People don’t realize how hard we as fans got robbed.

Imagine if we had a full 10 years of 3-4 international tournaments a year. Think of the insane storylines.

Everything culminates with Worlds at the end of the year. The huge major event that dwarfs all others in prestige and importance.

The circuit would be kinda like other esports where they have “majors” and then we have the huge biggest major at the very end with Worlds. It would be so fucking hype.

Don’t worry, they’ll already be promoted to some untouchable executive position where they can get paid top dollar while taking accountability for nothing, before quietly moving to another cozy executive position before they have to be responsible for the results of things like, say, the “investigation” into Evil Geniuses.

Wow 😮 actually terrifyingly sad 😭

IMO, there are multiple problems from different angles (and some of them not solved yet).

We had (and we still have at Worlds) too little best-of-5 with a week long gap. Sure, Riot wants to make it as hype as possible, media days, higher viewership on weekend, sure, sure.

But Gen.G and to some degree JDG shows that momentum is very important. BLG at MSI shows that momentum is very important. And still Riot introduces looooooong pause and teams basically can start look shaky.

Also, you might notice that quite often quality of Finals is nowhere close to some Quarters and Semis. The score still can be full 5 games, it is still hype, but from pure analytical perspective with cold heart it is clear that the quality of game itself decreases, we see a higher number of mistakes. You can’t from the pure analytical point compare T1-JDG in Semis 2022 and T1-DRX in Finals. Deft story and win was hype as fuck, but if we just watch quality of games, you will notice a substantial decrease in all aspects.

Apart of losing momentum, the week gap also introduces another big problem: no decent scrim partners, and it explains quality of game degradation. When it is quarters you still have a lot of teams around. In Semis, if it is not like T1 now, you still have someone to scrim. Sure, academy rosters, try-outs, amateur teams is all good, but let’s be realistic - the peak of the game is when teams can scrim normal teams. I still recon 2019 Mikyx words that last week before Finals you have no one to play, you just sit in hotel nervous, play random soloq and slowly burning inside. Same thing was told multiple years by multiple players who play finals: last week is a torture and brings nothing good, you lose a lot of skills due to this awkward wait. And every fucking year we see the same problem, they force finalists to literally waste 1 week, lost all momentum, don’t practice well and then “oh why Finals never feels like peak of the game”, really?

The problem here is that Riot has no better monetization than just sponsors. We don’t sell much tickets (regularly), we don’t sell broadcast rights. Riot just grab sponsors and sponsors pay. And to force them pay more, Riot have to show high numbers. “Your ad was watched by 3 million viewers!!!” it sounds cool and sells it to sponsors, but to have those high numbers Riot sacrifices everything: team, practice, momentum, quality and quantity of games. Everything is sacrificed for it.

All big sports have big games on weekdays. UEFA Champions League Semis is on weekday. FIFA World Cup Semis is on weekday. No one cries, people are people, they CAN sit and watch a few best-of-5 few times per year, RIOT please stop pretending you know better than us what we should do and please give us high quality tournament and high quality games and not that shitty product which every Worlds post-Quarters is

L take

I think an open circuit could be what closes the gap between the East & West. But knowing Riot, it would never happen.

I think the only way they can increase that is by shortening the splits to add more international events.

As a minimum the 2-2 stage at Swiss should’ve been Bo5 instead of a Bo3 because those matches were all really good ones, and 2-2 will always have relatively strong sides facing off for the final three knockout spots. Even better Riot could also make all of the Swiss elimination matches Bo5, in total it would be converting 8 Bo3s into 8 Bo5s. I think it’s a bit weird that play-ins had Bo5s but then Swiss doesn’t, which means (no disrespect) some mediocre/weak play-in teams got to play a Bo5 at Worlds whereas some of the main stage teams only got a Bo3 before being eliminated.

But other than that, I don’t think adding more international events is going to resolve the “issue” of not seeing specific matchups. You just can’t guarantee those matchups like Knight vs Chovy will happen because of seeding and brackets and teams getting knocked out. Ultimately GenG didn’t perform when it matters and so that’s the reason why we aren’t seeing Chovy vs Knight in a Bo5. The only way to ensure a Bo5 matchup across all top teams is to have a round robin league with Bo5 matches, and honestly I’m not sure people would actually want that format.

How many BO2s per year does football have? Champion’s League has like 15 no?

To the gulag with him.

I honestly think all regions should be allowed the same amount of teams. “Oh, but wildcard regions…” who cares? If they lose, let them lose, at the very least they were all given an equal chance and more players had the opportunity to play in an international environment and improve. Like, we literally are just lifting up those who are already high instead of trying to do the same to everyone, Korea and China have huge investment in their teams, but who the fuck would invest in a small region team for a chance to have ONE slot at an environment they don’t even know if they’ll be in the next year? I don’t want to sound like I hate Korean or Chinese players or teams, because I don’t, but I’m fucking sick of having pretty much only them being relevant at Worlds.

Worlds would have 0 hype if going into finals we’d seen JDG beat Gen G 43 times that season

Monte has said a few times that Riot said to him they favour Bo1 over Bo5 because Bo1 can have more upsets. This gives the West a better chance.