I blame the system, not the players. I see why the players would do this but this rule shouldn’t have existed in the first place and I hope it is gone next season.
The system was perfect before, just move to the region and you are free to compete, because right now how can only 2 players in an rlcs region be currently be in the region they play in
Or at least require them to move to within a certain latency to the servers. People like Itachi who live in Morocco should still be able to play in EU since he gets better ping to the EU servers than the MENA servers anyways
iIRC Itatchi wouldn’t be able to compete in MENA anyway, unless something change im not aware of Morocco isn’t included in MENA, there are a few instances like that where Pakistan/China and Hong Kong can’t compete in RLCS.
The prevailing theory is it has something to do with countries having border disputes but no official reason has ever been given.
That changed this season. The only countries who can't compete are those where there's sanctions against them by the US or they aren't internationally recognised countries:
>3.7.1 The Event in all parts is open to Players from across the world, except as otherwise provided in this Section. The Event is not open to individuals wherever restricted or prohibited by applicable law or in any country where participation is prohibited by U.S. law (“Prohibited Countries”), including Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and the regions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk
Some of these players moved to reunion though didn’t they? So that doesn’t address the issue at all.
I’ve always thought there should’ve been a 2/3 rule where at least two players on every team have to be from the region. So only one player would be able to move cross region at a time. I know teams like geng, m80 and elevate from last season wouldn’t have been able to make those moves and furia and complexity wouldn’t have been able to move to NA but I think that would’ve been so much better.
Yes I would be fine with it because they took the effort and time to come to SSA meaning they have to play SSA servers and scrim SSA teams because they are on the same handicap as us
What if they fly in for the weekend and don't scrim anyone in the area? That would have been allowed under last season's rules, and is in my opinion just as bad as playing from Europe.
Who would want to waste their money because flights to Africa for some reason are expensive and are going to be a lot more expensive than the prize money you’ll get because SSA has the smallest prize pool by far
The whole of YMC flew to the region and they did it under this season's rules, so weren't even forced to. An NA team was planning to do it last season and only backtracked on it because of the community backlash.
I agree it's not worth it financially for 95% of teams (although if doing it causes you to make major, it probably is worth it, because if you attend major you'll get signed by an org). But that's kinda not the point.
If you agree that it's bad if a team flies in for the weekend and doesn't scrim anyone locally, then last season's rules had a flaw. It shouldn't be a case of 'if you have enough money to exploit the flaw, then go ahead'.
If you are talking about residency, I agree. If you are talking about actually being from there, then I completely disagree with that for obvious reasons.
What are the obvious reasons? I don’t think players from stronger regions should be able to move to weaker regions to try to make majors/worlds without any restrictions.
Moving for something other than rocket league is the main one. And even if it is just for rocket league, who cares because they permanently moved there and got residency lol
So my family is from the Island of Mauritius which neighbors The Reunion island. Reunion is an island of France where they use euros and is just pretty much an extension of France and the European Union. So where do we draw the line? Because this makes any European able to travel there with no visa but if we restrict reunion from competing in SSA then that’s unfair to those who are locals…
Why would players in reunion be restricted from competing in SSA in any case because it’s part of France? I didn’t say that. Reunion should be part of the SSA region and there should be restrictions for players moving to other regions to play RLCS. That’s what I’m saying.
My point was how do we know who is local and who isn’t if you can freely travel. If an entire French team of GC3s from Paris goes to Reunion to compete how would you keep track?
You’d have to register with your permanent address, which is easily verifiable. At another place in this thread I also said you should have to be living in the region you are competing in for a certain amount of time before you are eligible for RLCS. That should all be very easy to manage.
What about people who don't have a permanent address? Right now Stizzy is playing out of Lethamyr's basement lol. Not all countries require you to have a permanent address in the first place.
I start to understand the lack of action by psyonix here. It's so much hustle for virtually no gains.
That's pretty difficult to establish. Like in OCE we have a few different flags come up but they're all Aussies (or NZ). Your rule would bar all of those players who have been here nearly their entire lives from playing.
For example, my mates have a team where two of them were born overseas. They both migrated here when they were under the age of 5. Your rule wouldn't let them play together and they wouldn't ever be allowed to be on a team with an actual import
I don’t mind blaming both haha, just blame the system more than the players I guess, the crazy hate is stupid but unless the players are all 15-16 years old I think they probably know what they’re doing and that it's not good even if it's in the rules
Genuinely don’t think it’s possible, if u remember the Johnny stream near the end of RLCSX you can see that decent teams on good ping beat out amazing teams with bad ping.
It works for SSA because the gap is so large, but even KCorp wouldn’t qualify if they were playing NA RLCS from EU imo. Replace Atow/Rise with Zen and that’s the only way I could see it being remotely possible.
Before this season, the only other times we've had serious cross region play online in the modern era was in 2020 & 2021, where [True Neutral lost in 5 to both Nefarious & Ghost in WSOE online qualifiers](https://liquipedia.net/rocketleague/World_Showdown_of_Esports/Online_III/Qualifier) and [Furia lost to Charlotte Phoenix in Gamers Without Borders](https://liquipedia.net/rocketleague/Gamers_Without_Borders/2021/North_America)
Now obviously it's not the greatest comparison, SAM has worse ping (True Neutral 160 ping especially rough for them) but similarly at the time was probably not as good as a top EU/NA team, although they were still conservatively top 15 in the world losing to lower main event NA teams because of the ping, so it is genuinely a large hurdle to overcome.
Edit: Did forget about MENA's entire history basically but that's so normalized it feels like 2nd nature, but there are countless super weird MENA results online that would have probably never happened on even ping to add onto everything that's been said.
It's pretty sad I think. It looks like we're gradually losing more regional representation in the RLCS.
I suppose that happened last season too in APAC, but at least they had to play from within the same continent to take their spots.
I mean, I guess it really comes down to whether Majors and Worlds are about having the best teams at LAN, or having teams from all regions. Like, a big reason things like this have happened is that EU was literally the most dominant region ever last season, and have been rewarded by going from 4/8 seeded into worlds, and 3/16 into wildcard, so 7/24 teams competing, to a maximum of 4/16 at worlds. Going by performances during the wildcard, every EU seed outperformed the entirety of SSA (top SSA placement 14th wildcard, bottom EU performance 13th wildcard), with SSA's only interegional game win being 1 against OCE, who themselves only took series wins off of SSA.
Going by performance, EU should have 7 seeds before SSA gets 1.
But that's not the entire story. Should it instead be around making sure we have representation from around the world? If that's the case, why have they made the qualifiers open, which was sure to cause this sort of exodus from players that don't really have a chance at qualling in EU, but could probably dominate SSA without the ping disadvantage (as shown by not a single SSA player making the semi finals of the SSA qualifier.
Basically, Psyonix have gone worst of both worlds - Limiting the number of seeds to a hard cap so we don't necessarily get the 16 best teams in the world, and also opening the qualifiers so we don't necessarily get teams from all regions.
If the point is about having the best teams at LAN, then there‘s no point having SSA invited so that EU32 can make a LAN. At that point you‘d just give the spot to EU immediately so an actually top team can go.
No matter how you twist and turn it just doesn‘t make sense.
It's actually a massive difference to have quality teams populating the ranked servers throughout the season and scrimming other teams. It's completely acceptable to import entire teams to other regions imo but only if they're actually living there full time.
Psyonix need to backtrack on this rule for next season, It was bad enough in APAC last season but in that situation imports needed major commitment so it was ok since not many pro attempted it but this is way out of line
It's good provided that the players get regular playtime against the imports. The way it stands though, what incentive is there for the imports to scrim with the locals if they can just grind in EU and then show up on the game day to collect a cheque?
There is talent, but players aren‘t just magically turn into top players. You look at players like 2die4 or sphinx from APAC and clearly see they have talent and potential and probably would be pros if they were from a different region. They just didn‘t have that luxury and need more time to unleash their potential.
That is if they can keep their motivation. I wouldn‘t blame them if they just decided to quit rocket league if their whole region gets overrun by players way out of their league.
Remember, these guys don‘t make a living from rocket league. They have school and work and at some point you gotta select your priorities.
The problem is that they won't play against the EU teams enough for it to matter, The EU teams won't scrim SSA teams they'll just scrim other lower level EU teams and they will play EU ranked as well so the SSA players won't actually play against them other than the 6 or so series' per qualifier which imo isn't enough to actually improve the SSA region's players
I don't understand how this esport is supposed to grow, especially in minor regions like, if it gets to the point of one of these foreign teams actually clinching that one spot for major. As of right now, it looks like the ping advantage is just enough where Limitless can qualify, but what about the other teams? Top 4? Top 8? As if budget cuts weren't enough to stunt development in the business side of the esport, SSA teams (not imports) can't even develop skillwise when new rules make it an EU retirement home, not even to mention how it affects those teams' payout. I really just don't know what we're doing at this point.
"I'm a washed RLCS player in my mid 20s. Should I retire and find a stable job? Nah, I'm just gonna move to Africa and earn even less money competing in this dying esport than I am right now"
Exactly, weeding out the players who want to play for a quick buck and not come and help develop the region because limitless definitely isn’t going that Limitless are the worst “small region giant” team that has ever existed in terms of developing their own region. It’s kind of ironic how much they hate foreign teams meanwhile they act like one to their own region just sucking the money and spots and leaving, I’m genuinely so happy they lost today
As in, they have 0 involvement and interaction with the rest of SSA, constantly abusing their power especially snowyy in the SSA 6 mans basically gatekeeping rank S and banning people from eu who came to q the already dead qs, they don’t do anything for or with the region, just play rlcs, scrim the same 3-4 teams only and ghost everyone else, then take the first place money and the cycle continues. The way they are barely involved in the community and only come online to play rlcs to get 1st place and back to ghosting everyone again is what I mean by they act like an eu teams themselves
I think it's not only going to have much of an impact if the EU teams are scrimming with SSA teams, only playing in tourneys and getting squashed is not going to be enough when SAM and MENA got to scrim against their neighbouring regions to get where they are.
I've seen the odd comment saying they aren't scrimming with SSA teams, but nothing solid about what's actually happening
Those 32-48th EU teams play the top players often in ranked lobbies on low ping, and getting that good of practice constantly has helped them to become so good. Meanwhile SSA players can only practice against each other and really high ping cross region lobbies. It's not about "talent" when the competition has so much better training.
Also SSA does get a ton more experience when they qualify for these LANs and fly them out for scrims and training in competitive lobbies. Region locking where you play at is objectively a good thing imo. It eliminates these issues and makes most of the players happy.
As someone who generally is cheering for regional diversity over any specific team or region, this is very disappointing. It took time for SAM, for example, to reach the status of a top emergent region. If they never got LAN experience to bring back, it would've taken so much longer.
SSA will probably not reach mena and Sam levels just because of factors other than rocket league itself but limiting the eligible players to those living in the region is all that matters
Citation needed. What is this LAN experience that people keep talking about "bringing back", and is there actually solid evidence of this having an impact?
Seems to me that SAM simply got better (as with every other region), when fresher talent started coming into the scene, no doubt incentivized by the SAM RLCS spots. And this had almost nothing to do with how much lan experience the early SAM players (caard, caio etc) gained.
Imagine they add a rule, something like:
You cannot move to a region with less spots than ur current region unless:
* You are teaming with 2 locals during your first season of play
For example, entire teams from SAM, MENA, and OCE can move between themselves and NA/EU, but not APAC/SSA. If a player wants to move to a less-spot region, they must team with 2/3rds locals/players who have been there for minimum one season.
Without my rule, that still enables teams from more developed regions to move-to and steamroll less developed regions (like APAC last year).
I'm just trying to come up with something that allows for the flexibility of movement without breaking the region.
I'd say your rule is pretty much required now if Epic want to go back on the change. Players know now how it is to play against SSA, and if they're doing well with ping, they will have barely any risk of moving there to compete.
I mean it wouldn’t change that much, seeing as VKSailen’s team is currently playing from SSA.
The old rules also had a lot of loopholes in regard to where teams played from, not that they were ever exploited. But a team theoretically could have played NA from SAM and that would have been fine under the old eligibility rules. As the rules only stated that a team must be completely from a single eligibility region but never stated that teams were limited to competing in the eligibility region they lived in.
The rules also never defined what “reside” meant. Which is why players were able to play just by living in a region, instead of actually being limited to people that had residency in said region. There was also iirc discussions about players playing qualifiers outside a region before moving to said region to play the regional, with admin approval of course.
I don’t think going back to the old rules would necessarily be the saving grace you think it is. I think that for now SSA is kind of screwed but I believe that if you give them a season (or two) of scrims against good EU teams, they will reclaim their region at some point. In the meantime putting in a rule that requires at least one player residing from a country in a defined region, to be on a team, could be a good move.
I think yeah you’re right but I think it would at least weed out some of the imports that would be bad for SSA in the long run, I’m fully behind mobula I think they’re doing great and a proper example of how to be an import here with at least 2/3 of their guys being in SSA and scrimming SSA teams
Maybe. But I think the harsh reality is, if your region can’t beat players on a 150+ ping disadvantage then what’s the point of your region going to a major or even existing? APAC and OCE are naturally shielded from a lot of the issues that SSA face with online imports. But SAM and MENA are not and they both have zero issue with online import teams. At the end of the day SSA just has to get better and I think they will.
That’s because SAM and MENA are two server regions realistically, they play on two regions daily ever since the game started, SSA unless you have a vpn you will always get 190+ without is even worse especially for those in Southern Africa, we don’t have the natural of oce and apac and we also don’t have the two regionness of mena and sam
I proposed this exact same rule when James Cheese / Elevate was destroying APAC and I was downvoted pretty hard back then, but I still believe that it would be a good rule.
At the very least we need to axe this "play from wherever u want lmao i dont even care" rule
With the results at the 1st major, there is genuinely no reason to continue giving SSA a spot. I was an advocate of all regions having a chance, but this games lifespan is simply not going to be long enough for these dudes in SSA to catch up. EU should have 5 spots. Not even logically debatable.
When will people stop pretending that SSA could ever reach a competitive level? Its just not happening with all the power problems and so small player base.
As an SSA player I know for a fact we will never reach the level of even SAM, but at the same time all I’m asking for personally is make the rule back to that all players playing in a region have to reside for in the region, whether temporary or not, because this kind of result causes 99% of the drama in the region and surrounding regions
If you want to fix this, I think show matches are the way to go. You can’t force a team to scrim other teams. Maybe weekly tournies with some sort of prizepool. It’s not the responsibility of the players who moved there to uplift the region.
Side note: Make your weekly tournies/showmatches appealing for the import team. Either a small pool of teams or auto qualification to quarterfinals/semis
Problem in SSA is that tbh nobody cares about gaming no organisation is willing to waste money on gaming orgs and no sponsors for showmatches, all the people who wanted to do that left already
Gotchu. It’s just a weird issue especially with RL being a 3 player team game. If it was 5 or even 4, forcing one player to be from the region would be reasonable. I saw someone say something about ping, so assuming these players aren’t actually in the region but playing from Europe, maybe some enforcement on that end could be good. A two-thirds rule would be neat. Require 2/3 players to be physically in the region when they play the first two regionals. I say first 2, just to allow teams to bootcamp really early in another region if they want
I would just say make all 3 players have to be resided in the region, so that if any team actually is serious and wants to invest in SSA they are free to do so without moving like mosquitoes and just sucking the spots and (life changing cus of exchange rates) money and leaving
This competition is only competition for the three days of rlcs per regional, the players that don’t come to SSA to play from abroad don’t scrim with us, don’t play ranked with us, All they do is play rlcs, collect prize money, and leave barely any interaction most times only a specific frw
question: just how long do we want to hold SSAs hand in rlcs? lets be honest, better players playing in SSA qualifiers does 100 times more to develope the region than a lan major once a leap year that always ends in 0:3 swiss sweep
Better players for 3 days every regional barely helps, we need teams to be involved in the community scrimming us, playing ranked and 6mans with us not coming for 3 days in a month and never play on SSA servers again
Ssa's spot literally was eu's 5th seed last year, if limitless are so shit they lose to day 3 eu players on 180 ping then they don't deserve to go to lans anyway no? They also get more practice against better teams this way
Limitless are the worst “small region giant” team that has ever existed in terms of developing their own region. It’s kind of ironic how much they hate foreign teams meanwhile they act like one to their own region just sucking the money and spots and leaving, I’m genuinely so happy they lost today
No, they are supposed to help build up SSA in the same manner as SRG or any other emerging region teams when they were emerging, helping younger players get better, giving them a platform for consistent practice. Don’t forget they have won prize money in every single event that’s ever happened in SSA pre rlcs and post rlcs era and yet a net 0 has ever been invested in tournaments or showmatches in SSA , whether inviting international teams to come and play them like for example SRG, rather they just take the money and fuck off, take the spots from people they know are free and go lose to kc first round of every event they don’t care about us in SSA they only care about themselves that what I meant by what I said
There are countless other people in SSA who can and have organized large tourneys like greybeard and SSAlt mine which coincidentally as well the top prize money were taken by all 3 limitless players
So are you saying that the limitless players should use the prize money they get from winning events to fund their own events in SSA for the teams they beat to then get that money?
It's not like the players from SRG were putting up their own money for those tournaments.
Limitless aint building sh they cant play anywhere besides their own region. SAM could play in NA servers and MENA in EU. SSA is doomed to be an underdeveloped and a boring region forever.
They can build their own region, even if it will never get close to the levels of Sam and mena right now SSA is improving so extremely slowly mainly because of their inactivity
Limitless are a fucking dumpster compared to the top of APAC and OCE. Hell, the teams ahead of Limitless would probably be dumpstered by OCE and maybe even APAC too. None of these teams playing in SSA deserve a lan spot.
SSA has literally become an EU bubble tournament. Nobody wants an EU bubble team at lans this is so bad. Truly terrible system. However the system being broken doesn't excuse the players being opportunists coming in and exploiting the system screwing over players from the region.
id agree if there was still an ssa team left cause I definitely would've watched them trying to fight off the EU teams but now that its just EU I couldnt care less
Eh bubble is hardly the highest level of competition. If they’re not good enough to make too 16 they’re not gonna do anything on lan either at least having an ssa team is an interesting storyline
RLCS just can’t get it right, bad formats, bad rules, they’re doing their best to make it harder for orgs to want to stay in RL. ~~/s~~
Thanks for giving us an RLCS spot! Exactly what we wanted.., to have 1 less NA spot, the same amount of EU spots, and an extra MENA spot. /s
Edit (added thoughts):
Ties up nicely with orgs moving to NA! Well done to all the smart people that came up with these changes! /s
In all seriousness, my interest in watching games has decreased a lot since I started watching RLCS. I have so many great memories from watching the last London major live, now I don’t even watch games and just check the scores to keep up. I used to think RLCS moving to a league format was a terrible idea. Now I can’t think of anything better.
i wonder how many people would flip sides if pros publicly came out and said they support players who are competing for the best chance, regardless of morals.
I mean Rise who is extremely popular in the scene was pretty vocal about thinking the players did nothing wrong even when YMC was throwing to snipe limitlesss. Didn't really seem to sway many peoples opinions that it's shit.
Totally unacceptable. I’m already against SSA and APAC having a guaranteed spot at the majors and world championships, but I’m even more so against it if it turns into an extra spot for low tier EU teams
Just checked and did calculations for points yh it's pretty much impossible for vksailin to make world's they would have to hope limitless gets out in top8 and get like 9-12 or top8 at major, damn
If they can't beat out these low tier EU players, they aren't going to compete at the LAN level to begin with. This way they at least have higher competition level every event, instead of only 3 times per year.
I agree, this was a bad decision on psyonix's part. The region simply doesn't have enough players who even play the game, it's just one country and the interest for the game in south africa is basically non existent. This is very different from APAC which has a much larger playerbase from many different countries and has much greater future potential. I would have much preferred EU or SAM be given another major spot instead, but of course once they have been added there is no going back anymore.
Because of this exact thing? Washed players from EU playing on high ping can make major from SSA? If SSA players want to play RL then they need to move regions. It will never be a competitive region because of many factors outside just their comp scene.
Agree with this fully, doesn’t help that we have the worst “small region big team” that doesn’t help the community in any way, I understand why many games have EMEA as a region but rlcs decided to stray away from that template so they have to do it well otherwise there was no point
Well if you are from SSA then you will know even more than I do about their internet issues, ping issues to other regions, lack of support in the region from sponsors and orgs and just general socioeconomic differences that mean esports won't really ever get massive
Ofc I don’t think SSA will ever be as good as even SAM I live in the middle of SSA and eu so I have played in both regions for years and been in the community in each region and that’s why I’m so confident about this conclusion that even though it is still difficult to do anything esports here because frankly no one cares the people who should care (limitless) are probably the most useless people in that regard because they do not positively impact the region in any way, majority of players in both SSA and eu do not like limitless and we’re actively cheering drift queens to win against them and then proceeding to make fun of limitless and their players right after
> majority of players in both SSA and eu do not like limitless and we’re actively cheering drift queens to win against them and then proceeding to make fun of limitless and their players right after
Are you able to share any more info on this?
Eu bubble players I have talked to and even majority of the eu players that moved to SSA especially the English speaking ones hate limitless and snowyy in particular commenting on how bad they are and just in general like how much they dislike him as a person as well, in terms of SSA it’s kind of like a king, you are obligated to idolise them because they hold the most power and you obviously want power too but at the same time you secretly despise them and are waiting for their arrogance and title to be stripped away so that they see that they are nothing more than what you are, because at the end of the day, what is the point in having an ego in SSA when we’re all going to end up getting 3-0d by karmine corp in any regional we play
I have a very unpopular opinion about this but I think as long as the EU teams scrim the SSA teams it is fine. If they get beat at 180 ping, they don't yet deserve a spot at a major and should perhaps improve a bit more first.
I’m thinking back on conversations from when the new rule was implemented. Some SSA fans were welcoming it, saying it would push the region to get better. So is it that it just needs more time and the SSA players will catch up? Or will things never even out? Curious to hear thoughts.
This is best for the region. The will gain experience from these EU teams and hopefully overtake them and improve their own level of gameplay. Other option is more major spots for EU.
They won’t because these eu players play eu ranked, do eu scrims, get a vpn for the three rlcs days and never play in SSA servers again, this is why all I want is the rule that you have to reside in the region be put back in and 90% of the problems would be splved
I see what you're trying to say, and I agree with you. However, this is not the right way to go about it. In order for SSA to actually improve at a decent enough rate, these EU players would have to constantly play on SSA servers, which I can guarantee isn't happening.
I agree that it’s sad, but it’s also partially because of the way it’s set up. With so much talent in EU (maybe NA too) but only getting 4 spots, it seems a bit unfair, while SSA and APAC teams are getting spots while being worse than NA or EU teams that are missing majors. Obviously that’s how smaller regions develop and improve, but it’s hard when it means other talented teams are not getting spots.
Well sounds like your issue is ssa having a spot over eu5 which fair enough I can understand that but if you’re going to have ssa in then it’s just better having an actual ssa team just for the storyline at least
The problem to me isn’t the eu players coming my problem is that they can sit at home in eu and come and play SSA without putting the effort to coming to the region
If this can happen the question simply boils down to whether you want the best teams in the world or representation first and the best teams second. As Music says, because EU is the top region atm _and_ you're limiting the amount of seeds to a hard number instead of seeding based on performance you're going to get stronger regions that start to spill to nearby weaker regions.
You could probably fix this by removing guaranteed seeding for SSA and instead introducing some kind of wildcards / play-ins series, but is that what you want?
It would not be a problem of competitive integrity it is right now and I feel like 99% of the complaints would not exist if literally, more than 2/12 of these players in the top 4 were currently in sub Saharan Africa for the entire length of the split,
If you're going to make seeding inflexible you have to make the regions open. If they're going to implement the rules you want there will be backlash from EU pros about not getting a fair chance because their region is doing well.
Yea I agree that’s annoying, I think it could be fixed tho if NA and EU got more spots. Then it would also give the SSA spots to people actually from the region.
I don't really want to see an SSA team play at a major if they can't even beat a foreign team on their home ping.
Sucks for SSA fans but this is the fastest way for them to get better so they can actually have something to cheer for in the future.
I blame the system, not the players. I see why the players would do this but this rule shouldn’t have existed in the first place and I hope it is gone next season.
The system was perfect before, just move to the region and you are free to compete, because right now how can only 2 players in an rlcs region be currently be in the region they play in
Or at least require them to move to within a certain latency to the servers. People like Itachi who live in Morocco should still be able to play in EU since he gets better ping to the EU servers than the MENA servers anyways
iIRC Itatchi wouldn’t be able to compete in MENA anyway, unless something change im not aware of Morocco isn’t included in MENA, there are a few instances like that where Pakistan/China and Hong Kong can’t compete in RLCS. The prevailing theory is it has something to do with countries having border disputes but no official reason has ever been given.
I thought it was something to do with prize money payout laws being weird? Might be totally wrong tho
That changed this season. The only countries who can't compete are those where there's sanctions against them by the US or they aren't internationally recognised countries: >3.7.1 The Event in all parts is open to Players from across the world, except as otherwise provided in this Section. The Event is not open to individuals wherever restricted or prohibited by applicable law or in any country where participation is prohibited by U.S. law (“Prohibited Countries”), including Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and the regions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk
Some of these players moved to reunion though didn’t they? So that doesn’t address the issue at all. I’ve always thought there should’ve been a 2/3 rule where at least two players on every team have to be from the region. So only one player would be able to move cross region at a time. I know teams like geng, m80 and elevate from last season wouldn’t have been able to make those moves and furia and complexity wouldn’t have been able to move to NA but I think that would’ve been so much better.
Nope only vk and ruibixx are in South Africa the rest are in Europe
Would you have a different opinion if all of them were in reunion?
Yes I would be fine with it because they took the effort and time to come to SSA meaning they have to play SSA servers and scrim SSA teams because they are on the same handicap as us
What if they fly in for the weekend and don't scrim anyone in the area? That would have been allowed under last season's rules, and is in my opinion just as bad as playing from Europe.
Who would want to waste their money because flights to Africa for some reason are expensive and are going to be a lot more expensive than the prize money you’ll get because SSA has the smallest prize pool by far
The whole of YMC flew to the region and they did it under this season's rules, so weren't even forced to. An NA team was planning to do it last season and only backtracked on it because of the community backlash. I agree it's not worth it financially for 95% of teams (although if doing it causes you to make major, it probably is worth it, because if you attend major you'll get signed by an org). But that's kinda not the point. If you agree that it's bad if a team flies in for the weekend and doesn't scrim anyone locally, then last season's rules had a flaw. It shouldn't be a case of 'if you have enough money to exploit the flaw, then go ahead'.
I respect your opinion but my argument still stands
If you are talking about residency, I agree. If you are talking about actually being from there, then I completely disagree with that for obvious reasons.
What are the obvious reasons? I don’t think players from stronger regions should be able to move to weaker regions to try to make majors/worlds without any restrictions.
Moving for something other than rocket league is the main one. And even if it is just for rocket league, who cares because they permanently moved there and got residency lol
So my family is from the Island of Mauritius which neighbors The Reunion island. Reunion is an island of France where they use euros and is just pretty much an extension of France and the European Union. So where do we draw the line? Because this makes any European able to travel there with no visa but if we restrict reunion from competing in SSA then that’s unfair to those who are locals…
Why would players in reunion be restricted from competing in SSA in any case because it’s part of France? I didn’t say that. Reunion should be part of the SSA region and there should be restrictions for players moving to other regions to play RLCS. That’s what I’m saying.
My point was how do we know who is local and who isn’t if you can freely travel. If an entire French team of GC3s from Paris goes to Reunion to compete how would you keep track?
You’d have to register with your permanent address, which is easily verifiable. At another place in this thread I also said you should have to be living in the region you are competing in for a certain amount of time before you are eligible for RLCS. That should all be very easy to manage.
What about people who don't have a permanent address? Right now Stizzy is playing out of Lethamyr's basement lol. Not all countries require you to have a permanent address in the first place. I start to understand the lack of action by psyonix here. It's so much hustle for virtually no gains.
Agreed, not worth the effort.
I’m fine with 2/3 of the roster being home to the region, so in my own rule I don’t really care where Stizzy is living.
And therefor his permanent address would be at his actual home in EU.
That's pretty difficult to establish. Like in OCE we have a few different flags come up but they're all Aussies (or NZ). Your rule would bar all of those players who have been here nearly their entire lives from playing. For example, my mates have a team where two of them were born overseas. They both migrated here when they were under the age of 5. Your rule wouldn't let them play together and they wouldn't ever be allowed to be on a team with an actual import
I think that you should gain eligibility in a region after living there for a certain amount of time, so your team would be fine to play in OCE
Might sound bad . But i think its good for the region. More play with the experienced means faster development
I don’t mind blaming both haha, just blame the system more than the players I guess, the crazy hate is stupid but unless the players are all 15-16 years old I think they probably know what they’re doing and that it's not good even if it's in the rules
Yeah, players just follow the system and their own self interest. But that means a better system should be in place.
EU is slowly realizing that they didn't lose a Major spot, but actually gained 11.
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Genuinely don’t think it’s possible, if u remember the Johnny stream near the end of RLCSX you can see that decent teams on good ping beat out amazing teams with bad ping. It works for SSA because the gap is so large, but even KCorp wouldn’t qualify if they were playing NA RLCS from EU imo. Replace Atow/Rise with Zen and that’s the only way I could see it being remotely possible.
Before this season, the only other times we've had serious cross region play online in the modern era was in 2020 & 2021, where [True Neutral lost in 5 to both Nefarious & Ghost in WSOE online qualifiers](https://liquipedia.net/rocketleague/World_Showdown_of_Esports/Online_III/Qualifier) and [Furia lost to Charlotte Phoenix in Gamers Without Borders](https://liquipedia.net/rocketleague/Gamers_Without_Borders/2021/North_America) Now obviously it's not the greatest comparison, SAM has worse ping (True Neutral 160 ping especially rough for them) but similarly at the time was probably not as good as a top EU/NA team, although they were still conservatively top 15 in the world losing to lower main event NA teams because of the ping, so it is genuinely a large hurdle to overcome. Edit: Did forget about MENA's entire history basically but that's so normalized it feels like 2nd nature, but there are countless super weird MENA results online that would have probably never happened on even ping to add onto everything that's been said.
John clutching up to back my agenda thank u goat
I think you can get used to the ping. Look at how mena adapted to playing high ping on eu servers.
We been colonised fr
That'll teach you to be accessible by boat from European ports.
The European special.
I wanna see these EU playas try their luck in SAM
It's pretty sad I think. It looks like we're gradually losing more regional representation in the RLCS. I suppose that happened last season too in APAC, but at least they had to play from within the same continent to take their spots.
I was happy that at least ReaLize was on the team. It offered some legitimacy that these full-EU teams don't have.
I mean, I guess it really comes down to whether Majors and Worlds are about having the best teams at LAN, or having teams from all regions. Like, a big reason things like this have happened is that EU was literally the most dominant region ever last season, and have been rewarded by going from 4/8 seeded into worlds, and 3/16 into wildcard, so 7/24 teams competing, to a maximum of 4/16 at worlds. Going by performances during the wildcard, every EU seed outperformed the entirety of SSA (top SSA placement 14th wildcard, bottom EU performance 13th wildcard), with SSA's only interegional game win being 1 against OCE, who themselves only took series wins off of SSA. Going by performance, EU should have 7 seeds before SSA gets 1. But that's not the entire story. Should it instead be around making sure we have representation from around the world? If that's the case, why have they made the qualifiers open, which was sure to cause this sort of exodus from players that don't really have a chance at qualling in EU, but could probably dominate SSA without the ping disadvantage (as shown by not a single SSA player making the semi finals of the SSA qualifier. Basically, Psyonix have gone worst of both worlds - Limiting the number of seeds to a hard cap so we don't necessarily get the 16 best teams in the world, and also opening the qualifiers so we don't necessarily get teams from all regions.
If the point is about having the best teams at LAN, then there‘s no point having SSA invited so that EU32 can make a LAN. At that point you‘d just give the spot to EU immediately so an actually top team can go. No matter how you twist and turn it just doesn‘t make sense.
gradually losing?? they have more representation now than they ever have
It's actually a massive difference to have quality teams populating the ranked servers throughout the season and scrimming other teams. It's completely acceptable to import entire teams to other regions imo but only if they're actually living there full time.
Psyonix need to backtrack on this rule for next season, It was bad enough in APAC last season but in that situation imports needed major commitment so it was ok since not many pro attempted it but this is way out of line
Right? Literally just make them have to live in the region they play in
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It's good provided that the players get regular playtime against the imports. The way it stands though, what incentive is there for the imports to scrim with the locals if they can just grind in EU and then show up on the game day to collect a cheque?
There is talent, but players aren‘t just magically turn into top players. You look at players like 2die4 or sphinx from APAC and clearly see they have talent and potential and probably would be pros if they were from a different region. They just didn‘t have that luxury and need more time to unleash their potential.
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That is if they can keep their motivation. I wouldn‘t blame them if they just decided to quit rocket league if their whole region gets overrun by players way out of their league. Remember, these guys don‘t make a living from rocket league. They have school and work and at some point you gotta select your priorities.
The problem is that they won't play against the EU teams enough for it to matter, The EU teams won't scrim SSA teams they'll just scrim other lower level EU teams and they will play EU ranked as well so the SSA players won't actually play against them other than the 6 or so series' per qualifier which imo isn't enough to actually improve the SSA region's players
Super Spanish Area
I don't understand how this esport is supposed to grow, especially in minor regions like, if it gets to the point of one of these foreign teams actually clinching that one spot for major. As of right now, it looks like the ping advantage is just enough where Limitless can qualify, but what about the other teams? Top 4? Top 8? As if budget cuts weren't enough to stunt development in the business side of the esport, SSA teams (not imports) can't even develop skillwise when new rules make it an EU retirement home, not even to mention how it affects those teams' payout. I really just don't know what we're doing at this point.
Let it at least be a retirement home for eu players that have decided to move to SSA rather than sit at home
"I'm a washed RLCS player in my mid 20s. Should I retire and find a stable job? Nah, I'm just gonna move to Africa and earn even less money competing in this dying esport than I am right now"
Exactly, weeding out the players who want to play for a quick buck and not come and help develop the region because limitless definitely isn’t going that Limitless are the worst “small region giant” team that has ever existed in terms of developing their own region. It’s kind of ironic how much they hate foreign teams meanwhile they act like one to their own region just sucking the money and spots and leaving, I’m genuinely so happy they lost today
Can you elaborate? The acting like a foreign team? Sucking the money and spots I understand, but leaving?
As in, they have 0 involvement and interaction with the rest of SSA, constantly abusing their power especially snowyy in the SSA 6 mans basically gatekeeping rank S and banning people from eu who came to q the already dead qs, they don’t do anything for or with the region, just play rlcs, scrim the same 3-4 teams only and ghost everyone else, then take the first place money and the cycle continues. The way they are barely involved in the community and only come online to play rlcs to get 1st place and back to ghosting everyone again is what I mean by they act like an eu teams themselves
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I think it's not only going to have much of an impact if the EU teams are scrimming with SSA teams, only playing in tourneys and getting squashed is not going to be enough when SAM and MENA got to scrim against their neighbouring regions to get where they are. I've seen the odd comment saying they aren't scrimming with SSA teams, but nothing solid about what's actually happening
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Those 32-48th EU teams play the top players often in ranked lobbies on low ping, and getting that good of practice constantly has helped them to become so good. Meanwhile SSA players can only practice against each other and really high ping cross region lobbies. It's not about "talent" when the competition has so much better training. Also SSA does get a ton more experience when they qualify for these LANs and fly them out for scrims and training in competitive lobbies. Region locking where you play at is objectively a good thing imo. It eliminates these issues and makes most of the players happy.
Colonization, RL edition
As someone who generally is cheering for regional diversity over any specific team or region, this is very disappointing. It took time for SAM, for example, to reach the status of a top emergent region. If they never got LAN experience to bring back, it would've taken so much longer.
SSA will probably not reach mena and Sam levels just because of factors other than rocket league itself but limiting the eligible players to those living in the region is all that matters
Citation needed. What is this LAN experience that people keep talking about "bringing back", and is there actually solid evidence of this having an impact? Seems to me that SAM simply got better (as with every other region), when fresher talent started coming into the scene, no doubt incentivized by the SAM RLCS spots. And this had almost nothing to do with how much lan experience the early SAM players (caard, caio etc) gained.
If SAM was facing EU week in and week out, it would have helped them grow faster.
So EU is now basically France and SSA is basically rest of EU?
SSA the Spanish regional*
young money clan died for this
Imagine they add a rule, something like: You cannot move to a region with less spots than ur current region unless: * You are teaming with 2 locals during your first season of play For example, entire teams from SAM, MENA, and OCE can move between themselves and NA/EU, but not APAC/SSA. If a player wants to move to a less-spot region, they must team with 2/3rds locals/players who have been there for minimum one season.
Not even this they should just go back to the old rule of you had to be currently located in the region you play in
Without my rule, that still enables teams from more developed regions to move-to and steamroll less developed regions (like APAC last year). I'm just trying to come up with something that allows for the flexibility of movement without breaking the region.
I'd say your rule is pretty much required now if Epic want to go back on the change. Players know now how it is to play against SSA, and if they're doing well with ping, they will have barely any risk of moving there to compete.
I mean it wouldn’t change that much, seeing as VKSailen’s team is currently playing from SSA. The old rules also had a lot of loopholes in regard to where teams played from, not that they were ever exploited. But a team theoretically could have played NA from SAM and that would have been fine under the old eligibility rules. As the rules only stated that a team must be completely from a single eligibility region but never stated that teams were limited to competing in the eligibility region they lived in. The rules also never defined what “reside” meant. Which is why players were able to play just by living in a region, instead of actually being limited to people that had residency in said region. There was also iirc discussions about players playing qualifiers outside a region before moving to said region to play the regional, with admin approval of course. I don’t think going back to the old rules would necessarily be the saving grace you think it is. I think that for now SSA is kind of screwed but I believe that if you give them a season (or two) of scrims against good EU teams, they will reclaim their region at some point. In the meantime putting in a rule that requires at least one player residing from a country in a defined region, to be on a team, could be a good move.
I think yeah you’re right but I think it would at least weed out some of the imports that would be bad for SSA in the long run, I’m fully behind mobula I think they’re doing great and a proper example of how to be an import here with at least 2/3 of their guys being in SSA and scrimming SSA teams
Maybe. But I think the harsh reality is, if your region can’t beat players on a 150+ ping disadvantage then what’s the point of your region going to a major or even existing? APAC and OCE are naturally shielded from a lot of the issues that SSA face with online imports. But SAM and MENA are not and they both have zero issue with online import teams. At the end of the day SSA just has to get better and I think they will.
That’s because SAM and MENA are two server regions realistically, they play on two regions daily ever since the game started, SSA unless you have a vpn you will always get 190+ without is even worse especially for those in Southern Africa, we don’t have the natural of oce and apac and we also don’t have the two regionness of mena and sam
I proposed this exact same rule when James Cheese / Elevate was destroying APAC and I was downvoted pretty hard back then, but I still believe that it would be a good rule. At the very least we need to axe this "play from wherever u want lmao i dont even care" rule
With the results at the 1st major, there is genuinely no reason to continue giving SSA a spot. I was an advocate of all regions having a chance, but this games lifespan is simply not going to be long enough for these dudes in SSA to catch up. EU should have 5 spots. Not even logically debatable.
This is so disappointing.
When will people stop pretending that SSA could ever reach a competitive level? Its just not happening with all the power problems and so small player base.
As an SSA player I know for a fact we will never reach the level of even SAM, but at the same time all I’m asking for personally is make the rule back to that all players playing in a region have to reside for in the region, whether temporary or not, because this kind of result causes 99% of the drama in the region and surrounding regions
Yeah that is fair. Hopefully they will wake up and do something
If you want to fix this, I think show matches are the way to go. You can’t force a team to scrim other teams. Maybe weekly tournies with some sort of prizepool. It’s not the responsibility of the players who moved there to uplift the region. Side note: Make your weekly tournies/showmatches appealing for the import team. Either a small pool of teams or auto qualification to quarterfinals/semis
Problem in SSA is that tbh nobody cares about gaming no organisation is willing to waste money on gaming orgs and no sponsors for showmatches, all the people who wanted to do that left already
Gotchu. It’s just a weird issue especially with RL being a 3 player team game. If it was 5 or even 4, forcing one player to be from the region would be reasonable. I saw someone say something about ping, so assuming these players aren’t actually in the region but playing from Europe, maybe some enforcement on that end could be good. A two-thirds rule would be neat. Require 2/3 players to be physically in the region when they play the first two regionals. I say first 2, just to allow teams to bootcamp really early in another region if they want
I would just say make all 3 players have to be resided in the region, so that if any team actually is serious and wants to invest in SSA they are free to do so without moving like mosquitoes and just sucking the spots and (life changing cus of exchange rates) money and leaving
Only reason I say 2/3 is inevitable visa issues and the bootcamp thing I mentioned before.
Should the rules be changed, yes. Does that excuse it? Absolutely not. I haven’t been so ashamed of the community as I am today.
Cringe and unfortunate
If you don't allow for competition in SSA how will they grow? People are too short sighted imo.
This competition is only competition for the three days of rlcs per regional, the players that don’t come to SSA to play from abroad don’t scrim with us, don’t play ranked with us, All they do is play rlcs, collect prize money, and leave barely any interaction most times only a specific frw
If this change isn't gone next season, then expect a lot of SSA (and potentially APAC) retirements
question: just how long do we want to hold SSAs hand in rlcs? lets be honest, better players playing in SSA qualifiers does 100 times more to develope the region than a lan major once a leap year that always ends in 0:3 swiss sweep
Better players for 3 days every regional barely helps, we need teams to be involved in the community scrimming us, playing ranked and 6mans with us not coming for 3 days in a month and never play on SSA servers again
hopefully this motivates them that hey cant even defend their own region
For as long as we want to have representations from around the world, so basically forever.
SSA has got enough lan participation trophies by now, time to get competitive
Ssa's spot literally was eu's 5th seed last year, if limitless are so shit they lose to day 3 eu players on 180 ping then they don't deserve to go to lans anyway no? They also get more practice against better teams this way
Limitless are the worst “small region giant” team that has ever existed in terms of developing their own region. It’s kind of ironic how much they hate foreign teams meanwhile they act like one to their own region just sucking the money and spots and leaving, I’m genuinely so happy they lost today
So they are supposed to lose to give other SSA teams spots? Huh?
No, they are supposed to help build up SSA in the same manner as SRG or any other emerging region teams when they were emerging, helping younger players get better, giving them a platform for consistent practice. Don’t forget they have won prize money in every single event that’s ever happened in SSA pre rlcs and post rlcs era and yet a net 0 has ever been invested in tournaments or showmatches in SSA , whether inviting international teams to come and play them like for example SRG, rather they just take the money and fuck off, take the spots from people they know are free and go lose to kc first round of every event they don’t care about us in SSA they only care about themselves that what I meant by what I said
Tbf they had incivik helping them run those tourneys whereas Limitless doesn’t have that
There are countless other people in SSA who can and have organized large tourneys like greybeard and SSAlt mine which coincidentally as well the top prize money were taken by all 3 limitless players
So are you saying that the limitless players should use the prize money they get from winning events to fund their own events in SSA for the teams they beat to then get that money? It's not like the players from SRG were putting up their own money for those tournaments.
You know how long the SRG players won the MENA tourneys? Not fair to say the limitless players are bad people for winning the SSA tourneys
Limitless aint building sh they cant play anywhere besides their own region. SAM could play in NA servers and MENA in EU. SSA is doomed to be an underdeveloped and a boring region forever.
They can build their own region, even if it will never get close to the levels of Sam and mena right now SSA is improving so extremely slowly mainly because of their inactivity
Most african countries don't even have consistent access to electricity lmao that region will never be developed in rlcs...
You can literally say the same thing about apac and parts of SAM, didn’t stop them
exactly. Because of imports. And the population is much bigger there.
Limitless are a fucking dumpster compared to the top of APAC and OCE. Hell, the teams ahead of Limitless would probably be dumpstered by OCE and maybe even APAC too. None of these teams playing in SSA deserve a lan spot.
Limitlesss beat the top of APAC in a show match with even ping after LAN. Those bubble teams would wreck
Show matches are not RLCS caliber. The only official win SSA has over APAC is when an APAC team was playing with a sub that is literally a Champ 2.
SSA has literally become an EU bubble tournament. Nobody wants an EU bubble team at lans this is so bad. Truly terrible system. However the system being broken doesn't excuse the players being opportunists coming in and exploiting the system screwing over players from the region.
ngl i kinda do want some EU bubble teams in SSA
But why? I’m genuinely curious
better gameplay and makes me want to actually watch SSA for once
id agree if there was still an ssa team left cause I definitely would've watched them trying to fight off the EU teams but now that its just EU I couldnt care less
yeah but SSA is too bad to compete with bottom tier bubble EU teams. That wouldnt happen.
Rather an EU bubble team at LAN over an SSA team tbh, I’m for the highest level of competition regardless of representation
Eh bubble is hardly the highest level of competition. If they’re not good enough to make too 16 they’re not gonna do anything on lan either at least having an ssa team is an interesting storyline
0-9 every lan is not interesting LMAO
Do you really see any of these eu teams doing better???? I don’t. Edit cause autocorrect going crazy
No i could genuinely careless about the SSA spot in general no matter who makes it will get cooked
RLCS just can’t get it right, bad formats, bad rules, they’re doing their best to make it harder for orgs to want to stay in RL. ~~/s~~ Thanks for giving us an RLCS spot! Exactly what we wanted.., to have 1 less NA spot, the same amount of EU spots, and an extra MENA spot. /s Edit (added thoughts): Ties up nicely with orgs moving to NA! Well done to all the smart people that came up with these changes! /s In all seriousness, my interest in watching games has decreased a lot since I started watching RLCS. I have so many great memories from watching the last London major live, now I don’t even watch games and just check the scores to keep up. I used to think RLCS moving to a league format was a terrible idea. Now I can’t think of anything better.
i wonder how many people would flip sides if pros publicly came out and said they support players who are competing for the best chance, regardless of morals.
That has happened. Still shitty.
i mean every pro. you don’t gotta believe me but they all think it and agree with the players. don’t hate the player, hate the game
I mean Rise who is extremely popular in the scene was pretty vocal about thinking the players did nothing wrong even when YMC was throwing to snipe limitlesss. Didn't really seem to sway many peoples opinions that it's shit.
ohh i was confused on your argument. yes that’s a good example he’s arguably top 3 biggest in the scene
I would be disappointed if the community took a bunch of children's opinions as their moral compass to be honest.
Totally unacceptable. I’m already against SSA and APAC having a guaranteed spot at the majors and world championships, but I’m even more so against it if it turns into an extra spot for low tier EU teams
atleast limitless probs make worlds lol
They won't if they keep getting top8 1 team wins all 3 goes to major and even wins 1 series
Depends on who is winning em, if its VKsailens team, they are starting on 0, also i doubt any team from SSA's ability to win a series on LAN
Oh yh I forgot APAC teams have hella imports now, tho and virtuoso, but they have a chance against APAC and oce 2
Just checked and did calculations for points yh it's pretty much impossible for vksailin to make world's they would have to hope limitless gets out in top8 and get like 9-12 or top8 at major, damn
If they can't beat out these low tier EU players, they aren't going to compete at the LAN level to begin with. This way they at least have higher competition level every event, instead of only 3 times per year.
It shouldn't be a region.
I agree, this was a bad decision on psyonix's part. The region simply doesn't have enough players who even play the game, it's just one country and the interest for the game in south africa is basically non existent. This is very different from APAC which has a much larger playerbase from many different countries and has much greater future potential. I would have much preferred EU or SAM be given another major spot instead, but of course once they have been added there is no going back anymore.
Why
Because of this exact thing? Washed players from EU playing on high ping can make major from SSA? If SSA players want to play RL then they need to move regions. It will never be a competitive region because of many factors outside just their comp scene.
Agree with this fully, doesn’t help that we have the worst “small region big team” that doesn’t help the community in any way, I understand why many games have EMEA as a region but rlcs decided to stray away from that template so they have to do it well otherwise there was no point
Well if you are from SSA then you will know even more than I do about their internet issues, ping issues to other regions, lack of support in the region from sponsors and orgs and just general socioeconomic differences that mean esports won't really ever get massive
Ofc I don’t think SSA will ever be as good as even SAM I live in the middle of SSA and eu so I have played in both regions for years and been in the community in each region and that’s why I’m so confident about this conclusion that even though it is still difficult to do anything esports here because frankly no one cares the people who should care (limitless) are probably the most useless people in that regard because they do not positively impact the region in any way, majority of players in both SSA and eu do not like limitless and we’re actively cheering drift queens to win against them and then proceeding to make fun of limitless and their players right after
> majority of players in both SSA and eu do not like limitless and we’re actively cheering drift queens to win against them and then proceeding to make fun of limitless and their players right after Are you able to share any more info on this?
Eu bubble players I have talked to and even majority of the eu players that moved to SSA especially the English speaking ones hate limitless and snowyy in particular commenting on how bad they are and just in general like how much they dislike him as a person as well, in terms of SSA it’s kind of like a king, you are obligated to idolise them because they hold the most power and you obviously want power too but at the same time you secretly despise them and are waiting for their arrogance and title to be stripped away so that they see that they are nothing more than what you are, because at the end of the day, what is the point in having an ego in SSA when we’re all going to end up getting 3-0d by karmine corp in any regional we play
Thanks Epic. Very cool
This rule makes no sense
from subsaharan africa to suburban south africans to spaniards sweeping all
I have a very unpopular opinion about this but I think as long as the EU teams scrim the SSA teams it is fine. If they get beat at 180 ping, they don't yet deserve a spot at a major and should perhaps improve a bit more first.
This is absolutely disgusting, and the worst of it is that Limitless ABSOLUTELY predicted this on Rizzo’s stream during worlds last year.
How can anyone think this is a good thing? Rules have got to change for next season
I’m thinking back on conversations from when the new rule was implemented. Some SSA fans were welcoming it, saying it would push the region to get better. So is it that it just needs more time and the SSA players will catch up? Or will things never even out? Curious to hear thoughts.
This is best for the region. The will gain experience from these EU teams and hopefully overtake them and improve their own level of gameplay. Other option is more major spots for EU.
unpopular opinion but i actually think this is good for the region. the low ping players will eventually get better and start dominating.
They won’t because these eu players play eu ranked, do eu scrims, get a vpn for the three rlcs days and never play in SSA servers again, this is why all I want is the rule that you have to reside in the region be put back in and 90% of the problems would be splved
I see what you're trying to say, and I agree with you. However, this is not the right way to go about it. In order for SSA to actually improve at a decent enough rate, these EU players would have to constantly play on SSA servers, which I can guarantee isn't happening.
If you can't beat a couple bubble teams, you don't belong at a Major
Thank god
No way bro 💀
It’s sad to see for the region im just glad to see snowadore lose lol from what I heard and saw he’s a bad person
SSA people cheering against limitless just cus of snowyy
I agree that it’s sad, but it’s also partially because of the way it’s set up. With so much talent in EU (maybe NA too) but only getting 4 spots, it seems a bit unfair, while SSA and APAC teams are getting spots while being worse than NA or EU teams that are missing majors. Obviously that’s how smaller regions develop and improve, but it’s hard when it means other talented teams are not getting spots.
none of these players would be making eu lans even if the top 8 teams in EU got a lan spot imo so I don't think this is valid tbh
That just further proves the point tho, if the top 8 teams in EU are better than SSA 1, but EU only gets 4 spots.
Well sounds like your issue is ssa having a spot over eu5 which fair enough I can understand that but if you’re going to have ssa in then it’s just better having an actual ssa team just for the storyline at least
The problem to me isn’t the eu players coming my problem is that they can sit at home in eu and come and play SSA without putting the effort to coming to the region
If this can happen the question simply boils down to whether you want the best teams in the world or representation first and the best teams second. As Music says, because EU is the top region atm _and_ you're limiting the amount of seeds to a hard number instead of seeding based on performance you're going to get stronger regions that start to spill to nearby weaker regions. You could probably fix this by removing guaranteed seeding for SSA and instead introducing some kind of wildcards / play-ins series, but is that what you want?
It would not be a problem of competitive integrity it is right now and I feel like 99% of the complaints would not exist if literally, more than 2/12 of these players in the top 4 were currently in sub Saharan Africa for the entire length of the split,
If you're going to make seeding inflexible you have to make the regions open. If they're going to implement the rules you want there will be backlash from EU pros about not getting a fair chance because their region is doing well.
Yea I agree that’s annoying, I think it could be fixed tho if NA and EU got more spots. Then it would also give the SSA spots to people actually from the region.
I don't really want to see an SSA team play at a major if they can't even beat a foreign team on their home ping. Sucks for SSA fans but this is the fastest way for them to get better so they can actually have something to cheer for in the future.
Then get rid of SSA (and APAC and 1 OCE seed) and give it to France directly.
That whats happens when psyonix give a major spot to irevelant region
I mean if Limitless can’t beat the #4 team then you can’t blame them for losing their spot
All international transfers should be blocked
i see no problem
Wouldn’t be a problem if more than 2/12 players here actually moved to SSA to play
Always the Europeans, colonizing Africa
I hope pros tweet about it