Honestly franchising is a more organized system which can benefit riot by having all of their s tier tournaments organized by riot only, but honestly IMO it's much less exciting
- League + playoffs is essentially the qualifiers for any international tournament
- If you suck then you can only play 10 matches - 13 matches, and play matches that don't even matter
- There are less chances for teams to win trophies
- off season is shockingly long and boring
I always wonder what if valorant adopted CS or Dota's style of tournaments, where 3rd party organizers can organize tournaments and I feel like having more than 3 international tournaments a year is just way more excitingg (which means you have to stretch the timeline from february till late october or november)
They can do it like how Dota does it (the DPC system back in like 2017 to 2023), where there are a bunch of majors/s tier tournaments and 1 huge tournament organized by valve (The International). In val this would be Champions.
In valorant, orgs like ESL, BLAST, PGL, and IEM can be 3rd party organizers, and have like maybe 4 or 5 huge international majors/masters and 1 champions (4 is probably the way to go) per year. It would be like:
February: Masters Qualifiers 1 per region
Late Feb-Mid March: Masters 1
Mid March - Early April: Break/Patch change or something
Mid April: Masters Qualifiers 2 per region
Early May-Mid May: Masters 2
Mid May - Early June: Break/Patch Change
June-Early July: Masters Qualifiers 3 per region
Mid July-Mid August: Masters 3
Mid August: Early September Break/Patch Change
Mid September - Early October: LCQ/Open qualifier per region for only 1 slot (LAN)
Mid October-Early Nov: Valorant Champions
Nov - February: Offseason and Roster Shuffling
This would have a circuit point system (similiar to valorant in 2021 actually) where the top 3 teams per region would be directly invited to Champions
and the last slot is an LCQ with 1 more team.
Teams get circuit points based on how well they do in regional qualifiers and international tournaments
Regional (Top 3 goes masters):
1st = 5 points
2nd = 3 points
3rd = 2 points
4th = 1 point
Masters Point:
1st = 10 points
2nd = 6 points
3rd = 5 points
4th = 4 points
5-6th = 3 points
7th-8th = 2 points
IMO, giving huge points to the masters and regional qualifiers winners make sense because you deserve to be in champions if you win a masters (or atleast this point gap can help a lot, though if you win 1 masters and lose the rest of the year then you're cooked)
1 problem I would have is that I don't know how the regions will go, It can be the same as the current regions rn tbh
Americas = 4
EMEA = 4
APAC = 4
CHINA = 4
which can work but I think it's more fair to split the Americas into 2 NA and 2 SA
Ideally all the qualifiers should be LAN but historically most of these qualifers are online, which will be hard for the NA and SA matches.
1 thing I can think of is to make the open qualifiers online and the qualifiers for masters a LAN + broadcasted tournament, with 12 teams (and ofcourse, a trophy!
(each team from each region like Americas for example. the 6 NA teams, 3 latam, and 3 br teams, will all be in one 12 team tournament for the masters qualifier)
Americas = 6 NA teams, 3 LATAM, 3 BR,, qualifier LAN in LA
EMEA = I have no idea how EMEA would work but maybe go 6 western europe 3 CIS/Eastern Europe, the rest are MENA, qualifier LAN in Berlin
APAC = 6 SEA Teams, 3 KR teams, 3 JP teams, qualifier LAN in Seoul
China = 12 chinese teams ofc,, qualifier LAN in shanghai
These are my thoughts on how this would go. 3 masters + 1 champions is a decent system
positives = more matches, more trophies to win, more tournaments, 3rd party organizers, more breaks for players and a short off season, more chances for unknown/lower tier teams to make internationals, no franchise system, no ascension system
negatives = probably logistically more difficult, and the schedule would clash with league worlds
Maybe there are flaws or corrections that you vlr guys can make, feel free to suggest it!
tdlr: vct system is 3 masters + 1 champion, season is february to october, open qualifier online, LAN qualifier offline, more trophies, point system, top 3 teams with most points per region invited to champs, lcq for last slot