Challenger life: Experience

My name is Kenneth "ExecutionerKen" Tang. For people that do not know me, I am a challenger support player that had been in and out of the challenger scene for couple years. Most notable achievements includes subbing for Evil Genius for two weeks (1.5 years ago, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlcY-oP1c1Q), defeating and kicking Quantic's Korean squad (Apple, Prime, Suno, Loco, Gunza) out of one of the NA promotional tournament.



And for most of the people that know me, I tend to be regarded as a subpar free lancer. The one that can be picked up and expect to do well against lower challenger tier players, and held his own against the better ones. No surprises however, and I rarely becomes a major factor in any game. (As a matter of fact, my scrims result tend to vary as well, and I only perform consistently in a tournament setting.)



This post is more about the experience and problems that I had, and hopefully the ones that read it will not repeat my mistakes. If you are looking for drama, save your popcorns for a later time. I have no intention to burn any bridges (or maybe I will save it for a later time). Please keep in mind that I am just looking for something to do at 4AM in the morning, therefore grammar and essay structural is not in my consideration, take what you want and ignore the rest.



Expectations: For new/ semi-competitive players. First and foremost you must understand: League is just like any other competitive sports. You work hard and MAYBE you will have a chance. Being talented is good, hardworking is a plus; but having both doesn't mean you will have your opportunities. You must grind and earn the CHANCE to have opportunity. Most often time they don't come in on a silver platter (outliner. Kieth's TL games -> TSM tryout).



And you don't have neither, stop. Play the game for fun, Laugh with your friends with troll builds and team comp. Enjoy your friendship and social life.



If you believe you have what it takes, nice. Next thing you need to do will be looking for a team and learn to play as a competitive player. There is a major differences between solo queue and competitive 5s. In NA we do a really poor job at separating them. Most often lower-tier challenger teams are just five random players playing solo queue on voice comm.



First real advice: Plan ahead.

Personally I am stuck in a really bad spot academically. I had finished all my general education requirement in college, yet I do not know what I shall be pursuing in the future.



So I would like to remind everyone, try to predict and force yourself to make a decision within a specific time frame. It is completely fine to take a year off in between to try and test different things, but never, ever, allow yourself to overlap your education and pursuing gaming at the same time. It will fuck you over, it doesn't matter if you have the ability to multi-task and do both jobs at a high level. If you focus on only ONE, you will always be better on that one specific subject.



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Problems

The challenger scene suffers from a lot of problems. On structural side, we lack a good foundation. Reliable organizations, money, management staff etc. Aside from the very few top tier org (For NA example would be Coast, C9, RNG, Vortex *note: Yes, Vortex does have support staff) most other, if not all organizations, have extremely awful managing and planning. I would even recommend players to stay away from contracts until you have secure a spot in the NACS. Quite frankly if you do not need any support to achieve that, then you actually have real value and chance to pursue your dream, and the orgs that can help you will be interested in investing in you. This also allows you to avoid those shady contracts. (note* read your contract before signing)





Management:

Management system (for NA challenger scene at least) is a complete mess. Currently most of the managers are passionate gamer that lacks the ability to become a competitive player, therefore they take a step down and become a manager. While this is extremely good to start off an amateur scene, it is very bad if we are to treat League as a real sport. We do not have qualified personal to handle these positions. I do not expect us to have manager on a super professional fashion like Fnatic's manager IzpAH and coach Deilor, but I definitely don't want to see a dozen of managers that can't even properly schedule and organize a scrim schedule with google/ excel sheet.



Improving as a whole: There are too many people that are just playing the game, thinking they will improve via grinding. To keep it simple:



System to improve(Individually):

Plan, set a goal, test (solo queue/ 5s), watch replay and find your mistakes, modify your plan and continue with the goal.

*(Ask higher ranked friends -non one trick pony- to look at your replay if you can't find mistakes).



System to improve(Group):

Plan, and set a direction.

MOCK DRAFT

Test your desired champion picks (solo queue, 5s)

Work in smaller groups when all 5 cannot be presented at the same time (Top/jng duo, mid/jng, ad/sup, jng/sup etc.)

Play as a group

Watch replay and go over mistakes.

*ASK PERSON WHOSE NOT ON YOUR TEAM FOR THEIR OPINIONS (if you don't need to hide anything)

Rinse and repeat.



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Personal notes: Expectation on future:



I believe League will continue to grow for another two years. After that will be completely depend on whether there is any competitions worthy to compete against League. League still have the advantage over Dota as League is a lot easier. However it is also setting a barrier on itself, as new players are in a consistent struggle against smurfs, lack of IP, and playing the catchup games compare to the veteran of the game.



Money are starting to flow into the challenger scene as people start to realize the potential of the e-sport market. However there will always be scam/ shady stuff, so please be mindful with just about everything.



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