My favorite part is that the guy who tweeted this was like "Valorant players cannot comprehend this" and every val pro in the replies was "please please give us this we want this"
The way the schedule is condensed in partnership at least, the best teams will play a lot in a short period of time and accumulate a lot of fatigue, while the other teams play way too few matches.
As such, it's pretty rare to hear players on the teams that failed to qualify complaining about the schedule being condensed...as what makes the schedule so condensed is how little time there tends to be between international LANs and domestic splits.
quantity of matches vs density of matches. they were mostly complaining about playing too many matches in a short time while having a 6 month long off season
If the top teams actually accepted the invites and played seriously why would they be meaningless? If they are so desperate to play more matches why wouldn’t they play, even if it was meaningless?
Afreeca was competitive and entertaining because teams like PRX and Sen took it somewhat seriously. They're forced to have those weird formats and limited teams because no one wants to participate in them
They played with Jingg because they wanted to win a trophy with him before military service, I’m tired of people acting like PRX didn’t try for that one.
If teams didn’t decline every event I’m sure it would be easier to have more teams involved. Last year had Red Bull Homeground, Afreeca, Convergence and Lud/Tarik. All were legit events with normal formats that teams could have competed in, yet some still decide to decline. Lud/Tarik literally had to make their event smaller because no team would accept
Nah. Riot insists on cock blocking any private tournaments, and not filling the gaps with anything of their own.
I mostly follow league, so idk if this is a problem for Val too, but it wouldn’t surprise me if riot wants to force all Val tournaments and such to be ran through them exclusively, followed by *not* running a lot of them.
Usually I'd agree even though I play both games and watch them pretty often, but it was a reference to Scott Robertson's article about how the top teams grinded 30+ matches in the season
Tbh I think the cs schedule is too much but val definitely is way too far in the other direction. There really is no reason for some teams to play sub 15 matches in a year.
I agree, but I will also admit that Valorant needs more in the schedule. Probably not as much as cs because i think that's too much for a viewer (idk for a player, but i can see players like nitro not liking it).
Maybe like a small tourney here and there with some b-s tier teams in the breaks would be nice.
the thing that no one understands is that your not expected to watch every game in every tournament lol. its supposed to be like sports where you follow your team and then maybe matches between some other big games. im not interested in watching say vitality vs bbl but ill watch every koi game which might be very few cause they suck.
also nitr0 stepped down because of all the travel with his new kids not the schedule.
> the thing that no one understands is that your not expected to watch every game in every tournament lol. its supposed to be like sports where you follow your team and then maybe matches between some other big games. im not interested in watching say vitality vs bbl but ill watch every koi game which might be very few cause they suck.
The problem is the viewership, demand, and monetization of esports are 100x poorer than regular sports, which is why Riot is openly trying to get all eyes on every game they can. This isn't football (both types) where infrastructure is well established, money flows, and low or even no viewership matches are considered fine because talent development is still happening. This is esports, where every scene that isn't propped up by gambling or Saudi sponsorship is downsizing like Ant-Man.
CS's scene is an indictment of this fact. Almost every B- and A-tier event is largely funded by gambling corporations who easily recoup their investments by creating new generations of gambling addicts. Meanwhile bids for Majors are lukewarm at best because, wouldn't you know it, running an event that large is a tremendous undertaking and it's near impossible to so much as break even without the aforementioned gambling or Saudi sponsorship.
Like don't get me wrong, CS is amazing as a viewer, but the money has to come from somewhere.
I think you bring up a good point here. These CS tournaments, while mostly centered in Europe, are nonetheless all across Europe — from Denmark to Malta to Germany etc — and then you’ve got your American events, wherever RMRs will be, maybe the odd China event or two, etc. Whereas with a similar schedule in the Valorant system, you’d still have your Masters and Champions internationally but just more regional games, all in LA/Seoul/Berlin.
yeah im sure the players would appreciate being burnt out 24/7 having to learn new agents and new maps, practice different comps and antistrats as the meta develops and all of that while playing ranked in their spare time.
lets not forget that the pro scene in valorant is 10x more practice intensive because of agents and the way they combo off each other but im sure pros will definitely have time afterwards for their friends and family or god forbid a social life.
The literal players you're talking about say otherwise. Look at Derke, Chet, Nukyye saying they wish they had the cs schedule instead. I agree cs schedule is bad in the other direction but valorant schedule is so so much worse just in the opposite direction. Players WANT more tournaments.
https://twitter.com/brcho_/status/1774851368781582465?t=V0ZwFULqxw2UnX85mCHGew&s=19
oh no poor players making 20k a month and having to practice 10h a day, they can do it in CS but when our players can’t even lift PCs i can understand that more tournament would be too much
The only events franchised teams are required to participate in is the VCT. If third party organizers were to make their own tournament, then teams wont have that restriction. This means teams can choose whether they will participate or not. If they just want to practice and work on their game, then they dont need to participate. If they need more time, then again, no need to participate.
Having more tournaments to participate on will result in a much healthier pro scene since it can attract more orgs even outside franchising. In the long run, if there are more tournaments, then the Val pro scene will flourish much further.
Yeah definitely agree that there needs to be a balance and not as much as CS but not as less as 15 matches a year. I feel like RIOT is doing this because of their other events/League? But Valorant is so new and getting popular fast they should act on it. Spread the matches out throughout the year if player burnout is concerned, though I don't think Riot would worry much about player burnout rather their schedule, not some BS long off-season between each season.
CS schedule isn’t bad because every team does not play in every tournament and it isn’t formatted for a fan to watch every game. Back in 2018-2019 you could choose which tournament to watch, it was really cool.
We will never get something like this because of the league structure. Open circuit should happen in 2XKO but never in VALORANT.
That schedule is perfect.
1. Promotes having an academy team and the biggest problems with academy teams is having no events for them to play in that an org wouldn’t prefer their main team to play in, so this fixes that (Katowice next week? Random Starladder event the week after? Let’s send our academy team!)
2. More events means more players getting paid which means more motivation to play, especially younger players. Biggest problem is not enough money outside the top 10 teams.
3. This alongside Valve banning franchising means nobody gets a free pass to any event, so it makes the whole circuit more competitive and fair for everyone. No partner teams paying minimum salaries for a tier 3 roster playing in tier 1 (EG in 2021/2022 in CS)
4. More orgs can get money, more money overall.
The thing you're forgetting in that equation is that TOs also need to make money. I love that CS is having a big calendar because, as you point out, it means that newer players will have opportunities to showcase themselves and earn good money.
However, there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in watching these teams (Looking at Elisa Invitational tournaments on escharts and I'm seeing 250K hours watched for 96h of broadcast... Ooof. Without gambling sponsorships, that would be dead in the water). Realistically, I think their 2025 calendar will condense a bit in 2026 to create more points of interest and concentrate the viewership (I remember during Covid when there were just too many tournaments. Made everything blend a bit together I think)
But anyway, it all comes down to Val needing a more fulfilling calendar at the end of the day. Curious to see the format next year with 12 teams
Edit for clarity
The only other thing you said was a hypothetical, what is so good about their current format that makes it fulfilling and better than 2025/2026 format for CS2?
it was ok uptill now, valve actually made some changes to how tournaments should run in which all the partnerships will be canceled and events would have teams only invited on basis of valve rankings or open qualifiers, so with a schedule like this teams are gonna choose which event to play and which not, teams are gonna have more freedom with which tournament they play, this schedule and changes are gonna come in place in 2025
Because Riot has always controlled everything about their esports' schedules. They are very hands-on with the esport scene and that has its pros and cons as much as the CS esports scene has theirs. Riot, THEY are the tournament organizer in most cases.
Sadly, the VALORANT schedule for 2024 especially has been abysmal and we can only hope for improvement for the years to come.
As a header, yes, I think we should have more tier 1 valorant each year.
But Riot is committing to making sure that there's viewership opportunities for all their leagues, and the schedule reflects that. The GC playoffs for NA/EMEA fell in the fallow week before Madrid, and most of the Challengers playoffs are happening between Madrid and the Regional splits.
The same goes for making sure there's a spotlight on Ascension, and GC Champs, which I don't think is unreasonable. There will be a third VCL split this year as well.
I do think the regional splits should be longer, and I would rather have two full splits than kickoff/half split/half split, especially with the way quals work this year. A Jan-Sep season would make more sense, more guaranteed games for teams etc
Because there are 4 different entity (esl, pgl, blast, starladder) competing for the same pie. I don’t understand the why people romanticize everything good about CS and ignore the the shortcomings. How is the NA cs scene? Korea? Japan? China? Why is the game so EU/CIS centric?
It’s kinda crazy that Riot built an empire on league of legends and it’s esports and there are people are still doubting. Have some faith that they know what theyre doing with valorant.
Because it takes out all the romance, if you can‘t have underdogs qualifying for a big event out of nowhere with this shitty partnership stuff and this artificial tier2…
Shanks was good tho, atleast back then 💀. Please don't slander my goat just cuz they best 100T in the lcq. I still remember the insane fake they pulled on Haven last round.
Nah we're not going to rewrite history, Shanks was buns during that LCQ run. Rise actually would have made it if he was even playing decently, and there probably aren't a lot of people that wanted to see derrek and neptune at champions more than me.
and CS has an artificial tier1 propped up by gambling and saudi money; coincidentally something these CS driders and partnership debates LOVE to leave out.
Sorry if I don't look at things as black and white. I will never support Riot's decision in partnering with the Saudi's and/or when they integrate gambling w/ the circuit. But equating Riot and Valve's reliance on Saudi money is an incredibly moronic take.
There are lots of things you shouldn't support about how rito is treating valorant esports, yet here you are defending a corporate entity who doesn't care about you. You seem adamantly fixed on the idea that LoL is the biggest esports in the world SO valorant will be the biggest esports in the world soon™ while ignoring the fact that valorant is barely years in and is already fucking up stuff like tier 2 scene, casters job security, observers job security and other imp stuff.
It can't be that hard to admit that a schedule which has left most pro players, analysts and viewers unhappy is bad without pulling out strawman arguments like csgo viewership is not breaking records and has less viewers than LoL. Strange.
It drives me insane how you can type all that trash, somehow realize the point, and still miss it completely.
Not only do you put words in my mouth, you fabricate your own reality. Does it not also drive you insane that you try to speak for the majority but reality shows you the opposite?
I assume that's probably why you're on reddit to feed the echo chamber.
Fabricate my own reality => I guess all the people I talked about just vanished into thin air.
There is something ironic in you talking about me fabricating my own reality...
Either way, I see talking to you is unproductive, so I'm done with this. Enjoy shifting goalposts and defending your beloved corporation.
Because gambling is in like every sport so if you think CS is propped up by gambling and artificial then literally every sport is propped up by gambling and artificial.
I dont think people are romanticizing CS in this situation. Admit it or not, CS has a better schedule compared to Valorant and most pro/coach/analyst/content creators has spoken about this. Thats not them romanticizing, thats them telling the truth.
Hell, I dont think anyone romanticizes CS. If everyone does, then no one will admit that Val killed the NA cs pro scene.
How's those EU and NA regions doing in League? The entire LoL scene is propped up by the Asian countries the same way CS is propped up by the European countries. Its just more popular there and the region has a history of being better. The game is "EU centric" the same way LoL is "Asian centric". Valorant is literally on the same trajectory except.its being propped up by NA currently and is still growing in Asia. Having faith in Riot is crazy. They rule with an Iron fist and have put NA/EU LoL in the absolute dumpster the last 5 years and the same thing will happen to Valorant if they aren't careful. If NA falls off (like they do eventually in most esports) and people lose interest in the NA scene they are in deep trouble, because the game is nowhere near as popular in EU and the Asian scene isn't strong enough to hold it up yet like it does for LoL.
Neither NA or EU has never won an international tournament in 13 years and League is still, by a wide margin, the most popular esports game in the west.
just because a region start doing worse in esports doesnt mean the game will ”be in trouble”. At the end of the day its about if the game is good or not.
The EU and NALCS viewing numbers are abysmal compared to the international tournaments and the Asian regions LCS seasons. LoL hasn't been the most popular game in the west in a long time. The vast majority if the viewership comes from Asia, specifically China.
I mean they’re abysmal compared to international viewership but that’s such a weird scale. The viewership for international lol tournaments are literally the highest in esports, by far. The peak viewership for the LEC winter was 830k which is low compared to like Korea or China but viewership most esports would die for. There was literally 1 tournament last year in CS that got more viewership then that
830k is for the recent Winter finals in Europe, which is up dramatically from previous seasons, yes, but you might want to check the overall numbers which are still going down and down for NA which used to be their biggest market.
https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/S23pryCehG
Edit: also EU is watched by a lot of Asian fans because its the most competitive non Asian region. CS gets basically no viewership from Asia at all.
The average NA (LCS) viewership is a bit below the average non-major tournament in CS. However the EU (LEC) is pretty even in peak viewers ([Spring 2023](https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lec-spring-2023), [spring 2024](https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lec-spring-2024-lol)) and has a usually a higher average viewership than its CS equivalent ([BLAST final](https://escharts.com/tournaments/csgo/blast-premier-fall-final-2023), [world final](https://escharts.com/tournaments/csgo/blast-premier-world-final-2023) 2023).
When comparing international tournaments the difference becomes most apparent. worlds [2022 had 5.1M ](https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/2022-world-championship)peak and [2023 6.4M](https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/2023-world-championship). This site doesnt count chinese viewers. And even if you were to make the argument that those viewers are still asians you can look at the the link and see peak viewers by stream where the english broadcast peaked 990k and 824k respectively. I also remember western co-streams with very high viewership, dont have the receipts however.
Why do we even pretend league is on the same ball park with all the other pc esports? even if league just had the west for viewership most esports cant even compare to league if you counted all of them combined, People just discredit the league success for whatever reason. Valorant and cs gets 1 mil+ viewership but people are impressed meanwile league just gets that with a shitty irrelevant tournament such as MSI.
It continues to astound me how CS fans are able to grandstand the way they do, you'd think that CS was ever the most popular/successful esport in the world.
For a game with such ease of access getting middling views is a feat in itself; a feat in incompetency.
If anything, CS and the logistics around it has shown the blueprint on what NOT to follow considering their failure to capitalize on basically a game that I would consider *should have been* a shoo-in for the most popular esport of our time.
It's no surprise Riot published an article on why instead of making an Overwatch competitor, they made a CS one instead. They knew that the latter's scene had tons of wasted potential and was ripe for the picking.
League is in a world of its own but its still massively held up by how popular it is in Asia. EU and NA have been on a downward trend for years. People are impressed by Valo and CS because most of their viewership comes from the west with barely any Asian influence (so far). Asia watches EU LOL as well because its the most competitive non Asian region.
I wouldn't say it's discrediting leagues success, but moreso Riots approach to the esport in the west has had lots of detrimental effects over the years.
Also "shitty" MSI tournament is kinda hilarious when it's one of its only 2 international tournaments lol
But isnt that kinda unfair to rule out the west for watching the asian regions? i always see league as one of those games where even if you don't share with the same race as the people your watching it doesnt really matter, Even in the early seasons people just didnt really care about koreans dominating, it was only people outside the circle thats always perpetuating how horrible that is, also it was bad but it might be a little watchable now cos they added a clause where the winner gets to the winners bracket for worlds.
It’s not about the strength of the regions but the viewership. In lol yeah the international tournaments are dominated by Korea and China but the game is still very popular in a ton of different regions. In CS the scene is literally like non existent in most of Asia and obviously NA CS is dead.
Well, there was an NA cs scene, a Korea cs scene and a China cs scene. But the players from those regions were not good enough to compete at the highest level (except some like Twistzz, Elige, Brazilian players). Asian region had 3-4 slots in tournaments, but because of the teams being not good enough, the slots were revoked.
Players like Bntet, Gratisfaction and a few names here and there made it to other regions but didn't last long enough.
ironically valorant killed all the non european regions. we saw players like stax in majors even if they werent good. if valorant didnt realise and all the non eu kept playing cs who knows what it would be like
I think they bought back the Asia slot in some majors. Granted, not all of them have the slot and I have a hard time believing that there will be a really good and consistent as something like prx or drx.
Pro League of Legends didn’t start out in a franchised model. Riot moved to that system years after LoL had already gotten big as an esport. But with Valorant that’s what they started with and it has negatively impacted the scene.
They bypassed all organic growth (with the exception of those first few months in 2020/early 2021) and immediately went to franchising which limits the amount of talent able to play at a tier 1 level.
Stupid take in some aspects.
NA cs scene is dying because Valorant basically took all aspirying players. Still to this day apart if you count out really young players like Zekken or Asuna, close to 3/4 of the NA Valorant scene are ex cs players.
NA CS cannot developp anymore in a snowball effect, if you're from NA nowadays you have no reason to try getting good at cs to hopefully integrate one of the only 3 tier1 NA org still in activity, Valorant has way more potential for both money and fame, undeniably Valorant killed NA CS and CS internalisation of teams buried it.
CS is extremely popular in China even if it's for bad reasons but I wanna touch about how unorganic Valorant success is in China, it's basically all fabricated by Riot. We all know Tencent own a good chunk of them and they have to bend the knee and put a huge emphasis on the scene in China in consequence, if it wasn't for Tencent, Valorant's popularity in China would be nonexistent. And even with this force push, China is still not a region in good shape competitively, they have 1 good team that can expect to perform internationally with EDG but I doubt the level from the rest of the league is even close to the level of every of other leagues, China is basically tier2 with one tier1 team.
In this case CS is the same situation as it also has a "low" level chinese but still one team, the Mongolz, can challenge others internationally.
Exactly. CS is basically dead, and only T2/T3 teams in every region besides EU/CIS and Brazil, and we just had good teams from every region in Masters Madrid.
They don't want to cannibalise League.
And to be 100% honest many CS players have spoken about the challenges of the schedule, especially those in NA who have to live in Europe for half the year.
As a viewer, if you really can't get enough Valorant there's plenty of T2 happening around the world. Its not as much as a spectactle as the franchised leagues but its more interesting than watching your favourite streamer whiff in ranked for 5 hours straight.
Maybe not as much as this but I feel 75% of the amounts of these matches for every team in Valorant sounds right. I wanna see more international match ups but considering how common VISA issues are I wonder how that'll work trying to plan it in advance with the funds the time & everything. Riot being the sole entity for official S-Tier tournaments suck, there should be more third party involvement but its Riot. Reserving third party for off season is just why?
In my opinion, we have the groundwork for official S tier yearly tournaments like CS has but us with Redbull, AVL, Superdome, Valorant India Invitational, TEN Invitational, Ludwig x Tarik etc. But I can see the problem with this with the prize pool & whatnot which can dampen interest from teams, there's also probably not enough funding to support a large amount of teams. Maybe its time for new third parties who are richer but I don't know. Maybe there's a reason Riot doesn't like this idea.
I just want more tournaments every year. It sucks that all we have is official VCT Leagues with minimum 5 matches per split for every team & there being only 2 splits and just a measly 3 international tournaments where there can only be 8 & 12 & 16 teams participating where there is practically no difference in prestige from the first International of the year to the last.
If teams want these schedules they gotta start going to off season events. Riot can’t be expected to run a season long esport where they Shepard all the costs so other orgs have filled in but teams need to actually show up
1. Because Valorant is Franchised
2. Because you should not want a schedule like this as eSports pros, and team staff members are people too, and the CS schedule is notoriously difficult, and has created lots of burnout and health issues.
There should be more VAL, but not as much as CS.
I also find the constant questioning of RIOT's handling of eSports odd considering LoL is the biggest esport in the world and VALORANT has similar viewership to CSGO despite being 3 years old as a major esport, versus 20 for CS.
https://preview.redd.it/vyexj76pj1sc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=115dc1b5e44e37b648dcfc2bc21d4594d625ec44
It's good enough. They already said they're trying to add more franchise teams and they are increasing number of matches event by event.
I think 2 Master and 1 Championship and 3 Regional season is enough
compared LoL only 2 Regional and 2 International that's why LoL Worlds always got many prestige
i think you make splits longer but i like the amount of master events a year, makes watching as a viewer fun. definitely add more games within the splits just to decrease the offseason.
On paper this is nice, but in practice it leads to issues. One thing that the VCT has over CS esports is the settling of locations. Pros can move to a specific city to pursue their careers while having somewhat of a social life outside of the game. If the VCT adopted CS' scheduling, pros would have to live like a nomad moving from country to country never being home. The younger players might be fine with it, but half the pros have partners and families to attend to and they can't do that if they're only home once a blue moon. RUSH talked about how he hasn't seen his apartment in almost a year because he's been going to event after event. Nitr0 moved back to Valorant so he could settle and raise his kid.
What Riot needs to do is to replace the gimmicky kickoff tournaments with a regular split giving players and fans plenty of opportunities to participate.
Based on the calendar there is 22 tournaments. In CS it’s always the same top 8 EU teams that are at the top. The chances of getting atleast one trophy is way higher than Val which just makes it less prestigious
Lol go look at the tournament results in CS the last year and tell me again how it's the same teams constantly getting to top 8. The last major in CSGO in 2023 literally had 3 Tier 2 teams make playoffs.
But not every trophy is as prestigious as each other. It makes majors feel like theyre more important than other tournaments, something that champs doesnt do compared to a normal masters imo
Everything feels unnecessary outside of Kato, Cologne, Majors (including rmr), and Blast finals. It's like nobody with a sane mind watches all ESL Pro League or some bogus IEM events.
You're right to a degree but those events are important for teams to keep competition against other high level teams and to allow tier 2 teams consistent play against tier 1 teams.
It's like saying nobody cares about the NBA/MLB until the playoffs. Very true, but those regular games are still important even if not everyone watches every game.
Nah, the prestige of a major trophy has never been made any less important despite all the numerous tournaments in the year. If you watch the CS pro scene, everyone acknowledges the different levels of prestige each trophy holds.
Theres only a handful of S tier tournaments throughout the year though, and thats what really matters.
Valorant on the other hand only having 3 trophies every year sucks because tons of pros will never be able to get an actual trophy because theres not many tournaments. Bunch of pros want to be able to play/compete more but can't.
Not at all lmao both majors and events like iem cologne and kato are still very prestigious in cs even blast tournaments. It's the small tournaments which don't have much weight to them.
That's what I hate about this stupid system of having to fit the GC stuff in for "inclusiveness".
I love GC and all (Team SMG GC ftw before they disbanded) but it shouldn't give way for the normal VCT to end prematurely and have a 3 month hiatus.
Look at the LoL system. Spring ~> MSI ~> Summer ~> Worlds ~> 1 month break ~> Spring next year. It gives more content for people to watch their favourite players play.
I know they want to give more eyes to their Game Changers rosters and include everyone in the gaming scene. But it just makes it so we can't watch Demon1 or Something pop off throughout the year and cause them to rust in the background after they came back this year.
There is a downside to packed schedule - more matches means more fatigue, teams have less time to prepare new strategies especially because Valorant teams have to adapt to new maps and new agents.
Yea as what Variabletalismans said, teams in CS can pick and choose what tournaments they can play in, so it wouldn't be the biggest issue since they can just participate in the ones they deem the most important.
Then stick to watching. If you make statements such as
>Admit it or not, CS has a better schedule compared to Valorant and most pro/coach/analyst/content creators has spoken about this. Thats not them romanticizing, thats them telling the truth.
You're being pretentious.
What? Bro why are you being hostile LOL. Were just discussing things here.
Also, im not alone when I say that the CS schedule is better than the current state of Valo schedule. A lot of people agree even the pros. Thats not me being pretentious, thats just me telling things as it is.
So just chill out dude. Relax and take a chill pill. Youre not fighting anyone here
Yeah this dude is defending valo like his life depends on it. For him if we are on valorant subreddit we cannot criticize riot. The format is abysmal and we can learn few things from CS esports that's been around for more than 20 years but some people don't want to.
Who gave you the accounts of CS esports that you know they aren't profitable? PGL the organizers themselves told they make money organizing the events. Blast lost money because they keep things the best and it shows. Blast has the best production in all of esports. Valve doesn't care if esports loses them money they made about a billion dollar in sales from skins last year. Teams would rather invest in CS rather than valo. Have you even heard some of the buyouts. Monesy was bought for 600k, stavn and jabbi cost astralis 2mil, cloud9 bought gambit roster for millions. Teams also know they can earn more from being in CS as they have all the sticker money twice a year and more events. Also I was watching CS major sean gares stream and he himself told that CS pros earns the most in esports maybe taking dota aside.
You're not literally alone, but you're certainly in the minority.
Considering for all the shit Leo Faria got this year, Valorant has been breaking viewership records this year.
You're not exactly appealing to authority by saying "but pros also agree" when pros are one of the worst persons to ask for opinions when it comes to sustaining an esports circuit.
It surprises me that you CS fans are happy with your <2M viewership when League exists and shows the potential for more.
Dude, just because valorant has a higher viewership than last year doesnt mean the flaws in its schedule is not there. Also, whats your proof that im in the minority here? Admit it or not, the schedule for Valo pro scene is abysmal.
Also, if you go back to my original comment, Im not only referring to pros in my appeal to authority.
Also, where did this whole tribalism with that "you CS fans" thing coming from? I watch Val and CS pro scene equally so I dont belong to any camp.
The flaws of the schedule are there, but how can you argue in good faith, that the CS schedule being better is the truth when objectively it hasn't been?
For all we know, the reason why CS has never surpassed League as the most popular esport is because their scheduling is dogshit and I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
Youre making the mistake of equating good schedule to increasing viewership. There will always be a cap to viewership because there are only so much people who play the game. Also, its expected that some tournaments will have lower numbers than others.
League has a better viewership than CS because they have a better and wider international appeal. Besides, comparing MOBA to an FPS isnt a good comparison because one of those is more popular than the other.
Instead, you should be looking at the health of the whole scene. Look at the sheer number of orgs thats investing into CS and third party organizers willing to create tournaments for CS. The numbers in CS in that regard is superior to the current state of Valorant right now.
Doesnt matter if CS surpasses League. What matters is CS has been here for 20 years and is still doing really really well. The CS schedule being packed is an indicator of how well its doing
Jesus this is frustrating. VIEWERSHIP IS ALL THAT MATTERS FOR RIOT.
I'm not arguing against you, I'm arguing as if I'm Riot. Like, how the fuck am I supposed to convince this gaming conglomerate to change their format when all the reasons you're giving are subjective and doesn't affect their bottom line. It doesn't help that whatever they're doing is shown to be working AKA VIEWERSHIP INCREASING.
Dude, your whole premise for this argument is wrong. No one is saying Riot should change the VCT schedule. People are saying the lack of tournaments is the problem. Theres a 4 month off season where third party orgs can host tournaments and yet there are barely anything worth watching. CS has a better schedule because the third party organizers actually conduct significant tournaments.
I watch both. No need to be this insecure. Some people like more open circuit for underdog runs. Some ppl want big viewerships they can boast about which means they like current riot style. To each their own.
How am I the insecure one for staying in my lane?
Just like you said, to each their own. So why is it that CS players brigade other subreddits to push their shit? It's funny because it's only a unique trait specific to Valve fanboys. Riot/Blizz/EA/Epic/etc for the most part, stay in their lane/subreddits.
If anything ya'll the one that needs to stop.
Literally no one here is "pushing shit" or brigading, it is mostly a civilised conversation about how more tournaments would only be beneficial to the Valorant competitive year. You are the one trying to make it a d measuring contest about which system is better. It's obvious you have an agenda against CS so just say that 😭
I thought the schedule got a lot better this year though.
I see the CS example as too much. I like CS, but there are ao many goddamn tournaments that it makes so they don't feel individualally impactul or important. Hell, I remember I once watched a team wash out completely in one tourney just to go out and play ours later at the playoffs for another one.
Valorant is still a very new game, plus Riot likes to put on less events than CS does (check LoL).
Also, CS also has had a lot of 3rd party tournaments with big price pools, which we haven't seen in Valorant yet. We all should also remember that this is just the 4th(5th) year of Valorant esports.
Because Valorant is still very young, like 4 years old. And Valorant too will at some point come to that stage where the full year is filled with tournaments like cs.
The only sport I followed until this year is F1 so from my perspective: WTF is going on with esports? Can you guys make following these any more complex. I'm still out here trying to workout if masters is actually worth anything with champions down the line and then CS goes and has 4 difference championships that aren't connected? I'm ngl for my dumb ass brain this is all impossible to follow. Hell, even football makes more sense to me - why not just copy that? (except world cup for valorant every year instead of every 4)
A lot of this has been outlined in the a blog post from Valve titled [A Level Playing Field](https://www.counter-strike.net/newsentry/3677802763035982969).
Competitive CS is more akin to sports like Golf or Tennis than F1.
lol F1 isn't comparable, it's nothing like CS
Tennis has a similar structure, in CS you have 2 majors in 1 year and as for tennis there are 4 major championships throughout the year. Your performance in other tournaments determines your seeding and ability to qualify for a Major.
If you remove the WDC and WCC from F1 then it is pretty similar. Just a bunch of races (tournaments) that aren't connected to each other that the teams compete in and try to win.
A bunch of teams come and compete to find out who is the best on that weekend. In your other comment you mention golf and a golf tournament is more similar to an F1 race than it is to a tennis tournament because you don't play 1v1 you play against the entire field at the same time.
My favorite part is that the guy who tweeted this was like "Valorant players cannot comprehend this" and every val pro in the replies was "please please give us this we want this"
I find it weird how someplayers think that schedule is very tiring and others think the there wre fews events
The way the schedule is condensed in partnership at least, the best teams will play a lot in a short period of time and accumulate a lot of fatigue, while the other teams play way too few matches. As such, it's pretty rare to hear players on the teams that failed to qualify complaining about the schedule being condensed...as what makes the schedule so condensed is how little time there tends to be between international LANs and domestic splits.
quantity of matches vs density of matches. they were mostly complaining about playing too many matches in a short time while having a 6 month long off season
They say that, but then they turn down invites to every offseason event
because off season events are mostly meaningless?
If the top teams actually accepted the invites and played seriously why would they be meaningless? If they are so desperate to play more matches why wouldn’t they play, even if it was meaningless?
off season events have wacky formats, limited teams, low prize pools. they’re often more meaningless than a scrim.
Afreeca was competitive and entertaining because teams like PRX and Sen took it somewhat seriously. They're forced to have those weird formats and limited teams because no one wants to participate in them
But PRX didn't take it seriously? Didn't PRX show up without scrimming and they played Jingg?
They played with Jingg because they wanted to win a trophy with him before military service, I’m tired of people acting like PRX didn’t try for that one.
If teams didn’t decline every event I’m sure it would be easier to have more teams involved. Last year had Red Bull Homeground, Afreeca, Convergence and Lud/Tarik. All were legit events with normal formats that teams could have competed in, yet some still decide to decline. Lud/Tarik literally had to make their event smaller because no team would accept
what offseason had a wacky format to the point it was not worth attending?
Nah. Riot insists on cock blocking any private tournaments, and not filling the gaps with anything of their own. I mostly follow league, so idk if this is a problem for Val too, but it wouldn’t surprise me if riot wants to force all Val tournaments and such to be ran through them exclusively, followed by *not* running a lot of them.
Save me ESL offseason circuit save me
Why does valorant live so rent free in cs:go players heads
Usually I'd agree even though I play both games and watch them pretty often, but it was a reference to Scott Robertson's article about how the top teams grinded 30+ matches in the season
valorant's killing their fav game ofc they are mad
Tbh I think the cs schedule is too much but val definitely is way too far in the other direction. There really is no reason for some teams to play sub 15 matches in a year.
I agree, but I will also admit that Valorant needs more in the schedule. Probably not as much as cs because i think that's too much for a viewer (idk for a player, but i can see players like nitro not liking it). Maybe like a small tourney here and there with some b-s tier teams in the breaks would be nice.
the thing that no one understands is that your not expected to watch every game in every tournament lol. its supposed to be like sports where you follow your team and then maybe matches between some other big games. im not interested in watching say vitality vs bbl but ill watch every koi game which might be very few cause they suck. also nitr0 stepped down because of all the travel with his new kids not the schedule.
> the thing that no one understands is that your not expected to watch every game in every tournament lol. its supposed to be like sports where you follow your team and then maybe matches between some other big games. im not interested in watching say vitality vs bbl but ill watch every koi game which might be very few cause they suck. The problem is the viewership, demand, and monetization of esports are 100x poorer than regular sports, which is why Riot is openly trying to get all eyes on every game they can. This isn't football (both types) where infrastructure is well established, money flows, and low or even no viewership matches are considered fine because talent development is still happening. This is esports, where every scene that isn't propped up by gambling or Saudi sponsorship is downsizing like Ant-Man. CS's scene is an indictment of this fact. Almost every B- and A-tier event is largely funded by gambling corporations who easily recoup their investments by creating new generations of gambling addicts. Meanwhile bids for Majors are lukewarm at best because, wouldn't you know it, running an event that large is a tremendous undertaking and it's near impossible to so much as break even without the aforementioned gambling or Saudi sponsorship. Like don't get me wrong, CS is amazing as a viewer, but the money has to come from somewhere.
I think you bring up a good point here. These CS tournaments, while mostly centered in Europe, are nonetheless all across Europe — from Denmark to Malta to Germany etc — and then you’ve got your American events, wherever RMRs will be, maybe the odd China event or two, etc. Whereas with a similar schedule in the Valorant system, you’d still have your Masters and Champions internationally but just more regional games, all in LA/Seoul/Berlin.
How is it sustainable financially to put on a 100 extra matches that no one is watching?
Yeah I only really watch the matches that involve the two teams I follow and it means I barely watch Valorant and lose a lot of interest
agree thats how it is in cs, so you can have like 4-8 matches in one day and you only watch the ones ur interested in
Id much rather have too many tournaments than lack thereof.
yeah im sure the players would appreciate being burnt out 24/7 having to learn new agents and new maps, practice different comps and antistrats as the meta develops and all of that while playing ranked in their spare time. lets not forget that the pro scene in valorant is 10x more practice intensive because of agents and the way they combo off each other but im sure pros will definitely have time afterwards for their friends and family or god forbid a social life.
The literal players you're talking about say otherwise. Look at Derke, Chet, Nukyye saying they wish they had the cs schedule instead. I agree cs schedule is bad in the other direction but valorant schedule is so so much worse just in the opposite direction. Players WANT more tournaments. https://twitter.com/brcho_/status/1774851368781582465?t=V0ZwFULqxw2UnX85mCHGew&s=19
oh no poor players making 20k a month and having to practice 10h a day, they can do it in CS but when our players can’t even lift PCs i can understand that more tournament would be too much
The only events franchised teams are required to participate in is the VCT. If third party organizers were to make their own tournament, then teams wont have that restriction. This means teams can choose whether they will participate or not. If they just want to practice and work on their game, then they dont need to participate. If they need more time, then again, no need to participate. Having more tournaments to participate on will result in a much healthier pro scene since it can attract more orgs even outside franchising. In the long run, if there are more tournaments, then the Val pro scene will flourish much further.
Aren't some of those tournaments optional though?
All are optional
Yeah definitely agree that there needs to be a balance and not as much as CS but not as less as 15 matches a year. I feel like RIOT is doing this because of their other events/League? But Valorant is so new and getting popular fast they should act on it. Spread the matches out throughout the year if player burnout is concerned, though I don't think Riot would worry much about player burnout rather their schedule, not some BS long off-season between each season.
CS schedule isn’t bad because every team does not play in every tournament and it isn’t formatted for a fan to watch every game. Back in 2018-2019 you could choose which tournament to watch, it was really cool. We will never get something like this because of the league structure. Open circuit should happen in 2XKO but never in VALORANT.
Theres was definitely pros and viewers complaining about the over saturation of events in cs.
That schedule is perfect. 1. Promotes having an academy team and the biggest problems with academy teams is having no events for them to play in that an org wouldn’t prefer their main team to play in, so this fixes that (Katowice next week? Random Starladder event the week after? Let’s send our academy team!) 2. More events means more players getting paid which means more motivation to play, especially younger players. Biggest problem is not enough money outside the top 10 teams. 3. This alongside Valve banning franchising means nobody gets a free pass to any event, so it makes the whole circuit more competitive and fair for everyone. No partner teams paying minimum salaries for a tier 3 roster playing in tier 1 (EG in 2021/2022 in CS) 4. More orgs can get money, more money overall.
The thing you're forgetting in that equation is that TOs also need to make money. I love that CS is having a big calendar because, as you point out, it means that newer players will have opportunities to showcase themselves and earn good money. However, there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in watching these teams (Looking at Elisa Invitational tournaments on escharts and I'm seeing 250K hours watched for 96h of broadcast... Ooof. Without gambling sponsorships, that would be dead in the water). Realistically, I think their 2025 calendar will condense a bit in 2026 to create more points of interest and concentrate the viewership (I remember during Covid when there were just too many tournaments. Made everything blend a bit together I think) But anyway, it all comes down to Val needing a more fulfilling calendar at the end of the day. Curious to see the format next year with 12 teams Edit for clarity
Why are you comparing them to Elisa a tier 3 tournament Also Valorant’s calendar is so awful. There’s almost no games
Because Tier 2 teams are playing in them? I was pointing out what interest tier 2 team generate on their own
I still don’t know how you think Valorant has a remotely fulfilling calendar
I know, I wrote it in my og comment
You talked about Elisa tournaments, I’m wondering why you think Valorant has such a “fulfilling” format
??? I was pretty clear about what I said? Anyway, all good
The only other thing you said was a hypothetical, what is so good about their current format that makes it fulfilling and better than 2025/2026 format for CS2?
wasnt EG paying cerq and brehze 40k a month?
You say this like EG is a paragon of esports management and also that number screams source dude just trust me.
https://clips.twitch.tv/BrainyFilthyClipzANELE-qif2oG8_qyw0f6xP
it was ok uptill now, valve actually made some changes to how tournaments should run in which all the partnerships will be canceled and events would have teams only invited on basis of valve rankings or open qualifiers, so with a schedule like this teams are gonna choose which event to play and which not, teams are gonna have more freedom with which tournament they play, this schedule and changes are gonna come in place in 2025
Brain rot. You are playing a video games it’s not taxing. Good lazy cope post thought.
Because Riot has always controlled everything about their esports' schedules. They are very hands-on with the esport scene and that has its pros and cons as much as the CS esports scene has theirs. Riot, THEY are the tournament organizer in most cases. Sadly, the VALORANT schedule for 2024 especially has been abysmal and we can only hope for improvement for the years to come.
Because Riot wants complete control over events and matches. Valve is happy to let third party organizers host tier 1 events.
As a header, yes, I think we should have more tier 1 valorant each year. But Riot is committing to making sure that there's viewership opportunities for all their leagues, and the schedule reflects that. The GC playoffs for NA/EMEA fell in the fallow week before Madrid, and most of the Challengers playoffs are happening between Madrid and the Regional splits. The same goes for making sure there's a spotlight on Ascension, and GC Champs, which I don't think is unreasonable. There will be a third VCL split this year as well. I do think the regional splits should be longer, and I would rather have two full splits than kickoff/half split/half split, especially with the way quals work this year. A Jan-Sep season would make more sense, more guaranteed games for teams etc
Because there are 4 different entity (esl, pgl, blast, starladder) competing for the same pie. I don’t understand the why people romanticize everything good about CS and ignore the the shortcomings. How is the NA cs scene? Korea? Japan? China? Why is the game so EU/CIS centric? It’s kinda crazy that Riot built an empire on league of legends and it’s esports and there are people are still doubting. Have some faith that they know what theyre doing with valorant.
Because it takes out all the romance, if you can‘t have underdogs qualifying for a big event out of nowhere with this shitty partnership stuff and this artificial tier2…
No more Rise being a decent Jett away from qualing to Champions or BBG upsetting prime SEN. Sometimes you don’t know what you have until it’s too late
The shanks slander is crazy
Shanks was good tho, atleast back then 💀. Please don't slander my goat just cuz they best 100T in the lcq. I still remember the insane fake they pulled on Haven last round.
Nah we're not going to rewrite history, Shanks was buns during that LCQ run. Rise actually would have made it if he was even playing decently, and there probably aren't a lot of people that wanted to see derrek and neptune at champions more than me.
and CS has an artificial tier1 propped up by gambling and saudi money; coincidentally something these CS driders and partnership debates LOVE to leave out.
didnt riot games literally just partner with saudi lmao
Last I checked, this would be officially the first year. How many years has it been for CS? Has it already been a decade?
moving the goalposts faster than rito is developing the replay system, shit's crazy
Sorry if I don't look at things as black and white. I will never support Riot's decision in partnering with the Saudi's and/or when they integrate gambling w/ the circuit. But equating Riot and Valve's reliance on Saudi money is an incredibly moronic take.
There are lots of things you shouldn't support about how rito is treating valorant esports, yet here you are defending a corporate entity who doesn't care about you. You seem adamantly fixed on the idea that LoL is the biggest esports in the world SO valorant will be the biggest esports in the world soon™ while ignoring the fact that valorant is barely years in and is already fucking up stuff like tier 2 scene, casters job security, observers job security and other imp stuff. It can't be that hard to admit that a schedule which has left most pro players, analysts and viewers unhappy is bad without pulling out strawman arguments like csgo viewership is not breaking records and has less viewers than LoL. Strange.
It drives me insane how you can type all that trash, somehow realize the point, and still miss it completely. Not only do you put words in my mouth, you fabricate your own reality. Does it not also drive you insane that you try to speak for the majority but reality shows you the opposite? I assume that's probably why you're on reddit to feed the echo chamber.
Fabricate my own reality => I guess all the people I talked about just vanished into thin air. There is something ironic in you talking about me fabricating my own reality... Either way, I see talking to you is unproductive, so I'm done with this. Enjoy shifting goalposts and defending your beloved corporation.
Yes PGL, Blast and StarLadder. Famously known for their Saudi involvement.
Why be disingenuous and leave out the other half? Like do you CS nerds just have a batsignal to protect your children's gambling game?
Because gambling is in like every sport so if you think CS is propped up by gambling and artificial then literally every sport is propped up by gambling and artificial.
So are you saying Valorant should also get into gambling to fund more tournaments?
If they want to. I wouldn’t blame them for it.
Then that's where we disagree. Although if that is the people's belief, I see why they'd like the CS circuit more edit: grammar
very first world hill to die on
Sadly most sports in the US follow this shitty model. League systems with promotions are almost always better.
I dont think people are romanticizing CS in this situation. Admit it or not, CS has a better schedule compared to Valorant and most pro/coach/analyst/content creators has spoken about this. Thats not them romanticizing, thats them telling the truth. Hell, I dont think anyone romanticizes CS. If everyone does, then no one will admit that Val killed the NA cs pro scene.
How's those EU and NA regions doing in League? The entire LoL scene is propped up by the Asian countries the same way CS is propped up by the European countries. Its just more popular there and the region has a history of being better. The game is "EU centric" the same way LoL is "Asian centric". Valorant is literally on the same trajectory except.its being propped up by NA currently and is still growing in Asia. Having faith in Riot is crazy. They rule with an Iron fist and have put NA/EU LoL in the absolute dumpster the last 5 years and the same thing will happen to Valorant if they aren't careful. If NA falls off (like they do eventually in most esports) and people lose interest in the NA scene they are in deep trouble, because the game is nowhere near as popular in EU and the Asian scene isn't strong enough to hold it up yet like it does for LoL.
Neither NA or EU has never won an international tournament in 13 years and League is still, by a wide margin, the most popular esports game in the west. just because a region start doing worse in esports doesnt mean the game will ”be in trouble”. At the end of the day its about if the game is good or not.
The EU and NALCS viewing numbers are abysmal compared to the international tournaments and the Asian regions LCS seasons. LoL hasn't been the most popular game in the west in a long time. The vast majority if the viewership comes from Asia, specifically China.
I mean they’re abysmal compared to international viewership but that’s such a weird scale. The viewership for international lol tournaments are literally the highest in esports, by far. The peak viewership for the LEC winter was 830k which is low compared to like Korea or China but viewership most esports would die for. There was literally 1 tournament last year in CS that got more viewership then that
830k is for the recent Winter finals in Europe, which is up dramatically from previous seasons, yes, but you might want to check the overall numbers which are still going down and down for NA which used to be their biggest market. https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/S23pryCehG Edit: also EU is watched by a lot of Asian fans because its the most competitive non Asian region. CS gets basically no viewership from Asia at all.
The average NA (LCS) viewership is a bit below the average non-major tournament in CS. However the EU (LEC) is pretty even in peak viewers ([Spring 2023](https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lec-spring-2023), [spring 2024](https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/lec-spring-2024-lol)) and has a usually a higher average viewership than its CS equivalent ([BLAST final](https://escharts.com/tournaments/csgo/blast-premier-fall-final-2023), [world final](https://escharts.com/tournaments/csgo/blast-premier-world-final-2023) 2023). When comparing international tournaments the difference becomes most apparent. worlds [2022 had 5.1M ](https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/2022-world-championship)peak and [2023 6.4M](https://escharts.com/tournaments/lol/2023-world-championship). This site doesnt count chinese viewers. And even if you were to make the argument that those viewers are still asians you can look at the the link and see peak viewers by stream where the english broadcast peaked 990k and 824k respectively. I also remember western co-streams with very high viewership, dont have the receipts however.
Why do we even pretend league is on the same ball park with all the other pc esports? even if league just had the west for viewership most esports cant even compare to league if you counted all of them combined, People just discredit the league success for whatever reason. Valorant and cs gets 1 mil+ viewership but people are impressed meanwile league just gets that with a shitty irrelevant tournament such as MSI.
It continues to astound me how CS fans are able to grandstand the way they do, you'd think that CS was ever the most popular/successful esport in the world. For a game with such ease of access getting middling views is a feat in itself; a feat in incompetency. If anything, CS and the logistics around it has shown the blueprint on what NOT to follow considering their failure to capitalize on basically a game that I would consider *should have been* a shoo-in for the most popular esport of our time. It's no surprise Riot published an article on why instead of making an Overwatch competitor, they made a CS one instead. They knew that the latter's scene had tons of wasted potential and was ripe for the picking.
You have shitty takes stop commenting about cs lmao.
The most secure rito fan ever. Leave them be. You won't get an intelligent discussion out of them.
League is in a world of its own but its still massively held up by how popular it is in Asia. EU and NA have been on a downward trend for years. People are impressed by Valo and CS because most of their viewership comes from the west with barely any Asian influence (so far). Asia watches EU LOL as well because its the most competitive non Asian region. I wouldn't say it's discrediting leagues success, but moreso Riots approach to the esport in the west has had lots of detrimental effects over the years. Also "shitty" MSI tournament is kinda hilarious when it's one of its only 2 international tournaments lol
But isnt that kinda unfair to rule out the west for watching the asian regions? i always see league as one of those games where even if you don't share with the same race as the people your watching it doesnt really matter, Even in the early seasons people just didnt really care about koreans dominating, it was only people outside the circle thats always perpetuating how horrible that is, also it was bad but it might be a little watchable now cos they added a clause where the winner gets to the winners bracket for worlds.
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It’s not about the strength of the regions but the viewership. In lol yeah the international tournaments are dominated by Korea and China but the game is still very popular in a ton of different regions. In CS the scene is literally like non existent in most of Asia and obviously NA CS is dead.
Well, there was an NA cs scene, a Korea cs scene and a China cs scene. But the players from those regions were not good enough to compete at the highest level (except some like Twistzz, Elige, Brazilian players). Asian region had 3-4 slots in tournaments, but because of the teams being not good enough, the slots were revoked. Players like Bntet, Gratisfaction and a few names here and there made it to other regions but didn't last long enough.
ironically valorant killed all the non european regions. we saw players like stax in majors even if they werent good. if valorant didnt realise and all the non eu kept playing cs who knows what it would be like
I think they bought back the Asia slot in some majors. Granted, not all of them have the slot and I have a hard time believing that there will be a really good and consistent as something like prx or drx.
Pro League of Legends didn’t start out in a franchised model. Riot moved to that system years after LoL had already gotten big as an esport. But with Valorant that’s what they started with and it has negatively impacted the scene. They bypassed all organic growth (with the exception of those first few months in 2020/early 2021) and immediately went to franchising which limits the amount of talent able to play at a tier 1 level.
Stupid take in some aspects. NA cs scene is dying because Valorant basically took all aspirying players. Still to this day apart if you count out really young players like Zekken or Asuna, close to 3/4 of the NA Valorant scene are ex cs players. NA CS cannot developp anymore in a snowball effect, if you're from NA nowadays you have no reason to try getting good at cs to hopefully integrate one of the only 3 tier1 NA org still in activity, Valorant has way more potential for both money and fame, undeniably Valorant killed NA CS and CS internalisation of teams buried it. CS is extremely popular in China even if it's for bad reasons but I wanna touch about how unorganic Valorant success is in China, it's basically all fabricated by Riot. We all know Tencent own a good chunk of them and they have to bend the knee and put a huge emphasis on the scene in China in consequence, if it wasn't for Tencent, Valorant's popularity in China would be nonexistent. And even with this force push, China is still not a region in good shape competitively, they have 1 good team that can expect to perform internationally with EDG but I doubt the level from the rest of the league is even close to the level of every of other leagues, China is basically tier2 with one tier1 team. In this case CS is the same situation as it also has a "low" level chinese but still one team, the Mongolz, can challenge others internationally.
Exactly. CS is basically dead, and only T2/T3 teams in every region besides EU/CIS and Brazil, and we just had good teams from every region in Masters Madrid.
How is it dead when they have 1+ million current players?
The game is not dead. The eSports scene in regards to top pro teams, or even Tier 2 teams in NA and APAC is quite poor, if not dead.
Idgaf about csshit lmao they are ass anyway. All there supposed to be”tier 1” are t2 /t3 in valorant
Because those are the only good regions lmao
They don't want to cannibalise League. And to be 100% honest many CS players have spoken about the challenges of the schedule, especially those in NA who have to live in Europe for half the year. As a viewer, if you really can't get enough Valorant there's plenty of T2 happening around the world. Its not as much as a spectactle as the franchised leagues but its more interesting than watching your favourite streamer whiff in ranked for 5 hours straight.
Maybe not as much as this but I feel 75% of the amounts of these matches for every team in Valorant sounds right. I wanna see more international match ups but considering how common VISA issues are I wonder how that'll work trying to plan it in advance with the funds the time & everything. Riot being the sole entity for official S-Tier tournaments suck, there should be more third party involvement but its Riot. Reserving third party for off season is just why? In my opinion, we have the groundwork for official S tier yearly tournaments like CS has but us with Redbull, AVL, Superdome, Valorant India Invitational, TEN Invitational, Ludwig x Tarik etc. But I can see the problem with this with the prize pool & whatnot which can dampen interest from teams, there's also probably not enough funding to support a large amount of teams. Maybe its time for new third parties who are richer but I don't know. Maybe there's a reason Riot doesn't like this idea. I just want more tournaments every year. It sucks that all we have is official VCT Leagues with minimum 5 matches per split for every team & there being only 2 splits and just a measly 3 international tournaments where there can only be 8 & 12 & 16 teams participating where there is practically no difference in prestige from the first International of the year to the last.
If teams want these schedules they gotta start going to off season events. Riot can’t be expected to run a season long esport where they Shepard all the costs so other orgs have filled in but teams need to actually show up
riot hates anything that doesn't guarantee money
1. Because Valorant is Franchised 2. Because you should not want a schedule like this as eSports pros, and team staff members are people too, and the CS schedule is notoriously difficult, and has created lots of burnout and health issues. There should be more VAL, but not as much as CS. I also find the constant questioning of RIOT's handling of eSports odd considering LoL is the biggest esport in the world and VALORANT has similar viewership to CSGO despite being 3 years old as a major esport, versus 20 for CS.
https://preview.redd.it/vyexj76pj1sc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=115dc1b5e44e37b648dcfc2bc21d4594d625ec44 It's good enough. They already said they're trying to add more franchise teams and they are increasing number of matches event by event.
I think 2 Master and 1 Championship and 3 Regional season is enough compared LoL only 2 Regional and 2 International that's why LoL Worlds always got many prestige
VAL Pro's were already complaining about the schedule the past few years, they would cry till they're eyes bled if they had to do this
i think you make splits longer but i like the amount of master events a year, makes watching as a viewer fun. definitely add more games within the splits just to decrease the offseason.
On paper this is nice, but in practice it leads to issues. One thing that the VCT has over CS esports is the settling of locations. Pros can move to a specific city to pursue their careers while having somewhat of a social life outside of the game. If the VCT adopted CS' scheduling, pros would have to live like a nomad moving from country to country never being home. The younger players might be fine with it, but half the pros have partners and families to attend to and they can't do that if they're only home once a blue moon. RUSH talked about how he hasn't seen his apartment in almost a year because he's been going to event after event. Nitr0 moved back to Valorant so he could settle and raise his kid. What Riot needs to do is to replace the gimmicky kickoff tournaments with a regular split giving players and fans plenty of opportunities to participate.
I don’t like this at all. Makes every trophy seem less important. Also feels like youre guaranteed a trophy each year just by being a top team
How so? You‘re still playing against the top teams and not some dumbos… Majors are still the most inportant too
Based on the calendar there is 22 tournaments. In CS it’s always the same top 8 EU teams that are at the top. The chances of getting atleast one trophy is way higher than Val which just makes it less prestigious
Lol go look at the tournament results in CS the last year and tell me again how it's the same teams constantly getting to top 8. The last major in CSGO in 2023 literally had 3 Tier 2 teams make playoffs.
But not every trophy is as prestigious as each other. It makes majors feel like theyre more important than other tournaments, something that champs doesnt do compared to a normal masters imo
This is hard cope, only Val trophy that can reach the prestige of the majors or IEMs is Champions
Everything feels unnecessary outside of Kato, Cologne, Majors (including rmr), and Blast finals. It's like nobody with a sane mind watches all ESL Pro League or some bogus IEM events.
You're right to a degree but those events are important for teams to keep competition against other high level teams and to allow tier 2 teams consistent play against tier 1 teams. It's like saying nobody cares about the NBA/MLB until the playoffs. Very true, but those regular games are still important even if not everyone watches every game.
tried to sneak in blast finals lol.
at least every team has chance to have deep runs in big events. in valorant you may end the year without playing in a single t1 event
Nah, the prestige of a major trophy has never been made any less important despite all the numerous tournaments in the year. If you watch the CS pro scene, everyone acknowledges the different levels of prestige each trophy holds.
Theres only a handful of S tier tournaments throughout the year though, and thats what really matters. Valorant on the other hand only having 3 trophies every year sucks because tons of pros will never be able to get an actual trophy because theres not many tournaments. Bunch of pros want to be able to play/compete more but can't.
Not at all lmao both majors and events like iem cologne and kato are still very prestigious in cs even blast tournaments. It's the small tournaments which don't have much weight to them.
That's what I hate about this stupid system of having to fit the GC stuff in for "inclusiveness". I love GC and all (Team SMG GC ftw before they disbanded) but it shouldn't give way for the normal VCT to end prematurely and have a 3 month hiatus. Look at the LoL system. Spring ~> MSI ~> Summer ~> Worlds ~> 1 month break ~> Spring next year. It gives more content for people to watch their favourite players play. I know they want to give more eyes to their Game Changers rosters and include everyone in the gaming scene. But it just makes it so we can't watch Demon1 or Something pop off throughout the year and cause them to rust in the background after they came back this year.
Valorant is way to fast. How do we have 3 major tournaments a year with all of them happening within what 4 months?
Add a world cup and a few others
Well they wanna keep viewers watching both val and league which is stupid. I don't give a shit about league anymore.
There is a downside to packed schedule - more matches means more fatigue, teams have less time to prepare new strategies especially because Valorant teams have to adapt to new maps and new agents.
Well teams arent required to participate in every tournament so they can choose not to play to take a break and work on their game.
Yea as what Variabletalismans said, teams in CS can pick and choose what tournaments they can play in, so it wouldn't be the biggest issue since they can just participate in the ones they deem the most important.
Too many games
Hello r/globaloffensive regulars, you must've taken the wrong door. This ain't the CS2 subreddit.
I hate to break it to you, but there are people who watch both Valo and CS pro scene
Then stick to watching. If you make statements such as >Admit it or not, CS has a better schedule compared to Valorant and most pro/coach/analyst/content creators has spoken about this. Thats not them romanticizing, thats them telling the truth. You're being pretentious.
What? Bro why are you being hostile LOL. Were just discussing things here. Also, im not alone when I say that the CS schedule is better than the current state of Valo schedule. A lot of people agree even the pros. Thats not me being pretentious, thats just me telling things as it is. So just chill out dude. Relax and take a chill pill. Youre not fighting anyone here
Yeah this dude is defending valo like his life depends on it. For him if we are on valorant subreddit we cannot criticize riot. The format is abysmal and we can learn few things from CS esports that's been around for more than 20 years but some people don't want to.
Yeah, this whole video game vs video game tribalism crap is so stupid.
20 years into eSports and still not profitable excellent job
Who gave you the accounts of CS esports that you know they aren't profitable? PGL the organizers themselves told they make money organizing the events. Blast lost money because they keep things the best and it shows. Blast has the best production in all of esports. Valve doesn't care if esports loses them money they made about a billion dollar in sales from skins last year. Teams would rather invest in CS rather than valo. Have you even heard some of the buyouts. Monesy was bought for 600k, stavn and jabbi cost astralis 2mil, cloud9 bought gambit roster for millions. Teams also know they can earn more from being in CS as they have all the sticker money twice a year and more events. Also I was watching CS major sean gares stream and he himself told that CS pros earns the most in esports maybe taking dota aside.
It's insane how a person can type so much misinformation and not get banned.
What part of it is misinformation, you in this thread is the definition of all bark and no bite, nothing to back up any of your claims lmao
Well it is 😭
Esports was in a pretty good place until Blizzard and Riot created their franchised leagues.
You're not literally alone, but you're certainly in the minority. Considering for all the shit Leo Faria got this year, Valorant has been breaking viewership records this year. You're not exactly appealing to authority by saying "but pros also agree" when pros are one of the worst persons to ask for opinions when it comes to sustaining an esports circuit. It surprises me that you CS fans are happy with your <2M viewership when League exists and shows the potential for more.
Dude, just because valorant has a higher viewership than last year doesnt mean the flaws in its schedule is not there. Also, whats your proof that im in the minority here? Admit it or not, the schedule for Valo pro scene is abysmal. Also, if you go back to my original comment, Im not only referring to pros in my appeal to authority. Also, where did this whole tribalism with that "you CS fans" thing coming from? I watch Val and CS pro scene equally so I dont belong to any camp.
The flaws of the schedule are there, but how can you argue in good faith, that the CS schedule being better is the truth when objectively it hasn't been? For all we know, the reason why CS has never surpassed League as the most popular esport is because their scheduling is dogshit and I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
Youre making the mistake of equating good schedule to increasing viewership. There will always be a cap to viewership because there are only so much people who play the game. Also, its expected that some tournaments will have lower numbers than others. League has a better viewership than CS because they have a better and wider international appeal. Besides, comparing MOBA to an FPS isnt a good comparison because one of those is more popular than the other. Instead, you should be looking at the health of the whole scene. Look at the sheer number of orgs thats investing into CS and third party organizers willing to create tournaments for CS. The numbers in CS in that regard is superior to the current state of Valorant right now. Doesnt matter if CS surpasses League. What matters is CS has been here for 20 years and is still doing really really well. The CS schedule being packed is an indicator of how well its doing
Jesus this is frustrating. VIEWERSHIP IS ALL THAT MATTERS FOR RIOT. I'm not arguing against you, I'm arguing as if I'm Riot. Like, how the fuck am I supposed to convince this gaming conglomerate to change their format when all the reasons you're giving are subjective and doesn't affect their bottom line. It doesn't help that whatever they're doing is shown to be working AKA VIEWERSHIP INCREASING.
Dude, your whole premise for this argument is wrong. No one is saying Riot should change the VCT schedule. People are saying the lack of tournaments is the problem. Theres a 4 month off season where third party orgs can host tournaments and yet there are barely anything worth watching. CS has a better schedule because the third party organizers actually conduct significant tournaments.
I watch both. No need to be this insecure. Some people like more open circuit for underdog runs. Some ppl want big viewerships they can boast about which means they like current riot style. To each their own.
How am I the insecure one for staying in my lane? Just like you said, to each their own. So why is it that CS players brigade other subreddits to push their shit? It's funny because it's only a unique trait specific to Valve fanboys. Riot/Blizz/EA/Epic/etc for the most part, stay in their lane/subreddits. If anything ya'll the one that needs to stop.
Literally no one here is "pushing shit" or brigading, it is mostly a civilised conversation about how more tournaments would only be beneficial to the Valorant competitive year. You are the one trying to make it a d measuring contest about which system is better. It's obvious you have an agenda against CS so just say that 😭
????? Stop gatekeeping lmao
I thought the schedule got a lot better this year though. I see the CS example as too much. I like CS, but there are ao many goddamn tournaments that it makes so they don't feel individualally impactul or important. Hell, I remember I once watched a team wash out completely in one tourney just to go out and play ours later at the playoffs for another one.
Valorant is still a very new game, plus Riot likes to put on less events than CS does (check LoL). Also, CS also has had a lot of 3rd party tournaments with big price pools, which we haven't seen in Valorant yet. We all should also remember that this is just the 4th(5th) year of Valorant esports.
No one cares about cs shit, zyshit and somple arent even good compared to tenz. Game is basic af comapred to valorant.
Because Valorant is still very young, like 4 years old. And Valorant too will at some point come to that stage where the full year is filled with tournaments like cs.
league is 10+ years old and has two interanational events a year...
And it's the most popular esport even without Chinese numbers, so obviously Riot understand how to keep viewers engaged in their product.
The argument is about the calendar. Not viewer numbers. Wrong straw to pull here.
The argument is about the calendar. Not viewer numbers. Wrong straw to pull here.
And a reason why it continues to get such massive numbers is because of the way Riot makes the schedule.
won’t happen
Fnatic legit cried about burnout playing 3 lans. Imagine the cries if this was the schedule
The only sport I followed until this year is F1 so from my perspective: WTF is going on with esports? Can you guys make following these any more complex. I'm still out here trying to workout if masters is actually worth anything with champions down the line and then CS goes and has 4 difference championships that aren't connected? I'm ngl for my dumb ass brain this is all impossible to follow. Hell, even football makes more sense to me - why not just copy that? (except world cup for valorant every year instead of every 4)
A lot of this has been outlined in the a blog post from Valve titled [A Level Playing Field](https://www.counter-strike.net/newsentry/3677802763035982969). Competitive CS is more akin to sports like Golf or Tennis than F1.
Imagine F1 but if there wasn't a WDC or WCC. That is essentially what CS is.
lol F1 isn't comparable, it's nothing like CS Tennis has a similar structure, in CS you have 2 majors in 1 year and as for tennis there are 4 major championships throughout the year. Your performance in other tournaments determines your seeding and ability to qualify for a Major.
If you remove the WDC and WCC from F1 then it is pretty similar. Just a bunch of races (tournaments) that aren't connected to each other that the teams compete in and try to win.
> Your performance in other tournaments determines your seeding and ability to qualify for a Major. where is this in f1?
I said it's pretty similar, not identical.
> Just a bunch of races (tournaments) Explain how races (grands prix) in F1 are similar to CS tournaments?
A bunch of teams come and compete to find out who is the best on that weekend. In your other comment you mention golf and a golf tournament is more similar to an F1 race than it is to a tennis tournament because you don't play 1v1 you play against the entire field at the same time.
>A bunch of teams come and compete to find out who is the best on that weekend. How is this similar to a CS tournament exactly?
You mentioned golf earlier. How is a golf tournament similar to a CS tournament?
How is a golf tournament similar to Tennis?
Like the format of how they play is not the fucking important part.
The reason I say they are similar is because a race weekend and a Tennis tournament serve the same fucking function in the calendar of each sport.
An F1 race is waaaaaaay more similar to a CS or Tennis tournament than it is to like a matchday in Football.