Evil Geniuses and Team Secret shocked the Dota 2 community with recently revealed roster changes shaking up two of the most successful teams in the game right now.

Considering the fact that Valve were looking to improve roster stability with the roster lock system, it seems like further changes may be necessary to achieve that goal. David "LD" Gorman has strong feelings about how the roster locks are affecting competitive Dota 2.

The Majors system was intended to promote roster stability, but it has done nothing but further destabilize the @DOTA2 pro scene. — David Gorman (@LDdota) March 23, 2016

Earlier in March, I spoke to LD about the Majors system as a whole, and roster stability was a large part of that conversation.

Here is what he had to say about the current state of roster stability in Dota 2.

[Note: this interview took place before the recent roster changes of Team Secret and Evil Geniuses]

"The one area where I would say that the Majors have really to me failed so far and I’m not sure if this was their goal but it seems like with the roster locks that Valve was trying to promote stability in terms of team rosters. I don’t think anything’s changed. If anything I think things have gotten worse in terms of team rosters.

"If a team doesn’t win the open qualifier for a Major, most of the time they’re going to disband, or if they don’t disband they’re going to make roster changes. I’m not sure if there’s really a great solution to it but basically … because there’s these events now throughout the year that are so big and any time that you don’t make it to one, you might as well start afresh.

"All the other events combined don’t really add up to one Major, let alone to TI so if the goal is to promote roster stability, we haven’t gotten there.

"I’m not sure if there’s a great solution to that problem … You’d have to change the structure of the scene more fundamentally to solve it but I don’t think it’s improved at all.

"I’m a traditional sports fan, I’m a Philadelphia Eagles fan ... I’m a fan of the team as much as the players and in Dota people tend to follow players more than teams, people are more fans of Arteezy than they are of Evil Geniuses [Editor’s note: haha] that’s even more the case for other brands that are less popular than EG.

"I think that roster stability would go a long way towards building loyalty to team brands … it’s less important in esports but it still is important and it’s unfortunately one of the more underdeveloped aspects of esports right now, and Dota in particular.

Roster stability matters because it's crucial to viewers, especially new/casual ones. It's hard to follow a scene w/upheaval every 3 months. — David Gorman (@LDdota) March 23, 2016

"It’s tied to the structure of the Dota scene. I think one of the big things that really hurts roster stability is how prize money driven Dota is. If you look at other esports like League of Legends, even CS:GO, the CS:GO Majors recently boosted their prize pools from $250,000 per Major to 1 million but from what little I understand it’s not that much money relative to what teams bring in from stickers, and the overall Major money doesn’t dwarf the other tournaments.

"You’ve got the Turner league which has a really substantial prize pool ($1.2 million) and ESL Pro League, to just one of these Valve Majors. Especially in League of Legends where they have full salaries, a lot of the players bring in tons of viewers and earn money through streaming revenue as well as subs and all these other avenues. Basically building your personal brand is a lot more important in those games and I think for a lot of fans personal brands are more tied to the teams they’re on.

"I think the League based format of League of Legends — how appropriate that they have that format — it lends itself to building that team loyalty. Say what you will, and I’m not saying that format is better in every way, but the focus is more on building player brands and relationships with fans and it’s a bit less on purely just winning each individual competition.

"I think there are some lessons maybe we can learn from other games. It’s wonderful that fans contribute so much to prize pools. I ultimately think that just how prize money focused the Dota scene is, its not really ideal for building that structure.

"I don’t think it’s the best way necessarily to encourage roster stability because, if you’re a premiere player and you see an opportunity to join a better team… forget all the other benefits of being on whatever your existing team is, if you can get on a team that can place one slot higher at TI, or you think it might be able to and you’re a little more confident, you’re going to jump ship no matter what.

"There’s no real downsides to it, as long as you can get to TI or get your invite… you know there’s the risk, sometimes you have to go through open qualifiers … and obviously I’m not saying all players care about is prize money, of course many of them are competitors, a lot of them don’t even think about the money at stake — while they’re competing — but they’re human, it is a factor for sure and winning these events, even with just four events a year it’s still very little compared to the more spread out structure that CSGO and League have.

"I think just how concentrated the prize money is and even with the Majors it’s still a relatively tiny number of events is part of why we see less roster stability.

"The only fix for that… well probably the easiest fix is if Valve takes a really hands-on approach and the problem with that is that it’s not really the Valve way. It would obviously have a lot of negative effects on third party organizers in the scene which ultimately is healthy competition. You might not get to have a Captain’s Draft or a Summit or an ESL One for example if teams are locked up in an LCS format most of the year… which could be bad for the scene as well."

After the news broke about EG and Team Secret's roster changes, LD took to twitter to express his frustration with the current system. He made some suggestions for changes he thinks would improve things.

Changes I'd like to see:

-More emphasis on stability for invites

-Less direct invites

-Two roster locks per year

-Separate drop + add dates — David Gorman (@LDdota) March 23, 2016

With less than 72 hours left in the biggest roster shuffle period yet, players and teams are put in a difficult position that could jeopardize their chances to compete in both the Manila Major and TI6. This, if nothing else, is an indication that things need to change.

An idea that has been making its way around the Dota 2 community that has gained some popularity is the concept of separate "drop" and "lock" periods. This would mean teams could only take players off their roster in the first period, making a pool of available free agents that could be picked up during the following lock period.

This would eliminate the issue of players being dumped shortly before the lock, forced to find a new home when many top teams have already decided on their players. However, it might cause issues in situations where teams that wish to make decisions on which players they are keeping based on which players they plan to pick up.

While finding a perfect solution may be next to impossible without more Valve experimentation, hopefully they will make some change to the roster lock system for the post-TI6 Majors leading up to TI7. Without a change, the volatility of Dota 2 rosters will continue to plague us.

Annabelle "Abelle" Fischer is a writer for theScore esports with a love for Dota 2, birds and cheese. You can follow her on Twitter.