https://www.cybersport.ru/dota-2/articles/natus-vincere-kak-za-polgoda-razvalit-komandu-i-zastavit-vsekh-sebya-nenavidet

The squad that didn’t become a team

I think that real NAVI fans on the last map in the match with Team Empire were most upset by the doom that the team played with. Already in midgame, when the rivals did not even have a particular advantage, the team began to act so fragmented and weak-willed, as if they themselves had resigned themselves to defeat long before the fall of the throne.

At some point, NAVI just stopped trying, and the players, having silenced each other in Discord, were already making plans for the next season. After all, again, the team, with all due respect to Team Empire, was not the most formidable rival, and on the 26th minute the gap was less than 5 thousand gold – the game could still be saved.

You can analyze individual errors of players – why No was substituted[o]ne or why RAMZES666 unsuccessfully initiated – but in the context of NAVI’s speech, these are secondary questions. More importantly, we didn’t see team play. Despite a month of training, we just had a roster of five star and skill players. This was noticeable even in the match with EXTREMUM, after which I myself praised RAMZES666 and No.[o]ne, but even those NAVIs made mistakes. On the second map of the match against HR, we saw how easy it is to disorganize a team and throw it into a stupor. Yes, Zayac is great, but it was not he who won “in solo”, it was NAVI who simply got lost on the map and began to make mistakes. And so in everything, from drafts to team interactions during the game. NAVI did not look like a single organism.

Nix, examining the last map against Team Empire, said that NAVI players, such as RAMZES666 and SoNNeikO, simply do not “stack” with each other, which makes it seem uncomfortable for the participants to play together. And it really felt, but then the question arises why the team gathered in such a composition. After all, every esports player, whoever you ask about what the ideal Dota 2 roster should be like, will surely say that the most important thing will be team chemistry and good understanding in the game. That is, everyone is well aware that it is impossible to win and progress on a bare skill, but at the decisive moment of the season, we still suddenly got another attempt to collect a star roster, which in the end remained just a stack of non-stacking people.

Who is guilty?

Perhaps this is the main question that I now want to ask Natus Vincere as a club. The results clearly demonstrated that all the changes that have occurred in the lineup over the past few months were wrong. Evgeny Zolotarev, even after the GeneRaL kick, said that he gave the management of the roster to the cybersportsmen themselves. But how? If there are only two people left from the original composition, which was signed by NAVI, will “someone” be held responsible for the decisions made? Will the permutations be assessed?

And most importantly, it is important to know whether the course of the club itself will change after the failure at the end of the season. Perhaps the time has come for the CEO of NAVI to take control over the state of the team into their own hands again. Because everything that has happened to the team in the past few months cannot be called anything other than amateur performance and a mess. Both reshuffles raised hundreds of questions, and if after the first NAVI with a delay they nevertheless made a statement, albeit not the most successful one, then the reasons for the kick by ALWAYSWANNAFLY and Iceberg had to be learned from the broadcasts of the esportsmen themselves. The club simply did not have a clear position, and if there is none, then the direction in which the team is moving is not clear. Successful results could justify all of this, but if the performance only got worse, then it’s time to ask again who is responsible for the decisions.

As a result, due to “someone’s” decisions, our region, on the eve of The International, lost the strong roster of AS Monaco Gambit, which lost two participants, three NAVI players were left without a team, and NAVI themselves experienced such a blatant regression. The problems that the team wanted to solve with the help of the GeneRaL kick (lack of in-game leader, bad atmosphere), apparently, remained and became even more aggravated. However, the roster again decided to resort to exactly the same method for the next “rescue” of the team. And the situation repeated itself. The fact that this approach to solving problems does not work, I hope, has become obvious to everyone. However, nothing will radically change in NAVI (and in the entire region) until a specific person is behind each important decision, and the division of areas of responsibility in organizations becomes transparent, so that we understand who is responsible for maintaining the atmosphere in the team, who determines the drafts and who picks the players for the squad.

Haight – no. Criticism – yes

Let’s return to the issue of the wave of negativity that will now cover the NAVI leadership and specifically the players of the roster. Yes, insults and outright harassment from some part of the audience certainly do not paint our community. However, adequate criticism in such a situation is as logical and justified as possible. E-sports is, after all, primarily about the result. NAVI not only failed to achieve it, but also performed much worse than the most pessimistic forecasts. In this situation, the best thing that can be done to the members of the squad, the club and all its supporters is to throw any excuses down the pipe and admit the mistakes they have made. And as it usually happens in sports, to voice them. I have often heard the opinion: “Why on earth should a conditional CEO or a player make excuses for a defeat in front of a fan, he, or what, pays them a salary?” Partly yes. Any e-sports club exists due to sponsorship and advertising contracts, according to which it, in fact, “sells” its own audience to brands. Each video watched, in which advertising is integrated, a click on a referral link, or a visit to a broadcast where players are “shining” sponsors on jersey – this is our contribution to the stability of the organization. Therefore, yes, in front of its audience, the club must make excuses for failures. And this is not to mention the banal respect for the fans. I hope NAVI understands this very well and soon we will see a voluminous analysis of the last few months from the club’s representatives, because the worst thing that can be done in such a situation is to keep silent or try to deliberately divert the audience’s attention to other issues, masking the problem.

It is very easy to turn the situation around, thus accusing the community of inappropriate behavior. But for me, as a fan of Dota 2 in the CIS, it is much more important to understand why we lost a team, which until recently was at least the second in the region. We talk so much about the instability of the CIS, crazy reshuffles, “Wishlist” players, leading to sad consequences, stacks of “friends” and so on, but again and again we come across the same rake. Nothing changes, but we continue, as if for the first time, to discuss all the same problems. Moreover, mistakes are made not by tier-3 stacks and young players who have not developed as individuals, but by the leading organization of the region and the best cybersportsmen of recent years. From this it becomes insanely insulting. Therefore, yes, the defeat of NAVI evokes a reaction, it shocks, angers and demoralizes, and it needs to be discussed and analyzed if we want esports to develop in our region. NAVI players (both current and recently departed) are humanly sorry, I myself would be very pleased to see No[o]ne at The International, especially with Aegis in hand, but you can’t elevate the squad members to the rank of victims, because they themselves are primarily to blame for the abyss that the team fell into.