COG Situation

This will probably be one of the only twitlongers I ever write, because I am not a huge fan of how open competitive smite teams/players are in general. Call me old fashion, but I like to keep things inhouse, out of respect for my teammates, as they do in professional sports for the most part. Anyway, COG will obviously be undergoing roster changes and whether that involves me or doesn't is unknown at this point. There is a ton of time in which those who didn't make worlds will largely be doing nothing in the way of smite. Therefore, I feel there is no hurry for me to jump to any decisions, especially immediately after a tourney in which people were clearly not satisfied with the result.



I mostly keep to myself and don't really let people in on the dynamic of my teams or even me individually, as I don't think that is always the most appropriate course of action. However, given everyone's recent posts and chatter I will shed light on the scenario. Our roster was thrown into the gauntlet last minute in an attempt to do our best and do what we love, play smite. This was made very difficult with our inability to ever find scrims against quality teams. Just playing in general also became very frustrating for all of us in our own ways. All the guys on the team were great and enjoyable to be around for the most part. Although, there was clear differences among all of us.

One of the most disheartening traits of our team was the lack of seriousness and competitive nature. After being the ingame leader of a top 3 NA Counter-Strike 1.6 team for many, many years I was used to going into a server and throwing the same few flash or smoke grenades for 4 hours straight. Was this enjoyable? Absolutely not, but we all did it because it was what you needed to do to win in a game with more than a half million players. In smite it has been hard to get people to have sustained constructive conversations about picks and bans, replays, etc. While smite is more forgiving, with a small player base that doesn't require the same level of dedication, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be willing to go the extra mile in my eyes. Hardwork and laziness are both infectious, in the real world and in competitive video games.



Another discouraging area was our lack of team chemistry in, but more importantly out of game. This was something that really rubbed me the wrong way not only about our team, but about a lot of other teams. Hearing so many negative things said about people's teammates and about how certain players were actually going to be replaced within the last week before Super Regionals was sad. In Counter-Strike teammates would always hangout after scrims and at LAN, because they really were good friends. Being an athlete all my life I really never needed more friends via searching the depths of the internet, but the reality is I found them. One of my old teammates ended up being my best friend, someone I will likely ask to be my best man at my wedding in the distance future. Even those who weren't this close still had a sense of comradery that was amazing. To give you an example, summit1g was my teammate for about a year, not all that long, and even he invited me to his wedding because of the relationship we developed over that year. Maybe this difference is because smite is so small and teammates are sometimes chosen out of necessity, but it's not fun to see. Teams, in my eyes, are largely successful because of their hardwork and partnership with one and other.



This post is not to call anyone out, or place blame on others. It is simply a reflection on my experience in two different communities. I know that I could have played better this split. I also know I could have been a better teammate and leader myself. I take a large amount of the responsibility for our team not finishing as strongly as we would have liked, but I thought this would be a good time to show a sense of transparency that I haven't shown the smite community up until this point.



There is no doubt I am not the easiest person to play with. I am stern, very serious, and sometimes flat out rude. At the end of the day though it's because I care on a level that a lot of people probably can't relate to. I hate losing to a borderline pathological level. It's been hard going from an environment in which you have a 95% win rate and the top players quote you as one of the most influential leaders in their careers, to one where you can hardly find a scrim or hold people's attention for more than 10 minutes. I also think that my difficulties were made easier in other games because of the strong bonds that I shared with my teammates and maybe I could have done a better job of building those bonds in this game. I am really thankful for Aror's presence in the team, as he was kind of an example of this. We fought a lot online and during scrims, but this was largely because we shared a lot of similarities, goals and held a similar mindset. No surprise, we ultimately got along extremely well at LAN.



At the end of the day, I still love the game of smite and we will see what happens in the coming months. Congrats to the teams that get to keep playing and good luck to everyone now stuck in purgatory or who have decided to move on from smite/gaming. As a reminder, I am not leaving/quiting/xboxing or anything really until some time passes. For now I will be playing a mixture of smite, paladins, overwatch beta, and CS:GO.



Reply · Report Post