Are There Too Many Import Players In Modern Pro Gaming?

It is often a difficult task for Pro Esports Teams to balance their teams, with the explosive growth many games have received over the last few years, it seems that every day there is a new hot-shot rookie player making a name for themselves somewhere in the world. So how can teams make sure they are actually getting the best bang for their buck, and have we possibly reached the point where it’s more important to have a recognisable name on your team, rather than resting your chances on lesser known players.

It seems to be a common complaint in more than a couple of games, that there is an underrepresentation problem when it comes to pro players. Now, it might be easy to point to a particular section of the community as a problem area, for example, it is a very common complaint that there is a distinct lack of female players at the top levels of gameplay. Until very recently, the Overwatch League was a “male only” zone, until the inclusion of Kim “Geguri” Se-Yeon broke the mould. But while that is definitely an issue, it’s not the one I’m referring to right now. At the moment, there seems to be a problem with Pro Teams across a variety of games that are placing too much emphasis on importing players from other regions to fill gaps in their squads.

Let’s take a look at the North American League of Legends Championship Series. The two main examples that come to mind are Team SoloMid, and Flyquest. Now, these are very different teams, but I believe that they fell into the same trap during the off-season, namely, an over-reliance on bringing in new players when things don’t work out. Flyquest spent a great deal of time and effort singing the praises of their new mid laner, Song "Fly" Yong-jun, a player most known for competing in Korea. By the end of the season, the Fly led Flyquest had managed to reach a match record of 4-8, losing two games for every win they picked up. The problem with this, is that Fly was not able to play for the first few weeks of the NA LCS, forcing Flyquest to use their Academy Team mid laner Jang "Keane" Lae-young, a player who has been a part of the NA LCS and NA CS for several years now. Flyquest didn’t seem to perform much better with Keane at the helm, in fact they managed an identical win percentage, with 2 victories to 4 losses. Both mid laners seemed to have fairly similar percentages when it came to the stat breakdowns, but it begs the question, was it worth using an import slot and, presumably, a reasonable amount of time, money and effort, in order to bring Fly to the NA LCS.

Team SoloMid’s problems are not unknown in the community. A team long known for their domestic success, it came as a massive shock that they were unable to make the finals of the NA LCS for the first time this season. Whether or not this is because of the level of competition rising in the region, or the team simply not finding their feet during the regular season, the outcome is the same, that this is the first TSM squad to at least challenge for the top spot in the NA LCS. At the end of last year, it was revealed that TSM would be dropping the hugely popular bot lane duo of Yiliang "Peter" "Doublelift" Peng and Vincent "Biofrost" Wang, two domestic players that had enjoyed a lot of success with the team, for the European duo of Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen and Alfonso "mithy" Aguirre Rodríguez. Known for challenging the title of “Best in the West”, the former G2 bot lane duo were supposed to be the answer to TSM’s international problems, bringing their experience from the EU LCS to North America. While they are absolutely top tier players, it’s these kind of roster moves that point towards what seems to be a growing problem in Esports today. Teams are willing to put team cohesion as a secondary concern in favour mechanical skill. Whether you believe that Zven is a better AD Carry than Doublelift is another discussion for another day, but the point remains that at the end of the day, the roster moves did not help TSM achieve the success they were looking for, at least initially.

There seems to be a mentality that when your team is not doing the best, the answer is just to import a more successful player from another region, rather than spending the time and energy to build a team from the ground up. A lot of successful players enjoy the fruits of their teams labour, after all, what was season 3 Faker without Bengi, or season 4 Doublelift without aphromoo. Plucking individual players out of successful teams does not seem to be the key to success, and selecting players from less than successful foreign teams seems to be doing even less in terms of domestic success. It remains to be seen how these teams will turn their fortunes around, but at the same time it seems far more likely that success will come from building up the team with a good support network and the opportunity to flourish, rather than hoping a roster swap will suddenly be the solution.

For more League of Legends action, check out the match preview for Day One of the Mid-Season Invitational, here, and for more information on when this match will be played, check out the Official Schedule page, here.