The atmosphere of any competitive team in any game is always improvement. Inherited from the team being "competitive". That is not something that I think anyone'd argue to change. However, the undertones of team environments are of astronomical importance.

There's a trend in Overwatch where players will make it to Contenders Trials or Contenders, and quit. It seems incredibly back-asswards from the outside looking in. But it actually makes a lot of sense to me. When you move up a tier, the undertones of the environment change.

You're no longer playing a game with the boys and having a laugh. Before you object, you lil Literal Larry you, yes, you are still playing games just the same as you were before, but the atmosphere is no where near the same.

In Overwatch, due to the general *low* expectation for OWL's run-time as a league, it quickly becomes "Every fight, every set, every mistake will make or break my chances for OWL".

It happens very quickly to literally every competitive team. It's bad.

Yes, your results impact your career. But you did not get good at Overwatch by worrying about results. You got good at Overwatch because you loved the game and loved playing it. Getting good was a by-product of having fun.

If you spend every second in-game worrying about how any little mistake can ruin your chances of OWL, or become the next person to get relentlessly flamed for fucking up an ult a few times in a row, guess what?

It's more likely to not go your way.

Grind. Practice. Keep your head up. But stop subjecting yourselves to this archaic non-sense of "it's a lifestyle". Stop taking it so seriously. The best teams in the world are still going to be having fun. They still love the game.

But if you're in trials/contenders, you cannot justify competing if you are not having fun. There is no money for you here, we all know that. It's T2. If you are here for any other reason other than you fucking love playing the game, you're here for the wrong reason.

Not even a year ago I had a completely different perspective on this. However, after retiring, taking time to just enjoy games, Overwatch and more, I quickly realized how wrong I was.

I always played my best individually when I was in love with the game and the team I was on.

If your team environment is not fun, it's wrong.

Yes, this is a job. Technically speaking. It is. But if anyone was playing T2 for the money they would've quit around the same time Xfinity controlled the salaries of 3 contenders teams at once and lowered the average by $2,000/m.

I'd love to start a conversation about this.

Ultimately, this is a main contributing factor as to why I retired. The environment on TI was fucking amazing. But it wasn't enough to bring me back to what it used to feel like to play with the boys and not care.

To add, when I practiced in the same room as some of the TI CS:GO roster, the first thing I noticed was how relaxed they were in scrims/officials. They were passionate, driven, phenomenal players. They still are. But above all of that, they were having fun.

TI CS:GO won advanced and made MDL this past season. When that happened I took it upon myself to go around and ask some friends who play professionally in other games how the environment is.

Every one, except for League players, said basically the same thing as what I described.

Also, if you just got shit on by DarkMode or any other pug team comprised of mechanically good individuals, here's a hint:

They were having more fun than you and had nothing to lose. You had your ego on the line and more than likely took it way too seriously.

PUG teams are fucking bad but they seemingly win so God damn always. So why? What do they do that makes them actual contenders in t2 tournaments?

Stupid comps? Eh, on occasion, sure.

But realistically it's the fact that they aren't caught up in a 14 step master-plan written in invisible ink on the back of the declaration of independence that instructs them on how to rotate thru nexus to take Pylon on Blizzard World point second. They're just gaming.

All they have to go off of is their intuition. The intuition that's been built up by thousands of hours of playing the game.

If that beats you, take a look at two things:

Do you let yourself trust your intuition in game?
How good/bad is your prep as a team/individual?