It might be a bit disconcerting for fans of Counter-Strike to find their favored team suddenly seeming a bit spotty in terms of performance as of late. FURIA just lost their first best-of 3 series to MIBR, Astralis was looking shaky well before Gla1ve and Xyp9x took leave, and Evil Geniuses simply can’t find their stride to save their life in most matches.
While some fans of the teams are beginning to ask managers to start looking at replacing the shakier members of their beloved teams, others are insisting that it is very unlikely that any team would make drastic roster changes at this time.
The primary point here is that playing on a LAN in front of a crowd is wildly different from playing in your home office. Even removing the massive factor of latency that is prevalent in the vast majority of matches being played in all forms of esports right now, the feeling of having fans there cheering for your victory is a drastic quantifier for what makes many teams tick.
And rating your roster off how they’re playing in non-ideal circumstances is a fool’s gambit, infinitely more so when we’re seeing servers drop players halfway through matches while admins throw their hands up in the air and ask players what they want to do.
While the competitive scene for Counter-Strike admittedly seems to be going a bit more haywire at the moment than what we’re used to seeing, take heart: at least we shouldn’t see massive roster changes during this time.
On top of that, once teams finally do get back to LAN, we’re likely to see many teams struggle with the sudden switch as latency no longer effects hitboxes; don’t expect massive shifts the moment LANs regain their spot.
This leaves us with the question of precisely when LANs are supposed to come back to Counter-Strike.
ESL One Cologne is now scheduled for the end of August in Germany; a strictly controlled studio will host teams as they compete in the first LAN in months for a prize pool of $1,000,000, with sixteen teams fighting for the heft of it.
Precisely how teams can even begin to prepare for that environment, where teammates and opponents are playing in the closest you could possibly get to real-time, is anyone’s guess.
COVID-19 shook up how the world operates, and while esports are enjoying the spotlight during this period of time where it’s the only sport ongoing, it is also causing untold and innumerable difficulties with the esport scene as well.
