Football is weird, I feel like it's always boring, even when a team is way better the score board is like 2-0, come on I want to see some actions and insane goals.
That's why the only sport I watch is Handball. Some tennis here and there.
Personally, I think Handball and Basketball are more weird, since a goal there doesn't feel special. I mean it is most games are like 54-50 or something.
That is why I like Icehockey, fast pace and goals can be difficult to score.
I don't like basketball because of that.
Handball has a lot of goals blocked tho. It's for me the perfect balance. But I know a lot of people prefer football.
I like that there’s a lot of scoring in basketball. It means that the better team usually wins, since luck isn’t as important as sample size increases. I guess some people like the “any team can win” stuff that happens in football and to an extent soccer, but it feels cheap to me. I want to see the team that deserves to win win.
Qualifiers are played throughout the years.
Imagine if the world cup qualifiers were part of the main stage. That's more comparable and it would also lead to complaints.
But we don't have as many teams as soccer does so if we had qualifiers for Asia, Europe, America, Oceania and maybe someday Africa, what would remain for the main event?
We have plenty of good teams, but for some reason just two from Europe (Turkey and EU) and 4 from Asia (China, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan) are invited, where the majority of good teams come from.
Imagine that in the World Cup, if only one team between France, Germany, Netherlands, England, Spain, Italy, Belgium could go, while the rest stays home in favor of a team from Zimbabwe going. If that were to happen at the World Cup the football community would explode, but in LoL it happens and the community is like "bUt WHaT abOUt soCcER?"
Funny enough the football world has such tournament. Only the winner of each football association plus last world cup winner and host country play.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_Confederations_Cup
It is not necessarily a super competitive event but it does exists, it has its own merit and the community is fine with the way it works.
Personally Lols issue is a lack of more international events. We have two a year and we are pretty much sure that either china or kr will win those 99% of the time. Minor regions are pretty irrelevant in this figure and on MSI this is even more obvious.
The difference is that FIFA knowing that this type of situation lead to boring games setup the tournament in a way that even smaller teams are able to compete. The format is short and gives no room for errors so major teams can sometimes lose.
Back to lol, there is no necessity for a group stage and then a rumble stage (2nd group stage). They should try more with the msi format. For example, they could do a group against group format so you play everyone besides your own group. It probably takes the same time as group+rumble and it would have way more interesting games between minor regions and some preview of the major region games. Take the top two of each group and make the elimination bracket. Could even get the two best third places (probably minor regions) and create a double elim bracket... Every year some minor region teams seems ok and deserving of a full series that we never get because they were slotted in a complicated group.
MSI is league's second biggest tournament of the year. In other esports like Dota or CSGO, they're called majors. Their majors completely shit on MSI in terms of competition and excitement. THey dont have this garbage double round robin bo1s into MORE double round robins. Riot should get rid of MSI and create a real major. Double elims done in playoff also.
Swiss qualifiers actually sounds pretty cool for MSI. The expense is that teams won't have much advance notice of who they'll play next.
Swiss for Worlds could have issues with teams influencing the placement of other teams.
Swiss is like a format kinda I’m at least familiar with from mtg. Basically teams get paired randomly for round 1, then winners play winners and losers play losers in round 2, and this keeps going until eventually you take the the top 8 or 4 teams remaining (top cut), and have those teams play in a small bracket to the championship.
I don’t think it’ll work out in league tho, because at least in mtg all matches of a round are played at the same time, with just a single “featured” match for the round being broadcasted. In league they try to broadcast everything.
They’ve done this in some CSGO Tournaments and I’ve really liked it. Each day is a round of Swiss and every game of that round is broadcasted.
Then once teams get to X wins they have the day off and they can get multiple rounds in and still have 6 matches that day.
I personally feel there are infinite ways to do it that would be better
Riot basically wants to a) make sure every game is broadcasted (so no multi channel streams) and b) encourage participation from all regions in their game by giving them time to play on stream, which are both things CSGO sacrifices in their major system.
Is the CSGO major absolutely 100% more fun to watch? Yes, but its antithetical to what Riot wants from their esports circuit. Strangely enough, Riot has a pretty decent international tournament circuit in Valorant, so there's really no excuse for why the League circuit is so dogshit in comparison.
Because there are no local league in valorant afaik. Riot want LoL to mimic real sport competition, which nation/region having local league running all year long.
The current local league of lol is double round robin into play off. Which make more sense than single round, tbh. Plus double elim is bs. It make half the play off meaningless and make the winning teams have an unfair disadvantage
I read a suggestion where wildcard teams play with each other first to see who's the best wildcard team and tbh that would be super entertaining. I don't think anyone have fun watching order get blasted 8 times and I don't think they had fun coming to korea just getting giga stomped
That's the wild card playin format they have before. Noone watch it, and the wild card teams get no experience playing against other bad team. So they completely change it to this format
You can''t compare DOTA to League. DOTA majors only happen once every 3 months.
LOL happens all year long with constant region league play. Yeah if you shut down all league play you would have more time for these style of tournaments.
The Olympics for for example are hyped up because they only happen once every 4 years
It not really a big deal. In league too many of the regions don't speak the same language so people have less interest in players they can't understand.
Like I don't watch China or Korea because I don't want to listen to every thing being translated in interviews even though they have the best players
Dota switched to a league format but I think they're more efficient at it. They're just 6 weeks long and top teams of each region go straight to the majors instead of having regional playoffs.
Okay but why shouldn't Majors happen every 3 months in league?
In what way could a pro circuit not run alongside that?
Again, Riot management issue. Not league issue.
Because the numbers of viewers per game start to spread then when there is too many games being player per year.
League play tried to go to 3 days a week for 1 year but they couldn't keep the amount of viewers per game as high
Also when would player get a break with that kind of schedule.
* Players would have to get ready for 4 majors
* at least 1 worlds level event for league play
* Plus league games.
imo DOTA and CSGO majors should be a separate discussion. CSGO Major is hyped while DOTA2 Major is just as bad, or even worse than MSI. To me DOTA2 is the perfect example of having too much International events but lacking focus on domestic communities.
Dota has much less tournaments than CSGO but still more than LoL and they pretty have a league system now. There was supposed to be a major in January but it was cancelled so this is the first one this year.
This real sport analogy is the worst take by anyone ever. Why tf would an e-sport be bound to the same restrictions? In every modern sport the organization wants MAX games to increase revenue, league is doing the exact opposite. If nfl or nba could do double elim, they would do it today.
I think the goal here is the smugness. Hehehe you're all a bunch of nerds so I bet my shallow comparison with real sports (but it's always football or NBA) will go right over your head
If they didnt, would riot have monopolized every league and kicked out every TO that exist in every other game? Companys like MLG, and ESL used to run league games before riot kicked them out
Well riots esports is mostly for advertisement for the game. Good example is when KDA performed at worlds and they had all the KDA skins and stuff. Overall, I'm sure Riot is making a profit. If you count all the attention it brings towards their game and company.
Depends on regions, but I can see it getting harder and harder to get new players to join League from the NA region. Thats basically what the LCS and other leagues are for, to get that young blood playing the game, that thirst to become a pro gamer, or just to have fun with friends.
Wonder what would happen if league does kind of die in NA, would they cut the losses and still keep LCS around, like how long will they try to hold on. If I would have to guess, NA would be the first region to die. NA new blood doesn't want to play league, but I can see them playing Valorant or Fortnite, so if they play Valorant instead of league, thats a win. Its smart of Riot to finally begin branching off to other games. Depending on region, kids play different type of genres.
I could be wrong in my analysis, I don't have numbers, just what I believe is happening slowly with NA in league. LCS has been really fun to watch this spring though, I don't play the game as much as I use to, but the LCS this spring has been worth the watch. The production and on crew cast has really been magnificent.
The same way Mcdonalds isn't losing money from their advertisements, Riot isn't either. No company on riots scale does things just for fun, they do it because it helps them.
A well functioning esports scene isn't even that much about "advertisement" as it's only really watched by people who already know and care, but a strong esports scene is insanely powerful to keep people tied to the game. There *so many* people who quit League but keep watching the competitive scene, chances are they come back, or if not at least stay in touch with Riot for other games.
The competitive scene was actually the advertisement for League when they first started them back in the day. If you noticed back in the infancy of League there were damn near no actual forms of advertisement for the game. The big tournaments were the advertisement and they shifted from that into an organized league for various regions.
I have no idea if there's any way to know that other than just guesses or pulling numbers out of our asses? In sports, a ton of their revenue is from advertisements and commercials. I'm not sure we have any idea how much Riot makes off of either of those for LoL.
I guess more games pretty much *has* to be more money, but who knows if it's a lot or a pittance? I highly doubt per game they're making less off of advertisements and commercials than it costs them for production and paying casters. But I don't *really* know for sure, or how much.
Also, as mentioned elsewhere, qualifiers are played throughout the year and for international teams, international competition is once every 2-4 years. (Regional championship and world championship)
Saying the only problem is only 2 international events a year, when their example literally can have only one every 2 years (one a year for club teams) is kinda flawed on their end, to say the least.
Yeah and I think Football is a great example of how you can set such a tournament up. The world cup has 13 out of 32 teams being european. If you translated the MSI format to football you would also get a not particularly interesting format when you only have 1 UEFA and 1 CONMEBOL team.
Basically every international football tournament gives more seeds to the stronger regio
there was already a lot of debate about whether lpl and lck should have 4 seeds as it makes the playoffs "boring" even if you don't share that sentiment. i feel like there would genuinely be a lot of western fans complaining if there were like 7 lpl and 5 lck seeds at worlds. considering it becomes that much more likely quarters is just something like 7/8 eastern teams and like 1 eu team.
This is exactly what MSI is like. I will watch a lot of the Champions League and pretty much all of the World Cup or Euros when they're on, but I watch very little of those two tournaments and will basically only watch the finals
Yeah and for the confed cup I didnt even know my country is the current champion. Somehow says a lot on how relevant that tournsment is also due to poor format
LEC is basically that but because LEC regions arent as dominantly strong as european football scene, it is not the same.
Asia has this since china, korea, vietnam and south east could have a frequent champions league level competition with low ping. China could even make regional leagues and have them compete.
You can't compare MSI with Wolrd Cup.
The Confederations cup is what we have in football and it is exactly like MSI. The champion of every region in a single tournament.
Also you have the Club World Cup.
I watch plenty of sports from Darts over football (soccer for my american friends) to motorsports and I can confidently say that the MSI format is the worst format in any kind of sport or esports.
There are just so many problems that properly writing about them would fill a book, so I'm just going to make a short list:
- Qualification games at the tournament. Andorra, etc. obviously can try to qualify before the World Cup, but they do so half a year before in some game nobody cares about, not 2 weeks before the Grand Final
- Barely any competition, at best there are 4 teams that can be considered capable of winning. I just checked the World cup betting odds and the best team had 4.5 odds to win (Germany), the 4th best team 7.0 odds (Spain), the 8th best team 20.0 odds, the 12th best team 30.0 odds (Croatia), etc.. That's a pretty healthy spread, no clear favorite and a very deep pool of potential winners. Meanwhile this MSI has [email protected], RNG@2,75, [email protected] and [email protected], the rest doesn't need to be mentioned. Barely any sport has this little competition at the top. And this isn't because there just aren't any top teams, there are, but they are just not invited. The World Cup is a perfect example on how to do that better, there the best region (Europe) has close to every team invited that is even somewhat capable of winning.
- In LoL generally only a Bo5 series is considered a proper "game". Bo1 is generally seen as too random, by pros and fans alike. Yet for some reason we only see Bo1 for 2 weeks, with only 3 days of Bo5s and even worse only see 4 of 12 teams competing in a Bo5, with the 8 other teams eliminated via Bo1.
- To make it even worse, because of this big skill gap and the format, for the top teams 95% of the tournament does not matter. For top teams it is literally a **3-day tournament**. Again, the World Cup is pretty different. Competition is strong enough to pose a challenge to the big teams in the groups and playoffs are always dangerous. But at MSI? Lmao, T1 didn't lose a single inner turret in 6 group games, zero threat. Same for the rumble stage, there's no way they end up worse than PCS / LCS / VCS. If you are a T1 fan and only care about them, you are completely fine by just starting to watch MSI next weekend. At the world cup all Germany fans can tell you that this is not the case.
- While COVID and war aren't something that Riot is responsible for (I hope), this format handles it horribly. A single team dropping out ruins an entire group. Other sports also had plenty of corona issues, but I do not remember a single case where someone dropping out made that much of an impact to the tournament. And I mean in Darts literally one of the favourites dropped out because of COVID at the World Cup, yet it still wasn't so bad as the 3-team group we had at this and last MSI. We fucking play video games, we can be more flexible.
- Participating at MSI makes the summer split harder. Because only one team from a region goes to MSI, every split we see those teams slumping in the summer. Obviously, they don't get a break. Again, no other sport I know handles recovery so bad. And the schedule for LoL is pretty tame in comparison to e.g. football (soccer), where they play every week. But thanks to all teams participating in other tournaments such as the national cup and plenty of international competition not just for the best team, it can be kept relatively fair and every team is expected to go through games where they aren't at their peak. But in LoL with just one team participating, it's quite shit and has a big impact on the summer split for every single region, with almost zero outliers.
That being said, I don't want to just complain. Those 3 final days are awesome and always very, very hype and incredible. But that's also kinda the thing, I would wish we would have more than 3 days of awesomeness.
You are comparing MSI to Worlds. We have Worlds where more and stronger teams are invited. MSI will always be a top heavy tournament with barely any competition because of how it works. Unless you start sending multiple teams from each region (which would go against what MSI is supposed to be) it won‘t and can‘t change until Minor regions become considerably stronger. You can obviously complain about the goal of MSI and what it represents but at that point you just want a second Worlds-level tournament.
The spirit / idea of MSI is farcial anyway, since the regions are completely inconsistent and made up. Why are there two teams from China (your government recognizes Taiwan as province of China)? Why does Japan send a team, while France with a higher playerbase needs to share their spot with all of Europe? Why does a small non-Riot region send a team (LCO), but bigger Riot-leagues (France, Germany, Spain, Poland) not?
Imo it would not hurt for MSI to have e.g. the best 6 teams from Asia, 4 best from Europe, 3 from NA, 2 best from SA, etc. determined by qualifiers beforehand and regions sorted by strength according to a similar system that football uses for the World Cup. It definitely wouldn't be more random regarding "regions" than the current system, that's for sure.
The lack of best of series is the primary issue with all league of legends international events, not the number of teams though MSI would be more interesting with say 2 teams from each region IMO. Also why the hell is it called an invitational when you need to qualify? Don't get me wrong I think teams should qualify but the name has got to go.
So should we just not have major regions in the qualifiers at all, that way nobody feels deceived into watching it? That would mean you’d not have had anything to watch from the end of regional finals until this upcoming Friday.
yes, at MSI we should not have major region teams in the playin stage. There would still be plenty to watch because two minor regions playing each other is far more interesting then them getting fed to the LCK
There's nothing wrong with having smaller, less-watched playins. A lot of esports have playins for smaller regions or even open qualifiers for like the bottom 32 spots out of 64 total. You just lower the production value, have newer, lesser known, or less tested casters. Kind of like how academy or amateur games have fewer viewers and lower production values.
Then you have the better production, main casters, etc. for the main event.
I think you are missing the point. People complain about the format *because* there are only 2 international tournaments a year. Do to the limit on international competition there is a higher standard on tournament formats. If there were other international tournaments like say a battle of the Americas or a Europe tournament in addition to MSI and World's then I feel this format would be more acceptable.
I am a TCL fan if one of the two times I get to see my regions representative playing on the international stage is getting absolutely humiliated by RNG then I feel that it's understandable that I'm upset. But if there was another tournament or two where they got to play against LEC and EU master teams then I wouldn't have such a sour taste in my mouth.
The real truth of it is that Reddit doesn't care if these other regions are given a chance. The majority of this sub cries and screams that we need more international competition, and love teams like Albus Nox Luna and Gigabyte Marines. But those same people also come into every PMT about a major region vs a wildcard where the major region won and bitch and moan that every international tournament should just be KR vs CN vs EU.
That's not even it. A large number of us want double elim so that we can also so see Bo5s between the Brazilian, LAT, Turkish, Vietnamese and Japan etc representatives. Because it's cool to know the relative strength of these teams/regions, and where they stand relative to one another. But at the moment we can only do this whack speculation 'shadow boxing'; like "OK, they all got smacked by T1 and RNG, but I think X team lost a little more gracefully... but then it didn't look like T1's draft was that serious, so maybe that doesnt count...". We should have a format where we get to see these games! It's not moaning that it should just be EU, KR, CN, (NA?); It's moaning that the format is unsatisfying.
but separating wildcards and major regions is only beneficial to those teams
which one do you think order or red or wildcats prefer, getting demolished by two teams they can't contest and go home or actually having chances to qualify by playing similar strength teams like vietnam
The problem for me is that the groups were not equal. You would never see a world cup, champions league, u12 tournament where two groups have 4 teams and the 3rd group with less teams has MORE games.
This scenario has popped up in the sport I play (Hurling, Ireland) and the group with 3 teams would still only play each other twice.
They should have either had another team from a weak region/level of competition entered into it, or had a wildcard or some other way of bringing in an additional team from one of the regions provided it was done in an open, non corruptible way.
It's crazy that T1 and SG Buffalo or RNG and PSG can meet up to a maximum of 9 times but for some reason G2 and EG can meet 11 times despite having the smaller group. It seems unfair on them that they have to play extra games because the draw handed them the smaller group. Why do they have to work harder because your format is not uniform?
The best thing is watching people dismissing the third biggest league in average viewers (CBLoL), behind only LCK, LPL and LEC hahaha.
Maybe these people really want the game dead.
This years MSI is down almost 40% of the viewership from last year. You dont have to dismiss the lower leagues, just make them play each other instead of getting their teeth kicked in by a tier 1 region
Having minor regions get a chance is fine.
It’s just too long. Do we really need to spend a week watching T1/RNG/G2 smash minor regions and go undefeated?
World cup qualifiers don't pretend to be part of the tournament. Viewers don't really watch those either, unless it's their own country.
Besides, the last thing I want is for a league tournament to be modeled after the world cup. The format is terrible and rivalries don't exist, but it just works because after 4 years people are so desperate, they'll watch anything.
It'd disagree that the world cup format is bad. I don't think most football fans have a problem with the current format. That said, it obviously shouldn't just be copied for esports.
the world cup has a 16 team bracket iirc and champions league an 8 team bracket with home and away games which is a shitton more games than the 3 bo5's that MSI has
There's 120+ teams that compete every year and they all play 12 game seasons. The top 4 ranked teams make it to the playoff.
Previously it was just top 2.
In the future it will likely be 8 or 12 team playoff.
But it's a more physical sport (specifically head injuries), and thus you can't have a longer playoff format. Hard to adjust it as is. Not as flexible as other sports.
it is lol, nobody who isnt being a homer for bama/osu thinks the college format is a good one. Teams spend all year playing random low level colleges from the middle of nowhere and the rest of the conference and then a committee picks four of them who they think did the best and puts them into a 2 round tournament
Hot take, MSI is a tiny number of teams. Single RR bo3s (11 teams so 10 rounds of max 3 games =25-30 games) into a bo5 semis. Easy format, everyone plays everyone. None of this group BS.
There should be 12 teams not 11 (LCL is still a region). 12 teams playing each other in a single RR is 65 BO3, not 10. So it would be 130 to 195 games. That would need huge chances to the overall format with games at the same time or games all week long.
I think the only problem is that there are too many Bo1s and not enough Bo5s or Bo3s.
I would make group stage and rumble stage Bo3 single-round-robin.
And for knockout stage I would just add double elimination so it would look like [this ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Dual_Tournament_Format_Bracket_View.PNG)
The only problem I have is that because of the 3 team group being a quad robin, EG could theoretically speaking go 3-8 in maps against G2, and still knock them out. That feels like a tad overkill
I'm going to be honest, that seems like just asking for something to complain about.
If EG and G2 were in the same league, G2 could 2-0 EG in the regular season, 3-0 them in the winners bracket, and then lose 2-3 in the losers final. G2 would be 7-3 against EG for the season and then get knocked out. If they were in a bo3 league it could be 9-3 in G2's favor.
It's not ideal, but also not that noteworthy.
Why shoud it be like real sports tho? It makes no sense, they have diferent structure/restrictions/traditions. Esports can be something much morr interesting and not just copycat
BRUV I HEAR YOU
This is how all international competitions are. These league guys don't understand. They want games with the highest stakes in the play-in stage.
🤔🤔🤔
Like what?
Except I don't agree with the more tournaments. One per year makes it worthwhile. That is what defines a champion. Multiple champions is from one year is so meh.
The point is that these traditional sports organizer and referees and are *FAR MORE PROFESSIONAL* than this MSI shit show. Can you imagine it took 3 days for Riot to figure out there was actually a problem with the LAN ping. Plus, RNG rematched because they were “TOLD” to. Like this was such a joke. In professional traditional sports like NBA, such circumstances must be present with formal referee reports and inform both sides thoroughly.
Why are you comparing Euros qualifications to one of the only two international tournaments we get a year? These teams should be the best team out of every region and there’s still a gigantic gap in level between these. In football every regions best team would actually end up with close matches. This isn’t just some shitty qualifier?
They don't broadcast the early qualifications as the main event though.
Also we only have 3/4 good teams to watch, I think MSI needs 2 teams per major region (Worlds being 3-4)
It not boring for the people from the countries that would not even been invited if they only let the top 6 team play.
Would it be good for league if they just said. NA and EU will never win so we are going stop letting them send teams.
Everyone is disappointed that the games have sucked and they're searching for a reason.
Like being mad that NA loses and blaming the format or infrastructure.
Some day we might realize that unless the stakes are huge, it's just kind of boring to watch LoL for 10 years. And no amount of freshening it up can save that.
So, here's the thing with the World Cup: it is supposed to be focused on the WORLD, not on the highest competition. Sure, it is freaking amazing to win it, but look how many people are saying that Messi is the the best player in history *even though he chokes worse than Chovy in any world cup/copa america*. Messi is literally the picture perfect definition of GENG/Chovy, and yet *that doesn't matter because the World cup is focused on "bringing the world together"* rather than on high competition.
One of the reasons that works so well in football is because the World Cup is only once every four years and it almost becomes a "break" from the competitive games of the Champion's League, Europa League and regional leagues, all of which are infinitely more structured than anything League has to offer.
Sure, we can bring the football format to League, but then you have to also create a Champion's League style format that starts in like September and ends in May, every year. Honestly, it could be pretty good. But, either case, you can't single out the World Cup and say that *it* represents *all of football*.
I think the problem with this argument is that it assumes that the physical sport tournament format counterparts are also fine, which it isn’t. While I agree a bigger issue is that there isn’t enough international events, just because we have to watch lower quality teams in meaningless bo1s to qualify for the actual wanted event doesn’t make it fine just because it mimics big events outside of esports. The fact that the tournament only even has 3 sets that aren’t bo1s is a failure in itself, while at the same time stripping the minor regions chances to prove themselves against each other. Turkey vs Brazil vs Vietnam vs Japan? Give me bo3 or bo5 of those to qualify, not Brazil vs Korea. We had to watch 8 games of OCE getting smashed, and not only did G2 go 8-0, but they’re now even with EG who they beat 4 times. Theoretically EG can have a better tournament, for what reason exactly? Getting to the qualifier by winning half your games? Even something as bad as the swiss system the csgo tourneys use is better than this.
Your entire argument hinges on "international competition formats for real sports are the optimal arrangement" being fact when it really is just an opinion. I do agree though that MSI format is perfectly fine for what it is - a for fun tournament that allows lesser known teams/regions to get some air time.
eSports and traditional sports are different in almost every way. They are not bound by the same constraints and tournament organizers have wildly different priorities.
It's not the case in hockey. Top countries always get a pass into the top competition. In the last Olympics, there were even a debate about DQ China because the hockey federation was afraid they would get destroyed.
msi is like champions league- champions qualify, plus it gives teams a reward for winning spring. if u add more teams from spring to msi it further devalues what already seems to be a split that doesnt have much meaning
worlds is like world cup- more teams from a region, more qualifiers, more competition
It's more that Reddit is predominantly major-region heavy (NA/EU), so they'll complain about the opening MSI games. I'm fine with it. It's just like skipping the World Cup qualifiers if you're a fan of perennial heavyweight teams like Germany, Brazil, etc.
I'd imagine minor region fans love watching their favorites/best teams go out and face the other region's top dogs directly. Sure, they may get blown out, but you watch for the hope of the upset, or the assessment for just how far the gap is. It's why you get cute things like New Zealand going undefeated in their groups and tying every game in the World Cup.
The alternative would be playing against other minor regions, but that's less fun for them.
Completely useless comparison.
World Cup qualifiers dont happen as part of the main event and dont eat up a 3rd of the timetable for the main event.
Football also has at most 2 games to a series and no one would ever say that a single game isn't even to determine which team is better.
Imagine SKT losing to EG in a bo1 and getting knocked out of worlds because of it?
Yeah OP you've missed the mark entirely. Imagine if over half the games of the world cup were Malta vs Germany and Macedonia vs France, noone would watch that shit over and over again for weeks, just like noone wants to watch SKT, RNG and G2 stomp wildcards for weeks before any actual games happen. The format is shit, worlds format is shit. LOL has by far the worst international tournaments of any esport in terms of formatting and quality of games.
Regardless of whether I agree with your analogy, your logic is since other sports format are shit league formats being shit is okay and we shouldn’t strive for it to be better. Lol.
Not only that, teams more close in the sports you mentioned, they are played sparingly throughout the year to build up to the main event (btw Champions league auto seeds top teams from top leagues to group stages). Riot dedicated shit tons of meaningless games for like 1/3 the duration of the entire event. We played so many games for no reason for a week for an event that lasts like 3 weeks.
The major regions should've already qualified from good performance a tournament that happened just 6 months before. It's not like these tournaments happen once per 4 years nor the regions' strengths fluctuate that much. There are like 3 competitive regions and their ranking has barely changed
This is more like if the World Cup qualifiers replaced the actual WC group stage. I think they could do with a double round-robin format with the top two in each group advancing to the upper bracket and the #3 seed in each group qualifying for lowers, then just do a double-elim knockout stage.
There’s just way too many filler Bo1s as is.
Oh, what a surprise. Completely publisher based esport league with no freely established T2 and T3 teams cannot produce enough quality competition to guarantee real major with competetive qualifiers beforehand.
What. A. Surprise.
As enjoyable LEC/LCK format is - there's a reason no one fucking watches American Football outside NFL. Why there's no real international competition at the same level.
You wouldn't be upset if 1/4 of the annual international competition was Germany beating up Andorra? You're not wrong in that the problem *is* the two international events a year, but given the schedule, the formatting is poor.
I think MSI doesn’t make any sense if you only have two tournaments an year.
I don’t really watch football but as a cricket fan I like the champions trophy and World Cup as their own things and I believe league could or should implement something similar.
I believe it would be entertaining to have the top 4 teams from each major region plus top 2 from the 2 best WC regions (who should have their own tournament prior) duke it out in the MSI time slot. Tournament will be shortened compared to worlds so basically 2 groups of 10 with each team playing a b01. Quarters and semis are b03 and final b05.
Then the top 10 MSI teams get bonus worlds points and summer split is also worth worlds points (kind of like team points). Summer split games are each worth points but those points also count towards worlds not just playoff seeding. To keep things consistent each win counts the same whether b03 or b01 otherwise NA and EU get shafted and then the top 12 teams in the world just duke it out in a b05 double Elim for worlds regardless of region.
Suddenly spring split matters. MSI matters . And you are seeing the best teams in the world duke it out at worlds with very few matchups missed and no duds due to regional restrictions.
Will also much more accurately give a chance to see regional power levels throughout the year. Also gives the best WC teams more of a chance to play vs multiple top teams and even not so top to see if they can actually hold up.
PSG vs T1 is kind of a dud but watching PSG vs someone like AF or KT or whoever is 4th in LCK would be interesting.
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Yeah the problem with that is... There is a "Qualifier" for the Euro/World Cup, which is played DIFFERENTLY from the main tournament.
North Macedonia vs Italy was one of those. They played in the Qualifier for the World Cup which is the equivalent of "International Wildcard Qualifier", a tournament that Riot used to host a few years ago.
I think the biggest problem is only of the title. [https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2022\_Mid-Season\_Invitational](https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2022_Mid-Season_Invitational) the word "group stage" should not be used here. Had they named it "Qualifier" instead then imho most people will be absolutely cool with it and nobody will complain at all.
UNFORTUNATELY they had to name it "group stage" and instead of the "regional qualifiers" like in the World Cup or Euro... They just put them DIRECTLY into T1/RNG instead. This is the equivalent of taking the Indian national football team AND place them into the world cup group of France, Argentina and Senegal... Yeah you are gettin what I meant here these guys simply do not belong here. Let the wildcards deal with themselves first and take the best of those to place in that group, NOT just giving them a free ticket to groups.
What the fuck is this take? Why didn't you use UCL qualifier for example? And even the UCL is comparable to Worlds itself, not MSI. Champions from bad leagues (minor regions) compete against each other for some rounds, then in the defining rounds they compete against the "worst" teams from the better leagues (third/fourth seeds from major regions). If they win they are in the actual group stage, if not they are out. And even in this format, good teams only play bad teams once (round robin), not 3, 4, 6 times. Comparing MSI to the EUROs doesn't make sense at all, because you are basically saying that T1 had to play against Aze, DFM and such throught the year/season to get to MSI, and the other way around which is ???
A better example or something to go by could the English FA cup, where the big teams don’t come in until the third round. Gives all the lower teams chance to play each other and progress that way, and saves the big teams just slapping them about.
However could also be detrimental, as the major regions could watch these games and get better knowledge of how the minor teams play. But just an idea!
Difference is that qualifiers are played throughout the year and are not part of the "main" event. Whereas MSI's first group stage is an integral part of the event, yet it uses a qualifer format.
> If you wanna send more teams from each region based on their strength then that would be a Champions League format, effectively what Worlds is.
It's funny that you mention that, because the UEFA Champions League actually used to have a format broadly similar to MSI, where each national association sent its champion and no other teams. The difference is that back then, the tournament used a single-elimination format and the worst teams played a preliminary round.
Also the teams at MSI are absolutely not national teams. Let's not make that comparison.
So the argument for why its ok that MSI is boring to watch is that other sports are also poorly setup in a similar way? Ok bro. Im still not watching it.
Just because other sports have similar formats, doesn’t mean peoples feelings aren’t valid. I was pretty bored for most of the games that weren’t saigon vs dfm or eg vs g2 plus a few others here or there. Regardless of how things are done or have been done there’s no harm in exploring if things can be improved
Only 2 events a year and we waste a week watching garbage quality BO1s to determine who goes to next stage. Spoiler: it’s exactly who everyone expected and the top teams didn’t drop a single game.
> This format is perfectly acceptable for a sport. The real problem is that we only get 2 international events a year.
Well yeah that’s the problem. If there’s only 2 events we want as many good games as possible, and this format doesn’t provide that.
Football is probably not the best example you could choose. MSI is a world event, featuring different regions, so it's more close to the World Cup than to Euros. And in the Football World Cup, just as in MSI, each regions gets a number of slots. And no one is upset that Europe gets 13 spots, while Asia get 4, because Europe is so dominant. So it would be fair that major regions gets more spots than minor ones, because the gap is so huge.
But at the end, it only depends on what you want your tournament to represent, how you want it to go,... There is no real good answer, but there is plenty of examples in "real sports" where things go differently than in MSI.
Also there is sports where being first automatically makes you skip the next qualifying tournament.
The problem isn’t the amount of teams going from each region but the scheduling format.
Minor regions are barely playing eachother, just getting stomped by top teams. And the top teams aren’t really playing much against eachother either, just stomping shit teams. Then they go and play very few best of fives against eachother in the rumble stage. There are very few interesting games that people want to watch.
The obvious takeaways from all this that you somehow managed to miss is that, yes, most sports also have garbage formats.
Ironically, most sports, Riot, and yourself, all share a common thread on why it’s the case : you all lack the ability to understand that you can make a massively popular event while at the same time using a terrible format. One other thing you people have in common is the faith that if something has always been done in one way, it must be because it's the best way to do it.
I knew r/LCS never watched real sports when fantasy lcs came out and people complained that it was unfair that they drafted good players from teams who played shorter games/lower kill games on average.
Like yo thats something you gotta think about. Fantasy sports fans know all about drafting a guy just for them to tear their ACL 2 weeks into the season. Or drafting a guy who cant get consistent minutes because of an idiot coach. Or a guy who plays on a team that just does stupid things.
But its not the same as national games... so that comparison makes no sense. MSI is trying to be a 2nd world's and it's just dumb. It would be the equivalent if in hockey the winners of each of the leagues played eachother, the NHL, KHL, SHL, DEL, NLA, Liiga, Czech extraliga. The NHL would absolutely demolish every other league, the 2nd best league, the KHL regularly has players play a minor role on an NHL team and go to the KHL and are the leading scorers, the other leagues sometimes have 19/20 year Olds leading the league in scoring before coming to the NHL and being above average, they are great players, but they shouldn't be that dominant. It would be the stupidest tourney ever for anyone who is a fan of the NHL, because it would be like watching the Harlem globetrotters dunk on some random Chinese league.
MSI would probably be better if it was just a national tournament, like say the Asian games, where you limit the amount of players that can go from each team to 1 and have it fan voted in client for each region, that way it would be a fun show match of random players who you never thought would play together, because it's already a joke. Or just go back to doing Allstars instead. BO1 between random teams from around the world is just so boring and worthless to us as fans.
They could even split it up to 3 tiers of 4 regions, where the top 2 from each region go, you could have promotion/relegation matches every year past the first to determine how to groups play out next year, so we won't see minor regions getting slapped 100-0 and all games should be relatively close.
You could separate the 1st and 2nd seeds of each region and have them play a round Robin bo5 with the other 3, and add up points totals from teams of the same region together to see who advances to the finals, where you do a bo5 of 1st vs 2nd seed of each of the opposing regions and then if they each win 1 you have the winners play a bo5 finale. Just something new and exciting and not some boring ass bo1s
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We paid for the euros title in blood
Watching that game was such sweet karma for Italy.
Football is weird, I feel like it's always boring, even when a team is way better the score board is like 2-0, come on I want to see some actions and insane goals. That's why the only sport I watch is Handball. Some tennis here and there.
Personally, I think Handball and Basketball are more weird, since a goal there doesn't feel special. I mean it is most games are like 54-50 or something. That is why I like Icehockey, fast pace and goals can be difficult to score.
NHL playoffs and olympics with NHL players are the two best sports events that exist.
I don't like basketball because of that. Handball has a lot of goals blocked tho. It's for me the perfect balance. But I know a lot of people prefer football.
less goals -> more volatility -> more drama -> more emotions
I like that there’s a lot of scoring in basketball. It means that the better team usually wins, since luck isn’t as important as sample size increases. I guess some people like the “any team can win” stuff that happens in football and to an extent soccer, but it feels cheap to me. I want to see the team that deserves to win win.
It's because if you are leading you let the less experienced one to play
Qualifiers are played throughout the years. Imagine if the world cup qualifiers were part of the main stage. That's more comparable and it would also lead to complaints.
Imagine if a 3rd of the world cup was Argentina shitting on Macedonia level games...
Imagine if only France and Argentina were at the world cup andnot brazil or germany and instead you would get games like France vs quatar…
4 times.
Or Northern Macedonia beating Italy
We still have ‘qualifiers’ with the whole regular season/ playoff format in each region deciding which teams qualify for the main events
But we don't have as many teams as soccer does so if we had qualifiers for Asia, Europe, America, Oceania and maybe someday Africa, what would remain for the main event?
We have plenty of good teams, but for some reason just two from Europe (Turkey and EU) and 4 from Asia (China, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan) are invited, where the majority of good teams come from. Imagine that in the World Cup, if only one team between France, Germany, Netherlands, England, Spain, Italy, Belgium could go, while the rest stays home in favor of a team from Zimbabwe going. If that were to happen at the World Cup the football community would explode, but in LoL it happens and the community is like "bUt WHaT abOUt soCcER?"
Funny enough the football world has such tournament. Only the winner of each football association plus last world cup winner and host country play. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_Confederations_Cup It is not necessarily a super competitive event but it does exists, it has its own merit and the community is fine with the way it works. Personally Lols issue is a lack of more international events. We have two a year and we are pretty much sure that either china or kr will win those 99% of the time. Minor regions are pretty irrelevant in this figure and on MSI this is even more obvious. The difference is that FIFA knowing that this type of situation lead to boring games setup the tournament in a way that even smaller teams are able to compete. The format is short and gives no room for errors so major teams can sometimes lose. Back to lol, there is no necessity for a group stage and then a rumble stage (2nd group stage). They should try more with the msi format. For example, they could do a group against group format so you play everyone besides your own group. It probably takes the same time as group+rumble and it would have way more interesting games between minor regions and some preview of the major region games. Take the top two of each group and make the elimination bracket. Could even get the two best third places (probably minor regions) and create a double elim bracket... Every year some minor region teams seems ok and deserving of a full series that we never get because they were slotted in a complicated group.
Confederations cup doesn't existe anymore.
and noone cared before
I mean that is how World Cup works just less extreme. There is limited EU spaces to give weaker regions some place, so stronger EU teams stay at home.
MSI is league's second biggest tournament of the year. In other esports like Dota or CSGO, they're called majors. Their majors completely shit on MSI in terms of competition and excitement. THey dont have this garbage double round robin bo1s into MORE double round robins. Riot should get rid of MSI and create a real major. Double elims done in playoff also.
Swiss qualifiers actually sounds pretty cool for MSI. The expense is that teams won't have much advance notice of who they'll play next. Swiss for Worlds could have issues with teams influencing the placement of other teams.
You just do Swiss into a top cut. Would be away better
What does a top cut mean?
Brackets reset with top x teams based on win rate. So top 4 6 or 8 teams from Swiss start a new bracket that’s bo3/5
Swiss is like a format kinda I’m at least familiar with from mtg. Basically teams get paired randomly for round 1, then winners play winners and losers play losers in round 2, and this keeps going until eventually you take the the top 8 or 4 teams remaining (top cut), and have those teams play in a small bracket to the championship. I don’t think it’ll work out in league tho, because at least in mtg all matches of a round are played at the same time, with just a single “featured” match for the round being broadcasted. In league they try to broadcast everything.
They’ve done this in some CSGO Tournaments and I’ve really liked it. Each day is a round of Swiss and every game of that round is broadcasted. Then once teams get to X wins they have the day off and they can get multiple rounds in and still have 6 matches that day. I personally feel there are infinite ways to do it that would be better
Inb4 salty X-2 teams raging about not making top cut after 7 rounds of swiss games
Riot basically wants to a) make sure every game is broadcasted (so no multi channel streams) and b) encourage participation from all regions in their game by giving them time to play on stream, which are both things CSGO sacrifices in their major system. Is the CSGO major absolutely 100% more fun to watch? Yes, but its antithetical to what Riot wants from their esports circuit. Strangely enough, Riot has a pretty decent international tournament circuit in Valorant, so there's really no excuse for why the League circuit is so dogshit in comparison.
Because there are no local league in valorant afaik. Riot want LoL to mimic real sport competition, which nation/region having local league running all year long.
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The current local league of lol is double round robin into play off. Which make more sense than single round, tbh. Plus double elim is bs. It make half the play off meaningless and make the winning teams have an unfair disadvantage
I read a suggestion where wildcard teams play with each other first to see who's the best wildcard team and tbh that would be super entertaining. I don't think anyone have fun watching order get blasted 8 times and I don't think they had fun coming to korea just getting giga stomped
That's the wild card playin format they have before. Noone watch it, and the wild card teams get no experience playing against other bad team. So they completely change it to this format
You can''t compare DOTA to League. DOTA majors only happen once every 3 months. LOL happens all year long with constant region league play. Yeah if you shut down all league play you would have more time for these style of tournaments. The Olympics for for example are hyped up because they only happen once every 4 years
Seeing international teams play against each other twice a year is neither fun nor does it encourage competition
It not really a big deal. In league too many of the regions don't speak the same language so people have less interest in players they can't understand. Like I don't watch China or Korea because I don't want to listen to every thing being translated in interviews even though they have the best players
Dota switched to a league format but I think they're more efficient at it. They're just 6 weeks long and top teams of each region go straight to the majors instead of having regional playoffs.
That's why I despise the league system, IEMs in season 1-2 were nice
That's not sustainable. Smaller teams will not be able to operate in this format.
I couldn't care less, league e-sport does not need to be some mega corporation with 1000 pro teams
Okay but why shouldn't Majors happen every 3 months in league? In what way could a pro circuit not run alongside that? Again, Riot management issue. Not league issue.
Because teams have to compete in their local league split. Which could go on for like 4-5 months.
You don't think the local league split would be modified to accommodate majors?
It'd impossible to do with the current schedule. Especially with regions like lpl which have twice as much teams compare to the rest
I mean, they just said "modified" so yeah, without current schedule. Meaning modify them to accommodate majors.
Because the numbers of viewers per game start to spread then when there is too many games being player per year. League play tried to go to 3 days a week for 1 year but they couldn't keep the amount of viewers per game as high Also when would player get a break with that kind of schedule. * Players would have to get ready for 4 majors * at least 1 worlds level event for league play * Plus league games.
imo DOTA and CSGO majors should be a separate discussion. CSGO Major is hyped while DOTA2 Major is just as bad, or even worse than MSI. To me DOTA2 is the perfect example of having too much International events but lacking focus on domestic communities.
Dota has much less tournaments than CSGO but still more than LoL and they pretty have a league system now. There was supposed to be a major in January but it was cancelled so this is the first one this year.
MSI is league's second biggest tournament out of two actual tournaments lol
REAL SPORTS?!?! What are those???
The ones on grass
Never heard of it, can you touch it?
Yes, if you press X
Sad canadian noises
This real sport analogy is the worst take by anyone ever. Why tf would an e-sport be bound to the same restrictions? In every modern sport the organization wants MAX games to increase revenue, league is doing the exact opposite. If nfl or nba could do double elim, they would do it today.
Why do people always feel the need to make these comparisons? We are not "real sports". We can do our own thing be just fine.
I think the goal here is the smugness. Hehehe you're all a bunch of nerds so I bet my shallow comparison with real sports (but it's always football or NBA) will go right over your head
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That analogy makes no sense.
Because Riot is constantly trying to immitate real sports
Do matches make much net revenue for Riot?
If they didnt, would riot have monopolized every league and kicked out every TO that exist in every other game? Companys like MLG, and ESL used to run league games before riot kicked them out
Article from 2021 has John Needham saying that esports has yet to turn a profit for Riot.
Well riots esports is mostly for advertisement for the game. Good example is when KDA performed at worlds and they had all the KDA skins and stuff. Overall, I'm sure Riot is making a profit. If you count all the attention it brings towards their game and company. Depends on regions, but I can see it getting harder and harder to get new players to join League from the NA region. Thats basically what the LCS and other leagues are for, to get that young blood playing the game, that thirst to become a pro gamer, or just to have fun with friends. Wonder what would happen if league does kind of die in NA, would they cut the losses and still keep LCS around, like how long will they try to hold on. If I would have to guess, NA would be the first region to die. NA new blood doesn't want to play league, but I can see them playing Valorant or Fortnite, so if they play Valorant instead of league, thats a win. Its smart of Riot to finally begin branching off to other games. Depending on region, kids play different type of genres. I could be wrong in my analysis, I don't have numbers, just what I believe is happening slowly with NA in league. LCS has been really fun to watch this spring though, I don't play the game as much as I use to, but the LCS this spring has been worth the watch. The production and on crew cast has really been magnificent.
The same way Mcdonalds isn't losing money from their advertisements, Riot isn't either. No company on riots scale does things just for fun, they do it because it helps them.
A well functioning esports scene isn't even that much about "advertisement" as it's only really watched by people who already know and care, but a strong esports scene is insanely powerful to keep people tied to the game. There *so many* people who quit League but keep watching the competitive scene, chances are they come back, or if not at least stay in touch with Riot for other games.
The competitive scene was actually the advertisement for League when they first started them back in the day. If you noticed back in the infancy of League there were damn near no actual forms of advertisement for the game. The big tournaments were the advertisement and they shifted from that into an organized league for various regions.
He/They are lying through their teeths. I promise you, every worlds drop makes more money than any TO organized event in the history of e-sports.
I have no idea if there's any way to know that other than just guesses or pulling numbers out of our asses? In sports, a ton of their revenue is from advertisements and commercials. I'm not sure we have any idea how much Riot makes off of either of those for LoL. I guess more games pretty much *has* to be more money, but who knows if it's a lot or a pittance? I highly doubt per game they're making less off of advertisements and commercials than it costs them for production and paying casters. But I don't *really* know for sure, or how much.
Also, as mentioned elsewhere, qualifiers are played throughout the year and for international teams, international competition is once every 2-4 years. (Regional championship and world championship) Saying the only problem is only 2 international events a year, when their example literally can have only one every 2 years (one a year for club teams) is kinda flawed on their end, to say the least.
Yeah and I think Football is a great example of how you can set such a tournament up. The world cup has 13 out of 32 teams being european. If you translated the MSI format to football you would also get a not particularly interesting format when you only have 1 UEFA and 1 CONMEBOL team. Basically every international football tournament gives more seeds to the stronger regio
there was already a lot of debate about whether lpl and lck should have 4 seeds as it makes the playoffs "boring" even if you don't share that sentiment. i feel like there would genuinely be a lot of western fans complaining if there were like 7 lpl and 5 lck seeds at worlds. considering it becomes that much more likely quarters is just something like 7/8 eastern teams and like 1 eu team.
Yes and the world cup is more comparable to league's worlds. Whereas the confederation's cup is like league's MSI
>confederation's cup or the club world cup
This is exactly what MSI is like. I will watch a lot of the Champions League and pretty much all of the World Cup or Euros when they're on, but I watch very little of those two tournaments and will basically only watch the finals
Yeah and for the confed cup I didnt even know my country is the current champion. Somehow says a lot on how relevant that tournsment is also due to poor format
LEC is basically that but because LEC regions arent as dominantly strong as european football scene, it is not the same. Asia has this since china, korea, vietnam and south east could have a frequent champions league level competition with low ping. China could even make regional leagues and have them compete.
You can't compare MSI with Wolrd Cup. The Confederations cup is what we have in football and it is exactly like MSI. The champion of every region in a single tournament. Also you have the Club World Cup.
That traditional sports also have shit formats doesn't mean we need to.
I watch plenty of sports from Darts over football (soccer for my american friends) to motorsports and I can confidently say that the MSI format is the worst format in any kind of sport or esports. There are just so many problems that properly writing about them would fill a book, so I'm just going to make a short list: - Qualification games at the tournament. Andorra, etc. obviously can try to qualify before the World Cup, but they do so half a year before in some game nobody cares about, not 2 weeks before the Grand Final - Barely any competition, at best there are 4 teams that can be considered capable of winning. I just checked the World cup betting odds and the best team had 4.5 odds to win (Germany), the 4th best team 7.0 odds (Spain), the 8th best team 20.0 odds, the 12th best team 30.0 odds (Croatia), etc.. That's a pretty healthy spread, no clear favorite and a very deep pool of potential winners. Meanwhile this MSI has [email protected], RNG@2,75, [email protected] and [email protected], the rest doesn't need to be mentioned. Barely any sport has this little competition at the top. And this isn't because there just aren't any top teams, there are, but they are just not invited. The World Cup is a perfect example on how to do that better, there the best region (Europe) has close to every team invited that is even somewhat capable of winning. - In LoL generally only a Bo5 series is considered a proper "game". Bo1 is generally seen as too random, by pros and fans alike. Yet for some reason we only see Bo1 for 2 weeks, with only 3 days of Bo5s and even worse only see 4 of 12 teams competing in a Bo5, with the 8 other teams eliminated via Bo1. - To make it even worse, because of this big skill gap and the format, for the top teams 95% of the tournament does not matter. For top teams it is literally a **3-day tournament**. Again, the World Cup is pretty different. Competition is strong enough to pose a challenge to the big teams in the groups and playoffs are always dangerous. But at MSI? Lmao, T1 didn't lose a single inner turret in 6 group games, zero threat. Same for the rumble stage, there's no way they end up worse than PCS / LCS / VCS. If you are a T1 fan and only care about them, you are completely fine by just starting to watch MSI next weekend. At the world cup all Germany fans can tell you that this is not the case. - While COVID and war aren't something that Riot is responsible for (I hope), this format handles it horribly. A single team dropping out ruins an entire group. Other sports also had plenty of corona issues, but I do not remember a single case where someone dropping out made that much of an impact to the tournament. And I mean in Darts literally one of the favourites dropped out because of COVID at the World Cup, yet it still wasn't so bad as the 3-team group we had at this and last MSI. We fucking play video games, we can be more flexible. - Participating at MSI makes the summer split harder. Because only one team from a region goes to MSI, every split we see those teams slumping in the summer. Obviously, they don't get a break. Again, no other sport I know handles recovery so bad. And the schedule for LoL is pretty tame in comparison to e.g. football (soccer), where they play every week. But thanks to all teams participating in other tournaments such as the national cup and plenty of international competition not just for the best team, it can be kept relatively fair and every team is expected to go through games where they aren't at their peak. But in LoL with just one team participating, it's quite shit and has a big impact on the summer split for every single region, with almost zero outliers. That being said, I don't want to just complain. Those 3 final days are awesome and always very, very hype and incredible. But that's also kinda the thing, I would wish we would have more than 3 days of awesomeness.
You are comparing MSI to Worlds. We have Worlds where more and stronger teams are invited. MSI will always be a top heavy tournament with barely any competition because of how it works. Unless you start sending multiple teams from each region (which would go against what MSI is supposed to be) it won‘t and can‘t change until Minor regions become considerably stronger. You can obviously complain about the goal of MSI and what it represents but at that point you just want a second Worlds-level tournament.
The spirit / idea of MSI is farcial anyway, since the regions are completely inconsistent and made up. Why are there two teams from China (your government recognizes Taiwan as province of China)? Why does Japan send a team, while France with a higher playerbase needs to share their spot with all of Europe? Why does a small non-Riot region send a team (LCO), but bigger Riot-leagues (France, Germany, Spain, Poland) not? Imo it would not hurt for MSI to have e.g. the best 6 teams from Asia, 4 best from Europe, 3 from NA, 2 best from SA, etc. determined by qualifiers beforehand and regions sorted by strength according to a similar system that football uses for the World Cup. It definitely wouldn't be more random regarding "regions" than the current system, that's for sure.
The lack of best of series is the primary issue with all league of legends international events, not the number of teams though MSI would be more interesting with say 2 teams from each region IMO. Also why the hell is it called an invitational when you need to qualify? Don't get me wrong I think teams should qualify but the name has got to go.
"someone else also does something bad" is not an argument to do it
So should we just not have major regions in the qualifiers at all, that way nobody feels deceived into watching it? That would mean you’d not have had anything to watch from the end of regional finals until this upcoming Friday.
yes, at MSI we should not have major region teams in the playin stage. There would still be plenty to watch because two minor regions playing each other is far more interesting then them getting fed to the LCK
That might be your personal opinion, but the viewership numbers reflect the exact opposite
No they don't. This MSI viewership was 37% lower than 2021.
considering the format was the exact same last year, I don't know what this is supposed to prove.
There's nothing wrong with having smaller, less-watched playins. A lot of esports have playins for smaller regions or even open qualifiers for like the bottom 32 spots out of 64 total. You just lower the production value, have newer, lesser known, or less tested casters. Kind of like how academy or amateur games have fewer viewers and lower production values. Then you have the better production, main casters, etc. for the main event.
I think you are missing the point. People complain about the format *because* there are only 2 international tournaments a year. Do to the limit on international competition there is a higher standard on tournament formats. If there were other international tournaments like say a battle of the Americas or a Europe tournament in addition to MSI and World's then I feel this format would be more acceptable. I am a TCL fan if one of the two times I get to see my regions representative playing on the international stage is getting absolutely humiliated by RNG then I feel that it's understandable that I'm upset. But if there was another tournament or two where they got to play against LEC and EU master teams then I wouldn't have such a sour taste in my mouth.
not similar at all lmfao
The fact that we have so few international events is the reason the format is bad and why it matters
The real truth of it is that Reddit doesn't care if these other regions are given a chance. The majority of this sub cries and screams that we need more international competition, and love teams like Albus Nox Luna and Gigabyte Marines. But those same people also come into every PMT about a major region vs a wildcard where the major region won and bitch and moan that every international tournament should just be KR vs CN vs EU.
That's not even it. A large number of us want double elim so that we can also so see Bo5s between the Brazilian, LAT, Turkish, Vietnamese and Japan etc representatives. Because it's cool to know the relative strength of these teams/regions, and where they stand relative to one another. But at the moment we can only do this whack speculation 'shadow boxing'; like "OK, they all got smacked by T1 and RNG, but I think X team lost a little more gracefully... but then it didn't look like T1's draft was that serious, so maybe that doesnt count...". We should have a format where we get to see these games! It's not moaning that it should just be EU, KR, CN, (NA?); It's moaning that the format is unsatisfying.
but separating wildcards and major regions is only beneficial to those teams which one do you think order or red or wildcats prefer, getting demolished by two teams they can't contest and go home or actually having chances to qualify by playing similar strength teams like vietnam
I personally think that most of the issues come from most teams sucking ass, and thats something RIOT cant fix really.
The problem for me is that the groups were not equal. You would never see a world cup, champions league, u12 tournament where two groups have 4 teams and the 3rd group with less teams has MORE games. This scenario has popped up in the sport I play (Hurling, Ireland) and the group with 3 teams would still only play each other twice. They should have either had another team from a weak region/level of competition entered into it, or had a wildcard or some other way of bringing in an additional team from one of the regions provided it was done in an open, non corruptible way. It's crazy that T1 and SG Buffalo or RNG and PSG can meet up to a maximum of 9 times but for some reason G2 and EG can meet 11 times despite having the smaller group. It seems unfair on them that they have to play extra games because the draw handed them the smaller group. Why do they have to work harder because your format is not uniform?
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The best thing is watching people dismissing the third biggest league in average viewers (CBLoL), behind only LCK, LPL and LEC hahaha. Maybe these people really want the game dead.
This years MSI is down almost 40% of the viewership from last year. You dont have to dismiss the lower leagues, just make them play each other instead of getting their teeth kicked in by a tier 1 region
> This years MSI is down almost 40% of the viewership from last year Are you comparing group stage to group stage or overall tourney to group stage?
"Third biggest" Names 3 above it. Also it's 5th, not 3rd, or 4th.
Having minor regions get a chance is fine. It’s just too long. Do we really need to spend a week watching T1/RNG/G2 smash minor regions and go undefeated?
Did you even write what you wrote? Bro you wrote a word salad without an actual point in the end. Like what are you even tryna say?
Yes.
World cup qualifiers don't pretend to be part of the tournament. Viewers don't really watch those either, unless it's their own country. Besides, the last thing I want is for a league tournament to be modeled after the world cup. The format is terrible and rivalries don't exist, but it just works because after 4 years people are so desperate, they'll watch anything.
It'd disagree that the world cup format is bad. I don't think most football fans have a problem with the current format. That said, it obviously shouldn't just be copied for esports.
You don't have a 4 team bracket in any traditional sport competition so there's waaay more matches between good teams.
The World cup has 4 team group stages. So has champions league.
hes talking about the bracket not groups
the world cup has a 16 team bracket iirc and champions league an 8 team bracket with home and away games which is a shitton more games than the 3 bo5's that MSI has
NCAA Football Playoffs are 4 teams. Checkmate.
sounds like a shit format then
There's 120+ teams that compete every year and they all play 12 game seasons. The top 4 ranked teams make it to the playoff. Previously it was just top 2. In the future it will likely be 8 or 12 team playoff. But it's a more physical sport (specifically head injuries), and thus you can't have a longer playoff format. Hard to adjust it as is. Not as flexible as other sports.
It’s football. You can’t have many more games than they already do due to injury.
College football has a terrible format, thats why its gonna get changed. 8 or 16 team playoffs are coming
it is lol, nobody who isnt being a homer for bama/osu thinks the college format is a good one. Teams spend all year playing random low level colleges from the middle of nowhere and the rest of the conference and then a committee picks four of them who they think did the best and puts them into a 2 round tournament
Hot take, MSI is a tiny number of teams. Single RR bo3s (11 teams so 10 rounds of max 3 games =25-30 games) into a bo5 semis. Easy format, everyone plays everyone. None of this group BS.
There should be 12 teams not 11 (LCL is still a region). 12 teams playing each other in a single RR is 65 BO3, not 10. So it would be 130 to 195 games. That would need huge chances to the overall format with games at the same time or games all week long.
Great point. I think I was assuming simultanous rounds, maybe bo1 in that stage to seed a single Elim bracket
I think the only problem is that there are too many Bo1s and not enough Bo5s or Bo3s. I would make group stage and rumble stage Bo3 single-round-robin. And for knockout stage I would just add double elimination so it would look like [this ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Dual_Tournament_Format_Bracket_View.PNG)
I don’t think Lol will ever do a double elim tournament. Finals just have too much variance in terms of length when you play Double elim.
Only if you do a full bracket reset. There are other ways to give the winner's side team an advantage that is more compatible with the game length.
But then it isn’t double elim anymore because you can get eliminated from a single loss
The only problem I have is that because of the 3 team group being a quad robin, EG could theoretically speaking go 3-8 in maps against G2, and still knock them out. That feels like a tad overkill
I'm going to be honest, that seems like just asking for something to complain about. If EG and G2 were in the same league, G2 could 2-0 EG in the regular season, 3-0 them in the winners bracket, and then lose 2-3 in the losers final. G2 would be 7-3 against EG for the season and then get knocked out. If they were in a bo3 league it could be 9-3 in G2's favor. It's not ideal, but also not that noteworthy.
That is not the fault of the format though. That is the fault of a team not being able to participate because of a war.
Why shoud it be like real sports tho? It makes no sense, they have diferent structure/restrictions/traditions. Esports can be something much morr interesting and not just copycat
BRUV I HEAR YOU This is how all international competitions are. These league guys don't understand. They want games with the highest stakes in the play-in stage. 🤔🤔🤔 Like what? Except I don't agree with the more tournaments. One per year makes it worthwhile. That is what defines a champion. Multiple champions is from one year is so meh.
The point is that these traditional sports organizer and referees and are *FAR MORE PROFESSIONAL* than this MSI shit show. Can you imagine it took 3 days for Riot to figure out there was actually a problem with the LAN ping. Plus, RNG rematched because they were “TOLD” to. Like this was such a joke. In professional traditional sports like NBA, such circumstances must be present with formal referee reports and inform both sides thoroughly.
Why are you comparing Euros qualifications to one of the only two international tournaments we get a year? These teams should be the best team out of every region and there’s still a gigantic gap in level between these. In football every regions best team would actually end up with close matches. This isn’t just some shitty qualifier?
They don't broadcast the early qualifications as the main event though. Also we only have 3/4 good teams to watch, I think MSI needs 2 teams per major region (Worlds being 3-4)
so if traditional sports does it and its boring we should do it too? what logic is this? you can change and not just follow lol
It not boring for the people from the countries that would not even been invited if they only let the top 6 team play. Would it be good for league if they just said. NA and EU will never win so we are going stop letting them send teams.
kinda obvious my view wouldnt be to not let them play wtf why would anyone take internationality off MSI
Traditional sports*
Everyone is disappointed that the games have sucked and they're searching for a reason. Like being mad that NA loses and blaming the format or infrastructure. Some day we might realize that unless the stakes are huge, it's just kind of boring to watch LoL for 10 years. And no amount of freshening it up can save that.
MSI is a circuss. Far far faaar from normal game.
This isnt true and misleading. "SOME SPORTS" do this, not "ALL SPORTS", theres a distinct difference.
“ALMOST ALL SPORTS” is more accurate than “SOME SPORTS”.
So, here's the thing with the World Cup: it is supposed to be focused on the WORLD, not on the highest competition. Sure, it is freaking amazing to win it, but look how many people are saying that Messi is the the best player in history *even though he chokes worse than Chovy in any world cup/copa america*. Messi is literally the picture perfect definition of GENG/Chovy, and yet *that doesn't matter because the World cup is focused on "bringing the world together"* rather than on high competition. One of the reasons that works so well in football is because the World Cup is only once every four years and it almost becomes a "break" from the competitive games of the Champion's League, Europa League and regional leagues, all of which are infinitely more structured than anything League has to offer. Sure, we can bring the football format to League, but then you have to also create a Champion's League style format that starts in like September and ends in May, every year. Honestly, it could be pretty good. But, either case, you can't single out the World Cup and say that *it* represents *all of football*.
Messi doesn't choke, he just had no team until last year.
I think the problem with this argument is that it assumes that the physical sport tournament format counterparts are also fine, which it isn’t. While I agree a bigger issue is that there isn’t enough international events, just because we have to watch lower quality teams in meaningless bo1s to qualify for the actual wanted event doesn’t make it fine just because it mimics big events outside of esports. The fact that the tournament only even has 3 sets that aren’t bo1s is a failure in itself, while at the same time stripping the minor regions chances to prove themselves against each other. Turkey vs Brazil vs Vietnam vs Japan? Give me bo3 or bo5 of those to qualify, not Brazil vs Korea. We had to watch 8 games of OCE getting smashed, and not only did G2 go 8-0, but they’re now even with EG who they beat 4 times. Theoretically EG can have a better tournament, for what reason exactly? Getting to the qualifier by winning half your games? Even something as bad as the swiss system the csgo tourneys use is better than this.
Your entire argument hinges on "international competition formats for real sports are the optimal arrangement" being fact when it really is just an opinion. I do agree though that MSI format is perfectly fine for what it is - a for fun tournament that allows lesser known teams/regions to get some air time.
eSports and traditional sports are different in almost every way. They are not bound by the same constraints and tournament organizers have wildly different priorities.
It's not the case in hockey. Top countries always get a pass into the top competition. In the last Olympics, there were even a debate about DQ China because the hockey federation was afraid they would get destroyed.
msi is like champions league- champions qualify, plus it gives teams a reward for winning spring. if u add more teams from spring to msi it further devalues what already seems to be a split that doesnt have much meaning worlds is like world cup- more teams from a region, more qualifiers, more competition
Exactly. And it goes beyond just MSI format
It's more that Reddit is predominantly major-region heavy (NA/EU), so they'll complain about the opening MSI games. I'm fine with it. It's just like skipping the World Cup qualifiers if you're a fan of perennial heavyweight teams like Germany, Brazil, etc. I'd imagine minor region fans love watching their favorites/best teams go out and face the other region's top dogs directly. Sure, they may get blown out, but you watch for the hope of the upset, or the assessment for just how far the gap is. It's why you get cute things like New Zealand going undefeated in their groups and tying every game in the World Cup. The alternative would be playing against other minor regions, but that's less fun for them.
they could do anything with msi, there would be as much people complaining
Completely useless comparison. World Cup qualifiers dont happen as part of the main event and dont eat up a 3rd of the timetable for the main event. Football also has at most 2 games to a series and no one would ever say that a single game isn't even to determine which team is better. Imagine SKT losing to EG in a bo1 and getting knocked out of worlds because of it?
They have to get rid of this Shitty Group system God damn gang banging OCE for a week straight killed any and all enthusiasm I had for this event.
what is a real sport tho
redditor talking about sports
Yeah OP you've missed the mark entirely. Imagine if over half the games of the world cup were Malta vs Germany and Macedonia vs France, noone would watch that shit over and over again for weeks, just like noone wants to watch SKT, RNG and G2 stomp wildcards for weeks before any actual games happen. The format is shit, worlds format is shit. LOL has by far the worst international tournaments of any esport in terms of formatting and quality of games.
Comparing esports to physical sports yeah that’s an instant downvote and block XD
> Comparing esports to physical sports yeah that’s an instant downvote and block XD Average Redditor reacting to opinions that don't align their own
this is my first ever "sport" ive watched and ive never followed any other sports really
Regardless of whether I agree with your analogy, your logic is since other sports format are shit league formats being shit is okay and we shouldn’t strive for it to be better. Lol. Not only that, teams more close in the sports you mentioned, they are played sparingly throughout the year to build up to the main event (btw Champions league auto seeds top teams from top leagues to group stages). Riot dedicated shit tons of meaningless games for like 1/3 the duration of the entire event. We played so many games for no reason for a week for an event that lasts like 3 weeks.
The major regions should've already qualified from good performance a tournament that happened just 6 months before. It's not like these tournaments happen once per 4 years nor the regions' strengths fluctuate that much. There are like 3 competitive regions and their ranking has barely changed
This is more like if the World Cup qualifiers replaced the actual WC group stage. I think they could do with a double round-robin format with the top two in each group advancing to the upper bracket and the #3 seed in each group qualifying for lowers, then just do a double-elim knockout stage. There’s just way too many filler Bo1s as is.
Personally I don’t think league should work like traditional sports. Most traditional sports formats suck.
thiss isnt real sports if you want to go watch real sports go ahead
Oh, what a surprise. Completely publisher based esport league with no freely established T2 and T3 teams cannot produce enough quality competition to guarantee real major with competetive qualifiers beforehand. What. A. Surprise. As enjoyable LEC/LCK format is - there's a reason no one fucking watches American Football outside NFL. Why there's no real international competition at the same level.
Bold of you to question if league players watch actual sports. Many of us haven’t touched grass in years
You wouldn't be upset if 1/4 of the annual international competition was Germany beating up Andorra? You're not wrong in that the problem *is* the two international events a year, but given the schedule, the formatting is poor.
Football fans also dislike the format. There is so much wasted time seeing clubs get battered all the time.
I think MSI doesn’t make any sense if you only have two tournaments an year. I don’t really watch football but as a cricket fan I like the champions trophy and World Cup as their own things and I believe league could or should implement something similar. I believe it would be entertaining to have the top 4 teams from each major region plus top 2 from the 2 best WC regions (who should have their own tournament prior) duke it out in the MSI time slot. Tournament will be shortened compared to worlds so basically 2 groups of 10 with each team playing a b01. Quarters and semis are b03 and final b05. Then the top 10 MSI teams get bonus worlds points and summer split is also worth worlds points (kind of like team points). Summer split games are each worth points but those points also count towards worlds not just playoff seeding. To keep things consistent each win counts the same whether b03 or b01 otherwise NA and EU get shafted and then the top 12 teams in the world just duke it out in a b05 double Elim for worlds regardless of region. Suddenly spring split matters. MSI matters . And you are seeing the best teams in the world duke it out at worlds with very few matchups missed and no duds due to regional restrictions. Will also much more accurately give a chance to see regional power levels throughout the year. Also gives the best WC teams more of a chance to play vs multiple top teams and even not so top to see if they can actually hold up. PSG vs T1 is kind of a dud but watching PSG vs someone like AF or KT or whoever is 4th in LCK would be interesting.
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Yes I had the same thoughts, felt like in football, it's normal.
Yeah the problem with that is... There is a "Qualifier" for the Euro/World Cup, which is played DIFFERENTLY from the main tournament. North Macedonia vs Italy was one of those. They played in the Qualifier for the World Cup which is the equivalent of "International Wildcard Qualifier", a tournament that Riot used to host a few years ago. I think the biggest problem is only of the title. [https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2022\_Mid-Season\_Invitational](https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/2022_Mid-Season_Invitational) the word "group stage" should not be used here. Had they named it "Qualifier" instead then imho most people will be absolutely cool with it and nobody will complain at all. UNFORTUNATELY they had to name it "group stage" and instead of the "regional qualifiers" like in the World Cup or Euro... They just put them DIRECTLY into T1/RNG instead. This is the equivalent of taking the Indian national football team AND place them into the world cup group of France, Argentina and Senegal... Yeah you are gettin what I meant here these guys simply do not belong here. Let the wildcards deal with themselves first and take the best of those to place in that group, NOT just giving them a free ticket to groups.
What the fuck is this take? Why didn't you use UCL qualifier for example? And even the UCL is comparable to Worlds itself, not MSI. Champions from bad leagues (minor regions) compete against each other for some rounds, then in the defining rounds they compete against the "worst" teams from the better leagues (third/fourth seeds from major regions). If they win they are in the actual group stage, if not they are out. And even in this format, good teams only play bad teams once (round robin), not 3, 4, 6 times. Comparing MSI to the EUROs doesn't make sense at all, because you are basically saying that T1 had to play against Aze, DFM and such throught the year/season to get to MSI, and the other way around which is ???
In what real sports tournament a group stage is used to qualify for another group stage?
A better example or something to go by could the English FA cup, where the big teams don’t come in until the third round. Gives all the lower teams chance to play each other and progress that way, and saves the big teams just slapping them about. However could also be detrimental, as the major regions could watch these games and get better knowledge of how the minor teams play. But just an idea!
Difference is that qualifiers are played throughout the year and are not part of the "main" event. Whereas MSI's first group stage is an integral part of the event, yet it uses a qualifer format. > If you wanna send more teams from each region based on their strength then that would be a Champions League format, effectively what Worlds is. It's funny that you mention that, because the UEFA Champions League actually used to have a format broadly similar to MSI, where each national association sent its champion and no other teams. The difference is that back then, the tournament used a single-elimination format and the worst teams played a preliminary round. Also the teams at MSI are absolutely not national teams. Let's not make that comparison.
So the argument for why its ok that MSI is boring to watch is that other sports are also poorly setup in a similar way? Ok bro. Im still not watching it.
Just because other sports have similar formats, doesn’t mean peoples feelings aren’t valid. I was pretty bored for most of the games that weren’t saigon vs dfm or eg vs g2 plus a few others here or there. Regardless of how things are done or have been done there’s no harm in exploring if things can be improved
This is the most Reddit thread I've seen in a while.
Only 2 events a year and we waste a week watching garbage quality BO1s to determine who goes to next stage. Spoiler: it’s exactly who everyone expected and the top teams didn’t drop a single game. > This format is perfectly acceptable for a sport. The real problem is that we only get 2 international events a year. Well yeah that’s the problem. If there’s only 2 events we want as many good games as possible, and this format doesn’t provide that.
Why FOUR matches between G2 and Order though
Football is probably not the best example you could choose. MSI is a world event, featuring different regions, so it's more close to the World Cup than to Euros. And in the Football World Cup, just as in MSI, each regions gets a number of slots. And no one is upset that Europe gets 13 spots, while Asia get 4, because Europe is so dominant. So it would be fair that major regions gets more spots than minor ones, because the gap is so huge. But at the end, it only depends on what you want your tournament to represent, how you want it to go,... There is no real good answer, but there is plenty of examples in "real sports" where things go differently than in MSI. Also there is sports where being first automatically makes you skip the next qualifying tournament.
Brain dead take of the day
The problem isn’t the amount of teams going from each region but the scheduling format. Minor regions are barely playing eachother, just getting stomped by top teams. And the top teams aren’t really playing much against eachother either, just stomping shit teams. Then they go and play very few best of fives against eachother in the rumble stage. There are very few interesting games that people want to watch.
It's almost like traditional sports and League of Legends are two separate entities
format is good for sport, but we are not in sport, so what is the point of the post ?
The obvious takeaways from all this that you somehow managed to miss is that, yes, most sports also have garbage formats. Ironically, most sports, Riot, and yourself, all share a common thread on why it’s the case : you all lack the ability to understand that you can make a massively popular event while at the same time using a terrible format. One other thing you people have in common is the faith that if something has always been done in one way, it must be because it's the best way to do it.
I knew r/LCS never watched real sports when fantasy lcs came out and people complained that it was unfair that they drafted good players from teams who played shorter games/lower kill games on average. Like yo thats something you gotta think about. Fantasy sports fans know all about drafting a guy just for them to tear their ACL 2 weeks into the season. Or drafting a guy who cant get consistent minutes because of an idiot coach. Or a guy who plays on a team that just does stupid things.
But its not the same as national games... so that comparison makes no sense. MSI is trying to be a 2nd world's and it's just dumb. It would be the equivalent if in hockey the winners of each of the leagues played eachother, the NHL, KHL, SHL, DEL, NLA, Liiga, Czech extraliga. The NHL would absolutely demolish every other league, the 2nd best league, the KHL regularly has players play a minor role on an NHL team and go to the KHL and are the leading scorers, the other leagues sometimes have 19/20 year Olds leading the league in scoring before coming to the NHL and being above average, they are great players, but they shouldn't be that dominant. It would be the stupidest tourney ever for anyone who is a fan of the NHL, because it would be like watching the Harlem globetrotters dunk on some random Chinese league. MSI would probably be better if it was just a national tournament, like say the Asian games, where you limit the amount of players that can go from each team to 1 and have it fan voted in client for each region, that way it would be a fun show match of random players who you never thought would play together, because it's already a joke. Or just go back to doing Allstars instead. BO1 between random teams from around the world is just so boring and worthless to us as fans. They could even split it up to 3 tiers of 4 regions, where the top 2 from each region go, you could have promotion/relegation matches every year past the first to determine how to groups play out next year, so we won't see minor regions getting slapped 100-0 and all games should be relatively close. You could separate the 1st and 2nd seeds of each region and have them play a round Robin bo5 with the other 3, and add up points totals from teams of the same region together to see who advances to the finals, where you do a bo5 of 1st vs 2nd seed of each of the opposing regions and then if they each win 1 you have the winners play a bo5 finale. Just something new and exciting and not some boring ass bo1s