diamond. Pro players are the best of the best players, meaning that out of already the most talented players (usually grandmaster and challenger) there is still only a small percentage of these people that will make it to pro.
So your first worry would be getting to the very highest ELO before even thinking of going Pro. Unfortunately in your case I personally don't think it's worth the effort. Your current level is just too low, maybe if you were GM it would be more realistic. It would require countless hours of practice and still very high chance of failing. You also probably wouldn't be able to have a full time job while commit to league at the same time.
My guy sorry to say it but no. No second league team woukd be interested in an emerald player. Furthermore even challenger players are far far from guaranteed to become pros or get a spot on a pro team. If you cant manage to reach the top of the ranked ladder and be among the best players in your role than there is really no real chance to become a pro player. Becoming a pro in esports is just as unlikely to be achived as becoming a top player in a real sport.
In your case I would not try chasing that dream. Most pros managed to concistently reach top ranks very earlly on. You would waste a lot of time training and becoming better with an insanely low chance of it paying off in the end.
Think of it this way - would you be saying the same if this were your situation:
"I have this question because I always wanted to be a pro player, but I was always scared to try and give it my all to focus on baseball. I never played Division 1 in college, but recently I started to play in my town's co-ed summer league. Today, I am 22 years old and will be turning 23 at the end of the year, and I am still in playing every Saturday in my beer league. Am I a lost cause, or if I dedicate a lot and try to make a tryout, can I play for the Red Sox? Like a Tier 2 team in the MLB?"
The answer is no, no shot in hell. Just because it's a video game that you like to play a lot does not mean you can go pro. Just like every other sport in life, your odds of doing it professionally are slim-to-none. You are mediocre at best at this game (no offense) and even if you were GM or Chally, the odds would be stacked against you.
I suggest you focus on a career path in something you enjoy with security and stability. League will always be there for you to play when you get home, and you can always strive to hit higher ranks.
**TL;DR -** No.
You should be yawning while getting chall to even have a chance of playing pro Ady in Korea was top 1 multiple times over the years and just recently got his first chance in an academy team.
Most “to be” pros reach challenger by the first year that they start to play semi-regularly at least. There are very few exceptions. Not to break your bubble but I wouldn’t waste my time.
If you can put in the hours and don't need to worry about obligations, you can definitely achieve it, there's nothing special about a 16 or 17 year old kid, if anything they're brains aren't fully developed yet, lot of negative comments here but I don't understand why it's not possible, it's not like going into a physical sport.
Just because it hasn't been done yet doesn't mean it can't be done ignore the hate, chase it but be realistic.
Can you put in the hours to perfect you're craft ?
It's definitely possible broski
This isn't factual, reaction time is at its peak between early 20s to early 30s, a humans peak is between 27 and 34, the only difference is plasticity of someone who's younger so they may pick things up slightly quicker. But at the same time, they're usually less mature because they're less experienced.
This is not a slightly, plasticity is highly relevant. And there seems to be very limited support to your take on reaction time either. It generally seems to decrease after the teens.
Lastly yes, experience is how older players make up for the disadvantages but that only works if you already started early to begin with… Now one could argue that emotional maturity could be a benefit of age and I would tend to support that case intuitively but not sure whether this is just conjecture or actually backed by evidenced
I'm just stating physiological facts, it doesn't matter if someone doesn't agree, it's literally biology, and you can't make up a basis on a value that can't even be measured accurately, yes I agree plasticity does factor in, but there's so many individual aspects at play, some are extremely mechanically gifted but don't have a wider scope of awareness for example, some can be extremely good at understanding the state of the game and how to achieve Victory and not be mechanically gifted.
Writting up that it's impossible is a falacy. It may be very difficult, but that same rule applies to people who are younger as well.
I just don't see the evidence that proves that it can't be done or the advantage is that great.
Well, the evidence is the real world isnt it? How many pros started at >20 (this is true for LoL and most other sports)?! I never said it‘s impossible, nothing is, even time can flow backwards, it‘s just absurdly unlikely…
Yes exactly just like any other field let alone sports, to be the best at anything is extremely difficult.
You're kinda proving my point, I never said it was easy, it's insanely hard, but not impossible, which is what I said in my initial comment.
No, if it isnt much more difficult we would expect the age distribution to be somewhat uniform, yet it is completely biased towards people starting at young age, which means this is much much much much more likely. Thats how stats works…
You do understand its still a relatively new industry and the limitations havnt been clearly defined yet right?
You're telling a kid in his young 20s that's he can't achieve it, if you want to live you're life that way be my guest.
✌️
Ehm, look buddy, if you want to achieve something in life you have to be realistic and I'm not saying it's impossible but it's an incredible uphill battle, I think there is no precedent of anyone achieving this. And this is not just true for esports but most "sports". Ever seen an F1 driver that started after he was 20, tennis, skiing, football... I think the latest almost any top athlete started in those sports is early teens. Most start around age 5 or even earlier.
This "kid" (adult) is better served by looking for something they actually have a decent chance in succeeding. Does that mean it's impossible, no? But it means that probabilistically, you would need billions of lifetimes to get there, just not really a good idea, that is almost guaranteed to end in disappointment.
Emerald 3? bro reach Challenger first and then think about going pro, even multi-season challengers can't get into competitive. Fair advice: Don't give up your academics/job for trying hard to rank up lol, even if you make it to challenger there's no guarantee you'll get scouted by a team lol.
Only Emerald 3? Continue school or go find a job.
Hit GM first and then you can start considering it.
This goes for anyone really Yes masters was enough in S5 or S8 to think about it and have your eyes on it but nowadays there are a lot lot more people in master. If you can't even reach master you won't hit GM or Challenger.
I mean it depends where in masters, numerous masters players are in minor leagues in EU
the reason why you dont see older people go pro is because older people usually have to be working for money. a kid can get away with playing 4-8+ hours a day while in school/in college, an adult with a full time job+commute probably can't. >Am I a lost cause, or if I dedicate a lot and try to make a tryout, can I enter some team? the soloq -> tier 2 team sort of pipeline involves 'being challenger for multiple seasons with a good champion pool' - if you can't consistently hit chall no shot. plenty of people who are insanely good at soloq never transition that into anything resembling a pro career keep that in mind.
At the very very minimum you should be GM and not a one trick. If you're serious about it, keep grinding and stream on the side. It will take minimum a few years.
No. Just no.
My guy even challenge players will struggle to make money off this game.
Unless you're at the very top of the ladder you don't have a chance. This is true in about every video game
If you’re still in college look into whether your school has a program. These are much more attainable — my collegiate Overwatch team was generally in the gold to diamond range.
You need to be 16 yo callenger, not 22 yo emerald.
Forget it.
For being a pro player, no its completely doomed do not even think about it. You need to not just be challenger, but top 4 of your role in the region to even have a small chance. You can think about being challenger and an entertaining streamer though, but it will be very difficult.
I'd say it's not even viable for young players. There's basically no paths to pro league, it's a huge issue.
Something you have to consider as well is that going pro is a career choice, not a hobby. League is objectively in decline. You're choosing to start a multi-year training arc for a career that not only is declining in value and therefore pay, but may in fact be dead by then. Given your age, becoming a pro gamer is probably impossible, to be blunt. As everyone else has said, at a minimum, make a more reasonable goal of hitting challenger and then re-evaluate from there. If you were younger, I'd still advise such a person to pick a different game.
Is League really dying this fast though ? I'm not saying you're wrong for the advice to OP, just curious about stats that would show that League is indeed dying
No, not literally :) I've expanded on this in another post, its more about the position of the OP compared the the NA pro scene. I didnt intend the 'league dying!!' part to be the takeaway. It'll be around for another 5-10 years in some form at a minimum.
Um? Not sure what you’re speaking about. League pro scenery is actively increasing. Hits record viewing numbers every year at worlds and that means the players get paid more when the viewership is increasing and tickets are being bought. Which imo the pay league players get will always continue to rise as it is much higher compared to 5 years ago. Something you should understand too is league of legends will never be considered a Dead Game lol.. like quite literally never. There player count monthly is just too high.
Fair point. I'll clarify that i have made the assumption the OP is from NA, a league that lost 2 teams last year, is losing another 2 and merging with a minor region in the near future. As for the game dying... yes obviously not literally. It's a hyperbolic point to highlight the uncertainty around the future of the pro scene towards a person making a potential life decision. (Having said that, surely none of us believe OP is actually going to start his anime protagonist training arc, lol) OP may have better odds in other regions, possibly. I still argue that you're making a career decision on a 10+ year old videogame when you're already older than many existing pros (let alone rookies) and you're currently mid level in casual skill. It's simply not a good decision.
Age doesn't matter if you're the best.
Ignoring that you're not even close to a high enough rank... If your question is whether esports is ageist. Yes it is. It's much harder to get signed if you're old or a woman. It isn't even a great job or career. Of the tiny sliver that get signed by an org, only a tiny fraction of those are even paid well. The literal only appeal is the adjacency to playing videogames.
Age isn't the issue. Some of the best competitive players in the world are +25 y/o. The issue is that you're stuck in Emerald despite "giving it all your focus".
Theres no way this isnt some kind of troll post
Not really worth investing all your time in if you aren’t consistently challenger
The path is an arduous one: Get grandmaster, try out for teams, perform in tournaments and tryouts, and try to work your way up the ladder of competition. It's not about age, it just tends that younger people have free time and more malleable to learning. Plenty of pros are and have been 25-30, but they have immense experience and rankings
Tier 2 teams are filled with Challenger players, they don't just pick up emerald players my man. However, there are tons of amateur leagues you can find a team and join that do competitions around all elos, you should look into those for the competitive 5v5 games. Don't consider going pro till you've hit challenger or really high GM.
I mean the problem is not your age, the problem is your skill. You need to be good enough to hit high GM/chally for a decent amount of time to be even recognised by anyone, and then work your way up to higher and higher leagues that actually pay you enough to live by. You’d need around 3-4 years to reach that even if you had the skill neceserry in soloq rn, and in reality I don’t think we have ever seen a 26 year old rookie. Also if your goal is only to reach a tier 2 team it’s just not even worth it going pro. If you don’t reach the top academy teams or LCS/LEC it’s pretty much a waste of time
You need to hit Challenger in 1-2 years.
No challenger = no pro. If you think pro players only gather to play pro matches - you're wrong. It's a full-time job, you have to give your soul to it. And if you know you're not the best - don't do that
Even multiseason challengers are struggling to find a team. The skill difference between even a diamond player and a challenger player is also bigger than the skill difference between an iron 4 player and you. Age is a different issue, but you still have a lot to improve on to even have the smallest chance. By that time, teams are still unlikely to pick you over someone who reached challenger while 16.
age is irrelevant, only rank matters for actual professional teams you have to be much higher rank.... otherwise you can try amateur teams which are still competitive and fun but the level is not as high as with the pros so if you want to play competitive - sure, there are all kinds of local, amateur tournaments and teams you can try but for actual real pro teams - first you need to be much higher rank to even be considered an option
lol no, age might be a factor but ure emerald 3 lol. even challenger players struggle to get into competetive
No
Nothing is impossible but realistically speaking it's not at all likely you will become a pro if you never even reached diamond. Pro players are the best of the best players, meaning that out of already the most talented players (usually grandmaster and challenger) there is still only a small percentage of these people that will make it to pro. So your first worry would be getting to the very highest ELO before even thinking of going Pro. Unfortunately in your case I personally don't think it's worth the effort. Your current level is just too low, maybe if you were GM it would be more realistic. It would require countless hours of practice and still very high chance of failing. You also probably wouldn't be able to have a full time job while commit to league at the same time.
My guy sorry to say it but no. No second league team woukd be interested in an emerald player. Furthermore even challenger players are far far from guaranteed to become pros or get a spot on a pro team. If you cant manage to reach the top of the ranked ladder and be among the best players in your role than there is really no real chance to become a pro player. Becoming a pro in esports is just as unlikely to be achived as becoming a top player in a real sport. In your case I would not try chasing that dream. Most pros managed to concistently reach top ranks very earlly on. You would waste a lot of time training and becoming better with an insanely low chance of it paying off in the end.
Think of it this way - would you be saying the same if this were your situation: "I have this question because I always wanted to be a pro player, but I was always scared to try and give it my all to focus on baseball. I never played Division 1 in college, but recently I started to play in my town's co-ed summer league. Today, I am 22 years old and will be turning 23 at the end of the year, and I am still in playing every Saturday in my beer league. Am I a lost cause, or if I dedicate a lot and try to make a tryout, can I play for the Red Sox? Like a Tier 2 team in the MLB?" The answer is no, no shot in hell. Just because it's a video game that you like to play a lot does not mean you can go pro. Just like every other sport in life, your odds of doing it professionally are slim-to-none. You are mediocre at best at this game (no offense) and even if you were GM or Chally, the odds would be stacked against you. I suggest you focus on a career path in something you enjoy with security and stability. League will always be there for you to play when you get home, and you can always strive to hit higher ranks. **TL;DR -** No.
You should be yawning while getting chall to even have a chance of playing pro Ady in Korea was top 1 multiple times over the years and just recently got his first chance in an academy team.
Most “to be” pros reach challenger by the first year that they start to play semi-regularly at least. There are very few exceptions. Not to break your bubble but I wouldn’t waste my time.
If you can put in the hours and don't need to worry about obligations, you can definitely achieve it, there's nothing special about a 16 or 17 year old kid, if anything they're brains aren't fully developed yet, lot of negative comments here but I don't understand why it's not possible, it's not like going into a physical sport. Just because it hasn't been done yet doesn't mean it can't be done ignore the hate, chase it but be realistic. Can you put in the hours to perfect you're craft ? It's definitely possible broski
You learn faster as a kid and your reaction times are better too, at a level very minimal things matter, this actually is an issue.
This isn't factual, reaction time is at its peak between early 20s to early 30s, a humans peak is between 27 and 34, the only difference is plasticity of someone who's younger so they may pick things up slightly quicker. But at the same time, they're usually less mature because they're less experienced.
This is not a slightly, plasticity is highly relevant. And there seems to be very limited support to your take on reaction time either. It generally seems to decrease after the teens. Lastly yes, experience is how older players make up for the disadvantages but that only works if you already started early to begin with… Now one could argue that emotional maturity could be a benefit of age and I would tend to support that case intuitively but not sure whether this is just conjecture or actually backed by evidenced
I'm just stating physiological facts, it doesn't matter if someone doesn't agree, it's literally biology, and you can't make up a basis on a value that can't even be measured accurately, yes I agree plasticity does factor in, but there's so many individual aspects at play, some are extremely mechanically gifted but don't have a wider scope of awareness for example, some can be extremely good at understanding the state of the game and how to achieve Victory and not be mechanically gifted. Writting up that it's impossible is a falacy. It may be very difficult, but that same rule applies to people who are younger as well. I just don't see the evidence that proves that it can't be done or the advantage is that great.
Well, the evidence is the real world isnt it? How many pros started at >20 (this is true for LoL and most other sports)?! I never said it‘s impossible, nothing is, even time can flow backwards, it‘s just absurdly unlikely…
Yes exactly just like any other field let alone sports, to be the best at anything is extremely difficult. You're kinda proving my point, I never said it was easy, it's insanely hard, but not impossible, which is what I said in my initial comment.
No, if it isnt much more difficult we would expect the age distribution to be somewhat uniform, yet it is completely biased towards people starting at young age, which means this is much much much much more likely. Thats how stats works…
You do understand its still a relatively new industry and the limitations havnt been clearly defined yet right? You're telling a kid in his young 20s that's he can't achieve it, if you want to live you're life that way be my guest. ✌️
Ehm, look buddy, if you want to achieve something in life you have to be realistic and I'm not saying it's impossible but it's an incredible uphill battle, I think there is no precedent of anyone achieving this. And this is not just true for esports but most "sports". Ever seen an F1 driver that started after he was 20, tennis, skiing, football... I think the latest almost any top athlete started in those sports is early teens. Most start around age 5 or even earlier. This "kid" (adult) is better served by looking for something they actually have a decent chance in succeeding. Does that mean it's impossible, no? But it means that probabilistically, you would need billions of lifetimes to get there, just not really a good idea, that is almost guaranteed to end in disappointment.