The 5 month off season was a mistake. Now now, calm down and put down the pitchforks. I know what I said was controversial and political in nature. My future as an interviewer and writer is forever tarnished with this radical statement. But really, who knew 5 months of no Tier 1 play could be a bad idea? Sarcasm aside, for all the troubles brought down on the scene by this long, long off season there’s been an unexpected good.
The new wave of educational content coming from the Tier 1 is one of the best outcomes that could have happened. Rather than sitting around doing nothing for just under half a year, many players and coaches have gotten into the content grind. What’s more, most have opted to go the educational route rather than sick nasty fragmovies.
The end result is coaching like what MrB and Drip have started. Sometimes on stream for everyone to watch, these coaching sessions allow professional players and coaches to offer insight for players and teams interested in improving. Beyond the coaching, KangruKenny has started creating content reminiscent of ReaperEN’s, another huge boon for the community and Wylde streams some of their scrims, offering a live look into pro comms and strats. All of this has resulted in a new wave of content centered around competitive Siege and how to improve within this niche area of the game.
Content focused around high level Siege, team based Siege, is something that’s always been a bit lacking. Add in that esports competitors rarely came down from their mystical mountains of “being professionals” and espoused their wisdom of getting good and it’s been hard to learn high level concepts without someone directly teaching them to you. It’s why the early vods of Canadian or MeepeY doing vod reviews were gold. They became some of the most coveted content you could find to learn the game at a competitive level. It was rare, it was good, and completely unlike the rest of the content on offer at the time.
With the off season, we’re now getting loads more of this content from a much larger amount of players and coaches. And it isn’t just the players and teams learning from these coaching sessions that benefit. This serves as a healthy kick in the butt for a lot of other coaches to step up their game.
Obviously people like Kaosx have been doing good work, but nothing lights a fire under anyone’s butt quite like high quality competition. When MrB and Drip, two very smart individuals with clear qualifications, also start offering coaching sessions, the other coaches have to start improving their work and what they offer to stand out and provide value that the pros don’t or cant’.
While it’s a small win, it’s a win nontheless. The off season has borne a genuinely valuable wave of new content that helps Siege. This is a modern injection of high level content about competitive Siege that has been historically rare in the scene. While it’s unclear how long these players and coaches will stick with it, Fett’s already stopped his coaching and Stage 2 will surely put a pause on things, the mere existence of this kind of content has been needed for a long time.