IMT 3-2 with how sloppy Rogue has been looking today.
They took a well deserved and much needed break. Players are starting to visibly get burnt out, some after a year+ of non stop playing.
The matches they had were closer than what most people would have expected but this match will be another serious test of of well they can adjust to being challenged.
Again all I want is some high octane and exciting OW and in this showdown of two teams I like I'll go with my fav one:
IMT 3-2 Rogue
It goes w/o saying that this very well could be totally wrong, but I'm /praying to RNJesus that I haven't afflicted IMT with my Haitian Voodoo curse like the last few times...
Mighty AOD might be(probably) stronger than IMT
They have beaten KDP after all https://www.over.gg/3593/kdp-vs-mighty-aod-ogn-apex-season-3-regular-season-group-a
I think KDP said they were sandbagging a bit because they already made it out of groups...
Overwatch is weird though, just because one team beat another fairly recently doesn't mean they'll beat everyone "worse" than that team.
Hell, one of the biggest factors I've seen decide games sometimes is someone on a specific team is having an off day.
How are players getting burnt out? we've barely had tournaments in OW at least not of the LAN nature and just before christmas teams had played half a dozen games in 6 months, look at CS teams flying all over the world for LAN after LAN yet OW teams who play 1 tournament every few months online are burnt out, eh?
What did Rogue do before they moved to NA? look at the EnvyUs match history page here, one page covers an entire year yet they are burnt out? if that's the case how are they gonna handle the OWL if it's LAN if attending 2 LAN a year burn you out.
Well if there are barely enough tournaments and players are getting burnt out surely that tells you something is wrong? maybe playing 10 hours a day doesn't make sense if you cry fatigue and need a break, just saying. Can't imagine EnvyUs practising that much every day at least not based on body language, ever seen them pissed when they lose a map/game? I see them smiling constantly even after getting hammered, to me that tells me they barely give a shit and the problem with them is motivation/boredom rather than burnout but who knows.
I think it might have more to do with the lack of team expression in this current meta. A lot of teams feel forced to play dive, when that may or may not be their strong point or style. In order to be competitive (in the professional sense) you have to play the meta and be good at it. So people might get burnt out by grinding something they're not really into. Not to mention that a lot of teams are scriming for the majority of the day, or the living conditions are shit (rip Taimou ).
On another note, this is going to be a great series :)
These are all assumptions I have but tournaments don't make up the bulk of the time teams spend on the game. Scrims do, hours and hours of scrim to practice and perfect team play style and set plays. All of this so that they can perform at their best during the tournaments you mentioned. In the case of Rogue and nV you can add being in Korea and obviously needing to keep up scrims there.
I don't think OWL will change much since I assume they'd just adjust their scrim schedule around it.
I'm not sure why you'd think they would just be sitting around doing nothing in between tournaments, but going from what the players themselves have said, yes, burn out is a very real thing and player health needs to be emphasized if a "long" career is to be had in eSports, imo.
Yet CS players are the exact same added in an extra ten thousand miles of flying every few months, or do they not scrim as well? the fact you don't have to fly to LAN's outside APEX and Take Over should be a massive benefit and why would teams scrim 6 hours a day 7 days a week knowing full well that leads to burnout? common sense costs nothing.
OWL might change a great deal if it involves a LAN every month or two which is a lot more than they are used to now, if you can't handle the current lack of LAN events how will you handle OWL? and if you can adjust your scrim schedule for OWL why not just adjust it now if you clearly feel burnt out?
Shit makes no sense to me and screams of excuses, Rogue flopped at Apex I guess it was burnout? EnvyUs looked shit but hey, burnt out I guess right? EnyvUs the team who have done pretty much squat before Apex should've went in there with full energy yet still flopped and claim burn out? fuck knows.
CS teams do so much more yet never once have I read about them suffering burnout.
I'm definitely not saying that Rogue and Envy lost at APEX because of burn out, they legit got outplayed, but APEX more than likely added to it. More LAN or tournaments in general don't necessarily add to your work load, it could just move it around. And I have no clue what is involved in CS:GO so I can't comment on that part.
It sounds like you're saying they're just not working hard enough and that all they're doing is complaining and making excuses. I think the debate itself is a bit of a moot point since your impression of how much it this games takes out of them isn't relevant to how the players are expressing it takes out of them.
Burn out is a thing, maybe they do just need to rethink their schedules, but the OWL shouldn't make things worst if they work around it and promote player health first and foremost imo.