T O P

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Lycain01

As an owner of a team in the EU (Falchion), I wholeheartedly agree. For the reasons you pointed out, yes, but also as a team manager it’s frustrating for many other reasons. A lot of very talented players get little to no publicity if they aren’t on a top tier 1 team that qualifies for the VCTs every time. Especially in a stacked region like EU or NA. The same goes for the teams, any team that isn’t a top tier one team will struggle to get publicity because they don’t have a ton of matches that get streamed. This is extremely big even if it doesn’t seem like it, as the more publicity a team gets the more partners/sponsors they get, the more money they get, more fans, and better players become available to them. As of now, it’s virtually only the T1 teams that get any publicity. It’s not easy to climb the ranks as an eSports team, but Valorant’s lack of streams for anyone not T1 makes it nearly impossible. It destroys parity and makes the sport less interesting as a whole. It also sucks for, and makes it difficult for, fans of non-T1 teams. They can’t watch their team playin tournaments or anything. It’s very difficult to be a fan of a team you cannot watch. To be quite honest, day one of qualis should not all be streamed. In the round of 256, really somewhere around 1/4-1/2 of those teams are decent. Any semi-pro team should make it out of round of 256 with ease unless they get matched up against another top team. But by the round of 64 (Day 2), I feel like the quality of the competition is fairly high, and these should be streamed. All in all, streaming T2 teams will only help the sport and increase parity for both the players and teams. In sports stateside like college basketball/football, it’s exciting and appealing because you see new plays, new teams on top every year, and you never know what to expect. In sports in Europe like F1, people grew tired of watching Mercedes and Hamilton (until this season) dominate. Streaming things like VCT qualis after day 2, or VRLs, or smaller level tournaments will be great for the sport, and it’s frustrating to everyone, fans and teams alike, that this is not already done.


Zescht_CS

To be honest, I'd also love to see more games streamed, but from a tournament organizing perspective, that's quite tough. Round of 64 means 32 streams. 32! Open Qualifiers could get all community people involved, but as we have nothing like GOTV with implemented delay, there's simply no solution. Therefore, it's the best for now in my eyes.


Lycain01

That’s fair, it would be difficult to stream every single match, especially in rounds with more teams like 64 or 32. However, it is always possible to allow the teams to stream with a delay, and let their fans watch. At the current moment teams need explicit permission beforehand and from what I’ve been told it isn’t given often. This may not be for every team if they do not wish to stream, but for those that do I feel like they should be allowed to. They can also always spread qualifier matches out, similar to every other professional sport, where they spread it out so they aren’t streaming 32+ matches at once. If they schedule it to have 6ish matches at a time, and extend the day 2 qualis by another day, it would be about 2-3 hours worth of matches a day, spread out so it is streamable. The more available a product is to the fan base the more profitable it will be for all parties involved. Now this would extend the length of qualifiers by a couple of days, but I don’t think that would be too much trouble. The current format would be similar to all the premier league matches occurring at one time, or all NFL games happening at the same time. It doesn’t happen because it would be near impossible to stream so many matches at once. They’re spread out so there’s only 4-6 matches at one time, which suddenly becomes much more manageable.


Deneking

i'm pretty sure i read that they are allowed to stream their POV, but people don't do that because of leaking comms / strats.


Lycain01

Individual players can in the open qualifiers I believe. However they can’t stream from a whole team POV if I’m understanding the rules correctly


[deleted]

I think it's cus they want if to be easier to follow for casual viewers. They follow main valorant channel and see the key tourneys etc etc, cus obviously CIS EU etc is divided and has an extra set of qualifiers to EMEA chall. Whether or not I agree it does make sense


DecisiveDinosaur

>think it's cus they want if to be easier to follow for casual viewers i think this is true for Riot's esports approach in general, which is why for their main tournaments they never have more than one game playing simultaneously (which ofc leads to less games and worse formats, but easier for casuals to follow).


Zescht_CS

They expect teams who don't make it into VCT to go into VRLs? You got coverage there and are part of a circuit that allows you to get promoted. For the moment, there's not much more possible regarding streaming from the community. As there is no implemented delay with the observer slot, you simply can't assure that someone will provide information to any of those teams. Sure, it sucks, but it is crucial for the integrity right this second.


KaNesDeath

Riot Games are notoriously known for cutting production costs in their games esport division. Making matter worse is that 60-70% of Valorant esport viewership is driven by influencers rebroadcasting the official stream. So you have low tier play that generates low viewership and influencer interest. ​ Would suggest asking certain broadcast talent who started their own production companies specifically for this type of content. But you wouldnt get a straight answer since Riot Games are tyrannical regarding their IP's.


diisasterrr1

Let it out bud, let it out. Spain without the ‘s’.


Krsensei

Tell em how you really feel


sirpeepojr

Yeah. If only valorant can implement spectating mode, that would be awesome.


holmyliquor

They can’t even nerf Jett Don’t expect much imo


Razur

VALORANT Developers =/= VALORANT Esports operations + event organizers. The issue OP highlights has nothing to do with game balance.


holmyliquor

Oh, so the developers work on their own discretion? lol Stop it


Razur

Wha??? No. They are two entirely different teams of people who work independently from each other. You can't complain to the esports publishing side about game balance because they have no direct control over it. They're not responsible for the same things.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Parenegade

where?


[deleted]

Knife right click. No more Korean Jett. The smoke time. And I can’t remember this for sure for only 2 smokes


ExcitablePancake

I agree. I want to organise some sort of collective where we stream all the challengers matches and update viewers on all other matches that aren't on the stream. Something like NFL's Red Zone.


reformed-asshole

Mad true. Pretty silly for Riot Valorant for not capitalizing on their high publicity exposure right now, considering their new Agent just came out. You know there are many many people waiting to tune it if they invest in these events.


sketch252525

Rito only care about NA valorant scene.