After just having made the tweet about there being a lack of players who are talented in NA, I spoke with a few people who prompted me to think back to something Blizzard had in SC1: US West and USEast.



On USWest you would often find much better players, because that's where the Koreans connected to, to avoid the chinese/etc on the Asia server. USEast had some good players who came from it, and when eventually they sought after tougher competition they would go on USWest which had slightly more ping, but ultimately the level of play was higher in some of the channels. Outside of these two servers there were Europe and private servers where it p2p connection, which basically even Koreans/USEast players could basically play vs each other with not too many issues. For Europeans, they would usually all hang out in OP ToT) channel, or show up on USWest to play vs some people sometimes.



The ability to have decently located servers spread out across the globe was fantastic, and the p2p which arose out of private servers made it possible for people to play together who otherwise could never play together. I'm not 100% sure of if this is even possible with League, but I'm just bringing it up anyway.



Moving on, during a few of my conversations the most common topic which was brought up over and over again was the ping. 60ping is actually unacceptable. Not only is there certain things you simply can't do in that ping(no, this isn't an opinion or an argument, if you think 60ping is okay or even 40, you're wrong, that's all)



Something I think of everytime someone tells me 40ping or something is okay is this video of Bisu in SC1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12BZjrGJxH8 . Had this been an online match Flash would've just walked him over as the commands he issued would've been incapable of reading his clicks relative to the ping and he would've lost.



Had Bisu been practicing/training for the mass majority of his day in online ping and then presented with this situation, did he have the adequate training necessary to prepare him to pull this off? Would his hands and reaction speed be up to par to handle the pressure of the moment, or would he even think to try to micro in this way if the ping had lead him to believe he had reached his limit of control over his units?



It's is literally the most unacceptable and disgusting thing to make LCS players play in 40-60 ping in SoloQ and then be compromised if they go on stage and didn't get to practice enough of a champions advanced mechanics in 6-8ping. Not only could it lead to huge errors showing up, it enables a negative playstyle and forces players to compromise, thus hindering their growth. Here is just one of many examples of a professional playing making errors because his muscle memory wasn't trained for the ping: https://twitter.com/nukeducklol/status/579074220681916417



I think Riot should not have gone the path of having a middle-ground for USWest and East, I think they should've created an Eastern server. If a player surely got to the very top ranks of USEast he would most certainly grab the eyes/attention of Western teams and players and probably then could be offered trials of some sort. A middle server could be made/used randomly similar to "tournament server" which Riot enables for CS/LCS teams and this server could be where a USEast player could maybe play in scrims or something of that nature, but even this I think is harmful, because again, the ping.



Going back to a previous point of p2p, I don't even believe this is feasible because of how toxic LoL ladder can be. It would literally take 1 player constantly doing something to force lag and ruin a game, and I believe it would be infinitely easier than DDoS or anything of that nature.



With 60ping you're never going to see real mechanical monster arise in any region other than KR or CN unless they're literally living right next to the server. Because of this, all pro players are at an innate disadvantage at international competitions when facing a KR or CN team. I don't even want to hear the argument of "they get to practice on tournament realm sometimes" as that is completely laughable when you compare how many hours are spent on TR vs Live, and then again TR games are usually scrims, which means you don't get to practice plays that may cost your team the game.



In closing I feel like there is so much that can be done to help the competitive scene of league and it isn't being done. I'm addressing the issue of ping because it has been a very hot topic/concern with a lot of masters+ players I've spoken to over the past month, especially ones who were or will do a Korean bootcamp for training purposes only.

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