SEA is basically just rrq and talon and it's nobody's fault except the SEA orgs not anybody else it's really up to them to change it up
I will admit I have no idea about the tier 2 SEA scene so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but I think maybe SEA could benefit from the EU approach
Instead of building rosters around primarily one country, they should build rosters for the region as a whole
For example: VIT, KC have no French players.
TH, KOI and GX have no Spanish players.
APK don't have a Norwegian player.
But all of them have 'EU players' + a few imports
I think SEA orgs should take the same approach
The only org to really do it is PRX actually, with 2 MY/SG and 2 Indo players
Yeah, not to say that they don't need to tap in to their own countries talent, but it shouldn't be a priority imo.
I'll use TS as an example: they are a PH org but they can still pick up talent from other SEA sub regions, maybe they could build a roster around 2 PH players, say 1 MY/SG player and 2 Thai players for example
They need to tap into the countries talent, it should've been a priority imo.
TS is marketed as " PH representative ", if the " PH representative " fielded only 2 PH on the team that's not a great look for TS. Regional identity in APAC is strong imo, doing this is just a slap in the face for the fans imo.
If anything GE proved that all TS needs to do is to wake up and picked better PH players.
The way I see it, if you expect your teams to only pick up talent from one country without regard for merit you're setting you're setting them up to not be competitive. Sure it's absolutely fine if you want that, but then you shouldn't demand results imo. You have prioritise one or the other more often than not.
The reason regions like Korea can get away with it is because of how deeply engrained (PC) esports is in their culture, for example; you want a top tier initiator? you have 5 to pick from, I just don't think that's the case with the subregions in SEA.
I think what GE are doing is perfect, they realised that perhaps they didn't have the most competitive region, so they chose to look abroad and pick up foreign talent specifically for the roles they needed
you gotta understand that orgs are still a business; the fanbase keeps the money coming in - if i try and go international and fail to succeed i lose my team identity and fanbase its not a risk worth taking if im an org owner imo ! look at estrella today i dont think he played bad but the indonesian fans were really trying to get him cut after that loss
The Korean teams have Korean rosters so there is no reason why it shouldn't work. I think a reshuffling is long overdue and some serious superteams should be made. T1 struggled last year with an international roster despite having talents yet look at them now.
Imagine an Indonesian team that could perhaps poach Forsaken and Mindfreak
Imagine TALON with a full Thai roster with Crws on the coaching role providing guidance to younger players. If they could somehow keep Frost as HC but have Crws as the stage coach interpreting comms what would that look like? I'm sure these orgs consider it but as an outsider all I can do is sit and speculate what ifs. They may have trialed it, who knows, I just know I haven't seen it on stage and the team still looks shaky.