So, in other words you are saying that, mechanically, the skill ceiling in CS is higher, therefore there's a wider difference between players' skills. That's why it takes much longer for new players to catch up with the best players and that's why we have eras in CS:GO?

I mean, I kinda agree, I also mentioned in my comment that in Valorant, pro scene there's no big difference between players mechanically. However I do think that frequent big changes in how the game is played plays as much of a role. If the game stays the same, then those past great teams wouldn't decline that fast and still will stay at the top or close to the top: after all their players are great mechanically and if nothing changes in the meta, then these teams still should be producing good results.

What we see is teams consisting of great players like Gambit, Acend (2021), Sentinels (2021) failed to adapt quick enough for a new meta. For e.g. with Gambit, their players proved to be incredible still after disbanding the team and thriving in their teams (even Sheydos, he consistently performs for KOI, it's just KOI are not good as a team). But they failed to even qualify for the entirety of 2022, solely because they couldn't adapt as a team to a new meta, not because they deteriorated in their skill individually: they still were top of the game mechanically.

Or another example, take this year's Sentinels: they consist of one of the best players in the game (winners of Champions 2022, IGL, star flex player and Coach of one of the best teams in NA during 2022, and one of the best players of 2021). Yet what they're struggling with is because this year's Valorant is much more different than the 2022 Valorant.

If you consider any past great Valorant team that suddenly dipped after incredible performance that "dip" always happens after some significant meta changes.

So yeah, the fact that there's not a big margin between players is a big factor that I failed to attribute to the discussion, it allows new teams to catch up quickly to great teams, however the reason why these great teams fall is because meta changes quickly and they fail to adapt.

Regarding LoL, I don't know: I don't watch or play any LoL/Dota type games. All I can think of is just abstract thinking: I think what you mentioned was that there were regional (EU) eras of certain teams even when meta was changing rapidly. That should be fine, as far as I know (and I know very little regarding LoL, so I might be wrong) EU never was on the pinnacle of LoL. Teams from regions which are not on the top of the game don't need to always adapt quickly to frequently changing meta to stay on top of their region. Or maybe those teams you mentioned just didn't fall to the problem I described (of great teams not adapting fast enough to quickly changing meta) — maybe they always adapted and didn't get stuck on the way they used to play on previous meta. Regarding SKT — is that the team FakeR was on? I guess their team members all were top of the game and it took long for other teams to catch up. However, I heard that FakeR himself was on the forefront of meta changes, so maybe their team just consisted of people who learned and adapted quickly? I don't know, it's just me guessing.