For VCT 2022
TDLR;; LATAM is 2 regions, LAS and LAN, but south is way ahead from north, but riot's format is unfair
LATAM is already merged, LAS and LAN can't play together, but they make a playoffs event like EMEA, if u add Brazil it would be more competitive for the region but it's way harder to organize. anyway LATAM format is poorly designed, bc LA South and LA North dont play against each other even when in circuit points they share ladder. This year KRU won everything in LAS, but other teams were way better than LAN teams, even with that, only 1 LAS team was able to qualify to LCQ because LAN circuit had 2 or 3 different champions, and with KRU already qualified, rest of the region didn't had enough points to qualify to LCQ (anyway the only LAS team won against the other 6 but lost with FURIA)
Regions are naturally uneven due their distictive caracteristics. EU, for example, are richer, have a huge pool of players and have a better esports culture. These caracteristics makes them almost always the pinnacle of FPS. Most of regions cant compete against them because of this. However, if you give enough Tier 1 experience, any region can produce title contender teams. BR, for example, have historically a good performance at CS. These teams only managed to reach the top after bootcamping for long periods of time in better regions. If you dont give the opportunity for smaller regions to send their best teams abroad and, consequently, not having international experience, this process simply doesnt happen and we tend to have an esports more centered in a big region than globally. So isnt like they are simply bad, maybe they didnt get the oportunity to get better.
Let me widen your mind. What do you think will happen if APAC only sends a small portion of their region?
Riot certainly will lose viewership and profit by a large margin since Asia is the biggest continent. Not to mention, Riot is a company that pushes 'equality' (although may not all the time), and they even has a branch office in SEA. Also, given the potential APAC held recently, I highly doubt that Riot would and should merge all the APAC region into one.
"if you are bad then it's your problem that you won't get anywhere". gatekeeping i see. this is exactly why the na csgo scene died they refuse to develop their talents. they tried to reduce the influx of players and just recycle their current players. look at the eu cis regions in csgo instead of gatekeeping they help upcoming players.
csgo scene died? You might believe that if you keep visiting this echo chamber of a website. idk what you mean by the last sentence, the major slots for EU and CIS have been the same for years and only recently did CIS become good enough to be consistently winning things. Tons of new players popped up since the game became free, mostly from China and yet nothing good was ever producent from there. Plenty of CS teams have academy teams that are developing talents.
They probably wouldn't do it, because if they do then the LJL would have already merge with the LCK years ago, and EU & NA will only get at least 2 spots at Worlds since the gap with China & Korea is far ahead for the West. This is Riot and they took League success as their reference in building their new esports.
This would just make it like CSGO tbh just because the country is bad you cant just forget about them and merge them with other struggling regions as well.. the only way for a team and region to be able to develop is when they have equal opportunities in T1 events fighting against T1 teams.
APAC is very new to the FPS genre as CSGO just neglects APAC in its entirety, This affects a lot of the quality of the games and the teams. EU, NA ,CIS have 20+ years of experience and 90% of LAN events. The way riot is doing it right now is correct by giving JP, KR , SEA each a chance at scrimming and fighting against the T1 teams of EMEA and NA they will also develop. Nothing develops overnight, it takes years. so instead of taking their spot, we should just add more teams participating with a different format that allows for more clashes between regions
when did I ever say that I want to take away their slots? Everyone in the replies is creating strawmans that they are attacking and not even reading my arguments.
tyloo and vici have been consistently the best teams from the region and they haven't achieved anything even though they bootcamp in EU pretty often
I feel like every qualifier for the Masters events should all be a group of regions on LAN(APAC, SA, NA(+OCE) and EMEA) kinda like LCQ but just for all Master quals. So basically instead of just Korea playing Korea over and over again to qual for Masters events, they would have to make it out of their Korean tournaments to qualify to the APAC LAN to then qualify to Masters. This way teams like VS or CR who dominate their own region(KR and JP respectively) would have to be tested by the teams in the regions around them to make it to Masters and teams wouldn't just make it because their own region is weak.
Maybe each individual region gets 1 slot and then each larger region(APAC, NA + OCE, EMEA and SA) gets a certain amount of slots so there is a proper allocation of slots instead of Riot just saying "ehhh I feel like KR should get 3 and JP should get 1" or something like that. That way, each individual region is still represented but the slots are also fair.
in case you missed my point, its already a hassle even without pandemic.
compared to csgo, they have event organizers such as PGL, ESL, BLAST, StarLadder, eXTREMESLAND (for asia), etc which made LAN possible be held in each region. Riot doesnt give the privilege to other organizers to host a tournament under the organizer's name. Riot only use organizers to help them organize a qualifer in each region and countries.
lastly, whatever youre suggesting, is really shallow and if you think about it deeper, you'll find many holes like for example not all countries have their pandemic going away, like in Europe, its rising fast.
Both SEA and JP deserves a slot they've been working hard for it just because they're developing slow doesn't mean they don't deserve a slot, APAC doesn't have the same experience in FPS compared to EU and NA so obviously they'll develop much slower give them time and if they're still horrible in 2-3 years then you can say they don't deserve the slots, taking their slots away will only make it worse and the region will only become underdeveloped.
What if Riot do both things ?? They could give at least one direct slots for the regions and the remainder is decided in a tournament within the region, similarly how EMEA works right now. So, considering masters 3 slots allocation, Riot could give one direct slot for EU,CIS,TR and the last one be decided in a tournament with the three regions and may the best team earn their way to masters. For me, it would be much more fun with they expand this concept to others regions like SA, JP+KR, NA+OCE+Central america