RID 2-0 MRSH
Should be fairly easy for last year's VCJ champion

Time to see if Gwangboong is still That Gwangboong.

On the flipside, FL looked quite shaky during Advanced Stage

VCJ, for better or worse, looks pretty stacked this year, yet again.

This Year's the Year™

bro casually ignoring Jinboong and Gyen. Especially Gyen locked the fuck in

Well, I'm talking about players that could guaranteed get a spot in VCJ, not those who would lose their spot to imports. I'm not delusional enough to think that someone who can't even find a spot in VCJ would be successful abroad.

As for full-Japanese roster argument that I was making, I should note that I'm talking about two separate things here. On the one hand, like I've said, VCJ purely Japanese just for the sake of making it fully Japanese would only hamper quality. What's the meaning of giving new faces chances, if the competition is much easier? Sure, there were teams like Fennel and MRSH that did well in T2 as full-Japanese roster, but how could you say for sure that other full-Japanese rosters would be of same quality? Hence the argument about fully-Japanese rosters that are failing to qualify for the main stage. I think there's a good chance that the overall strength of VCJ would get closer to those teams that fail to qualify, than Fennel or MRSH should they impose absolute import ban.

As for the point about "mostly Japanese rosters", I'm talking about players that are clearly good enough for the international stage, be it good enough to qualify for Ascensions, or get a seat in T1, that are playing in a "mostly Japanese rosters". They are the ones that I'm arguing that should stop staying complacent and look for winning opportunities overseasz because mostly-Japanese rosters haven't worked for the last two years. This, however, doesn't apply for most of the T2 players.

You mean SF and Smash Bros. Tekken has always been Korean (+ Pakistani more recently) stronghold.

I think a big problem here is that they got used to losing. They don't have winning mentality as an org, or as a team. Seeing how DRX steadily changed for the better as a team during 2022 after losing to Zeta, is what you should expect of Zeta as well, every time they have underwhelming performances.

For DRX, it was an absolute shocker that they've lost to Zeta of all teams. Unfortunately at the moment, losing to any PAC teams would not be the same kind of a shocker for Zeta. Losing to the likes of PRX, DRX, GEN or T1? 'It's an expected outcome, they are top dogs.' Losing to other teams? 'their aims are cracked. nt gg.'

If anything, maybe it would be a good idea for Japanese teams to have a public tourney between T1 Japanese teams and T2 teams. I think there's a good chance that T1 teams will lose bad, and once they lose in publicly humiliating way, maybe then they'll fix their shit. Obviously that would never happen, but that sort of wake-up is what they need, I feel.

Maybe decimating VCJ and destroying their comfort zone will actually force good players to look outside for opportunities lol.

I know it's actually hard to tell these players to chase ambition in place of stable pay in Japanese T2, since it's literally their living, and since they are already at a disadvantage once they retire from the scene and pursuit another career, but I wanted to point out that, even so, it's pretty darn disappointing that you don't see a single notable Jaoanese player going abroad.

Tbf, Riot made Valo as accessible as possible for a game that was released in 2020. You could run it on 60 fps on an average jo laptop no-problem. I don't think hardware accessibility is the problem here.

Importing in VCJ feels more like a strucutral problem of higher order, a problem of orgs themselves rather than players. Sure, coaches have most say on rosters, but if the org wants it to be full Japanese, it would be (eg. Zeta). Also, I don't think making VCJ teams fully Japanese for the sake of it being fully Japanese wouldn't solve anything. We see a lot of full-Japanese entrants failing to qualify for the main stage already.

What I'm talking about rn is a more individual problem. To be very honest, I also believed in the strength of VCJ last year, and it did seem like the last Ascension spot was theirs to take. But now that it's quite evident they are lagging behind, I feel like we should be hearing much more news about Japanese players attending tryouts for foreign teams if they really want to win.

Japanese players playing mostly Japanese teams clearly hasn't worked for ghe last 4 years, bar that one Masters in Reykjavik. Standout players should realise that they need standout teammates in order to win.

That's why I said except RID. By extent Aace as well, since he left his winning roster, to look for a better team. My guy wants to win. But other than him and rest of the RID players?

Their players don't have any ambition. Like, Japanese and Korean are one of the most easiest to learn if you know how to speak one another. There's a winning region right next to you. if you want to win, start learning Korean, or English, and go abroad. You see plenty of Koreans playing outside of Korea already in Valo. Saya was already playing in NA and was winning even before franchise. We've seen Americans playing in APAC of all places, and some in EMEA. Some EMEA players in Americas, too.

As for Japanese players, I haven't heard once that their players are looking to find a team abroad or have attended a tryout on a foreign team, so that could play in a winning roster. All they care is to cruise and coast on comfy Japanese orgs, collecting paychecks and building fanbase so that once they retire, they've got a nice place to fall back on. Sayin "NT" and pat themselves in the back once in a while whenever they shit the bed and bomb out of whatever tournaments.

Like, the amount of players who want to stick to T2 is already crazy enough. When your are in a team like RID, I get it. There seems to be a real chance in winning Ascensions and challenging for the spot in the International League. Other than that, if they feel they are good enough but keep playing on T2 'because there's no spot in either Zeta or DFM', welp, what should I say?

Even in LoL, a Japanese player, who's from the region that is by far one of the weakest, a region absolutely deserted up until recently, went to LEC to take his chance, nearing 30 years of age, married and with child, leaving his family behind back in Japan. That is what you call pro-gridnset, the urge to win. I don't see any Japanese Valo players doing that.

Korean players in ALGS once made fun of Japanese players sticking to "NT" after getting wiped, after which the amount of NTs you hear on Japanese comms noticeably reduced.

Wth are you yappin. JP playerbase has been much larger ever since the start of Valo.

That loss fixed DRX though.

All top Korean talents play on Asia server instead of the Korean server. Your point is moot.

Estrella reading GEN like a book in map 1 handily won RRQ the game but these guys giving him all the shit. Bunch of bots.

gold medal in AG, but any medal in Olympics

You could normally delay until you are 27

NFX seen 14-4 ing against Gen.G main team on scrims.

They are cooking. RC 1-2 NFX

Seems like GenGA roster was revealed just after I wrote this.

It's Ash, BENECIA, Cloudy, H3il and Ramgi. I don't think they'll be fighting for titles like T1A and FearX (and maybe DRXP) but seems good enough for middle of the pack.

I definitely see the potential. Though if they're good enough to beat either of the BME or NS, should they win Ascension as you predict, would be another question.

Wait, he's actually jacked. More reason to be excited anout T1A, but it also would be such a waste should they win

Medalist, Golden Kamui, Blue Giant

That's actually my question too. Theu can't go to Ascension anyeays regardless, so it feels like it does defeat the whole point of "Academy". Maybe they think it's a good investment should the contract be longer than 2 years? Though T1's probably the richest org in all of Pacific literally owned by a mega corp and have been very nice to their players before when it comes to contracts, so I don't see that happening either.

Maybe they were brought in as contingency/pseudo-sub players in-case anyone on the main T1 roster under performs

Yeah, it's only been a single match, to be fair. We'll see how they'll perform on the lower brackets which I think would be the real test.

Also, what's your verdict about T1A roster and their performance during their respective stints in VCJ?

Don't really care about negativity since this was also a round-up of what I've gathered.

Thanks nonetheless

Thanks.

Tbh, I also am more invested in VCJ than VCK, though since SPG won the last Ascension and looks pretty promising in terms of how they'll do this year, I think it wouldn't be bad if I post about who to look out for.

I think him and Moothie would be best performers of T1A if they win VCK

thanks mate

modern brainrot problem

bro did the extra work to type this shit

watch out for T1A, BNK FearX and DRX, dont need to actually watch VCK though

Was not paying attention to VCK since there are no Liquipedia nor VLR page for it, but from what I've looked up, it seems at least two teams (maybe +1 to make it three teams) out of eight are going to be good enough to contend for the Ascensions title this year.

For starters, among the 3 Academy teams, T1 has a roster consisting of GangPin, DH, Moothie, exa and TenTen. The other two are either internally grown rookies who I don't know much about (DRX) or hasn't revealed the roster yet (Gen.G)

If you watch VCJ or used to watch, you'll know how good GangPin, DH, Moothie and TenTen could be, especially DH. He was shortly at CGZ alongside Hyunmin and was able to show that he could be just as good as Hyunmin. TenTen was also in CGZ until he had a beef with flipzjder and got himself in trouble. He had some issues with consistency, but when CGZ won, quite a lot of times he was the, or was one of the carries. GangPin played alongside Akame in Reject and had a pretty good showing. Since Akame's performance, who was Reject's best player at the time, wasn't really inspiring/standing out during the DFM v. RRQ match, I might consider GangPin a step below the former CGZ players, but imo he's quite good nonetheless. Don't know much about exa so I can't say much.

DRX Prospects had a quite a few promising talents before, so I'm looking forward to see how they'll perform in T2 environment. No info about Gen.G so no idea.

Apart from T1A, BNK FEARX also looks very promising. They are basically the ex-NS players that have won 2024 S3 bar Xross, + Hermes from fOu Clan that was runner up in 2024 S3. NS was also a all-around very good team during 2024, and Cloy and SID were already part of the roster that was just one map away from beating Sin Prisa during 2024 S2. PKM and Yoman from their runner-up squad went to IAM and Gen.G respectively, and were replace by Kally and Banger. Both are not bad replacements.

DK is a bit of a question mark. They had a let-down in 2024 S3 and haven't qualified for 2025 S1, so they acquired 3 of the fOu Clan players, which as I've mentioned above, were runner ups during 2024 S3. They are going to play alongside kAyle and Bangnan, who used to play for Varrel before they disbanded. To be exact, Bangan left and kAyle joined as his replacement for VCJ 2024 S2. Bangnan then played in VEC Daejon, but anyways, Varrel and VEC Daejon weren't particularly strong teams, and Bangnan and kAyle were not much of a standouts even in those lower-mid teams. kAyle used to be hyped by a few as the next big thing, the next Korean ranked demon, but he unfortunately wasn't. Should see how DK performs with former fOu members and if ex-Varrel players could show that they've improved. (btw, Empty, the last fOu Clan member not mentioned is still LFT so I think he'll be picked up by one of the VCK teams)

Haven't got much to note about the rest of the entrants. IAM dropped out, as reported on front page, so there'll be one more team that would qualify but no clue how they'll pick that team. Could have been Sherpa, but they've disbanded. Open qualifiers could be possible, since 2024 S1 also started quite late. SLT and CRG were 3rd and 4th place during 2024 S3, so my expectations are that they're probably not the teams who'd win VCK this year.

It's going to be the yardstick for how things will pan out in the near future, that's for sure. Like conversely, if the viewership drops yet again, might really be hopeless. Riot esports folks are definitely going to like the resulta of today though, that's for sure.

Yeah, I could for example see Tarik streaming SR GC games, at least during the first half of the split. While browsing Twitch I've seen a few female streamers with few thousand viewers as well. Can't really say if they're big names, but there definitely is interest.

I've seen a lot of people talk about T2 downfall, but with SR GC, is NA T2 saved, at least for this split? Supporters of GC or girls in esports would be highly interested so a lot of them will tune in, and unfortunate haters would also tune in as well, hoping to witness their downfall. Apart from those who support or hate, there will also be people who don't really have an opinion(= simply don't support) but still interested in GC team performace in T2 tune in as well.

Like, this is kinda big for NA T2, no?

The most utilitarian option

Holy smokes they did it, and with map 2 in quute a dominant fashion. Fucking grats

They would first need to qualify for mainstage, and then also first win any of the splits to prove they are good enough for Ascension

There's no stream cuz its not mainstage

SR 1-2 FUN
Funhavers do have fun destroying people's dreams.

okay, maybe I was a bit optimistic... Maybe it's time to change the rules to 1 import only.

MRG is not winning any of this year's VCJ splits nor are they going to Ascension, but at least VCJ is saved with a bunch of people going to suffer watching their fav team play in main stage.

Yeah, all these naïve kids needs to first think "why" Riot needs to support esports. They don't "need" to support esports if its a bad investment.

DW, the fundamental reason why so many Koreans are in VCJ is due to language proximity. SEA doesn't have that, and outside of Koreans, most "foreign" players who can't speak Japanese were players with dual citizenship who counts as locals. Even if SEA goes to shitters, I don't think that the spillover will be that bad. Maybe a few top-of-the-top prospects like Something but not much more.

Good thing we have Kato and Biju streaming at least

Now, where the actual issue lies is the emerging market, ie SEA and South Asia. And sorry to break it to you, SEA fans, but emerging markets are not the priority markets for most game devs/publishers. Unless you could pull numbers similar to that of mobile games like MLBB or PUBG mobile, the ROI from emerging market is never going to be good, and that's the problem. Valo is a PC game, and it is never going to be as accessible as mobile games in the emerging markets. From the average wage/spending power standpoint, your average player in the emerging markets is no different from a kid living in a Western country who has to rely on his pocket money that he got from his parents to buy a Paysafe card. Most of the times, currency of emerging markets are equally weak, so for Western publishers who operates on dollars, there's even less incentive to spend the resource they could've otherwise spend on the Western or Chinese market. This is very apparent from the fact that SEA was the only region where an external publisher (Garena) was granted publishing rights for League, apart from China.

It's the same reason why all the outrage concerning the T2 SEA League and SOOP exclusive streaming rights made no sense in the first place (I've seen some SEA fans claiming that Riot is conspiring to make SEA weaker, in order to cement Korean dominance in APAC because Jake Shin is Korean and they have favoritism towards Korea. Bro what?) It's understandable that SEA fans are emotionally shook, but like I've said, there's no money to be made in SEA. Like, when you see that news, the first question that should come to your mind is how bad the ROI should be, that Riot is virtually axing the T2 esports scene of the entire region by handing over the tournament organizing rights to a platform no one fucking uses, and is full of bugs that you never want to watch anything again on said platform. If you really think that Jake could singlehandedly decide what he wants to do with an entire damn region with multiple national leagues, and it's streaming rights, there's no need to talk further. I've seen people mentioning viewership numbers of around 30~70k concerning the national leagues before the downfall, but the thing is, that's still not enough. You'll need numbers rivaling VCJ if you really want to convince Riot that they should keep on investing to keep the respective T2 scene healthy.

The biggest problem with investing in the emerging market as a game publisher is the fact that video games doesn't work like physical goods. In case of physical goods like electronic devices or cars/motorcycles, clothes and so forth, branding matters, and it makes sense to invest to promote your brand with 10 years down the line in mind. That doesn't work for video games. How high are the chances that your 10 year old game will be gaining active players, finding new markets? Video game players move on fast, and you can't invest in emerging markets expecting immediate gains. Simply put, it's very understandable from financial standpoint as to why Riot is backing out of SEA esports.

Valorant launched just as the esports bubble burst, and we are seeing its long-term effects. The thing is, unless you are having gambling money involved like in CS, only the publisher (in Valo's case, Riot/Tencent) could fund the pro-scene. It has been re-iterated countless times that Riot never made any money out of LoL esports outside of China. Though they've still invested in it due to the intangibles, ie promoting their product. LoL esports did this quite successfully, since LoL esports is one of the biggest reason the game is still pretty healthy in terms of player counts and interest. It has therefore been a good ROI, despite LoL esports losing money for Riot on paper. Even so, Riot had to merge several regions to create LTA and APAC league this year.

Now, talking about Valo, again, unless Riot wants to allow CS-style open circuit with external TOs hosting tournaments with gambling sponsorship money, they have to bear the whole expenditure of maintaining the esports scene. Funny thing is, at the beginning of Valo, Riot mentioned that they are planning to structure Valorant esports unlike that of LoL but closer to that of CS : 3rd party TOs, lot of different international LANs, etc. For some reason, they've altered their plans and now here we are, with VCT as we know today.

So from Riot's point of view, everything revolves around the ROI, ie how much marketing the pro-scene does for Valo. Riot recoups the investment they've made on the esports scene by added interests of viewers that leads to more play-time and money spent in-game. Players and watchers of VCT all shit on Riot for creating the franchised system and ruining the national/regional leagues as a result, but Riot must've done some calculations before jumping to the franchised structure. Especially, what'd matter is how much ROI they'll be able to get from key markets, that is the Chinese market and the Western market. It is very plausible that the ROI of creating and maintaining 4 international leagues is much better than maintaining every single individual national T1 leagues, as it has been pre-franchise.

I think that Riot couldn't care less about T2. Had it been possible, I think that they wanted to replicate the success of the European LoL esports scene, where both the LEC and ERL/EM were very popular. This obviously hasn't worked in Valo, but at least from the viewership standpoint, I think T1 has worked out well for Riot.