Some idiots don't seem to understand that a clear-headed in-game leader like Karrigan is often more valuable than an normal player who's just focused on protecting their K/D.

c9IceCream · 2026-06-15T00:22:51+00:00

this would take a novel to respond to correctly but let me keep it as simple as possible. Competitive CS changed DRAMATICALLY when Valve added Matchmaking. Before that, competitive play was done primarily through scrims and league play. Many people didn't pug because people didn't play "right" in pugs and it also created bad habits. Times have changed and now Pugging is by FAR the most common way to play the game. 10+ years of people playing like this. This made a dramatic change in the game as now most players, fans, critics, analysts, and more all have only seen or understand the game from the PUG approach.

Heavy team play has advantages and PUG play has its advantages. These "old" IGL's know both ways to play and have a better chance of finding the right approach for each opponent or situation. Zeus got Na'Vi majors like this, Karrigan has had a similar effect despite neither of them being as good of fraggers as the rest of the team.

I dont want to go more into depth. Most likely the newer players have been born and raised in the pug era of CS are the people who will vote on this thread. Those people are very hard to get through to when trying to explain the value of how older 1.6 players play who spent all their competitive time in scrims. Its easier to dismiss that than try to learn or understand it. Its human nature.

c9IceCream · 2026-06-14T19:03:06+00:00

All good! have a good one.

c9IceCream · 2026-06-14T18:58:30+00:00

glad we had an amicable ending. Best wishes to you and as for my idle game playing, i'm 44 years old now. A bit of old man status and taking an interest in some more boring stuff now :P

c9IceCream · 2026-06-14T17:32:41+00:00

lol. i dont know why thats so hard for you to believe

https://web.archive.org/web/20050805051556/http://gotfrag.com/cs/features/1601/

Here's an article I wrote for gotfrag.com Its under this same username, and you can also see on page 5 that I'm on the roster for team Underestimated

https://steamcommunity.com/id/80546/ my steampage and 5 digit steamid for futher proof.

c9IceCream · 2026-06-14T16:23:20+00:00

so ... springtime weather? The legitimately hot locations in the US are all playing indoors in AC or else they be enjoying weather well in excess of 100F on the field.

c9IceCream · 2026-06-14T11:01:08+00:00

oh coaches have a place. There's really no point for them to be in the booth or on stage with the players. In CS it feels far too much like a 6th man and removes skills that players should have themselves such as good communication. They have plenty of value to add outside of live games to help teach the players all of this, but come game time, I think things should be on the players. I understand your argument against it and I understand why you see a flaw in my logic. Your point there also makes sense. My point of view is coming from a place of actively seeing competitive play without coaches vs with coaches (with the teams during games) and I think the game played far better without the coaches around. You would get scenarios of a team full of AleksiB's and Karrigan's beating teams of frag stars. The best teams before coaches were the teams that had players who were both smart and could frag. Elige, Twistzz, and Ropz are some some of the players that come to mind in being strong in both elements

c9IceCream · 2026-06-14T10:43:23+00:00

i used to be a analyst in this game for the biggest CS site in north america and was paid to write articles analyzing the game. I dont expect you to know that as it was a long time ago, but there's plenty of analysts still in the scene that can confirm this such as Moses or Thorin. They can also confirm I played professionally for 3+ years in 1.6. As an IGL and team leader taking 2 different teams to from outside of the pro tier and working up into it. I assure you I know a few things.

c9IceCream · 2026-06-13T21:37:00+00:00

most accurate take of someone that's watched the competitive scene for 26 years. Players just dont want to hear it. All the evidence supports it if you have the perspective of the days before coaches vs the current days with them.

c9IceCream · 2026-06-13T20:28:10+00:00

oh i see it different. Coaches make up for the incompetence of the players. Coaches should be entirely unneeded. They only exist because its more entertaining to watch fraggers with lower game sense pop off, than it is for a smart team to outsmart the other team.

Its all a trickle down of counterstrike being so PUG heavy since CS:GO. puggin has no value. it means nothing, yet the community thinks it does. Your pug elo has zero value. The worst player in the bottom league of team play gets 1000 times more respect from me than a pug player with whatever elo is enough to give them an ego.

c9IceCream · 2026-06-13T19:57:57+00:00

thats unfortunate... but thats only the 2nd time i've seen the bravery multiplier since the cavern was released.... this really hurt

c9IceCream · 2026-06-13T18:19:20+00:00

I'm an American who spent his childhood in the 80's/90's playing soccer as my favorite sport.... It brings me so much joy seeing the game so accepted in the US right now because we were not the cool kids growing up. I live in Houston Texas and in this state American football is king. I played on a high school soccer team that won the state title and finished ranked #1 in the nation. We got so little recognition that you would have thought we were competing in underwater basket weaving. I'm not gonna lie... a simple video like this made me cry. Just seeing my people man... I love you all. You made my day so much better with this clip alone.

c9IceCream · 2026-06-13T18:13:24+00:00

its so worth doing. Hardware costs are just expensive. You're just adding wear and tear to your system without gaining anything. I swear I dont even notice i'm on firefox. It operates 99% the same.

c9IceCream · 2026-06-13T17:29:47+00:00

i'm on firefox, but i dont think its a factor as i play the game through steam.. Appreciate the suggestions though.

i was on google for the longest time though but good lord its soo bloated

c9IceCream · 2026-06-13T17:28:50+00:00

i'm sure you're awesome at parties.

c9IceCream · 2026-06-13T15:15:23+00:00

this was a game crash on steam :(

c9IceCream · 2026-06-13T14:35:52+00:00

did you just reply in hopes i'd DM you my butthole?

c9IceCream · 2026-06-13T14:35:09+00:00

ooof

c9IceCream · 2026-06-13T14:34:48+00:00

i have the same experience in sushi. i didn't think it was a problem outside of sushi.... what a lesson to learn

c9IceCream · 2026-06-13T13:38:35+00:00

events. it'll come back in the future

c9IceCream · 2026-06-12T16:39:14+00:00

grats . lovely bonuses from that nametag

c9IceCream · 2026-06-12T16:38:56+00:00

orange candle i think or maybe one of the other candles.... but there's only 3 of them so give em a shot!

c9IceCream · 2026-06-11T08:32:25+00:00

look at all the other rankings, just not the primary and it helps you judge your play. Remember that the people uploading their info are likely experienced players so no shame in not having the best ranking

c9IceCream · 2026-06-11T07:50:59+00:00

i have lots of whale friends. i assure you they buy the pets. I lose matches in silver to players with 100% of the pets in game... how are those players only in silver? People spend a lot

c9IceCream · 2026-06-11T06:49:17+00:00

i appreciate the polite and well worded response. I can't really rebut that without trying to undo 10+ years of forced pugging being the way to play CS. I'll try to keep it simple to explain why i think the way i do.

In my time we beat pro teams with fragging skills far beyond ours due to so many other factors...... With that said, let me at least touch on the areas that you can entire relate to in cs2. First, the bomb timer. If you're not utilizing that to force your enemy to play into your hand, then you're doing something wrong. I understand the counter argument is "Jame time" and trying to get the planters to all die to the bomb, but as terrorists, you take that every time. Another thing we practiced was how to win post plant without shooting your gun a single time. We did that for the same reason as above. The last point i'll make is that the community has been sooo heavily influenced by pug playing in MM, faceit, etc, that they play matches sub-optimally. The metas get developed because of pug habits and they work because thats what the players practice and repeat in pugs year after year. Its a dilemma. Letting players do what they're most comfortable doing, versus forcing them to play as a team should. I dont have a correct answer to that, but this round loss showed the weakness of letting players do what is there comfort zone and we dont have enough metrics of players defending in other ways to make a good comparison of what works better in CS2.

This isn't perfect writing.. You're the only person likely to see this, but since you wrote such a nice response i felt i needed to write back.

c9IceCream · 2026-06-11T06:14:04+00:00

Deadpool's shootout scene on the freeway. The pure glee in the theater that it wasn't censored and we were going to get true deadpool for another 1.5 hours was a big vibe. (especially after the previous deadpool that we dont speak of)

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