Riot's new more aggressive region lock is a mistake

Riot has just announced a new policy where 3/5ths of an LCS team needs to meet "residency requirements" in the region they wish to play. They haven't released the exact residency requirements yet but they make it quite clear it's intended to stop an overflow of foreign players taking over. However foreign players permanently overrunning the LCS is an incredibly unlikely scenario, and this rule to combat that worst case scenario could have negative impacts on potential salaries for the best league players in the world.

The new rule is primarily in place to stop full roster moves, like LMQ and the failed Quantic, as well as stop LCS from becoming what Starcraft 2's WCS has been in recent years with all the regions being filled nearly exclusively with Korean players. That unfortunate scenario for SC2 was caused largely by the fact Blizzard ran the majority of the WCS online. Players could live in Korea, play on the Korean server against other Korean opponents, and simply play the majority of their matches remotely. Because Korea was already established as the strongest region in SC2 the lack of LAN play for the majority of SC2 tournaments meant non-Korean players had to invest significantly more for the same chance to compete. Korean players scrimmed on the Korean servers even when they were participating in the North American region, meaning there was no chance for NA local players to get practice against the caliber of players they'd have to defeat to qualify without moving to Korea. NA players would have to move to Korea and play on the Korean servers just to practice against their potential NA opponents. Because of that disproportionate investment required the scene stagnated and Korea remained on top by virtue of simply having been at the top of the pile from the start.

Back in LCS games are not played over the internet with only a handful of LAN tournaments requiring people to show up, instead they are played live in front of an audience 2-3 days a week for 3 straight months at a time. The fact that the LCS is in its entirety a LAN event means teams and players must move to the LCS region they're participating in. Living locally in the LCS region means they scrim local teams and play on the local soloqueue ladder all against other players who live and play in the LCS region. This means just like how Hai and Froggen elevate their respective regions each time they play soloqueue or scrim another team, foreign players who come to compete in LCS like XiaoWeiXiao do the same for that LCS region. Because the LCS is on LAN when a player is imported to play in the LCS, while they do deny a slot to a local player, they provide more and better practice for local players for the duration of their career in the region.

The pre-existing soft region lock for LCS meant that the influx of foreign talent was a self correcting problem. By virtue of being forced to play against their future competition each foreign player added to an LCS region makes it that much less successful for the next foreign player to move over. In fact we've already hit an early milestone on this progression of the problem fixing itself. So called "C tier" players are no longer viable in NA due to the influx of foreign talent. While super star players like Bjergsen, and Dexter, and "B tier" Chinese players like Vasilii and XiaoWeiXiao have proven NA is not done correcting the problem, other attempts like the failed Quantic team, Amazing, Helios, and Seraph have proven there is verifiable progress towards foreign talents being more expensive than they're worth.

If NA had actually followed the worst case scenario people fear and gotten worse by the early importing of Edward, Bjergsen, and Dexter then subsequent imports Quantic, Amazing, Helios, and Seraph should have been slam dunks to only have to compete against other foreign imports in their lanes. Instead the best of them are middle of the pack NA players. Quantic a team of 5 "C tier" Korean players formed to dominate NA failed to even make the promotion tournament. Helios and Seraph, touted as the conquering Koreans come to dominate NA, shook out to be barely middle of the pack in their respective roles, both outclassed by more than one local NA player. Amazing, TSM's slam dunk don't even need to try him out European jungler import completely collapsed; dragging the entire TSM team down with him for the majority of a split before they could finally train him up to be a reliable asset in time for playoffs.

That leaves Lustboy the newest acquisition for TSM who has certainly out performed former teammate Helios so far in his time in the LCS, and the full Chinese roster LMQ. LMQ actually helps further the point that "C tier" foreign talent is no longer viable as the team contains members from the 6th place LPL team, a member of the S3 Worlds runner up team, and several of the players were rising talents on the verge of breaking out in China. Most of LMQ would likely have found starting positions on teams in China had they stayed. On top of that LMQ while managing to stay near the top in NA has struggled to maintain that position all split long sharing top 2 with no less than 3 other NA teams prior to playoffs, and only barely made worlds as the 3rd seed. LMQ is another strong indication that NA is moving up in overall skill and becoming harder for foreign players to enter and find success. LMQ's move to NA LCS also had the added benefit of directly raising the strength of the challenger scene where most other imports only effected it tangentially through Soloqueue. The split LMQ spent competing in the challenger scene made the teams they faced like up and comers Team 8 that much stronger, and helped forge local rising talent Altec into a top ADCs in the NA LCS.

Recent imports make it readily apparent that high profile expensive moves to nab the best foreign talent will soon be the only way to make importing players more valuable than simply training up a rising star from the local challenger scene. In essence the imports would have to return to what was seen originally, pulling in players widely regarded as the best up and coming talents of their regions like Dexter and Bjergsen where when acquired, or competing away an integral part of one of the strongest teams the region has ever seen like with Edward. These big expensive moves due to the fact they're pulling the top tier highest profile players would be both rarer than the recent rash of imports, and far better for players in all regions. When teams from all over compete to secure a top player of a region like Froggen, not only does Froggen benefit but so do all other players. Froggen gets a huge check to secure him against theoretical offers from the likes of CLG or Curse, and players like Bjergsen get to say "hang on a minute, I'm nearly as good as Froggen and get payed 1/3rd what he does! Pay me more or I'll find someone who will." The expense of securing the best players in the world helps all the players get a better salary, and has the added benefit of further stunting foreign talent imports.

Now this is where the new rule moves from jumping the gun on a pointless rule into a full blown mistake. The drive and desire to secure super stars like Froggen, there by helping to increase theirs and other players salaries world wide, is now severely impeded by this rule. Because no LCS team can have more than 2 non-residents many of the teams with the deepest pockets are taken out of the bidding before it even begins when a must have like Froggen becomes available. Before this rule if Froggen's contract were to expire post worlds and he was still seen as the best in EU he could expect offers from most of the wealthy LCS teams in both regions. However after this rule is in place in the same scenario TSM, CLG, LMQ, and EG would all be incapable of putting forward offers due to their number of non-residents already on  the teams. This means competition for a star player's contract is lower, and as a result what he can expect to receive as a final offer is likely to also be lower than it would be if multiple additional teams were allowed to participate in the bidding.

It's understandable that Riot wants to calm people's fears of another SC2 situation arising but they are fighting against a non-problem with a rule that actively hinders the growth of LoLesports. Still Riot has decided to take action and lots of people are calling out for something to be done, so here's s way Riot could solve this problem without damaging the growth of the scene.

Simply make this rule apply to teams who enter LCS from the challenger scene. Rewrite the rule to require that any team participating in the promotion or expansion tournaments must have a minimum of 3 players who will meet the residency requirements by or before the start of the next split. The rule will function much like the age requirement for challenger teams, it halts full rosters trying to make it in with low investment into the scene, and it doesn't remove some of the richest teams in LCS as potential bidders for the biggest superstar players. It's still unnecessarily fixing a non-problem like the newly debuted rule, but it does it in a less damaging way.

The current iteration of Riot's new rule is a mistake that fixes a problem that will mostly self correct, while impeding growth of the scene. I am certain that if LCS continues it's current growth rate that within the next few seasons (not splits) Riot will be forced to significantly alter if not completely do away with this rule as it not only becomes obsolete but a more significant impediment to the growth of League of Legends as an esport.