Before I start this, I am not ioStux, the XL2 Coach and YouTuber. I want to post this on Over.gg to spread the word on Tier 2 or Contenders problems, I also will post this on the forum because it is an interesting read on how organizations are treated by Blizzard in effort to create a tier-inspired league rather than a competitive game with no direction on how to join. So I hope you all enjoy the read from u/ioStux aka NYXL's academy coach for Contenders NA.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/8ydpiy/im_xl2_coach_iostux_i_walked_the_path_to_pro/
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u/ioStux:

"Before I start this post, I wanted to introduce myself quickly. My name is Ridouan “ioStux” Bouzrou, I am currently Coach for the XL2 Academy Team (NYXL’s Contenders Team) and have been pursuing this dream for over 2 years. Some of you might know me from Youtube Videos I have created.

Blizzard’s “Path to Pro” is a system designed to motivate players and coaches alike by giving them a clear competitive structure that is supposed to guide them from the depths of Tier Infinity all the way up to Tier 1. Previous Esports titles have been more ambiguous, and it wasn’t always clear how to actually join a professional team, this is why Blizzard wanted to have a predefined Tier structure to shape their competitive scene and make “going pro” not as daunting as it has been in other titles.

Looking at the title, you might have figured out by now that their idea hasn’t really worked. You are also thinking that everything I’ll talk about is known already anyways. So why do I bother making this post? Because I would say that there is no reason for me to hate the path to pro that isn’t objective. When others complain about the path to pro being bad, there is always this sour aftertaste of “Well he is just complaining because he isn’t good enough to go pro.” So I hoped that my opinion on the matter could give some of you a more objective perspective on the path to pro and its flaw, as I have experienced all of these things first hand.

One last disclaimer. Not everything that I mention here is Blizzard’s fault or can be fixed by Blizzard. The point of this post is to showcase how difficult, unmotivating and frustrating the path to pro in its current form is for the majority of players.

1st Lack of funding. I am going to say this right off the bat. If it weren’t for my private coaching sales, there is no way in hell that I would have been able to pursue a professional coaching position. Just to put in perspectives, I was in the process of getting my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at University. I entirely quit Uni when I was making 40$ a month from my coaching.

The first point to talk about would be prize pools. The prize pools in Contenders are laughable. You could be a 6 man team winning every single map of every season in a year, and you would still have to take a part-time job to pay the bills. And I am talking about NA here, other regions like SA or AU make less than half of what NA does ( a QUARTER to be exact) . Sure, across all regions the total sum of the prize pool could seem pretty significant, but with the number of regions and teams participating it is challenging to make a living with Contenders.

Oh also, in case you didn’t know Coaches and Managers have 0 right to any prize money . That means that if the players don't want to pay the staff, they don’t have to at all. You can guess how many coaches were lured into doing free work. It’s disgusting.

So if Blizzard doesn’t provide funding to aspiring professionals, then organizations need to come to the rescue. But that’s not happening either. Just read through this, please.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/414467962410631169/466447577815187466/unknown-1.png

These are the sponsorship limitations for Contenders Teams. I don’t really think that I have to go on; further, any organization expecting to turn a profit by having a contenders team is delusional.

Not only is the amount of money that unsigned Tier 2 players receive bad, but actually getting the money itself is also a huge issue. While I can understand that accounting probably takes a long while, it is pretty clear that waiting over a year for your prize money is not reliable enough to pay the bills. And telling your landlord “Chill, I’ll get you the money in 284 days!” isn’t going to end well.

So there are 2 options. Doing what I did and making money via other means (I did private coaching, most other players boost accounts for cash). Or being 16 and having parents that are fine with you spending hours on a video game. Most players are entirely throwing their OWL dreams in the trash and scramble for collegiate teams (Joining Tespa is exclusive, as far as I know you can’t compete in other Blizzard Tournaments at the same time although my source may be inaccurate) because the full rides that they offer are the only way that they can play the game without being irresponsible.

2nd I guess to add onto the next point, and this is going to seem kind of hypocritical, but the Academy Teams don’t help. The amount of money and exposure you receive depends on your results in Contenders. But teams that fight their way through trials, make it into Contenders, and are ready to show what they got on stream are at a severe disadvantage. XL2 has a Team House in Los Angeles as well as a bunch of other incredible benefits I cannot disclose in a public post (But trust me, the advantages are enormous). At this point, it could be argued that competitive Overwatch is Pay to Win to a certain extent. If you have money, you can invest more time into practicing or increase the quality of practice (Faster Internet Speeds, better Hardware for the players, etc.)

Obviously, expansion teams are going to help with this as there will be a lot more salaried positions available, but repelling organizations like no other Esport and then pitting those unsigned teams against signed teams with a complete support structure behind them is unfortunate. Some Contenders games just aren’t really that enjoyable to watch because you know that the reason 1 team won isn’t necessarily that they grinded harder, it’s just that they were supported much better.

3rd Lack of Exposure. Contenders streams don’t really get a ton of viewers which once again makes it less attractive for organizations, and it also makes it harder for players to amass a following. I don’t expect OWL levels of viewership, but having 3.000 Viewers for a Tier 2 tournament isn’t great. There is no advertising done. They recently tried putting the Australian Contenders stream into the Battle.net launcher which gave them a bunch of “fake” viewers, but that apparently doesn’t work. Even adding Contenders Matches into the game itself would undoubtedly increase the viewer count by a sizeable amount and help grow the scene.

Not only is exposure limited because of Blizzard not treating Contenders like a truly competitive tournament (Potentially to avoid it from taking hype away from OWL), but it is also not really incentivizing 3rd party tournaments. I need to admit I don’t fully understand the situation when it comes to the limitations those 3rd party tournament organizers face, but from what I heard there is an excellent reason that we barely get any tournaments besides Contenders and OWL these days with real prize pools. The breaks between seasons are very long, so players who didn’t win Trials, for example, need to wait months until they can next prove themselves...

4th Regions are messed up. Australian Teams are scrimming Korean Teams, good luck finding a good ranked game in Oceania, and some regions don’t even have Lan Finals or an English broadcast (Although to be fair some regions like China are getting one soon). It is ridiculously complicated for players from “non-prime” regions like NA, EU or Korea to prove themselves. Don’t take this the wrong way but a lot of people in South America, for example, have even less of a financial foundation to stand on while they pursue a professional career, so not giving them proper finals, streams or decent prize money makes these regions really seem like “memes” at this point. I don’t know the solution to this but having more cross-region Contenders Matches could be a good idea like they had at the end of last season although that was pretty bare bones.

Sorry for being Australian I guess, it’s now 10x harder for you to go pro than someone living in the US for example.

5th “But stux, can’t all the western trash players just get good?”. I mean, yeah I guess they can, but for a system that promotes local talent growth Contenders sure doesn’t care about teams just importing as many Koreans as possible. I love my team to bits, every single player, but having to compete against players like WooHyaL, Tizi, Nanohana or Nenne over an academy slot is ridiculously difficult. As a coach, it’s a bit easier but when I was trialing for a team and another Korean coach was present I already knew that my chances of getting picked up were slim. I think this just shows how Korea supports its Esports culture and thus manages to create more high tier players than other regions. “Oh sorry but the other coach had Apex experience!” is not a great thing to hear. So yeah, western players could just outperform Koreans, but let’s be real here, compared to Korea the western Tier 2 scene is dead.

Some sort of region lock could help. I know that there are arguments against this such as “Shouldn’t the best player always get the slot, isn’t that the point behind the competition?” and I agree with those, but I am sure that a lot of fellow Tier 3/2 players agree that Koreans have a considerable impact on the western scene. This point is very controversial so feel free to share your thoughts on the matter in the comments.

6th Cronyism. That’s when you take a friend over someone more qualified when trying to fill a position. And there is lots of it in the Tier 3/2.5 scene. This is not something Blizzard can fix, but it’s something that aspiring players need to be aware of. There will be a lot of situations where another player got picked over you just because he knew the manager. Teams also leak comps and strats, sometimes even VoDs from competing teams, at which point it can become difficult to stay competitive without doing things like that yourself (I can proudly say I have never taken part in anything like that, up to you if you believe me of course).

So yeah, even if you manage to get past all the other hurdles like funding, exposure, bad regions and imports, and you actually get good at the game, you might still not make it just because someone else knows more people. Competitive bootlicking.

7th This has been talked to death so I’ll try to keep it short. It is incredibly difficult to get better at this game compared to other games. No replay system which makes it harder for lower tier players to learn from their own mistakes or to rewatch higher tier players from their PoV. Catching up is hell. Top Teams only scrim each other for obvious reasons and there are stringent limitations on Pugs (Pick up games) for high tier players, so there’s even less opportunity to practice against top talent. Ranked is not a good place for improvement especially if all the top players are being moved to the West Coast, making it harder for other regions to get good comp matches without using a VPN (I don’t know the exact percentage, but I lost count of the number of players I know that have to pay for a VPN using their non existent Trials money just so they can get decent comp games).

The top tier players keep getting better and better, while the lower tier players keep falling behind. The amount of stuff that I have learned as a coach since I have been working with XL2 (I worked with them before the announcement, just has to finalize some stuff) is insane compared to what I learned on previous teams only because I get to work with higher level players and have a vast support structure behind me.

8th Patches. When I was coaching FLOW in this last open division, it was impossible for me to improve really beside just watching the teams VoDs. I think there were 3 different patches at one point?” 1.22, 1.24 and 1.25 (Don’t quote me on that). Finding new strats and learning about the game is hard when the top competition plays a different game.

Just imagine being an Open Division Team that has to practice on patch A, then you get into Trials where you have to play Patch B against teams that have been playing on Patch B for weeks, and then you get into Contenders where you have to go to Patch C against teams that have been practicing Patch C for weeks. What’s going on? Let alone the fact that Trials teams got their OPR accounts late (at least some of them), so they had even less time to prepare than relegating teams.

Having 4 teams go from Trials into Contenders is nice, but it is challenging for relegated Contenders teams not to qualify again during trials. No offense to any relegated Contenders teams of course, but a lot of Tier 3 players agree that some teams and players made it pretty far even though they are nowhere near the level required to compete.

Map pools are also changing all the time, which is bizarre considering that Open and Trials isn’t even officially streamed so “Map Fatigue” is not a valid argument for viewers. Ever wondered why so many Contenders teams are picking Rialto? They were scrimming that map while Trials teams had to practice a completely different pool. Obviously, this isn’t an instawin condition, but it’s one of the many problems present.

TL;DR

Low prize pools

Strict sponsorship limitations

Slow payouts

Academy Teams having a distinct advantage

Not a lot of advertisement for T2

No third party tournaments

Some regions are screwed

Having to compete against a lot of Koreans

Shady shit going on behind the back

Cronyism, people take friends over talent

No replay system

Patches are a mess

Map Pools are a mess

Ranked is a mess

Disclaimer before you comment: I just wrote this up real quick with the help of some T2/T3 players. Sorry if the grammar and stuff isn’t super top notch, I don’t have that much time anymore to make these posts (duty calls!), so I tried to keep the pace. Also, I know that some of these things may be controversial and aren’t easy to fix. This post isn’t saying “Blizzard you suck can you fix your stuff”, it’s saying “You want to go pro? Well, you are in for a treat!”.

Do you have any questions about the competitive scene and what it’s like to go pro in Overwatch? Write a comment, and I’ll get back to you. I’ll try to reply to everyone, but I might miss or forget something.

I hope I could give you an interesting perspective on the path to pro from someone who actually walked it! Zacharee I’ll get you curly fries soon don’t worry."

Well it's good to see someone on the inside sharing his thoughts on this, even more so if most confirms what some/many member of the communities were already pointing out.

The main issue is that due to some (most) of those reasons OW managed to drive away e-sport's endemic orgs, it started in 2017 with the proonged "let's wait for OWL to kick off!" but is still going on (Envision).

Sure none of them will ever be able to compete with the salaries/support of an OWL organization, but at the moment is either those, or "playing for the glory", and since those few top tier organizations pay loads of money to be part of OWL, of course they want to scout and hire player that can bring more visibility and wins to them asap.

EDIT
Thanks for sharing this mate, I'm not much into Reddit
And second Edit, as an example, in 2016 there were worldwide about 140 non offical Blizzard tournaments, in 2018 there are 30ish