This masters is one of the worst produced esports event that i have ever witnessed , Riot is adamant to continue doing every single production related task in house like league but it's working horrribly bad for them , some of the major problems that i have noticed are
1) Buggy player cams , which are shown for some rounds, and not for others
2)Buggy player audio , sometimes you wont hear the audio of players cheering , first i thought it was intentional to prevent offensive stuff to be aired , but riot later added some of the same clips with audio in THEIR OWN HIGHLIGHTS.
PS : Im not sure about riots take on this so take this criticism with a grain of salt as riot might have chose to not add player audio live due to other restrictions and not due to the limitations of the server...i dont know specifically but i wish they had player audio , the banter makes the game so much more hype
3) HUD : Ohh boy do where do i even start? I'll just say this , Ninjas in Pyjamas vs Zeta division Icebox map
4) Horrible game timings : Matches of APAC/SEA/JP regions are scheduled sooo late !!? Why? Reykjavik 2021 got me into valorant esports because it was late but like not extremely late... Now i have to stay up till 3 am to watch a match?!
5)Watch Parties (English) : there's literally only two watch Parties Rn that most people love , Tenz and tarik , like i can understand sinatraa not getting one but... Sorry NRG som? Subroza? Shanks? Asuna? Hiko?shroud? , Like i understand shroud , he doesn't really play valorant much but still atleast give it to other pros that have consistently streamed during VCT north america
5) Analyst desks (hot take) : Riot needs specialist analysts like Lothar and seangares( :( well miss you sean)! You
cannot expect casters to do part time analysis and produce the same result , sideshow , bren , mitch they try their best but at the end of the day , what a specialist analyst brings to the table you cant get with a caster.
6) Stage : Well this one is a bit subjective but i dont like this extremely dark and gloomy stage , like i can understand that riot wanted to add screens and all in the background and it probably looks cooler in real life than on screen but as a viewer its soo badd man , i literally have to to turn up the brightness sometimes to see the faces of players , the walkouts are a red nightmare , everything looks red
7)Half-Time breaks : I can understand these if riot was running ads running or something , but they don't and the half time breaks are by choice , and Riot themselves don't have half time breaks in EMEA Vct , it just breaks the pace man , like give the teams an extra 30 seconds in spawn , but dont just switch to analysts and all , its hard even for the analysts to find like good points to talk about with such low time on hand and they just talk jargon most of the time and it ruins the experience
8) Locations : Pick better locations with less strict covid protocols than berlin and iceland , sweden might be a good pick , or asian countries , if we're gonna keep it without a crowd , you can probably experiment new countries
Conclusion ; I dont wanna trashtalk riot employees and production , but I know riot listens to feedback and they have made changes in the past , i want the game to succeed and have a massive global viewerbase , that is why i wanted to make some issues visible
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