The Rocket League Esports scene has been put in the hot seat as RLCS team organizations have shown their concerns for the next RLCS season with a letter to Psyonix. This letter was mostly focusing on the fact that the organization should not be hearing about events/schedule at the same time as fans do. To which I say sounds fair. You can't market your teams properly if you aren't given enough time to advertise. It's a no brainier. When this story broke, many members of the community (falsely in my opinion) smelt hints of franchising. The reason why people were speculating the idea of franchising was when the letter also brought up that the players have more control of the teams then the actual organizations do. I'm not going to deep dive into the politics of this, because there are strong points to both sides of this arguments. Nonetheless, the idea of Rocket League going the franchise route tickled my fancy and I also know franchising is a literal wet dream for a lot of you Rocket League fans especially those fans that want to turn Rocket League into a full blown "sport".
When I hear "franchising" I think about the failure of the Championship Gaming Series (2006-2008) or the current drowning of the Overwatch League. The CGS failure can be heavily contributed to the lack of interest in esports at that time. However, the Overwatch League has a list of reasons why it's a failing league and why many people don't pay attention to the it. Personally, I hate watching players get their personalities snuffed out for the sack of possibly triggering fans or sponsors. Without a doubt if a player crosses a line deal with it when that shit happens, but I feel like these Overwatch players aren't able to make story-lines because they aren't even allowed to start them. If I heard xQc had major beef with one of of his opponents I'd be WAY more interested in tuning into that match just to see the outcome. Sadly and honestly I tune into the Overwatch League whenever I hear more about it failing. It's a lot like watching a car wreck or the continuation of a growing meme. When Sinatra, the MVP of the Overwatch League, literally bailed on Overwatch mid-season for Valorant I watched the first San Francisco Shock match without him. It's not a good look. The way Blizzard runs the Overwatch League really doesn't make for good entertainment. On the contrary the Call of Duty League hit the nail on the head with EVERYTHING (as of now). They knew the structure of a "regular season" sucked with location based franchising. Fans pay a pretty penny for a ticket and in many cases these fans travel just to see their favorite/home team play. Sadly, CDL teams during the old format would only play one or two matches during the weekend. In other words BORING and not the best in regards to fan service. The way around this problem? Turn EVERY event in a tournament format and give points based off the placement of these tournaments throughout the season. This adds a ton of MEANING and EXCITEMENT to the events. What Blizzard/Activision did is the literal definition of "fan service". In addition to their format I also noticed that they allow their players a ton of freedom when it comes to speaking their minds or showing hype on stage. I do enjoy the fact that they know when they interview a player before or after a match that a lot of emotion/passion may be thrown on that mic and when you watch LIVE they let it rock. However, when you watch the uploaded stream on Youtube they do censor or edit some of it out which I am down with. It is the best of both worlds if you ask me. Rocket League franchising I will admit DOES make a lot of sense. I mean shit the game is literally a hybrid of soccer and hockey. Location based teams could fit with the game as well, BUT once again I do not feel Rocket League really needs this to blow up in the esports realm because it already has blown up. I also feel like since we have had 4 years under our belts with the current format in RLCS it would then make franchising a bit tougher. Wrap your brain around this loyal reader, you are a Cloud9 fan from Boston. During the off-season Rocket League goes to a city based franchising model. Now Cloud9's team is called the London Lunatics. That just sucks ass for that C9 fan. Is it a big deal? Probably not, but I hope if franchising does become a thing we don't go city based with it. And as I hinted in the beginning of this blog I hope we don't go with the same franchising playbook as the Overwatch League. We got to let these players show off their personalities. Personalities create story-lines and story-lines breathe a lot of life into a games competitive scene. Story-lines EVEN play (though small) part into keeping a competitive scene alive. I must reiterate, all this franchising shit is all hypothetical and I only decided to blog this because you guys were filling up my timeline for weeks theory crafting what Rocket League franchising would look like. And the narcissist in me felt like you guys wanted to read my take on the whole thing. SO I DID.
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Former Reciprocity, NOW Oxygen Esports has made what I have to say is the biggest move of this offseason...so far. The Mechanical God Aztral of Dignitas has been signed to Oxygen after they dropped Fruity. Making Oxygen Esports consist of Ferra, Chausette, and Aztral. You can't go wrong with this move, Fruity may not have been the single cause of their struggles last season, but from what I was watching he felt like the most obvious odd duck on their team. The community likes to paint Fruity as "the 3rd man" or "back player" and in this new day and age of Professional Rocket League and with the game getting faster, you need to be able to do it ALL. Aztral brings the speed to this team that they so desperately need. He also is just simply better than Fruity in all aspects of this game.....well passing is a bit of struggle. Aztral REALLY doesn't like to dish the ball to his teammates, but who the fuck actually likes passing. Yuck.
I always feel when I write about this kind of stuff I have to start the blog off with a disclaimer. I want you all to know that I 100% don't give a shit what you "identify as". If you want to identify as a can of tuna, go for it, will you ever convince me you are a can of tuna? ABSOLUTELY NOT, but it's your life you do what you want with it. I have to disclose this kind of thing because we are talking about FerociouslySteph (a woman who identifies as a Deer) and the dumb, racist, and just wrong statement she said about gamers. FerociouslySteph on her stream and with GREAT confidence might I add said "I think a lot of you gamers are actually white supremacist". When I watched this clip, I look myself in the mirror with DISGUST. How could I have been so naive? How did I not put it together? White Skin + Gamer = Giant White pillowcase collection. What an IDIOTIC take. Now to be even more clear I don't believe this clip even comes close to being an issue OR going as viral as it did if she didn't have the position in Twitch that she has. FerociouslySteph is part of the Twitch safety council. From my sources, all this really means is once or twice a month "the council" joins a conference call with Twitch corporate and they discuss Twitch Term of Services. They bring up rules that need to be adjusted, revised, created, etc. On paper the goal is to make the Twitch T.O.S more transparent and easier for content creators to know where the line is drawn and where it can't be crossed. And Steph without a doubt needs to be removed from this council. She has literally PROVEN that she is part of the problem that her position as a member of the safety council is trying to combat. Unfortunately, I don't think that Twitch will remove a trans, deer identifying, woman from her position ONLY because that would completely fuck with the message Twitch wants nowadays. People should be kept OR fired NOT because of their race, religion, political/social stance, etc. They should be kept or fired based off their QUALITY of work and what FerociouslySteph did was display a terrible, garbage quality of work. Not sure what the deal is, but my Twitter timeline has been filling up with people complaining about toxicity in their games and I am truly shocked at what people consider "Toxic" nowadays. I come from a time where if you weren't called a "faggot" during a post-game lobby you probably weren't shitting on people as hard as you thought you were. Don't get me wrong, you shouldn't be throwing words like that around, but if you want to, bless your soul and good luck making friends with that kind of behavior. To me, you got to cross a line to be toxic and I will be the first to admit, my "line" is harder to cross compared to most people on the internet. My line is crossed when the toxic person is intentionally trying to throw a game. That to me is toxic as fuck. If you want to talk shit go for it, it's my fault if I'm allowing someone's words to effect my play and if that was the case I need to work on my mental game. Someone throwing a match is something I can't control, it's not something I can ignore and just keep playing. In other words my view of toxicity is something that someone does to break your in-game experience outside of just shit talking. If you are someone that gets titled or offended by trash talking in a COMPETITIVE game you need to realize where you are.....the internet. Most games do offer mute options so I do suggest using that if your game does offer it and if YOUR "LINE" was crossed most games also have a report player option.
With my full-time job being weird due to the COVID-19 pandemic I have had nothing, but TIME to practice my main game Rocket League. It has been a blast going back to my "younger days" where I had the time to grind something for more than two hours a day. With this increase of time I have seen INSANE improvements and it just puts a smile on my narcissistic soul. With such a grind, I have been wanting to dabble with other "competitive" games after my Rocket League sessions. Of course if you guys haven't tuned into the stream (Twitch.tv/Nicktacular) I have blessed/cursed the Valorant community with my presence and I can NOT wait to see what happens with that games future. The Valorant grind has for some unknown reason tickled my want to play Overwatch.....something I have NOT played since its release in May of 2016. After virtually dusting my Battle.net launcher off and downloading some updates I began my dive into Overwatch. The more I played Overwatch the more I realized my opinion of the game literally has not changed. I put Overwatch in the same category as...(you may want to fight me over this) Fortnite. Put your pitchforks down and let me explain. I fucking hate Fortnite in regards to a balanced and competitive game because well...IT'S NOT, but you put a six pack of Guinness, some shots of Fireball on my desk and put me in a party with my equally drunk friends Fortnite will deliver some of the best times you'll have in gaming. Overwatch in my opinion is a lot like that. The game is much much more competitively mindset, but you don't have to go super fucking sweaty to feel like you contributed to a match. This entices my non-FPS playing friends to give this game a try. A lot like Fortnite, I have had some of the most fun when I have a squad of friends and we just head butt the objective over and over and over again. Before you Overwatch diehards come at my throat for not recognizing the Overwatch League and it's esports scene.... let me tell you something I got nothing but love for people that grind and compete in Overwatch if it's your jam get nutty with it. However, I am not the only one with this opinion, but your game is so god damn hard to follow from a spectators perspective and this is coming from a guy who used to watch Quake CTF tournaments....google that shit. I think that's where Overwatch and it's current decline is heavily caused by. The average first time watcher is going to be so intimidated by the amount of unexplained chaos that is plastered on their screen that they're just going to dip from the stream all together and never comeback. To bring it back to reality I am having a great time playing Overwatch and have no intention of trying to get better at the game or care about what's going on in the Overwatch League but I will totally be playing more of it. I was grinding my remaining unranked games in order to unlock the competitive/ranked mode in Valorant when someone in the game chat was bringing up how "a lot of big streamers are leaving Valorant" and if that is good for the scene. I'm going to be 100 percent real with you ALL. The game is fun, and it may need a touch of adjustments, but if you have a complete run and gun mentality and no previous round based shooter experience (CS:GO, Search and Destroy in COD) you may not do well in this game. Individual performances generally determines how one likes or dislikes a game. I'll use DrDisRespect as an example. He has been very vocal about his dislike for the pace of the game and that to me makes sense. The Doc, from what I have seen, plays very minimal Counter Strike, but has a heavy Call of Duty and Battle Royale background...lots of moving forward, aggressive play, tons of gunfights, and EXPLOSIONS!! This way of playing rarely works in games like Valorant. Playing aggressive in Valorant works when you have gained Intel on your opponents....which takes time, patience which a lot of people struggle with. I will admit Valorant does shit the bed from a viewing experience. It's slow, a lot of things are thrown around, walls going up, walls going down, smokes here, smoke there, meanwhile while players a jiggle peeking and nothing (from an untrained eye) is getting done. In these kind of moments you lose a lot interest from people. Which is weird to me, because I can watch Counter-Strike tournaments ALL GOD DAMN day. Maybe this is do to CS:GO having a way more in-depth spectator mode then what we currently have in Valorant (psst it's still in beta). We CAN'T forget Counter Strike houses THE BEST in on-air personalities as well to help that viewing experience like Semmler, Anders, Moses, Machine, HenryG, Thorin, the list could easily go on. In the end I think Valorant will be fine once this game officially releases. We need not to worry about these "big name" streamers sticking around, most of these kind of streamers play whatever is "hot off the press" anyways. Keep playing what you love and good luck on the grind.
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