Yesterday, we reported on the GFE roster swap and the ensuing drama it caused within the NA competitive community. Now, as promised, B Step’s Zoia delivered a “semi-scripted rant” during Town Hall Heroes on the troubling state of the NA scene and the reason for its steady decline over the past year.

Citing “lazy players”, “personal grudges” and managerial “incompetence”, Zoia explains that NA is a weak region because of systemic issues that every player and manager contributes. Zoia took particular time to explain how 40 hours of “locked in scrims” during an NVIDIA sponsored NA boot camp session dropped down to only 16 because of teams canceling, managers making mistakes in the schedule, and players not showing up. He assured the stream that his own team, B Step, is also part of the problem and airing these grievances is “not an excuse for why we lost”.

A widening gap

Instead, Zoia placed his concerns on a rapidly improving EU and KR that continues to leave NA in the dust. Roster swaps aren’t always bad, he adds, specifically calling out Naventic’s support player, Kenma, for his deteriorating skill. With this call out, he poses the rhetorical question: How many other NA rosters are crippled in some way?

When asked during the stream if EU faces any of these problems, James “Bakery” Baker, captain of Team Dignitas, seemed bemused at the infighting and difficulties the NA region is facing. He casually stated that he doesn’t know of “a single player [In EU] who would refuse to play with someone because of personal reasons”, which is in stark contrast to how NA seems to operate.

In the end, Zoia cites a lack of professionalism as NA’s biggest weakness:

“Every single team is causing this issue for other teams. No one is still, to this day, taking this seriously like a job. We are at the point where it’s a job guys, but it’s been like this for a while...there are so many grudges that half of the rosters are crippled.” -Zoia, Episode 145 of Town Hall Heroes.

Derek “Dunktrain” Arabian was largely silent on the issue, which is surprising considering his BlizzCon 2015 world champion status as captain of Cloud9’s old Heroes squad. Though he seemed to nod in agreement to most of Zoia’s points, perhaps his silence was a result of his ex-pro player status. After all, these issues were likely the cause of his former team’s disbandment.

See for yourself

You can watch the full episode on the Arcane8’s Twitch channel, or on their YouTube channel. Ultimately, Zoia ended his rant with a sign of hope, stating that all of the problems are “fixable” as long as the region as a whole gets past their grudges and starts acting more professional. This, of course, begs the question as to whether a semi-scripted rant was professional in the first place.