A possible replacement of challenger series
Does Challenger series really provide what lcs need or make lcs healthy?
I am happy hai is able to bring team from cs to lcs, but the only new blood is the jugler. Also locking players in cs make lcs teams hard to change their roster to improve during the split and also stop cs players giving a shot at world.
Is it necessary to bring a cs team to replace a lcs team? P1 this split show that one player change could turn the table. On the other hand, echo fox does not improve much during the split. Maybe it is hard to hire player that playing cs.
The pressure for teams getting relegated could scare team a little bit but it does not help much for them to improve. Also, the career life of esports player is much shorter than ordinary sport(say, 1/3 of it), so i really hope players who have talent can earn their chance faster. Therefore, i suggest the following replacement.
- "College" or "School" forms by riot instead of challenger series. Players(including foreigners) want to become pro players join this college, number of player limit to, say, 40. Can also hire some support staffs(coach, analyst or even manager). Riot holds the contract of them.
- Teams are forms among the players in college and staff. The duration/period will be 3 weeks or a month, the key part is it is shorter than lcs split. Players and staff can show the preference while forming teams but college will try to put players that never team together in a team to let players build experience working with different players.
- within the period, teams play tournament like cs. Winner team of this tournament has cash prize.
- After the period/tournament, lcs team can draft players and staff from college. If the draft phase is during the first half of the lcs split, Lower position team has higher priority to pick first. On the contrary, If the draft phase is during the second half of the lcs split, higher position team has higher priority to pick first LCS team are not allow to change their roster during split except this drafting phase after each period and not allow non **college **players.
- Riot will hold the contract of the drafted player so that riot can secure the salary are given to those drafted players and so does not impact the financial situation of the teams. Although the team still need to let the newly drafted player stay in game house and cover other things compare to original roster. If teams are financially stable, riot can transfer the contract to the team and then increase the subsidize to the team to compensate.
- The last place team of lcs loses its spot, their players and staff are transfer to college temporarily, with salary level lower to the level of "college" players and staff. This money is from the remaining subsidizes that plan to give to the team during the split. Riot look for a new owner and form a new team with players and staffs from college. If the team just newly formed from college last split are tied with team for last place, this team do not need to play tie breaker and allow to stay in lcs.
I hope riot could take this into consideration when they think about change to challenger series.