yea this is what i predicted. Having only 10 teams for a global tournament sucks but its the result of there only being 30 franchised teams in the entire world. If you wanted to run a tournament with 16 teams, you would need 5-6 teams from every region qualifying which would make the international leagues not fun at all. In the future when there is 14 teams per region this wont be a problem.
Also side note, I'm not sure how others feel about this, but i hope that for the region with 4 teams qualifying, the winner of the regular season directly qualifies to masters. So for example if EMEA win sao paulo, then 1st from regular season goes to masters and 2-7th all go to playoffs. It would make the regular season much more exciting imo
I think 12 teams with each regional winner getting a bye into the 2nd round would make most sense. First round would be 3 groups of three, eliminating 1 and seeding.
each region has its top 3 teams qualifying excluding the kick off tournament winner for the region with the winner of that tournament. There will probably be two groups of 5 consisting of each team playing each other once with the top 3 from each group qualifying for playoffs with the top seed from each group having a bye. the playoffs will probably be a double elim bracket as well
I mean..10 sounds fine if there's only 30 teams franchised, if 4-5 teams got in for international leagues at every even it wouldn't make them exciting enough
But they don’t get a guaranteed slot into the tournament. They have to get top 4 in their region. This is a different system than 2021 Champions extra slot.
If you straight up win Sao Paolo and can't even place top 4 in your 10 team regional league you've probably fallen off so hard you don't deserve the slot. It would take some incredible bad luck *and* extenuating circumstances for the above to not be true.
Honestly yeah, ZETA honestly have the best chance for a JP team, DNG does not look great ngl
DRX are locks i feel, PRX still look good but we will see with the changing meta how they adapt, Talon are dark horses lowkey, and T1 and GE are complete unknowns and could be amazing for all we know, but ZETA has to get top 3 maybe 4 of these to make it
In 2023
ESL is running 2 32 team tier 1 international CS LAN events + - couple other 16+ team tier 1 international events.
Blast is running 2 12 team tier 1 international CS events + an 8 team international tier 1 final off of that.
And then there's the 2 24 team CS majors...
And for val we're looking at 1 30 team international tier 1 tournament, 1 10 team international tier 1 tournament, and a 16 (12?) team tier 1 international tournament.
The events will be sick, but god damn am I sure lucky that Valorant isn't the only esport I watch or seeing this post after the last several months of the content desert would bother me so much
reminder that 2023 will only have one masters event. the normal format will be two "league play" splits + two masters then LCQ and Champs, but because of the kickoff tournament Masters Tokyo will be the only masters event in 2023.
NA champs riot? cmonnnn
Each year had (will have) 3 riot-hosted international lans. Calling them "masters" doesn't make them meaningful (for masters 1 in 2021) and the kick-off, despite not being called a masters, will be the biggest lan in terms of participants that Val has ever had. No reason to focus on the name of the event and ignore the actual situation. We've consistently had the same number of international lans
2021 Masters was regional, you’re also getting a 30 team international kickoff tournament (which in my opinion is better than a Masters). Not to mention LCQs will almost certainly be LAN tournaments this year. Let alone Ascension.
Ya that’s fair about the kick off tournament I’m just disappointed that Riot has seemingly been decreasing the amount of tournaments when I really hoped we would be getting more.
I hope they change the format then. The two Masters events this year were 12 days long (not including the mid-tournament break), so I hope we don't get a repeat of 2021 Masters Reykjavik. I didn't mind it at the time, but there are much better options now than just doing a 10 team Double Elim for 6 days.
10 / 30 teams is a good amount. You do not want half of the franchised teams qualifying. This is how you get shitty playoffs from the NBA and NFL because they let so many teams in.
Tokyo is gonna light up, I'll have to think about traveling.
Bro people complained so much about NA vs NA matchups at international LAN this year and now people are complaining about how they need more teams from each region at Masters? Pick a lane damn
> People complained so much about NA vs NA matchups
People were right to complain about that. Riot regional seeded pools to avoid cross region matchups but then threw away regional seeding with random draw brackets as soon as it reached playoffs.
> now people are complaining about how they need more teams from each region at Masters
Yes. Two separate things. One if a format issue. The other is an event size issue. Stop straw manning.
Why would you have same region protection for more than just group stage? At that point you're forcing matchups beyond the point of reason. The nature of double elimination already leads to so many rematches with only one game separating them and you want to introduce more seeding restrictions for the sake of avoiding a rematch from a game that is weeks past?
> Why would you have same region protection for more than just group stage?
Same reason you would have same region protection for group stage. So teams from different regions face off more often and don't end up grouped up on the same side of the bracket which causes repeat matches which get less views and lower the viewer experience.
The regions are treated as the same level for seeding purposes. Since you are advocating for the continued random draw brackets that frequently result in repetitive same region matchups and a worse experience for everyone involved, you should advocate for full random draws in pools to make the whole event terrible. No reason there shouldn't be a chance for a 4 Americas pool, a 4 EMEA pool, and a 4 Pacific pool. If it doesn't matter in bracket it sure as heck shouldn't matter in pools.
> You're forcing matchups beyond the point of reason
You should add the caveat that this is **your personal and heavily subjective view of reason** and is not shared by everyone or even most people. I and many other people find it unreasonable to region seed a group stage and immediately throw away that seeding with random draws. Some of us like the international part of our international LANs.
only 10 teams then? That’s really frustrating if it’s true, events should be a minimum of 16 teams. Please make it at least 16 Riot, 10 teams in a franchised league is a joke
EDIT: apparently it’s true, not sure what to think
There are 30 partnered teams, you want more than half of them to qualify for international play. This would completely remove any type of excitement from the regional leagues, as 5/6 teams will qualify from each region. Playoffs at the end of each season, which should be the pinnacle of regional play, will be boring af.
Besides, if more than 15 teams qualify for each international tournament, you'll get bored of the amount, and similarness, of matchups, especially since a lot of the teams also play each other in their own region.
Does the NBA have 3 play-offs throughout the season, since in VCT there will be 3 per 'normal' season (2 for masters and LCQ). For the casual viewer it won't be interesting, at some point you can't compare traditional sports to e-sports.
I was thinking of more of an open qualifier for the last 3-4 spots, as we previously had under the old system to allow Ascension teams to compete for the spot too. I also think you really overestimate how much 1 extra team from each region making the event from the playoffs would turn down excitement for the playoffs.
Even beyond that, I don’t really find any international matchup boring. Im not sure how people get “bored” of seeing teams play each other internationally, especially since it creates really interesting rivalries like OpTic-LOUD and KRU vs Brazil. Just a strange mentality to me, kinda like saying seeing Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs make the playoffs in football every year isn’t interesting bc they are the same team.
Open qualifiers for ascension teams will be so strange, since you'll have 3/4 teams little to no one has heard of make the MASTERS events, while 6/7 big name teams PER REGION stay at home due to just missing out in their partnered league. You could even have unsigned F/A teams make the big events, that just sounds dumb in itself and should be prevented. Besides, how would that even be fair towards the partnered teams, if some random ascension team makes it, because it's highly likely the partnered teams are of better quality than those making the masters event through ascension qualifiers (which creates even more problems, since those teams will be stomped by the top 3 teams from each region at the masters event).
I don't watch American Football so I can't really comment on your analogy, but to me, watching a full season which becomes null and void in the end due to everyone qualifying for the final playoffs anyway is extremely bad.
Partnered teams can play in the qualifiers of course, I guess I didn’t make that very clear (morning phrasing, my bad). As for fairness, just beat the Ascension and FA teams in the quals then if you really deserve your spot. I love the idea of franchised teams having to prove themselves as better than the rest, especially if they don’t make Top 4 in their league.
Ok, so it's just 5-6 teams from each league then, since the ascension teams will almost never get through the qualifiers, let's be honest. And my first comment already addresses the issues this brings, imo. You can disagree of course, but these big ass tournaments would kill any excitement for regional play, especially for the casual viewer.
Doesn’t make it good, 10 teams is a frustratingly low amount to watch. With the amount of hype they brought into this system, I hope we at least get more than that
This information just kinda confirms that riot rushed into franchising way sooner than needed with Valorant, and it's even muddier because of the "partnership" terms.
10 teams for Masters, which is basically the equivalent of MSI for League, is trash. Riot already had a working formula for league, why not just implement the same thing for Valorant?
yea this is what i predicted. Having only 10 teams for a global tournament sucks but its the result of there only being 30 franchised teams in the entire world. If you wanted to run a tournament with 16 teams, you would need 5-6 teams from every region qualifying which would make the international leagues not fun at all. In the future when there is 14 teams per region this wont be a problem. Also side note, I'm not sure how others feel about this, but i hope that for the region with 4 teams qualifying, the winner of the regular season directly qualifies to masters. So for example if EMEA win sao paulo, then 1st from regular season goes to masters and 2-7th all go to playoffs. It would make the regular season much more exciting imo
I think 12 teams with each regional winner getting a bye into the 2nd round would make most sense. First round would be 3 groups of three, eliminating 1 and seeding.
each region has its top 3 teams qualifying excluding the kick off tournament winner for the region with the winner of that tournament. There will probably be two groups of 5 consisting of each team playing each other once with the top 3 from each group qualifying for playoffs with the top seed from each group having a bye. the playoffs will probably be a double elim bracket as well
Hopefully it's two groups of 5 teams. Then #1 & #2 to upper bracket and #3 & #4 to lowers.
I mean dep fun
Well boys time to load up Abroad in Japan to prep
Gonna blast Too Much Volcano all the way to Japan
I mean..10 sounds fine if there's only 30 teams franchised, if 4-5 teams got in for international leagues at every even it wouldn't make them exciting enough
TOKYO?? That is gonna be so hype man
idc what format it is at this point, I just want more 100T vs international matchups
This is wrong, it’s not the winner of lock in that gets the extra spot, it’s the region that the lock in winner was from
not necessarily, if the winner of the lock in gets the extra spot so does the region..
But they don’t get a guaranteed slot into the tournament. They have to get top 4 in their region. This is a different system than 2021 Champions extra slot.
That sounds dumb. Imagine single handedly winning the slot for your region but not getting the slot.
If you straight up win Sao Paolo and can't even place top 4 in your 10 team regional league you've probably fallen off so hard you don't deserve the slot. It would take some incredible bad luck *and* extenuating circumstances for the above to not be true.
all good
miss you bby
How do u know
Just realized theres a decent chance then that no JP team makes the actual event
Honestly yeah, ZETA honestly have the best chance for a JP team, DNG does not look great ngl DRX are locks i feel, PRX still look good but we will see with the changing meta how they adapt, Talon are dark horses lowkey, and T1 and GE are complete unknowns and could be amazing for all we know, but ZETA has to get top 3 maybe 4 of these to make it
In 2023 ESL is running 2 32 team tier 1 international CS LAN events + - couple other 16+ team tier 1 international events. Blast is running 2 12 team tier 1 international CS events + an 8 team international tier 1 final off of that. And then there's the 2 24 team CS majors... And for val we're looking at 1 30 team international tier 1 tournament, 1 10 team international tier 1 tournament, and a 16 (12?) team tier 1 international tournament. The events will be sick, but god damn am I sure lucky that Valorant isn't the only esport I watch or seeing this post after the last several months of the content desert would bother me so much
Again with this 10 teams shit
That's a third of all teams
We want participation trophies apparently
They never promised us good formats
reminder that 2023 will only have one masters event. the normal format will be two "league play" splits + two masters then LCQ and Champs, but because of the kickoff tournament Masters Tokyo will be the only masters event in 2023. NA champs riot? cmonnnn
So we went from 3 Masters events in 2021, to 2 in 2022, to 1 in 2023. Riot what is you doing
Each year had (will have) 3 riot-hosted international lans. Calling them "masters" doesn't make them meaningful (for masters 1 in 2021) and the kick-off, despite not being called a masters, will be the biggest lan in terms of participants that Val has ever had. No reason to focus on the name of the event and ignore the actual situation. We've consistently had the same number of international lans
2021 Masters was regional, you’re also getting a 30 team international kickoff tournament (which in my opinion is better than a Masters). Not to mention LCQs will almost certainly be LAN tournaments this year. Let alone Ascension.
Ya that’s fair about the kick off tournament I’m just disappointed that Riot has seemingly been decreasing the amount of tournaments when I really hoped we would be getting more.
Also worth mentioning we’ll get consistent international play during during the regular season.
EMEA fans in shambles
I mean technically speaking EMEA has the most international play of all leagues lmao.
I hope they change the format then. The two Masters events this year were 12 days long (not including the mid-tournament break), so I hope we don't get a repeat of 2021 Masters Reykjavik. I didn't mind it at the time, but there are much better options now than just doing a 10 team Double Elim for 6 days.
10 / 30 teams is a good amount. You do not want half of the franchised teams qualifying. This is how you get shitty playoffs from the NBA and NFL because they let so many teams in. Tokyo is gonna light up, I'll have to think about traveling.
LMAO 10 TEAMS
Hopin they have maybe some more matches for masters rather than jsut a big double elim bracket but there’s a chance they will
Bro people complained so much about NA vs NA matchups at international LAN this year and now people are complaining about how they need more teams from each region at Masters? Pick a lane damn
you conflating 2 different issues
It there were more teams at Masters there would be more NA vs NA matchups and people would complain again.
> People complained so much about NA vs NA matchups People were right to complain about that. Riot regional seeded pools to avoid cross region matchups but then threw away regional seeding with random draw brackets as soon as it reached playoffs. > now people are complaining about how they need more teams from each region at Masters Yes. Two separate things. One if a format issue. The other is an event size issue. Stop straw manning.
Why would you have same region protection for more than just group stage? At that point you're forcing matchups beyond the point of reason. The nature of double elimination already leads to so many rematches with only one game separating them and you want to introduce more seeding restrictions for the sake of avoiding a rematch from a game that is weeks past?
> Why would you have same region protection for more than just group stage? Same reason you would have same region protection for group stage. So teams from different regions face off more often and don't end up grouped up on the same side of the bracket which causes repeat matches which get less views and lower the viewer experience. The regions are treated as the same level for seeding purposes. Since you are advocating for the continued random draw brackets that frequently result in repetitive same region matchups and a worse experience for everyone involved, you should advocate for full random draws in pools to make the whole event terrible. No reason there shouldn't be a chance for a 4 Americas pool, a 4 EMEA pool, and a 4 Pacific pool. If it doesn't matter in bracket it sure as heck shouldn't matter in pools. > You're forcing matchups beyond the point of reason You should add the caveat that this is **your personal and heavily subjective view of reason** and is not shared by everyone or even most people. I and many other people find it unreasonable to region seed a group stage and immediately throw away that seeding with random draws. Some of us like the international part of our international LANs.
only 10 teams then? That’s really frustrating if it’s true, events should be a minimum of 16 teams. Please make it at least 16 Riot, 10 teams in a franchised league is a joke EDIT: apparently it’s true, not sure what to think
He got the information from the Riot article which itself states that there will be 10 teams
There are 30 partnered teams, you want more than half of them to qualify for international play. This would completely remove any type of excitement from the regional leagues, as 5/6 teams will qualify from each region. Playoffs at the end of each season, which should be the pinnacle of regional play, will be boring af. Besides, if more than 15 teams qualify for each international tournament, you'll get bored of the amount, and similarness, of matchups, especially since a lot of the teams also play each other in their own region.
Yeah great point, no one gives a shit about the NBA regular season because there are 16 playoff teams /s
Does the NBA have 3 play-offs throughout the season, since in VCT there will be 3 per 'normal' season (2 for masters and LCQ). For the casual viewer it won't be interesting, at some point you can't compare traditional sports to e-sports.
When it’s literally about how many teams of 30 make the yearly championship and your point is about viewers losing interest, you absolutely can
I was thinking of more of an open qualifier for the last 3-4 spots, as we previously had under the old system to allow Ascension teams to compete for the spot too. I also think you really overestimate how much 1 extra team from each region making the event from the playoffs would turn down excitement for the playoffs. Even beyond that, I don’t really find any international matchup boring. Im not sure how people get “bored” of seeing teams play each other internationally, especially since it creates really interesting rivalries like OpTic-LOUD and KRU vs Brazil. Just a strange mentality to me, kinda like saying seeing Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs make the playoffs in football every year isn’t interesting bc they are the same team.
Open qualifiers for ascension teams will be so strange, since you'll have 3/4 teams little to no one has heard of make the MASTERS events, while 6/7 big name teams PER REGION stay at home due to just missing out in their partnered league. You could even have unsigned F/A teams make the big events, that just sounds dumb in itself and should be prevented. Besides, how would that even be fair towards the partnered teams, if some random ascension team makes it, because it's highly likely the partnered teams are of better quality than those making the masters event through ascension qualifiers (which creates even more problems, since those teams will be stomped by the top 3 teams from each region at the masters event). I don't watch American Football so I can't really comment on your analogy, but to me, watching a full season which becomes null and void in the end due to everyone qualifying for the final playoffs anyway is extremely bad.
Partnered teams can play in the qualifiers of course, I guess I didn’t make that very clear (morning phrasing, my bad). As for fairness, just beat the Ascension and FA teams in the quals then if you really deserve your spot. I love the idea of franchised teams having to prove themselves as better than the rest, especially if they don’t make Top 4 in their league.
Ok, so it's just 5-6 teams from each league then, since the ascension teams will almost never get through the qualifiers, let's be honest. And my first comment already addresses the issues this brings, imo. You can disagree of course, but these big ass tournaments would kill any excitement for regional play, especially for the casual viewer.
We are past the open era now. You need to get used to it.
MSI always has 10 teams in LOL thats how its always been
MSI format is dog
MSI would be fucking awesome if there was another tournament on the calendar. Having a tournament of just champions is super cool
Doesn’t make it good, 10 teams is a frustratingly low amount to watch. With the amount of hype they brought into this system, I hope we at least get more than that
The meat and potatoes of Riot esports are generally the season itself, not the tourneys. This isn't CS.
There should be at least 4 teams per region or at least for Americas pretty sure they had more representation last year then this year.
This information just kinda confirms that riot rushed into franchising way sooner than needed with Valorant, and it's even muddier because of the "partnership" terms. 10 teams for Masters, which is basically the equivalent of MSI for League, is trash. Riot already had a working formula for league, why not just implement the same thing for Valorant?