Kronovi · @KronoviRL
1st Jan 2022 from TwitLonger
Retiring from Competitive Rocket League
Hey everyone. As my post suggests, I will no longer be competing in the RLCS. This decision has taken me an incredibly long time to make, but now more than ever I feel this is the time for me. I know there are fans out there that wish I had accomplished more before stopping my career as a pro player, but the amount of time investment required to be a top level player just isn't worth the reward to me anymore. I'll go into more details about when/why I started thinking about this, but for now I just want to let people know that I intend to be more involved than ever in the RL community. I'm going to really be ramping up content on both Twitch and YouTube, as well as potentially casting/coaching. Rocket League is a game I practically grew up with. It is still 100% my passion to play this game, but I no longer feel really rewarded by pro play as much as I feel rewarded by doing content.
TL;DR: moving to content and casting/coaching
For anyone that wants more insight into why I made this choice now, it's a combination of factors over time as well as really enjoying content creation lately. I'll break it down as quickly as I can.
Let me take you all the way back to RLCS X when I was on Rogue. Off season went great, then season X begins and we are hovering around top 8 but can't break past that. During the end of the off season and most of the first split I was seriously struggling to enjoy practice and the game in general. The only way I could justify doing something I wasn't 100% enjoying was if the results were there. We never managed to break out of top 8, so I asked to be released from Rogue. Who knows if I was the next player out anyway. Roster moves can happen at any time, but regardless I wanted out of comp play for a little bit. I took the next split off so that I could figure out if I even liked Rocket League anymore. I did a few quals here and there for fun with people, and after the winter split I knew what I wanted to do.
The final split of RLCS X I was teamed up with Continuum (Aeon, Astroh, Bob). This is the team that would rekindle my passion for the game. I can't express how grateful I am to have been around them during one of my darkest times. Playing with them, grinding to become an RLCS team, making top 12 at an event and then signing with KCP were all milestones that re-lit the fire inside me. They made me realize a lot about myself and really allowed me to regain a positive mentality about the game.
During the off season between RLCS X and RLCS 11, the KCP roster shifted quite a lot. Freshness, Mectos, and Wondamike were now the starting roster with me as substitute. I was still feeling okay about myself as a player, which is one of the few reasons I even accepted the sub spot. I got subbed in far more often than I initially anticipated, which for me was a massive boost of confidence, but ultimately the team failed to gain any points during the first split.
If you tracked the high and low points of my career going all the way back to 2015, it would look like a roller coaster at Six Flags. There are tons of highs and lows. I've always been someone that bounced back no matter how bad things got. The only difference from all those other times and now is that I'd rather move on. I don't see the payout from grinding RLCS the way I used to. More and more, it just stresses me out when the team I'm on doesn't win. I maintain high standards and the amount of work to meet those standards is better spent elsewhere. I know I can become a great content creator and caster/coach if I put time into it. I'm at the crossroads of trying to bounce back for pro play, or pursue multiple fun aspects of the Rocket League community. I'm sorry if I was the player you rooted for in the RLCS and now you have no one else to root for, but it's my time to move on.
I am still dedicated to being a high level player. A lot of my content will still be focused on high level gameplay, and when I stream I will always be playing ranked and pushing leaderboards. I hope to continue to grow alongside the Rocket League community and I invite everyone to continue to watch and support me on this new journey. Thank you to everyone who has supported and believed in me all this time. Thank you to ProfElixir for being that person I could always talk to. Thank you to KCP as a whole for being an awesome org and a great group of people <3. I'm sad I won't get to rep them on the field like I used to, but they always treated players like family and I'll never forget yall.
I think that about wraps up the how/why/when. If you made it this far, thank you for reading everything. I'll see everyone on the content side of things now, but everyone will be getting more of Kronovi than they ever had before, I promise :)