What are people's opinion on Riot using a similar play-in format for Champions as Worlds?
Play-ins would include regions like SA, OCE, and MENA, as well as lower seeds from major regions
I feel like this would be a good way to give these minor regions a chance to play in Champions, without giving them a direct slot for free (because a lot of them still need time to develop)
This would be a great improvement over the current system. I think that it may have been impossible to do this for this Champions event, as the budget was predecided. I hope this is implemented from the 2022 circuit onwards. IMO, it should be present for Masters events too, if the budget permits it. This event has only displayed how minor regions have improved greatly over just a single year, which I think would not have been possible without their slots to the Masters events.
Play-ins is a great format in theory but it doesn't work in practice, you remove one problem by adding a whole bunch of other problems. Play-ins teams that are minors won't be able to train with the good teams, this happens a lot in LoL. The growth curve of the teams will be much lower than if they are catching the main event teams, remember, you only play with mediocre teams and the most you can evolve is to be the best of the mediocre. This tournament has already shown that the gap between regions is very low, even EMEA which is leading with 4 teams in the play-offs all had very close games and almost lost. You have to let the teams get crushed, they will learn more and they will realize their bad habits and fix this, which is something they would not be punished for by weaker teams. The LCQ already does this role of filtering the minors teams, the most Riot could do is make a Last Chance of the Last Chances, the 2nd place of the Last Chance of each region would fight in a mini international tournament for +1 spot with spots for the less developed minors (OCE, MENA, JP, SA) so they can play more international tournaments.
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