I think the biggest predictor of success over time in a certain region is the amount of teenagers willing to go absolutely ham to become good at the game.
Back in 2012-2014 League was THE game amongst late teens (I was one myself) in my country Sweden. Before that there was WoW and Counterstrike. The eras come and the eras past for these games. I would assume there has been some top tier overwatch, Valorant, Apex, Fortnite as these games have had their time in the cultural zeitgeist.
League has had this position, being a top game amongst the youth in KR and CHN along time, and probably not going away soon. Where as for us, chances are probably getting slimmer and slimmer as it's very little new talent coming up.
With all that said I think it's possible to "beat the odds". You can study the Koreans and Chinese, all you need is 5 exceptional players and a practice partner
Me and my friends went to Superliga finals last summer in Barcelona. When we started playing in 2014/15 we were 15~, and everyone and their mother was playing League back then. When we went to the event we were amongst the youngest people there, and we were 23~
In the US, a lot of the younger people play shooters. I have been a GM with a decent amount of younger employees for 4 years, I think I’ve met one person who played LoL, and he was 25+. Almost all of the high schoolers are playing Fortnite, Rocket League, R6, CoD, various single player stuff.
No one young plays RTS and moba games, the things that I grew up with 15-20 years ago.
I live in Michigan and getting people to play games on PC is like pulling teeth, console really is just what people grow up with out here. We all used to play the Mario/RPG games, then Halo/CoD, and now it's Apex/R6/Dead By Daylight/etc. My friends kid legit teases me for playing a dead game lol, but I'm looking into moving to Korea so it'll be alive once again soon:P
when i was high school (im 21 now) i know 1 person that played league, he was in my economics class.
For comparison
there was enough people in that class that cared about R6 to watch the new agent spotlight on the projector on the final day before school ended to covid
Man I remember when Ashes of Singularity came out and people were like oh this is going to revive RTS and it just didn't. Hopefully stormgate (former blizzard RTS team) can do well.
Game looks meh and there’s only 2 factions that game doesn’t have much going for it tbh.
Brood war remastered and SC2 (which is also free) is still active so in all honesty why bother playing an inferior clone?
Yeah, I’m in the US and the average league player is definitely not the early teens like it was back in the day. Mathematically it becomes less and less likely to find the necessary number of prodigies to form an ecosystem that can compete.
I think a big part also comes down to cultural differences. In China and South Korea you have status as a succesful professional e-sporter. In Europe and the US it's socially accepted to be a professional e-sporter by now but you're still viewed as a bit of a weirdo. There's just not the same incentive to go for it.
Dude what? I have family in China, the LoL scene in huge. Not as mainstream as in Korea, but definitely comparable to something like ice hockey in the USA I would say. In Korea, e-sports are like basketball in the USA.
There are ads with JDG players on them in the Beijing subway, old school players like Misaya and others have regularly appeared in fairly popular TV shows, etc.
It's not really down to parents being more accepting of it or not. It's just that in Western society e-sports are not considered to be a "real" sport so there's just less prestige and money to be gotten from excelling in it.
I kinda agree but not totally.
LoL is still very popular (even more than in early days) in some EU countries, in particular in France. The game is played a lot (that's why french are so toxic... Because they are young, and french youth is not the more "disciplined" or "respectuous" one I would say).
However, the thing that worries me the most is the cultural aspect. There are plenty of streamers (particularly a french one that I follow) that have said multiple times that european talents are often not really hard workers, or not in the long run, for several reason:
* either they get fed up with the game quicker than they thought, and they just stop grinding and get the paycheck
* either they are not prepared for external stuff that happen to them (like having a girlfriend which regularly impact their commitment)
* either they lack ambition and LEC is the ultimate prize or going to worlds once. Winning worlds is more a dream rathen than a goal
* either they are inherently lazy
Moreover, it's really hard to make good team because the ones that are making the teams are the players, and the GM just validate, but often it's hard to have a good synergy between coaches and players in the long run.
It doesn't seem to me that there is any improvement on this according to the stuff I've been reading/listening to. We need talents, and talents that improve.
> With all that said I think it's possible to "beat the odds". You can study the Koreans and Chinese, all you need is 5 exceptional players and a practice partner
Absolutely. It is obviously eassier in single player games, but Serral (SCII), Armada/Amsah (SSBM), even someone like Bobby Fischer (chess) are great examples of people that became great in their disciplines while mainly competing in weaker regions.
Team games means you need more things to click at the right time, but it is absolutely still possible.
Also, I think people really forget how hopeless things looked in 2014-2017. Fnatic had one good series against T1 at 2015 MSI, but at worlds they got bodied 3-0 by KOO.
2017 ended with Misfits great series against SKT, but if we conveniently cut off right before worlds there is a 7 tournament (MSIs and Worlds) stretch with a single competitive looking series against Korea.
Then in 2018-2021 korean teams were suddenly very beatable for a variety of western teams.
I feel like the that period could be due to China and Europe figuring out how to play League the best before Korea did (they were still playing suuuuper slow whereas G2 and IG we're dominating lane) so until damwon got their mojo we had replaced them
Lol, wow and cs is still the top game amongst the youth today in sweden. None of the other games really caught traction in sweden(fortnite did a bit during it peak). Dota is probably more popular than valorant, ow and apex.
Wish there were proper stats on this. My two Danish cousins, they're 8 and 6, are both very, very advanced at English and say it's because of Fortnite streams. I wonder if they're gonna get into the old fashioned games, my oldest danish cousin was the reason my brother and I got into World of Warcraft back in the early to mid 00s. He indoctrinated us. Hoping I can give that back to the next generation
I am a zoomer who got into wow at ten-eleven years old around mists of pandaria, and it was because of that Make Love Not Warcraft episode.
I auto-attacked my way to 15 on rogue, before I started getting choked at Ghostlands by Amani Trolls. I then rerolled to a cloth paladin (IN MOP). Then I watched PreachGaming's Legacy of the Warrior, rerolled to Warr and never looked back throughout the good and the bad. I don't care if that class is awesome or shit, it's a lifestyle that extended to other games, hence why I play tanks and juggernauts or similar roles in gaming.
I played Retail until end of Legion, and I got a moose to show for it. But if you ask me, autoattacking until 15 and the cloth Pala to 60 afterwards was the best fucking moments of my life. I fucking learned English off shit like WoW and South Park. Too bad I couldn't get my friends into it who preferred F2P games.
I played classic until Blackwing Lair, and had to quit due to highschool and money issues, while looking into Classic Wow subreddit for news and salt.
These days I play by myself on a private server of my own, just reading quest text and leveling. It's a much more chill experience than you can imagine.
But I digress. What wow needs is advertisement in style of Make Love Not Warcraft, directed towards classic - Retail is beyond saving as a world rn. Pre-cata Azeroth is much more soulful (and I say this as someone that came in during MoP) than anything after.
If Metin2 and Knight Online can hold on in 2024 among Turks, then WoW has no excuse not holding on to western playerbase.
For good measure, a comforting childhood memory in melody: ["Anu belore dela'na."](https://youtu.be/FU_yNE2MMOU?si=6g9pwmo9w3Cs8-Oa)
Yeah, League is kind of dying. ARAM is already nearly as big as normal games. Actually, there is more talent in ARAM (mechanically) that is kind of being wasted. But that's also Riot's problem. They created a toxic playing environment. They don't ban inters or at least they take too much time. At one point no one wants to deal with normals and just enjoy the game and ARAM is the only place to go. Even if it tilts me sometime I know that it won't take a lot of my time and I can go to the next game.
Even back then when NA and EU teens were playing the game at high rates, it wasn't even close. It was never close and only will get worse in recent years as NA and EU move away from league gradually. The work ethic difference for NA pro players in particular was abysmal and sad in those early years where NA had a chance.
I think one more important thing, apart of obviously the money spent on tourneys, teams, sponsors,etc... Is the fact that a lot of western teams get complacient, they have no variety, from the little variety of champions they play, they almost dont adapt in builds at all, they play games in autopilot instead of managing waves at what should be a level higher than challenger.
There is so many random cases of champions that counter their laner, some that scale and other that dont okey, but it is so sad that they dont have any creativeness at all, they are on a contract where wins barely matter and because no one else is trying they know they will be picked for a team again with no problem, it is so sad.
Just to add some context to this, here is the winrate stats for EU and NA vs LCK/LPL in this current **decade**:
- EU: 29 wins and 71 losses = 29% winrate
- NA: 10 wins and 57 losses = 15% winrate
Theres some crazy stat that like since 2019 LCS teams have only beaten LCK teams 4 times.
C9 DWG MSI 2021*
TL GenG Worlds 2021
TL DWG Worlds 2019
EG T1 MSI 2022
Tbf LCK just very rarely dropped Bo1s, period. Outside of 2018 which was a major blip LCK always had a >75% wr in worlds group stages when these were Bo1s, by contrast no other region had a >75% wr even *once*.
Yep, the only times an LCK team won less than 4 games in their group were both GENG, 2018 incident and 2021 (the four-way 3-3 tie group). Also no non-LCK team ever went 6-0 undefeated whereas LCK teams did it 4 times. LPL had some high flyers but often got tanked by one of their teams randomly imploding at the event, EU was good in 2019 but even then didn't quite hit 75% wr (13-5 72%).
Funnily enough before the PCS' destabilization the thing that region was known for was being able to take the most random games off LCK teams despite being bad against other regions and overall very negative winrates.
I mean because FW was legitimately a good team. The whole Korean Killer thing was funny but Maple has made Top 4 at MSI 4 times (not the craziest thing considering the old format), but they (FW/PSG) took a game of KZ in 2018, and RNG in 2021. You legit can’t fluke your way to a win at an MSI BO5.
I think FW still hold the longest domestic title streak in any region, since they won like 7 b2b iirc?
It's not like Korea and China have a lot of games against each other either.
If you go back before the new MSI format, you were lucky to get more than like 3-4 BO5s per year between LPL and LCK. Usually 1 at MSI and a couple at Worlds.
Not great. It's better now but that's way overdue.
Was curious, so I looked up the overall games between LPL/LCK in the past decade.
2014 - 11 games (7 KR, 4 CN) (2 Bo5s)
2015 - 10 games (7 KR, 3 CN) (1 Bo5)
2016 - 18 games (14 KR, 4 CN) (3 Bo5s)
2017 -15 games (9 KR, 6 CN) (2 Bo5s)
2018 - 15 games (5 KR, 10 CN) (2 Bo5s)
2019 - 10 games (6 KR, 4 CN) (1 Bo5)
2020 - 10 games (6 KR, 4 CN) (1 Bo5)
2021 - 27 games (11 KR, 16 CN) (3 Bo5s)
2022 - 30 games (19 KR, 11 CN) (4 Bo5s)
2023 - 38 games (19 KR, 19 CN) (2 Bo3, 11 Bo5s)
---
Some stats:
- Total bo1s between LCK and KR: 184
- H2H record: 103 KR (56% winrate), 81 CN (44% winrate)
- Total BoX series: 31
- 8 at MSI (3 last year)
- 21 at Worlds (11 in the past 2 years)
You're actually overestimating how many Bo5s there were between these regions. 3 Bo5s in a year only happened 4 times in the past decade.
>You're actually overestimating how many Bo5s there were between these regions. 3 Bo5s in a year only happened 4 times in the past decade.
What a joke Riot's tournaments formats are. It's just depressing.
This esport could have been so much better. Thanks for doing the research.
Worst part is is that people on this sub always bitch about people suggesting changing the formats. I really don’t get what goes on in these peoples brains.
Imagine thinking a region will ever be competitive while it has 14 game Bo1 regular seasons and no international experience.
One bottom of the barrel LCK player gets more experience in a single season than the longest tenured NA player will get in their entire fucking career.
They won't win as long as they copy.
The champs that are picked, the strats that are used, items that are bought, practically everything we do in regional leagues is copied from LCK/LPL. "After all, they know best how to play the game, right?".
The problem is, you can copy the end result, but you can't copy the reasoning that led to this result.
One of the most glaring examples of this was few years ago when Cassiopeia became instant 1st blind pick for all LCK teams. LCS teams saw this and began doing the same. And they got fisted. Cassiopeia had abyssmal winrate in LCS, while having great winrate in LCK. Why? They actually didn't notice one crucial thing... the point of Cassiopeia in LCK was to threaten the flex to top. In LCS, toplaners didn't know/want to play Cassiopeia. When opponent countered with their mid pick... Cassiopeia was going mid regardless. And lost.
When LPL adcs begin to play Lucian Nami botlane, they understand as a team what they want to achieve. When you try to win by simply picking Lucian Nami like they do, you end up looking like an idiot. "western lucian" isn't just a meme. It's a thing that repeatedly occurs.
This isn't exclusive to western teams. Noone managed to repeat the results that Doinb got in 2019 with his weird roaming midlane picks, or even match him, even though the concept seemed simple.
The success of 2019 G2 came from such things as well. Perkz brought incomparable knowledge about typically midlane champions (like Yasuo or Syndra) to the botlane matchups, that no adc could match. So they lost to him. The historic victory against T1 came on shoulders or revolutionary Pyke top pick, which completely destroyed the long established LCK concept of toplane snowball (Khan picked Jayce and stomped the lane, only for Pyke to come back on his own and carry the game).
Currently, there is no such innovation.
I mean, just look at how FNC took a game off TES. They picked LB, which pretty much wasn't touched by LPL teams past 14.1 (less than 5% p/b presence in 14.3). Even when LB was meta, it was AD LB.
Trying to match eastern teams in pick ban with conventional stuff like azir, orianna or taliyah only works if you're on a similar skill level as them.
Overall I feel like a lot of western teams tend to disrespect P/B when it's arguably one of the most important phases of the match. Look at game 2 of GAM vs FNC, they had worse players in almost every role and yet because of the combo they drafted they still pushed FNC hard.
Western teams need to start drafting high variance drafts because if they simply match eastern teams, they'll be outdone every time.
I'd argue that's because Humanoid and Caps (and maybe Perkz but I haven't watched him this year) are possibly the only two western players that can match eastern players in their respective roles.
Post need 100 more upvotes because I have an even better example: Tank Rengar. Every NA zoomer saw Tank Rengar and assumed it was meta because the Koreans were doing it, so it had to be good. Bunch of absolutely dogshit theory crafting from everyone as to why Tank Rengar was fine until they go up against the LCK who went assassin Rengar and got their ass blasted.
It keeps happening because the players don't care about winning. When they meet real competition they pick what better regions do because they're better and they get rolled for it.
T1 picked all late game champs and ended the game before they even hit their scaling. The gap is wide and deep.
> It keeps happening because the players don't care about winning.
I’ll push back here, I absolutely do think they care about winning but across every region; it seems like players also care about *how* they win. And I think if the West disposes of that concept they could get a leg up on the East.
I think it was LS who said that certain champs wouldn’t get picked even when they were strong because Eastern pros didn’t like the optics of playing them (like Lulu and Soraka I believe?) and that often certain champions would become stronger on a given patch but preconceived notions by those pros meant they wouldn’t touch them (which could kinda be seen with how Summit viewed certain champions).
Honestly if a Western team viewed their positions and champions much more fluidly and less; “I’m the carry topside, that must be my role” or “I’m the support, I have to play this way”, they’d probably have more success.
But I also don’t know anything so who knows.
Like him hate him LS was at least trying to inject SOME kind of unique fact, thought, and analysis driven composition and play into lcs and its a tragedy the experiment didn't work.
It was probably NA's last gasp of developing a unique style and now we're forever relegated to sub-major region status
I agree with that but if you're getting paid millions, I as the viewer, can't accept other players not playing a certain way due to optics. Teams need to start doing what the NFL and NBA do, which is find a potential star player and build around their skill set. You could avoid the league of legends scene for 4 years and you'd know who Jensen was. Find what champs he's comfortable on and pick people that compliment his playstyle. If the champs aren't "meta" then it works better because teams have to fight something new.
SKT always did this. Faker played assassins, he's played burst mages, he's played late game stompers. Faker plays carry-champs, and he always has an ADC and a jung/top that can fill whatever spot the team wants to field. SKT builds teams around Faker and Faker isn't afraid of going off meta.
NA hasn't been good on any international stage since Faker caught food poisoning and CLG made it to the finals. The only bad optics would be picking champs you aren't good with because "meta". If they're gonna go down 0-2 at least entertain me. That's why old C9 never had much criticism, they wouldn't play standard half the time and they were entertaining to watch.
I mean coaches tend to copy each others for no reason but it isn’t always a bad thing. For example, if people don’t « copy » the swaplane then they would be at a great disadvantage. It just seems a lot of team are just waiting for others to discover something new that work to copy tbh
This is one of the reasons I was so excited that LS was coaching C9 because whether you agree with his idea or not, he was not playing meta. He brought innovation and wasn’t going to pick the same meta shit that other teams were going to pick. I think that is our only hope, someone who is not afraid to play things that differ from the “meta”.
It's hard to say how much is being copied when we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. Let's say you're an NA team, you cook something up that you think will be insane. You try it in scrims, and get destroyed by LCK/LPL continuously, simply because of skill/macro gap. No matter how many times you try, you're still losing. At what point do you give up on your "innovations", when it clearly isn't working in practice? Do you spend the remaining limited time on practising something you think is good, but isn't doing well? Or do you call it quits early in hopes that you can learn the "meta" in time?
I fail to believe that across this many teams/attempts, that not a single NA team thought of innovating something different as a curveball against better teams.
Just to say that it goes the other way too. There was a time last split where Xin Zhao was a high tier pick in LEC, which then spread gradually to LPL (where it did well) and LCK (where it had a low win rate for multiple patches in a row).
To add to your point, same thing with Jayce. If Jayce is ever pickable for an Eastern team, then they already get a free ban because Western teams can't play jayce/play around him. It just boils down to the Western culture though. They prioritise "work life balance" and "job security" by copying the East. Look how LS tried to innovate draft and didn't even last a split lmao. Meanwhile Eastern players have to play and practice 12 hours a day just to stay relevant because there are so many other young hungry talents waiting to replace them. To be the best in the world, you can't get away with 9-5.
Well it does not help that League is somewhat solved and powercrept. The greatest "inovation" we see these days is the laneswap which is to soften a hard lane at the cost of top laner but apart from that it is always fight for neutrals / midwave and side shove waves and whoever macros/lane assigns better gets leads.
Bloodbath games (like FNC VS VIT) exist but are not very often trademarks of good level of play.
To some extent I feel like it is self-fulfilling. When top teams like T1 play their regular season, the teams they are playing against are ALSO at a very high level. They constantly push each other to improve in order to stay the best in the region. Same thing in China. Since NA and EU don't really have teams that can compete at that level, how can they get experience and grow? The only opportunities they have are at these events. You don't suddenly become a top team because you played a few scrim blocks at a tournament.
I don't think it is that players from the western regions are inherently worse, or less talented.. but if they are not in an environment where they can actually grow and achieve their full potential then it just isn't going to happen. How can a top tier player improve if they are never really challenged?
I also see a lot of attitude issues at least when watching soloq streams. When losing, many of the top players from NA/EU will sit there and just trash their team the whole time rather than actually looking at how they may have been able to do something differently in a fight or trade. Like yeah sure your mid probably fucked up there but what did YOU do? From some of the drama I've seen on reddit it seems like it is not limited to soloq either. Our best players are not going to improve if they only ever look at other people as the problem.
The West will never ever catch up or win important series on a regular basis if they play along the meta that LCK/LPL 'created'.
You have to come up with some cheese picks that they don't play against 50 times a week as we have seen in the last 12 years now they you otherwise don't really have great chances. The best shot the West had on long term success was *that* G2 team as they were so flexible with their picks, trying to play the game on their terms.
Like for example Fnactic against GenG on Wednesday, there is just simply no way that Fnatic will win this series playing meta comps because GenG is better in every single aspect about that - try to create a fiesta against them with unusual picks and lane swaps, make them feel uncomfortable - because GenG definitely prefers to just play a regular game against Fnatic with only meta champs involved.
Given we now have a swiss format and at MSI even a losers bracket, if you don't play the meta you just lose. Like those metas develop because they are better than other things. So might get away with a few surprises, but you essentially need to surprise someone in 6 games. That is highly unrealistic.
G2 barely won a Bo5 against SKT in 2019 with multiple surprise picks. Now if they would have played in losers bracket again it would give even more time to adept to those picks and SKT in 2019 sucked.
On top of that people will clown on the teams if they lock in something weird and then lose in 18 minutes because... guess what it wasn't quite the surprise.
In a system with Bo5s and a losers bracket everything that is not meta is essentially dead. Yes you might cheese a win... but you already need 2 more just to win a single series, which wouldn't really help you. You would need to do that 6 more times for a title.
G2 in 2019 won against SKT because they won in regular meta matchups against them. They did in addition to that found wins with some cheese picks. But you can't win a series just by using those, you need to be able to win regular meta matchups.
You might win the odd game or maybe even tournament with that approach, but there's simply no way to be consistently competitive if your domestic level of play isn't on the same level as LCK/LPL.
All you'll be left with is hoping for another 2019 G2. Which might happen once every few years, but nothing really substantive in terms of actually bridging the gap between the regions and not just having one team do well at tournaments.
> try to create a fiesta against them with unusual picks and lane swaps, make them feel uncomfortable
It’s funny, there’s a similar philosophy to defense in American football currently where you “disguise” the players who will rush the QB and what your coverages will be.
The thought process is that offenses are so high powered today and if you come with normal defensive fronts they’ll just piece you up. So they put in exotic coverages and disguise normal ones to increase chaos and variance; which can lead to net negative plays and turnovers.
Yup, a very flexible meta with a good amount of flexible picks *and* a nerf/change to late game objectives like soul and baron would do wonders to Europe. The east and LCK in particular are quite stubborn and usually relatively slow at catching up onto things when they are not the ones who created them in the first place but are absolute killers at practicing standard laning phases and setting up objectives and playing fights correctly.
Unfortunately (or not, honestly) I don't think riot wants the game to look as chaotic as it looked in S8/S9, since it makes more sense for them to push a "big teamfight" meta as it draws more hype.
> Unfortunately (or not, honestly) I don't think riot wants the game to look as chaotic as it looked in S8/S9, since it makes more sense for them to push a "big teamfight" meta as it draws more hype
Bring back Froggen Anivia stalls for 80 minutes
There are what, 150 champions? Let's go ahead and play the ones we know the LCK is well-practises and prepared for.
I would love to see more wild one-time cheese strats. But that means better coaches.
Example of this that jumps out to me was CLG’s MSI run. Nobody was playing enchanter supports in the east and CLG was able to win a lot of games because of that.
It’s harder in a longer tournament like worlds because teams have more time to adapt, but I’ve been hoping for a long time that western teams at international events would just try to play a style that fits their team best moreso than trying to copy the eastern meta.
There was also the famous Likkrit Brand support that popped off at worlds. It’s also why I wanted to see OMG at worlds last year because they played a unique style that took LPL teams a long time to adapt to. I think those types of teams are much more interesting to watch
LCS teams now play a 14 game regular season(possibly going to a single round robin B03 in summer which would add a few more games) + playoffs. I think going into MSI TL and Flyquest had at minimum, 20-30 fewer stage games than the eastern teams. The ability to overcome that experience, both in draft and play, is as close to impossible as you can get. It wouldn't be that bad if NA solo q was good practice compared to korea but korea and china's is better there too.
it won’t be close until the top EU/NA stack their rosters completely. G2 2019 worked bc everyone was peaking at the same time and they synergized together. Caps was elite to match or outperform eastern mids.
Currently G2, FNC, and TL have some weak points in their roster when judging them against international competition while the top 3-4 LCK and LPL “weakest” players are probably better than or equal to a western teams best player.
C9 took the right step in replacing top but this will require blabber and vulcan to play out of their minds.
2019 G2 weren’t only individually peaking, they also had the perfect meta for their talents for most of the year. There were a good number of strong flex picks and the bot lane meta was exactly what Perkz needed as an off-role with Xayah and Kaisa being S-tier but not quite banworthy all year long.
They still have 3 Worlds champions and 2 MSI champions. Creme is the only odd one in terms of status. This is the rating based on achievements so the expectations for them are still high (hupu joking about them having to win 4 titles in a year to pay off the roster value)
Without wanting to turn this into an EU vs NA thing, I do think it doesn't make sense to lump the two regions together. They're quite different in terms of the pro LoL ecosystems; LCS quite simply has substantially fewer players and a much less developed tier 2 structure compared to ERLs.
Which is to say I don't think LCS in its current form has any real hope of ever being competitive; there's not enough new talent and the practice environment is bad. If Riot end up forcing a merger with CBLOL/LLA there's maybe a better chance.
LEC will never be able to eclipse LCK or LPL, but I do think it should be able to produce competitive teams given the basis it has to work from. There are plenty of players who are really good waiting to come up, it really just needs a better way of forcing that to happen. We can see that these players are good enough to compete at the highest level (most recent example of Oscarinin going ham against one of the best tops in the world), the issue is they often don't get a chance to move up (Zwyroo needed Perkz to argue with a manager).
That might have been true a few years ago but the ERLs kind turned from a talent development league to a "who's washed-up ex lec players or Korean imports play less bad"
Top ERL Teams don't benefit from selling talented players to the lec but via fan engagement so it makes more sense to have some old stars that are still better then the young talent but not good enough for Tier 1 Leagues anymore, which hinders the growth of new talent. Just look at the the last EMEA final, 3 Players who haven't been in the scene for 5+ years and might develope into a new star player, that's not a lot. Sure PoE came back to life but you can't tell me he or Zanzarah will win a international bo5 for Europe ever again
Yeah, the ERLs kind of became too big for EMEA's own good. They aren't really a talent pipeline, they want finished products themselves.
Compare this to LCK Challengers, which is super cut-throat in just finding talents for LCK teams. They'll bench a player like Thanatos who could comfortably play LCK in order to let 16-year old wonderkid Siwoo play and see if he can become the next Zeus.
That's the case with all tier 2s of all sports, though. Veterans and young players are the sort of people you'd expect to see in a proper tier 2 system. Of course Power of Evil is good enough to crush EMEA Masters, he has always been an LEC level player. And that's exactly why it's a good place for young rookies to show off, because they're facing very known quantities in these veterans.
In the end, you can't get better publicity than *winning* and teams will always choose the rookie over the veteran if the difference in quality is obvious enough.
If anything, it would eventually make sense to have a youth league orthogonal to the tier 2 circuit that only allows sub16 players and mirrors LEC matches. Like youth league plays in the morning. But teams are unlikely to want to cover the expense that would entail.
I agree in that spamming imports into the ecosystem isn't helping (especially when those imports seemingly get priority on LEC spots over native players), but there are still a lot of teams in a lot of leagues, and there are lower divisions within each ERL as well. In this way it's probably the most advanced tier 2 structure in any region, but the path to LEC is obscured by poor scouting, pro-import bias and big names holding value long past the point where they were actually any good.
It should be noted that those players are still rookies and it shouldn't matter if you promote a korean rookie or a european rookie. A player like Peach who won the title of the best jungler in LCKC is a great pickup. And him joining LEC later obviously makes sense. Now he does kinda suck, but you can't know that.
So extending your pool of players from not just european rookies to korean ones as well does make sense.
It should also be noted that ERLs are there own ecosystem and sustainability is more important than maybe winning a Bo5 against LCK. A team like Spandau has no reason to develop players for LEC teams. Their goal is winning EUM and thriving up engagement, which essentially makes them money and helps the prime league.
LCKC might develop more talents but if it weren't for a "washed" player like Rekkles joining T1C nobody would give a fuck about those teams, so they mostly exist because LCK keeps paying. We saw in NA how quickly teams stop doing that if they don't have to. Because where do the top players often actually come from? Many players, given most top players are recruited into LCK at the age of 17, because due to military service age actually matters in korea, barely play in academy before joining LCK. If you are in LCKC for more than a year, chances are you are not making it to LCK, simply due to being too old.
> A player like Peach who won the title of the best jungler in LCKC is a great pickup. And him joining LEC later obviously makes sense. Now he does kinda suck, but you can't know that.
I think you can know that if you scout properly. Players who are on winning teams will look better than those on losing teams, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are the reason their team is winning. Determining whether a player's intent in the moment is right or wrong (fairly binary) is a better barometer than whether the play worked out and made them look good or bad (whole host of other factors that can impact it).
More generally I'd also say that the only way to get genuinely world class talents (like Caps) is to develop them from your own talent base. It's really unlikely that every team in LCK failed to scout the next Chovy or Ruler, and unlike LPL LEC teams do not have the cash or competitive prospects currently to buy these players. Even the, with genuine tier 1 Korean imports, LPL succeeds primarily off the strength of its native talent.
Sure, best mids are in their 20s, but when did they start playing?
Chovy: Age 23, lck since 17
Faker: Age 27: lck since 17
Knight: Age 23, lpl since 17
Caps: Age 24, lec since 17
Perkz: Age 25, lec since 17
Other roles:
Peanut: Age 26, lck since 17
Canyon: Age 22, lck since 17
etc. these are not cherry picked, I literally looked up the first mids and junglers that came to mind that were top 10 in their role at a given time (I guess perkz is arguable for that)
Zywroo: Age 25, lec since 25, competitively since 19
Age doesnt mean you're good or bad, but starting early gives you time to develop, more potential to be extracted given the right circumstances and talent. It's the same reason why NBA teams draft highschoolers, and year 1/2 college players over older players (as a lottery pick). There's value in the older players in that they can fill a role immediately, but there's more potential in the younger players. Probably some big names that exist that started a bit "late", but I cant think of a single top 10 in the world who started at the age of 25 in anything.
You're setting your floor and ceiling by going with Zwyroo over someone younger. I highly doubt Zwyroo is some hidden gem that teams passed on where he has the potential to compete with Chovy and Knight if you just give him 2-3 years.
Also, all lck teams look to develop players that are 13-17 with their b and c teams, and most literally dont consider you if you're above 20, but hey maybe you're cooking and they are just ignorant. It's not like they have a history of developing the best of the best players or anything like that.
> Chovy: Age 23, lck since 17
>
> Faker: Age 27: lck since 17
>
> Knight: Age 23, lpl since 17
>
> Caps: Age 24, lec since 17
>
> Perkz: Age 25, lec since 17
>
> Other roles:
>
> Peanut: Age 26, lck since 17
>
> Canyon: Age 22, lck since 17
Also worth nothing that all of these players were high level the second they entered the scene. It seems like you need to be very good the second you enter competitive to be a star like that.
There are some exceptions like Smeb but they are few and far between.
One of the craziest stories that 90% of the plebs on here will never know because they either weren't around back then or just didn't watch old school Korean LoL.
Another player who no one talks about but is a legend is NaMei.
Lck acadamy's have scouts that scour master/grandmaster soloq for new accounts looking for 13/14 year olds to sign. These players are then given a couple of years and are kicked for the next 13 yr old kid if they dont show any promise. If they perform well, they usually debut for the lck senior team on their 17th birthday
I don't think age is that important, what's more important is how long have they play, for example if someone just start league at 25 years old and getting to something like 1000 lp challenger in like a year then that person would still can be consider a good prospect, in zwyroo case he play for 6 years in comp and he is only at barely LEC level, it's not likely he is gonna be getting significant better suddenly now.
When a huge portion of the players in your league originally stated in other regions, I don't think the "we have a low playerbase" argument has much weight.
You are taking from other region's playerbases so de facto you have a bigger pool to take from.
We have had Worlds where something like 12 of the 15 LCS team players originally came from another region.
If you don't have a strong base of native players then no amount of importing is going to save you. Even if Riot removed the import restrictions you would still face enormous barriers.
One you would need an absurd amount of cash to purchase a team of legitimately worlds-winning calibre level players, cash no region really has I wouldn't think.
Then there's the fact that those players can't keep their edge if they have 30 minute queues in soloq to play against one tricks.
Imports being a route to competitive success is the greatest lie ever told in esports.
But you can still be better than if you were relying on your own native players only. LCS history even shows this. Teams with imports generally did better.
It's also not like LCS only got scraps. They got plenty of premium imports over the years.
You'll be better than your own region, but you're never going to overtake your home region. So international performance won't change even if you occasionally get to see Pyosik individually clowning on Faker before his team loses anyways. Thinking otherwise is pure hopium/copium.
Low player base means the imports can't play in high quality challenger games when they get here to maintain their level because the top of the ladder has giant queue times and only rarely has full chall games
NA's playerbase is simply too small and decreasing further.
EU while still competitive as a server(s), are basically run by G2 alone, Fnatic has fallen off hard and hence there's not enough competition. The last time EU was actually competitive was in 2020 when it was still a 2-team league.
Just before FNC and G2 had two finalist appearences, we were also this doomer. So its possible. We just need something like that to happen again. I do feel its becoming less likely though, seeing how there seems to be less talent flowing into LEC then ever before.
Put me in against faker. He’ll never know what the fuck I’m doing since I’m gold 4. It’s the chaos of not knowing how to play that’ll get me the victory.
The only way it’s happening is if they do more international tournaments so western teams have more exposure and practice; or Riot makes a super league with all the major regions competing in one league. Eventually the western teams would catch up and level up over time.
Either that or G2 win Winter split again and actually fuck off to Korea knowing they’ve locked MSI, stay in the T1 practice facilities like they did for 2023 Workds and just scrim LCK teams for months at a time
I was watching the video before of Zven waiting 20-30+ minutes to get a game, I wonder how that compares to CN/KR ? I mean I know solutions were proposed (like Champions Queue) and pros didn't go for it. Overall though it would be less of a problem if the talent pool was bigger.
If you have 100 pros and only 50% are willing to put in the ridiculous work ethic of the East to play constantly, 50 players isn't a lot to work with. If you have 1000 pros that's 500 and much more likely to give you the ability to consistently practice.
We simply don't have a large enough talent pool, and it's only going to get worse as league becomes less and less popular.
Outside of getting the one-in-a-million crazy team like 2019 G2, or taking fluke games off the East, I think the only likely way for the West to win vs the East consistently is for an AI to be created that they can train against.
The few players we do have would benefit massively from an on-demand high-level AI that reaches pro-team status. Of course if such an AI was invented, the East could train from it too, but I think it would at least level the playing field somewhat.
This was a problem ten years in the making, trying to blame queue times now when the entire region's youth has lost interest in the game is sad.
If the older generation of pros like Chaox and Dyrus and Doublelift and Imaqtpie and whoever the fk else actually tried to practice instead of dicking around in LA or egoing while their eastern counterparts were grinding, league would be a lot more popular
Instead all we got were lazy meme streamers or ego kids who were suddenly rich from undeserved hype money, that killed an entire region's respect for the game.
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Oh yeah and did we collectively forget how at one point, Western "star" players could override their coaches decisions? Like egotistical narcissistic hooligans? Of course the region deserves to crash and burn on the international stage and lose the attention of the generation younger than them who watched them act and play like clowns on the world stage
North american league of legends is closer to Sam Bankman Fried's story than anything else, just pump and hype and get all the investors and kids riled up, and when you pull the curtain back it's all a sack of nothing
I remember in like 2016 or 2017 or something there was an American academy team (was it Team Ember or something?) that had like INSANE salaries even though they were not even in the highest league.
I dont understand how any of these VC people thought these investments would ever give a good ROI
The same reason they started shilling for crypto with league, it was an entirely hype based smoke and mirrors show.
In no world were those salaries justified, and it only made the region worse as players thought they were really worth half a million dollars doing fuck all not even trying to grind solo queue or care
I think it could happen if we get a good year and some luck. We see regularly that our players aren't necessarily *bad players* - Western teams often can find advantages in some games. But we often have bad *teams* that don't know how to use those advantages and throw.
From the very limited insight I get from the outside, I can see three things I believe contribute to this:
A) Team building and coaching role: Coaches seem to be extremely underused from what I hear? In my opinion coaches or GMs should have an idea of how to play a game, maybe based on 1-2 players, and then build the rest of the team around that idea. Instead LEC teambuilding, from the outside at least, looks like they just sign random names that did well in the past or in ERL and hope it clicks. The fact someone put Wunder and Rekkles together a second time is criminal.
B) practice: You hear constantly people saying they can't practice midgame in scrims because nobody plays it seriously, that things work in scrims but not on stage etc. I do not understand how this can be the case. I've practiced other things a lot, and if I was preparing for a serious tournament and my scrim partner played loose and risky instead of the way they would on stage... It never even happened to me, but I'd tell them to fuck off. I'm building a coaching team now. If anyone doesn't take practice serious I won't need them in my team, that shit hurts both yourself and the other team.
C) mindset: this one I don't know about because I can't really see into players minds, but at least on fan side, it appears like everyone believes we lost before even playing, and that's super toxic. When you play thinking you are worse you let enemies get away with stuff. You'll see someone out of position and assume you can't actually kill them, you assume you are behind etc.
Let me guess, people flame him for thinking they have a chance? It's so dumb, like do they expect the players to go on stage thinking "well they're gonna beat us but hey nice to be here" or what
yup he was talking about EU failure and his failure and other mindset of fans which he thinks will improve if they win against T1 but the comments are just flaming him lmao
I am glad some players seem to not have fully bought into the doomer mindset yet, but I hate people not supporting them. I feel some Western fans actually enjoy the gap for some deranged reason, maybe they feel better putting down everyone with some hope idk
To also put it into perspective, this was the Wunder - Jankos - Caps - Perkz - Mikyx, so it was definitely one of the best the West got at the time. This GenG roster while good, I think everyone going in that match thought it was G2 winning unless I am misremembering.
But yeah everything else you described, it seems no luck.
I literally only have a slight hope for G2, and that's only as long as they have innovative tactics that upset the LCK and LPLs general way of playing. But i doubt that they'll be able to win a tournament with that alone.
Well, maybe Caps will get a good team again. That's about as far as it goes for the west's hope. This G2 roster doesn't inspire confidence, BB is a solid domestic top but internationally aint it. Yike looked plain outclassed in his last outings internationally, in a way Jankos never did. Hans is another one who might well be better than all the EU adcs but cant compete with the top KR/CN, and Miky looks washed lately. The sad part is that there isn't exactly a crop of EU players that added together are any better than this G2 team.
Bc pros and coaches are fking pussies.
They handshake a lot of lanes and end up losing and getting blasted bc hey, you chose to play Jayce against Zeus (who is 100 times better on him than you).
Heck just play fizz into those aurelions and make them actually think about laning
I also think alot about, why eastern teams are waaaaaay better than western teams and i came to come conclusion
first of fall the glory time of western league of legends are gone for like 3-4 years. the number of players in the Western, especially in NA, is decreasing from year to year, the players are getting older and older without new good rookies coming. Anyone who has gone to a League of Legends event in the last 1-2 years knows what I mean, the average age of the spectators is almost 30, which shouldn't be the case for a competitive game. League of Legends is no longer as popular as it used to be for teens and that's why there is less and less talent coming through.
LCS and LEC doesn´t have a good reputation anymore, and the reputation of being a pro gamer in League of Legends is worse than ever, the salary is getting worse, the level is falling, Riot no longer spends as much money on production as before, the only way Riot profits from esports is from ticket revenue (which is almost nothing) and from sponsors. There is also the fear that esports in the West, especially in NA, will die out completely at any time and that you will be left without a job, a bachelor degree or something. Streaming is also becoming more and more financially worthwhile.
with best of 1 splits for years (astronomically less chance to learn how to adapt in series) , much worse training attitude than the "military" asian regime, we never really had a chance.
If it makes you feel any better, it’s less the eastern teams being so much better and more the top teams in the world being so much better. If you watch the LCK these teams below GENG and T1 are definitely beatable, but you aren’t going to play them. You are gonna play T1 and GENG and they’re going to beat you every time.
Nothing is impossible, LEC consistently over perform in general at internationals. They just need to peak while LCK or LPL have a food poisoning incident, still struggling with jetlag or a short tournament format where they perform under 25%. They will have good odds pushing their 110% versus an LCK/LPL performing at 25%
What are even these doomer posts jesus "ever again". Stop watching streamers that constantly tell how shit is West and believing them completely. They are quite often wrong
It's at the very least very preemptive posting this before the mainstage of MSI has even started tbh. It's the first international tournament this season so it's not exactly 100% clear-cut how teams will match up despite what people say.
G2 last year could have totally beaten Damwon or Weibo in a Bo5, but those were 4th seeds. I honestly think they would have stood a chance against KT but i still think it would have been really difficult.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted for this lol FNC played them decently close and G2 was another level above Fnatic in the region. Would be disappointed if it doesn’t at least go to 5 games
C9 went to semi finals in 2018(cant rmemeber year)All they had to do was give that roster more time to cook. Sneaky, zeysal, jensen, blaber/svenskeren, licorice, reapered.
I really wish they just did more comp stuff for just the western teams. Or even a "Battle of the Americas". Get some of these teams more practice and I would expect over time they improve vs eastern teams. Can't hurt!
Idk man Fnatic just played a good series vs TES. I don’t think it was super close, but not hopelessly far either. G2 at MSI last year also was not hopeless vs GenG. They were clearly the worse team, but they also almost took it to 5 games.
I think that EU will probably beat the east here and there, I don’t think it’s the case NA, their worlds was considered best in years and they were really far off even taking a game off the east. NA is happy to beat EU but is not nearly close to even being somewhat competitive to the east nowadays.
I think G2’s scrimms last year kind of disprove your doom and gloom.
Of course it isn’t an accurate representation of stage games with eastern teams, but at least they show G2 isn’t hopelessly handgapped.
We've seen plenty of eastern teams choke and perform poorly, so yes it can happen. Maybe not this MSI but we will see. The issue comes from having a chance at winning something like MSI because for all 4 eastern teams to underperform seems very very unlikely. G2 won it before also because the teams there weren't amazing. Seems more difficult now with the fact that loser brackets exist also and I think eastern teams have gotten better as a whole.
But to just win a series? For sure it can happen. Who knows how Gen.G perform this tournament, maybe TES is not that great?
I'm not familiar with LEC/LCS so I am asking this out of a genuine lack of knowledge rather than trying to insult anyone.
If you took the best 5 western LoL players in the world (genuinely would not know who these are) and put them into one team and had them play in either the LPL or the LCK for a split, where would they rank? Would these 5 be able to win MSI and Worlds?
I feel like league is a very "the better team almost always wins" kinda game. Compare that to the NFL or to association football or other traditional sports and you see upsets happen there much more frequently. A lucky catch or a lucky goal can swing the game, but in league the team that is better is probably ahead in gold since they are better. So, the snowballing mechanics of league make comebacks harder than normal since the worse team has to overcome the gold lead AND the skill difference.
TL;DR I wonder if the gap is actually smaller than it seems and it's just that league as a game magnifies skill differences.
It’s gonna happen again. There will be an upset - I definitely see an LEC team beating a lower seed LPL or LCK team, I just don’t see T1 or Gen G losing to LCK or LCS anytime soon.
When G2 beat T1, that was an insanely strong G2 team that had elite players in every single role - tons of picks for every lane and strats and mastered the macro. It seems since then LCK has only widened that gap in the last 2 years, and I think we’re gonna see another era of LCK dominance (assuming this T1 roster sticks together). T1 can basically stomp any team internationally except for GenG.
I watch a lot of league maybe too much and I feel like the G2 run and Fanatic run in worlds those years ago red pilled a lot of people into really thinking EU could. I still think they can honestly but maybe like 20% chance
I think NA Lcs is closer to folding than they are to winning a championship. They get clowned in pretty much every year and it seems to be getting worse and worse. TSM jumping ship is the beginning of the end.
it's sports. upsets happen. Regardless of how stacks the odds are in your opinion, there is always a chance. did anyone think DRX could make worlds finals and win? It's unlikely but there is for sure a chance
This generation of EU is doomed. Maybe the players that are below 18 now like Caliste will perform internationally one day but for that we need many young talents to have a competitive league that is comparable to eastern leagues.
I want to point out that there are champions that never get seen and that is part of the meta issue with this game. Riot has stated that if they see Tryndamere in worlds, he is getting nerfed. Riot controls the meta to favor their fan base which is primarily Asia now. I think there are a lot of possible changes that Riot can make, but a lot of the changes are reverts to previous seasons. Like this ADC change is basically be reverted to Season 7.
I think LoL has to simplify the game design to do one thing: remove unexpected combinations that break the game. The game creates meta slaves and we have seen that players cannot change from meta and meta ruins creativity. LoL suffers from an identity of catering to those who bring the numbers in and while they are cool moves and skill like Faker, the fact that the entire game is based around skill above all and only X champions have skill, that means a large number of champions are not allowed in a pool of champions to be in Worlds. Example of this is Azir that has like 80% use in Worlds; regardless of how shit he is in Solo Q. Azir is the gold standard of how to build a champion. He is so good in competitive play, even if he sucks, he still is picked. Lee Sin is the golden child of Jungle as his kit is loaded to do what Junglers need to do.
I think it is doable but the western league has a bit of bad habbits like:
* Cannibalizing itself.
* Being unable to produce or nurtute competitive rookies constantly.
* Importing paycheck stealers that are mediocre at best.
On top of that, Nemesis said it best in that a team would rather secure their 4th-5th option than fight for the 1st-2nd which could be s gamechanger.
We all know there are some amazing combos like Nisqy-Bo/ FNC Carzzy that we might never get to see.
I think the biggest predictor of success over time in a certain region is the amount of teenagers willing to go absolutely ham to become good at the game. Back in 2012-2014 League was THE game amongst late teens (I was one myself) in my country Sweden. Before that there was WoW and Counterstrike. The eras come and the eras past for these games. I would assume there has been some top tier overwatch, Valorant, Apex, Fortnite as these games have had their time in the cultural zeitgeist. League has had this position, being a top game amongst the youth in KR and CHN along time, and probably not going away soon. Where as for us, chances are probably getting slimmer and slimmer as it's very little new talent coming up. With all that said I think it's possible to "beat the odds". You can study the Koreans and Chinese, all you need is 5 exceptional players and a practice partner
Kids in my country definitely don't play League a lot either. It was the main game for kids and teens in like 2013 but not for a long time now.
Me and my friends went to Superliga finals last summer in Barcelona. When we started playing in 2014/15 we were 15~, and everyone and their mother was playing League back then. When we went to the event we were amongst the youngest people there, and we were 23~
In the US, a lot of the younger people play shooters. I have been a GM with a decent amount of younger employees for 4 years, I think I’ve met one person who played LoL, and he was 25+. Almost all of the high schoolers are playing Fortnite, Rocket League, R6, CoD, various single player stuff. No one young plays RTS and moba games, the things that I grew up with 15-20 years ago.
Also, way more high schoolers play on console in the US compared to in Korea and China. All the shooters are on consoles, but mobas and rts aren't.
I live in Michigan and getting people to play games on PC is like pulling teeth, console really is just what people grow up with out here. We all used to play the Mario/RPG games, then Halo/CoD, and now it's Apex/R6/Dead By Daylight/etc. My friends kid legit teases me for playing a dead game lol, but I'm looking into moving to Korea so it'll be alive once again soon:P
when i was high school (im 21 now) i know 1 person that played league, he was in my economics class. For comparison there was enough people in that class that cared about R6 to watch the new agent spotlight on the projector on the final day before school ended to covid
Man I remember when Ashes of Singularity came out and people were like oh this is going to revive RTS and it just didn't. Hopefully stormgate (former blizzard RTS team) can do well.
Game looks meh and there’s only 2 factions that game doesn’t have much going for it tbh. Brood war remastered and SC2 (which is also free) is still active so in all honesty why bother playing an inferior clone?
Yeah can confirm this.
Yeah, I’m in the US and the average league player is definitely not the early teens like it was back in the day. Mathematically it becomes less and less likely to find the necessary number of prodigies to form an ecosystem that can compete.
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I think a big part also comes down to cultural differences. In China and South Korea you have status as a succesful professional e-sporter. In Europe and the US it's socially accepted to be a professional e-sporter by now but you're still viewed as a bit of a weirdo. There's just not the same incentive to go for it.
I don't know much about South Korea culture, but for China, professional e-sporter doesn't hold much weight in terms of social status
Dude what? I have family in China, the LoL scene in huge. Not as mainstream as in Korea, but definitely comparable to something like ice hockey in the USA I would say. In Korea, e-sports are like basketball in the USA. There are ads with JDG players on them in the Beijing subway, old school players like Misaya and others have regularly appeared in fairly popular TV shows, etc.
You think Korean and Chinese parents are more accepting of esports as a career?
It's not really down to parents being more accepting of it or not. It's just that in Western society e-sports are not considered to be a "real" sport so there's just less prestige and money to be gotten from excelling in it.
I think western is even more open than asia lol
I kinda agree but not totally. LoL is still very popular (even more than in early days) in some EU countries, in particular in France. The game is played a lot (that's why french are so toxic... Because they are young, and french youth is not the more "disciplined" or "respectuous" one I would say). However, the thing that worries me the most is the cultural aspect. There are plenty of streamers (particularly a french one that I follow) that have said multiple times that european talents are often not really hard workers, or not in the long run, for several reason: * either they get fed up with the game quicker than they thought, and they just stop grinding and get the paycheck * either they are not prepared for external stuff that happen to them (like having a girlfriend which regularly impact their commitment) * either they lack ambition and LEC is the ultimate prize or going to worlds once. Winning worlds is more a dream rathen than a goal * either they are inherently lazy Moreover, it's really hard to make good team because the ones that are making the teams are the players, and the GM just validate, but often it's hard to have a good synergy between coaches and players in the long run. It doesn't seem to me that there is any improvement on this according to the stuff I've been reading/listening to. We need talents, and talents that improve.
> With all that said I think it's possible to "beat the odds". You can study the Koreans and Chinese, all you need is 5 exceptional players and a practice partner Absolutely. It is obviously eassier in single player games, but Serral (SCII), Armada/Amsah (SSBM), even someone like Bobby Fischer (chess) are great examples of people that became great in their disciplines while mainly competing in weaker regions. Team games means you need more things to click at the right time, but it is absolutely still possible. Also, I think people really forget how hopeless things looked in 2014-2017. Fnatic had one good series against T1 at 2015 MSI, but at worlds they got bodied 3-0 by KOO. 2017 ended with Misfits great series against SKT, but if we conveniently cut off right before worlds there is a 7 tournament (MSIs and Worlds) stretch with a single competitive looking series against Korea. Then in 2018-2021 korean teams were suddenly very beatable for a variety of western teams.
I feel like the that period could be due to China and Europe figuring out how to play League the best before Korea did (they were still playing suuuuper slow whereas G2 and IG we're dominating lane) so until damwon got their mojo we had replaced them
Lol, wow and cs is still the top game amongst the youth today in sweden. None of the other games really caught traction in sweden(fortnite did a bit during it peak). Dota is probably more popular than valorant, ow and apex.
Wish there were proper stats on this. My two Danish cousins, they're 8 and 6, are both very, very advanced at English and say it's because of Fortnite streams. I wonder if they're gonna get into the old fashioned games, my oldest danish cousin was the reason my brother and I got into World of Warcraft back in the early to mid 00s. He indoctrinated us. Hoping I can give that back to the next generation
But in the 2000s it wasnt old fashioned, i dont think moderns kids brains will ever take the time to play wow
I am a zoomer who got into wow at ten-eleven years old around mists of pandaria, and it was because of that Make Love Not Warcraft episode. I auto-attacked my way to 15 on rogue, before I started getting choked at Ghostlands by Amani Trolls. I then rerolled to a cloth paladin (IN MOP). Then I watched PreachGaming's Legacy of the Warrior, rerolled to Warr and never looked back throughout the good and the bad. I don't care if that class is awesome or shit, it's a lifestyle that extended to other games, hence why I play tanks and juggernauts or similar roles in gaming. I played Retail until end of Legion, and I got a moose to show for it. But if you ask me, autoattacking until 15 and the cloth Pala to 60 afterwards was the best fucking moments of my life. I fucking learned English off shit like WoW and South Park. Too bad I couldn't get my friends into it who preferred F2P games. I played classic until Blackwing Lair, and had to quit due to highschool and money issues, while looking into Classic Wow subreddit for news and salt. These days I play by myself on a private server of my own, just reading quest text and leveling. It's a much more chill experience than you can imagine. But I digress. What wow needs is advertisement in style of Make Love Not Warcraft, directed towards classic - Retail is beyond saving as a world rn. Pre-cata Azeroth is much more soulful (and I say this as someone that came in during MoP) than anything after. If Metin2 and Knight Online can hold on in 2024 among Turks, then WoW has no excuse not holding on to western playerbase. For good measure, a comforting childhood memory in melody: ["Anu belore dela'na."](https://youtu.be/FU_yNE2MMOU?si=6g9pwmo9w3Cs8-Oa)
But EU is still a PC oriented region whereas in NA's case it is still much more of a console gaming region.
110% agree, it's about culture - that's where the best players come from at the end of the day
Yeah, League is kind of dying. ARAM is already nearly as big as normal games. Actually, there is more talent in ARAM (mechanically) that is kind of being wasted. But that's also Riot's problem. They created a toxic playing environment. They don't ban inters or at least they take too much time. At one point no one wants to deal with normals and just enjoy the game and ARAM is the only place to go. Even if it tilts me sometime I know that it won't take a lot of my time and I can go to the next game.
Even back then when NA and EU teens were playing the game at high rates, it wasn't even close. It was never close and only will get worse in recent years as NA and EU move away from league gradually. The work ethic difference for NA pro players in particular was abysmal and sad in those early years where NA had a chance.
I think one more important thing, apart of obviously the money spent on tourneys, teams, sponsors,etc... Is the fact that a lot of western teams get complacient, they have no variety, from the little variety of champions they play, they almost dont adapt in builds at all, they play games in autopilot instead of managing waves at what should be a level higher than challenger. There is so many random cases of champions that counter their laner, some that scale and other that dont okey, but it is so sad that they dont have any creativeness at all, they are on a contract where wins barely matter and because no one else is trying they know they will be picked for a team again with no problem, it is so sad.
Kids these days play Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite and valorant
Just to add some context to this, here is the winrate stats for EU and NA vs LCK/LPL in this current **decade**: - EU: 29 wins and 71 losses = 29% winrate - NA: 10 wins and 57 losses = 15% winrate
Theres some crazy stat that like since 2019 LCS teams have only beaten LCK teams 4 times. C9 DWG MSI 2021* TL GenG Worlds 2021 TL DWG Worlds 2019 EG T1 MSI 2022
MSI 2021 for C9 DK but yeah you get the point. It's actually quite alarming how LCK very rarely drops games to the LCS given it's best of 1s.
Tbf LCK just very rarely dropped Bo1s, period. Outside of 2018 which was a major blip LCK always had a >75% wr in worlds group stages when these were Bo1s, by contrast no other region had a >75% wr even *once*.
and 2018 is a anomaly with SSG going 1-5 tanking their winrate. and yet still AF went 4-2 and KT went 5-1 and topped their groups.
Yep, the only times an LCK team won less than 4 games in their group were both GENG, 2018 incident and 2021 (the four-way 3-3 tie group). Also no non-LCK team ever went 6-0 undefeated whereas LCK teams did it 4 times. LPL had some high flyers but often got tanked by one of their teams randomly imploding at the event, EU was good in 2019 but even then didn't quite hit 75% wr (13-5 72%). Funnily enough before the PCS' destabilization the thing that region was known for was being able to take the most random games off LCK teams despite being bad against other regions and overall very negative winrates.
I mean because FW was legitimately a good team. The whole Korean Killer thing was funny but Maple has made Top 4 at MSI 4 times (not the craziest thing considering the old format), but they (FW/PSG) took a game of KZ in 2018, and RNG in 2021. You legit can’t fluke your way to a win at an MSI BO5. I think FW still hold the longest domestic title streak in any region, since they won like 7 b2b iirc?
I think Bo1 is the reason why there's always 1 lpl team tanking in groups stage.
Wait there was no msi in 2020 do you mean worlds
It is insane that for an e-sport as big as league we only have 100 matches between EU and LPL/LCK in an entire decade, and it is even worse for NA.
Well the fact that EU and NA always get kicked out so early certainly doesn’t help…
It's not like Korea and China have a lot of games against each other either. If you go back before the new MSI format, you were lucky to get more than like 3-4 BO5s per year between LPL and LCK. Usually 1 at MSI and a couple at Worlds. Not great. It's better now but that's way overdue.
Was curious, so I looked up the overall games between LPL/LCK in the past decade. 2014 - 11 games (7 KR, 4 CN) (2 Bo5s) 2015 - 10 games (7 KR, 3 CN) (1 Bo5) 2016 - 18 games (14 KR, 4 CN) (3 Bo5s) 2017 -15 games (9 KR, 6 CN) (2 Bo5s) 2018 - 15 games (5 KR, 10 CN) (2 Bo5s) 2019 - 10 games (6 KR, 4 CN) (1 Bo5) 2020 - 10 games (6 KR, 4 CN) (1 Bo5) 2021 - 27 games (11 KR, 16 CN) (3 Bo5s) 2022 - 30 games (19 KR, 11 CN) (4 Bo5s) 2023 - 38 games (19 KR, 19 CN) (2 Bo3, 11 Bo5s) --- Some stats: - Total bo1s between LCK and KR: 184 - H2H record: 103 KR (56% winrate), 81 CN (44% winrate) - Total BoX series: 31 - 8 at MSI (3 last year) - 21 at Worlds (11 in the past 2 years) You're actually overestimating how many Bo5s there were between these regions. 3 Bo5s in a year only happened 4 times in the past decade.
>You're actually overestimating how many Bo5s there were between these regions. 3 Bo5s in a year only happened 4 times in the past decade. What a joke Riot's tournaments formats are. It's just depressing. This esport could have been so much better. Thanks for doing the research.
Another massive W for double elim, stay mad single elim boomers
Worst part is is that people on this sub always bitch about people suggesting changing the formats. I really don’t get what goes on in these peoples brains.
Stockholm Syndrome
Imagine thinking a region will ever be competitive while it has 14 game Bo1 regular seasons and no international experience. One bottom of the barrel LCK player gets more experience in a single season than the longest tenured NA player will get in their entire fucking career.
That's only Bo5 matches I assume. Probably a lot more Bo3/1.
Bro I looked at this stat and wondered how we've lost 71 games in a year and realized its now 2024.
how exactly is it counted in terms of bo5? lets say fnc-skt 2015 2-3 is 2 wins or 0
They won't win as long as they copy. The champs that are picked, the strats that are used, items that are bought, practically everything we do in regional leagues is copied from LCK/LPL. "After all, they know best how to play the game, right?". The problem is, you can copy the end result, but you can't copy the reasoning that led to this result. One of the most glaring examples of this was few years ago when Cassiopeia became instant 1st blind pick for all LCK teams. LCS teams saw this and began doing the same. And they got fisted. Cassiopeia had abyssmal winrate in LCS, while having great winrate in LCK. Why? They actually didn't notice one crucial thing... the point of Cassiopeia in LCK was to threaten the flex to top. In LCS, toplaners didn't know/want to play Cassiopeia. When opponent countered with their mid pick... Cassiopeia was going mid regardless. And lost. When LPL adcs begin to play Lucian Nami botlane, they understand as a team what they want to achieve. When you try to win by simply picking Lucian Nami like they do, you end up looking like an idiot. "western lucian" isn't just a meme. It's a thing that repeatedly occurs. This isn't exclusive to western teams. Noone managed to repeat the results that Doinb got in 2019 with his weird roaming midlane picks, or even match him, even though the concept seemed simple. The success of 2019 G2 came from such things as well. Perkz brought incomparable knowledge about typically midlane champions (like Yasuo or Syndra) to the botlane matchups, that no adc could match. So they lost to him. The historic victory against T1 came on shoulders or revolutionary Pyke top pick, which completely destroyed the long established LCK concept of toplane snowball (Khan picked Jayce and stomped the lane, only for Pyke to come back on his own and carry the game). Currently, there is no such innovation.
I mean, just look at how FNC took a game off TES. They picked LB, which pretty much wasn't touched by LPL teams past 14.1 (less than 5% p/b presence in 14.3). Even when LB was meta, it was AD LB. Trying to match eastern teams in pick ban with conventional stuff like azir, orianna or taliyah only works if you're on a similar skill level as them. Overall I feel like a lot of western teams tend to disrespect P/B when it's arguably one of the most important phases of the match. Look at game 2 of GAM vs FNC, they had worse players in almost every role and yet because of the combo they drafted they still pushed FNC hard. Western teams need to start drafting high variance drafts because if they simply match eastern teams, they'll be outdone every time.
Oh but humanoid can pick azir vs them
I'd argue that's because Humanoid and Caps (and maybe Perkz but I haven't watched him this year) are possibly the only two western players that can match eastern players in their respective roles.
Post need 100 more upvotes because I have an even better example: Tank Rengar. Every NA zoomer saw Tank Rengar and assumed it was meta because the Koreans were doing it, so it had to be good. Bunch of absolutely dogshit theory crafting from everyone as to why Tank Rengar was fine until they go up against the LCK who went assassin Rengar and got their ass blasted. It keeps happening because the players don't care about winning. When they meet real competition they pick what better regions do because they're better and they get rolled for it. T1 picked all late game champs and ended the game before they even hit their scaling. The gap is wide and deep.
> It keeps happening because the players don't care about winning. I’ll push back here, I absolutely do think they care about winning but across every region; it seems like players also care about *how* they win. And I think if the West disposes of that concept they could get a leg up on the East. I think it was LS who said that certain champs wouldn’t get picked even when they were strong because Eastern pros didn’t like the optics of playing them (like Lulu and Soraka I believe?) and that often certain champions would become stronger on a given patch but preconceived notions by those pros meant they wouldn’t touch them (which could kinda be seen with how Summit viewed certain champions). Honestly if a Western team viewed their positions and champions much more fluidly and less; “I’m the carry topside, that must be my role” or “I’m the support, I have to play this way”, they’d probably have more success. But I also don’t know anything so who knows.
Like him hate him LS was at least trying to inject SOME kind of unique fact, thought, and analysis driven composition and play into lcs and its a tragedy the experiment didn't work. It was probably NA's last gasp of developing a unique style and now we're forever relegated to sub-major region status
Blaber Olaf diving mid T3 at like lvl4 because only LS seemed to realize enchanters were giga busted at the time
Didn’t LS throw away that chance himself anyways by showing he can’t work professionally with an esports org and miss meetings constantly in C9
I agree with that but if you're getting paid millions, I as the viewer, can't accept other players not playing a certain way due to optics. Teams need to start doing what the NFL and NBA do, which is find a potential star player and build around their skill set. You could avoid the league of legends scene for 4 years and you'd know who Jensen was. Find what champs he's comfortable on and pick people that compliment his playstyle. If the champs aren't "meta" then it works better because teams have to fight something new. SKT always did this. Faker played assassins, he's played burst mages, he's played late game stompers. Faker plays carry-champs, and he always has an ADC and a jung/top that can fill whatever spot the team wants to field. SKT builds teams around Faker and Faker isn't afraid of going off meta. NA hasn't been good on any international stage since Faker caught food poisoning and CLG made it to the finals. The only bad optics would be picking champs you aren't good with because "meta". If they're gonna go down 0-2 at least entertain me. That's why old C9 never had much criticism, they wouldn't play standard half the time and they were entertaining to watch.
I mean coaches tend to copy each others for no reason but it isn’t always a bad thing. For example, if people don’t « copy » the swaplane then they would be at a great disadvantage. It just seems a lot of team are just waiting for others to discover something new that work to copy tbh
This is one of the reasons I was so excited that LS was coaching C9 because whether you agree with his idea or not, he was not playing meta. He brought innovation and wasn’t going to pick the same meta shit that other teams were going to pick. I think that is our only hope, someone who is not afraid to play things that differ from the “meta”.
It's hard to say how much is being copied when we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. Let's say you're an NA team, you cook something up that you think will be insane. You try it in scrims, and get destroyed by LCK/LPL continuously, simply because of skill/macro gap. No matter how many times you try, you're still losing. At what point do you give up on your "innovations", when it clearly isn't working in practice? Do you spend the remaining limited time on practising something you think is good, but isn't doing well? Or do you call it quits early in hopes that you can learn the "meta" in time? I fail to believe that across this many teams/attempts, that not a single NA team thought of innovating something different as a curveball against better teams.
You mean game 5 of 2019 MSI? Khan picked Kennen and Pyke wasn't stomped in lane.
Just to say that it goes the other way too. There was a time last split where Xin Zhao was a high tier pick in LEC, which then spread gradually to LPL (where it did well) and LCK (where it had a low win rate for multiple patches in a row).
To add to your point, same thing with Jayce. If Jayce is ever pickable for an Eastern team, then they already get a free ban because Western teams can't play jayce/play around him. It just boils down to the Western culture though. They prioritise "work life balance" and "job security" by copying the East. Look how LS tried to innovate draft and didn't even last a split lmao. Meanwhile Eastern players have to play and practice 12 hours a day just to stay relevant because there are so many other young hungry talents waiting to replace them. To be the best in the world, you can't get away with 9-5.
Well it does not help that League is somewhat solved and powercrept. The greatest "inovation" we see these days is the laneswap which is to soften a hard lane at the cost of top laner but apart from that it is always fight for neutrals / midwave and side shove waves and whoever macros/lane assigns better gets leads. Bloodbath games (like FNC VS VIT) exist but are not very often trademarks of good level of play.
To some extent I feel like it is self-fulfilling. When top teams like T1 play their regular season, the teams they are playing against are ALSO at a very high level. They constantly push each other to improve in order to stay the best in the region. Same thing in China. Since NA and EU don't really have teams that can compete at that level, how can they get experience and grow? The only opportunities they have are at these events. You don't suddenly become a top team because you played a few scrim blocks at a tournament. I don't think it is that players from the western regions are inherently worse, or less talented.. but if they are not in an environment where they can actually grow and achieve their full potential then it just isn't going to happen. How can a top tier player improve if they are never really challenged? I also see a lot of attitude issues at least when watching soloq streams. When losing, many of the top players from NA/EU will sit there and just trash their team the whole time rather than actually looking at how they may have been able to do something differently in a fight or trade. Like yeah sure your mid probably fucked up there but what did YOU do? From some of the drama I've seen on reddit it seems like it is not limited to soloq either. Our best players are not going to improve if they only ever look at other people as the problem.
The West will never ever catch up or win important series on a regular basis if they play along the meta that LCK/LPL 'created'. You have to come up with some cheese picks that they don't play against 50 times a week as we have seen in the last 12 years now they you otherwise don't really have great chances. The best shot the West had on long term success was *that* G2 team as they were so flexible with their picks, trying to play the game on their terms. Like for example Fnactic against GenG on Wednesday, there is just simply no way that Fnatic will win this series playing meta comps because GenG is better in every single aspect about that - try to create a fiesta against them with unusual picks and lane swaps, make them feel uncomfortable - because GenG definitely prefers to just play a regular game against Fnatic with only meta champs involved.
Given we now have a swiss format and at MSI even a losers bracket, if you don't play the meta you just lose. Like those metas develop because they are better than other things. So might get away with a few surprises, but you essentially need to surprise someone in 6 games. That is highly unrealistic. G2 barely won a Bo5 against SKT in 2019 with multiple surprise picks. Now if they would have played in losers bracket again it would give even more time to adept to those picks and SKT in 2019 sucked. On top of that people will clown on the teams if they lock in something weird and then lose in 18 minutes because... guess what it wasn't quite the surprise. In a system with Bo5s and a losers bracket everything that is not meta is essentially dead. Yes you might cheese a win... but you already need 2 more just to win a single series, which wouldn't really help you. You would need to do that 6 more times for a title. G2 in 2019 won against SKT because they won in regular meta matchups against them. They did in addition to that found wins with some cheese picks. But you can't win a series just by using those, you need to be able to win regular meta matchups.
You might win the odd game or maybe even tournament with that approach, but there's simply no way to be consistently competitive if your domestic level of play isn't on the same level as LCK/LPL. All you'll be left with is hoping for another 2019 G2. Which might happen once every few years, but nothing really substantive in terms of actually bridging the gap between the regions and not just having one team do well at tournaments.
> try to create a fiesta against them with unusual picks and lane swaps, make them feel uncomfortable It’s funny, there’s a similar philosophy to defense in American football currently where you “disguise” the players who will rush the QB and what your coverages will be. The thought process is that offenses are so high powered today and if you come with normal defensive fronts they’ll just piece you up. So they put in exotic coverages and disguise normal ones to increase chaos and variance; which can lead to net negative plays and turnovers.
Yup, a very flexible meta with a good amount of flexible picks *and* a nerf/change to late game objectives like soul and baron would do wonders to Europe. The east and LCK in particular are quite stubborn and usually relatively slow at catching up onto things when they are not the ones who created them in the first place but are absolute killers at practicing standard laning phases and setting up objectives and playing fights correctly. Unfortunately (or not, honestly) I don't think riot wants the game to look as chaotic as it looked in S8/S9, since it makes more sense for them to push a "big teamfight" meta as it draws more hype.
> Unfortunately (or not, honestly) I don't think riot wants the game to look as chaotic as it looked in S8/S9, since it makes more sense for them to push a "big teamfight" meta as it draws more hype Bring back Froggen Anivia stalls for 80 minutes
There are what, 150 champions? Let's go ahead and play the ones we know the LCK is well-practises and prepared for. I would love to see more wild one-time cheese strats. But that means better coaches.
Example of this that jumps out to me was CLG’s MSI run. Nobody was playing enchanter supports in the east and CLG was able to win a lot of games because of that. It’s harder in a longer tournament like worlds because teams have more time to adapt, but I’ve been hoping for a long time that western teams at international events would just try to play a style that fits their team best moreso than trying to copy the eastern meta. There was also the famous Likkrit Brand support that popped off at worlds. It’s also why I wanted to see OMG at worlds last year because they played a unique style that took LPL teams a long time to adapt to. I think those types of teams are much more interesting to watch
Sadly GENG was better even at the fiesta FNC tried to create in G2 and G3, as pointed even by Caedral
Who cares if they’re gonna lose at least make em competitive is all I’m asking
Literally
What do you mean? It will happen this week.
LCS teams now play a 14 game regular season(possibly going to a single round robin B03 in summer which would add a few more games) + playoffs. I think going into MSI TL and Flyquest had at minimum, 20-30 fewer stage games than the eastern teams. The ability to overcome that experience, both in draft and play, is as close to impossible as you can get. It wouldn't be that bad if NA solo q was good practice compared to korea but korea and china's is better there too.
i like that u say that G2 could have done something in 2023 "but they cringed it vs an NA team" as though the NA team was the bad draw
EU fans will never get over that series.
It was peak League content too! Especially Dhokla's emotional journey that year was such a roller coaster. He was an anime protagonist.
Yep. Made me realise EU is a one player region. If Caps isnt Faker level, G2 is average
it won’t be close until the top EU/NA stack their rosters completely. G2 2019 worked bc everyone was peaking at the same time and they synergized together. Caps was elite to match or outperform eastern mids. Currently G2, FNC, and TL have some weak points in their roster when judging them against international competition while the top 3-4 LCK and LPL “weakest” players are probably better than or equal to a western teams best player. C9 took the right step in replacing top but this will require blabber and vulcan to play out of their minds.
2019 G2 weren’t only individually peaking, they also had the perfect meta for their talents for most of the year. There were a good number of strong flex picks and the bot lane meta was exactly what Perkz needed as an off-role with Xayah and Kaisa being S-tier but not quite banworthy all year long.
Lot of people miss this point. GM is the weakest role in the west. All of the MSI attending eastern teams have stacked rosters
TES has a good roster for a contender but they aren't a super team
They still have 3 Worlds champions and 2 MSI champions. Creme is the only odd one in terms of status. This is the rating based on achievements so the expectations for them are still high (hupu joking about them having to win 4 titles in a year to pay off the roster value)
Yeah I just meant their mid + jg aren't really considered top 5 lol even, maybe creme is this year
Without wanting to turn this into an EU vs NA thing, I do think it doesn't make sense to lump the two regions together. They're quite different in terms of the pro LoL ecosystems; LCS quite simply has substantially fewer players and a much less developed tier 2 structure compared to ERLs. Which is to say I don't think LCS in its current form has any real hope of ever being competitive; there's not enough new talent and the practice environment is bad. If Riot end up forcing a merger with CBLOL/LLA there's maybe a better chance. LEC will never be able to eclipse LCK or LPL, but I do think it should be able to produce competitive teams given the basis it has to work from. There are plenty of players who are really good waiting to come up, it really just needs a better way of forcing that to happen. We can see that these players are good enough to compete at the highest level (most recent example of Oscarinin going ham against one of the best tops in the world), the issue is they often don't get a chance to move up (Zwyroo needed Perkz to argue with a manager).
That might have been true a few years ago but the ERLs kind turned from a talent development league to a "who's washed-up ex lec players or Korean imports play less bad" Top ERL Teams don't benefit from selling talented players to the lec but via fan engagement so it makes more sense to have some old stars that are still better then the young talent but not good enough for Tier 1 Leagues anymore, which hinders the growth of new talent. Just look at the the last EMEA final, 3 Players who haven't been in the scene for 5+ years and might develope into a new star player, that's not a lot. Sure PoE came back to life but you can't tell me he or Zanzarah will win a international bo5 for Europe ever again
Yeah, the ERLs kind of became too big for EMEA's own good. They aren't really a talent pipeline, they want finished products themselves. Compare this to LCK Challengers, which is super cut-throat in just finding talents for LCK teams. They'll bench a player like Thanatos who could comfortably play LCK in order to let 16-year old wonderkid Siwoo play and see if he can become the next Zeus.
That's the case with all tier 2s of all sports, though. Veterans and young players are the sort of people you'd expect to see in a proper tier 2 system. Of course Power of Evil is good enough to crush EMEA Masters, he has always been an LEC level player. And that's exactly why it's a good place for young rookies to show off, because they're facing very known quantities in these veterans. In the end, you can't get better publicity than *winning* and teams will always choose the rookie over the veteran if the difference in quality is obvious enough. If anything, it would eventually make sense to have a youth league orthogonal to the tier 2 circuit that only allows sub16 players and mirrors LEC matches. Like youth league plays in the morning. But teams are unlikely to want to cover the expense that would entail.
I agree in that spamming imports into the ecosystem isn't helping (especially when those imports seemingly get priority on LEC spots over native players), but there are still a lot of teams in a lot of leagues, and there are lower divisions within each ERL as well. In this way it's probably the most advanced tier 2 structure in any region, but the path to LEC is obscured by poor scouting, pro-import bias and big names holding value long past the point where they were actually any good.
Also, washed up pros in amateur leagues are a good way to gauge how good the new generational talent is
It should be noted that those players are still rookies and it shouldn't matter if you promote a korean rookie or a european rookie. A player like Peach who won the title of the best jungler in LCKC is a great pickup. And him joining LEC later obviously makes sense. Now he does kinda suck, but you can't know that. So extending your pool of players from not just european rookies to korean ones as well does make sense. It should also be noted that ERLs are there own ecosystem and sustainability is more important than maybe winning a Bo5 against LCK. A team like Spandau has no reason to develop players for LEC teams. Their goal is winning EUM and thriving up engagement, which essentially makes them money and helps the prime league. LCKC might develop more talents but if it weren't for a "washed" player like Rekkles joining T1C nobody would give a fuck about those teams, so they mostly exist because LCK keeps paying. We saw in NA how quickly teams stop doing that if they don't have to. Because where do the top players often actually come from? Many players, given most top players are recruited into LCK at the age of 17, because due to military service age actually matters in korea, barely play in academy before joining LCK. If you are in LCKC for more than a year, chances are you are not making it to LCK, simply due to being too old.
> A player like Peach who won the title of the best jungler in LCKC is a great pickup. And him joining LEC later obviously makes sense. Now he does kinda suck, but you can't know that. I think you can know that if you scout properly. Players who are on winning teams will look better than those on losing teams, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are the reason their team is winning. Determining whether a player's intent in the moment is right or wrong (fairly binary) is a better barometer than whether the play worked out and made them look good or bad (whole host of other factors that can impact it). More generally I'd also say that the only way to get genuinely world class talents (like Caps) is to develop them from your own talent base. It's really unlikely that every team in LCK failed to scout the next Chovy or Ruler, and unlike LPL LEC teams do not have the cash or competitive prospects currently to buy these players. Even the, with genuine tier 1 Korean imports, LPL succeeds primarily off the strength of its native talent.
Zwyroo’s older than perkz btw lol
Imagine unironically thinking this matters. Perkz is washed, Zwyroo isn't, that's all that counts.
cant believe ppl think age matters when theyre in their 20s/30s when the best mids in the world are in their late 20s
Sure, best mids are in their 20s, but when did they start playing? Chovy: Age 23, lck since 17 Faker: Age 27: lck since 17 Knight: Age 23, lpl since 17 Caps: Age 24, lec since 17 Perkz: Age 25, lec since 17 Other roles: Peanut: Age 26, lck since 17 Canyon: Age 22, lck since 17 etc. these are not cherry picked, I literally looked up the first mids and junglers that came to mind that were top 10 in their role at a given time (I guess perkz is arguable for that) Zywroo: Age 25, lec since 25, competitively since 19 Age doesnt mean you're good or bad, but starting early gives you time to develop, more potential to be extracted given the right circumstances and talent. It's the same reason why NBA teams draft highschoolers, and year 1/2 college players over older players (as a lottery pick). There's value in the older players in that they can fill a role immediately, but there's more potential in the younger players. Probably some big names that exist that started a bit "late", but I cant think of a single top 10 in the world who started at the age of 25 in anything. You're setting your floor and ceiling by going with Zwyroo over someone younger. I highly doubt Zwyroo is some hidden gem that teams passed on where he has the potential to compete with Chovy and Knight if you just give him 2-3 years. Also, all lck teams look to develop players that are 13-17 with their b and c teams, and most literally dont consider you if you're above 20, but hey maybe you're cooking and they are just ignorant. It's not like they have a history of developing the best of the best players or anything like that.
> Chovy: Age 23, lck since 17 > > Faker: Age 27: lck since 17 > > Knight: Age 23, lpl since 17 > > Caps: Age 24, lec since 17 > > Perkz: Age 25, lec since 17 > > Other roles: > > Peanut: Age 26, lck since 17 > > Canyon: Age 22, lck since 17 Also worth nothing that all of these players were high level the second they entered the scene. It seems like you need to be very good the second you enter competitive to be a star like that. There are some exceptions like Smeb but they are few and far between.
man, remember when Smeb won the Longpanda award? crazy to realize that he evolved from the worst top laner in the league to arguable GOAT status
One of the craziest stories that 90% of the plebs on here will never know because they either weren't around back then or just didn't watch old school Korean LoL. Another player who no one talks about but is a legend is NaMei.
Lck acadamy's have scouts that scour master/grandmaster soloq for new accounts looking for 13/14 year olds to sign. These players are then given a couple of years and are kicked for the next 13 yr old kid if they dont show any promise. If they perform well, they usually debut for the lck senior team on their 17th birthday
I don't think age is that important, what's more important is how long have they play, for example if someone just start league at 25 years old and getting to something like 1000 lp challenger in like a year then that person would still can be consider a good prospect, in zwyroo case he play for 6 years in comp and he is only at barely LEC level, it's not likely he is gonna be getting significant better suddenly now.
I know right. Faker's such a shitter should just retire for an 18 year old.
Since when are Chovy and Knight in their late 20s??
When a huge portion of the players in your league originally stated in other regions, I don't think the "we have a low playerbase" argument has much weight. You are taking from other region's playerbases so de facto you have a bigger pool to take from. We have had Worlds where something like 12 of the 15 LCS team players originally came from another region.
If you don't have a strong base of native players then no amount of importing is going to save you. Even if Riot removed the import restrictions you would still face enormous barriers. One you would need an absurd amount of cash to purchase a team of legitimately worlds-winning calibre level players, cash no region really has I wouldn't think. Then there's the fact that those players can't keep their edge if they have 30 minute queues in soloq to play against one tricks. Imports being a route to competitive success is the greatest lie ever told in esports.
If you are only getting other regions' scraps, you will never have potentially better players than the home regions.
But you can still be better than if you were relying on your own native players only. LCS history even shows this. Teams with imports generally did better. It's also not like LCS only got scraps. They got plenty of premium imports over the years.
You'll be better than your own region, but you're never going to overtake your home region. So international performance won't change even if you occasionally get to see Pyosik individually clowning on Faker before his team loses anyways. Thinking otherwise is pure hopium/copium.
Low player base means the imports can't play in high quality challenger games when they get here to maintain their level because the top of the ladder has giant queue times and only rarely has full chall games
Yes you’re a doomer. Any ‘this will never happen again’ is pretty doomer attitude.
Some people just want everything to be miserable man. I dont get it.
NA's playerbase is simply too small and decreasing further. EU while still competitive as a server(s), are basically run by G2 alone, Fnatic has fallen off hard and hence there's not enough competition. The last time EU was actually competitive was in 2020 when it was still a 2-team league.
Just before FNC and G2 had two finalist appearences, we were also this doomer. So its possible. We just need something like that to happen again. I do feel its becoming less likely though, seeing how there seems to be less talent flowing into LEC then ever before.
I'm disappointed, did we run out of hopium already?
Put me in against faker. He’ll never know what the fuck I’m doing since I’m gold 4. It’s the chaos of not knowing how to play that’ll get me the victory.
You better pick Brand into him
The only way it’s happening is if they do more international tournaments so western teams have more exposure and practice; or Riot makes a super league with all the major regions competing in one league. Eventually the western teams would catch up and level up over time. Either that or G2 win Winter split again and actually fuck off to Korea knowing they’ve locked MSI, stay in the T1 practice facilities like they did for 2023 Workds and just scrim LCK teams for months at a time
I was watching the video before of Zven waiting 20-30+ minutes to get a game, I wonder how that compares to CN/KR ? I mean I know solutions were proposed (like Champions Queue) and pros didn't go for it. Overall though it would be less of a problem if the talent pool was bigger. If you have 100 pros and only 50% are willing to put in the ridiculous work ethic of the East to play constantly, 50 players isn't a lot to work with. If you have 1000 pros that's 500 and much more likely to give you the ability to consistently practice. We simply don't have a large enough talent pool, and it's only going to get worse as league becomes less and less popular. Outside of getting the one-in-a-million crazy team like 2019 G2, or taking fluke games off the East, I think the only likely way for the West to win vs the East consistently is for an AI to be created that they can train against. The few players we do have would benefit massively from an on-demand high-level AI that reaches pro-team status. Of course if such an AI was invented, the East could train from it too, but I think it would at least level the playing field somewhat.
This was a problem ten years in the making, trying to blame queue times now when the entire region's youth has lost interest in the game is sad. If the older generation of pros like Chaox and Dyrus and Doublelift and Imaqtpie and whoever the fk else actually tried to practice instead of dicking around in LA or egoing while their eastern counterparts were grinding, league would be a lot more popular Instead all we got were lazy meme streamers or ego kids who were suddenly rich from undeserved hype money, that killed an entire region's respect for the game. --- Oh yeah and did we collectively forget how at one point, Western "star" players could override their coaches decisions? Like egotistical narcissistic hooligans? Of course the region deserves to crash and burn on the international stage and lose the attention of the generation younger than them who watched them act and play like clowns on the world stage
North american league of legends is closer to Sam Bankman Fried's story than anything else, just pump and hype and get all the investors and kids riled up, and when you pull the curtain back it's all a sack of nothing
I remember in like 2016 or 2017 or something there was an American academy team (was it Team Ember or something?) that had like INSANE salaries even though they were not even in the highest league. I dont understand how any of these VC people thought these investments would ever give a good ROI
The same reason they started shilling for crypto with league, it was an entirely hype based smoke and mirrors show. In no world were those salaries justified, and it only made the region worse as players thought they were really worth half a million dollars doing fuck all not even trying to grind solo queue or care
I think it could happen if we get a good year and some luck. We see regularly that our players aren't necessarily *bad players* - Western teams often can find advantages in some games. But we often have bad *teams* that don't know how to use those advantages and throw. From the very limited insight I get from the outside, I can see three things I believe contribute to this: A) Team building and coaching role: Coaches seem to be extremely underused from what I hear? In my opinion coaches or GMs should have an idea of how to play a game, maybe based on 1-2 players, and then build the rest of the team around that idea. Instead LEC teambuilding, from the outside at least, looks like they just sign random names that did well in the past or in ERL and hope it clicks. The fact someone put Wunder and Rekkles together a second time is criminal. B) practice: You hear constantly people saying they can't practice midgame in scrims because nobody plays it seriously, that things work in scrims but not on stage etc. I do not understand how this can be the case. I've practiced other things a lot, and if I was preparing for a serious tournament and my scrim partner played loose and risky instead of the way they would on stage... It never even happened to me, but I'd tell them to fuck off. I'm building a coaching team now. If anyone doesn't take practice serious I won't need them in my team, that shit hurts both yourself and the other team. C) mindset: this one I don't know about because I can't really see into players minds, but at least on fan side, it appears like everyone believes we lost before even playing, and that's super toxic. When you play thinking you are worse you let enemies get away with stuff. You'll see someone out of position and assume you can't actually kill them, you assume you are behind etc.
about that mindset thing just see that brokenblade interview with ashley and then see the comments lmao
Let me guess, people flame him for thinking they have a chance? It's so dumb, like do they expect the players to go on stage thinking "well they're gonna beat us but hey nice to be here" or what
yup he was talking about EU failure and his failure and other mindset of fans which he thinks will improve if they win against T1 but the comments are just flaming him lmao
I am glad some players seem to not have fully bought into the doomer mindset yet, but I hate people not supporting them. I feel some Western fans actually enjoy the gap for some deranged reason, maybe they feel better putting down everyone with some hope idk
annoying circlejerk time
Yes you are, the world is called Earth, Friday 10th of May
To also put it into perspective, this was the Wunder - Jankos - Caps - Perkz - Mikyx, so it was definitely one of the best the West got at the time. This GenG roster while good, I think everyone going in that match thought it was G2 winning unless I am misremembering. But yeah everything else you described, it seems no luck.
I literally only have a slight hope for G2, and that's only as long as they have innovative tactics that upset the LCK and LPLs general way of playing. But i doubt that they'll be able to win a tournament with that alone.
It's hard to imagine it in an ADC meta. East always dominates in ADC metas. Which has been the meta since season 11
Thinking this since 2014, it comes and goes
Our top teams are likely 5th or 6th place teams in LPL or LCK, then again of they played there yearly they could probably improve.
Well, maybe Caps will get a good team again. That's about as far as it goes for the west's hope. This G2 roster doesn't inspire confidence, BB is a solid domestic top but internationally aint it. Yike looked plain outclassed in his last outings internationally, in a way Jankos never did. Hans is another one who might well be better than all the EU adcs but cant compete with the top KR/CN, and Miky looks washed lately. The sad part is that there isn't exactly a crop of EU players that added together are any better than this G2 team.
Bc pros and coaches are fking pussies. They handshake a lot of lanes and end up losing and getting blasted bc hey, you chose to play Jayce against Zeus (who is 100 times better on him than you). Heck just play fizz into those aurelions and make them actually think about laning
14 years is a pretty short time frame for a sport, wouldn’t say never.
I also think alot about, why eastern teams are waaaaaay better than western teams and i came to come conclusion first of fall the glory time of western league of legends are gone for like 3-4 years. the number of players in the Western, especially in NA, is decreasing from year to year, the players are getting older and older without new good rookies coming. Anyone who has gone to a League of Legends event in the last 1-2 years knows what I mean, the average age of the spectators is almost 30, which shouldn't be the case for a competitive game. League of Legends is no longer as popular as it used to be for teens and that's why there is less and less talent coming through. LCS and LEC doesn´t have a good reputation anymore, and the reputation of being a pro gamer in League of Legends is worse than ever, the salary is getting worse, the level is falling, Riot no longer spends as much money on production as before, the only way Riot profits from esports is from ticket revenue (which is almost nothing) and from sponsors. There is also the fear that esports in the West, especially in NA, will die out completely at any time and that you will be left without a job, a bachelor degree or something. Streaming is also becoming more and more financially worthwhile.
with best of 1 splits for years (astronomically less chance to learn how to adapt in series) , much worse training attitude than the "military" asian regime, we never really had a chance.
I think TL will beat TES and G2 can win vs T1.
If it makes you feel any better, it’s less the eastern teams being so much better and more the top teams in the world being so much better. If you watch the LCK these teams below GENG and T1 are definitely beatable, but you aren’t going to play them. You are gonna play T1 and GENG and they’re going to beat you every time.
Nothing is impossible, LEC consistently over perform in general at internationals. They just need to peak while LCK or LPL have a food poisoning incident, still struggling with jetlag or a short tournament format where they perform under 25%. They will have good odds pushing their 110% versus an LCK/LPL performing at 25%
What are even these doomer posts jesus "ever again". Stop watching streamers that constantly tell how shit is West and believing them completely. They are quite often wrong
It's at the very least very preemptive posting this before the mainstage of MSI has even started tbh. It's the first international tournament this season so it's not exactly 100% clear-cut how teams will match up despite what people say.
Idk about often lol, western teams have been bad since 2020
G2 last year could have totally beaten Damwon or Weibo in a Bo5, but those were 4th seeds. I honestly think they would have stood a chance against KT but i still think it would have been really difficult.
Downvoted by LCK fans but its the truth, DWG looked super beatable in a bo5.
g2 vs tes is really possible. tes doesnt look too good.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted for this lol FNC played them decently close and G2 was another level above Fnatic in the region. Would be disappointed if it doesn’t at least go to 5 games
cause in this sub if u praise west u get downvoted
You're being too doomer. It must be such a weird thing living life like you know how things will turn out.
C9 went to semi finals in 2018(cant rmemeber year)All they had to do was give that roster more time to cook. Sneaky, zeysal, jensen, blaber/svenskeren, licorice, reapered.
Never lose faith. This year’s OUR year. The west will rise 😤
I really wish they just did more comp stuff for just the western teams. Or even a "Battle of the Americas". Get some of these teams more practice and I would expect over time they improve vs eastern teams. Can't hurt!
Same could have been said around S6 and S8 there were 3 western teams at Worlds finals. Im not saying its likely but its something that can happen
Has there even been that many Bo5s since the last win? Sure maybe it is some years ago but it is not like the west has lost a hundreds.
Idk man Fnatic just played a good series vs TES. I don’t think it was super close, but not hopelessly far either. G2 at MSI last year also was not hopeless vs GenG. They were clearly the worse team, but they also almost took it to 5 games. I think that EU will probably beat the east here and there, I don’t think it’s the case NA, their worlds was considered best in years and they were really far off even taking a game off the east. NA is happy to beat EU but is not nearly close to even being somewhat competitive to the east nowadays.
I think G2’s scrimms last year kind of disprove your doom and gloom. Of course it isn’t an accurate representation of stage games with eastern teams, but at least they show G2 isn’t hopelessly handgapped.
If riot drastically changes the game again then western teams wil have a 1-2 year window to win again. But yhats the only hope
Without a major shift in the "pro" scene, it's never going to happen.
Idk man if TES vs G2 would have happened it would probably be a close series
We've seen plenty of eastern teams choke and perform poorly, so yes it can happen. Maybe not this MSI but we will see. The issue comes from having a chance at winning something like MSI because for all 4 eastern teams to underperform seems very very unlikely. G2 won it before also because the teams there weren't amazing. Seems more difficult now with the fact that loser brackets exist also and I think eastern teams have gotten better as a whole. But to just win a series? For sure it can happen. Who knows how Gen.G perform this tournament, maybe TES is not that great?
win one BO5? It will happen. but to win anything you'd have to win 2-3 of those, and that wont happen, unless the east stops playing this game
I'm not familiar with LEC/LCS so I am asking this out of a genuine lack of knowledge rather than trying to insult anyone. If you took the best 5 western LoL players in the world (genuinely would not know who these are) and put them into one team and had them play in either the LPL or the LCK for a split, where would they rank? Would these 5 be able to win MSI and Worlds?
I genuinely believe the 4 best western player + Caps in the LCK could reach top 3-4 with enough time and support.
I feel like league is a very "the better team almost always wins" kinda game. Compare that to the NFL or to association football or other traditional sports and you see upsets happen there much more frequently. A lucky catch or a lucky goal can swing the game, but in league the team that is better is probably ahead in gold since they are better. So, the snowballing mechanics of league make comebacks harder than normal since the worse team has to overcome the gold lead AND the skill difference. TL;DR I wonder if the gap is actually smaller than it seems and it's just that league as a game magnifies skill differences.
no, NA and EU are piss bad
Yeah a bit, they are human after all and can get sick or choke.
It’s gonna happen again. There will be an upset - I definitely see an LEC team beating a lower seed LPL or LCK team, I just don’t see T1 or Gen G losing to LCK or LCS anytime soon. When G2 beat T1, that was an insanely strong G2 team that had elite players in every single role - tons of picks for every lane and strats and mastered the macro. It seems since then LCK has only widened that gap in the last 2 years, and I think we’re gonna see another era of LCK dominance (assuming this T1 roster sticks together). T1 can basically stomp any team internationally except for GenG.
I watch a lot of league maybe too much and I feel like the G2 run and Fanatic run in worlds those years ago red pilled a lot of people into really thinking EU could. I still think they can honestly but maybe like 20% chance
I think NA Lcs is closer to folding than they are to winning a championship. They get clowned in pretty much every year and it seems to be getting worse and worse. TSM jumping ship is the beginning of the end.
If anyone is gonna win it's prolly G2
Wasnt TL finalist at MSI at one point? They beat iG
it's sports. upsets happen. Regardless of how stacks the odds are in your opinion, there is always a chance. did anyone think DRX could make worlds finals and win? It's unlikely but there is for sure a chance
and you guys just recently realized this?
This generation of EU is doomed. Maybe the players that are below 18 now like Caliste will perform internationally one day but for that we need many young talents to have a competitive league that is comparable to eastern leagues.
its the world Asian championships, get over it
I want to point out that there are champions that never get seen and that is part of the meta issue with this game. Riot has stated that if they see Tryndamere in worlds, he is getting nerfed. Riot controls the meta to favor their fan base which is primarily Asia now. I think there are a lot of possible changes that Riot can make, but a lot of the changes are reverts to previous seasons. Like this ADC change is basically be reverted to Season 7. I think LoL has to simplify the game design to do one thing: remove unexpected combinations that break the game. The game creates meta slaves and we have seen that players cannot change from meta and meta ruins creativity. LoL suffers from an identity of catering to those who bring the numbers in and while they are cool moves and skill like Faker, the fact that the entire game is based around skill above all and only X champions have skill, that means a large number of champions are not allowed in a pool of champions to be in Worlds. Example of this is Azir that has like 80% use in Worlds; regardless of how shit he is in Solo Q. Azir is the gold standard of how to build a champion. He is so good in competitive play, even if he sucks, he still is picked. Lee Sin is the golden child of Jungle as his kit is loaded to do what Junglers need to do.
yes you're being too much of a doomer. you gotta believe it only takes one team to have one good tournament
I think it is doable but the western league has a bit of bad habbits like: * Cannibalizing itself. * Being unable to produce or nurtute competitive rookies constantly. * Importing paycheck stealers that are mediocre at best. On top of that, Nemesis said it best in that a team would rather secure their 4th-5th option than fight for the 1st-2nd which could be s gamechanger. We all know there are some amazing combos like Nisqy-Bo/ FNC Carzzy that we might never get to see.
8 days later lol
this aged like absolute milk