Franchising and Chinese Valorant Release

#1

nella

Two main issues I've had with franchising so far is the distribution of regions and how China is going to fit into the mix.

After looking at the games and results so far from LOCK//IN, there are 3 observations I've made (feel free to disagree)

So many NA teams are looking extremely dominant, with EG being the supposed "worst NA team", and doing amazing against TH, even though they don't look particular good tbh
The Korean region seem to best of the Pacific League, with DRX beating BBL, who looked like they had lots of potential, and then GEN.G playing extremely well and pushing the Championship-winning core of LOUD (notably LOUD no longer have Sacy and Pancada but cauanzin is looking unpolished but extremely talented)
Chinese Valorant seems to have the potential to get close, if not to the level of Korean Valorant; although the FPX v KCORP game is not a good one to reference (both teams looked extremely shaky) Looking at the new FGC circuit, there are a lot of new teams entering the scene, with some real talents who were not seen in 2022. Some of these include "You", who returned this year with TOTORO GAMING, and "whz" who has seen to be playing in 2022, but at time too undisciplined and otherwise held back by honestly lackluster teammates (and/or teamplay)

So, even through franchising has just begun, I think a possible solution from a viewer's perspective, maybe (definetely) not from riot's perspectve, would to re-split the regions into 5 groups: the ones that were used during LCQ of 2022.

North America
South America (LATAM + Brazil)
EMEA
East Asia (Korea + China + Japan)
South East Asia (including SA and Oceania)

Masters events would feature 2 teams from each region to total up to 10 teams, or alternatively 2 more teams could come from the 2 top performing regions (realistically NA and EMEA, sorry to BR fans), bringing the total up to 12 teams.

Champions would then feature 3 teams from each region, plus the winner of the last masters event before champs, totaling up to 16 teams.

Thoughts?

#2

Mallister

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I love when we were 5 regions NA SA EMEA EA and SEA it was so fun but hornestly merge NA+SA and SEA+EA to one league can make it more competitive I'm quite sure that will improve everyone more than 5 regions

And china can have their own league like others games they did because they are so big

#3

nella

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Fair point honestly, just hope that eventually the weaker regions will eventually have the chance to make it internationally. Thanks :D

#4

JiangLi

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Well they separate it because China is too big on its own and even if they do make it a separate league 'East Asia' then they will have to follow a lot of rules to fit Chinese government rules/agenda so they are not looking to combine it there. Korea have it's own set of strict rules .
Then there's Japan also which is huge on its own , they have their own rules for Valorant there .
Japan and Korea are not just gna follow them

Speaking of who is far ahead or not i will only say you are judging way too early , DRX is just far ahead of everyone in Korea or even in APAC . Not all matches even happened yet so how do you know the whole region is far ahead ? According to me , how strong an entire region is , is dependent on its T2 league so we have to wait for Ascension to start . Valorant is RIOT's only game which is as close we get to a Pan-Asian game
Also one more reason , they are probably not looking to separate Asian league because that will create a power dynamic in terms of investment because SEA + India will fall behind a lot when compared to Korea , Japan & China .
This is actually what happened in LoL and they do not want to repeat the same because countries like India and Indonesia can prove out to be v profitable for them and things have changed a lot from 2011 (remember these countries are huge alr and have potential to pull numbers which is RIOT's wet dream)

Then about the slot distribution, it's probably not good to have only 2 teams atleast in America's let's say . NA is competitive on its own but then it will overshadow BR and LATAM where you have to note the game is v famous as well so the SA regions will get neglected and it'll be weak . I really liked how they distributed slots up until last year , had 2 masters event and LCQ so everyone was getting represented properly

#6

nella

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2 things

Thanks for the info abt what happened on the LoL side, and yea if Riot are hoping to avoid a similar situation, yea this makes a lot of sense. The thing is that it seems like this East Asia grouping has been pulled off before in the form of the 2022 East Asia LCQ, so if they were able to sort things out between themselves, that would be great. But looking at the LoL scene ig China would prefer to keep their players and games on home soil. big sad

Although I feel like maybe the Americas could still be split into the 2 regions; my fear is that Brazil is looking like a 1-teams region (sorry) and LATAM like a 0.5 team region (half the time LEV or KRU do great, or no one does). They will be completely dominated by the NA teams and their supposed best team is being pushed to the limits by GEN.G (admittedly they do look pretty good tho). Similarly, we will probably have to wait at least a year after LOCK//IN before we see Japan on the global stage again. I rly enjoyed the ZETA run from last year, and maybe with split back in the map pool they could do well again, but I don't have that much confidence tbh.

Also there are a bunch of orgs missing from franchising that should be in there in all honesty: many of the T2 Americas league orgs (G2, TSM, GUARD), some prominent korean and APAC orgs (NONGSHIM, BLEED, BOOM, X10(?)), and some BR and LATAM orgs (not so familiar with these im afraid)

Sad that it seems like lots of these things wont be possible either due to politics or financial interest tho.

Thanks for the response :DDD

#9

JiangLi

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Actually to be more accurate, there were talks about holding the LCQ in a LAN but it did not end up happening. Doing it online would have ping issues on both sides and RIOT probably wanted to see atleast one of either Korean , Japanese or Chinese team at Champions. If it was combined with the then APAC , then competition would be too stiff and no guarantees of a team qualifying from those 3 countries .
Then you have to remember at that time Valorant wasn't released in China so it was possible to do something like that .

I'm not sure if Brazil is a 1-team region or not but have to remember this country has a good fps history and dedicated gamers . They also pull numbers and seeing it succeed like csgo is likely what they want . For the current moment , i'd say they are alr doing good and RIOT would hardly be concerned about their pro teams bcuz remember Loud also had bad performance but then just straight won Champions.
I have same fear for Japan tho lol . It would be quite bad to not see any Japanese team at Masters on their own country but atleast can say RIOT is doing a lot for their so the fans won't just neglect . They have 2 teams to look forward to in the Pacific league which will start soon.

Also i do agree some orgs are missing. I'm not sure what's going with other regions but they gave every successful sub-region in Asia a Team . For example Singapore got PRX , Thailand got Talon , India got GE . BOOM deserved it kind of as Indonesia rep but RRQ had ties with RIOT so they gave it to them even tho BOOM deserved more just like CR deserved more in Japan instead of DFM . According to Bleed CEO tho they did not apply for partner but even if they did i think either of PRX or Bleed would've got it bcuz both orgs from same country only even tho both are good orgs and pay their players well compared to their SEA counterparts . SEA got a bad rep overall when it comes to org so no X10 lmao .

#10

nella

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aight thanks for the info man, this has genuinely answered a lot of my questions.

cheers!

#11

JiangLi

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cheers! brushed up my essay writing skills

#5

valulrantefanboy

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China is big market for Riot, they can sacrifice all SEA region to make Val more popular there (money talks, sadge truth). Thats why they give then own league

#7

Subreezy

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i kind of like having the americas together. EMEA is a collection of many countries, whereas NA is basically 2. Having all the americas compete together makes me want to root for more than just 1 region at a major.

riot actually did good with the split of regions imo, and overtime the ascension tournaments will ensure that the strongest regions get their deserved spots in franchising.

#8

hekzy

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I think Chinese teams first need to get into APAC league. This will bolster the APAC scene and they will have more globally competitive teams. Instead of relying on DRX and PRX, they can also have a top tier EDG team.

#12

JiangLi

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apac is nerfed now so even more shit . Earlier atleast 2-3 times sub-region tournaments now 0