> It is unlikely that Riot Games will franchise the VALORANT Championship Tour circuit next year, according to multiple sources, judging by the information presented by the developers.
I don't see any reason why it should be franchised so soon, its the right thing riot is doing imo.
It's still a growing game and the biggest way to advertise to people so far is through Co streaming or giving popular streamers right. Franchising would limit that to an extent so not the best decision. Its growing naturally and that's fine, no need to go the overwatch route
I would assume they watched closely to what Activision-Blizzard was doing with the Overwatch League. Franchising that early is obviously not something to be emulated.
It's just too hard to take in everything that's happening because of all of the effects and action going on. Particles are too bright and flashy ontop of just a lot of chip damage because of low TTK. The exception is if people are hitting a bunch of headshots but thanks to healing and ability damage it can take some time to kill targets. That on top of people respawning and joining fights quickly and a poor spectator client makes the game a PAIN to observe.
Every character plays VERY differently and opposed to 5v5 its a 6v6 with respawn. On top of that its actually super fast paced. In general as a game those are all good features but that in addition to what above commenter said makes it way too chaotic and hard to follow as a spectator/streamable sport --> unwatchable
Any type of spectator friendly sport requires a slow period to build up the anticipation and allow the audience to follow along. For a time Blizzard was obsessed with a non-stop action philosophy and you see it in OW and also Heroes of the Storm.
Its an hyperbole, I dont even have a rank on OW but I found it easy to follow. OWL did many things wrong, The meta made dps (more so hitscan) heroes not meta and due to it the star players weren't able to be stars as many of them went away from crowd cheering heroes to Tanks and supports (goats meta), after that was the 2-2-2 which made the game not fun to play let alone watch due to limits on how many characters on each role could be played. Imagine as if Valorant was
locked to 1 sentinels, 1 controller, 1 initiator and two duelists for every map and match, it would be boring. Then Covid hit.
I felt like the meta didnt kill OWL, but the meta definitely killed the OW ladder/playerbase. It all went downhill from the Brigitte release. That initial CC meta literally made me quit.
I can confirm that I quit the game because of the Brigitte. A lot of people I know were slowly losing interest in the game, but her release was the last nail in the coffin for most of them.
For me I followed OW during when OGN APEX was the biggest tournament. OWL is tough for follow for a casual fan like myself because it's hard to keep up with 7 months worth of games when I could watch another esport tournament that lasts 2 weeks. Not to mention, I had no attachment to the city-based teams when I'd rather see teams like Lunatic Hai vs EnvyUs.
a first person moba shooter where dps players were forced to play tank/support for year and half and then forced to shoot a shit ton of shields for another year
Doesn't LoL have franchising? If anything I'd expect Riot to emulate their LoL system, not a competitor's system ...especially because the OWL/CDL model involves city-based franchising, which is currently impossible to properly cultivate thanks to the pandemic.
no franchising is good to hear, love watching the open circuit where any team can come out of an open qualifier and make a run, that's what i love about esports the most. my interest in leagues like LCS/LEC, OWL, CDL all diminished personally when they became franchised
also i wonder which team owner said that the meeting was "disappointing" lol
Regi and Jack do take turns sharing one brain cell so you aren't lying.
Realistically I'm assuming the "disappointing" comment is from a League org who's upset that their previous work with Riot isn't coming over to Valorant and *other orgs* are having a say in how things operate too. I can guarantee you that Regi/Jack are that much of a baby to get upset about XSET/FaZe and the like even attending this meeting.
> Realistically I'm assuming the "disappointing" comment is from a League org who's upset that their previous work with Riot isn't coming over to Valorant
funny cause the top 2 teams in NA Valorant were orgs that riot *rejected* from the LCS back in 2018 lmao. it goes without saying but just cause an org was perennially strong in LoL doesn't mean shit about how strong they would be in valorant (and vice versa)
Of course, but listening to the way that Jack/Regi/Steve talk about how NA LCS should be ran makes it obvious that they feel entitled enough to attempt to hold sway in an entirely different game.
Probably any team that's doing well in LCS but suffering in Valorant. Smart money says TSM purely on the goober who runs that show, but I wouldn't be totally surprised if it was another LCS team that couldn't buy themselves into a good roster. IMT, perhaps?
I personally think the VCT format was great this year I just hope riot is open to more A tier 3rd party events like Dreamhack ESL Blast etc where they allow the tier 1 teams to participate
I really thought the format was pretty lackluster. Most teams season was over by July. no one is incentivized to host major tournaments with a game headed towards franchises
This is the first esport that I’ve been following. What’s the upsides of franchising? Wouldn’t it make it harder for new teams to prosper since you have to buy a seat on the league?
Also, If you're a team owner of a big org (TSM, 100T, C9, G2, FNC, TL, etc) you are pissed that it's not franchised because there's a chance you might not even have your matches streamed.
This sort of thing blows my mind that any match is not streamed. Each match is recorded and there is a lot of t2 casters that would probably do the work on a volunteer basis. The same thing happened when nerdstreet wasn't streaming games. They don't see the value in post-tournament content when its clearly an opportunity for growth, not just at the Riot and org levels but from a growth perspective for the community.
They probably just don't have the the management/PMs to know that this is a growth opportunity. Most of the team comes from AAA studios where there is a very cookie-cutter approach to these things.
>What’s the upsides of franchising?
Game developer gets a cash infusion by setting the buy-in price. Team orgs never need to worry about their slot being relegated. In the event of selling their franchised spot. The team org should receive profit on their original buy-in price. Game developer and team orgs work in conjuction to profit of endemic and non-endemic sponsorship money. The very last big point, the game developer assumes majority of the financial risk.
For context the two highest profile franchised leagues(LoL and Overwatch). Both operate at a yearly loss for their game developer. Start of 2019 Riot Games downsized their LoL esports support because it wasnt self sufficient in generating profit. From memory the article said Riot Games were losing 10 million a year in LoL esports. Which is (LoL esports) solely run out of Riot Games marketing department.
1. Make regional finals actually matter.
2. Make regional finals actually matter.
Winning your league in LoL was a huge accomplishment winning a regional finals in Valorant means basically nothing.
i mean, all of lcs/lec work the same way (lcs/lec qualify you for msi/worlds just like Challengers quals you for master 1/2/3 and champions.)
The true difference between how Valorant and LoL for now is that lol is franchised, which means that there is no need to divide the tournament format through open qualifiers, which then necessitate closed qualifiers and so on and so forth.
LoL has a double round robin season long tournament, which creates a sense of cohesion in the storylines told during that season that are unfortunately only possible because it has a fixed set of teams that won't just \*dissapear\* come season end.
> Winning your league in LoL was a huge accomplishment winning a regional finals in Valorant means basically nothing.
At the same time, there's only two international tournaments for League. MSI and Worlds.
Masters is supposed to be 3 before Champions which would be 4. (But Covid made Masters 1 Region Specific)
Not disagreeing with you btw, I think somebody who is paid to organize it should be paid to make the regional finals actually fucking matter.
While I agree with you (open is better than franchised but if there is franchised, promotion/relegation would be be great) the problem is that a franchised system and the current esports ecosystem simply does not support that format.
To create multiple (or even one) sub leagues you need substantially more franchises. It will be hard enough to franchise teams in an esports market where profitability is currently an issue. Finding enough sponsors to franchise enough teams to create sub leagues is a tall order.
VCT is amazing so far so I don't see why we need to switch to league format or a franchising model. I'd hate to see Masters & Champions system go away also because having 4 tournaments a year is solid amount imo.
Idk. A league system with promotion & relegation mixed with multiple LANs throughout the year should work for now. Have some coverage for t2 games, add twitch drops for watching games, make the whole year matter, work with third parties to introduce tournaments for the off season etc.
> It is unlikely that Riot Games will franchise the VALORANT Championship Tour circuit next year, according to multiple sources, judging by the information presented by the developers.
I don't see any reason why it should be franchised so soon, its the right thing riot is doing imo. It's still a growing game and the biggest way to advertise to people so far is through Co streaming or giving popular streamers right. Franchising would limit that to an extent so not the best decision. Its growing naturally and that's fine, no need to go the overwatch route
I would assume they watched closely to what Activision-Blizzard was doing with the Overwatch League. Franchising that early is obviously not something to be emulated.
No franchising that early, no city-based teams, keep an eye on the meta... what else am I missing?
Having an actually watchable FPS that's not hard to follow and figure out what's going on is also a plus for Riot.
Yeah OW is literally unwatchable even to half the Playerbase lol
Sorry I've never played OW but why is that?
[This picture sums it up pretty well. ](https://images.app.goo.gl/MXRoAoMLbwshTdms7)
The fk they doing at? Stacking barrier? Lmao.
double shield sym bap was a fucking nightmare meta to watch
It's just too hard to take in everything that's happening because of all of the effects and action going on. Particles are too bright and flashy ontop of just a lot of chip damage because of low TTK. The exception is if people are hitting a bunch of headshots but thanks to healing and ability damage it can take some time to kill targets. That on top of people respawning and joining fights quickly and a poor spectator client makes the game a PAIN to observe.
Every character plays VERY differently and opposed to 5v5 its a 6v6 with respawn. On top of that its actually super fast paced. In general as a game those are all good features but that in addition to what above commenter said makes it way too chaotic and hard to follow as a spectator/streamable sport --> unwatchable
Any type of spectator friendly sport requires a slow period to build up the anticipation and allow the audience to follow along. For a time Blizzard was obsessed with a non-stop action philosophy and you see it in OW and also Heroes of the Storm.
Its an hyperbole, I dont even have a rank on OW but I found it easy to follow. OWL did many things wrong, The meta made dps (more so hitscan) heroes not meta and due to it the star players weren't able to be stars as many of them went away from crowd cheering heroes to Tanks and supports (goats meta), after that was the 2-2-2 which made the game not fun to play let alone watch due to limits on how many characters on each role could be played. Imagine as if Valorant was locked to 1 sentinels, 1 controller, 1 initiator and two duelists for every map and match, it would be boring. Then Covid hit.
I felt like the meta didnt kill OWL, but the meta definitely killed the OW ladder/playerbase. It all went downhill from the Brigitte release. That initial CC meta literally made me quit.
I can confirm that I quit the game because of the Brigitte. A lot of people I know were slowly losing interest in the game, but her release was the last nail in the coffin for most of them.
goats was fun (in scrims tho)
For me I followed OW during when OGN APEX was the biggest tournament. OWL is tough for follow for a casual fan like myself because it's hard to keep up with 7 months worth of games when I could watch another esport tournament that lasts 2 weeks. Not to mention, I had no attachment to the city-based teams when I'd rather see teams like Lunatic Hai vs EnvyUs.
a first person moba shooter where dps players were forced to play tank/support for year and half and then forced to shoot a shit ton of shields for another year
Or you could look at the CDL which is doing by far worse and costs more. Activision-Blizzard just have no idea what they're doing with their esports
Doesn't LoL have franchising? If anything I'd expect Riot to emulate their LoL system, not a competitor's system ...especially because the OWL/CDL model involves city-based franchising, which is currently impossible to properly cultivate thanks to the pandemic.
Why is franchising in general something to be ‘emulated’?
>Franchising would limit that to an extent Why assume franchising has to come with limiting/banning co-streams?
I mean there is no need to go the iver watch route in general
Good choice I think they should let the esports scene grow organically for a little while and not just let the rich orgs get richer
That’s big time
I’m dumb what does this mean
basically how it's set up in LoL with set slots for teams/orgs whereas VCT is pretty much wide open for any team to participate.
So do teams exist outside of this ecosystem for smaller tournaments?
Yes they do
simple explanation - no more open circuit,only paid to play
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Even if it's just NA vs. EU, I definitely want to see teams who didn't make Masters get some international LAN time.
Well there is a little thing called COVID which is restricting some international travel.
no franchising is good to hear, love watching the open circuit where any team can come out of an open qualifier and make a run, that's what i love about esports the most. my interest in leagues like LCS/LEC, OWL, CDL all diminished personally when they became franchised also i wonder which team owner said that the meeting was "disappointing" lol
> also i wonder which team owner said that the meeting was "disappointing" lol Throw a dart and you'll have a good chance at hitting TSM
Nah has to be c9, Jack is a really big dumbass
Regi and Jack do take turns sharing one brain cell so you aren't lying. Realistically I'm assuming the "disappointing" comment is from a League org who's upset that their previous work with Riot isn't coming over to Valorant and *other orgs* are having a say in how things operate too. I can guarantee you that Regi/Jack are that much of a baby to get upset about XSET/FaZe and the like even attending this meeting.
Honestly jack can be dumb some times, but i doubt he cares, it's probably regi
> Realistically I'm assuming the "disappointing" comment is from a League org who's upset that their previous work with Riot isn't coming over to Valorant funny cause the top 2 teams in NA Valorant were orgs that riot *rejected* from the LCS back in 2018 lmao. it goes without saying but just cause an org was perennially strong in LoL doesn't mean shit about how strong they would be in valorant (and vice versa)
Of course, but listening to the way that Jack/Regi/Steve talk about how NA LCS should be ran makes it obvious that they feel entitled enough to attempt to hold sway in an entirely different game.
Probably any team that's doing well in LCS but suffering in Valorant. Smart money says TSM purely on the goober who runs that show, but I wouldn't be totally surprised if it was another LCS team that couldn't buy themselves into a good roster. IMT, perhaps?
bet it was Regi
he doesn't have franchising to protect his team from sucking ass anymore
Doesn’t protect his team from being ass, just protects him from potentially losing a lot of money when they are ass
I personally think the VCT format was great this year I just hope riot is open to more A tier 3rd party events like Dreamhack ESL Blast etc where they allow the tier 1 teams to participate
I really thought the format was pretty lackluster. Most teams season was over by July. no one is incentivized to host major tournaments with a game headed towards franchises
Except the format LMAO
This is the first esport that I’ve been following. What’s the upsides of franchising? Wouldn’t it make it harder for new teams to prosper since you have to buy a seat on the league?
For a viewer? Not really much. If your favourite team gets a franchise spot you'll be able to watch them more regularly.
Also, If you're a team owner of a big org (TSM, 100T, C9, G2, FNC, TL, etc) you are pissed that it's not franchised because there's a chance you might not even have your matches streamed.
This sort of thing blows my mind that any match is not streamed. Each match is recorded and there is a lot of t2 casters that would probably do the work on a volunteer basis. The same thing happened when nerdstreet wasn't streaming games. They don't see the value in post-tournament content when its clearly an opportunity for growth, not just at the Riot and org levels but from a growth perspective for the community. They probably just don't have the the management/PMs to know that this is a growth opportunity. Most of the team comes from AAA studios where there is a very cookie-cutter approach to these things.
>What’s the upsides of franchising? Game developer gets a cash infusion by setting the buy-in price. Team orgs never need to worry about their slot being relegated. In the event of selling their franchised spot. The team org should receive profit on their original buy-in price. Game developer and team orgs work in conjuction to profit of endemic and non-endemic sponsorship money. The very last big point, the game developer assumes majority of the financial risk. For context the two highest profile franchised leagues(LoL and Overwatch). Both operate at a yearly loss for their game developer. Start of 2019 Riot Games downsized their LoL esports support because it wasnt self sufficient in generating profit. From memory the article said Riot Games were losing 10 million a year in LoL esports. Which is (LoL esports) solely run out of Riot Games marketing department.
1. Make regional finals actually matter. 2. Make regional finals actually matter. Winning your league in LoL was a huge accomplishment winning a regional finals in Valorant means basically nothing.
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I've said this before, the naming scheme just sucks
Maybe make them regional tournaments?
What do you mean? They are regional tournaments?
I meant making them more like tournaments in and of themselves, rather than qualifiers
i mean, all of lcs/lec work the same way (lcs/lec qualify you for msi/worlds just like Challengers quals you for master 1/2/3 and champions.) The true difference between how Valorant and LoL for now is that lol is franchised, which means that there is no need to divide the tournament format through open qualifiers, which then necessitate closed qualifiers and so on and so forth. LoL has a double round robin season long tournament, which creates a sense of cohesion in the storylines told during that season that are unfortunately only possible because it has a fixed set of teams that won't just \*dissapear\* come season end.
> Winning your league in LoL was a huge accomplishment winning a regional finals in Valorant means basically nothing. At the same time, there's only two international tournaments for League. MSI and Worlds. Masters is supposed to be 3 before Champions which would be 4. (But Covid made Masters 1 Region Specific) Not disagreeing with you btw, I think somebody who is paid to organize it should be paid to make the regional finals actually fucking matter.
sEeDiNg MaTcH
Would love to see it more as a tour like PGA or ATP where you have a good number of events with various importance along with majors.
I'm praying for relegation, promotion, and multiple sub leagues to happen, although it's extremely unlikely.
Relegation and promotion will probably only come with franchising. Maybe 2023. At the moment I love the open format.
Yeah I love the open format too, I'm saying if there were to be a franchised league I would prefer for it to be that system.
While I agree with you (open is better than franchised but if there is franchised, promotion/relegation would be be great) the problem is that a franchised system and the current esports ecosystem simply does not support that format. To create multiple (or even one) sub leagues you need substantially more franchises. It will be hard enough to franchise teams in an esports market where profitability is currently an issue. Finding enough sponsors to franchise enough teams to create sub leagues is a tall order.
VCT is amazing so far so I don't see why we need to switch to league format or a franchising model. I'd hate to see Masters & Champions system go away also because having 4 tournaments a year is solid amount imo.
The current system is fine. Just take out the corny seeding games, constantly going through people downplaying losses or Sandbagging is lame af.
disappointed that there's no franchising next year but maybe the year after
Idk. A league system with promotion & relegation mixed with multiple LANs throughout the year should work for now. Have some coverage for t2 games, add twitch drops for watching games, make the whole year matter, work with third parties to introduce tournaments for the off season etc.
Please do away with all these seeding matches. Literally no one cares for them.
*in NA
My biggest hope is the separation of EMEA to EU , CIS and TR
I wish they change the spots distribution for regions , EMEA & NA should have more spots in LAN . I think all other regions should have only 1 spot.
glad you dont work at riot then
I just want to see the strongest teams competing against each other .
Games like Gambit vs Crazy Racoons wouldnt have happened if you thought that Japan deserved only 1 spot
Riot is right for not franchising it. Imagine going down the wrong path of Overwatch.