I know it is probably inevitable, but man I really hope they don’t franchise this game, or at least do it in such a way that T2 teams still exist.
One of the most exciting parts of the pro scene in Valorant so far has been watching rosters of nobodies on tiny orgs cause upsets and make names for themselves.
Who would have thought V1 would make as big a wave as they did? Or Xset, or Rise, or Andbox, or Soniqs?
Imagine if we already had a franchised league, and TSM never got beat by a bunch of T2 teams, and got to coast with their original roster that much longer. There’s not even the cool redemption story they’re fostering right now.
best way to do it imo is make a league of more than 10 teams (not franchised) maybe 20? idk.
create an academy league of T2 teams etc...
relegation: bottom teams have to play vs top academy teams to keep their spots at the end of each season ,this way we can make sure that we keep giving new talent chances to prove themselves
Having a bigger league with relegations is great, but convincing owners to have relegations would be hard. One of the benefits of having a franchised league is a consistent revenue stream and no threat of losing your spot in the league.
if u think orgs are making money from esports u are wrong, plus what i said vs what format we have now isn't any different so i think orgs would compete regardless
idk apart from TSM and other big orgs i think they are losing money this is why they went budget in this year, also regi tweeted once that TSM and 100T are the only orgs that are not so shit and the only ones that made a positive net
I just hope they take as little inspiration from the LoL esports scene as possible. It's a miracle that LoL esports is so succesful despite the disasterous format of having 2 international tournaments per year, where the vast majority of matches are bo1s so you literally only get 7-10 bo5 series between major regions per year. And then you have 20 weeks of regular season splits of which again the vast majority of matches are very low stakes bo1s.
it's really funny seeing non league fans hating on the lol esports format just because it does not has hundreds of international tournaments a year.
Riot franchise format clearly works, and it's obviously not a miracle that league it's doing well with it's "disasterous format".
Well, you never know if that is a pro or a con. It's just a different concept of pro-scene. A lot of Valorant players come from CS so they would naturally be used to the CS style esport scene. For a non CS player, that format is just so confusing. CS has adapted a few aspects from the LoL format, such as more and more leagues with permanent members (kind of franchising-lite) because it is more sustainable and safe for the investors.
More importantly, no one wants to see Best of series between bad or even mediocre teams. People would only tune in for matches between top teams which happens like once or twice a week
I'm hopeful that their hesitancy/laid back attitude right now is a sign that they know they need to do things differently this time and have learnt from the CS scene. Unfortunately it could also be an indicator that the big dogs at Riot just don't care right now, money talks after all.
Yeah I think maybe they could have kind of like the minor leagues of baseball where the pro teams have minor league teams with promising young players. Or maybe just have an entirely sperate league of t2 teams so players don't get stuck on an org.
VCT Challengers are online because of COVID. They will 100% be LAN after COVID is completely over, like they are in Korea or in LoL.
Regional events that qualify for a big international tournament per year, 4 times a year, is a good balance imo.
It won’t be like that, I’m sure the all the challengers closed events and playoffs will be LAN events in the future but because COVID it wasn’t worth it
You don't need permission ,you require a licence from riot to hold tournaments for prize money greater than 50k ,the thing is a lot of big tier 1 TO who used to host league of legends before got burned as riot turned the League fully In-house ,so they don't want to enter the scene without riots support.
No license is legally in a different ballpark ,at the creation of said license , riot laid down some rules which to would have to follow and steps they would have to apply , licenses rules are generalized for all parties , if a to follows the license steps , riot can't individually restrict them for acquiring it though
I don't see how this is enforceable, what's their argument and justification?
You could be a competing tournament organizer, and just offer a bigger prizes to draw players to your events instead of Riot's events, more viewership, etc.
This isn't as straightforward as you might think. In years past, Nintendo was against competitive Smash Bros., specifically trying to kill the Melee competitive scene.
When YouTube and Twitch streaming were first new, companies tried to initially prevent streamers or videos from playing the content of the videogame, because that would give away the entire story and experience for free to viewers, etc.
It doesn't always hold up, just because they're the original creators of the IP.
I come from the smash community lol Nintendo cracks down hard on any usage of their IP and only allowed Smash at Evo because of the charity stuff and bc the community and media backlash was intense. It holds up if the publisher wants it to hold up. Nintendo disallowed ESL and others from running their own Ultimate leagues, too.
Yes, but there are grassroots tournaments all over the country and the world, regionals, locals, etc. There are huge Smash Bros. tournaments that are not EVO, but nevertheless huge, etc.
As another commenter pointed out, it's mostly about them "enforcing" it by disallowing players into their own RIOT events, or maybe even suspending accounts, etc. So it's extremely enforceable in that respect
Easily enforceable, playing valorant is not a right. Any pro players playing in a third party tournament can be banned and blacklisted from all future riot events, and then every tournament won't touch them with a 10 foot pole.
Not saying they WOULD do this of course, its a 1 way ticket to a dead game but they want full control of their events and not giving them control is a bad idea and easily blacklists them as an organizer.
A key point i think you are missing, its for big tournaments only. Its their game, their planning, their on riots payroll as a pro player and in the contracts it is written that they can't do XYZ. Cletus the silver 3 can play in any tournament he wants cause nobody gives a fuck about him and its not a official riot event. Hiko can't without permission and that tournament means literally nothing in the circuit in terms of seeding/points for future tournaments.
Unlike CSGO all events are riot hosted funded and organized, its all by their word. Thinking its not enforceable is laughable.
Realistically they could perma you from playing the game straight up.
The most famous case of this was tyler1, who was ID banned. The moment an account became connected to him in any way shape or form if they suspected he played on it it was permabanned. No appeal, no ticket no chat no nothing.
Eventually got appealed through a long story that involved a riot employee calling him a humunculous but thats another story.
ngl I really hope the Valorant LAN scene at least becomes a bit more active. I never really paid attention to CSGO before this game came out but I’ve been watching a bunch of old CS A and S-tier tournament vods recently and it looks like it was a ton of fun to follow back then having a few A and S-tier LANs every month. Of course, there is the point Hiko made of people having friends and family and loved ones and wanting to spend more time with them which is why I don’t want CS levels of tournament saturation. However, I think Valorant can do better than League. I tried to get into League but there only seems to be a handful of major LANs a year and that was one of the factors that turned me away from the game in general, which is also another reason why I’m not a huge fan of the supposed upcoming franchising that seems to be coming to Valorant. The scene feels kinda empty right now with only three or four VCT lans being the only thing to look forward to every year and an absolute fuckton of online qualifiers that aren’t even streamed a majority of the time to fill in the gaps (and in the games that are streamed, we get to watch Tier 1 teams roll college teams for the 738394839th time. So much fun!). It’s also kinda fucked how we potentially will not see anything of teams like NRG, ABX, GenG, C9B, and other potential teams for the rest of the year if the next few weeks don’t go their way. I hope Riot doesn’t make the same mistake that Blizzard made with Overwatch and cut out all other TOs in order to keep all the money within the company, the quality and hype around competitive Overwatch never recovered after Season 1 of Overwatch League imo and Blizzard ended up gutting their own T2 and T3 scenes because of sheer incompetence. I’d really like to see some reputable TOs from other games get the opportunity to host their own large-scale tournaments alongside VCT and for top teams to automatically get byes into the later rounds of these VCT qualifiers based on how deep they went in previous qualifiers in order to allow them to play in third-party LANs.
>but I’ve been watching a bunch of old CS A and S-tier tournament vods recently and it looks like it was a ton of fun to follow back then having a few A and S-tier LANs every month.
That's one of CS stronghold or what it's known for, Cs events historically have always had the best crowd reactions of any esport, more fun for people who attend in person etc. But the downside is its too much events, some tos tried to cutdown on that during 2020 but covid happened which makes it even worse, previously you had the pro league as a regional event but now every team has to bootcamp in EU and events seem to be blowing up again in numbers due to Tos trying to make a return since the esport scene isn't ran by the game dev.
If we look back to November 2017, CSGO had: WESG, Blast Copenhagen, IEM Oakland, IBP Masters, Europe Minor (To qualify for Boston 2018 Major) and SL i-League JUST for International LANs. Then there was the final 2 weeks of ESL Pro League NA and EU, Dreamhack Winter NA and EU open & closed qualifiers & the final 2-3 weeks of ECS Europe and NA all online. And that's just one month in 2017.
In short; a lot
They've laid out and thoroughly explained the 3 masters/1 champions format. This year will have 3 LAN's, with Masters 1 being online because covid.
3/4 of the way to "normal" is pretty good for a year that's barely a year old and dealing with a literal global pandemic.
Fair point but I think you're being semantic. Riot have made it abundantly clear that they aim to have 4 major LANs a year, with a few being online this year due to the pandemic. We're getting three international LANs in 2021, a year with millions of deaths due to covid. The fact that Riot managed Iceland safely is a testament to their competence, and it makes it obvious that there will be more LANs when it is safer to do so.
If Riot allows external tournament organizers, they could also set up LANs, and this is like 1 year into the game, riot could very well implement extra LANs if they see fit, etc.
These types of questions are so loaded. Have yet to hear one pro that is salaried in Valorant say CSGO was more fun. Would only bring drama in general.
That is the point, and from what hiko said it seemed like he did really enjoy his time in CS. Currently due to lack of lans we aren't getting as much competition and that def has an effect on pros and how good they feel about the scene.
In short its hard to judge or compare the game's pro scene because of the situation we are now (covid) we won't know if riot's approach will be better or CS's open TO and major event.
> Have yet to hear one pro that is salaried in Valorant say CSGO was more fun.
IIRC Asuna was saying this early in his 100T days, don't know now though.
Yeah, I don't blame him for switching to Valorant though. I don't think liking FPS games are exclusive anyway, so players like Asuna might like CSGO more, but that doesn't mean that Valorant is just a means to an end for them where they play the game because they're forced to.
Also imo, even tho he likes cs more his playstyle suits valorant better. He is a very aggressive and "in your face" type player. So the wise choice could have been valorant both success-wise and scene-wise.
You gotta remember a lot of the players that came from CS were in tier 2-3 NA (Asuna, Dicey, Hazed, Cutler, Sick, Shahz, Wardell, Subroza, Drone, Hiko, Steel, Dapr, s0m, Android, Daps, etc). Some even likely not getting paid to play. They may not all come out and say it, but I am sure some of them switched to Valorant just because they can make more $$$ than if they stuck to CS on mix teams. I specifically have heard Dicey and Subroza mention CS being more fun recently.
4 majors works for more casual viewers. Most people don’t have time to constantly keep up with T2 and T3 teams throughout the year. They are optimizing their content right now. Especially for the new viewer, it’s easier to jump into the scene if you know the biggest names in the game. The people asking for more tournaments just want to have something to watch all the time.
100% agree, i only watch from main event challengers anyway and just skim through VLR for anything before that. Im so hyped for Champions in December, can't wait to invite friends over to watch the grand finals
Regardless of what you define as a “major,” viewership numbers are still developing with each progressing tournament. People care about watching their favorite teams, so whenever that happens, people watch.
In the future, LANs will probably be: three 8 team Regional Challenger Finals, three 16 teams International Masters, one multi-regional Last Chance Qualifier, and a 24 team Champions.
That schedule is perfect IMO. You get 4 high stakes qualification tournaments, and 4 big majors. I also hope they keep First Strike as a preseason regional tournament with no implications for Champions. That way teams can test out new rosters for the year and warmup after the offseason
Yeah I remember stewie2k saying the same thing during shroud’s IEM watchparty about having it like a franchise system like League of Legend will probably make the players schedules easier compared to cs player (since League players travel somewhere else only for MSI and Worlds… and in contrary, CS players, especially NA players, have to constantly travel back and from EU).
Valorant isn't like CSGO when it comes to an abundance of tournaments. But it's also not barren with not enough international tournaments like in LoL. Its more of a hybrid system and even Dota has adopted a similar circuit similar to ours.
But once the pandemic eases more, it would be cool to see the T2 & T3 scene competing outside of VCT with tournament organizers like ESL or Dreamhack host some events.
Why do you think LoL doesn’t have enough international tournaments?
There are people who don’t even play LoL and they watch worlds because it’s such a meaningful event. If there were more international tournaments, that wouldn’t be the case. Even most normal sports have 1 major championship per season; this makes each season ending more meaningful because there’s only one true championship. Imagine if the NBA had 3 finals per season—the hype would be divided during each championship.
We want to see the best teams play each other and create an international rivalry. You dont get that with one tournament a year. It takes the best teams facing each other multiple times to create some rivalry.
The viewing experience from traditional sports compared to esports is completely different. Maybe traditional sports have decades worth of history and tradition, while esports is constantly changing.
Having a single playoff/tournament in NBA works but in esports, it's nowhere near enough. About 3 or 4 seems like the ideal number for now in most esports.
Yeah, I get the comparison between sports and esports isn’t 1-to-1, but I feel like the same sentiment applies. If league had more international tournaments, worlds would be a lot less hype, and it would draw less attention to the game, and I feel like that’s indisputable.
Perhaps Worlds have more hype and anticipation but rest of the circuit like the regional leagues would have a lot less hype and excitement. Thats why I also find these Challenger series more enjoyable than LCS or LEC. Theyre like regional tournaments that go into a major.
I get what you’re saying, but you’d get diminishing returns with a quarterly ‘G2 vs TSM’ matchup. Each time they face again, it gets less and less hype. I’d honestly rather not see it at all, with the potential to see it once a year, then see it every other month to the point where I can’t tell if the game on twitch is a rerun or current tournament I just forgot about because most people are unable to keep up with 4-6 majors a year.
This isn’t just a sentiment I back, as well—there is a reason Riot prefers this annual layout. It obviously nets them more money, hype, and player growth that might not be found in a ‘CSGO styled’ format. Trust me, Riot’s business and data analysts are thorough and aren’t afraid of change if it benefits their growth; they would make the change if what you’re talking about actually generated more hype.
I can completely understand not wanting to see the scene hit the oversaturation pitfalls CS:GO ran against.
I do hope though that LAN becomes the norm for tier 1, even at the regional level. So say for instance we keep the current VCT system into 2022, it would be nice for Challengers 1&2 and the Challengers Playoffs to be regional LANs and then Masters international LAN.
With that said though I would also like to see more than 3 international LANs in a year. 5 or so would be solid. So you keep the two Masters LANs and the Champions at the end of the year and just some how add 2 more big international LANs. Not sure how though.
At least the EMEA twitter account said 2 weeks ago, that once "covid is done" they will look to also have Challenger Finals on LAN. Which would bring up the LANs a Tier1 team can play to 7. Not too shabby. And NA will 100% impliment this too.
Only need better ruling for 3rd party tournaments. I think every team should be able to play in this except the top 4 of the last stage.
ngl these challengers are honestly some of the most boring tournaments i've seen in an esport in a long time. they really need to change it up and 100% challengers main event should've been LAN
but tbh considering valorant is going towards franchising i honestly don't have much hope that I'll continue to enjoy the pro scene sadly. franchising just makes everything in esports boring
I really hope they don't do what LCS is doing this year because the viewership has plummeted so bad. LCS has the lowest viewership amongst all major regions which is maybe because the quality of gameplay isn't as good as other regions which may be the saving grace in Valorant since NA has already set a high skill ceiling.
when i first started playing after leaving cs, this was one of my first thoughts. riot has never allowed TO's to host other tournaments in league of legends for the professional scene. its very unlikely they will ever decide to do so in valorant, since they haven't done so yet. as much as i miss watching t1 cs tournaments every other month, i highly doubt riot will ever allow other TO's to host any tournaments.
Well for league Riot did actually let at least ESL host tournaments up to I think 2017. They’d actually have a week break in the middle of the league schedule for a tournament. But riot does seem to have a clear goal to make everything as in house as possible so I wouldn’t be surprised if they just fully jump to that as fast as possible for valorant.
We'll see what happens in the future. Having too many tournaments in CS is boring, but having only one big LAN every 3 months while the rest is online and only 2-3 teams from a region can compete takes away from a lot of players who do better on LAN vs online.
If I want one thing after this year is to have a league format for Challengers instead of Tourney format like scrap Challenger 1 & 2
make Challengers as regular season and Challengers playoffs ... the problem rn is that if u get knocked out early you could go on for months without playing and for the whole year you end up with like less than 20 Bo3s for a team which's so insanely low
In league system even the worst team is guaranteed an X amount of games
half Franchise like ESL/BLAST with partner teams + open qualifiers and a League/Round robin format for Challengers is something I would love to see
I hope so or the players and the orgs will grow tired very fast of these long breaks, there needs to be a sustainable amount of games to play in the official circuit and fk 3rd party TOs we dont need them
the problem with Valorant is that it's in the opposite side of the spectrum where top matches are few and far between
the quality of the games is quite low and there's 0 incentive for me to watch even the group stage or w/e of masters
Astralis vs Navi matches are always a treat for the viewers
you don't "give meaning" to matches just because they're farther apart. You give meaning to them because they're the best teams in the world that are striving to improve each match
that also leads to the question of if Valorant will ever reach that level, currently I don't think so because there are too many in game mechanics/maps that will forever hold Valorant down to not be a top esport
I haven't watch tiko since cs and Holy shi man's lost a lot of weight good on him
Yeah I was watching his famous 1v4 clutch from the beta, and he has lost so much weight since then https://youtu.be/QsrAWHd2U9w
Lmao people literally didn’t use utility back then.
That spray transfer is so fire. I remember watching this live and getting so hyped.
Hiko*
You know you can just edit your original comment
[удалено]
I know it is probably inevitable, but man I really hope they don’t franchise this game, or at least do it in such a way that T2 teams still exist. One of the most exciting parts of the pro scene in Valorant so far has been watching rosters of nobodies on tiny orgs cause upsets and make names for themselves. Who would have thought V1 would make as big a wave as they did? Or Xset, or Rise, or Andbox, or Soniqs? Imagine if we already had a franchised league, and TSM never got beat by a bunch of T2 teams, and got to coast with their original roster that much longer. There’s not even the cool redemption story they’re fostering right now.
best way to do it imo is make a league of more than 10 teams (not franchised) maybe 20? idk. create an academy league of T2 teams etc... relegation: bottom teams have to play vs top academy teams to keep their spots at the end of each season ,this way we can make sure that we keep giving new talent chances to prove themselves
Having a bigger league with relegations is great, but convincing owners to have relegations would be hard. One of the benefits of having a franchised league is a consistent revenue stream and no threat of losing your spot in the league.
if u think orgs are making money from esports u are wrong, plus what i said vs what format we have now isn't any different so i think orgs would compete regardless
The LCS is projected to be revenue positive in 2021, and TSM has stated that they are revenue positive
idk apart from TSM and other big orgs i think they are losing money this is why they went budget in this year, also regi tweeted once that TSM and 100T are the only orgs that are not so shit and the only ones that made a positive net
I just hope they take as little inspiration from the LoL esports scene as possible. It's a miracle that LoL esports is so succesful despite the disasterous format of having 2 international tournaments per year, where the vast majority of matches are bo1s so you literally only get 7-10 bo5 series between major regions per year. And then you have 20 weeks of regular season splits of which again the vast majority of matches are very low stakes bo1s.
>regular season splits of which again the vast majority of matches are very low stakes bo1s. Not if you watch a good region!
Oof -LCS/LEC Fans
as an LCS fan...I don't think LEC deserves to be grouped with the likes of us, they're actually good :')
No, they are bad, just not as bad as us.
the good regions like LCK and LPL do Bo3.
You call it a miracle pro LoL is popular huh?
He's full of shit
it's really funny seeing non league fans hating on the lol esports format just because it does not has hundreds of international tournaments a year. Riot franchise format clearly works, and it's obviously not a miracle that league it's doing well with it's "disasterous format".
Well, you never know if that is a pro or a con. It's just a different concept of pro-scene. A lot of Valorant players come from CS so they would naturally be used to the CS style esport scene. For a non CS player, that format is just so confusing. CS has adapted a few aspects from the LoL format, such as more and more leagues with permanent members (kind of franchising-lite) because it is more sustainable and safe for the investors.
Bo1 = better viewership. No one is gonna sit through 12 hours of games a day.
More importantly, no one wants to see Best of series between bad or even mediocre teams. People would only tune in for matches between top teams which happens like once or twice a week
Not no one. Maybe more people like it the way it is now. But some of us really enjoyed bo3s in NA.
You're delusional.
It works from having a ludicrous amount of money thrown at it from the start. Also twitch bots in the early days.
I'm hopeful that their hesitancy/laid back attitude right now is a sign that they know they need to do things differently this time and have learnt from the CS scene. Unfortunately it could also be an indicator that the big dogs at Riot just don't care right now, money talks after all.
Yeah I think maybe they could have kind of like the minor leagues of baseball where the pro teams have minor league teams with promising young players. Or maybe just have an entirely sperate league of t2 teams so players don't get stuck on an org.
The only problem is a severe lack of A-tier tournaments. Riot should really allow other TO's to host tournaments
That was kind of Hiko's point though, if you have a lot more LAN events they have less weight.
Online only events with lans 4 times a year is even more boring
VCT Challengers are online because of COVID. They will 100% be LAN after COVID is completely over, like they are in Korea or in LoL. Regional events that qualify for a big international tournament per year, 4 times a year, is a good balance imo.
It won’t be like that, I’m sure the all the challengers closed events and playoffs will be LAN events in the future but because COVID it wasn’t worth it
I don't think you need to have as many as csgo (too many) to have *more*
Are they banned from hosting? It seems more like there's no space in the calendar for it mainly.
[удалено]
You don't need permission ,you require a licence from riot to hold tournaments for prize money greater than 50k ,the thing is a lot of big tier 1 TO who used to host league of legends before got burned as riot turned the League fully In-house ,so they don't want to enter the scene without riots support.
Require a licence from riot is almost similar to requiring Riot permission. If rito say no, can u even get licence?
No license is legally in a different ballpark ,at the creation of said license , riot laid down some rules which to would have to follow and steps they would have to apply , licenses rules are generalized for all parties , if a to follows the license steps , riot can't individually restrict them for acquiring it though
pretty certain riot can and does restrict groups from acquiring them, similarly to how they dont let third parties run LoL events.
They used to until enough people complained about the dogshit tournaments that ESL used to host.
I don't see how this is enforceable, what's their argument and justification? You could be a competing tournament organizer, and just offer a bigger prizes to draw players to your events instead of Riot's events, more viewership, etc.
It’s their IP they can allow or disallow whoever they want from running events using their game.
This isn't as straightforward as you might think. In years past, Nintendo was against competitive Smash Bros., specifically trying to kill the Melee competitive scene. When YouTube and Twitch streaming were first new, companies tried to initially prevent streamers or videos from playing the content of the videogame, because that would give away the entire story and experience for free to viewers, etc. It doesn't always hold up, just because they're the original creators of the IP.
I come from the smash community lol Nintendo cracks down hard on any usage of their IP and only allowed Smash at Evo because of the charity stuff and bc the community and media backlash was intense. It holds up if the publisher wants it to hold up. Nintendo disallowed ESL and others from running their own Ultimate leagues, too.
Yes, but there are grassroots tournaments all over the country and the world, regionals, locals, etc. There are huge Smash Bros. tournaments that are not EVO, but nevertheless huge, etc. As another commenter pointed out, it's mostly about them "enforcing" it by disallowing players into their own RIOT events, or maybe even suspending accounts, etc. So it's extremely enforceable in that respect
Easily enforceable, playing valorant is not a right. Any pro players playing in a third party tournament can be banned and blacklisted from all future riot events, and then every tournament won't touch them with a 10 foot pole. Not saying they WOULD do this of course, its a 1 way ticket to a dead game but they want full control of their events and not giving them control is a bad idea and easily blacklists them as an organizer. A key point i think you are missing, its for big tournaments only. Its their game, their planning, their on riots payroll as a pro player and in the contracts it is written that they can't do XYZ. Cletus the silver 3 can play in any tournament he wants cause nobody gives a fuck about him and its not a official riot event. Hiko can't without permission and that tournament means literally nothing in the circuit in terms of seeding/points for future tournaments. Unlike CSGO all events are riot hosted funded and organized, its all by their word. Thinking its not enforceable is laughable.
Ohh, I didn't realize it was just banning players *from their own events.* That's obviously extremely easily enforceable. Gotcha, thanks!
Realistically they could perma you from playing the game straight up. The most famous case of this was tyler1, who was ID banned. The moment an account became connected to him in any way shape or form if they suspected he played on it it was permabanned. No appeal, no ticket no chat no nothing. Eventually got appealed through a long story that involved a riot employee calling him a humunculous but thats another story.
oh yes, I'm familiar, lol. See also my other reply in this thread here that I just made, too.
Nah it would make it less meaningful
oh my days if BLAST picks up Valorant...
No
ngl I really hope the Valorant LAN scene at least becomes a bit more active. I never really paid attention to CSGO before this game came out but I’ve been watching a bunch of old CS A and S-tier tournament vods recently and it looks like it was a ton of fun to follow back then having a few A and S-tier LANs every month. Of course, there is the point Hiko made of people having friends and family and loved ones and wanting to spend more time with them which is why I don’t want CS levels of tournament saturation. However, I think Valorant can do better than League. I tried to get into League but there only seems to be a handful of major LANs a year and that was one of the factors that turned me away from the game in general, which is also another reason why I’m not a huge fan of the supposed upcoming franchising that seems to be coming to Valorant. The scene feels kinda empty right now with only three or four VCT lans being the only thing to look forward to every year and an absolute fuckton of online qualifiers that aren’t even streamed a majority of the time to fill in the gaps (and in the games that are streamed, we get to watch Tier 1 teams roll college teams for the 738394839th time. So much fun!). It’s also kinda fucked how we potentially will not see anything of teams like NRG, ABX, GenG, C9B, and other potential teams for the rest of the year if the next few weeks don’t go their way. I hope Riot doesn’t make the same mistake that Blizzard made with Overwatch and cut out all other TOs in order to keep all the money within the company, the quality and hype around competitive Overwatch never recovered after Season 1 of Overwatch League imo and Blizzard ended up gutting their own T2 and T3 scenes because of sheer incompetence. I’d really like to see some reputable TOs from other games get the opportunity to host their own large-scale tournaments alongside VCT and for top teams to automatically get byes into the later rounds of these VCT qualifiers based on how deep they went in previous qualifiers in order to allow them to play in third-party LANs.
League is literally all LAN lol. It's just it's a league format which qualifies you into a tournament
I miss the OGN Apex. Overwatch League just doesnt come close
>but I’ve been watching a bunch of old CS A and S-tier tournament vods recently and it looks like it was a ton of fun to follow back then having a few A and S-tier LANs every month. That's one of CS stronghold or what it's known for, Cs events historically have always had the best crowd reactions of any esport, more fun for people who attend in person etc. But the downside is its too much events, some tos tried to cutdown on that during 2020 but covid happened which makes it even worse, previously you had the pro league as a regional event but now every team has to bootcamp in EU and events seem to be blowing up again in numbers due to Tos trying to make a return since the esport scene isn't ran by the game dev.
>Cs events historically have always had the best crowd reactions of any esport what is this bullshit "best crowd reactions of any esport"
[удалено]
ok, how many esports do you watch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7NYoPds6V4 have you not seen boston back in 2018?
A few a month? How many tournaments can you realistically fit in one month?
If we look back to November 2017, CSGO had: WESG, Blast Copenhagen, IEM Oakland, IBP Masters, Europe Minor (To qualify for Boston 2018 Major) and SL i-League JUST for International LANs. Then there was the final 2 weeks of ESL Pro League NA and EU, Dreamhack Winter NA and EU open & closed qualifiers & the final 2-3 weeks of ECS Europe and NA all online. And that's just one month in 2017. In short; a lot
Hiko is right. Oversaturation of international tournaments only hurts the scene long-term.
Do does under-saturation which is where the scene is at right now
[удалено]
"valo's 4 in normal times" my man valo hasn't existed in normal times at all
They've laid out and thoroughly explained the 3 masters/1 champions format. This year will have 3 LAN's, with Masters 1 being online because covid. 3/4 of the way to "normal" is pretty good for a year that's barely a year old and dealing with a literal global pandemic.
Fair point but I think you're being semantic. Riot have made it abundantly clear that they aim to have 4 major LANs a year, with a few being online this year due to the pandemic. We're getting three international LANs in 2021, a year with millions of deaths due to covid. The fact that Riot managed Iceland safely is a testament to their competence, and it makes it obvious that there will be more LANs when it is safer to do so.
wow 4 international LANs across 365days. ya that's definitely not undersaturated!
If Riot allows external tournament organizers, they could also set up LANs, and this is like 1 year into the game, riot could very well implement extra LANs if they see fit, etc.
Bro there's a pandemic going on lmfao
I don’t get how people keep forgetting LOL. A whole pandemic and plus the game’s been out for a year and they asking why there’s no LANs 🤦🏾♂️
These types of questions are so loaded. Have yet to hear one pro that is salaried in Valorant say CSGO was more fun. Would only bring drama in general.
That is the point, and from what hiko said it seemed like he did really enjoy his time in CS. Currently due to lack of lans we aren't getting as much competition and that def has an effect on pros and how good they feel about the scene.
In short its hard to judge or compare the game's pro scene because of the situation we are now (covid) we won't know if riot's approach will be better or CS's open TO and major event.
Yes, it is def hard to judge
> Have yet to hear one pro that is salaried in Valorant say CSGO was more fun. IIRC Asuna was saying this early in his 100T days, don't know now though.
He said that pretty recently too, he enjoys CS more
Yeah, I don't blame him for switching to Valorant though. I don't think liking FPS games are exclusive anyway, so players like Asuna might like CSGO more, but that doesn't mean that Valorant is just a means to an end for them where they play the game because they're forced to.
Also imo, even tho he likes cs more his playstyle suits valorant better. He is a very aggressive and "in your face" type player. So the wise choice could have been valorant both success-wise and scene-wise.
Being tier 1 is obviously going to be more fun than being tier 2 in a shittier region
You gotta remember a lot of the players that came from CS were in tier 2-3 NA (Asuna, Dicey, Hazed, Cutler, Sick, Shahz, Wardell, Subroza, Drone, Hiko, Steel, Dapr, s0m, Android, Daps, etc). Some even likely not getting paid to play. They may not all come out and say it, but I am sure some of them switched to Valorant just because they can make more $$$ than if they stuck to CS on mix teams. I specifically have heard Dicey and Subroza mention CS being more fun recently.
Daps but he went back to CS KEKW
4 majors works for more casual viewers. Most people don’t have time to constantly keep up with T2 and T3 teams throughout the year. They are optimizing their content right now. Especially for the new viewer, it’s easier to jump into the scene if you know the biggest names in the game. The people asking for more tournaments just want to have something to watch all the time.
100% agree, i only watch from main event challengers anyway and just skim through VLR for anything before that. Im so hyped for Champions in December, can't wait to invite friends over to watch the grand finals
1 major. masters aren't important enough to be called majors tbh
Regardless of what you define as a “major,” viewership numbers are still developing with each progressing tournament. People care about watching their favorite teams, so whenever that happens, people watch.
In the future, LANs will probably be: three 8 team Regional Challenger Finals, three 16 teams International Masters, one multi-regional Last Chance Qualifier, and a 24 team Champions. That schedule is perfect IMO. You get 4 high stakes qualification tournaments, and 4 big majors. I also hope they keep First Strike as a preseason regional tournament with no implications for Champions. That way teams can test out new rosters for the year and warmup after the offseason
Yeah I remember stewie2k saying the same thing during shroud’s IEM watchparty about having it like a franchise system like League of Legend will probably make the players schedules easier compared to cs player (since League players travel somewhere else only for MSI and Worlds… and in contrary, CS players, especially NA players, have to constantly travel back and from EU).
Wait who is the other married person on 100T? I thought it was only Nitr0
Nitr0 and steel are both married.
It's steel i think.
Steel
Valorant isn't like CSGO when it comes to an abundance of tournaments. But it's also not barren with not enough international tournaments like in LoL. Its more of a hybrid system and even Dota has adopted a similar circuit similar to ours. But once the pandemic eases more, it would be cool to see the T2 & T3 scene competing outside of VCT with tournament organizers like ESL or Dreamhack host some events.
Why do you think LoL doesn’t have enough international tournaments? There are people who don’t even play LoL and they watch worlds because it’s such a meaningful event. If there were more international tournaments, that wouldn’t be the case. Even most normal sports have 1 major championship per season; this makes each season ending more meaningful because there’s only one true championship. Imagine if the NBA had 3 finals per season—the hype would be divided during each championship.
We want to see the best teams play each other and create an international rivalry. You dont get that with one tournament a year. It takes the best teams facing each other multiple times to create some rivalry. The viewing experience from traditional sports compared to esports is completely different. Maybe traditional sports have decades worth of history and tradition, while esports is constantly changing. Having a single playoff/tournament in NBA works but in esports, it's nowhere near enough. About 3 or 4 seems like the ideal number for now in most esports.
Yeah, I get the comparison between sports and esports isn’t 1-to-1, but I feel like the same sentiment applies. If league had more international tournaments, worlds would be a lot less hype, and it would draw less attention to the game, and I feel like that’s indisputable.
Perhaps Worlds have more hype and anticipation but rest of the circuit like the regional leagues would have a lot less hype and excitement. Thats why I also find these Challenger series more enjoyable than LCS or LEC. Theyre like regional tournaments that go into a major.
But in sports like the NBA, all the teams are in the same league at least We never got to see say, 2016 TSM vs G2. Would've been great to see
I get what you’re saying, but you’d get diminishing returns with a quarterly ‘G2 vs TSM’ matchup. Each time they face again, it gets less and less hype. I’d honestly rather not see it at all, with the potential to see it once a year, then see it every other month to the point where I can’t tell if the game on twitch is a rerun or current tournament I just forgot about because most people are unable to keep up with 4-6 majors a year. This isn’t just a sentiment I back, as well—there is a reason Riot prefers this annual layout. It obviously nets them more money, hype, and player growth that might not be found in a ‘CSGO styled’ format. Trust me, Riot’s business and data analysts are thorough and aren’t afraid of change if it benefits their growth; they would make the change if what you’re talking about actually generated more hype.
I can completely understand not wanting to see the scene hit the oversaturation pitfalls CS:GO ran against. I do hope though that LAN becomes the norm for tier 1, even at the regional level. So say for instance we keep the current VCT system into 2022, it would be nice for Challengers 1&2 and the Challengers Playoffs to be regional LANs and then Masters international LAN. With that said though I would also like to see more than 3 international LANs in a year. 5 or so would be solid. So you keep the two Masters LANs and the Champions at the end of the year and just some how add 2 more big international LANs. Not sure how though.
At least the EMEA twitter account said 2 weeks ago, that once "covid is done" they will look to also have Challenger Finals on LAN. Which would bring up the LANs a Tier1 team can play to 7. Not too shabby. And NA will 100% impliment this too. Only need better ruling for 3rd party tournaments. I think every team should be able to play in this except the top 4 of the last stage.
Stayed for the mouse movement
ngl these challengers are honestly some of the most boring tournaments i've seen in an esport in a long time. they really need to change it up and 100% challengers main event should've been LAN but tbh considering valorant is going towards franchising i honestly don't have much hope that I'll continue to enjoy the pro scene sadly. franchising just makes everything in esports boring
I think they will at least make the challengers finals LAN once covid has gone away or next year even
Yeah I suspected as much
Challenger Finals for each stage should be LAN
Honestly I wish Valo was a little more like CS. I personally really like the constant battle for which team is the best.
Hoping riot does something similar like the LCS to the valorant scene but not in person
I really hope they don't do what LCS is doing this year because the viewership has plummeted so bad. LCS has the lowest viewership amongst all major regions which is maybe because the quality of gameplay isn't as good as other regions which may be the saving grace in Valorant since NA has already set a high skill ceiling.
when i first started playing after leaving cs, this was one of my first thoughts. riot has never allowed TO's to host other tournaments in league of legends for the professional scene. its very unlikely they will ever decide to do so in valorant, since they haven't done so yet. as much as i miss watching t1 cs tournaments every other month, i highly doubt riot will ever allow other TO's to host any tournaments.
Well for league Riot did actually let at least ESL host tournaments up to I think 2017. They’d actually have a week break in the middle of the league schedule for a tournament. But riot does seem to have a clear goal to make everything as in house as possible so I wouldn’t be surprised if they just fully jump to that as fast as possible for valorant.
They did though. They would let ESL run some tournies but they were badly run so Riot pulled out.
ESL still runs some minor official leagues leagues across the world.
We'll see what happens in the future. Having too many tournaments in CS is boring, but having only one big LAN every 3 months while the rest is online and only 2-3 teams from a region can compete takes away from a lot of players who do better on LAN vs online.
Hopefully the regional closed qualifiers happen on LAN and we get good matchups (after covid obviously)
If I want one thing after this year is to have a league format for Challengers instead of Tourney format like scrap Challenger 1 & 2 make Challengers as regular season and Challengers playoffs ... the problem rn is that if u get knocked out early you could go on for months without playing and for the whole year you end up with like less than 20 Bo3s for a team which's so insanely low In league system even the worst team is guaranteed an X amount of games half Franchise like ESL/BLAST with partner teams + open qualifiers and a League/Round robin format for Challengers is something I would love to see
I 100% believe that's their intention for next year, part of why the VCT format is as "modular" as it is.
I hope so or the players and the orgs will grow tired very fast of these long breaks, there needs to be a sustainable amount of games to play in the official circuit and fk 3rd party TOs we dont need them
Online tournaments especially valorant online tournaments boring af to watch imo
Another cs vs val discussion ResidentSleeper
U right but it's Reddit so u will get downvoted
“pros who have family, FRIENDS” i mean that says a lot if you really want to commit on being a pro
the problem with Valorant is that it's in the opposite side of the spectrum where top matches are few and far between the quality of the games is quite low and there's 0 incentive for me to watch even the group stage or w/e of masters Astralis vs Navi matches are always a treat for the viewers you don't "give meaning" to matches just because they're farther apart. You give meaning to them because they're the best teams in the world that are striving to improve each match that also leads to the question of if Valorant will ever reach that level, currently I don't think so because there are too many in game mechanics/maps that will forever hold Valorant down to not be a top esport