Is the Current Counter-Strike Talent Pipeline Incentivizing the Wrong Kind of Talent?
One of the eternal questions of life has always been the nature versus nurture debate. Are the times the mechanism that gives birth to great men, or conversely, were those great men always fated to be born and ultimately mold the times as they see fit? Over time, at least in my eyes, the solution to this debate has seemingly come out to be that it requires a proper balance. No man can be pushed to do great things unless the capacity to do so already exists innately within them. Be that as it may, nature unequivocally does play a role in creating an environment and incentive structure that pushes men down the path of greatness. A phenomenal example of this could be the tumultuous times of the American Revolution, I do not think it is pure happenstance that this time full of political turmoil also produced some of the greatest political luminaries that the American system has seen till this point. The times themselves necessitated the creation of these near-mythical individuals.
Similarly, in Counter-Strike there is an amateur infrastructure that grafts and molds the claylike pieces of talent that come into the scene completely untouched. The problem with this amateur infrastructure is that it sort of acts as a selection filter that is currently filtering for specific aspects of the game while leaving out ancillary, but still important, aspects of the game. A great example of this is the current ESEA matchmaking client, an environment that is inundated by the ubiquitous presence of RWS (Round Win Shares). RWS functions as a statistic that accrues based on how much damage you do to the opposing teams on rounds you win, a simple heuristic that has devastating consequences. The gameplay issues that arise due to RWS occur because RWS incentivizes gameplay that is antithetical to what Counter-Strike at the highest level of execution demands. Take, for anecdotal purposes, an eco round where the ct team is in a man-advantaged situation. RWS, as not only a statistical metric but also a vector that individuals utilize in order to climb the ranks of teams on the ladder, incentivizes the CTs to push in the situation rather than playing the odds and hold map control.
Another example of an incorrect incentive for talent development within the Counter-Strike ecosystem has to be FPL/Rank S. FPL (Faceit Pro League) and Rank S (Esea’s analog) function as pickup matchmaking ladders for pro-level players, and high-level amateurs who have managed to grind the ladder to reach that point. Furthermore, there has been a decent crop of talent that has actually sprung up from FPL with the foremost name amongst them being Mouz’s resident superstar, Ropz. Clearly, this environment is one that is able to nurture and produce talents that are capable of matching up skill-wise to any other player within the scene. The problem that arises, however, is that this same environment does not necessarily provide the evolutionary environment that would help select players who fulfill different roles. An individual whose skills are best suited for roles such as a bombsite anchor, or an entry fragger, is not the one who would stand out in a puggy environment like FPL. By putting an inordinate amount of weightage on amateur incentive structures such as FPL the Counter-Strike ecosystem is naturally selecting for a specific type of player whose skills might not necessarily translate to all aspects of the game.
The final illustration of the poor infrastructure that is currently set up for the selection of amateur Counter-Strike talent is the lack of investment into proper in-game leaders. Take for example Karrigan, one of the greatest in-game leaders to ever grace the game of Counter-Strike. When he hit the open market he did not seem to get the same level of interest that a star rifler at a comparative level of success would have. Take Team Liquid for example, at numerous points in time they had the opportunity to bring in one of the premiere leaders in Karrigan, they constantly pushed their roster down the path of high skill in conjunction with ad hoc IGL’s. Sadly that is a story that is far too common within the Counter-Strike scene currently, players being shifted into ad hoc IGL roles for short periods of time till they realize it is a more complex domain than it seems at a birds-eye view. Look at MSL for example, even now he is teamless and still constantly advertising his services out to the rest of the Counter-Strike scene. This is despite Valde, star rifler from OG, explaining that he had never realized the importance of the IGL and a proper system till MSL had left his side.
Furthermore, if the outlook for IGL’s is so grim even at the higher end of the scene what does this say about the prospects of IGL’s who are only at a nascent phase of their career. How would an amateur igl climb the ranks and gain notoriety, after all nowadays it seems that even at the lower levels players want to hop between lineups and utilize skill as the mechanism to get their name known, rather than proper teamplay.
In summation, I feel that I’ve presented enough of a case to say that the current pipeline for talent development is lacking in specific aspects. Environment plays a huge part in molding individuals into their future selves, and in my eyes, it is unequivocal that the current selection process for talent is keying in on certain characteristics while ignoring other extremely pertinent aspects of Counter-Strike whole cloth. If as a Counter-Strike scene our ultimate goal is to raise the competitive floor and ceiling we must begin to reevaluate the environment that is currently molding the players of tomorrow.
