am i crazy or was the schedule in 2022 perfect? there was a 3-4 month off season after and games for most of the year. a teams season wasn’t over after 5 matches. why not just copy that?
2022 had two challengers (i.e. the equivalent to the ILs today) splits. Both splits had group stages with 5 matches per team, plus playoffs for the teams that qualified. Then there was LCQ, double elim, i.e. min 2 matches per team.
2024 will have two IL splits. Both splits will give each team 5 matches, plus playoffs for the teams that qualify. Then before the two splits there's kickoff, which has min 2 matches per team (actually there will be only one team that gets 2 matches, most teams will get at least 3).
I don't love the 2024 schedule, but I feel like it's extremely comparable to the 2022 schedule? At least in terms of number of games played, which seems to be most people's issue anyway. I still think they should do two full round robin splits, but it's not like this is breaking some sort of precedent.