x0tek
@x0tek
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competitor. prev: Cloud9, Soniqs, AG, Anubis, ESL
practicing
Joined June 2014
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holy shit Valorant Premier is way bigger than you think
Look at the numbers:
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some optimism:
it's actually wild seeing so many women play Valorant
no other tac FPS has come close to this level of representation, either at the casual or competitive level. it's awesome, and if anything should convince you the game is here to stay, it's this.
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Top GC players are retiring left and right.
Org investment is at an all time low.
Is it Riot's fault, for not investing more? The players, for not competing in co-ed events? Something else?
Now that GC Series 2 is over, let's talk.
a thread.
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There are few things more toxic than insecure underperforming young adult males
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Today, some last minute issues caused us to be 2 minutes late to our match with
@Immortals
Thankfully, they graciously agreed to wait and play anyway.
@nerdstreetval
however, decided that we should be DQ'd instead.
Our bad.
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A lot of people recommend "studying vods" but it's rare that they dive into what that actually looks like.
If you're a competitor, there are several ways to watch games this
#VALORANTChampions
to get the most out of them.
Here are a few of them:
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IGL tip
#207
It's easier to speed up than slow down, both psychologically and tactically.
After a string of lost rounds, slowing down can often make you feel lethargic or desperate, with no clear plan. Especially if the other team begins to pick up their tempo at the same time.
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Study after study have suggested a simple truth.
A truth that your skill is based solely on the amount of hours of effective practice you put into your area of focus.
This is true across track athletes, golfers, musicians, and every skill-based endeavor yet tested.
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I guess the next pause I'm telling my team every setup the other team is using, where they're using their util, how they're defaulting, rotating, etc.
We'll use this since it's allowed (haven't up until this point), but this needs to change ASAP...
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At 9, Mozart was writing symphonies, yes.
But by the age of 5, his father had already made him practice music for thousands of hours.
At 3, Tiger Woods started playing golf, yes.
But at 6 months old, his father was already giving him small golf clubs to hold and swing.
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"Talent" is the idea that some people are more skilled, or learn a skill more quickly, than other people due to some innate ability.
We see a young Mozart playing a symphony, and call it talent. Tiger Woods golfs at 4 years old, and we call him gifted.
This idea is false.
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Anyone who wants to learn to IGL should study how Boaster does it. Not just the in-game calling, but the way he interacts with his team, the actual leadership.
You don't have to be that type of personality - there are tons of styles you can pick from. But Boaster is fantastic.
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There's been a crazy amount of discourse regarding Clove and their pronouns.
Now, the discourse is overwhelmingly positive, with content creators and casuals alike expressing support. Pog
But there's still a huge undercurrent of negativity beneath.
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I don't believe most of the people who "don't get it" are bad people.
They're taught that there are 2 genders, that it's a law of the universe. Like gravity, or math.
They were raised that way, and their own social media bubble doesn't help.
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Riot has done a fantastic job balancing the game
most agents are viable on most maps, and all agents are viable on at least one map
that's pretty dang impressive
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This is just as true for pronouns, or anything you call someone.
We introduce ourselves how we wish to be seen.
If you tell me your name, and I go "nah, you look like a Craig, so I'm gonna call you Craig", I'm allowed to do that.
But you're allowed to show me the door
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Anyone can become good, anyone can become great.
It's simply a matter of putting in the work.
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However, it's important to realize that using "they" to talk about one person is something you already do every day!
Let me explain.
Imagine this situation. I come up to you. "Oh my Gosh, I need you to google someone for me."
You pull out their phone. "What's their name?"
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Let's look at hockey.
In Canada, if you're born in the first 3 months of the year, you're more than 200% more likely to be drafted as a pro hockey player. Why? Not because of your astrological chart, your DNA, or anything of the sort.
Rather, it has to do with your experience.
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You use the singular "they" every day in your life without thinking about it.
We have a new professor next semester.
"What's their name?"
Yo there's a new artist I've been listening to.
"Who are they?"
This girl keeps looking at me 👀
"They're into u bro."
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I know everyone is cooking the Neon guy, but it's an event of aim trainers vs FPS pros
Of course the pro aim trainers are going to win
It'd be like taking professional NFL players vs competitive powerlifters in a weightlifting competition
Fun to see, but doesn't say much
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At that point, there's nothing making you call them Christian.
You're not legally required to, you are absolutely entitled to call them whatever you want. You aren't evil if you call them Josh.
But if you do, you are being an asshole.
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Trick: waiting until someone pisses you off to expose their racism is wack
Random people: WOW you're defending racism, sickening
you all have the collective IQ of a small golden retriever
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Reading the replies to that tweet is a bit sad. Overwhelming subtle sexism is on display.
"Valorant is a simple game"
"Val is for edating, girls get boosted more by their boyfriends"
"You can 5 stack to inflate your ELO"
"Val lets you rank up easier"
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Being born so early means that come school, you're slightly more coordinated and stronger than your fellow students.
A few months at a young age matters a ton.
The same kid born in January may look like an absolute athlete at 8, compared to their still 7-years-old classmates.
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One of the most common things I hear is, "Look, I'm trying to understand but...what are you supposed to call someone who's non-binary? It? Sh-im?
I can't say they, it's only one person. What if I have to make a callout in a 2v2, saying 'they' would get my teammate killed."
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Imagine if you didn't.
There's a new person dropping off a package today.
"Oh, what's his or her name?" vs "Oh, what's their name?"
Dude ShetlandPuppy69 is so bad at the game.
"Isn't he or she a streamer?" vs "Aren't they a streamer?"
It's instantly way more awkward
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team/org revenue idea:
"access pass", $10 a month
you get scrim highlights, funny moments, practice routines / schedules, Q&A with players, advice, early content
if even 1k people buy it, you're covering a chunk of costs and proving to investors you can monetize your fanbase
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But let's set aside the grammar.
Imagine the following.
Someone tells you, "Well, my first name is Joshua, but I go by middle name Christian."
And you go "Well your name is Joshua, so that's what I'm calling you."
Them: "Please do not. I go by Christian."
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This was the first international Valorant event since 2021 where the winning team didn't have a player in the top 5
It shows how well rounded Sentinels was as a squad, crazy performance
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Val has, from almost day 1, tried incredibly hard to market itself to girls as well as guys.
From the Gamechangers efforts, to cute promotional materials, to more inclusive worldbuilding.
Couple that with a shift toward more women in gaming in general, and, well...
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??
I will buy the Sentinels bundle for anyone who can tell me how this happened and replicate it
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Is it any surprise more women will be at the top?
I am extremely confident that some of the girls growing up today will eventually be world champions.
This isn't basketball, or football, where your biological bone mass and muscle fibers limit you.
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Growing up, my teachers in elementary school would yell at me for using "they" instead of "he or she" when I wrote
Even in middle school, I would fail assignments because of it
So I can easily understand someone growing up with these beliefs
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One of the most underrated things you can do as a competitor is simply be present for your team.
Stay on Discord or Teamspeak after practice ends, get to know one another. Laugh, have fun. Invite them to Vod review or DM with you.
Set the example, and they'll soon follow it.
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From Anders Ericsson, the expert on experts...
"It's impossible to prove something doesn't exist...but in my 20 years of studying experts in every field, I've never found something resembling 'natural talent'. Skill has always been the result of years of deliberate practice."
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Is it any wonder, then, that they seem like "natural athletes"?
Is it any wonder that later in life, those born in the first quarter of the year make up nearly 40% of the draftees, and those born in the last quarter closer to 10%?
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Parents pay attention. They encourage these kids, enrolling them in sports and events - promoting them where their "less-athletic" peers might be nudged to other avenues.
By the time secondary school comes around, these kids have hundreds of hours more practice than their peers.
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There is still a long way to go.
Systemic sexism is rampant, even in a game as inclusive as Val.
It's not just the sexism faced by players in casual settings. Even some Gamechangers teams and staff and don't truly believe they could compete at the highest levels.
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I spent 3 hours analyzing Lotus so you didn't have to.
to start off: the Lotus Agent Tier list.
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people saying "just remove crosshair when your stunned" have never played a game where you can accurately quickscope
it doesnt do anything at the highest levels
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While those might be true for a handful of individual cases, there is a far more fundamental reason across the board:
Representation.
Consider Chess.
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instead of trying to rizz your way into their arms
just be genuinely interested in them as a person
trust me, the hot girl you're DMing has WAY more practice seeing through intentions than you do at hiding them
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Ultimately, as the face of Game Changers NA, we should be held to the highest standard.
And as the coach, the blame falls squarely on my shoulders.
However, never in 18 years of competing have I faced a FF loss being 120 seconds late, with both teams willing and online to play.
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And yet...the average rating of a girl player is higher than the average rating of a guy.
Wait, what? How is that possible?
While there might be several reasons, a large one is that a huge majority of the community has always been male - 80-90+ percent.
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Val is a game of skill (well...sometimes haha). And as more and more women get involved, it's natural that more and more will be represented at the top level.
It wouldn't surprise me if, as is true in Chess, the average rank of a girl player is higher than that of a guy.
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3-1 over Shopify Rebellion to win
@Cloud9
's 6th
#vctgamechangers
title
3-9 and 4-10 comebacks to close out maps 3 & 4
Incredibly proud of everyone
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Look at aim training the way an athlete looks at going to the gym.
Will it improve your aim?
Yes, but not directly. So many factors go into in-game aim: crosshair placement, recognition, movement, recoil, and more
Aim trainers only improve one piece - mouse control.
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Let's take a moment to separate the idea of "performance" from "skill".
You might be the most skilled basketball player on earth, able to do magical, astonishing things with the ball.
But if you're only 4 feet tall, you're less likely to dominate in the NBA.
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2) "This idea is evil, you'll make people waste time!"
To the contrary. Success is never guaranteed, no matter your starting position or actions.
Research tells us that, despite this truth, success is almost always possible.
To me, that is a very optimistic and hopeful idea.
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Sharing this is not a good look...
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Representation matters.
If you have a much larger group of men, then it's a statistical certainty that the best (and worst) players come from that group.
Now think about Valorant.
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if someone wants to be called they/them, who cares? you've done this your whole life without thinking
"we had a new substitute teacher in math today"
"oh? what was THEIR name?"
it's just rude if you don't call someone what they ask you to
not that crazy a concept
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LFT, officially released from
@Cloud9
Happy with the progress we made, but unfortunately not all good things work out. The picture says it all, the red line is when I joined 4 months ago at rank 152
Incredibly lucky & grateful to have worked with the girls, I learned a lot.
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Gotta love the
@BreakThru_VAL
academy team canceling an entire afternoon of scrims without telling us, because they got offered a chance to last minute fill for a small tournament
Yikes, thanks for wasting our day
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Chess is a game of almost pure skill. Physicality barely matters. Yes, some endurance is required, and quick reflexes for speed chess.
Despite this, men dominate the top rankings. There isn't a single woman in the top 100 players. There has never been a female world champion.
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I see people saying "eh this isn't that important"
...are you kidding me? Being able to stand in the same position and visualize the util coming your way, and lab out the fights you took? Dozens of times in a few minutes?
That's insanely high value, esp for more common angles
Replay your VALORANT deaths in Aim Lab to make sure you never lose in those situations again. Welcome to Run It Back.
Run It Back is like timetravel for your VALORANT gameplay. Here's how it works 👇
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However, even among the sports most thoroughly dominated by physical attributes, such as basketball, there is still plenty of space to develop through skill alone.
T.J. Shorts (perhaps aptly named) is a 5'9 professional basketball player, and has been for the last 3 years.
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However, it is very likely that most average people could garner enough skill to become an elite-level player.
As I recently heard a sport psychologist say, "We know how to get basically any amateur athlete to the Olympics...but getting them to win 4 golds, now that's a trick."
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The weirdest thing about this is that you'd post it.
Like sure, Tim blew up here in a way that isn't cool. But like...you just talk to them 1 on 1 after. Like a normal person.
Running to Twitter for emotional support is incredibly uncalled for, especially as a would-be coach.
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Wanted to address / reiterate a few points people have brought up
1) "But genes matter in sport!"
The more physical a sport, the less skill and more other factors matters.
A 4'1 person will likely never make the NBA, even if skill-wise, they are the best player on Earth.
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People often say, "wow the stun is useless"
But the point of a stun isn't to get a free kill
Rather, it negates awps, they can't scope in
It stops movement, letting you pair with other util or take space
And it forces the player to hit their first bullet, no spraying
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3) "What about X who was a prodigy?"
While it's impossible to know every person's background, researchers have found that so-called prodigies, or those who succeed out of nowhere, honed and practiced those skills for much of their life, either in their domain or related ones.
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let's say a player isn't at the level they want, and isn't progressing fast enough for their goals
would you say
"that's okay, you're doing your best"
or "obviously you aren't working as hard or as smart as you need to be"
harsh perhaps, but only one of those can be true
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C9W, V1, and now XSET have all beaten multiple tier-2 teams in tournament.
C9W was one of the top 30 teams at one point, and placed 2nd in 2 different coed tournaments.
I might unpack this more later, but the idea that "women aren't doing it" is ignorant at best.
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I get storylines, but "dynasty"?
They've won 2 events
Heck, they even lost a regional event between them
And all this in a world where many other teams got worse due to the partnership shuffle
It's impressive but...dynasty, really?
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If you take a look at the lower divisions, at first it seems manageable. Between NA East and NA West, the bottom 2 divisions only combine for 178 teams.
That's around 800 players, but nothing too crazy.
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Why your IGL Sucks: a thread.
I had a discussion today with another Advanced IGL.
They made the argument that being the in-game leader fundamentally limits your ability to perform.
But is this really true? And if not, why?
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Pretty strong accusations from Slasher.
I can't speak to them specifically, but when C9W was a top 25ish team, multiple people received offers to trial for multiple coed teams.
Female VALORANT pro meL, reportedly has been turned away from trialing with Tier 1 teams due to male players not wanting to "play with women", according to
@Slasher
🔗
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Boaster really said "these noobs keep pushing us, let's just awp for the first 30 seconds"
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What role should an IGL play, other than "leader"?
Are some better than others?
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First, let's talk about the TOs.
The truth is, Raidiant did a pathetically bad job.
There were six qualifiers leading into Series 2. Six. And of those six, not a single match had a commentator. Not a grand final, not a major matchup, not a single GAME had commentary.
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@Shaftmug
did you read the thread?
I'm glad you mentioned the 100m race.
Did you know that only 1 person in the last 100 years has won the gold medal who was a firstborn child?
Because having older siblings as a child gives you more practice, literally, running to keep up with them.
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This Knights marks the 4th time a Gamechangers team has placed top 4 in a coed event
so far it's been:
Cloud9 White (2nd)
Cloud9 White (3rd)
Version1 (3rd)
Version1 (3rd)
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.
@QueenBobsta
the only non-duelist / Chamber in the top 18 players of GC
In her last best of 3, she only had 5 deaths in total.
Incredible
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A Challengers team just dropped two of its players.
I know Riot promised vague "poaching" protections, but it is going to be unbelievably unstable until rosters are hard locked.
no longer with
@turtletroopsval
appreciate the opportunity good luck to them ^_^ probably gonna take a bit of a break
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@MythrilSaber7
@TSM_Leffen
Dude. You have to be a bot. There's no way real people can be this delusional.
”He didn’t do it. Ok, he did. But the people accusing him tried to make him look worse in one small way! Burn them just as much, they’re liars!”
??????????
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These more than forty-thousand players feel enough of a connection to Valorant to not only play for themselves, but compete in Premier with their friends.
Not only to duo with, but an entire group of at least five people!
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I never understood hating people for practicing in a particular way
If you are destroying them 22-2 or 24-0 effortlessly, simply don't scrim them again until they get better
If you aren't, then hey awesome, you can learn from it
being annoyed is just useless ego
You are not PaperRex, you cannot run their comps and expect to win when you literally copy 1 thing from a VOD and then just run it down a lane. Fucking morons.
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Yet dozens of people volunteered to commentate. They were told "no thank you" or ignored.
Many people didn't even know the qualis were going on.
The marketing was bad, the production was bad, and - unsurprisingly - the viewership was bad.
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However, very quickly the sheer size of Premier starts to take shape.
Add in two more divisions?
The total teams jump up to 876.
Add in two more?
Those numbers more than double, to more than 2500 teams, and greater than twelve-thousand players.
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who cares if Shopify wants to play in open tournaments
it's weird they weren't playing under "Shopify", since it hurts lower-team rating significantly
(99 strength lost 21 elo in the finals, and would have lost 3 if it was the actual team)
but otherwise, it's an open event..?
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It seems like most analysts and coaches think Yoru is really strong
Why do you think so few teams run him?
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