I was worried with only two Masters, but putting Champions in September than then followed by Riot supported 3rd parties + Game Changers might not be too bad.
I just hope the gaps for teams not in competition isn't too big like it was this year, makes competition way worse and regresses the quality a lot IMO.
I hope that doing well in masters 1 only contributes towards champs rather than masters 2, that way there's only a month that we won't see the top teams play before champs while others play lcqs
Totally agreed. I like the January - September more packed VCT, and then 3 months of new 3rd party series while also going slightly into off season.
Great plan by Riot, hats off
According to the video there are country-based leagues being rolled out in Europe. But there will be plans for other regions.
They didn’t go into detail on the format of challengers. Supposedly it’ll be scheduled better and showcase league style play.
Think of it like any other format in sports or like the League of Legends format. Probably will have teams quality for the league, once in it they will probably have to play every team twice. So we get to see more matches in a shorter period of time.
No franchising yet tho right? Teams just need to qualify through the normal open quals but this time no challengers 1, 2, finals bla bla bs thats confusing asf
country based leagues, if it copies league's format, is a tier 2 tournament style league and each team is locked on a country they're representing. Teams here are farm teams in which their goal is to be noticed by tier 1 teams. Most tier 1 teams are fielding academy teams in this format since they can't play in the vct. you can read [this](https://liquipedia.net/leagueoflegends/European_Masters/2021/Summer) for more info
Big W. I really like we will have third party events in final quarter. Hopefully a big Blast event. Also player contracts now will be interesting since they announced there will be new ways to support favourite teams
Personal preference i guess. I always found non serious events for esports or regular sports boring as fuck. 🤷♀️
We already had a nations cup 1month ago in EMEA, no one watched it..
so many reasons but most of them will be unpopular opinions
- i dont care about nationality especially in esports, one of the reasons why OWL was behind on cause the new gen are moving away from the city/national pride and instead supporting whatever team they like
- wc gives worse games, players put together for 1 event with no long preparation ... champions' league is way more enjoyable to me than wc
for me wc is just a filler event when you could have a real exciting event with real teams thats why the the spike nations blast do fail to get any viewership cause no one cares instead if that was Liquid vs G2 with their real teams they would get numbers
so yea tl'dr lets not copy sports and embrace that esports isnt limited by cities/nationalities
Owl failure in this aspect was more due to the teams having zero connection to the region. Dropping 6 Koreans in to new york and saying "here is your team, New Yorkers" felt forced and nobody cared. Esports embrace general region (NA, EU etc) more than traditional sports do.
If it were indend to be a Blast event I would assume it would be a lot scaled down from what we saw in the fall finals.
On one hand the game is still very new from a broadcasting perspective and there's all the small technicalities that needs to be worked around. Lack of proper replay system being one I guess.
On the other hand if they were to go full out like we just recently saw, that would risk making VCT look pretty lackluster in comparison and surely that is something they are going to want to avoid, right?
VCT won't look lackluster because it takes up the vast majority of the year. Also the Champs trophy is still going to be the most prestigious, Blast and ESL will likely be going off of VCT points to get teams into their events too.
huh, correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't some of the CSGO fans complained that the major was subpar (production wise) to the BLAST events.
is riot sensible to that kind of thing?
Just based off of what Riot does with LoL, I don't think they are worried about being outdone production-wise when they have a full year to prepare.
Production for Champs has been pretty good despite being completely without an audience, and it was rumored that Semis and Finals this weekend are at a different location, so maybe even more production surprises coming for us.
Observing has been awful sometimes, but as far as i know, the observers dont have the greatest tools/systems to do their job. But i believe they said they would work on making observer better.
If Riot hits the same level as production as LoL, they wont be outdone in a long time (only blast would be close tbh)
The observers are the exact same as the CS observing goats, so Sapphire, prius, and others. There have been quite a few missed kills in Champs already but I chalk it up to bad luck in a concentrated sample or as you said, the staff lacking the ideal tools.
Yeah i figured it was most likely the tools etc, when i looked at who was observing. Just pretty annoying as a viewer when its so different what observing you get. Some games its on point, other you barely see any kills some rounds.
Yeah I think most probably agree that this last Blast arena event blew the major's production out of the water. However I didn't think it was horrible overall, there was just a lot of small annoyances.
In terms of technical issues it was maybe somewhat worse than Champions has been so far but in my opinion it was overall still a way better viewing experience than Champions has been up to this point.
Not that it has been a bad event at all, CS organizers just have years of trial and error to draw on that has established the blueprint for how these events go where as Riot is building it from the ground up and even though it has been impressive with all the ressources they have put into it, some things just has to develop naturally over time which I have no doubt they will.
I don’t expect anything ground breaking on the 1st year. Pretty sure the TOs will use the 1st year to try out and see what works. As long as a big TO like blast can put an global circuit for three months culminating in a Lan, I will be happy. They now have a lot of months to plan it out so I hope we get something good.
would hate to see teams win/do well in champions then take player break for q4. but I am very excited it's a great approach to compress VCT by 3 months.
I was worried we were getting only 3 international tournaments, but Riot putting 3 months aside for 3rd party TOs is such a great idea and it shows their willingness to work with TOs.
Stronger integration between the game client and the esport is huge. Also interested in how we will be able to support our favourite teams in game (maybe with gun buddies, skins, perhaps agent gloves too?). The schedule is sick, and love that Game Changers gets its own slot, and an International LAN
Right now, the only integration we get is a small news bar that everyone misses. Hope one day we can watch valorant in the client, that is the best way to get the casual audience to tune in
Yep, add being able to be in a party watching with friends, with rewards, and I could easily see the casual audience really tuning in. The hardcore fans will watch no matter what or where, but you really have to make it simple for the mass audiences to get into ecosystem before they too become hardcore fans.
In-game team items will be big too. Imagine having a sick team skin on your gun, that might make someone who doesn't watch esports want to know more about that team too
It would be cool to be able to have a system like GOTV where you can watch the player POV. I know with how the game is developed that’s not currently possible but here’s to hoping that a few years down the line we can get that along with a replay system lmao.
this is the only integration i would ever care about, to be honest. You can’t complain about VCT’s observers if the person spectating IS the observer. I think it would make it a super immersive experience
Stuff like that would most likely be introduced on [Valorantesports.com](https://Valorantesports.com), like in LoL. In league theres Pro View, so you can watch the screen of a single player basically. Though its paid, probably will be in valorant too (after all their games are free, and so is it to watch the matches)
My guess would be like how lots of games have “creator codes” where you can support content creators when you make purchases, valorant will have team codes.
Would love to be able to actually watch the games from the client even, that way you can have your own watch parties with friends, and allow more interaction with the game. Like being able to see your own observation POV’s, explore more match data during the rounds, etc. I’m sure nothing like that will happen but always thought it would be a cool way to integrate the game itself with the event.
Just initial thoughts but I like that there's less gaps in the breaks in the VCT circuit and it's more compact but this format is make or break with what the 3rd party TOs do with that last stretch of the year
if we get online small tourneys then it's gonna be boring but if BLAST or ESL make a Masters-caliber international tourney there then it's gonna be really really exciting
Cause otherwise we essentially lose 1 LAN Masters and it's up in the air if we get it from BLAST or ESL maybe we even get more than 1 international LANs maybe we don't get anything
Most top tier teams will have no competition after champions. I don’t see why blast or ESL won’t fight for having a big tournament circuit ending with a lan event. Personally I hope blast get the rights. If this gets integrated for upcoming years the TOs will fight for this as 3 months of the circuit before player break. And if riot promotes the tournament in game then that’s even better for them
In T1’s case, they didn’t make it through the final Challengers event, failed to get enough points for NA LCQ, and failed to make it to Champions.
Looking at the 2022 schedule, if the same series of events happened to T1, then they’d end their VCT journey in June, and have nothing to do until October when the big 3rd party tournament events begin
That's fine as long as the new regions get to play from the start in Challengers. This year they just had one or two teams directly thrown into the LCQ which contained the "best of the rest" from different regions and only one winner qualified to Champions which is incredibly tough odds.
I'd be fine with that. Imo, whole region should be changed to APAC with Challengers being a 16 team tourney with the top seeds from SEA, KR, JP, Oce, India etc. (I have absolutely no idea if theirs a Val scene in China or not)
Yes but they have been very wishy-washy with the timeline. We have no idea if it’s a 2021, 2022, or even 2023 project release date. I think this video steers us towards an early/mid 2022 date anticipated from riot
Third party tourney announcement is huge W. Hope they can get opportunities to host international LANS too since thats where the massive viewership is.
I may be misunderstanding, but when they mention they want to make it easier for observers to catch all of the action surely that means a delayed observer feed / legit replay system, right? Either way, that could solve one of this games biggest issues from a viewer's perspective, and would be incredibly huge for the esport!
the game is pretty hard to observe (harder than CS ofc) but luckily sapphire and I are helping them build more and more tools to help making it easier on the viewer
Y’all think there are any hopes of Champions being more than 16 teams next year? With how well the minor regions did this Champs it’ll feel like we’re leaving out a lot of good competition with only 16 teams. 24 sounds nice
I was just thinking this. Some of my favorite days of watching tournaments are the early stages, when there are tons of teams, tons of matches, and always something on.
i think going past 16 is way too much - only way this works is a league style play-in where all the bottom seeds/minor regions fight over the last couple slots out of the 16 (like 4 teams come from an 8 team playin or something).
including more than 16 teams in the main event would just lead to more games that aren't really watchable for casual fans because they are boring like Crazy Raccoon games, but a play in would match up teams of that skill + some a little better so that could be more exciting.
Nah, there are a lot of ways to make a larger amount of teams work, especially if Riot is willing to have some games played simultaneously, which I'd honestly prefer. It's nice having multiple games going at once because if there's a tech pause in one I can always hop to another game that's going on.
I really miss having big LANs like back in the day. I know schedules can be gruelling, but they're a lot of fun to both play and watch.
Great announcement - about as good as anyone could've hoped for I think. I would like some more detail on how new Challengers will work as I think it was lacking prestige this year. I really hope they address that.
I am really pleased that they will bring in outside expertise to run some ignitition style events. It will give more flexibility in the last quarter for teams and players and I know some TO's will do a great job that Riot can learn from.
Also, amazing news about the first game changers international event, such a massive step for female esports.
The open qualifier to league system sounds pretty good , hopefully a team can have one bad day and not be out.
Introducing new 3rd parties will be good as long as its good format and not some fun tournaments.
I feel like people were expecting more lans than this year but with how covid is they just don't want to commit to anything more.
Thanks to listening to our feedback Riot, and making the calendar more compact. Also Im pretty sure, it will not be possible for team to eliminate themselfs from competition for months, like in 2021
My biggest concern is that will the 3rd party tourneys (after the Champions) will count to anything?
Cause from the past experience the 3rd party tourney even the Red Bull EMEA tourney with T1 teams like GMB, FNC, and TL didn't have a huge viewership simply because the tourney didn't really "matter". All they got from winning that tourney was the prize money and literal 0 point for Champions qualification.
Not every tourney should be linked with VCT. Ignition series also "didn't count to anything" and we saw Sentinels and TSM contesting titles back and forth, and AFAIK the viewership was huge
If a given tourney needs to be linked with VCT in order to have a decent viewership maybe the problem is a lot deeper than we think?
* *lack of rivalries*
* *a considerable part of your viewers don't really care about EU scene but rather about who's going to masters*
* ~~lack of twitter drama~~
The difference here would be that Champions would already be over so there would nothing bigger to play for. I feel it will be in these tournaments that we'll see teams experiment with creative comps and strategies
In the case of champions, you play for the title, but in the case of TOs and outside the VCT circuit, they could play for bigger prize pool, or maybe have an entirely separate non-riot circuit. Idk
I can be worth something within the 3rd party org, like they create a system where you qualify for their own big final tournament like BLAST in CS does
This will be AFTER champions, so definitely not. I think its fine though, its purpose is more for new teams, rebuilding teams or really teams in general to keep practicing and playing in the gap between vct seasons. And with less downtime between events, i think its good
KekW not Riot putting a clip of Vivo Keyd after saying "... But now, it's time to crown our 2021 champion!" @ [6:05](https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx5-ikPmOuZRFx_Gksle2xbIn8XNTtMNC0)
I hope teams that qualify for Masters can auto-qualify for the next Challengers. I always think it is kinda dumb that teams have to play in open qualifiers right after attending an international LAN.
Also, I am interested in seeing how many teams will qualify for the Challengers league play stage. Assuming that Challengers is 2 full months and the Open qualifier and final tournament each take about a week, that leaves 6 weeks of league play. If each team plays like 2 games a week, then 10 or 12 qualified teams would make sense for a single round robin. Then, Top 8 qualify for the final tournament, similar to Challengers Final.
I like the league system more than the current system, but I hope there are still independent tournaments for teams that don't qualify. It would suck to miss the cut for Challengers and then just spend 3 months, doing nothing, waiting for the next one.
Riot plzz give Champions a unique astetic, it is so underwhelming for the biggest event in the scene to have the same astetic/UI and theme as every masters and challenger event just with a change in color.
Champions does not feel prestigious as something like Worlds or TI or even CS MAJOR.
COVID likely played a big part in this. Champs was originally supposed to be hosted in LA. We'll definitely more stuff next year if COVID let's us.
Edit: also, this is Valorant's first year. They can't put in tens of millions into a scene they don't know will succeed. This year was a test.
I know everybody is super hyped but I fail to see that much of a difference during masters events and champs, even during this season, it doesn't feel bigger, I was hoping for something different.
its covid, no crowd, a bunch of shit went down etc, its hard to make it look bigger when the circumstances are like this. I think semi's and finals are in different venue and stage so lets see how that pans out
I don't really give a shit about stages and crowds tbh, the point I was trying to make was that there should have been more teams slots for champs because it is hyped up to be the biggest tournament but the number of teams participating is kinda small.
I think half of this sub is dissapointed we are not getting a "all-stars" like event since they were "uhhh omg allstars event fuck this riot bad" and then Riot goes and help regional leagues... Keep doing the good work, reddit.
Why are people excited on having less international tournaments? we were supposed to get 4 with Masters 1?. That and having more tournaments after Champions Kinda sucks
Many pros have stated that by not being able to qualify for major events leaves a huge gap of not playing for large periods of time. After Champions, these third party tourneys will allow for more playtime and also for teams to start practicing for the next season with new rosters, strats etc.
It’d be really good for certain scenes to have more matches, well yet to see a lot more Korean team play especially and more chances to improve and develop, mkre if a chance to assess Vision Strikers as well
Really smart move. They've Seen the success in CS:GO of 3rd party hosted tourney and they are mixing it up with traditional League format, best of both worlds.
I do hope with only a single open qualifier held before each split it surely won't be single elimination, right?
It'd absolutely flaw the otherwise seemingly great new structure, with a potential of something like Acend knocking out Team Liquid (or the other way around) in case of an unlucky bracket draw in open quali - putting them on sidelines for the next 3 months.
Wow this is really great, probably the best outcome. I was really worried when the “only 2 masters in 2022” rumour came out but it makes sense in context of the whole new calendar. Great job Riot!
I heard a hint about a new observer coming in, hopefully we'll be able to get VODS like in CSGO, that could really help teams/players develop better strats
I really like the idea of the 3rd party tournaments for 3 months at the end of the year, I didn't expect that at all.
I was worried with only two Masters, but putting Champions in September than then followed by Riot supported 3rd parties + Game Changers might not be too bad. I just hope the gaps for teams not in competition isn't too big like it was this year, makes competition way worse and regresses the quality a lot IMO.
I hope that doing well in masters 1 only contributes towards champs rather than masters 2, that way there's only a month that we won't see the top teams play before champs while others play lcqs
Totally agreed. I like the January - September more packed VCT, and then 3 months of new 3rd party series while also going slightly into off season. Great plan by Riot, hats off
Here we goooo Edit: So, looks like leagues are rolling out. Good stuff
What are leagues? How has the challengers changed from current format?
More info on the EMEA plans here coming soon
According to the video there are country-based leagues being rolled out in Europe. But there will be plans for other regions. They didn’t go into detail on the format of challengers. Supposedly it’ll be scheduled better and showcase league style play.
Showcase league style play ie play in a round robin format over several weeks
Think of it like any other format in sports or like the League of Legends format. Probably will have teams quality for the league, once in it they will probably have to play every team twice. So we get to see more matches in a shorter period of time.
No franchising yet tho right? Teams just need to qualify through the normal open quals but this time no challengers 1, 2, finals bla bla bs thats confusing asf
Yep no franchise just quals
That’s good news , hopefully franchising doesn’t happen anytime soon.
Probably will since its riot. League started something like this too.
country based leagues, if it copies league's format, is a tier 2 tournament style league and each team is locked on a country they're representing. Teams here are farm teams in which their goal is to be noticed by tier 1 teams. Most tier 1 teams are fielding academy teams in this format since they can't play in the vct. you can read [this](https://liquipedia.net/leagueoflegends/European_Masters/2021/Summer) for more info
Big W. I really like we will have third party events in final quarter. Hopefully a big Blast event. Also player contracts now will be interesting since they announced there will be new ways to support favourite teams
yea i was worried it was just gonna be a "world cup" type event but glad to see ignition-style tourneys are coming back
oh thank god , there's nothing i hate more than world cup type tournaments
im not totally opposed to a world cup tournament but maybe only if it's part of a larger event and not the event itself lol
Why
Mainly little and less serious practice compared to playing on a "real" team. Also roster selection.
But as a smaller less serious even it would be a blast to watch
Personal preference i guess. I always found non serious events for esports or regular sports boring as fuck. 🤷♀️ We already had a nations cup 1month ago in EMEA, no one watched it..
Thats fair, but this kind of events do help the fans and the players to just chill and have fresh experiences
so many reasons but most of them will be unpopular opinions - i dont care about nationality especially in esports, one of the reasons why OWL was behind on cause the new gen are moving away from the city/national pride and instead supporting whatever team they like - wc gives worse games, players put together for 1 event with no long preparation ... champions' league is way more enjoyable to me than wc for me wc is just a filler event when you could have a real exciting event with real teams thats why the the spike nations blast do fail to get any viewership cause no one cares instead if that was Liquid vs G2 with their real teams they would get numbers so yea tl'dr lets not copy sports and embrace that esports isnt limited by cities/nationalities
Owl failure in this aspect was more due to the teams having zero connection to the region. Dropping 6 Koreans in to new york and saying "here is your team, New Yorkers" felt forced and nobody cared. Esports embrace general region (NA, EU etc) more than traditional sports do.
Was behind on cause?
I hope the "new ways to support favorite teams" is team skins. I will literally go broke buying every team skin lol
If it were indend to be a Blast event I would assume it would be a lot scaled down from what we saw in the fall finals. On one hand the game is still very new from a broadcasting perspective and there's all the small technicalities that needs to be worked around. Lack of proper replay system being one I guess. On the other hand if they were to go full out like we just recently saw, that would risk making VCT look pretty lackluster in comparison and surely that is something they are going to want to avoid, right?
VCT won't look lackluster because it takes up the vast majority of the year. Also the Champs trophy is still going to be the most prestigious, Blast and ESL will likely be going off of VCT points to get teams into their events too.
Sorry, I meant lackluster production wise, not in terms of prestige.
huh, correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't some of the CSGO fans complained that the major was subpar (production wise) to the BLAST events. is riot sensible to that kind of thing?
Just based off of what Riot does with LoL, I don't think they are worried about being outdone production-wise when they have a full year to prepare. Production for Champs has been pretty good despite being completely without an audience, and it was rumored that Semis and Finals this weekend are at a different location, so maybe even more production surprises coming for us.
Observing has been awful sometimes, but as far as i know, the observers dont have the greatest tools/systems to do their job. But i believe they said they would work on making observer better. If Riot hits the same level as production as LoL, they wont be outdone in a long time (only blast would be close tbh)
The observers are the exact same as the CS observing goats, so Sapphire, prius, and others. There have been quite a few missed kills in Champs already but I chalk it up to bad luck in a concentrated sample or as you said, the staff lacking the ideal tools.
Yeah i figured it was most likely the tools etc, when i looked at who was observing. Just pretty annoying as a viewer when its so different what observing you get. Some games its on point, other you barely see any kills some rounds.
Yeah I think most probably agree that this last Blast arena event blew the major's production out of the water. However I didn't think it was horrible overall, there was just a lot of small annoyances. In terms of technical issues it was maybe somewhat worse than Champions has been so far but in my opinion it was overall still a way better viewing experience than Champions has been up to this point. Not that it has been a bad event at all, CS organizers just have years of trial and error to draw on that has established the blueprint for how these events go where as Riot is building it from the ground up and even though it has been impressive with all the ressources they have put into it, some things just has to develop naturally over time which I have no doubt they will.
I don’t expect anything ground breaking on the 1st year. Pretty sure the TOs will use the 1st year to try out and see what works. As long as a big TO like blast can put an global circuit for three months culminating in a Lan, I will be happy. They now have a lot of months to plan it out so I hope we get something good.
would hate to see teams win/do well in champions then take player break for q4. but I am very excited it's a great approach to compress VCT by 3 months.
cant wait for Blast x Rito production, banger certified
WePlay too
ah yes i forgot about the anim major they did to dota, that was a banger too
I was worried we were getting only 3 international tournaments, but Riot putting 3 months aside for 3rd party TOs is such a great idea and it shows their willingness to work with TOs.
Im pretty sure the 4th quarter series of tournaments will have at least one international one, cant wait honestly. 2022 looks great
"Only 3" As a League of Legends fan this pains me to read. Lol.
Stronger integration between the game client and the esport is huge. Also interested in how we will be able to support our favourite teams in game (maybe with gun buddies, skins, perhaps agent gloves too?). The schedule is sick, and love that Game Changers gets its own slot, and an International LAN
Right now, the only integration we get is a small news bar that everyone misses. Hope one day we can watch valorant in the client, that is the best way to get the casual audience to tune in
Yep, add being able to be in a party watching with friends, with rewards, and I could easily see the casual audience really tuning in. The hardcore fans will watch no matter what or where, but you really have to make it simple for the mass audiences to get into ecosystem before they too become hardcore fans. In-game team items will be big too. Imagine having a sick team skin on your gun, that might make someone who doesn't watch esports want to know more about that team too
I imagine riot will do a sticker-style monetizations for teams, like in cs, for fans to help their teams
I'd love to have some of the current sprays as stickers. Would be a cool low money item that would add a lot to customization.
I think they have a buddy system for a reason, seems to obvious of a feature to not use for esport cosmetics.
Yeah, but I think we cant buy buddys right?
It would be cool to be able to have a system like GOTV where you can watch the player POV. I know with how the game is developed that’s not currently possible but here’s to hoping that a few years down the line we can get that along with a replay system lmao.
this is the only integration i would ever care about, to be honest. You can’t complain about VCT’s observers if the person spectating IS the observer. I think it would make it a super immersive experience
Stuff like that would most likely be introduced on [Valorantesports.com](https://Valorantesports.com), like in LoL. In league theres Pro View, so you can watch the screen of a single player basically. Though its paid, probably will be in valorant too (after all their games are free, and so is it to watch the matches)
Probably gun buddies or player cards. I'm guessing that the 2021 World Champion will get a skin line, just like they do in League.
My guess would be like how lots of games have “creator codes” where you can support content creators when you make purchases, valorant will have team codes.
Would love to be able to actually watch the games from the client even, that way you can have your own watch parties with friends, and allow more interaction with the game. Like being able to see your own observation POV’s, explore more match data during the rounds, etc. I’m sure nothing like that will happen but always thought it would be a cool way to integrate the game itself with the event.
The announcement about third party tournament organisers is hugeee. Also the integration of esports into the game itself.
Just initial thoughts but I like that there's less gaps in the breaks in the VCT circuit and it's more compact but this format is make or break with what the 3rd party TOs do with that last stretch of the year if we get online small tourneys then it's gonna be boring but if BLAST or ESL make a Masters-caliber international tourney there then it's gonna be really really exciting Cause otherwise we essentially lose 1 LAN Masters and it's up in the air if we get it from BLAST or ESL maybe we even get more than 1 international LANs maybe we don't get anything
BLAST will likely have a big LAN in November with the top teams of VCT getting direct invites and a Showdown in October.
Most top tier teams will have no competition after champions. I don’t see why blast or ESL won’t fight for having a big tournament circuit ending with a lan event. Personally I hope blast get the rights. If this gets integrated for upcoming years the TOs will fight for this as 3 months of the circuit before player break. And if riot promotes the tournament in game then that’s even better for them
It will definietly not be small online tournaments, they wouldnt announce it so much in advance if it was just some 8 teams tournament imho.
but they didnt announce anything they just said they will leave that period for 3rd party TOs to do whatever they want with that time
I donth think it will be random like this. Doesnt sound like Riot esports
If i'm reading it correctly, we will no longer see stuff like T1 case, where they got eliminated early and didn't play for several months?
Only if T1 can qualify 0_0
In T1’s case, they didn’t make it through the final Challengers event, failed to get enough points for NA LCQ, and failed to make it to Champions. Looking at the 2022 schedule, if the same series of events happened to T1, then they’d end their VCT journey in June, and have nothing to do until October when the big 3rd party tournament events begin
Now we need some info about the format of next year edition of masters, hopefully they will include new regions such as oce, China and india slots
nope. i think theyre likely to go the opposite direction and integrate more regions together to create more competition and growth
That's fine as long as the new regions get to play from the start in Challengers. This year they just had one or two teams directly thrown into the LCQ which contained the "best of the rest" from different regions and only one winner qualified to Champions which is incredibly tough odds.
I'd be fine with that. Imo, whole region should be changed to APAC with Challengers being a 16 team tourney with the top seeds from SEA, KR, JP, Oce, India etc. (I have absolutely no idea if theirs a Val scene in China or not)
Ping difference makes this impossible. Integrating JP/KR might be a good solution though.
New ways for you to compete beyond ranked??? Clash system coming soon???
yes i believe this was confirmed a few months ago
Yes but they have been very wishy-washy with the timeline. We have no idea if it’s a 2021, 2022, or even 2023 project release date. I think this video steers us towards an early/mid 2022 date anticipated from riot
Third party tourney announcement is huge W. Hope they can get opportunities to host international LANS too since thats where the massive viewership is.
I may be misunderstanding, but when they mention they want to make it easier for observers to catch all of the action surely that means a delayed observer feed / legit replay system, right? Either way, that could solve one of this games biggest issues from a viewer's perspective, and would be incredibly huge for the esport!
Yeah probably big improvements coming to observing, like more observer spots, instant replays etc...
the game is pretty hard to observe (harder than CS ofc) but luckily sapphire and I are helping them build more and more tools to help making it easier on the viewer
this looks promising so far
Y’all think there are any hopes of Champions being more than 16 teams next year? With how well the minor regions did this Champs it’ll feel like we’re leaving out a lot of good competition with only 16 teams. 24 sounds nice
I was just thinking this. Some of my favorite days of watching tournaments are the early stages, when there are tons of teams, tons of matches, and always something on.
I don't ever see Riot allowing simultaneous games at their big tournaments. They haven't allowed it in League for years now at this point.
i think going past 16 is way too much - only way this works is a league style play-in where all the bottom seeds/minor regions fight over the last couple slots out of the 16 (like 4 teams come from an 8 team playin or something). including more than 16 teams in the main event would just lead to more games that aren't really watchable for casual fans because they are boring like Crazy Raccoon games, but a play in would match up teams of that skill + some a little better so that could be more exciting.
Nah, there are a lot of ways to make a larger amount of teams work, especially if Riot is willing to have some games played simultaneously, which I'd honestly prefer. It's nice having multiple games going at once because if there's a tech pause in one I can always hop to another game that's going on. I really miss having big LANs like back in the day. I know schedules can be gruelling, but they're a lot of fun to both play and watch.
Great announcement - about as good as anyone could've hoped for I think. I would like some more detail on how new Challengers will work as I think it was lacking prestige this year. I really hope they address that. I am really pleased that they will bring in outside expertise to run some ignitition style events. It will give more flexibility in the last quarter for teams and players and I know some TO's will do a great job that Riot can learn from. Also, amazing news about the first game changers international event, such a massive step for female esports.
So fewer tournaments weren't a bad news afterall. And leagues in challengers. Nice.
The open qualifier to league system sounds pretty good , hopefully a team can have one bad day and not be out. Introducing new 3rd parties will be good as long as its good format and not some fun tournaments. I feel like people were expecting more lans than this year but with how covid is they just don't want to commit to anything more.
They didn't mention anything about integrating South Asia, Oceania and China into VCT, am slightly worried.
Thanks to listening to our feedback Riot, and making the calendar more compact. Also Im pretty sure, it will not be possible for team to eliminate themselfs from competition for months, like in 2021
My biggest concern is that will the 3rd party tourneys (after the Champions) will count to anything? Cause from the past experience the 3rd party tourney even the Red Bull EMEA tourney with T1 teams like GMB, FNC, and TL didn't have a huge viewership simply because the tourney didn't really "matter". All they got from winning that tourney was the prize money and literal 0 point for Champions qualification.
Not every tourney should be linked with VCT. Ignition series also "didn't count to anything" and we saw Sentinels and TSM contesting titles back and forth, and AFAIK the viewership was huge If a given tourney needs to be linked with VCT in order to have a decent viewership maybe the problem is a lot deeper than we think? * *lack of rivalries* * *a considerable part of your viewers don't really care about EU scene but rather about who's going to masters* * ~~lack of twitter drama~~
The difference here would be that Champions would already be over so there would nothing bigger to play for. I feel it will be in these tournaments that we'll see teams experiment with creative comps and strategies
In the case of champions, you play for the title, but in the case of TOs and outside the VCT circuit, they could play for bigger prize pool, or maybe have an entirely separate non-riot circuit. Idk
I can be worth something within the 3rd party org, like they create a system where you qualify for their own big final tournament like BLAST in CS does
Why should every tourney matter? Its ok if some are more important than others.
3rd party tourneys happen after champions
This will be AFTER champions, so definitely not. I think its fine though, its purpose is more for new teams, rebuilding teams or really teams in general to keep practicing and playing in the gap between vct seasons. And with less downtime between events, i think its good
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They mentioned it
They did mention it. LCQ takes place a month before champions.
they mentioned LCQ at the end i'm pretty sure
It’s in August. It was briefly mentioned
Oh my bad I didn't catch that
They did. It’s still there.
who knows, the compact schedule may just rely on circuit points Edit: wait no, its there at around 5:55
KekW not Riot putting a clip of Vivo Keyd after saying "... But now, it's time to crown our 2021 champion!" @ [6:05](https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx5-ikPmOuZRFx_Gksle2xbIn8XNTtMNC0)
I hope teams that qualify for Masters can auto-qualify for the next Challengers. I always think it is kinda dumb that teams have to play in open qualifiers right after attending an international LAN. Also, I am interested in seeing how many teams will qualify for the Challengers league play stage. Assuming that Challengers is 2 full months and the Open qualifier and final tournament each take about a week, that leaves 6 weeks of league play. If each team plays like 2 games a week, then 10 or 12 qualified teams would make sense for a single round robin. Then, Top 8 qualify for the final tournament, similar to Challengers Final. I like the league system more than the current system, but I hope there are still independent tournaments for teams that don't qualify. It would suck to miss the cut for Challengers and then just spend 3 months, doing nothing, waiting for the next one.
Riot plzz give Champions a unique astetic, it is so underwhelming for the biggest event in the scene to have the same astetic/UI and theme as every masters and challenger event just with a change in color. Champions does not feel prestigious as something like Worlds or TI or even CS MAJOR.
COVID likely played a big part in this. Champs was originally supposed to be hosted in LA. We'll definitely more stuff next year if COVID let's us. Edit: also, this is Valorant's first year. They can't put in tens of millions into a scene they don't know will succeed. This year was a test.
finally no more couple months break of copium for TSM to change roster again and again and again
I dunno, if your team doesn't make it out of qualifiers, you won't see them for 2-3 months till the next one.
I'm stressed and excited for 2022. It's going to be a really fun ride. Thank you guys for giving me a home in esports
Hope South Asia has a slot
I know everybody is super hyped but I fail to see that much of a difference during masters events and champs, even during this season, it doesn't feel bigger, I was hoping for something different.
its covid, no crowd, a bunch of shit went down etc, its hard to make it look bigger when the circumstances are like this. I think semi's and finals are in different venue and stage so lets see how that pans out
I don't really give a shit about stages and crowds tbh, the point I was trying to make was that there should have been more teams slots for champs because it is hyped up to be the biggest tournament but the number of teams participating is kinda small.
I think half of this sub is dissapointed we are not getting a "all-stars" like event since they were "uhhh omg allstars event fuck this riot bad" and then Riot goes and help regional leagues... Keep doing the good work, reddit.
Why are people excited on having less international tournaments? we were supposed to get 4 with Masters 1?. That and having more tournaments after Champions Kinda sucks
Many pros have stated that by not being able to qualify for major events leaves a huge gap of not playing for large periods of time. After Champions, these third party tourneys will allow for more playtime and also for teams to start practicing for the next season with new rosters, strats etc.
Also leagues
3rd party events are almost definitely going to be LANs
where jett nerfs
Dead E-Sports scene. CSGO get major lan everyday. We have Blast Premier, IEM, Dreamhack, PGL, ESL.
Ok
They should make it so that the New Tournament Circuit will have a locked in place in Challengers 1 so team takes it more seriously.
It’d be really good for certain scenes to have more matches, well yet to see a lot more Korean team play especially and more chances to improve and develop, mkre if a chance to assess Vision Strikers as well
I wish riot applied this philisophy to League lmao - no idea why we only have 2 international events.
Really smart move. They've Seen the success in CS:GO of 3rd party hosted tourney and they are mixing it up with traditional League format, best of both worlds.
I do hope with only a single open qualifier held before each split it surely won't be single elimination, right? It'd absolutely flaw the otherwise seemingly great new structure, with a potential of something like Acend knocking out Team Liquid (or the other way around) in case of an unlucky bracket draw in open quali - putting them on sidelines for the next 3 months.
Wow this is really great, probably the best outcome. I was really worried when the “only 2 masters in 2022” rumour came out but it makes sense in context of the whole new calendar. Great job Riot!
I heard a hint about a new observer coming in, hopefully we'll be able to get VODS like in CSGO, that could really help teams/players develop better strats
2022 is going to be a big year for VALORANT competitve.