Current State of the Tier 2/3 NA Scene

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This post is going to be divided in two different sections talking about FPL/RANK S and MDL teams.

1) First off FPL is in the worst state it has ever been in since the revival of the hub back in 2018. The queues consist of the same 20-30 people every week (the hub has over 250 people) and only half of them even try to win money. Players from EG, Liquid, FURIA, GenG, etc don't even queue because Faceit allows players that have no desire of going pro with a team to play the hub on a consistent basis. The only times these top NA teams even touch FPL is when they are streaming or if they want to play with their teammates, who rarely queue. If you really want NA FPL to be better you are going to need to remove the players who have been reported many times, which typically tend to be the ones who have no intention of going pro. If the admins are scared of FPL "dying" after these players are removed (since those players are in half of the current games), you can invite players from top NA teams such as my team (Triumph) or even players from like Recon 5 or New England Whalers. The difference between these players and the current bottom FPL players is that these players want to go PRO in the game are going to be willing to learn from their mistakes in FPL. Faceit isn't the only company that is guilty of this as Rank S is literally in a worse state than FPL. Rank S consists of MDL and Advanced players (most are teamless) that are competing at the highest rank on ESEA every Friday for thousands of dollars. Two years ago we would see PROFESSIONAL players competing everyday for this type of money but instead the admins have let the hub go to shit. I don't know if these companies even care for the state of the NA scene, especially in times like these when the tier 2 na scene really fucking needs it.

2) Now moving on to the current and past seasons of MDL. Recently there has been an increase in "pug" teams in the tier 2/3/4 NA scene; the players on these teams typically tend to grind these hubs (Fpl/Fplc & Rank G/S) for the money while competing in online tournaments such as MDL, winnersleague, mythic league, and efire for the money. There are multiple reasons why the scene has seen this surge of pug teams. There are players that continuously play these hubs everyday to steal away the top prizes. These players that grind these hubs are typically tend to not be on a competitive team hence they have more time to win these prizes. However, the prizes in these hubs actually have more money in them than MDL has on moveup seasons. So for the teams that have a slim chance of making Pro league one season, they might decide to not practice anymore and start grinding these hubs. Sometimes it might not even be the players fault because they aren't winning enough money with their team so they need to grind these hubs in order to pay the bills. Compared to EU, the cost of living in the United States and Canada is much higher which is why EU doesn't struggle with this problem nearly as much. A possible solution to encourage teams to practice would be to invest a lot more money in these tier2/3 leagues so players will make more from competing with a team rather than solo queueing a pug. The sad reality of CS:GO is that companies like FACEIT or ESEA couldn't careless about the state of the scene but as long as people still want to grind for FPL and Rank S, they will still be farming money from their users and making profit.

TL;DR: FPL and Rank S are both horseshit and need to be reworked, tier2/3/4 leagues need to have more money so people are encouraged to play on a team rather than grind hubs (and if the changes happen, these teams need to act more professionally and create a brand for themselves so organizations are willing to invest money into them)

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