VALORANT Masters Bangkok
48 teams in qualifying ÷ 8 teams attending ≈ 16% of teams competing
FIFA World Cup 2022
211 teams in qualifying ÷ 32 teams ≈ 15% of teams competing
Pretty far-fetched comparison but the point is maybe only 8 teams isn't really a stretch. Sure, it's more fun with more teams, but that doesn't make 8 teams inherently bad or illegitimate, especially when every team has a realistic shot at qualification.
why don’t we just go straight to playoffs.
Have
Have it so every #1 seed
plays a #2 seed
And have it that each side of the bracket will have 1 team from a region
ex.
EMEA 1 vs CN 2
Americas 1 vs Pacific 2
China 1 vs Americas 2
CN 1 vs EMEA 2
make it a double elim and
only downside is that this format would have 2 less matches
That could work, actually. A straight-to-playoffs double elimination bracket style tournament is a neat idea.
Another way they could potentially go about it, which I've seen in a few sports but never in esports, is if they have round robin groups purely for seeding. All 8 teams qualify, but playoffs end up being 1v4 2v3 3v2 4v1 between teams coming from two groups (in a Masters you'd have one team from each region in each group).
wait people are complaining about 8 team masters? realistically there has never been a tourament where its felt that more than 8 teams could win plus it increases the skill floor of each game. also i think its pretty safe to say the best event of the year was madrid which had 8 teams and nobody seemed to have a problem with it then.
That's true, and that's a valid point for Madrid over any other tournament this year. But then the argument of "Riot has the money, why don't they host every game in an arena?" comes about for tournaments next year—because we can't realistically guarantee every game at Masters Bangkok will be in an arena.
true i really hope they take the criticism and do something about it for the venues next year. the least they could do is upgrade the smaller venue so it feels a bit more grand and less theatre like. but with only 3 events a year i really do think having the bulk of events in a small venue slows the growth of the esport and they would benefit a lot in the long term from even doing like a top 6 in playoffs gets you to the big arena
Pretty safe to say that won't be for a long while, but I'm excited for that kind of thing as well. The regions that come to mind are South America and CIS, which would leave more teams available for both NA and SA, plus give EMEA more leniency to allow MENA representation.
Also we'd probably need more teams for each Masters, and... this is a bit of a stretch, but I'd really really wanna see an international LCQ, kind of like the international playoffs you see for the FIFA World Cup. No idea how that would be feasible but I'd love to witness it
Amer, and CIS doesnt have enough people in it, even in long term that might never happen, when MENA, India and Subsaharua will gap close their economical groth, they will have a population big enough to be a T1, and other region cant do it, hard to say when it will be, seems tings improving really fast in India
It's a double-edged sword. When more games are played, committed fans are a lot happier because they get more action. However, more casual fans of the esport (i.e. the majority of people) will just lose interest if a tournament goes on for more than a few weeks, especially if there are multiday pauses in play. I agree that more games are needed, but Riot does have to be mindful of how many games are played so that they make the maximum number of people happy.
Discord