Been thinking how cooked both those guys are/have been by the franchise system. I mean neT had to win ascension after TGRD missing out on franchising, then the whole fiasco of the Guard not cooperating, almost not being able to get into the league, just to get dropped mid-debut year for a rookie (who got dropped end of year). Now probably won't get picked up like his teammates have. Like that's got to be ridiculously demoralizing, doing everything by the book and just being baked by the business side of things. And then BcJ was on a top 3 NA team pre franchise, org doesn't make the cut, all his teammates find homes playing their roles, he has to take a role swap, gets benched like two weeks into first franchising season for a demon (no pun intended) and then is unable to show anything for the rest of the year. Has to go through ascension next year just to lose at the final hurdle, and probably will have to go through it again assuming no retirement. It's hard enough to breakthrough as a new player, but it seems like we're reaching a turning point where all the recent success with fresh blood is turning team's eyes towards the future, and the once top talents are being left for dead. Sad to see, but ig it's a natural cycle.
neT & BcJ
From a viewer’s perspective they seem like average, inconsistent players. They still have it better than most val pros for even ever having the opportunity to play on a T1 team. Think of great players like Skuba and Brawk still stuck in T2.
I’m sure next year they could play on a top T2 team like MxS.
It's definitely a very harsh system with very little room for error or an adjustment period (particularly for newer players). But in fairness both net and bcj had good opportunity to perform and didn't. They weren't dropped from g2/eg at random and both teams performed considerably better after making the changes. I do feel bad for bcj more because he was a huge part of why XSET were so good pre-franchising and then EG went from bottom tier to champs after replacing him for demon1. It's really tough and it was awesome to see him go after it again for m80.
But... both teams genuinely did improve considerably after making the changes. Even with icy gone now they still were one of the best americas teams and even looked solid internationally. Not winning of course but they got 3rd in shanghai and made it out of groups at champs.
bcj was on the starting roster for about 2 months on EG during the season and probably a fair bit longer pre-season as well. They had many scrims, lock in and also the start of the regional circuit to see if he could perform to the level they needed in that role and he couldn't. It's not a lot of time but it is a reasonable chance for a non-new player.
It's a very harsh system but within that system I don't think they were massively screwed by huge unfairness, just a tight margin with little room for error or learning. They were given good opportunity and were underperforming. It's not like the door is closed on either of them anyway, people know their names and respect that their experience could be a good addition and I imagine they will both be competing in NA challengers next season
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