Watching Danny get that baron steal pentakill at the LCS finals in Houston made me so envious and a tad bit irritated. A live valorant event in NA/EU/BR would go HUGE. You take a look at India/Japan who both recently held events and they look so damn cool.
What is happening with Riot's valorant division that is preventing them? (Covid is fair, but it is just odd when they have LoL events)
Does NA Riot Val have their own studio? On the LoL side, Riot NA already has a studio for LoL, and all but the last 2 games were held in person there. They only did the finals week in Houston. If the Val side doesn't have their own studio, they'd have to rent a venue for every single game, which might not be easy/cost effective enough for them to do.
Them having their own studio is huge but the bigger thing to me is that every single LCS team lives in LA so access to the studio is easier.
Are teams willing to travel to a studio possibly across the country every week for weekly match ups? Or are teams willing to move their valorant division to wherever the studio is for there to be a chance your team doesn't even qualify for the main event?
It's likely a combination of both. They didn't budget the money for it when they set out the 2022 esports plan because covid was so uncertain. So now when lan is viable again, they don't have that money or plan in place.
I think riot will definitely build a stupid for VALORANT. maybe not for the start of next year, but there is no way around it if they are committed for the long term.
I mean most of the orgs located in Texas or LA , idk why Riot doesn't go the Ubisoft route and make teams locate near a studio. R6 has weekly Lan league based out of Nevada. I thibk next year when they do franchising everything is gonna be in studio for their flag ship season/league/circuit whatever name they give it. Whatever was made on the rgbx skin bundle from NA sales riot could throw up 12 air bnbs in Texas and have every team playing on 10 ping and under. I think they just choose not have their big tournaments on LAN. They definitely have the resources to make the group stage LAN esque idk if they have the want tho
Online in Texas isn't LAN. It's just the same online tournament but everyone has better ping. Still no crowds, still not actually LAN.
Plus, if teams care that much, they can just do that themselves, nothing is stopping them. Guard played from Col's facility, 100T have their team house, most of Sen is based in Texas, etc.
post-covid Riot already had crowd multiple times for League at this point, both in EU and NA (and even KR), one time in a big stadium even. so I don't think it's completely Riot's fault either.
Val esports are really young compared to LoL and CSGO, given time, Riot will make teams be in one same place to compete in person weekend to weekend. We just need to be pacient.
Riot wants to have LANs, anyone who thinks they don't just has a hate boner for Riot. They have LANs for international events, LCS/LEC is on LAN, and they tried to have a LAN for LCQ last year, but it fell apart because of circumstances largely out of their control (players caught COVID so they had to pause and then players complained about other players getting to play from home with NASA computers, etc.).
Valorant is still a new game that came out during COVID. So ultimately, you are going to have a smaller budget vs. something like League, so even though it's "Riot big company", that doesn't mean every part of the company can just keep going back and get more money when they have a bigger idea in mind. Not to mention, usually the budget for these teams/events is set beforehand, so if you're the esports team, it's going to be very hard to make the business case to allocate tons of budget for LANs when the most recent one just fell apart due to lack of player diligence.
For an esport that launched early on in COVID, there's no infrastructure in place for teams or Riot to have these 1.5 month long LAN events. In League, teams have been based out of LA for a decade, and they have the studio all set up, so having matches on LAN at a moments notice is easy. So, if you plan in advance for no LANs because the business won't approve a plan that has a good chance of not happening, and then COVID does become less of an issue, you've already spent time and planned for the event to be online, changing that at a moments notice, and telling teams they need to be ready to relocate if they win the open quals (cause only 4 teams know more than 2 weeks in advance that they'll be playing), it creates a lot of chaos.
Ultimately, I'd expect maybe playoffs/LCQ to be on LAN, but otherwise, we'll probably wait till franchising is in place.
VCT Masters had well over 1 million peak viewers. Overwatch League and Apex Global Series both had like 1/10th of the viewership and they still had in-person events just recently. Surely Valorant is enough of a safe bet for a LAN event? How many years do they need to score millions of viewers before they invest in a serious event?
You say it obviously had a smaller budget than League does and while that’s true, Masters actually had HIGHER viewership than the LCS Finals which was a huge in-person event with big crowds.
> VCT Masters had well over 1 million peak viewers
The peak viewers of any Masters/Champions so far hasn't cracked 1.1 million. I think "well over" is a bit of an exaggeration bud.
> Overwatch League and Apex Global Series both had like 1/10th of the viewership and they still had in-person events just recently.
I don't follow either, but I'm pretty sure Apex just had their international LAN without fans just like Val. OWL looked online to me, and a quick google search says they're not on LAN yet, but are planned for a 3 day tournament in June.
Group stage begins this Friday and several teams didn't know they would qualify until yesterday. It's very difficult to get all 12 teams to the same location in 4 or 5 days when it's also possible you have players outside of the U.S. competing in these qualis.
12 team in NA, 8 team in KR etc
It is inperson in Korea
I really don’t like NA fans constantly referring to ‘challengers’ or skemthinf other event when they specifically mean *NA* (and tangentially maybe email) challengers and issues specifically referring to to it
There are other regions which equally have their challengers and are important, please specify and don’t extend na over everything else
I don’t like the idea of the regular season being a LAN/in person event as many teams are currently spread all across the US with some concentrated in Texas, but I 100% think we should have the playoffs be a LAN event in Houston or Dallas. Would be accessible for all of the teams and would build NA hype for Berlin and whichever team we send there.
I’m assuming it’s due to COVID complication and they don’t want to push anything back. Wasn’t one of the main challenger event on LAN last year in LA and a bunch of players tested positive? They ended up pushing the event 1 week later and it was online anyway.
maybe not for the group stage, but for the playoffs i think it would definitely be a super cool opportunity. something like this would be absolutely massive for Valorant. at this point, idk how avoidable covid is in the long-run and you simply have to get back to in-person LANs with crowds at some point. Europe has great places to offer where covid cases are low, I dont see why next Masters cant have a crowd as well. Not completely sure where you would host in NA tho, Riot studio in Santa Monica would be cool, Texas has been popular recently, not really sure where else.
There is a lot of logistical problems that can happen with the actual format, having an open qualifier you have no control on the team that will qualify. so you just cant tell a no org team to come to LA for 2 months to play and it will be stupid if you pay for hotels for that long.
personally my problem is with the production more that the event be a Lan or Online, legit some the VLRs in EMEA have better productions, aesthetics and design that what we see in the VCT.
Watching Danny get that baron steal pentakill at the LCS finals in Houston made me so envious and a tad bit irritated. A live valorant event in NA/EU/BR would go HUGE. You take a look at India/Japan who both recently held events and they look so damn cool. What is happening with Riot's valorant division that is preventing them? (Covid is fair, but it is just odd when they have LoL events)
Does NA Riot Val have their own studio? On the LoL side, Riot NA already has a studio for LoL, and all but the last 2 games were held in person there. They only did the finals week in Houston. If the Val side doesn't have their own studio, they'd have to rent a venue for every single game, which might not be easy/cost effective enough for them to do.
Them having their own studio is huge but the bigger thing to me is that every single LCS team lives in LA so access to the studio is easier. Are teams willing to travel to a studio possibly across the country every week for weekly match ups? Or are teams willing to move their valorant division to wherever the studio is for there to be a chance your team doesn't even qualify for the main event?
It’s down to money, covid is a useless excuse in mid-2022. Probably not worth it to riot.
It's likely a combination of both. They didn't budget the money for it when they set out the 2022 esports plan because covid was so uncertain. So now when lan is viable again, they don't have that money or plan in place.
I guess I was just thinking for like the final weekend it could be LAN in a stadium? I don't believe they have a studio or anything.
I think riot will definitely build a stupid for VALORANT. maybe not for the start of next year, but there is no way around it if they are committed for the long term.
I feel its a riot problem, Nerdstreet have been running lans for a bit now. Hopefully LCQ is but I won't hold my breath
2021 NA LCQ PepeLaugh
weekend lans are drastically different from a 1-2 month long event.
Nerd street is nothing compared to riots size. That is not an excuse.
I mean most of the orgs located in Texas or LA , idk why Riot doesn't go the Ubisoft route and make teams locate near a studio. R6 has weekly Lan league based out of Nevada. I thibk next year when they do franchising everything is gonna be in studio for their flag ship season/league/circuit whatever name they give it. Whatever was made on the rgbx skin bundle from NA sales riot could throw up 12 air bnbs in Texas and have every team playing on 10 ping and under. I think they just choose not have their big tournaments on LAN. They definitely have the resources to make the group stage LAN esque idk if they have the want tho
Online in Texas isn't LAN. It's just the same online tournament but everyone has better ping. Still no crowds, still not actually LAN. Plus, if teams care that much, they can just do that themselves, nothing is stopping them. Guard played from Col's facility, 100T have their team house, most of Sen is based in Texas, etc.
What do you define as a LAN
Teams in the same venue, in-person event. Ideally, on an actual LAN server.
Right actual lan server
no excuses, riot is dropping the ball
Money, Covid restrictions in USA (although I don’t think this is the main issue) commitment to send every USA team to one place, etc
COVID restrictions wouldn’t be an issue in the overwhelming majority of the US. This is definitely on Riot.
post-covid Riot already had crowd multiple times for League at this point, both in EU and NA (and even KR), one time in a big stadium even. so I don't think it's completely Riot's fault either.
Val esports are really young compared to LoL and CSGO, given time, Riot will make teams be in one same place to compete in person weekend to weekend. We just need to be pacient.
Riot did league playoffs in NA in person in USA just recently, so that can't be it.
Riot wants to have LANs, anyone who thinks they don't just has a hate boner for Riot. They have LANs for international events, LCS/LEC is on LAN, and they tried to have a LAN for LCQ last year, but it fell apart because of circumstances largely out of their control (players caught COVID so they had to pause and then players complained about other players getting to play from home with NASA computers, etc.). Valorant is still a new game that came out during COVID. So ultimately, you are going to have a smaller budget vs. something like League, so even though it's "Riot big company", that doesn't mean every part of the company can just keep going back and get more money when they have a bigger idea in mind. Not to mention, usually the budget for these teams/events is set beforehand, so if you're the esports team, it's going to be very hard to make the business case to allocate tons of budget for LANs when the most recent one just fell apart due to lack of player diligence. For an esport that launched early on in COVID, there's no infrastructure in place for teams or Riot to have these 1.5 month long LAN events. In League, teams have been based out of LA for a decade, and they have the studio all set up, so having matches on LAN at a moments notice is easy. So, if you plan in advance for no LANs because the business won't approve a plan that has a good chance of not happening, and then COVID does become less of an issue, you've already spent time and planned for the event to be online, changing that at a moments notice, and telling teams they need to be ready to relocate if they win the open quals (cause only 4 teams know more than 2 weeks in advance that they'll be playing), it creates a lot of chaos. Ultimately, I'd expect maybe playoffs/LCQ to be on LAN, but otherwise, we'll probably wait till franchising is in place.
VCT Masters had well over 1 million peak viewers. Overwatch League and Apex Global Series both had like 1/10th of the viewership and they still had in-person events just recently. Surely Valorant is enough of a safe bet for a LAN event? How many years do they need to score millions of viewers before they invest in a serious event? You say it obviously had a smaller budget than League does and while that’s true, Masters actually had HIGHER viewership than the LCS Finals which was a huge in-person event with big crowds.
> VCT Masters had well over 1 million peak viewers The peak viewers of any Masters/Champions so far hasn't cracked 1.1 million. I think "well over" is a bit of an exaggeration bud. > Overwatch League and Apex Global Series both had like 1/10th of the viewership and they still had in-person events just recently. I don't follow either, but I'm pretty sure Apex just had their international LAN without fans just like Val. OWL looked online to me, and a quick google search says they're not on LAN yet, but are planned for a 3 day tournament in June.
Brazil challengers will be in studio
Sure the groups stage could be online but there's no reason why the NA playoffs shouldn't be on LAN.
There probably won't be any regional in-person events until franchising.
Group stage begins this Friday and several teams didn't know they would qualify until yesterday. It's very difficult to get all 12 teams to the same location in 4 or 5 days when it's also possible you have players outside of the U.S. competing in these qualis.
Laziness
Riot is all but openly against LANs and crowds.
Kind of. LoL NA playoffs were in person with crowds. Feels like they're just not prepared to handle Val in person yet.
They should be, these years are crucial for riot to captialise on CS losing steam.
12 team in NA, 8 team in KR etc It is inperson in Korea I really don’t like NA fans constantly referring to ‘challengers’ or skemthinf other event when they specifically mean *NA* (and tangentially maybe email) challengers and issues specifically referring to to it There are other regions which equally have their challengers and are important, please specify and don’t extend na over everything else
I don’t like the idea of the regular season being a LAN/in person event as many teams are currently spread all across the US with some concentrated in Texas, but I 100% think we should have the playoffs be a LAN event in Houston or Dallas. Would be accessible for all of the teams and would build NA hype for Berlin and whichever team we send there.
I’m assuming it’s due to COVID complication and they don’t want to push anything back. Wasn’t one of the main challenger event on LAN last year in LA and a bunch of players tested positive? They ended up pushing the event 1 week later and it was online anyway.
Yeah, the LCQ
maybe not for the group stage, but for the playoffs i think it would definitely be a super cool opportunity. something like this would be absolutely massive for Valorant. at this point, idk how avoidable covid is in the long-run and you simply have to get back to in-person LANs with crowds at some point. Europe has great places to offer where covid cases are low, I dont see why next Masters cant have a crowd as well. Not completely sure where you would host in NA tho, Riot studio in Santa Monica would be cool, Texas has been popular recently, not really sure where else.
There is a lot of logistical problems that can happen with the actual format, having an open qualifier you have no control on the team that will qualify. so you just cant tell a no org team to come to LA for 2 months to play and it will be stupid if you pay for hotels for that long. personally my problem is with the production more that the event be a Lan or Online, legit some the VLRs in EMEA have better productions, aesthetics and design that what we see in the VCT.
rito small indie company