I'm not so happy about this. I'm a New Yorker and I don't want to be supporting LWB. I've always liked Flow3r (but he can't play right away), but I've never been a fan of the rest of the team. Even if they will do well in the league, this is a bad move marketing-wise. Having a full Korean roster in one of the biggest American cities is simply not the best way to start.
To add on: I don't care if they're Korean or not, I'm half Korean myself.
The main reason for me at least as a New Yorker is that NYC represents a thriving city of diversity of culture. I wanted a roster that was built from the ground up with a massive amount of internationality rather than just buying out a team. I would've been just as angry if they'd bought out Rogue or Flash Wolves or Kungarna.
I was with you in the previous comment, mainly because of the language barrier and culture difference of not just one or two players, but the whole squad. I think that forcing diversity over building a strong team is probably not the direction they want to take.
Now, I actually would have been OK with them grabbing Kungarna or ex-LGE or really any squad as long that had proven itself to be of OWL caliber. First and foremost you want a wining team no matter what form it takes, and you can add pieces to fill the gaps. Whether it;s 50/50 or otherwise nationality can't be your first criteria, even if it's to mirror the diversity of the area you represent.
In this case getting all of LWB is fine but I think it needs to be supplemented with NA/EU players that can fill any roles that the current squad lacks to make sure the team is the strongest one you can possibly have. Kind of like what MEGA Thunder did.
You don't throw a single American into the team.
What New York should do is add in 5-6 more players (mix of NA/EU) to supplement the core of LWB's roster to create a more formidable starting roster as a whole.
Keep Saebyeolbe and Mano as a core two. They're both the standout players of the team (if we're not talking about Flow3r). MekO is a good Dva but has very limited flexibility and skill on other heroes. Pine doesn't perform well on LAN, and until Flow3r returns, there are better projectile/flex players. Slyph and Jjonak might be fine, but they are mostly unproven and not at the highest level of support players.
Imagine NYC's season 1 roster to be something along the lines of: (theoretically)
Hydration (Projectile DPS)
Saebyeolbe (Hitscan DPS)
Mano (Tank)
Harbleu (Flex tank)
Avast (Support)
Dante (Flex support)
Season 2 could bring in Flow3r over hydration, and obviously other players are subject to change as time goes on. This isn't my prediction for what the roster will be in any way, Its just an example that I'm giving to showcase what I think could be a successful method that NYC could use. Using just LWB as a starting roster without Flow3r will not find the most success. Using the core of LWB best players and supplementing that core with the best players from NA and EU would make NYC a truly formidable team and one that I'd be proud rooting for.
Don't mix languages? Envyus has 5 different nationalities. Immortals has Koreans. Most European teams are extremely diverse and a lot of players speak different languages.
Players can learn English... it's what a majority of teams, and highly successful teams, up to this point, have done. I don't get what your point is here? Adding Koreans to NA is fine, but adding NA to Koreans is bad? You're not making sense. All teams find a way to communicate.
KariV on immortals has trouble speaking English, yet in a recent interview with Hyped, he said they work around it. KariV utilizes what he knows of the language, and communicates it through Fate (who's good at English), who then communicates it to the rest of the team. Despite an initial language barrier, they've worked there way around it (like every other team with mixed nationalities), and obviously immortals have found their way to some strong results.
I think the point is that if Flow3r isn't eligible and they decide to keep the remaining 5 members in the starting roster, it leaves one player short. If they decide to use a NA player as the sixth, language is bound to be a problem. The 5 Koreans aren't going to want to learn English just to compensate for one player, whilst the NA player isn't going to want to learn Korean either as they're still playing in the US. It's a lot easier if your roster is split proportionality with 3 native speakers and 3 non natives, but when it's 5-1 it's different.
To add to the European point, most people in Europe learn English from an early age, and it's vastly spoken by most teens/young adults in Europe nowadays, which is why mixed nationalities with EU/NA teams normally works well. As far as I'm aware, you don't learn much English, if any, in most east Asian countries, which is why the language barrier becomes much harder. I think if they're wanting to use the remaining members of LW Blue, they'd be better off bringing in another Korean.
I get your point with the mixed roster, because organisations can sign 6-12 players, but my point's about the starting roster. You want your starting roster to be the best players, and with signing LW Blue, a top 5 world team, you'd want most of your starting roster to be their 5 Koreans. Because of that, the same situation that I was on about with having another Korean rather than a NA player is what I think is more beneficial.
I don't really understand this communication barrier thing. In game, callouts are obvious and are for the majority one word callouts.
Outside the game, as in team bonding and stuff, I'd get the point but not when we're talking in-game. Almost everbody who games knows bits of english, or at least understands bits of it.
Get a tutor in there with some english only team bonding activities or whatnot and english will come in no time.
As for LWB, it would've been way better if Flow3r was able to compete, cause they're looking scary this season, and everybody's yet to see them in action. Only problem is SBB's hero pool is limited, his OWC Mccree was not looking good tbh, so they'd need one or two extra players to fill up.
You don't see Korean squads picking international players up, hopefully they decide to go with some unexpected picks. They can do some damage in S1 for sure.
Call outs work for dive, as all you have to do is call the target you're jumping on and that's it. When the likes of Rein, Zar etc come back into the meta and you actually have to create tactics and strategies, that's when the communication becomes difficult. I can see why people don't think it's a problem because of how easily NA/EU teams can gel, but it's different as most Asians aren't anywhere near as fluent as most Europeans.
You do realise that long callouts create chaos in comms, that's why teams have shotcallers, obviously the shotcaller will have to be somewhat proficient in whatever language the team is using.
And you prepare your strategies before the game starts, everybody pretty much knows where to go and what to do against a given team. I'm not saying it's easy, but words such as hotel, level 3, heals, peek, take damage and whatnot are not hard to communicate. As I'm sure that sticky situations might arise from time to time, but progress comes with practice.
I don't see how having different tanks impact how callouts work, if you could give me an example maybe we can discuss this part.
And yes, asians might have a more difficult time speaking it since they don't have latin languages to relate words to. But they take gaming careers seriously, so I don't think they'll be discouraged very easily.
#34 Well before every fight, the shotcaller's/main tank's (in some cases) job is to lay out target focus before engaging, among other things. If a Tracer at a top tier level is constantly sticking the wrong target, then you wanna be looking at a different Tracer to pick up for your team. Successful teams are successful because everybody is on the same page especially during the tougher moments.
And just my take on what you said, trading Pulse bomb for Res is a huge win, but I'm guessing that was just a random example.
#37 I'm not talking about shotcalling though, maybe that wasn't clear. And you brought up Zebbo, who was shotcaller for old Misfits that won the Overwatch Open 2016. They had 3 Swedes and 3 French players.
And Pine ? Pine plays Mccree and Widow, never seen him play anything else. Who's their Genji, Pharah, Reaper, Junkrat, etc assuming Pine can pick up Soldier 76 pretty fast. I don't see how that's a flexible duo tbh.
P.S: 500 word essay due tomorrow HAhaa.
I'd say there's a big difference between telling a Winston who to jump on rather than say telling your Rein to keep his shield up to protect your widow whilst she's grounded, telling him when to charge the other Rein when your Zar has bubble up or telling your Genji to save his ult to combo with grav. There's so many different strategies involved outside of dive which would be difficult to create with only a basic understanding of English. Dive shot calling is simply repeating "Lucio lucio lucio, zen zen zen, genji genji genji". The comms speed is much faster but also requires less communication. Anything outside of this normally requires more patience and therefore longer comms.
Dive at a pro level is not just that though ? I agree the most of it is screaming targets' names but you need to know what ults they have, which ones you're using before engaging, where they're gonna dive from, who on, etc.
As for the example you listed, I still believe most of it is the shotcaller's job. He'll tell everybody that what they're using next fight will be grav+sword and that's it, it's the players' jobs to position themselves accordingly to set up the winning play. I can see Zarya Rein chemistry being harder to develop, but it's in no way handicapping the team to the degree some people make it to be, in my opinion.
Zebbosai himself said calling in English was difficult after having called in Sweedish for so long so they adopted a bit of a hybrid system to help themselves out. Not sure if it's still the case but it's a compelling example from an actual english speaker.
As for LWB they have Pine yes? Adding in the new "ladder monster" they picked up their 6 man squad is complete. Pine's hero pool covers for SBB and they form another formidable Tracer + Flex duo.
Now, I'm assuming that if they did add players it wouldn't just be the one NA/EU player but several to cover any weaknesses they may have. I'm pretty interested in what they decide to do with the squad and how they do relative to the other crazy teams we'll see in OWL.
It's still very early but it looks like season one will be very competitive.
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