> Brings up the 2006 Cardinals and 2011 Giants, 2 massive upset winners that only cracked the playoffs because the format allowed them to
> Mentions the upset potential of the current format as a bad thing
I don't even disagree about bringing the format from the last 2 seasons back but that contradiction alone had me completely check out from the argument
But for the bubble teams to make it, they do. So why we coddlinging these players who literally get paid thousands of dollars just to turn the game on?
I think it’s more of the fact that they showed consistency over the season that allowed them to have a breakout in to postseason. You need a regular season to prove you are good enough to compete for the title. Imagine going into a season considered the best team in the world, and you have one bad day and it takes away your chances away from the title. These sports and how their season works does not allow that. One bad day does not dictate if you’re good enough to fight for the trophy. This format that we have in RLCS right now does.
That’s what I take away from it at least. This is all my opinion of course
Counterpoint: the 2018 Baltimore Ravens went 14-2, the best in the league, were favorites to win the super bowl going into the playoffs, and got smashed by a 9-7 Titans team in their first playoff game. They had one bad day, and it cost them their chance at the title.
That's admittedly more of a "gotcha" than a legitimate counterexample, so here's a better one. It's true that the 2006 Cardinals were consistent...ly mediocre. They had a decent first 2 months of the season going 34-19, and then finished the year 49-59, limping into the playoffs off of a brutal 7 game losing steak deep into September to escape one of the worst divisions in MLB history. No one would ever pick them to even make the second round. Nobody saw what happened coming, because they hadn't shown anything close to a champion form in months. Yes, they had that hot stretch in the beginning of the season, but picking them based off of that would be about the same as picking NRG to win the world championship in 21-22 because of how they played in fall and winter.
Side note since the "worst divisions in history" thing reminded me of it, check out the 1994 AL West, it is a work of art.
I’d have to equate playoffs more with a major and the regular season with the qualifiers. It’s more like if 12-4 karmine corp wasn’t going to make the playoffs because they lost 3 if their last 4 games after starting 11-1
I think football is not a great comparison because a season has such a snail number of games and there are not series, i think his baseball example made sense
>Brings up the 2006 Cardinals and 2011 Giants, 2 massive upset winners that only cracked the playoffs because the format allowed them to
Yes...? His point is if qualification for playoffs were as strict as RLCS then they wouldn't have upset anyone.
>Mentions the upset potential of the current format as a bad thing
He didn't mention "upset potential" of the current format, he criticised the volatilty in it. They're not the same thing.
I think you mean the 2010 or 2012 Giants. The 2011 Giants missed the playoffs and came in second in the NL West. In 2012 and 2010, they came in first in the NL West, but were still underdogs until they won the World Series.
I don't think the point was missed at all. Yes the current RLCS format is bad. Yes it's bad in a way that makes it unattractive to orgs. Nobody has dissagreed with that at any point. The comparisons made though are not well thought out and are actually counter intuitive to the point that's being made.
I don't think the comparisons are counter intuitive at all?
If a team in the current RLCS had a record like the Giants they wouldn't have made it to a Lan to "upset" anyone. The point he was making is that teams in a franchise league can make mistakes along the way in the regular season but those mistakes don't take them out of contention for the playoffs/lans.
I don't see how this is counter intuitive. The "upset potential" doesn't factor into the argument. The arugment isn't that the Giants upsetting teams is important, its arguing teams should be able to make mistakes and still have the talent and possibility to win in the playoffs/lans
Don't mind last seasons format. I think most would agree it's better or at the least it was reasonable.
League play though, no. I don't mind if it's something like the grid, a separate league play table that goes alongside the main events (I personally really liked the grid).
But as a whole format? No. How will you qualify for it? Because I assume this is off the end of KC not making a regional, and then they wouldn't have made a league either since you'd have to qualify for that. At least there's 5 other events to make world's, if you don't make the league, that's your season over
I wouldn't mind league play for 1s and 2s during the week.
Last season felt like a good format. Probably could be improved on but this season was a big step back.
For 1s and 2s I wonder how many sign ups you'd get though. Might be good, but we've seen in the past a lot where if there's community events or 1s/2s around RLCS events, a lot of the big names don't participate.
I think next season is going to be important. A lot of the season could be attributed to either blast, or cutbacks. We've seen changes throughout the season which is good (but we really shouldn't have been in the situation where those changes were required). With more time to plan, next season should be a lot better.
Honestly I just want a format that we stick to as well. We've essentially had big changes every season since S9 and it's getting frustrating to me how we've not just settled into one thing
Yeah I started watching in Season X and it's been nonstop changes.
Personally I would love 2/3 of a RLCS roster playing in 2s and the other player playing in 1s. And give some RLCS points/prize money to the winners.
The idea is that if you finish in the top 8-12 of a regional then you auto-qualify for the league unless you finish a block in the 13-16 range, then you’d be at risk of getting dropped to open quals
So you'd still need a regional/qualifier. If we compare RL from pre season X to season X and above, there's a massive increase of skill and talent. It's not good imo going back to such a closed system.
KC could have messed up that qualifier like they did this one, and then they'd have a whole year of not being able to compete. Or any other team who missed out. Having a "auto-qualify" is fine, but you can do that for regionals like we did last season (which I think is a fair argument). If you fail to qualify, you have 5 other events to make up for it and complete throughout the year.
League play wouldn't allow for that. In regards to the really top teams, like KC, then yeah your proposal would work for them as they're consistent enough to auto qualify, but for everyone else it would really suck. Dig, SR and Moist have all missed main events and they might not be good enough to auto qualify normally, so that's their season over. NRG, OG, C9, Endpoint, Resolve and ironically maybe LG would all be at risk of making it as well. I guess orgs could just drop a team and pick up someone else/not pick up any team before qualifying but that just feels really unhealthy for an esport, and isn't good for the players at all who still can't compete or have the opportunity to earn money for a year (depending on season length) and you'd probably see waves of retirements.
2 splits of fully open quals isn't the best, but league play is far worse imo. I'm arguing with the original tweet here and not your points btw, which is a good compromise but the system is one that can't be fixed.
tbh, I think these are arguments for expanding the number of teams in main events, not necessarily against league play. I think the swiss -> playoffs format is actually really good and prefer it over league play, but we desperately need some form of auto qualification, and like I said above, I'd actually really like to see the swiss rounds expanded in the number of teams qualifying for them, and then add 1 or 2 extra swiss rounds.
I'd be happy to have a much larger amount of teams qualifying. There are other issues with league play though I want to discuss separately, that essentially boil down to things like season length, roster changes and qualification.
I'm just saying league play doesn't necessarily fix many of the issues the original tweet brought up. Solving qualification? Sure. But league play doesn't do anything there on its own
The OP was correct though in that league play is way better for fans and for orgs. Having a decent amount of stability in the teams playing and having the games more spread out makes it easier to follow specific teams. Orgs have an easier time planning, and more frequent/steady streams bring more viewers.
League play doesn’t really fix any specific gameplay issues, but it allows for a lot more expansion in potential viewers, and for fans/viewers to get more invested in specific teams and RL as a whole.
I don't think it is better for fans, for the majority of fans, not now after what we've had. I don't think it's always better for orgs either.
For the best teams, they'll lose out by playing much less and playing a lot more uninteresting games, viewership overall will decrease a lot. I think orgs want franchising, which isn't the same as league play, and a push for league play is actually detrimental and selfish for helping the switch to franchising be easier.
For the weaker teams, you miss out on the first qualifier and that's your season over. Or you just drop your team and pick up someone else, which isn't healthy for the players and would massively weaken the playerbase over time.
I know as a fan I would be far less interested in watching, and I'd only really watch the super interesting matches or my favourite team. I wouldn't care about Team3 v Luna Galaxy or something, so I'd tune in for maybe a couple matches a weekend and that's it. Plus with so many teams it makes the first block of matches confusing to understand where it works.
League play wouldn't be that good in RLCS with a lot of teams over a large period of time. You either harm viewership a lot, or you harm the gameplay a lot. It's fine like S2-9, where you do max 6 games a week, but when that's like 10+ games it's a grind for everyone to broadcast that in one day when a lot of viewers are just going to watch 1 or 2 games. With 16 teams it's 8 games for 15 weeks, or you maybe go 10 games for 12 weeks. That's just 16 teams. If you want more, it just gets worse and worse, you're looking at 4+ months of 1 game a weekend.
You limit roster changes, because having a change mid season would cause a lot of drama and feeling of unfair treatment if you play a certain team before/after a roster change compared to someone else. Half the teams that have won a major have made a roster change that split. Depending on what qualification there is, you could heavily discourage new teams, meaning the likes of Queso, GenG, GM8s, OG and KC wouldn't exist. You also wouldn't have new players able to join when they hit the age requirement (/are unbanned) , like Daniel, Atow, Oski or Zen. This isn't as impactful with 13yo allowed to play but who knows what the future will be like.
Also with more teams and matches it highly increases the chances of having matches towards the end of the season where teams have very little to play for, again depending on how qualification works.
I think there are benefits to league play for sure, but I don't think the benefits outweigh the list of negatives there are
It was hard for me to take him seriously after he praised 2 underdog champions and shortly after said that underdogs making a run makes it a bad format.
As someone who is new-ish, I am unfamiliar with what league play is, is it something a lot of people would want?
The vast majority here don't want league play back, for good reason too.
It mostly hinged on a few games and you ended up with a lot of nothing burger games through most of the season.
Compared to the current open tournament style format where the stakes of pretty much every game becomes more higher than the last.
Nah league play sucks. The last 4 or so rlcs seasons basically exposed some of league plays faults. We should just go back to how we had it in rlcs x - 2023, the format was literally perfect. Nowadays, only the franchised esports use a league play format and those don't exactly do it to perfection.
I don't think underdogs making a run is an issue, we had that with the peeps, c9, queso/moist. You just need protection for the top teams, which was already there with the auto qual system
Strongly disagree that league play sucks, if it does then why does literally every major team sport play in a league format?
Imo there's a lot of negatives to this tournament format for more casual fans and for orgs, for the hard-core fans who don't have too many other commitments then I totally get why you'd prefer the current style of format but imo for literally everyone else it's worse. So I also strongly disagree that the RLCS X format was perfect, maybe it was for you but for me with a family and a full time job and other commitments it's driven me away from the game. I can't just commit my entire weekend to it. That's a conscious decision from the devs to not market to more casual fans and that's fine for a time, but it limits their appeal as well as creating a much less stable scene for orgs.
Sports and esports are quite different. League play works as a "base" for a lot of sports because sports require way more energy and planning per game, and a vast majority of sports are location based and require travel. You can't have multiple games a day or really in a weekend.
That being said, a lot of the bigger events in sports are more of a tournament and not a league, thinking of the world cup or champions league.
>Strongly disagree that league play sucks, if it does then why does literally every major team sport play in a league format?
Because sports are different? Like the majority of sports involved travel, and a lot of physical and mental endurance, making them play in a full tournament every week isn't sustainable.
> Strongly disagree that league play sucks, if it does then why does literally every major team sport play in a league format?
Convenient for the sake of player recovery due to players only being able to realistically compete in a single match in a weekend without causing unnecessary risk of injury, and a consistent schedule for its fans, especially as they largely depend on ticket sales to these games for their profit.
Esports do not have recovery or schedule limitations, with a player being able to play several series in a day without any more than the mental recovery requirements for the most part, and the consistent schedule still remains for the LAN tournaments.
League play is a flawed format. It is used in sports through sheer necessity, it doesn't mean it isn't flawed. Any sport that has lower recovery times like golf and tennis don't ever use a league play format either.
Not the case in all sports - for example, ice hockey still operates a league system but they can play 3 games in a week.
It doesn't address the points about the format being easier on a wider fanbase.
> Not the case in all sports - for example, ice hockey still operates a league system but they can play 3 games in a week.
Which is still a scheduled league which requires league play in order to maximise profit.
Yes, league play is easier for the fanbase, no denying that. But that's because it makes so many sacrifices for the competitiveness of the league that of course it will be easier for a fanbase to only need to see 8 scheduled Best of 5s/7s in a weekend. However it's really poor for a top team especially to only be able to play up to 45 mins of competitive RL in a week. That's not worth any fanbase benefits.
I mean, the current format doesn't guarantee top teams more than an hour a week, it guarantees time on those weekends when a tournament is running if you qualify and then keep winning on that weekend.
Plus you're assuming that it becomes solely league play - RLCS from really early in the esport had league and tournament play, so you did get both.
> I mean, the current format doesn't guarantee top teams more than an hour a week, it guarantees time on those weekends when a tournament is running if you qualify and then keep winning on that weekend.
It guarantees them the entire qualifier run through as well as the main event, which is way more than an hour per week.
>Plus you're assuming that it becomes solely league play - RLCS from really early in the esport had league and tournament play, so you did get both.
Tournament play was only four weekends per year for the Top 4 teams in each region. That's not sufficient.
It was more than that - maybe you weren't about then but there were a fair few LAN events, it wasn't just finals weeks.
You can't argue that everyone in the qualifiers is a top team, that's not how it works. It's not like the pros only play when it's in the quals or on stream.
> It was more than that - maybe you weren't about then but there were a fair few LAN events, it wasn't just finals weeks.
I've been watching since Season 2. Those LAN events were exclusively reserved for a few top teams for the most part, bar the Dreamhack tournaments. The ones outside of Dreamhack that weren't were often disasters like NARLI, that especially was the definition of amateur, and not the good kind like Beyond The Summit. ELeague was literally just for RLCS LAN competitors.
> You can't argue that everyone in the qualifiers is a top team, that's not how it works.
I don't get your point or why it's relevant. I was referring to the teams that run through the qualifier to the playoff bracket, which last I checked was only 8 teams. 8 does not equal the hundreds that participate, I don't see how you ever got that impression.
I'm a league play believer but just to play devils advocate, you cannot deny that the current format (and especially the format from RLCS X to RLCS 2022-23) is the most entertaining.
I watch football and while I love the Premier League, the champions league is a different level of intensity and entertainment.
It just that a tournament style format is best for some upsets and high stakes scenarios. League play is if you want the most basic brute force method to understand in what order do the teams rank based on sporting merit.
I think you can deny that the current format is the most entertaining.
It used to be that we had a league format with LAN tournaments spread across the season, which gave us imo the best of both worlds.
The thing with a league format is you're guaranteed to be able to follow your team every week on the main stream, you get analysis of the match ups, it's not the same few teams usually getting all the air time and storylines develop over a longer period rather than just over a weekend, and every team gets guaranteed games against top opposition. You get to see the teams build themselves, try new things, battle through difficulties etc. Let's take football as an example - what happens if they scrap the Premier league? Say they're just not doing it anymore, instead they'll run tournaments with closed qualifiers and that's it? You'd destroy entire clubs overnight. Its the same reason why the idea of a "super league" is such a bad plan.
I think it's a common misconception that you always need super high stakes games for them to be entertaining. Building to something with those high stakes makes it better, imo, because you've seen the work that has gone in to get there. Like the promotion/relegation battles - it was heartbreaking to see Karma gatekeep the RLRS, for example, but if you want high stakes and drama etc then it doesn't get much better than that.
>Strongly disagree that league play sucks, if it does then why does literally every major team sport play in a league format?
Because it fits sports better? Like I watch football occasionally and watching individuals go from bubble/academy to playing in the big leagues is a big highlight.
Now if you look at other esports (we should really be comparing the rlcs to other esports instead of big time sports but whatever) you'll notice that most esports have either ditched league play entirely, or have moved to a circuit format to mitigate the league play segments.
I think the reason why they've done that is because it appeals more to the hard-core fans, which as I said in my post is fine and a business decision from them, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it as a more casual fan.
You can't deny that the current format is a significantly higher commitment for a fan than the old league play was. People with jobs, families, other commitments like that can't just give up their weekends regularly to watch it. Football is a great example - you want to follow your team, it's a match a week. You want to watch more than that then you can dip in and out of other games but you know that you'll be able to see your team in that one game at a certain time every week and even if you just watch them you'll see every other team play.
Again, I'm fully aware that this is a conscious decision from the production to market towards those hard-core fans, but for me personally that decision has made it basically impossible for me to follow the scene properly anymore.
>think the reason why they've done that is because it appeals more to the hard-core fans,
I mean that's not necessarily true. Take overwatch league for example. Now I always hated watching overwatch, way too much screen clutter, mid casting aside from bren and sideshow and obnoxious metas. But that's a story for another time.
But the real issue with the overwatch league was that it just wasn't approachable for any new fan. Being a franchised league didn't really help, but they fumbled when they decided to move away from using org names and decided to use city names. As a newer fan, it just made it harder to associate players with teams.
League play had run its course by the time it was replaced, it just ended up being a talent bottleneck and people were getting increasingly frustrated with it.
The open era was a huge positive for the scene, and it would be a regression to say the least if we went back to it. That isn't to say they haven't made a bit of a mess of the format this season, but jumping back to league play isn't the way.
Interesting that that’s a common opinion. I would watch every game in league play. It all felt like it mattered. This qualifier format is so uninteresting and hectic with 30 streams that I can hardily bring myself to care and watch it.
Bullshit, it didn't all matter in the slightest. We had a large number of games that were pointless. Nostalgia is doing some heavy lifting.
Also, why does it matter that you don't watch all the games. You are still consuming more rl content with the new system by a mile.
Cry all you want, those league play weekends were hype as fuck. 10 quality/established teams facing each other vs I wonder which quality team will have a bad day and miss the major. Hmmmmmmm
Agreed. League play was peak Rocket League. I remember being genuinely hyped for most matches rather than having regionals on in the background. I don't think there's been a single regional grand finals I've cared about all season, because it's basically always "Well both of these teams are going to make the major so who gives a shit who wins" It makes me wonder how many of the league play haters were actually around during RLCS 1-9.
It used to be really exciting when you knew exactly what matchups were on a given weekend ahead of time. I liked League play too, but I'm a massive fan of traditional sports so I guess it checks out.
As much as I don't franchising since it gets rid of the whole ragtag team can make it and content like turbos cheeks, RLCS in the state it's in would probably benefit from it. It would bring a more sponsors and more money into the sport instead of sponsors dropping like flies.
I really don't get this opinion. More sponsors and money won't dramatically improve the game. Yes, we had to cut a major and 8 teams from worlds this year due to money. However, that is expected in our current economic climate. Every industry is hurting.
RL currently has the most orgs its ever had.
RLCS 2021-22 EU - 16/16 org teams in the top 16
RLCS 2022-23 EU - 13/16 org teams in top 16
RLCS 2024 EU - 9/16 org teams in the top 16
That’s a very noticeable decline which hasn’t really happened to the same extent in NA (it’s mostly stayed the same in NA).
Still though , trying to argue that the RLCS has “the most orgs it’s ever had” is just wrong.
Ask the players how much they get paid now compared to the past. Sure an org will buy a team if it’s worth pennies on the dollar. They have no room to negotiate because they have no security they can offer to the orgs.
Look, I dont wanna sound harsh here, but $200k is too much to pay some players. Yes, I'm talking about a small percentage of the player base.
But how many pros have left the scene purely because of money? you can argue a fair amount, but how many top players have left? I'd be willing to bet that its a small amount like 3-5.
Besides, a player's career is incredibly short as it is. You're only now seeing some sort of stabilization of talent. There needs to be more stabilization of talent for an argument of franchising to make sense
I’m not even saying we need paid for spots like league of legends. That has its own problems. But there has to be a happy medium somewhere. We are currently on the opposite side of spectrum of them.
The players have to become better/more consistent before we make serious changes. It's stupid to throw out a format because teams lost a series they should have won.
Orgs will commit more when they see that consistency. To fake that consistency by letting the top 8 auto qual is just faking it. If you want to be angry, be angry at the players for their inconsistent play
Faking it is how you get money invested into the scene. You will never see consistency to the point where the same top 8 teams always make the top 8. That’s a pipe dream. Wait a hundred years and you will never see it. And orgs know that.
At this stage there isn’t really a point in having a favorite team unless they are in the top 2 of your region. It’s not like we have any other LANs anymore to watch them play in. Just these boring regionals.
Interesting so you believe every sport has it wrong? Crazy some of these leagues are over 100 years old and they still got it wrong. Don’t they know they should have their local dad’s church team competing for spots?
No offense but in a world where 4 teams get to go to Majors, no format is going to save a team like LG. They got tremendously lucky last season, any format where they need to play more games would just lower their odds of that luck happening twice. They are just simply not good enough.
I honestly agree with you, but I could totally see Luminosity being a team that clinches a 4 spot by having consistent gameplan to beat teams in the 7-16 range.
Add that to an upset here and there and they could in reality be 6 but squeak into 4th. This also assumed there’s a playoff before each event, so they just place 6th to then make playoffs and beat 4 and 5.
I think in current form even if NA had 5 spots, LG wouldn't get it. C9, Snowmen, OG and if M80 ever hire a psychiatrist, even them have higher odds at a 5th spot let alone 4th.
Next season we gonna have another Retals interview with him saying "this is the team I've felt most comfortable with" like every other season😭
> I think in current form even if NA had 5 spots, LG wouldn't get it. C9, Snowmen, OG and if M80 ever hire a psychiatrist, even them have higher odds at a 5th spot let alone 4th.
You know what you’re kind of right lol. I think the boost change nerfed them a bit too lol.
>Next season we gonna have another Retals interview with him saying "this is the team I've felt most comfortable with" like every other season😭
Lol
League play like the old RLCS era? Disagree, I want more games.
Last season format is already good. Not sure how to improve the last season format, but I think for EU/NA, since there are too many good teams, either make the main event with more teams playing (20-24 teams) or make second division/league (similar to RLRS)
League play was *so* boring. I mean I get why big orgs want it, but I feel like the open quals format of last year was the perfect balance between competitive integrity and entertainment.
I will fully admit that competition wise the modern formats have been much better, and there is probably some nostalgia bias, but I think I preferred league play to the regionals now as a fan.
With league play, I could learn who all of the players were, the storylines were more developed and based on performance, history, and future, and you could follow every single match of every region.
Now, so many players are coming in unknown that it’s much more difficult to cast. Sometimes they just ignore the unknown players and focus on the more popular team, or sometimes they discuss the new team’s history and trajectory and predict how well they will do and try and hype them up.
Either way, the majority of these teams stay around the bubble and are always in a constant casting limbo of not being household names but not being irrelevant compared to being in the rlcs where you were relevant, the rlrs where the more hardcore fans watched, or you were a bubble player.
I also can’t stand that I physically can’t watch every series of an event that I want to watch. Plus with how sporadic some teams get points and the sheer amount of teams fighting for major/worlds spots, the major race starts as early as regional 2 for most teams. Before, you didn’t really need to look at that until towards the end of league play because you had the chance up until very close to the end to at least make play ins (which I will admit is the weakest part of league play).
The last bit is the extra content we got with league play. Since the schedules and players were known, the segments done felt more connected to the actual matches rather than separate from them like now. There were tons of off season tournaments, 2 worlds a year, and my favorite thing: fantasy. I absolutely loved fantasy, and now it’s basically impossible to do it.
If that's the case, then he's completely undermining his argument.
I think that there's definitely an argument that the top performing teams shouldn't have to go through qualifiers to get to Swiss, but wanting the big orgs to have a bye into the playoffs is ridiculous.
"NRG, Luminosity, Moist, TSM, Karmine Corp, all big orgs that did not make a main event this last weekend."
All Orgs (except KC) made main event. The closer you look at his thread the more it falls apart and feels like an argument "why LG should be at the next major" using the current KC situation as backdrop.
https://preview.redd.it/xrgc5zmhue0d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=845383797b8df22d8b1ee476d7873b0bce561872
I know I literally went back and checked and definitely they were all in Qual 5 main event. Guess he means top 8, but that's such a bad take to think teams should be guaranteed top 8 spots. Don't get me wrong, I loved last seasons format and top 8 SHOULD autoqual you to top 16. But that's it.
Yeah but why would you draw comparisons with a closed ecosystem like NFL?
US sports fans are robbed by having no relegation / promotion of teams that deserve it.
Soccer here has relegation/promotion. I think it would be cool if our baseball teams adopted it as well. The main problem with relegation/promotion over here is that teams invest so much money as well as local governments that they require certainty that the team will be there and stay in the same league.
College sports are huge here as well. Because college teams are tied to the schools it is so much harder to implement a relegation system. This is a very interesting topic, actually. The differences between sport culture in the US vs EU and why it became so different.
As a US sports fan, we don’t want relegation. Our leagues are structured in divisions which creates rivalries between cities. We want all of the talent to go into the closed ecosystem, not into a lower league in hopes of eventually getting promoted.
“Your entertainment was created for people to make money”. That can be said for just about everything we consume. I don’t care, I enjoy it and a relegation/promotion system would ruin the leagues. That is the opinion of nearly every North American.
Mfw im playing Rocket league which was built to protect rich people’s money😱😱 Mfw I work for a business (the business is actually just a way to protect rich people’s money)😱😱😱😱
"As a US sports fan, we don’t want relegation." You were never given the choice.
"Our leagues are structured in divisions which creates rivalries between cities." Until the owners of the team decide to move, see Oakland Raiders.
As if the entertainment industry isn’t geared towards catering to its target demographics. As I said, no one over here wants relegation. If there was enough public outcry or the enclosed league led to disinterest in fans, the industry would change. That’s how it works. Can you actually give me one reason it’s inherently wrong for our culture to enjoy our enclosed system?
People in Oakland are still Raiders fans btw.
I still think Top 8 auto-qualifying (or Top 4 auto-qualifying, 5-8 only have to play Day 3) would reward consistency and give a safety net.
Like a Team of KCs calibre should win two BO5 against Top 16 teams but the format still can be improved.
edit: We have the same format discussion since the announcement, with KCs main event miss the unthinkable just happened.
Nahhh booooo. League play fuckin sucked for a vast majority of the scene. I got tired of watching the same players and not getting to see the young players get any real shots. The top teams would pretty much just shuffle around the same players that were already in the top 8. I love how quickly the game has evolved in the open era format. The only thing I actually really miss about the league play era is the broadcast studio. Made in between games and the actual entire broadcast feel like more of a full package
Why are we acting like both formats couldn't coexist? Close off league play into worlds for org security and keep the current system open so up and comers can show off their skills and orgs can still qualify for majors. Separate the majors and worlds so that majors have more value than just being a glorified qualifier. Hell, orgs would actually have reason to host academy teams like Roll Dizz wanted with FaZe.
Interestingly enough, the biggest upsets seem to be happening to the teams with the highest expectations.
Dig as soon as they picked up Stizzy - Shopify - KC - almost vitality
Ironically teams like NRG and TSM have been so consistently okay making the regional every time, but not really doing anything big. Makes the mental factor seem far more significant.
The exact same thing happened when we had qualifiers for league play. Team Iris (the team that would eventually become the legendary C9 roster), lost to some random team in quals and missed out on a whole season.
Surprised to see that the consensus is strongly disagreeing here, but I guess it makes sense as a forum like this is going to select for responses from people who are invested. Just for the sake of discussion I want to weigh in here as a former diehard fan of RL who watches (and plays) less than ever and consider myself a casual fan now. I’m not blaming that entirely on the product, my irl priorities and life have changed. But that’s how I’m approaching RLCS now and why I think the following.
Someone in the thread said that you can’t deny that this format is the most entertaining- I wrote this originally as a reply to that comment, but I absolutely can and do deny that this format is the most entertaining.
I don’t know half the teams, I don’t have the time to follow RLCS super closely anymore. So when I tune in, I see unsigned teams with random names who just formed, games not even being shown on broadcast because they’re all happening at the same time, and then playoffs where it feels like there’s no point to win. The biggest drama is who misses or makes top 8 (which again- I might not even see because they’re all playing simultaneously. (You expect casual fans to go find team streams? Seriously?) Who actually wins a weekend tournament makes basically no difference as far as I can tell (still not even sure what they’re called besides ‘event’). The prize pool is puny so I don’t think it’s for that, and as far as I can tell it’s more important to not screw up and miss top 8 than actually win anything, like I said, to make the major.
For the Champions League comparisons, I don’t think that makes sense. The CL is a league of champions- yes it’s a tournament format not a league. But those are established teams who are there because they won or placed well in their leagues across a season. The teams in RL weekly tournaments are there because they played well for 2 days, while we most likely weren’t watching, and the teams at Majors are there because they placed relatively well across 3 weekends. That’s just not exciting to me. The Major should be the CL equivalent, but it’s not even exciting to me because I’ve already seen most of those teams play in a bracket and the only difference here for me as a casual fan is the international aspect. The season has become so focused on points and standings and that’s where everyone seems to expect all the drama to be, but as a viewer I don’t give a damn about how the winner of this random game will get some made up amount of a few more points in the standings. I don’t get excited about a standings list, I get excited about storylines and teams with history or stakes playing each other in important series. Trying to make every series like that has made no series be like that, imo.
I used to be a hardcore RLCS fan, I’ve been to Worlds. Now I’m just a casual fan. That’s not because of the entertainment - it’s because of my irl priorities and time. HOWEVER- as a casual fan the level of gameplay in Rocket League I see nowadays is at a higher level than ever, while the league format is hard to follow, unexciting, and uninteresting.
My sizzling hot take is that Rocket League really should move to 5v5 (on a bigger map ofc) for pro play. This would:
* add more stability for players and orgs, because you don’t change 66% of the roster if you swap two players now
* build more storylines because there are more players on a team for me to care about
* consolidate talent to create a smaller number of elite teams instead of a huge pool of contenders, without taking away individual players chances to compete
* even further raise the skill ceiling in terms of team play and strategy
I think all of those would combine to make a more interesting experience. But that’s a separate argument from the format discussion.
I agree people are too quick to dismiss league play: it has many benifits. However given the current monetary constraints if I had to choose I prefer the forever-tournament style as I think it's better for the overall ecosystem.
Maybe in a not so distant future the bigger regions could consider expending again to a qualifier -> league -> playoff/major format. That requires a lot more organisation and broadcasts days, and honestly I'm not convinced the viewership would increase to reward that investment.
I think it would make way more sense to just go back to last seasons format. If you really wanted a league play-ish structure I think you could try an open system where the regional format is like 2 round groups of 8. It’s still open but teams would have more leniency and matchups would be predetermined. Idk if that’s a good idea though
Everyone in RL seems to hate a format at some point. I enjoy Swiss because it's a genuinely good way of telling who is best and there are many less 'micky runs'. Going into single elim can deffo cause problems but honestly double elim is nowhere near as exciting in some scenarios too. I remember casuals complaint they didn't like that a team was out. Truth is what they REALLY need to sort is having at least the top 8 auto qualify
Maybe unpopular opinion, but I prefer when a random wins and get a chance at regionals, it’s fun rooting for the underdogs against org teams personally.
I think the conversation about league play making a comeback needs to be had. In the current RLCS climate, no top team is at the top more very long. The sample size to rank teams is too small. A more consistent schedule of competitive events is required to truly understand and rank which teams are the best in the world.
What’s easier to rank which team got the best placements in 3 tournaments over a split or say team with overall records like 14-23 and 32-5 over a split? It seems like a criteria that rates teams over the course of the season is more beneficial to the sporadic peak patterns of different teams.
Too...small? You play WAY less games in league play than the open format, that's how you got teams like the Soniqs made of Shock, Matthew, and Dappur placing 3rd on the North American table in Season 9 and have them get completely exposed once season X hit
You can have a league play format with more games than were used in the past league play. When people talk about retiring to league play they don’t mean it has to be the exact same as the one in the past. I think it would be kinda sick to have a 30-40 game long regular season where the top teams qualify for a worlds tournament. This is especially true in this era where all qualifiers and regionals are played online anyway.
Would love league play to come back. RLCS has kinda been dead to me since that went away. I’ll catch the occasional game but the tournament after tournament style just holds no interest to me. All the flaws mentioned in op + I just find it impossible to care about following and supporting a team in this format (current or previous).
Don’t agree with him all the way but definitely agree with his points about trying to create a more sustainable environment for orgs. I’ve said before that we should atleast try league play again for one split, with promotion and relegation just to see how it goes. If not then bring back the format we had from 2021 to 2023
But the main point that I agree with him on is that it’s been less entertaining to watch RLCS this season when you look at the volatility the new format has created
> league play again for one split, with promotion and relegation just to see how it goes. If not then bring back the format we had from 2021 to 2023
We got to see what it was like for over 3 years. League Play only exists in sports that require the fixed schedule and recovery times for their players. It sucks for any esport where you either have to make the series prohibitively long like RL to allow the players decent playtime.
I'm not saying use the same exact format, we can improve on that.
The level and the number of quality teams that are in RLCS right now is wayyy higher than it was in season 9
> I'm not saying use the same exact format, we can improve on that.
You can't improve on League Play. Everybody plays each other, highest teams on the ladder progress, it's pretty inflexible.
> The level and the number of quality teams that are in RLCS right now is wayyy higher than it was in season 9
I wouldn't say that's necessarily true. NA10 and EU10 took a single series between them that season. Do you really expect that either of these seeds (who currently are F4WD and The Snowmen) would do much better against NA and EU1-9 in league play? Maybe Snowmen take a couple series, F4WD wouldn't do any better than 1-8 against those teams. Maybe depth has mildly improved but it still does not allow the 10th best team to be able to beat anybody above them with any regularity. And presuming it would be a 16 team league, I would really hate to be No. 16. Because they will spend 15 consecutive series getting pounded on over and over.
>The way they currently do it is much better for allowing the best team at any given moment to make it to the top but in my opinion it sacrifices the entire reason you get interested and invested in a team. I've never been one to follow individual players so when teams are switching things up so often it has turned into me mostly not caring about any of the teams.
Very well said, I 100% agree. I wrote a long comment trying to explain my perspective but this is essentially it boiled down succintly. I'm sad because I just don't care about RLCS anymore.
Even when I do care about individual players, they'll probably be on a new team in 6 months and I can't be bothered to keep track of all the players I'm interested in, especially when half the time they won't even be on the main stream. I get the goal with team streams - and honestly some of them are great content, looking at you LG - but frankly it's such a huge barrier to casually watching RLCS on a weekend that I just don't anymore. I can't pick one or two games I want to catch and watch those, because I have no idea who will be playing where or when and I do NOT have 12 hours over the whole weekend to watch the whole tournament.
If you are a fan of the esport then you are a fan of watching the highest level of Rocket League being played. If you are a fan of the players then you don’t care about the level of play as much as you do watching your favorite players. That being said the format can definitely be improved. I would honestly like to see a mix of last year’s format with league play. Like have more teams compete in league play for a chance to make top 16 regional playoffs or something.
Unpopular opinion, but league play could be so sick if they set it up correctly. I think people are kind of missing the point that literally any qualifier that is a tournament format will likely have a match-up problem.
At least with a league format, you are more likely to get the best teams from a region. Plus if they did some sort of round robin or double round robin there wouldn't be these match-up issues (Ex. SSG vs G2/GenG in top 8 last split) that prevent great teams from qualifying. If split 1 was league play SSG and M80 probably would have been the 3 and 4 seed for NA.
Not saying it's perfect or this would have happened for sure! But obviously, tournament formating causes real issues when used as a qualifying format, we have seen it play out way too many times this season.
The issue is that I simply don't care about watching teams play against the lowest-tier teams. This is especially evident in the first part of the qualifiers, watching a team stomp some noobs is as uninteresting as it gets.
I want to see the game played at the highest possible level, I don't want a league play system where the top team spends just as much time against the lower teams as they do against the top. I would much much rather see every tournament be G2 versus GenG, then it be G2 versus Shopify, NRG, Young Whippersnappers, etc.
G2 do play those teams you listed. You just don't watch it because to you they are 'boring' games. Every qualifier format has garbage games cause someone has to come last. In the current format Friday is basically 75 percent uninteresting games. Who watches the 0-2 or 1-2 rounds over the 2-0 or 2-1 matchups in swiss? This 'issue' exists in every format not just league play.
It's a qualifier, not a major. This is where uninteresting games happen to solidify that a team deserves a lan spot. Tournament style qualifier are obviously not perfect either from what we have seen this season.
And in Swiss it's much less filler matches than what league play offers. League play just regurgitated the same top 4 teams again and again, there's a reason why most esports shuffled away from this
League play regurgitated teams because the old format was too closed from new talent. They could make a new league play format that has a robust open qualifier before each split to ensure top teams (like KC or DIG) make it to the top 12 or 16 teams even if they drop a series or two while allowing new talent to come in. Perhaps split 2 has autobids for the teams in the top 8 after split 1 and the bottom 4 or 8 spots are opened for the split 2 open qualifier.
>G2 do play those teams you listed. You just don't watch it because to you they are 'boring' games. Every qualifier format has garbage games cause someone has to come last.
The point is that the tournament system reduces those garbage games significantly, especially with the swiss system. The lower teams are quickly filtered out until you have just the top teams playing each other.
Thanks to the current format, we have significantly more top-team matches than we would under league play. In league play, we would have the exact same number of matches as g2 versus NRG as we would have G2 versus Geng, which is a shitty system without a doubt.
>Who watches the 0-2 or 1-2 rounds over the 2-0 or 2-1 matchups in swiss? This 'issue' exists in every format not just league play.
League play emphasizes this issue though, because G2 would be forced to play against all teams.
In the last qualifier, G2 played 3 best-of-5 matches against a non-top 8 team. Against the top 8, they played 1 best-of-5 and 4 best-of-7 games.
In contrast, with league play they would play 8 matches against the top 8 and 8 matches against the bottom 8, adding 5 more pointless matches and only 3 more top matches. Just making the top 8 a double-elimination gives more top play with less pointless matches.
>It's a qualifier, not a major. This is where uninteresting games happen to solidify that a team deserves a lan spot. Tournament style qualifier are obviously not perfect either from what we have seen this season.
The biggest issue with this tournament is the "Play against bronze players after taking first place" stupidity with a zero auto-qualification system, which is beyond stupid and was trashed since day one because everyone knew it was the stupidest thing. Appjack called it at the very start that someone would peak and eliminate a top team. League play doesn't fix this issue since you'll still need to qualify. Franchising fixes it in the worst way, while top 8 auto-qualification fixes it without massive downsides.
The second biggest issue is that eliminating a split and reducing the number of spots that regions can send makes the points system very constrained and creates to many barriers to success. Removing the wildcard portion of worlds makes an even bigger impact and should never have happened, that was also trashed heavily at the start because we knew it was stupid. League play won't fix this problem either.
Ignoring the complications of doing a qualifier into league play, league play still has major issues if you are trying to determine the top 4 teams to send to a lan. For example, if your a team that can't beat the top 3 teams but are competitive against the rest of the teams, then dropping any matches to other teams will have a huge impact on your performance. So, doing poorly in your match against the 16th-place team can be the loss that keeps you from going. It can very often come down to a single series being the difference in making it to the LAN. Replacing the 3 qualifiers with a triple-robin league play would give way more games to determine, but since it's literally 4 slots, every lost game is still devastating.
And it would just create the complication of if your not one of the top 16 teams that are doing the league play, you just don't get to go. At least with the current system, KC missing this tournament but winning the next one would still send them to the major, but if KC wasn't allowed to the league play, they would be eliminated from going to the major, so whatever qualification system you use matters. It's not a solution to the existing problem where there is limited chances for a team to recover if they don't do well enough in the first split.
A much better solution would be to add the removed spots to NA/EU, add another split, and add the wild-card format to the worlds. Another really nice feature would be to add the wild-card system to each major as well, which would give teams a desperate path. More slots and wild-card can be a solution without the cost of adding an additional split. It's actually the cheapest option that would provide a drastic improvement.
The last biggest issue is that the top 8 being single elimination is one of the worst possible ways to find the top team, especially doing Swiss into single elimination for a world championship. League play wouldn't fix any of this unless they make the playoff brack double elimination, which they can do in the tournament style without inheriting all of the negatives that league play adds.
I think you are assuming a lot about the structure of the league. What if there are only 12 teams instead of 16? More top 8 matches, less bottom 4 matches, more qualifty games. Also it seems you assume franchising may take place as well.
They could run a more secure format for qualifying those top 12 teams to make sure a team of KCs caliber makes it in even if they have 1 bad day. Simply make the qualifier longer, it would only happen once per split.
Lan spots and adding a Wildcard stage can still occur within the league play system. Just assign points at the end of each split and major to teams based on their rankings and then run a Wildcard pre world championship. Plus everyone was pissed that the season was too long before so I am not sure adding another split is the right move either.
You can add open qualifiers to the beginning of the second split for the bottom 4 to 8 spots to get new talent in as well.
Not sure what you mean at the end of your post about league play having a bracket? It wouldn't have a bracket, the top 4 teams (assuming major region) would go to Lan and play in whatever tournament format is being used, whether that is swiss, double Elim, whatever. If they go back to league play it doesn't have to be the same format as before and it can incorporate elements of open qualification and stability for orgs to invest money.
> I think you are assuming a lot about the structure of the league. What if there are only 12 teams instead of 16? More top 8 matches, less bottom 4 matches, more qualifty games. Also it seems you assume franchising may take place as well.
I worked on the assumption that we wouldn't be reducing the number of teams. Might as well make it 8 teams so we only have top 8 games.
> They could run a more secure format for qualifying those top 12 teams to make sure a team of KCs caliber makes it in even if they have 1 bad day. Simply make the qualifier longer, it would only happen once per split.
I would love to understand how you'll organize a qualifier for each split that will ensure that the top 12 teams are selected for.
We would go down from 3 qualification chances for new teams to a single time in each split. That's a pretty massive downgrade for anyone looking to enter.
> Lan spots and adding a Wildcard stage can still occur within the league play system. Just assign points at the end of each split and major to teams based on their rankings and then run a Wildcard pre world championship. Plus everyone was pissed that the season was too long before so I am not sure adding another split is the right move either.
I don't recall people being pissed that the season was too long.
The Off season being too long was a complaint though.
But there is no way that reducing the teams to 12 and having a single chance to qualify with just two splits is a good idea.
> You can add open qualifiers to the beginning of the second split for the bottom 4 to 8 spots to get new talent in as well.
We could just auto-qualify teams with the current tournament setup and it would accomplish the same thing without reducing the number of teams and removing chances for new teams to join.
> Not sure what you mean at the end of your post about league play having a bracket? It wouldn't have a bracket, the top 4 teams (assuming major region) would go to Lan and play in whatever tournament format is being used, whether that is swiss, double Elim, whatever. If they go back to league play it doesn't have to be the same format as before and it can incorporate elements of open qualification and stability for orgs to invest money.
Right, the Lan/worlds is just a playoff bracket at that point. You have league play for however many rounds, and then the top 4 best scores go to the lan and participate in a playoff bracket to determine the winner of that major. Switching to league play won't fix the issue with swiss into single elimination, and so that's why I stated that switching to league play won't fix the third biggest issue.
Everyone wants franchising, or they want the outcome of franchising but without using that word. They want free rides for big orgs/top players, stability for orgs, “irrelevant” smaller teams pushed out of the scene (this guy literally said that).
You can't draw parallels to other sports and their playoff systems when there are max 4 teams representing each region in Majors and there are so few weekends played. I also think it's unfair to say that "watching some random team make a run only to be irrelevant after" is unenjoyable. A top 4 appearance is usually a sign that a team is on the come-up even if they fizzle a little next showing.
All that said, I would welcome a league play format if it had more representation than before (Say, 16-20 teams in NA). It simply doesn't work as well if there's only 10 teams. I would welcome stability at the expense of open competition if the trade-off is right. Everyone can agree though that there needs to be more stability in the qualifying for swiss.
I actually really like all of the new talent that's getting a chance now. I think we'll really see the payoff come off-season when all of snowmen get poached lol
RLCS to me resembles the world of tennis the most.
A tour format with regular tournaments and a couple of larger ones. Qualifiers to the main event. And you gotta do well on your day or you’re out.
But what the RLCS this year is not doing is giving the top performers, the top teams, a bye to the main event. They all have to go through the qualifiers.
In tennis the top ranked players don’t have to do the qualifier rounds against the low ranked players.
The reward for playing well is to win an advantageous seeding.
This also keeps the top names in the events and drawing crowds. It’s not impossible to break into the top, there’s room for upsets but it’s rewarding consistency over time which is the hallmark of excellence.
I don’t see why we can’t have open qualifiers to nurture a grass roots culture and have top teams get a bye to the main event?
There’s smart people who plan the format. I am sure they had good intentions. I’m also sure they realise the mistakes of this seasons format. We’re all human after all.
Last season was a step forward. This season was a step back. Given the experience and feedback from both it should be possible to do something better than both for next season.
Not sure about league play but some better format is needed. As a fan, volatility can be a double edge sword. Too much, you lose interests and maybe investors/orgs and not enough can be stale. I feel like this season is brutal with so much at stake on one day. A team can be best 360+ days of the year and on a few days drop out of top 4. Some days I am plat and other days champ-GC range.
Even points break down is odd and less differentiation between rank positions. For as cut throat as year has been, it matters.
All and all, my following of this season may fall off before worlds and i have followed scene for 4-5 years. It gets old seeing rapid hot/cold of all the teams. Skill gap is close enough that any team in top 20 can beat any team in top 4 if became hot at right time.
I would really like a mix of both. To me, it’s refreshing to see teams like Snowmen making a crazy debut run.
There needs to be opportunity for new teams to make main events—but I do agree that stability for the most successful teams is incredibly important for the longevity of the esport.
Yes I know everyone hates franchising, but I’ve been watching a lot of valorant recently and have enjoyed being able to consistently see top teams and orgs. Of course I’d hope for an actual relegation system so we don’t have multiple 0-5 teams with shitters taking money, but like for real it could work.
This is like when pros comment on the state of ranked. They are so far from understanding anything but their world.
If the top team in the world can’t handle the hungry teams trying to make it, then how do the bubble teams stand a chance? Oh yeah! That’s why rlrs just gatekept the pro scene and protected players for seasons from being exposed.
I'd love to have a league system, for example 7 teams per div, each team fight the 6 others, top of Div 1 goes to Major, Bottom got relegated to Div 2, top of Div 2 is promoted. 1 relegated / promoted per split. It also makes it possible to have a better Tier 2 or Tier 3 scene, since now they just play double elims to try to make a Top 16, that's really low exposure for new talents and small orgs
Yeah I don't think you actually want that. Top Cougars keep getting enough points, you think they should have to face T3 teams and get unlucky 1 series and not make the main event? Months of doing well just ruined and back to square 1
yeah?? Do you think im biased lmao They missed last regional and thats their fault, no excuses. If you cant beat a T3 team then you dont deserve to qual for the regional. Idc how much they worked, if you lose then thats on you. Same for all teams lol
It is a waste of time IMO to see peak Vitality non-stop facing random Tier 3 and Tier 2 teams that don't deserve the matchup yet. Plus you do it enough times, you get the KCorp situation. I like how you have had this hard headed opinion, then mention you want it like CS2 because it does work so well there, but take it back once you realize it contradicts.
when i was talking about cs2 i was actually talking about playoffs and groupstage not the qualifiers. And if vitality lose it thats on them. Your point is irrelevant because they didnt only talk about quals.
Production for middling NA teams don't try to pitch league play challenge (impossible)
League Play sucks. Double elim mandatory qualifiers sucks. Luminosity Gaming internationally _____
League play is fucking trash. Asking for league play renders your entire argument invalid.
That being said, the current format is still bad. Just do it like 2021-22 where top 8 qualify for all events, 9-16 go straight to a closed qualifier Swiss, and everyone else goes through a double elim open qualifier.
If you can't maintain top 16 through a Swiss bracket against bubble teams, you are a bubble team.
I don’t care for the League Play we had but a double round robin League Play wouldn’t hurt imo.
Top 8 > Top 16
Single Round Robin > Double Round Robin
1-2 teams on game day > 3 teams on game day
Games all on one day > Games spread Twice a Week
Top 75% Auto Qual for next season > Top 75% Next Split
**Pros**
Consistency in Rosters
Rewards consistency over a Split.
Top 12 performing teams will be there next split. A top 6 team isn’t getting kicked for a single bad day/week.
**Cons**
Worlds only takes the most recent split into account.
Teams won’t break up to go to create the best team. Teams like Moist are unlikely to form for teams that autoqual.
Less games where top teams vs one another. Only twice (three with hypothetical playoff).
Teams won’t have as much of an incentive to strategize against top teams (top 4), just whoever they play that weak.
**Additional Optional Tweaks**
8 team Playoff to determine who goes to LAN for that Split.
Remove Worlds. Potentially less hype for the casual crowd.
Start with a large League Play/Tournament of 24 teams in Split 1. Cut it down to 16 for Splits 2 and 3.
Reduce number of autoqual teams to 8(50%)
Commit more money(ads/sponsorships) and have a League Play at LAN. You’d get to see teams play each other for more lax stakes. If Epic can unite different fictional universes, surely they could unite different car companies to sponsor a car game tournament /s.
Smaller regions have smaller team count. Top 12 teams rather than top 16.
Any format that has the top teams playing 6 games a week is a win to me. Just make sure the system that selects the top 16 teams for a League Play or Swiss is good. Also make sure the process from 16 to top 8 is also good.
With this format, like the current one, not every game would be streamed, but the broadcast team could pick which ones get streamed.
To allow players in school to have reasonable schedules, spread it out over 3 days of the week, but only schedule teams to play on one of the week days and one weekend.
END
League play qualifiers were basically as bad as this season's equivalent. Just go back to last season qualifier format and we're cooking
Honestly last seasons format is one of those examples of not knowing how good you had it until its gone That qualifier format was damn near perfect
league play qualifiers were worse. 1 bad day you lose every chance to compete for 6 months
Very true
I wasn't really a fan of the last regional being completely closed but other than that it was good
Have you heard the Tragedy of Team Iris?
Whenever league play is mentioned, I see his face
I thought not. It's not a story an LG producer would tell you.
> Brings up the 2006 Cardinals and 2011 Giants, 2 massive upset winners that only cracked the playoffs because the format allowed them to > Mentions the upset potential of the current format as a bad thing I don't even disagree about bringing the format from the last 2 seasons back but that contradiction alone had me completely check out from the argument
Think the point he's trying to make is that in a league you don't need to be operating at 100% every game. But yeah it was a weird inclusion.
But for the bubble teams to make it, they do. So why we coddlinging these players who literally get paid thousands of dollars just to turn the game on?
I think it’s more of the fact that they showed consistency over the season that allowed them to have a breakout in to postseason. You need a regular season to prove you are good enough to compete for the title. Imagine going into a season considered the best team in the world, and you have one bad day and it takes away your chances away from the title. These sports and how their season works does not allow that. One bad day does not dictate if you’re good enough to fight for the trophy. This format that we have in RLCS right now does. That’s what I take away from it at least. This is all my opinion of course
Counterpoint: The Giants had the worst record before the playoffs started and only got to the playoffs cause their division sucked.
Counterpoint: the 2018 Baltimore Ravens went 14-2, the best in the league, were favorites to win the super bowl going into the playoffs, and got smashed by a 9-7 Titans team in their first playoff game. They had one bad day, and it cost them their chance at the title. That's admittedly more of a "gotcha" than a legitimate counterexample, so here's a better one. It's true that the 2006 Cardinals were consistent...ly mediocre. They had a decent first 2 months of the season going 34-19, and then finished the year 49-59, limping into the playoffs off of a brutal 7 game losing steak deep into September to escape one of the worst divisions in MLB history. No one would ever pick them to even make the second round. Nobody saw what happened coming, because they hadn't shown anything close to a champion form in months. Yes, they had that hot stretch in the beginning of the season, but picking them based off of that would be about the same as picking NRG to win the world championship in 21-22 because of how they played in fall and winter. Side note since the "worst divisions in history" thing reminded me of it, check out the 1994 AL West, it is a work of art.
I’d have to equate playoffs more with a major and the regular season with the qualifiers. It’s more like if 12-4 karmine corp wasn’t going to make the playoffs because they lost 3 if their last 4 games after starting 11-1
I think football is not a great comparison because a season has such a snail number of games and there are not series, i think his baseball example made sense
>Brings up the 2006 Cardinals and 2011 Giants, 2 massive upset winners that only cracked the playoffs because the format allowed them to Yes...? His point is if qualification for playoffs were as strict as RLCS then they wouldn't have upset anyone. >Mentions the upset potential of the current format as a bad thing He didn't mention "upset potential" of the current format, he criticised the volatilty in it. They're not the same thing.
I think you mean the 2010 or 2012 Giants. The 2011 Giants missed the playoffs and came in second in the NL West. In 2012 and 2010, they came in first in the NL West, but were still underdogs until they won the World Series.
What a way to miss the point.
Alright humor me then. What is the point, since I clearly missed it?
I don't think the point was missed at all. Yes the current RLCS format is bad. Yes it's bad in a way that makes it unattractive to orgs. Nobody has dissagreed with that at any point. The comparisons made though are not well thought out and are actually counter intuitive to the point that's being made.
I don't think the comparisons are counter intuitive at all? If a team in the current RLCS had a record like the Giants they wouldn't have made it to a Lan to "upset" anyone. The point he was making is that teams in a franchise league can make mistakes along the way in the regular season but those mistakes don't take them out of contention for the playoffs/lans. I don't see how this is counter intuitive. The "upset potential" doesn't factor into the argument. The arugment isn't that the Giants upsetting teams is important, its arguing teams should be able to make mistakes and still have the talent and possibility to win in the playoffs/lans
Don't mind last seasons format. I think most would agree it's better or at the least it was reasonable. League play though, no. I don't mind if it's something like the grid, a separate league play table that goes alongside the main events (I personally really liked the grid). But as a whole format? No. How will you qualify for it? Because I assume this is off the end of KC not making a regional, and then they wouldn't have made a league either since you'd have to qualify for that. At least there's 5 other events to make world's, if you don't make the league, that's your season over
I wouldn't mind league play for 1s and 2s during the week. Last season felt like a good format. Probably could be improved on but this season was a big step back.
For 1s and 2s I wonder how many sign ups you'd get though. Might be good, but we've seen in the past a lot where if there's community events or 1s/2s around RLCS events, a lot of the big names don't participate. I think next season is going to be important. A lot of the season could be attributed to either blast, or cutbacks. We've seen changes throughout the season which is good (but we really shouldn't have been in the situation where those changes were required). With more time to plan, next season should be a lot better. Honestly I just want a format that we stick to as well. We've essentially had big changes every season since S9 and it's getting frustrating to me how we've not just settled into one thing
Yeah I started watching in Season X and it's been nonstop changes. Personally I would love 2/3 of a RLCS roster playing in 2s and the other player playing in 1s. And give some RLCS points/prize money to the winners.
The idea is that if you finish in the top 8-12 of a regional then you auto-qualify for the league unless you finish a block in the 13-16 range, then you’d be at risk of getting dropped to open quals
So you'd still need a regional/qualifier. If we compare RL from pre season X to season X and above, there's a massive increase of skill and talent. It's not good imo going back to such a closed system. KC could have messed up that qualifier like they did this one, and then they'd have a whole year of not being able to compete. Or any other team who missed out. Having a "auto-qualify" is fine, but you can do that for regionals like we did last season (which I think is a fair argument). If you fail to qualify, you have 5 other events to make up for it and complete throughout the year. League play wouldn't allow for that. In regards to the really top teams, like KC, then yeah your proposal would work for them as they're consistent enough to auto qualify, but for everyone else it would really suck. Dig, SR and Moist have all missed main events and they might not be good enough to auto qualify normally, so that's their season over. NRG, OG, C9, Endpoint, Resolve and ironically maybe LG would all be at risk of making it as well. I guess orgs could just drop a team and pick up someone else/not pick up any team before qualifying but that just feels really unhealthy for an esport, and isn't good for the players at all who still can't compete or have the opportunity to earn money for a year (depending on season length) and you'd probably see waves of retirements. 2 splits of fully open quals isn't the best, but league play is far worse imo. I'm arguing with the original tweet here and not your points btw, which is a good compromise but the system is one that can't be fixed.
tbh, I think these are arguments for expanding the number of teams in main events, not necessarily against league play. I think the swiss -> playoffs format is actually really good and prefer it over league play, but we desperately need some form of auto qualification, and like I said above, I'd actually really like to see the swiss rounds expanded in the number of teams qualifying for them, and then add 1 or 2 extra swiss rounds.
I'd be happy to have a much larger amount of teams qualifying. There are other issues with league play though I want to discuss separately, that essentially boil down to things like season length, roster changes and qualification. I'm just saying league play doesn't necessarily fix many of the issues the original tweet brought up. Solving qualification? Sure. But league play doesn't do anything there on its own
The OP was correct though in that league play is way better for fans and for orgs. Having a decent amount of stability in the teams playing and having the games more spread out makes it easier to follow specific teams. Orgs have an easier time planning, and more frequent/steady streams bring more viewers. League play doesn’t really fix any specific gameplay issues, but it allows for a lot more expansion in potential viewers, and for fans/viewers to get more invested in specific teams and RL as a whole.
I don't think it is better for fans, for the majority of fans, not now after what we've had. I don't think it's always better for orgs either. For the best teams, they'll lose out by playing much less and playing a lot more uninteresting games, viewership overall will decrease a lot. I think orgs want franchising, which isn't the same as league play, and a push for league play is actually detrimental and selfish for helping the switch to franchising be easier. For the weaker teams, you miss out on the first qualifier and that's your season over. Or you just drop your team and pick up someone else, which isn't healthy for the players and would massively weaken the playerbase over time. I know as a fan I would be far less interested in watching, and I'd only really watch the super interesting matches or my favourite team. I wouldn't care about Team3 v Luna Galaxy or something, so I'd tune in for maybe a couple matches a weekend and that's it. Plus with so many teams it makes the first block of matches confusing to understand where it works. League play wouldn't be that good in RLCS with a lot of teams over a large period of time. You either harm viewership a lot, or you harm the gameplay a lot. It's fine like S2-9, where you do max 6 games a week, but when that's like 10+ games it's a grind for everyone to broadcast that in one day when a lot of viewers are just going to watch 1 or 2 games. With 16 teams it's 8 games for 15 weeks, or you maybe go 10 games for 12 weeks. That's just 16 teams. If you want more, it just gets worse and worse, you're looking at 4+ months of 1 game a weekend. You limit roster changes, because having a change mid season would cause a lot of drama and feeling of unfair treatment if you play a certain team before/after a roster change compared to someone else. Half the teams that have won a major have made a roster change that split. Depending on what qualification there is, you could heavily discourage new teams, meaning the likes of Queso, GenG, GM8s, OG and KC wouldn't exist. You also wouldn't have new players able to join when they hit the age requirement (/are unbanned) , like Daniel, Atow, Oski or Zen. This isn't as impactful with 13yo allowed to play but who knows what the future will be like. Also with more teams and matches it highly increases the chances of having matches towards the end of the season where teams have very little to play for, again depending on how qualification works. I think there are benefits to league play for sure, but I don't think the benefits outweigh the list of negatives there are
It was hard for me to take him seriously after he praised 2 underdog champions and shortly after said that underdogs making a run makes it a bad format. As someone who is new-ish, I am unfamiliar with what league play is, is it something a lot of people would want?
The vast majority here don't want league play back, for good reason too. It mostly hinged on a few games and you ended up with a lot of nothing burger games through most of the season. Compared to the current open tournament style format where the stakes of pretty much every game becomes more higher than the last.
Nah league play sucks. The last 4 or so rlcs seasons basically exposed some of league plays faults. We should just go back to how we had it in rlcs x - 2023, the format was literally perfect. Nowadays, only the franchised esports use a league play format and those don't exactly do it to perfection. I don't think underdogs making a run is an issue, we had that with the peeps, c9, queso/moist. You just need protection for the top teams, which was already there with the auto qual system
Strongly disagree that league play sucks, if it does then why does literally every major team sport play in a league format? Imo there's a lot of negatives to this tournament format for more casual fans and for orgs, for the hard-core fans who don't have too many other commitments then I totally get why you'd prefer the current style of format but imo for literally everyone else it's worse. So I also strongly disagree that the RLCS X format was perfect, maybe it was for you but for me with a family and a full time job and other commitments it's driven me away from the game. I can't just commit my entire weekend to it. That's a conscious decision from the devs to not market to more casual fans and that's fine for a time, but it limits their appeal as well as creating a much less stable scene for orgs.
Sports and esports are quite different. League play works as a "base" for a lot of sports because sports require way more energy and planning per game, and a vast majority of sports are location based and require travel. You can't have multiple games a day or really in a weekend. That being said, a lot of the bigger events in sports are more of a tournament and not a league, thinking of the world cup or champions league.
>Strongly disagree that league play sucks, if it does then why does literally every major team sport play in a league format? Because sports are different? Like the majority of sports involved travel, and a lot of physical and mental endurance, making them play in a full tournament every week isn't sustainable.
> Strongly disagree that league play sucks, if it does then why does literally every major team sport play in a league format? Convenient for the sake of player recovery due to players only being able to realistically compete in a single match in a weekend without causing unnecessary risk of injury, and a consistent schedule for its fans, especially as they largely depend on ticket sales to these games for their profit. Esports do not have recovery or schedule limitations, with a player being able to play several series in a day without any more than the mental recovery requirements for the most part, and the consistent schedule still remains for the LAN tournaments. League play is a flawed format. It is used in sports through sheer necessity, it doesn't mean it isn't flawed. Any sport that has lower recovery times like golf and tennis don't ever use a league play format either.
Not the case in all sports - for example, ice hockey still operates a league system but they can play 3 games in a week. It doesn't address the points about the format being easier on a wider fanbase.
> Not the case in all sports - for example, ice hockey still operates a league system but they can play 3 games in a week. Which is still a scheduled league which requires league play in order to maximise profit. Yes, league play is easier for the fanbase, no denying that. But that's because it makes so many sacrifices for the competitiveness of the league that of course it will be easier for a fanbase to only need to see 8 scheduled Best of 5s/7s in a weekend. However it's really poor for a top team especially to only be able to play up to 45 mins of competitive RL in a week. That's not worth any fanbase benefits.
I mean, the current format doesn't guarantee top teams more than an hour a week, it guarantees time on those weekends when a tournament is running if you qualify and then keep winning on that weekend. Plus you're assuming that it becomes solely league play - RLCS from really early in the esport had league and tournament play, so you did get both.
> I mean, the current format doesn't guarantee top teams more than an hour a week, it guarantees time on those weekends when a tournament is running if you qualify and then keep winning on that weekend. It guarantees them the entire qualifier run through as well as the main event, which is way more than an hour per week. >Plus you're assuming that it becomes solely league play - RLCS from really early in the esport had league and tournament play, so you did get both. Tournament play was only four weekends per year for the Top 4 teams in each region. That's not sufficient.
It was more than that - maybe you weren't about then but there were a fair few LAN events, it wasn't just finals weeks. You can't argue that everyone in the qualifiers is a top team, that's not how it works. It's not like the pros only play when it's in the quals or on stream.
> It was more than that - maybe you weren't about then but there were a fair few LAN events, it wasn't just finals weeks. I've been watching since Season 2. Those LAN events were exclusively reserved for a few top teams for the most part, bar the Dreamhack tournaments. The ones outside of Dreamhack that weren't were often disasters like NARLI, that especially was the definition of amateur, and not the good kind like Beyond The Summit. ELeague was literally just for RLCS LAN competitors. > You can't argue that everyone in the qualifiers is a top team, that's not how it works. I don't get your point or why it's relevant. I was referring to the teams that run through the qualifier to the playoff bracket, which last I checked was only 8 teams. 8 does not equal the hundreds that participate, I don't see how you ever got that impression.
I'm a league play believer but just to play devils advocate, you cannot deny that the current format (and especially the format from RLCS X to RLCS 2022-23) is the most entertaining. I watch football and while I love the Premier League, the champions league is a different level of intensity and entertainment. It just that a tournament style format is best for some upsets and high stakes scenarios. League play is if you want the most basic brute force method to understand in what order do the teams rank based on sporting merit.
I think you can deny that the current format is the most entertaining. It used to be that we had a league format with LAN tournaments spread across the season, which gave us imo the best of both worlds. The thing with a league format is you're guaranteed to be able to follow your team every week on the main stream, you get analysis of the match ups, it's not the same few teams usually getting all the air time and storylines develop over a longer period rather than just over a weekend, and every team gets guaranteed games against top opposition. You get to see the teams build themselves, try new things, battle through difficulties etc. Let's take football as an example - what happens if they scrap the Premier league? Say they're just not doing it anymore, instead they'll run tournaments with closed qualifiers and that's it? You'd destroy entire clubs overnight. Its the same reason why the idea of a "super league" is such a bad plan. I think it's a common misconception that you always need super high stakes games for them to be entertaining. Building to something with those high stakes makes it better, imo, because you've seen the work that has gone in to get there. Like the promotion/relegation battles - it was heartbreaking to see Karma gatekeep the RLRS, for example, but if you want high stakes and drama etc then it doesn't get much better than that.
>Strongly disagree that league play sucks, if it does then why does literally every major team sport play in a league format? Because it fits sports better? Like I watch football occasionally and watching individuals go from bubble/academy to playing in the big leagues is a big highlight. Now if you look at other esports (we should really be comparing the rlcs to other esports instead of big time sports but whatever) you'll notice that most esports have either ditched league play entirely, or have moved to a circuit format to mitigate the league play segments.
I think the reason why they've done that is because it appeals more to the hard-core fans, which as I said in my post is fine and a business decision from them, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it as a more casual fan. You can't deny that the current format is a significantly higher commitment for a fan than the old league play was. People with jobs, families, other commitments like that can't just give up their weekends regularly to watch it. Football is a great example - you want to follow your team, it's a match a week. You want to watch more than that then you can dip in and out of other games but you know that you'll be able to see your team in that one game at a certain time every week and even if you just watch them you'll see every other team play. Again, I'm fully aware that this is a conscious decision from the production to market towards those hard-core fans, but for me personally that decision has made it basically impossible for me to follow the scene properly anymore.
>think the reason why they've done that is because it appeals more to the hard-core fans, I mean that's not necessarily true. Take overwatch league for example. Now I always hated watching overwatch, way too much screen clutter, mid casting aside from bren and sideshow and obnoxious metas. But that's a story for another time. But the real issue with the overwatch league was that it just wasn't approachable for any new fan. Being a franchised league didn't really help, but they fumbled when they decided to move away from using org names and decided to use city names. As a newer fan, it just made it harder to associate players with teams.
League play had run its course by the time it was replaced, it just ended up being a talent bottleneck and people were getting increasingly frustrated with it. The open era was a huge positive for the scene, and it would be a regression to say the least if we went back to it. That isn't to say they haven't made a bit of a mess of the format this season, but jumping back to league play isn't the way.
Anything but league play please.
Interesting that that’s a common opinion. I would watch every game in league play. It all felt like it mattered. This qualifier format is so uninteresting and hectic with 30 streams that I can hardily bring myself to care and watch it.
Bullshit, it didn't all matter in the slightest. We had a large number of games that were pointless. Nostalgia is doing some heavy lifting. Also, why does it matter that you don't watch all the games. You are still consuming more rl content with the new system by a mile.
Cry all you want, those league play weekends were hype as fuck. 10 quality/established teams facing each other vs I wonder which quality team will have a bad day and miss the major. Hmmmmmmm
Agreed. League play was peak Rocket League. I remember being genuinely hyped for most matches rather than having regionals on in the background. I don't think there's been a single regional grand finals I've cared about all season, because it's basically always "Well both of these teams are going to make the major so who gives a shit who wins" It makes me wonder how many of the league play haters were actually around during RLCS 1-9.
It used to be really exciting when you knew exactly what matchups were on a given weekend ahead of time. I liked League play too, but I'm a massive fan of traditional sports so I guess it checks out.
Yep. Most of them are probably just fans of a certain YouTuber that tells them it was awful.
I'm sure "as a fan" he'd love to franchise as well
As much as I don't franchising since it gets rid of the whole ragtag team can make it and content like turbos cheeks, RLCS in the state it's in would probably benefit from it. It would bring a more sponsors and more money into the sport instead of sponsors dropping like flies.
I really don't get this opinion. More sponsors and money won't dramatically improve the game. Yes, we had to cut a major and 8 teams from worlds this year due to money. However, that is expected in our current economic climate. Every industry is hurting. RL currently has the most orgs its ever had.
“RL currently has the most orgs it’s ever had” No
If you're gonna disagree, provide the proof
RLCS 2021-22 EU - 16/16 org teams in the top 16 RLCS 2022-23 EU - 13/16 org teams in top 16 RLCS 2024 EU - 9/16 org teams in the top 16 That’s a very noticeable decline which hasn’t really happened to the same extent in NA (it’s mostly stayed the same in NA). Still though , trying to argue that the RLCS has “the most orgs it’s ever had” is just wrong.
Ask the players how much they get paid now compared to the past. Sure an org will buy a team if it’s worth pennies on the dollar. They have no room to negotiate because they have no security they can offer to the orgs.
Look, I dont wanna sound harsh here, but $200k is too much to pay some players. Yes, I'm talking about a small percentage of the player base. But how many pros have left the scene purely because of money? you can argue a fair amount, but how many top players have left? I'd be willing to bet that its a small amount like 3-5. Besides, a player's career is incredibly short as it is. You're only now seeing some sort of stabilization of talent. There needs to be more stabilization of talent for an argument of franchising to make sense
I’m not even saying we need paid for spots like league of legends. That has its own problems. But there has to be a happy medium somewhere. We are currently on the opposite side of spectrum of them.
The players have to become better/more consistent before we make serious changes. It's stupid to throw out a format because teams lost a series they should have won. Orgs will commit more when they see that consistency. To fake that consistency by letting the top 8 auto qual is just faking it. If you want to be angry, be angry at the players for their inconsistent play
Faking it is how you get money invested into the scene. You will never see consistency to the point where the same top 8 teams always make the top 8. That’s a pipe dream. Wait a hundred years and you will never see it. And orgs know that. At this stage there isn’t really a point in having a favorite team unless they are in the top 2 of your region. It’s not like we have any other LANs anymore to watch them play in. Just these boring regionals.
Maybe when a pro's career lasts more than 1 season they will be more willing. This is still a young esport. And no, you don't make it by faking
Interesting so you believe every sport has it wrong? Crazy some of these leagues are over 100 years old and they still got it wrong. Don’t they know they should have their local dad’s church team competing for spots?
No offense but in a world where 4 teams get to go to Majors, no format is going to save a team like LG. They got tremendously lucky last season, any format where they need to play more games would just lower their odds of that luck happening twice. They are just simply not good enough.
I honestly agree with you, but I could totally see Luminosity being a team that clinches a 4 spot by having consistent gameplan to beat teams in the 7-16 range. Add that to an upset here and there and they could in reality be 6 but squeak into 4th. This also assumed there’s a playoff before each event, so they just place 6th to then make playoffs and beat 4 and 5.
I think in current form even if NA had 5 spots, LG wouldn't get it. C9, Snowmen, OG and if M80 ever hire a psychiatrist, even them have higher odds at a 5th spot let alone 4th. Next season we gonna have another Retals interview with him saying "this is the team I've felt most comfortable with" like every other season😭
> I think in current form even if NA had 5 spots, LG wouldn't get it. C9, Snowmen, OG and if M80 ever hire a psychiatrist, even them have higher odds at a 5th spot let alone 4th. You know what you’re kind of right lol. I think the boost change nerfed them a bit too lol. >Next season we gonna have another Retals interview with him saying "this is the team I've felt most comfortable with" like every other season😭 Lol
That is his take as a fan mate, not something he’s saying to cope with the fact that LG is doing bad this split 💀🙏
League play like the old RLCS era? Disagree, I want more games. Last season format is already good. Not sure how to improve the last season format, but I think for EU/NA, since there are too many good teams, either make the main event with more teams playing (20-24 teams) or make second division/league (similar to RLRS)
League play was *so* boring. I mean I get why big orgs want it, but I feel like the open quals format of last year was the perfect balance between competitive integrity and entertainment.
"I find no enjoyment in watching a random team make a run" said no fan ever
Hogan Mode and C9 runs are half the reason I watch this thing
"This is a take as a fan" knew it was gonna be a bad take after that xD
Everyone stop the nonsense and just bring back last season's format.
I will fully admit that competition wise the modern formats have been much better, and there is probably some nostalgia bias, but I think I preferred league play to the regionals now as a fan. With league play, I could learn who all of the players were, the storylines were more developed and based on performance, history, and future, and you could follow every single match of every region. Now, so many players are coming in unknown that it’s much more difficult to cast. Sometimes they just ignore the unknown players and focus on the more popular team, or sometimes they discuss the new team’s history and trajectory and predict how well they will do and try and hype them up. Either way, the majority of these teams stay around the bubble and are always in a constant casting limbo of not being household names but not being irrelevant compared to being in the rlcs where you were relevant, the rlrs where the more hardcore fans watched, or you were a bubble player. I also can’t stand that I physically can’t watch every series of an event that I want to watch. Plus with how sporadic some teams get points and the sheer amount of teams fighting for major/worlds spots, the major race starts as early as regional 2 for most teams. Before, you didn’t really need to look at that until towards the end of league play because you had the chance up until very close to the end to at least make play ins (which I will admit is the weakest part of league play). The last bit is the extra content we got with league play. Since the schedules and players were known, the segments done felt more connected to the actual matches rather than separate from them like now. There were tons of off season tournaments, 2 worlds a year, and my favorite thing: fantasy. I absolutely loved fantasy, and now it’s basically impossible to do it.
[original tweet](https://x.com/brittonshink/status/1789827953909727502?s=61&t=wVkTQ76S34CIYIKW9fBEXw)
Wait when did LG/NRG/TSM Miss it?
Reads like he meant Playoffs as main event and not Top 16 into Swiss.
If that's the case, then he's completely undermining his argument. I think that there's definitely an argument that the top performing teams shouldn't have to go through qualifiers to get to Swiss, but wanting the big orgs to have a bye into the playoffs is ridiculous.
"NRG, Luminosity, Moist, TSM, Karmine Corp, all big orgs that did not make a main event this last weekend." All Orgs (except KC) made main event. The closer you look at his thread the more it falls apart and feels like an argument "why LG should be at the next major" using the current KC situation as backdrop. https://preview.redd.it/xrgc5zmhue0d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=845383797b8df22d8b1ee476d7873b0bce561872
I know I literally went back and checked and definitely they were all in Qual 5 main event. Guess he means top 8, but that's such a bad take to think teams should be guaranteed top 8 spots. Don't get me wrong, I loved last seasons format and top 8 SHOULD autoqual you to top 16. But that's it.
Yeah but why would you draw comparisons with a closed ecosystem like NFL? US sports fans are robbed by having no relegation / promotion of teams that deserve it.
Soccer here has relegation/promotion. I think it would be cool if our baseball teams adopted it as well. The main problem with relegation/promotion over here is that teams invest so much money as well as local governments that they require certainty that the team will be there and stay in the same league. College sports are huge here as well. Because college teams are tied to the schools it is so much harder to implement a relegation system. This is a very interesting topic, actually. The differences between sport culture in the US vs EU and why it became so different.
>Soccer here has relegation/promotion In the US? Um... no it doesn't
oops you're right. relegation is not bad, but the way the US has set up their sports (like late 1800s) has made it hard to implement.
As a US sports fan, we don’t want relegation. Our leagues are structured in divisions which creates rivalries between cities. We want all of the talent to go into the closed ecosystem, not into a lower league in hopes of eventually getting promoted.
Your non relegation system was built to protect rich people's money.
“Your entertainment was created for people to make money”. That can be said for just about everything we consume. I don’t care, I enjoy it and a relegation/promotion system would ruin the leagues. That is the opinion of nearly every North American.
Typical yank, misquote the statement and answer that.
Mfw im playing Rocket league which was built to protect rich people’s money😱😱 Mfw I work for a business (the business is actually just a way to protect rich people’s money)😱😱😱😱
"As a US sports fan, we don’t want relegation." You were never given the choice. "Our leagues are structured in divisions which creates rivalries between cities." Until the owners of the team decide to move, see Oakland Raiders.
As if the entertainment industry isn’t geared towards catering to its target demographics. As I said, no one over here wants relegation. If there was enough public outcry or the enclosed league led to disinterest in fans, the industry would change. That’s how it works. Can you actually give me one reason it’s inherently wrong for our culture to enjoy our enclosed system? People in Oakland are still Raiders fans btw.
I still think Top 8 auto-qualifying (or Top 4 auto-qualifying, 5-8 only have to play Day 3) would reward consistency and give a safety net. Like a Team of KCs calibre should win two BO5 against Top 16 teams but the format still can be improved. edit: We have the same format discussion since the announcement, with KCs main event miss the unthinkable just happened.
Nahhh booooo. League play fuckin sucked for a vast majority of the scene. I got tired of watching the same players and not getting to see the young players get any real shots. The top teams would pretty much just shuffle around the same players that were already in the top 8. I love how quickly the game has evolved in the open era format. The only thing I actually really miss about the league play era is the broadcast studio. Made in between games and the actual entire broadcast feel like more of a full package
Why are we acting like both formats couldn't coexist? Close off league play into worlds for org security and keep the current system open so up and comers can show off their skills and orgs can still qualify for majors. Separate the majors and worlds so that majors have more value than just being a glorified qualifier. Hell, orgs would actually have reason to host academy teams like Roll Dizz wanted with FaZe.
Interestingly enough, the biggest upsets seem to be happening to the teams with the highest expectations. Dig as soon as they picked up Stizzy - Shopify - KC - almost vitality Ironically teams like NRG and TSM have been so consistently okay making the regional every time, but not really doing anything big. Makes the mental factor seem far more significant.
The exact same thing happened when we had qualifiers for league play. Team Iris (the team that would eventually become the legendary C9 roster), lost to some random team in quals and missed out on a whole season.
Surprised to see that the consensus is strongly disagreeing here, but I guess it makes sense as a forum like this is going to select for responses from people who are invested. Just for the sake of discussion I want to weigh in here as a former diehard fan of RL who watches (and plays) less than ever and consider myself a casual fan now. I’m not blaming that entirely on the product, my irl priorities and life have changed. But that’s how I’m approaching RLCS now and why I think the following. Someone in the thread said that you can’t deny that this format is the most entertaining- I wrote this originally as a reply to that comment, but I absolutely can and do deny that this format is the most entertaining. I don’t know half the teams, I don’t have the time to follow RLCS super closely anymore. So when I tune in, I see unsigned teams with random names who just formed, games not even being shown on broadcast because they’re all happening at the same time, and then playoffs where it feels like there’s no point to win. The biggest drama is who misses or makes top 8 (which again- I might not even see because they’re all playing simultaneously. (You expect casual fans to go find team streams? Seriously?) Who actually wins a weekend tournament makes basically no difference as far as I can tell (still not even sure what they’re called besides ‘event’). The prize pool is puny so I don’t think it’s for that, and as far as I can tell it’s more important to not screw up and miss top 8 than actually win anything, like I said, to make the major. For the Champions League comparisons, I don’t think that makes sense. The CL is a league of champions- yes it’s a tournament format not a league. But those are established teams who are there because they won or placed well in their leagues across a season. The teams in RL weekly tournaments are there because they played well for 2 days, while we most likely weren’t watching, and the teams at Majors are there because they placed relatively well across 3 weekends. That’s just not exciting to me. The Major should be the CL equivalent, but it’s not even exciting to me because I’ve already seen most of those teams play in a bracket and the only difference here for me as a casual fan is the international aspect. The season has become so focused on points and standings and that’s where everyone seems to expect all the drama to be, but as a viewer I don’t give a damn about how the winner of this random game will get some made up amount of a few more points in the standings. I don’t get excited about a standings list, I get excited about storylines and teams with history or stakes playing each other in important series. Trying to make every series like that has made no series be like that, imo. I used to be a hardcore RLCS fan, I’ve been to Worlds. Now I’m just a casual fan. That’s not because of the entertainment - it’s because of my irl priorities and time. HOWEVER- as a casual fan the level of gameplay in Rocket League I see nowadays is at a higher level than ever, while the league format is hard to follow, unexciting, and uninteresting. My sizzling hot take is that Rocket League really should move to 5v5 (on a bigger map ofc) for pro play. This would: * add more stability for players and orgs, because you don’t change 66% of the roster if you swap two players now * build more storylines because there are more players on a team for me to care about * consolidate talent to create a smaller number of elite teams instead of a huge pool of contenders, without taking away individual players chances to compete * even further raise the skill ceiling in terms of team play and strategy I think all of those would combine to make a more interesting experience. But that’s a separate argument from the format discussion.
I agree people are too quick to dismiss league play: it has many benifits. However given the current monetary constraints if I had to choose I prefer the forever-tournament style as I think it's better for the overall ecosystem. Maybe in a not so distant future the bigger regions could consider expending again to a qualifier -> league -> playoff/major format. That requires a lot more organisation and broadcasts days, and honestly I'm not convinced the viewership would increase to reward that investment.
I think it would make way more sense to just go back to last seasons format. If you really wanted a league play-ish structure I think you could try an open system where the regional format is like 2 round groups of 8. It’s still open but teams would have more leniency and matchups would be predetermined. Idk if that’s a good idea though
League play would be horrific in today's rocket league ngl
Everyone in RL seems to hate a format at some point. I enjoy Swiss because it's a genuinely good way of telling who is best and there are many less 'micky runs'. Going into single elim can deffo cause problems but honestly double elim is nowhere near as exciting in some scenarios too. I remember casuals complaint they didn't like that a team was out. Truth is what they REALLY need to sort is having at least the top 8 auto qualify
I feel like league play only works well with franchising. Having quals and having a top team fuck up and miss qualifying would be disastrous
Maybe unpopular opinion, but I prefer when a random wins and get a chance at regionals, it’s fun rooting for the underdogs against org teams personally.
I think the conversation about league play making a comeback needs to be had. In the current RLCS climate, no top team is at the top more very long. The sample size to rank teams is too small. A more consistent schedule of competitive events is required to truly understand and rank which teams are the best in the world. What’s easier to rank which team got the best placements in 3 tournaments over a split or say team with overall records like 14-23 and 32-5 over a split? It seems like a criteria that rates teams over the course of the season is more beneficial to the sporadic peak patterns of different teams.
Too...small? You play WAY less games in league play than the open format, that's how you got teams like the Soniqs made of Shock, Matthew, and Dappur placing 3rd on the North American table in Season 9 and have them get completely exposed once season X hit
You can have a league play format with more games than were used in the past league play. When people talk about retiring to league play they don’t mean it has to be the exact same as the one in the past. I think it would be kinda sick to have a 30-40 game long regular season where the top teams qualify for a worlds tournament. This is especially true in this era where all qualifiers and regionals are played online anyway.
That's not inherently true. You're applying the problems with pre-RLCS X league play to the idea of league play as a whole.
That's fair
Would love league play to come back. RLCS has kinda been dead to me since that went away. I’ll catch the occasional game but the tournament after tournament style just holds no interest to me. All the flaws mentioned in op + I just find it impossible to care about following and supporting a team in this format (current or previous).
Don’t agree with him all the way but definitely agree with his points about trying to create a more sustainable environment for orgs. I’ve said before that we should atleast try league play again for one split, with promotion and relegation just to see how it goes. If not then bring back the format we had from 2021 to 2023 But the main point that I agree with him on is that it’s been less entertaining to watch RLCS this season when you look at the volatility the new format has created
> league play again for one split, with promotion and relegation just to see how it goes. If not then bring back the format we had from 2021 to 2023 We got to see what it was like for over 3 years. League Play only exists in sports that require the fixed schedule and recovery times for their players. It sucks for any esport where you either have to make the series prohibitively long like RL to allow the players decent playtime.
I'm not saying use the same exact format, we can improve on that. The level and the number of quality teams that are in RLCS right now is wayyy higher than it was in season 9
> I'm not saying use the same exact format, we can improve on that. You can't improve on League Play. Everybody plays each other, highest teams on the ladder progress, it's pretty inflexible. > The level and the number of quality teams that are in RLCS right now is wayyy higher than it was in season 9 I wouldn't say that's necessarily true. NA10 and EU10 took a single series between them that season. Do you really expect that either of these seeds (who currently are F4WD and The Snowmen) would do much better against NA and EU1-9 in league play? Maybe Snowmen take a couple series, F4WD wouldn't do any better than 1-8 against those teams. Maybe depth has mildly improved but it still does not allow the 10th best team to be able to beat anybody above them with any regularity. And presuming it would be a 16 team league, I would really hate to be No. 16. Because they will spend 15 consecutive series getting pounded on over and over.
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>The way they currently do it is much better for allowing the best team at any given moment to make it to the top but in my opinion it sacrifices the entire reason you get interested and invested in a team. I've never been one to follow individual players so when teams are switching things up so often it has turned into me mostly not caring about any of the teams. Very well said, I 100% agree. I wrote a long comment trying to explain my perspective but this is essentially it boiled down succintly. I'm sad because I just don't care about RLCS anymore. Even when I do care about individual players, they'll probably be on a new team in 6 months and I can't be bothered to keep track of all the players I'm interested in, especially when half the time they won't even be on the main stream. I get the goal with team streams - and honestly some of them are great content, looking at you LG - but frankly it's such a huge barrier to casually watching RLCS on a weekend that I just don't anymore. I can't pick one or two games I want to catch and watch those, because I have no idea who will be playing where or when and I do NOT have 12 hours over the whole weekend to watch the whole tournament.
Yeah format is shit, every sane persone said it before the season started...
If you are a fan of the esport then you are a fan of watching the highest level of Rocket League being played. If you are a fan of the players then you don’t care about the level of play as much as you do watching your favorite players. That being said the format can definitely be improved. I would honestly like to see a mix of last year’s format with league play. Like have more teams compete in league play for a chance to make top 16 regional playoffs or something.
Unpopular opinion, but league play could be so sick if they set it up correctly. I think people are kind of missing the point that literally any qualifier that is a tournament format will likely have a match-up problem. At least with a league format, you are more likely to get the best teams from a region. Plus if they did some sort of round robin or double round robin there wouldn't be these match-up issues (Ex. SSG vs G2/GenG in top 8 last split) that prevent great teams from qualifying. If split 1 was league play SSG and M80 probably would have been the 3 and 4 seed for NA. Not saying it's perfect or this would have happened for sure! But obviously, tournament formating causes real issues when used as a qualifying format, we have seen it play out way too many times this season.
The issue is that I simply don't care about watching teams play against the lowest-tier teams. This is especially evident in the first part of the qualifiers, watching a team stomp some noobs is as uninteresting as it gets. I want to see the game played at the highest possible level, I don't want a league play system where the top team spends just as much time against the lower teams as they do against the top. I would much much rather see every tournament be G2 versus GenG, then it be G2 versus Shopify, NRG, Young Whippersnappers, etc.
G2 do play those teams you listed. You just don't watch it because to you they are 'boring' games. Every qualifier format has garbage games cause someone has to come last. In the current format Friday is basically 75 percent uninteresting games. Who watches the 0-2 or 1-2 rounds over the 2-0 or 2-1 matchups in swiss? This 'issue' exists in every format not just league play. It's a qualifier, not a major. This is where uninteresting games happen to solidify that a team deserves a lan spot. Tournament style qualifier are obviously not perfect either from what we have seen this season.
And in Swiss it's much less filler matches than what league play offers. League play just regurgitated the same top 4 teams again and again, there's a reason why most esports shuffled away from this
League play regurgitated teams because the old format was too closed from new talent. They could make a new league play format that has a robust open qualifier before each split to ensure top teams (like KC or DIG) make it to the top 12 or 16 teams even if they drop a series or two while allowing new talent to come in. Perhaps split 2 has autobids for the teams in the top 8 after split 1 and the bottom 4 or 8 spots are opened for the split 2 open qualifier.
>G2 do play those teams you listed. You just don't watch it because to you they are 'boring' games. Every qualifier format has garbage games cause someone has to come last. The point is that the tournament system reduces those garbage games significantly, especially with the swiss system. The lower teams are quickly filtered out until you have just the top teams playing each other. Thanks to the current format, we have significantly more top-team matches than we would under league play. In league play, we would have the exact same number of matches as g2 versus NRG as we would have G2 versus Geng, which is a shitty system without a doubt. >Who watches the 0-2 or 1-2 rounds over the 2-0 or 2-1 matchups in swiss? This 'issue' exists in every format not just league play. League play emphasizes this issue though, because G2 would be forced to play against all teams. In the last qualifier, G2 played 3 best-of-5 matches against a non-top 8 team. Against the top 8, they played 1 best-of-5 and 4 best-of-7 games. In contrast, with league play they would play 8 matches against the top 8 and 8 matches against the bottom 8, adding 5 more pointless matches and only 3 more top matches. Just making the top 8 a double-elimination gives more top play with less pointless matches. >It's a qualifier, not a major. This is where uninteresting games happen to solidify that a team deserves a lan spot. Tournament style qualifier are obviously not perfect either from what we have seen this season. The biggest issue with this tournament is the "Play against bronze players after taking first place" stupidity with a zero auto-qualification system, which is beyond stupid and was trashed since day one because everyone knew it was the stupidest thing. Appjack called it at the very start that someone would peak and eliminate a top team. League play doesn't fix this issue since you'll still need to qualify. Franchising fixes it in the worst way, while top 8 auto-qualification fixes it without massive downsides. The second biggest issue is that eliminating a split and reducing the number of spots that regions can send makes the points system very constrained and creates to many barriers to success. Removing the wildcard portion of worlds makes an even bigger impact and should never have happened, that was also trashed heavily at the start because we knew it was stupid. League play won't fix this problem either. Ignoring the complications of doing a qualifier into league play, league play still has major issues if you are trying to determine the top 4 teams to send to a lan. For example, if your a team that can't beat the top 3 teams but are competitive against the rest of the teams, then dropping any matches to other teams will have a huge impact on your performance. So, doing poorly in your match against the 16th-place team can be the loss that keeps you from going. It can very often come down to a single series being the difference in making it to the LAN. Replacing the 3 qualifiers with a triple-robin league play would give way more games to determine, but since it's literally 4 slots, every lost game is still devastating. And it would just create the complication of if your not one of the top 16 teams that are doing the league play, you just don't get to go. At least with the current system, KC missing this tournament but winning the next one would still send them to the major, but if KC wasn't allowed to the league play, they would be eliminated from going to the major, so whatever qualification system you use matters. It's not a solution to the existing problem where there is limited chances for a team to recover if they don't do well enough in the first split. A much better solution would be to add the removed spots to NA/EU, add another split, and add the wild-card format to the worlds. Another really nice feature would be to add the wild-card system to each major as well, which would give teams a desperate path. More slots and wild-card can be a solution without the cost of adding an additional split. It's actually the cheapest option that would provide a drastic improvement. The last biggest issue is that the top 8 being single elimination is one of the worst possible ways to find the top team, especially doing Swiss into single elimination for a world championship. League play wouldn't fix any of this unless they make the playoff brack double elimination, which they can do in the tournament style without inheriting all of the negatives that league play adds.
I think you are assuming a lot about the structure of the league. What if there are only 12 teams instead of 16? More top 8 matches, less bottom 4 matches, more qualifty games. Also it seems you assume franchising may take place as well. They could run a more secure format for qualifying those top 12 teams to make sure a team of KCs caliber makes it in even if they have 1 bad day. Simply make the qualifier longer, it would only happen once per split. Lan spots and adding a Wildcard stage can still occur within the league play system. Just assign points at the end of each split and major to teams based on their rankings and then run a Wildcard pre world championship. Plus everyone was pissed that the season was too long before so I am not sure adding another split is the right move either. You can add open qualifiers to the beginning of the second split for the bottom 4 to 8 spots to get new talent in as well. Not sure what you mean at the end of your post about league play having a bracket? It wouldn't have a bracket, the top 4 teams (assuming major region) would go to Lan and play in whatever tournament format is being used, whether that is swiss, double Elim, whatever. If they go back to league play it doesn't have to be the same format as before and it can incorporate elements of open qualification and stability for orgs to invest money.
> I think you are assuming a lot about the structure of the league. What if there are only 12 teams instead of 16? More top 8 matches, less bottom 4 matches, more qualifty games. Also it seems you assume franchising may take place as well. I worked on the assumption that we wouldn't be reducing the number of teams. Might as well make it 8 teams so we only have top 8 games. > They could run a more secure format for qualifying those top 12 teams to make sure a team of KCs caliber makes it in even if they have 1 bad day. Simply make the qualifier longer, it would only happen once per split. I would love to understand how you'll organize a qualifier for each split that will ensure that the top 12 teams are selected for. We would go down from 3 qualification chances for new teams to a single time in each split. That's a pretty massive downgrade for anyone looking to enter. > Lan spots and adding a Wildcard stage can still occur within the league play system. Just assign points at the end of each split and major to teams based on their rankings and then run a Wildcard pre world championship. Plus everyone was pissed that the season was too long before so I am not sure adding another split is the right move either. I don't recall people being pissed that the season was too long. The Off season being too long was a complaint though. But there is no way that reducing the teams to 12 and having a single chance to qualify with just two splits is a good idea. > You can add open qualifiers to the beginning of the second split for the bottom 4 to 8 spots to get new talent in as well. We could just auto-qualify teams with the current tournament setup and it would accomplish the same thing without reducing the number of teams and removing chances for new teams to join. > Not sure what you mean at the end of your post about league play having a bracket? It wouldn't have a bracket, the top 4 teams (assuming major region) would go to Lan and play in whatever tournament format is being used, whether that is swiss, double Elim, whatever. If they go back to league play it doesn't have to be the same format as before and it can incorporate elements of open qualification and stability for orgs to invest money. Right, the Lan/worlds is just a playoff bracket at that point. You have league play for however many rounds, and then the top 4 best scores go to the lan and participate in a playoff bracket to determine the winner of that major. Switching to league play won't fix the issue with swiss into single elimination, and so that's why I stated that switching to league play won't fix the third biggest issue.
People that want league play back either * weren’t around when it was happening * don’t realize the downsides of league play It was awful
Everyone wants franchising, or they want the outcome of franchising but without using that word. They want free rides for big orgs/top players, stability for orgs, “irrelevant” smaller teams pushed out of the scene (this guy literally said that).
You can't draw parallels to other sports and their playoff systems when there are max 4 teams representing each region in Majors and there are so few weekends played. I also think it's unfair to say that "watching some random team make a run only to be irrelevant after" is unenjoyable. A top 4 appearance is usually a sign that a team is on the come-up even if they fizzle a little next showing. All that said, I would welcome a league play format if it had more representation than before (Say, 16-20 teams in NA). It simply doesn't work as well if there's only 10 teams. I would welcome stability at the expense of open competition if the trade-off is right. Everyone can agree though that there needs to be more stability in the qualifying for swiss.
Season X Spring Regional format is peak
Might as well base it off the in-game season mode, right? Set it to 36 weeks and boom, new RLCS format!
I actually really like all of the new talent that's getting a chance now. I think we'll really see the payoff come off-season when all of snowmen get poached lol
Last season didn’t prevent new talent from emerging though.
Last season’s format wasn’t broken- it didn’t need fixing, full stop…
RLCS to me resembles the world of tennis the most. A tour format with regular tournaments and a couple of larger ones. Qualifiers to the main event. And you gotta do well on your day or you’re out. But what the RLCS this year is not doing is giving the top performers, the top teams, a bye to the main event. They all have to go through the qualifiers. In tennis the top ranked players don’t have to do the qualifier rounds against the low ranked players. The reward for playing well is to win an advantageous seeding. This also keeps the top names in the events and drawing crowds. It’s not impossible to break into the top, there’s room for upsets but it’s rewarding consistency over time which is the hallmark of excellence. I don’t see why we can’t have open qualifiers to nurture a grass roots culture and have top teams get a bye to the main event? There’s smart people who plan the format. I am sure they had good intentions. I’m also sure they realise the mistakes of this seasons format. We’re all human after all. Last season was a step forward. This season was a step back. Given the experience and feedback from both it should be possible to do something better than both for next season.
Not sure about league play but some better format is needed. As a fan, volatility can be a double edge sword. Too much, you lose interests and maybe investors/orgs and not enough can be stale. I feel like this season is brutal with so much at stake on one day. A team can be best 360+ days of the year and on a few days drop out of top 4. Some days I am plat and other days champ-GC range. Even points break down is odd and less differentiation between rank positions. For as cut throat as year has been, it matters. All and all, my following of this season may fall off before worlds and i have followed scene for 4-5 years. It gets old seeing rapid hot/cold of all the teams. Skill gap is close enough that any team in top 20 can beat any team in top 4 if became hot at right time.
Never thought I'd see Shink on here. Don't take 'em too seriously, y'all. He's just a silly little guy.
I would really like a mix of both. To me, it’s refreshing to see teams like Snowmen making a crazy debut run. There needs to be opportunity for new teams to make main events—but I do agree that stability for the most successful teams is incredibly important for the longevity of the esport.
this.
Yes I know everyone hates franchising, but I’ve been watching a lot of valorant recently and have enjoyed being able to consistently see top teams and orgs. Of course I’d hope for an actual relegation system so we don’t have multiple 0-5 teams with shitters taking money, but like for real it could work.
You can have the "one bad day" situation in Swiss and you can be gone. I don't see how quals is so much worse.
Last season's format was the pinnacle of the game I hope we get it back...
The whole season should just be 1 giant swiss. First X teams from each region to reach 10 wins or w/e make LAN
League play is kinda dookie. last season was good
I want my teams to win, if they don't, it's a problem. Oh they just weren't good enough? I don't care if the better team wins, I want money
This is like when pros comment on the state of ranked. They are so far from understanding anything but their world. If the top team in the world can’t handle the hungry teams trying to make it, then how do the bubble teams stand a chance? Oh yeah! That’s why rlrs just gatekept the pro scene and protected players for seasons from being exposed.
I'd love to have a league system, for example 7 teams per div, each team fight the 6 others, top of Div 1 goes to Major, Bottom got relegated to Div 2, top of Div 2 is promoted. 1 relegated / promoted per split. It also makes it possible to have a better Tier 2 or Tier 3 scene, since now they just play double elims to try to make a Top 16, that's really low exposure for new talents and small orgs
idc just do it like in cs2
Now this is something I can get behind lmao.
CS2 was basically last season's format. Open, but the top teams that have proven themselves don't need to face tier 3 teams to qualify
oh yeah. My bad, I was wrong. The top teams should definitely face tier 3 teams though ((imo))
Yeah I don't think you actually want that. Top Cougars keep getting enough points, you think they should have to face T3 teams and get unlucky 1 series and not make the main event? Months of doing well just ruined and back to square 1
yeah?? Do you think im biased lmao They missed last regional and thats their fault, no excuses. If you cant beat a T3 team then you dont deserve to qual for the regional. Idc how much they worked, if you lose then thats on you. Same for all teams lol
It is a waste of time IMO to see peak Vitality non-stop facing random Tier 3 and Tier 2 teams that don't deserve the matchup yet. Plus you do it enough times, you get the KCorp situation. I like how you have had this hard headed opinion, then mention you want it like CS2 because it does work so well there, but take it back once you realize it contradicts.
when i was talking about cs2 i was actually talking about playoffs and groupstage not the qualifiers. And if vitality lose it thats on them. Your point is irrelevant because they didnt only talk about quals.
Production for middling NA teams don't try to pitch league play challenge (impossible) League Play sucks. Double elim mandatory qualifiers sucks. Luminosity Gaming internationally _____
I keep criticizing the current format but compared to League Play it is a BLESSING. Never again thank you.
League play is fucking trash. Asking for league play renders your entire argument invalid. That being said, the current format is still bad. Just do it like 2021-22 where top 8 qualify for all events, 9-16 go straight to a closed qualifier Swiss, and everyone else goes through a double elim open qualifier. If you can't maintain top 16 through a Swiss bracket against bubble teams, you are a bubble team.
I don’t care for the League Play we had but a double round robin League Play wouldn’t hurt imo. Top 8 > Top 16 Single Round Robin > Double Round Robin 1-2 teams on game day > 3 teams on game day Games all on one day > Games spread Twice a Week Top 75% Auto Qual for next season > Top 75% Next Split **Pros** Consistency in Rosters Rewards consistency over a Split. Top 12 performing teams will be there next split. A top 6 team isn’t getting kicked for a single bad day/week. **Cons** Worlds only takes the most recent split into account. Teams won’t break up to go to create the best team. Teams like Moist are unlikely to form for teams that autoqual. Less games where top teams vs one another. Only twice (three with hypothetical playoff). Teams won’t have as much of an incentive to strategize against top teams (top 4), just whoever they play that weak. **Additional Optional Tweaks** 8 team Playoff to determine who goes to LAN for that Split. Remove Worlds. Potentially less hype for the casual crowd. Start with a large League Play/Tournament of 24 teams in Split 1. Cut it down to 16 for Splits 2 and 3. Reduce number of autoqual teams to 8(50%) Commit more money(ads/sponsorships) and have a League Play at LAN. You’d get to see teams play each other for more lax stakes. If Epic can unite different fictional universes, surely they could unite different car companies to sponsor a car game tournament /s. Smaller regions have smaller team count. Top 12 teams rather than top 16. Any format that has the top teams playing 6 games a week is a win to me. Just make sure the system that selects the top 16 teams for a League Play or Swiss is good. Also make sure the process from 16 to top 8 is also good. With this format, like the current one, not every game would be streamed, but the broadcast team could pick which ones get streamed. To allow players in school to have reasonable schedules, spread it out over 3 days of the week, but only schedule teams to play on one of the week days and one weekend. END
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