Woke up not too long ago and see only one game has been played. Was there a delay of some kind? Or is the schedule wrong on here??

Nah, it's just as big.

Why would it be? Literally the only challenger league doing that trash is NA.

This doesn't seem accurate as xerxia would have failed to qualify in this four way tie as they were even in map diff but the other three teams were positive. I think even in the four way tie H2H has to play some sort of role. This especially makes sense to me because in the graphic, of the 4 teams, they have FS/AAA ranked lowest of the four teams at 4/5 respectively and these teams were 1-2 in series win vs the other 3, while the other two in the tie were 2-1 each.

Glad JDT were able to redeem themselves after throwing against scarz in the regular season. This was a good showing.

G2 had a single game in game 4. Rest of the series, they got mostly dominated. Mad lion looked super good for the first 15mins in game 1, then they threw an almost un-throwable game and got fisted the rest of the series. Neither look convincing at all. You watched BLG in a single bo3. I watched all six bo5 they played in LPL playoffs and some regular season games because I'm a nerd like that.

I'm not saying that BLG losing to C9/GG/G2/MAD is impossible. Just saying, realistically, that cannot be the expectation whatsoever. If it happens, cool. It would be quite an accomplishment if any of those teams did it. But it most likely will not.

edit: Yep, 3-0. Like I said, that narrative was cope.

This narrative about BLG is cope imo. Anything can happen of course but anyone who realistically thinks that any of the western teams even have a 30% chance of beating BLG didn't watch LPL playoffs.

That's inevitable I think. Her being the only female coach across all the valorant partnership leagues+her long stint with EG as both a player/coach with very little meaningful success will do that. With that said, she really be cooking. I really was doubting her because of them retaining these players instead of grabbing other promising t2 talent in the offseason, but the team really has improved more than any other team in all of americas. It's wild.

Overall no.

https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/vct-2023-emea-league
https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/valorant-challengers-2023-north-america-split-2-valorant

Less than half average viewership.

You're confusing the riot/valorant partnership leagues with blizzard/overwatch league.

Pansy is my #1

Of course, to each their own. However, I do think a large majority of valorant fans enjoy panpoc.

Well, I do and plenty of others do as well.

Yes, because people never improve.

Nigeria
Ghana
Benin
Togo
USA
Canada
France
Spain
Italy
Belgium
Netherlands

Nah, unfortunately you're just wrong. Different strokes for different folks. There are plenty of people that do care and definitely would feel stronger in rooting for a team composed of their country men. But this isn't everyone. A lot of people simply don't have an ounce of nationalism in them. That might be hard to understand for a Brazilian as that definitely doesn't seem to be the case for most people in Brazil, but there are plenty of people that feel that way. You can pretend that's a facade if you want. For some people, I'm sure it is. But it isn't for others. Acting as if you can magically get in everyone's head and know exactly how they feel/think is pretty arrogant and quite frankly makes you come off as pretty delusional.

It really is. You just think it's not cause you don't know better.

Let your pro football goalkeeper try playing forward. What's the harm?

Mass Effect 2. The end run in particular is amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trcTZ2fmeCM

Basically same style as the sykko firing tweet, except with the entire roster lol

LEV got outplayed. That's about it.

The professional vibe adds nothing to the product and doesn't bring more viewership.

Yep, I can't take you seriously when you say brood-war, the game that birthed e-sports, was just barely hanging on. I can safely ignore any other replies from you. Nothing you say can be taken serious.

Not just lost, they got annihilated.

Yep. Even if league of legends were to die in Europe/NA, it would still thrive in korea/china for the foreseeable future.

No eSport has ever survived or been taken seriously without the west

Someone doesn't know their e-sports history. A game called starcraft: brood war survived just fine for more than a decade in south korea without the west. That game and the influence it's had on the history of e-sports is why for most of the 2000s south korea was called the mecca of e-sports. Also, you're being pretty foolish. We're talking about giving international event slots. You're attempting to loop in a bunch of other bullshit and acting as if it's all because of riot's efforts to support china.

Valorant has never been super popular in europe, primarily because the premier tac fps is still csgo over there. And the reason valorant is dead in CIS is similar to the reason it's struggled in europe except on top of that, Russia invaded Ukraine last year and that event completely fucked over any chance Valorant had in the cis region. Riot has had to completely withdraw any support of the region because of sanctions and that isn't changing any time soon.

As for the viewership, it's fine. Is it exploding like riot would have hoped? No. But it's okay and valorant is definitely one of the most successful e-sports in the west/world. The tier 2 scene definitely hasn't been handled the best but that has fuck all to do with what I was talking about. Also, ever heard of cross-fire, that game has had a vibrant and successful pro scene in china since the late 2000s. Europe isn't some god given region. Even if valorant full on dies in europe, which it won't, it can still do just fine if it persists in NA and asia.

edit: like i said, if you exaggerate shit, no one's gonna take you seriously

Yea. You're exaggerating. No one's gonna take you seriously when you say such alarmist bs. Valorant will be fine. Just like league of legends is fine. Also, not tapping into china would be a serious mistake. In league of legends, china alone brings in more profit for riot than all the other regions combined. I want you to really think about that last statement for a moment. Alone china does that. Call them greedy if you want, but assuming they have the same aspirations for valorant, they would be insane not to preempt and support chinese valorant as much as possible.

It's your right to cry. It's absolutely futile but it is your right. I just wonder hypothetically if in 5 years you'd cry if china was dominating valorant as korea/china do in LoL but they were still "unfairly" receiving the same slots as all the lesser "undeserving" regions.

And it's insufferable because people are bitching and moaning while attributing the decision just to nepotism. It annoys me when people are stupid and don't understand things. I guess that kinda makes me an asshole, but i guess i also have the right to bitch and moan.

In league of legends, a taiwanese/korean/chinese team has won the world championship every year since season 2(season 1 only EU and NA teams were invited). That is every single year since 2012, over a decade. Despite that, for the majority of league of legends history, NA and EU have enjoyed the same number of slots that korea/china received(3) with korea/china only getting a single extra slot in recent years.

I've been watch pro league of legends since 2011. I can guarantee if riot wanted to make the most competitive tournament they could in that game with the most "deserving" teams, they would invite 6 korean teams, 8 chinese teams and maybe throw EU/NA a single slot each. But have they ever done that? No. Will they ever do that(in the forseeable future)? No. Why? Because their e-sports are primarily global marketing exercises for their games.

People cry nepotism china this nepotism china that without actually using their brains. It's insufferable. It's just about $$$ and identifying untapped viewership wherever it may be found.

Nah, still have all the brazilians with their co-streamers.

People truly love to complain. Riot e-sports will always focus on making competition global, especially if there is money to be made. If you don't like it, go watch cs go. Bitching and moaning about how a company operates is pointless. It won't change anything. If valorant blows up in china as league of legends did, then the chinese teams will be competitive sooner rather than later. If it doesn't, oh well, not a big deal.

People need to understand this about riot games as an entity. For better or worse, their main priority with the e-sports they've created isn't competitive integrity, their main priority is the ability of said e-sports to facilitate the marketing of their games to make as much $$$ as possible. That is reality and what we've seen them do for over a decade with league of legends. At the end of the day, it still leads to a pretty fucking good product for viewers(not so much for orgs in the ecosystem). Nothing will be different with valorant. Deal with it.

I'm a potter fan. Not an EG fan. That close enough?

Wonderful =)

Oh wow. Assuming their current igl is competent, I think this is pretty positive news. With the additions of yay, nerve and now exalt being back, they're gonna have great firepower.

Mad lions only has 2 players they qualified with. So I'm assuming it's core 2. Anyway, i understand now, exalt is just subbing in for the week as far we know.

Did toast say it was only this week?

He's talking about the continuity of the roster between splits. I think you have to retain at least 2 players going from split 1 to split 2.

That doesn't really answer my question. Both steel and exalt would both count the same toward roster lock given that they both qualified together. I wanna know why steel is benched.

So is exalt back permanently? Meaning steel has been dropped. Or is he just subbing in for this week? Do we know if either of these are the case? Or do we just not know anything?

I'm not drawing any conclusions like that when we've literally only seen one other chinese team in a single appearance internationally.

Valorant isn't that popular in korea and even if it was, korea doesn't have the same potential to explode in player population that china has.

I'll just leave this here for people not understanding chinese potential in esports:
https://upcomer.com/worlds-2021-final-draws-73-8-million-peak-concurrent-viewers-riot-reports

China and Korea, two individual countries, dominate everyone in league of legends. While it's less likely in valorant because of Europe's history in tac fps, it's not impossible we could see china eventually do the same here.

Actually, with lcq in mind and the spot gained for the region winning tokyo, the other regions get 4/4/5 slots. They intend for china to be it's own partnership league eventually. If anything, when their league is fully up and running, I expect them to get a 4th slot.

I know but I don't really care even if it is just about money anyway. Money is good. And even if that's the case now, chinese teams will eventually be good and deserve to be at internationals on merit alone.

You could make that argument if you want. It's a little different tho, as the potential esports population of players is gonna be several fold higher in china than in india because of culture/infrastructure. We've seen what chinese e-sports look like at full throttle in league of legends and cross-fire. The same can't be said to be true of india.

Why shouldn't they get their own slots? They're their own region by themselves. It's not like they've pulled three random teams. It'll be the 3 best performing teams in china. Japan and Brazil were trash in 2021 but they still got slots for 2022. This is no different.

Why is it too much? Last I checked, china had a population of over 1.4 billion people.

I'm not sure why people are getting so mad. The japanese and brazilian teams were trash in 2021 and still given slots at internationals at the start of 2022. China has literally 4x the population of both those countries combined and have proven to be receptive to e-sports in other titles. They will improve with time.

Seems to me people like you are just masking your bigotry with the excuse of their teams being bad.

EDG isn't the best chinese team currently. ASE is.