On August 19 2014 13:08 insitelol wrote: No foreigners please! This will definetely lower the level of competition! SPL is elite league and always was for best of the best.
Maybe the foreigners would up their game if given such a chance? It doesn't happen to all of them, but often times simply living in Korea is very beneficial to foreigners.
On August 19 2014 13:08 ZigguratOfUr wrote: According to his twitter Stardust seems to have hand in this, and is trying to help form a superteam. Really interested to see how this goes.
The largest hurdle for Foreigners in Korea has seemed to be the isolation. Simply put the cities themselves are not super foreigner friendly due to language barriers etc. Any more then some Korean players would likely struggle a little if they didn't know English in a foreign setting. Additionally in the past the monetary gain from being in Korea wasn't enough to keep foreigners there. So that would be a smart issue for Pro League to tackle should you look for to add a foreign flavor to the league. Simply allowing it would probably be less likely to draw good foreign players or teams then one might think.
Bringing in an all star team of foreigners from various teams would seem to be a smarter move to increase interest across the world. That coupled with some sort of backing by pro league to make housing them comfortably while there and getting around Korea could work. This would both increase the possibility for the foreign players to be competitive, give them other foreigners to spend time with to decrease isolation, and make it more justifiable to the teams.
The question would be if pro league thinks heavily supporting something such as this would be enough of a financial gain to justify the financial cost. I think if possible to test run it would be worth the experiment for at least one season.
Edit: Also finding ways to allow foreign players sponsors to still be involved could be a smart way to attract more foreign sponsors to pro league, if there was foreign players to help promote the brands across the world.
Such a venture could be a huge step forward for Pro League or an absolute blunder if not done correctly.
I don't see the problem of opening up Proleague to more global teams, so long as the actual event remains offline. Some scheduling changed might also be needed to allow more leeway with foriegn events.
Just convincing any teams to commit would be tough, especially as a lot of the top koreans on foreign teams left Kespa to avoid the scheduling constrictions of proleague to attend foreign tournaments.
I'd like to see Invictus Gaming, or some dream team of the top Chinese players. I think if any kind of foreigner has a chance of competing with Korea in the right environment, it's the Chinese.
After EGTL I thought proleague was "open" to foreign teams if they had the chops to back it up (I know there was/is a pretty large security deposit to be in proleague, a lot of things to work out with kespa, etc)
and certainly ogn is allowing foreign participation in LoL, which I don't quite know the organization of OGN Champions with kespa (I know teams joined kespa but don't know the organization of champions/korea circuit tournament itself) but that has had foreign teams in the past and I think even is inviting a chinese team.
as many others have said in the thread that yeah, sure, if the barrier for getting a foreign team into proleague was good *edit: somehow different from what it was before, and mutual interest of kespa/the team,* then I'd be up for seeing any quality team, but good luck finding a team dedicated to proleague when the primary interest is going to be european/north american tournaments and wcs systems and presumably chinese teams with their chinese tourneys and such (chinese players in wcs am).
An all star team of Koreans who still live in Korea but play for foreign teams would do just fine in Pro League. It might not challenge for the top spot but it would certainly be competitive - maybe even sneak into the playoffs.
Also, for everyone that keeps bringing up EG-TL don't forget that they went 3-4 in every single round but one, which isn't dominant but certainly competitive. People remember the season as a failure because everyone expected them to be the top team because all the other teams had only just started playing SC2 full-time.
An all star team in 2015 would be much stronger than EG-TL -- the big question is who would coach them.
On August 19 2014 13:36 CuSToM wrote: I'd like to see Invictus Gaming, or some dream team of the top Chinese players. I think if any kind of foreigner has a chance of competing with Korea in the right environment, it's the Chinese.
It would be good to see the Chinese teams get some exposure, and if there is any league that can whip some low tier players into shape it is PL.
In theory this sounds fantastic but I can't see any foreign teams biting, except maybe the Taiwanese and Chinese teams (Wayi , Yoe and iG spring to mind mostly)
AxiomAcer would be awesome if TB can find a way to get a good sponsor that won't lock the whole team down in KR and have good foreign coverage which could be difficult. Outside of Samsung (already have a team), LG (Who are probably a massive no-go after the fiasco with IM) Hyundai and Daewoo I can't think of many KR companies who are on the global markets let alone one who'd be willing to sponsor an SC2 team, that tournament wise doesn't have much presence in Korea. If KeSPA and TB can find something that works though then that'd be awesome.
As for the teamless players, the old MVP guys apparently didn't like playing in PL that much. I don't think the GEM guys will want to lock themselves to KR for a majority of the year, makes it harder for them to farm events for WCS points.
StarDust has an interesting idea with combining teams to make a "foreign" all-star team, if he can get players like JD, Pigbaby, Jjakji, Sacsri, SuperNova, Journey etc you'd have a pretty decent team on your hands.
which teams? Which teams wouldn't I want to compete in Proleague! But especially Acer, Liquid, EG and Startale.
Let's assume for a moment that Kespa would partner up with a few organizers in Europe/America and e.g. European teams could play from Cologne. Good? Bad?
On August 19 2014 13:08 insitelol wrote: No foreigners please! This will definetely lower the level of competition! SPL is elite league and always was for best of the best.