I’m glad Riot decided to stay with single elimination for their biggest tournament because until they introduce a bracket reset of some kind it’s extremely unfair for the winners side. Every team gets to lose twice except the team that didn’t lose until grand finals.
As someone who comes from fighting games it’s crazy to me that there is no bracket reset. Especially in a game like league where you learn so much from your defeat, you get to go back and literally see everything the enemy was doing in vod review.
I know people say that there are advantages to winners side like getting to watch the enemy play in losers finals but I’m sure any team would rather have an extra life over that.
Don’t get me wrong it’s definitely way better as a viewer because you get way more games but until they can resolve the winner side disadvantage then I would say it’s cool to keep a single elim format for worlds at least.
You can just give them more bans or something. You also get a sizeable advantage that your opponents have to play more games that you can study. We saw how much that can matter in LCK playoffs when GenG knew exactly what to ban to stomp T1 3-0.
There’s just not enough bo3/bo5. JDG and GENG were the two tournament favorites coming in and one played just 1 bo3 & 1 bo5 before going home. JDG was the most fun team to watch for me and they literally only played 3 series before getting knocked out. And now their roster might not even stick around. At Valorant, Fnatic finished 4th and they ended up playing 6 bo3s before going home.
It’s been 6 months since the previous international tournament and all we’ve seen is crumbs size amount of games. And Worlds is supposed to be the biggest tournament.
Sorry, I will ALWAYS prefer double elim. Competition aside, players can negotiate for a better salary finishing 2nd instead of finishing 8th.
Riot has cared less and less about competitive (as well as ranked) integrity.
You can just tell very easily at this point that whatever they do is for you to get the biggest dopamine hit and thus be more likely to buy skins.
Their Pro play scene is just that (ranks also). It’s not about the best players and the best teams competing for the throne, its about them being an entertainment means for Riot to make more money.
Stop trying to find logical explanations to certain questions. Money is always the answer, not functionality.