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Author: Nogame
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First off, this is purely opinionated, because what is considered ‘skill’ could be debated by every gamer on the planet. This is just my personal recollection of how I’ve looked at their tiers of skill in my competitive gaming career. My personal gaming background comes from playing doom, the quake series and a bit of UT2K3 on a competitive level.
Skill, I consider to be a blend of aim, movement, intuition, strategy and the ability to maximize the efficiency of these factors in any game mode. If you believe skill is defined by other factors or that these factors may or may not be correct, post another article to cover your personal beliefs.
As far as exceptions, there are many. For every tier I’ll give you, I know a player who is an exception to the rule. However one thing that remains the same… there are never diamonds in the rough. A tier 1, tier 2 or tier 3, and usually a tier 4 never beats a tier 5 player/team in an official match. Even if that lower tier player has more raw talent, the concepts that make a player a professional can only be learned after playing at the highest levels of the game for a prolonged period of time.
First tier will be considered the lowest and least skilled players. The final tier will be considered the best of the competitive community.
Tier 1: Lan Only Players
There are a lot of players out there that just play for the hell of it, the fun of it, and the bragging rights among a small circle of friends. I consider these players to be the lowest tier because they rarely even go online to play and sample who else is out there.
These players stick within a small circle of players and if they are competing, they do so within this circle. It’s always fun to wander into one of these lans coming from a professional gaming background and beat everyone up. The games mind you, are not fun at all in fact lan players love to run in that intricate straight-line pattern. The fun part is having half the lan stand behind you going saying things like ‘holy shit, I didn’t know you could do that’ while you beat on the other half of the lan in a FFA. I’ve even finished lans and found out later that they had scanned my computer for bots during their tournament.
Ahh yes, FFA (Free for All), this is generally the preferred mode of play for the tier 1 players. Be it instagib, rail only, or just pure free for all deathmatch, most lan only players eat it up. If 1 vs 1 or teamplay is at all played in a lan only tournament its generally to a very primitive degree in which mods are not used and a fraglimit decides the winner.
Tier 2: Public Internet Players
I specify public as in they play on public servers, which will come into play later in the article. This tier of players consistently plays on public servers, be it FFA, CTF, etc. They play real hard, though they can’t always win every game. As time goes on they come closer to being consistently in the top 3, and on some nights, they may just win a few levels.
The key here is that public internet players never change. They always play the same game type over and over and over, trying to better their position on the scoreboard. They don’t understand the concept that they may need to try something different to improve the scoreboard’s outcome.
Tier 3: FFA Champions
This is basically the deciding point in every gamer’s evolutionary process from newbie to tournament competitor. At this tier of skill, a player consistently wins and sometimes humiliates FFA servers. Even when a Tier 4 player comes into a FFA server to blow off some steam, this player will either beat that Tier 4 (out of sheer experience) or give the Tier 4 a run for his money.
However, there comes a time in every FFA Champion’s career when someone asks our champion to play 1 v 1. This is frequently caused by an insecure Tier 4 getting beat in a game mode that he’s not as familiar with and challenging the player who did it to a 1 v 1 game. Then that champion gets a glimpse at competitive play by going to a private server with a teamplay mod or in teamplay mode and for the next 15 minutes of his life gets beat to sin by the Tier 4.
When this happens if the champion is a real competitor, he goes on for months (and possibly) years to getting his ass beat on private servers as he transitions into a Tier 4 while trying to improve his abilities as a gamer. If this player values fun over the hard word of improving his abilities as a gamer, he returns to his FFA servers and usually stays there unless prodded by friends to play teamplay or 1 v1 in the future.
Tier 4: Private Server Competitive Players
Private servers are simply unlisted servers or servers with passwords so that the general public that downloads gamespy can’t be a part of. To find these servers someone usually has to give you the ip address.
Something that also goes hand-to-hand with competitive gameplay on private servers is IRC. 95% of the competitive internet teams can be reached through IRC.
Tournaments are announced, bots are setup to invite you to scrimmages and there are always plenty of teams to scrimmage. IRC provides an organized way to find players to practice that are within your skill level.
Also, when a player begins competitive gameplay they transition to new game modes: 1 versus 1 or some form of teamplay (team dm, ctf, onslaught, etc.) If you’ve reached this level of the skill, usually you have soaked up as much as you could from FFA or previous game modes, and returning would not further your skill as a player.
Getting back on track here… The players who are at this tier start to develop new strategies and theories to their gameplay that they hadn’t been introduced to before. They also find out what weapons are more effective in different situations because of repetitive practice.
It is also common for Tier 4 players to create clans/teams and compete in many online tournaments and ladders to gauge their skill with other teams. Tier 4 players do not win these competitions, however they will beat any Tier 2/3 teams that have also signed up.
Tier 5: Professional Gamers
I use the term ‘professional’ very loosely. Currently only about 0.5 percent of competitive players ever see any real money from their professional gaming career though competition purposes, however they are of the caliber as being the best at what they do, and will some day be recognized by the mainstream as professional athletes (to some degree).
Professional gamers are those gamers who actively compete and have practice schedules. They consistently sit on the top spots of tournaments and ladders and very rarely lose official matches. Usually, if they are team players, they do not play outside of their team and are rarely seen on private team servers alone.
These players also frequent national and international tournaments to compete for large cash prizes and rankings.
Professional gamers also understand the mental concepts it takes to be a professional. The mindset you have to have to compete as well as the mindset you need to have in the community.
It is common for Tier 4 and Tier 5 to visit an occasional public FFA server to blow off some steam, but 9 times out of 10 they’ll be using an alias. They’ll be accused of botting, laugh and leave the server after humiliating everyone on it.
Summary
This was written not to deter people from trying to work their way up the competitive Tiers, but to educate the mass audiences on what there is out there beyond your favorite server, and who those guys with the 1’s and 3’s in their name are that beat everyone up.
I can honestly say I started as a Tier 2 player and worked my way up to Tier 5 after a few years. This could have been rapidly accelerated if someone would have showed me what IRC was at an earlier point in my gaming career.
Sometimes all that’s holding you back from the next tier is a mental barrier. I remember when I went from a Tier 4 player to a Tier 5 player. It was just a moment of clarity where everything made sense, and from that point on, I played at a much more heightened level of gameplay.
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