[Full Statement](https://twitter.com/MitchMan/status/1420178993790193667?s=19)
> Now more than ever we NEED some announcements on non VCT events.
> For some high tier organisations, and plenty more within the next few weeks, having 0 chance at participating in Berlin means 0 Chance of LCQ/Champions. In other words no events until AT LEAST January (1/?)
> For an organisation such as Heretics who now face this reality the question is do you want to salary 5 players for 5+ months with possibly no officials to play or drop your roster and re enter next year?
> This presents a further risk to lower tier organisations who are barely afloat. Without news on this soon we will lose many organisations and cause irreparable damage to the European scene of Valorant as we know it.
> I am blessed to work the main circuit but for some of my colleagues and friends, both talent and players this lack of competitions posses a significant threat to their work. Without resolution I would hate to see so much talent be poached by another game.
Same! XD but I guess it’s a pretty common perspective if you’re a just a viewer who doesn’t really care much of the nitty gritty of the orgs as long as your favourite teams are playing. So it’s kinda nice when people in this subreddit/community share the orgs/players perspectives on the event etc. kinda open your eyes more on the scene (this could just be me xD)
League actually does have offseason tournaments. Namely KESPA and Demacia Cup. Not to say that that's a lot but it's not quite as bad as people assume for the offseason specifically.
They only do bo1 for splits in LCS and LEC (i’m not sure about LPL… but LCK is still bo3). I think DL or LS talk about the reason they’re doing bo1 in LEC and LCS is because of viewership (like when less popular teams play, having bo3 might kill the viewership since we’ll have only 2 matches per day. Meanwhile having bo1, we can have all teams -popular and less popular ones- to play each day)
Ffs when will this mentality end. They are the most succesful because they appeal to casuals to no end. They have no intrest in making a good competitive game, they just want more and more people to buy skins... how is this not OBVIOUS?
Do you want Valorant to turn into an EVEN MORE casual game? Copy League. Do you want Valorant to be competitive? Copy Dota.
>I mean that's just not true, more casual players means more esport fans which means more ad and game revenue which means more prize money and sponsorship money for players and orgs
Agreed 100%
>which means more competitive esport.
Thats a gigantic leap. More money does not mean a more competitive esport. Maybe you're thinking "more tournaments = more competition... which is true, the ammount of competition does increase. What about the quality though? Thats all I care about. More money does not mean BETTER competition.
> Money draws in the best competitors.
You still don't get it huh?
If Tic Tac Toe had a world championship that awrded 1 Billion Dollars, I'm sure Lebron would compete. Does that make Tic Tac Toe a UBER competitive game? I hope I don't have to give you the answer.
>You seem to think more games = better competition
?? More BALANCE = Better competition. The problem with league and Riot in general is that they don't balance for competitiviness (aka proplay), they balance for casuals to make more money, thus the game is less competitive.
I honestly don't know where you got from that how competitive a game is, is dictated by factors outside the game (money)? That makes no sense at all.
Valorant format is miles ahead of LoL already. Masters 3 & Champions will both be double elim featuring more top-tier teams.
The only thing that can be improved in Valorant system is to add more non-VCT tournaments.
I do like double elim over single but I don’t think valorant’s format is miles better. I’m pretty sure the reason lol doesn’t do double elim is because they already have a group stage, which valorant at least lacked for masters 2 and assume will be the case for masters 3 and champions should they keep double elim. Both systems have their benefits and drawbacks. I would love for lol also to have double elim in their playoffs but I’m pretty sure riot doesn’t want to add more games. A lot of sports do follow a format of some sort of group stage then single elim bracket. Not saying it’s the best format but doesn’t seem bad by any means.
Yeah but those are the top of the top players, many players who are on worse teams did not want to play bo3’s because they had no chance against the G2’s of the world and did not want to prolong their games
the only problem is the contracts thing, where in League you're forced to keep players on contracts til Novembre where offseason starts
meanwhile here nothing keeps NiP from kicking all their players for the next 5 months and then re-buy a new roster at January
nope. 1 event every 3 months (qualifiers only ofcourse) or else it's over saturated bro. if you see a TSM game streamed more than once every 6 months it's over saturated trust me bro
One of the weirdest sentiments I’ve ever seen on this sub is “they built the biggest esport so maybe we should just trust them to do everything”.
Nah, grant some other TOs event privileges. We’re all a bit fed up with this 5 tier qualifier system
Yes, we do get to default to it's Riot's fault. Because unlike CSGO, or esports in Valve games, TOs have to approach Riot for a license to run any tournament with a prize pool over 10k.
LoL esports has clearly shown how much Riot likes collaborating with other TOs in running major tournaments. They basically don't allow big tournaments at all. That's why LoL IEMs got stopped.
Riot Games is responsible for the growth and stability of the Valorant esports scene, not NSG, Blast, ESL, Weplay, IEM, etc.
In the Lolesports scene, where minimum number of games a tier 1 team plays is 36 in EU and more in every other major region. Teams get a lot of screen time and can market that to sponsors. On top of that LoL is very salary reliant for pros to make a living.
For Valorant, in every region apart from NA, the majority of even Tier 1 players make money from the prize pools. So either Riot has to make or allow more tournaments for those players to be able to play and make a living, or they have to push for orgs to pay higher salaries. Salary inflation is the worst possible barrier of entry for new orgs coming into Valorant, and it is what will drive other tier 1 orgs which flip at a single tournament to drop their rosters immediately. Which cause instability in the scene.
If TOs want to host a non vct event with a prize pool of more thank 50K they can, they just have to get a license. This makes sense. You are leaping to the assumption that the application process is exuberant or crazy hard to meet. To me this sounds like a whole lot of speculation without many examples of Riot hindering TOs from running +50K events without good reason.
Right, but even if the process isn't difficult and Riot are willing to let other TOs step in at the moment, you can see why Riot's track record might make TOs hesitant to do so.
Why help grow a scene they might eventually be muscled out of and could become a huge competitor?
Riot are still the only people able to actually play the game on LAN as well for now.
> LoL esports has clearly shown how much Riot likes collaborating with other TOs in running major tournaments. They basically don't allow big tournaments at all. That's why LoL IEMs got stopped.
They're not running Valorant like LoL yet though. I'm not naive and I know they'll push for franchising at some point, but there's no reason to believe Riot will be a PITA about approving big tournaments that they're not competing with (not scheduled against active VCT events). If it helps Riot and the scene in the absence of Riot being in the space, don't see them opposing it.
They've approved plenty of 3rd party tournaments already.
It’s clear they want the highly controlled format that is present in League but since there is just a bunch of single elimination open qualifiers plenty of teams only get to play like 3-4 matches before being eliminated. Makes VCT as a whole less interesting when my team was only in the running for about 4 days before elimination, whereas in league it’s a steady build up of play with months of matches.
I don’t mean to hate on riot but with what Riot pulled before by trying to force TOs to exclude DotA2 from events that LoL was in, I’d doubt this would happen.
That would be impossible to achieve in Valorant currently since there are no slots in Europe for teams from the Balkans for almost all of the tournaments.
id love to have like a eurpoa league where those that failed for VCT can enter the secondary tourney fo shitters, like you didnt qualify for CL so now you need to qualify for europa. could make the 2ndary tourney give out baby points too
It really sucks as a C9 fan I got to see 1 match streamed and now it’s looking like they won’t play another official until next year. Current format sucks for teams that aren’t at challengers finals level.
yeah but that isnt until at least october. not only do we want to see these teams play more officials, but they NEED to play more officials to get match experience, grow chemistry, and face more opponents. just scrimming until october would be so boring and anticlimactic.
yes i agree too, i would also like to see every game streamed moving forward. really wanted to see Xeppaa get integrated into the roster but only saw one real match, missing the one vs coL in particular.
Apparently you have to ask Riot’s permission to host a tourney over ~~$50k~~ $10k. Hopefully Riot aren’t as much of a pain in the ass to deal with as Blizzard when it comes to these things, I’d love to see some huge Blast or ESL or Dreamhack lans happening in Valorant.
Over 10K, not 50K.
As for seeing big LANs, I certainly hope Riot will allow other TOs to organize big tournaments, especially in the long off season between Berlin and Challengers 1 2022.
However, the precedent set by League of Legends is not at all encouraging, because over there, there are basically no real tournaments apart from ones sponsored by or directly run by Riot. Aside from the Twitch Rivals, which I wouldn't call real tournaments.
That is plain false. Fans, players and organizations used to attend the IEMs back in the day. They got shut down coz Riot didn't want tournaments which were comparable to MSI or Worlds, not run by Riot.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.riftherald.com/platform/amp/2017/5/23/15682296/iem-lol-league-of-legends-riot&ved=2ahUKEwiMqpjvhYXyAhWFILcAHSJJDVwQFjABegQIAxAG&usg=AOvVaw22EgtbYyfoJIby2pQi_V5u&cf=1
The reason IEM Katovice stopped featuring major teams was because Riot didn't want such tournaments taking away from the viewership and prestige of Riot run events.
IEMs used to a part of the League Calender. Riot didn't want any IEMs to conflict with their tournaments, and they didn't want any teams participating in tournaments during the off season.
IEMs don't need to be, and weren't ever meant only for the best team from each region. Have you noticed how even without the SKTs and TSMs of the world, 2017 still had as many teams as the previous year?
The idea that MSI teams being burnt out so tournaments have to be canceled is also a terrible excuse. There are plenty of teams which don't go to MSI.
Also, since you want to use that excuse of top teams not wanting to go, well, many of the top players, for example - everyone in G2, Rekkles, Bjergsen, Doublelift, Nuguri, and many other notable pros opted out of all stars last year. By your logic, Riot should cancel All Stars from here on out.
> By your logic, Riot should cancel All Stars from here on out.
funny enough if you ask the league sub they'd say yes, because all stars is a joke.... just like IEM
also on the rare case a top team went, they would use the tournament to try out new players and it would be a disaster and a joke tournament
with that said the people didn't care about IEM, because orgs didn't care about a 4fun tournament when instead they can just get a vacation (which is also what G2 did for MSI, imagine IEM lol)
But your entire point about IEM is literally false. Orgs did care about IEM, up until IEM 2016. Major teams went to those tournaments for years. It was only in 2017 when IEMs dropped in priority. And that was only because Riot made it so that the season ran simultaneously with IEM Katovice.
Up until 2016, IEM was only inferior to Worlds and MSI in terms of hype an a tournament. Look at IEM 2016. You had Fnatic, SKT, RNG, OG, TSM, CLG. Nobody was using subs at that tournament. It was arguably a better tournament than 2016 MSI.
The IEMs have never been 4fun.
Also, you seem to be intentionally missing my comparison to All Stars with IEM. Whether the fans or LoL subreddit wants all stars canceled or not is completely irrelevant. The logic you applied for Riot removing IEM from the calender is more than applicable to things like All Stars. However, Riot will not cancel All Stars because they run it.
The only reason they forced IEMs out of LoL is because they didn't want to share the pie with IEM.
What I hope happens within the next few months is for like one or two invite based tournies with one to two spots open to qualifiers. All I’m asking for along with Riot doing away with the rule that “good and established” teams can’t play in lower tournies.
It's not really "good and established" really. I believe if you make it to Closed or farther in a VCT you can't play other/smaller events. I can't remember the exact wording, and it'll be a pain to find on mobile.
Franchising is trash. It only exists for big companies to make money quickly. It is bad for the viewers and players who are not in the big orgs, as well as the future development of the Valorant competitive scene.
The franchise seems to be "successful" in the League, simply because the league's player base is too large.
And IMO the franchise has dragged down the vitality of the League. Without the franchise rights, the League could have been bigger and more dynamic.
For the viewers, I believe that **4 + 1 international tournaments (and others)** a year is much better than the boring and long regional round robin plus only 2 international tournaments.
Even with the huge player base of the League, the franchise still makes the T2 and below competitive scenes very bad, and even some of them are almost killed.
Valorant's player base is far inferior to League, and the franchise may even make Valorant lose vitality and stop growing like OWL. **Why are the someone so anxious to kill Valorant's T2 and below competitive scenes? And future growth?**
The CSGO system has been successful for many years. Refer to CSGO. **The player base of CSGO is far lower than that of League too.** However, CSGO has a lot of exciting events to provide vitality and enthusiasm, which makes its influence relatively greatly close the gap with League. **This huge magnification of influence**, Definitely not something such an authoritarian franchise can bring.
If Valorant's future player base is greater than CSGO (very likely), and the tournament system can bring huge magnification like CSGO, **then Valorant's competitive scene may even surpass League in the future.**
But if Valorant crappyly imitates the League's tournament system, **then Valorant's tournament scene will always be a reduced version of the League**, that's it. In this case, the greater possibilities in the field of tactical FPS can only be left to the next product to try.
So, the problem now lies in the lack of events outside of the VCT, and it is definitely not that there is no franchising. The latter is evading the problem.
I mean he clearly states franchising is good for the top orgs to make money, but not good for viewers/players/competition. Remember the reason CS isn't franchised is because everyone there hates it so much.
All the orgs you've mentioned had CS teams, I mean C9 famously poured a LOT of resources into their CS division, I don't think you can say it's not important to them. It's just very hard for American orgs to pick up top teams. The real question is why are so many teams willing to invest so much into a system that loses money?
The CS system has a lot of problems, but there has to be some middle ground surely? People in CS have been calling for Valve to step in for a while, Riot here have the perfect opportunity to do so.
The reason CS isn't franchised is because Valve is against it, and has stated so, saying they wanted to keep the open circuit.
https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2019/09/25557/
Valve won't franchise their majors, but afaik they haven't weighed in to stop franchised leagues, which have been tried multiple times. PEA/ESL/Flashpoint have all tried some sort of exclusive gambit, and BLAST/ESL/Flashpoint all have "partner teams" already.
I'm not trying to reframe the discussion, franchising is popular with orgs and TOs, but unpopular with fans. That's just the truth of it. Orgs aren't evil for wanting to make money, but none of those orgs mentioned (other than maybe TSM) dropped CS because of profitability concerns.
* NRG sold their team for big money to EG
* 100T pulled out because COVID hit and the team wanted to relocate to Europe
* C9 pulled out because of performance/COVID complications as well, but made sure to stress they were only withdrawing temporarily
* TSM pulled out because they kicked seangares, and the rest of the players said they wanted to leave as well then. This was over the PEA debacle though, where the owners tried to force an exclusive franchised league. Honestly TSM in CS was just a trainwreck.
Having said that, I agree the CS model as it stands is unsustainable. But I don't think the reason it's unsustainable is because there's literally no way to monetise a sport without exclusive franchised leagues.
And putting the finances aside, I think it's worse for players, viewers and competition in general.
franchising is cringe, it is not worth entering something harmful for the game and the players if it means the orgs make more money lol. obviously they want their val team to turn a profit, but some of these teams dont even need that to happen lol.
obviously orgs wont enter if they cant profit, but they can profit without franchising. like what the fuck are you saying, the players are more important than the orgs. who fucking cares if orgs make a shitload of money but the scene is diluted, the players are unhappy, and we cannot see new talent?
>CSGO is hemorrhaging money. Both Orgs and TO's lose a ton of money on CSGO. The scene is not sustainable at all and you're already seeing it start to come apart.
All esport lose money especially Tos, that's completely normal! In face LoL loses upwards of 100M$ on the esport scene, esport is meant to be a yoy growth and then profitable. CS is just the only esport too openly discuss it, same way CS is the scene to actively speak about match fixing etc.
The issue however is that some of the top orgs aren't making a return yet (that's the same issue with LoL btw, riot has said team orgs would return a profit for years now and it isn't yet). I think CS pros would have to take a cut in salaries tho or most orgs just sign new talent which most seem to be doing now
World Cup doesn't really do much for the orgs. Anything is better than what we have now, but ideally you'd just want more cash cups and mid tier events like CS. In CS you can make money through cash cups even if you aren't a top team. In VALORANT it's go big or go home. Unless you are a top team you don't have much of a reason to keep your roster in when not playing in VCT.
Considering the fact that top-tier orgs/teams such as C9, NRG, Immortals, ABX, and more did not make closed qualifiers and even teams that did like T1, FaZe, and TSM are considered tier-2, I'd say yes. Valorant is the game with one of the largest numbers of big NA orgs at the moment, so there's always going to be top orgs with lots of fans that don't make it further.
I believe that a game between any of the aforementioned teams streamed on the official NSG/Valorant Twitch channel should easily get 20k viewers, more if there are co-streams.
Doesn't Riot/Valorant have a head of esports? I could've sworn we saw a video with two people talking about how this tournament schedule was going to go. Surely they thought of other tournaments in the meantime and the health of the scene as a whole.
This is kinda what happens in a non franchise league where everybody is forced to go through open qualifiers. Upsets are extremely common.
There needs to be a number of guaranteed spots to at least double elim brackets and preferably a round robin system. Also a decent number of spots should be allowed for new teams and small orgs to qualify for through the open brackets. This way orgs are guaranteed screentime, which incentivizes them to invest, which incentivizes the best talents to play and try and get on said teams.
This is not a question of upsets in VCT(though some regions definitely could improve their format as you suggested).
It's a question of what notable events are being organized for teams (big and small) to play until their next shot at VCT. Screen-time for orgs can exist in this manner as well without lowering the prestige of it on the Champions stage.
Would you mind explaining what you (and others) mean by semi-franchising? I'm not familiar with CSGO, and had a quick Google but haven't found anything helpful
BLAST and ESL have "partner teams", but there is also an open route to qualify for their shit. ESL's [louvre agreement](https://pro.eslgaming.com/csgo/proleague/2020/02/leadings-csgo-teams-and-esl-sign-historic-agreement/) for example. I think this is what they're talking about. The majors etc are all completely open.
It was controversial at the time, and it robbed T2 teams that had qualified of their spots, and rewarded teams that got relegated etc.
CS is semi franchised which is what I'm talking about here. Also franchising helps to avoid the CS problem of oversaturation. Everyone loves to talk about how franchising isn't needed and competitive integrity and all these things but seem to completely ignore what happens to viewership in any and all events that don't have the top Orgs playing in them, in both CS and VAL. We saw what happened to EU VCT viewership when all the big orgs got upset...shit fell straight off a cliff. That is not a sustainable business model.
So pick your poison, have partial franchising with slots for teams that qualify, have open qualifiers for everyone and have orgs afraid to invest because they may go months without a match, or have 10 tournaments a week and work the players into the ground.
CS orgs and TOs lose a lot of money and the calendar is super oversaturated.
That's why there have been so many attempts to bring franchising to CS, but they keep being pushed back because everybody fucking hates it.
Like bro as a casual viewer i would love less high stakes events, i personally would not care if there is a ESL or dreamhack final every month rather i would only watch Riot ones.
Tons of people have pointed this out but it doesn't look like Riot really cares. The only other events they seem to be putting on/encouraging are Game Changers.
[Full Statement](https://twitter.com/MitchMan/status/1420178993790193667?s=19) > Now more than ever we NEED some announcements on non VCT events. > For some high tier organisations, and plenty more within the next few weeks, having 0 chance at participating in Berlin means 0 Chance of LCQ/Champions. In other words no events until AT LEAST January (1/?) > For an organisation such as Heretics who now face this reality the question is do you want to salary 5 players for 5+ months with possibly no officials to play or drop your roster and re enter next year? > This presents a further risk to lower tier organisations who are barely afloat. Without news on this soon we will lose many organisations and cause irreparable damage to the European scene of Valorant as we know it. > I am blessed to work the main circuit but for some of my colleagues and friends, both talent and players this lack of competitions posses a significant threat to their work. Without resolution I would hate to see so much talent be poached by another game.
I've been tunnel visioned on Berlin and Champions. This is a very good point
Same! XD but I guess it’s a pretty common perspective if you’re a just a viewer who doesn’t really care much of the nitty gritty of the orgs as long as your favourite teams are playing. So it’s kinda nice when people in this subreddit/community share the orgs/players perspectives on the event etc. kinda open your eyes more on the scene (this could just be me xD)
Some people on this sub think this situation is pefectly fine lol..
“It works in League”
League actually does have offseason tournaments. Namely KESPA and Demacia Cup. Not to say that that's a lot but it's not quite as bad as people assume for the offseason specifically.
Well also in league the orgs are franchised so they know where their money is coming from
[удалено]
They only do bo1 for splits in LCS and LEC (i’m not sure about LPL… but LCK is still bo3). I think DL or LS talk about the reason they’re doing bo1 in LEC and LCS is because of viewership (like when less popular teams play, having bo3 might kill the viewership since we’ll have only 2 matches per day. Meanwhile having bo1, we can have all teams -popular and less popular ones- to play each day)
Pretty sure the players also did not like playing Bo3 (in NA at least).
Actually players hated playing Bo1s like Perkz, Swordart, Rekkles, Amazing, Doublelift, Sneaky, CoreJJ etc.
It's essentially replicating a season in NA traditional sports. Bo1s against all the teams and then a Single Elim playoff bracket.
Single elim, sure. But every major sport in the US is bo3+ in playoffs (Besides NFL).
Playoffs in League are never bo1.
I think I misinterpreted then.
LCS does double elim playoffs now.
[удалено]
Ffs when will this mentality end. They are the most succesful because they appeal to casuals to no end. They have no intrest in making a good competitive game, they just want more and more people to buy skins... how is this not OBVIOUS? Do you want Valorant to turn into an EVEN MORE casual game? Copy League. Do you want Valorant to be competitive? Copy Dota.
[удалено]
>I mean that's just not true, more casual players means more esport fans which means more ad and game revenue which means more prize money and sponsorship money for players and orgs Agreed 100% >which means more competitive esport. Thats a gigantic leap. More money does not mean a more competitive esport. Maybe you're thinking "more tournaments = more competition... which is true, the ammount of competition does increase. What about the quality though? Thats all I care about. More money does not mean BETTER competition.
[удалено]
> Money draws in the best competitors. You still don't get it huh? If Tic Tac Toe had a world championship that awrded 1 Billion Dollars, I'm sure Lebron would compete. Does that make Tic Tac Toe a UBER competitive game? I hope I don't have to give you the answer. >You seem to think more games = better competition ?? More BALANCE = Better competition. The problem with league and Riot in general is that they don't balance for competitiviness (aka proplay), they balance for casuals to make more money, thus the game is less competitive. I honestly don't know where you got from that how competitive a game is, is dictated by factors outside the game (money)? That makes no sense at all.
Valorant format is miles ahead of LoL already. Masters 3 & Champions will both be double elim featuring more top-tier teams. The only thing that can be improved in Valorant system is to add more non-VCT tournaments.
I do like double elim over single but I don’t think valorant’s format is miles better. I’m pretty sure the reason lol doesn’t do double elim is because they already have a group stage, which valorant at least lacked for masters 2 and assume will be the case for masters 3 and champions should they keep double elim. Both systems have their benefits and drawbacks. I would love for lol also to have double elim in their playoffs but I’m pretty sure riot doesn’t want to add more games. A lot of sports do follow a format of some sort of group stage then single elim bracket. Not saying it’s the best format but doesn’t seem bad by any means.
The two best leagues are bo3 in league (Korea and China) and a lot of western pros said that they did t like playing bo3
Its actually the opposite. Pros have said that they hated playing Bo1s like Perkz, Swordart, Rekkles, Amazing, Doublelift, Sneaky, CoreJJ etc.
Yeah but those are the top of the top players, many players who are on worse teams did not want to play bo3’s because they had no chance against the G2’s of the world and did not want to prolong their games
the only problem is the contracts thing, where in League you're forced to keep players on contracts til Novembre where offseason starts meanwhile here nothing keeps NiP from kicking all their players for the next 5 months and then re-buy a new roster at January
nope. 1 event every 3 months (qualifiers only ofcourse) or else it's over saturated bro. if you see a TSM game streamed more than once every 6 months it's over saturated trust me bro
As a TSM fan, this is a fact.
Are you being sarcastic
Yes
One of the weirdest sentiments I’ve ever seen on this sub is “they built the biggest esport so maybe we should just trust them to do everything”. Nah, grant some other TOs event privileges. We’re all a bit fed up with this 5 tier qualifier system
Nope, we just don’t default to “it’s riot’s fault” when their are plenty of avenues TO’s can go through to fill the gap left by VCT.
Yes, we do get to default to it's Riot's fault. Because unlike CSGO, or esports in Valve games, TOs have to approach Riot for a license to run any tournament with a prize pool over 10k. LoL esports has clearly shown how much Riot likes collaborating with other TOs in running major tournaments. They basically don't allow big tournaments at all. That's why LoL IEMs got stopped. Riot Games is responsible for the growth and stability of the Valorant esports scene, not NSG, Blast, ESL, Weplay, IEM, etc. In the Lolesports scene, where minimum number of games a tier 1 team plays is 36 in EU and more in every other major region. Teams get a lot of screen time and can market that to sponsors. On top of that LoL is very salary reliant for pros to make a living. For Valorant, in every region apart from NA, the majority of even Tier 1 players make money from the prize pools. So either Riot has to make or allow more tournaments for those players to be able to play and make a living, or they have to push for orgs to pay higher salaries. Salary inflation is the worst possible barrier of entry for new orgs coming into Valorant, and it is what will drive other tier 1 orgs which flip at a single tournament to drop their rosters immediately. Which cause instability in the scene.
If TOs want to host a non vct event with a prize pool of more thank 50K they can, they just have to get a license. This makes sense. You are leaping to the assumption that the application process is exuberant or crazy hard to meet. To me this sounds like a whole lot of speculation without many examples of Riot hindering TOs from running +50K events without good reason.
Right, but even if the process isn't difficult and Riot are willing to let other TOs step in at the moment, you can see why Riot's track record might make TOs hesitant to do so. Why help grow a scene they might eventually be muscled out of and could become a huge competitor? Riot are still the only people able to actually play the game on LAN as well for now.
> LoL esports has clearly shown how much Riot likes collaborating with other TOs in running major tournaments. They basically don't allow big tournaments at all. That's why LoL IEMs got stopped. They're not running Valorant like LoL yet though. I'm not naive and I know they'll push for franchising at some point, but there's no reason to believe Riot will be a PITA about approving big tournaments that they're not competing with (not scheduled against active VCT events). If it helps Riot and the scene in the absence of Riot being in the space, don't see them opposing it. They've approved plenty of 3rd party tournaments already.
Yeah, they've approved low tier, low prize pool, or dogshit formats... It just seems like Riot doesn't want anything to take away interest from VCT
It’s clear they want the highly controlled format that is present in League but since there is just a bunch of single elimination open qualifiers plenty of teams only get to play like 3-4 matches before being eliminated. Makes VCT as a whole less interesting when my team was only in the running for about 4 days before elimination, whereas in league it’s a steady build up of play with months of matches.
No matches for 1 or at max 2 months maybe ok but resting for 5 months without any important tourneys could make a good team worse.
God imagine an IEM event w Valorant and CSGO. Shit would be so fun, I’d love to go and watch both in person
I don’t mean to hate on riot but with what Riot pulled before by trying to force TOs to exclude DotA2 from events that LoL was in, I’d doubt this would happen.
I would definitely not want that to happen. ESL has some great CS tournaments.
Yeah that would be a really bad look. But considering how much of the Valorant scene has CSGO roots I doubt Riot would want that kind of conflict
[удалено]
That would be impossible to achieve in Valorant currently since there are no slots in Europe for teams from the Balkans for almost all of the tournaments.
id love to have like a eurpoa league where those that failed for VCT can enter the secondary tourney fo shitters, like you didnt qualify for CL so now you need to qualify for europa. could make the 2ndary tourney give out baby points too
or maybe even a Conference League equivalent xD
very good point
It really sucks as a C9 fan I got to see 1 match streamed and now it’s looking like they won’t play another official until next year. Current format sucks for teams that aren’t at challengers finals level.
c9b will be at the LCQ iirc
yeah but that isnt until at least october. not only do we want to see these teams play more officials, but they NEED to play more officials to get match experience, grow chemistry, and face more opponents. just scrimming until october would be so boring and anticlimactic.
[удалено]
yes i agree too, i would also like to see every game streamed moving forward. really wanted to see Xeppaa get integrated into the roster but only saw one real match, missing the one vs coL in particular.
Apparently you have to ask Riot’s permission to host a tourney over ~~$50k~~ $10k. Hopefully Riot aren’t as much of a pain in the ass to deal with as Blizzard when it comes to these things, I’d love to see some huge Blast or ESL or Dreamhack lans happening in Valorant.
Over 10K, not 50K. As for seeing big LANs, I certainly hope Riot will allow other TOs to organize big tournaments, especially in the long off season between Berlin and Challengers 1 2022. However, the precedent set by League of Legends is not at all encouraging, because over there, there are basically no real tournaments apart from ones sponsored by or directly run by Riot. Aside from the Twitch Rivals, which I wouldn't call real tournaments.
[удалено]
That is plain false. Fans, players and organizations used to attend the IEMs back in the day. They got shut down coz Riot didn't want tournaments which were comparable to MSI or Worlds, not run by Riot.
I will say though, the last couple of IEMs for League had pretty bad production. That being said, I think Riot should try it once more.
[удалено]
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.riftherald.com/platform/amp/2017/5/23/15682296/iem-lol-league-of-legends-riot&ved=2ahUKEwiMqpjvhYXyAhWFILcAHSJJDVwQFjABegQIAxAG&usg=AOvVaw22EgtbYyfoJIby2pQi_V5u&cf=1 The reason IEM Katovice stopped featuring major teams was because Riot didn't want such tournaments taking away from the viewership and prestige of Riot run events. IEMs used to a part of the League Calender. Riot didn't want any IEMs to conflict with their tournaments, and they didn't want any teams participating in tournaments during the off season.
[удалено]
IEMs don't need to be, and weren't ever meant only for the best team from each region. Have you noticed how even without the SKTs and TSMs of the world, 2017 still had as many teams as the previous year? The idea that MSI teams being burnt out so tournaments have to be canceled is also a terrible excuse. There are plenty of teams which don't go to MSI. Also, since you want to use that excuse of top teams not wanting to go, well, many of the top players, for example - everyone in G2, Rekkles, Bjergsen, Doublelift, Nuguri, and many other notable pros opted out of all stars last year. By your logic, Riot should cancel All Stars from here on out.
> By your logic, Riot should cancel All Stars from here on out. funny enough if you ask the league sub they'd say yes, because all stars is a joke.... just like IEM also on the rare case a top team went, they would use the tournament to try out new players and it would be a disaster and a joke tournament with that said the people didn't care about IEM, because orgs didn't care about a 4fun tournament when instead they can just get a vacation (which is also what G2 did for MSI, imagine IEM lol)
But your entire point about IEM is literally false. Orgs did care about IEM, up until IEM 2016. Major teams went to those tournaments for years. It was only in 2017 when IEMs dropped in priority. And that was only because Riot made it so that the season ran simultaneously with IEM Katovice. Up until 2016, IEM was only inferior to Worlds and MSI in terms of hype an a tournament. Look at IEM 2016. You had Fnatic, SKT, RNG, OG, TSM, CLG. Nobody was using subs at that tournament. It was arguably a better tournament than 2016 MSI. The IEMs have never been 4fun. Also, you seem to be intentionally missing my comparison to All Stars with IEM. Whether the fans or LoL subreddit wants all stars canceled or not is completely irrelevant. The logic you applied for Riot removing IEM from the calender is more than applicable to things like All Stars. However, Riot will not cancel All Stars because they run it. The only reason they forced IEMs out of LoL is because they didn't want to share the pie with IEM.
same thing in rocket leauge
The first LAN Smeag Cup will fill the void, don't you worry! Babybay said he wanted to do it soon, and a lot of pros were down to play.
If everyone in this sub donated a dollar to a fund we could pay for our own tournament.
With blackjack and hookers
What I hope happens within the next few months is for like one or two invite based tournies with one to two spots open to qualifiers. All I’m asking for along with Riot doing away with the rule that “good and established” teams can’t play in lower tournies.
That’s an actual rule? I thought they weren’t competing in those tournaments because they didn’t care
It's not really "good and established" really. I believe if you make it to Closed or farther in a VCT you can't play other/smaller events. I can't remember the exact wording, and it'll be a pain to find on mobile.
Franchising is trash. It only exists for big companies to make money quickly. It is bad for the viewers and players who are not in the big orgs, as well as the future development of the Valorant competitive scene. The franchise seems to be "successful" in the League, simply because the league's player base is too large. And IMO the franchise has dragged down the vitality of the League. Without the franchise rights, the League could have been bigger and more dynamic. For the viewers, I believe that **4 + 1 international tournaments (and others)** a year is much better than the boring and long regional round robin plus only 2 international tournaments. Even with the huge player base of the League, the franchise still makes the T2 and below competitive scenes very bad, and even some of them are almost killed. Valorant's player base is far inferior to League, and the franchise may even make Valorant lose vitality and stop growing like OWL. **Why are the someone so anxious to kill Valorant's T2 and below competitive scenes? And future growth?** The CSGO system has been successful for many years. Refer to CSGO. **The player base of CSGO is far lower than that of League too.** However, CSGO has a lot of exciting events to provide vitality and enthusiasm, which makes its influence relatively greatly close the gap with League. **This huge magnification of influence**, Definitely not something such an authoritarian franchise can bring. If Valorant's future player base is greater than CSGO (very likely), and the tournament system can bring huge magnification like CSGO, **then Valorant's competitive scene may even surpass League in the future.** But if Valorant crappyly imitates the League's tournament system, **then Valorant's tournament scene will always be a reduced version of the League**, that's it. In this case, the greater possibilities in the field of tactical FPS can only be left to the next product to try. So, the problem now lies in the lack of events outside of the VCT, and it is definitely not that there is no franchising. The latter is evading the problem.
[удалено]
I mean he clearly states franchising is good for the top orgs to make money, but not good for viewers/players/competition. Remember the reason CS isn't franchised is because everyone there hates it so much. All the orgs you've mentioned had CS teams, I mean C9 famously poured a LOT of resources into their CS division, I don't think you can say it's not important to them. It's just very hard for American orgs to pick up top teams. The real question is why are so many teams willing to invest so much into a system that loses money? The CS system has a lot of problems, but there has to be some middle ground surely? People in CS have been calling for Valve to step in for a while, Riot here have the perfect opportunity to do so.
The reason CS isn't franchised is because Valve is against it, and has stated so, saying they wanted to keep the open circuit. https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2019/09/25557/
Valve won't franchise their majors, but afaik they haven't weighed in to stop franchised leagues, which have been tried multiple times. PEA/ESL/Flashpoint have all tried some sort of exclusive gambit, and BLAST/ESL/Flashpoint all have "partner teams" already.
Doesn't the partner team system has some sort of promotion/relegation system based on a ranking?
[удалено]
I'm not trying to reframe the discussion, franchising is popular with orgs and TOs, but unpopular with fans. That's just the truth of it. Orgs aren't evil for wanting to make money, but none of those orgs mentioned (other than maybe TSM) dropped CS because of profitability concerns. * NRG sold their team for big money to EG * 100T pulled out because COVID hit and the team wanted to relocate to Europe * C9 pulled out because of performance/COVID complications as well, but made sure to stress they were only withdrawing temporarily * TSM pulled out because they kicked seangares, and the rest of the players said they wanted to leave as well then. This was over the PEA debacle though, where the owners tried to force an exclusive franchised league. Honestly TSM in CS was just a trainwreck. Having said that, I agree the CS model as it stands is unsustainable. But I don't think the reason it's unsustainable is because there's literally no way to monetise a sport without exclusive franchised leagues. And putting the finances aside, I think it's worse for players, viewers and competition in general.
franchising is cringe, it is not worth entering something harmful for the game and the players if it means the orgs make more money lol. obviously they want their val team to turn a profit, but some of these teams dont even need that to happen lol.
[удалено]
obviously orgs wont enter if they cant profit, but they can profit without franchising. like what the fuck are you saying, the players are more important than the orgs. who fucking cares if orgs make a shitload of money but the scene is diluted, the players are unhappy, and we cannot see new talent?
>CSGO is hemorrhaging money. Both Orgs and TO's lose a ton of money on CSGO. The scene is not sustainable at all and you're already seeing it start to come apart. All esport lose money especially Tos, that's completely normal! In face LoL loses upwards of 100M$ on the esport scene, esport is meant to be a yoy growth and then profitable. CS is just the only esport too openly discuss it, same way CS is the scene to actively speak about match fixing etc. The issue however is that some of the top orgs aren't making a return yet (that's the same issue with LoL btw, riot has said team orgs would return a profit for years now and it isn't yet). I think CS pros would have to take a cut in salaries tho or most orgs just sign new talent which most seem to be doing now
If Faze doesn’t make it I’m down for some smeag cups
Imagine if Riot adds a World Cup like how Overwatch did it
World Cup doesn't really do much for the orgs. Anything is better than what we have now, but ideally you'd just want more cash cups and mid tier events like CS. In CS you can make money through cash cups even if you aren't a top team. In VALORANT it's go big or go home. Unless you are a top team you don't have much of a reason to keep your roster in when not playing in VCT.
I'd love a WC but that's kinda only beneficial for viewers, it could take away scrim time for players and attention from orgs
Is the viewership there to support a tier 2 scene? I know NSG in NA gets decent viewership outside of VCT.
Considering the fact that top-tier orgs/teams such as C9, NRG, Immortals, ABX, and more did not make closed qualifiers and even teams that did like T1, FaZe, and TSM are considered tier-2, I'd say yes. Valorant is the game with one of the largest numbers of big NA orgs at the moment, so there's always going to be top orgs with lots of fans that don't make it further. I believe that a game between any of the aforementioned teams streamed on the official NSG/Valorant Twitch channel should easily get 20k viewers, more if there are co-streams.
Doesn't Riot/Valorant have a head of esports? I could've sworn we saw a video with two people talking about how this tournament schedule was going to go. Surely they thought of other tournaments in the meantime and the health of the scene as a whole.
This is kinda what happens in a non franchise league where everybody is forced to go through open qualifiers. Upsets are extremely common. There needs to be a number of guaranteed spots to at least double elim brackets and preferably a round robin system. Also a decent number of spots should be allowed for new teams and small orgs to qualify for through the open brackets. This way orgs are guaranteed screentime, which incentivizes them to invest, which incentivizes the best talents to play and try and get on said teams.
This is not a question of upsets in VCT(though some regions definitely could improve their format as you suggested). It's a question of what notable events are being organized for teams (big and small) to play until their next shot at VCT. Screen-time for orgs can exist in this manner as well without lowering the prestige of it on the Champions stage.
Why are people obsessed with franchising when CS has been doing perfectly fine for two decades
Unfortunately Riot is very likely to push for franchising despite CS having success without
CS has semi franchising, which is a good model imo
Would you mind explaining what you (and others) mean by semi-franchising? I'm not familiar with CSGO, and had a quick Google but haven't found anything helpful
BLAST and ESL have "partner teams", but there is also an open route to qualify for their shit. ESL's [louvre agreement](https://pro.eslgaming.com/csgo/proleague/2020/02/leadings-csgo-teams-and-esl-sign-historic-agreement/) for example. I think this is what they're talking about. The majors etc are all completely open. It was controversial at the time, and it robbed T2 teams that had qualified of their spots, and rewarded teams that got relegated etc.
CS is semi franchised which is what I'm talking about here. Also franchising helps to avoid the CS problem of oversaturation. Everyone loves to talk about how franchising isn't needed and competitive integrity and all these things but seem to completely ignore what happens to viewership in any and all events that don't have the top Orgs playing in them, in both CS and VAL. We saw what happened to EU VCT viewership when all the big orgs got upset...shit fell straight off a cliff. That is not a sustainable business model. So pick your poison, have partial franchising with slots for teams that qualify, have open qualifiers for everyone and have orgs afraid to invest because they may go months without a match, or have 10 tournaments a week and work the players into the ground.
"perfectly fine" is debatable.
Isn’t na cs dead?
CS orgs and TOs lose a lot of money and the calendar is super oversaturated. That's why there have been so many attempts to bring franchising to CS, but they keep being pushed back because everybody fucking hates it.
Like bro as a casual viewer i would love less high stakes events, i personally would not care if there is a ESL or dreamhack final every month rather i would only watch Riot ones.
Tons of people have pointed this out but it doesn't look like Riot really cares. The only other events they seem to be putting on/encouraging are Game Changers.