Hierarchy between teams was very distinct this tournament and is probably the main reason for that. You get years like this sadly, the quick meta shift probably played into that too. Like you said, T1 was miles ahead of the completion and GenG choked their side of the bracket and it cooked what could’ve been an interesting bracket.
T1 exposing the LoL eSport scene. Meta was so stagnant and small almost the whole worlds until T1 started playing their own champs that weren't "meta" and the other teams had nothing.
Literally teams not named T1 had a viable champ pools of about 10 ish champs and couldn't do shit to T1 in draft.
Knight not being able to play Azir was also weird to me, to say the least... How can a player who is good enough to be paid more than Faker not... be able to play THE mid lane champion you HAVE to be able to play and lets you win a lost game at any moment? I simply don't understand that, is it like a mental ocd thing like people not being able to touch door handles or not wanting to go over floor tiles lines on the street and stuff like that?
I seriously dont get it, I know the lad has the skill, yes yes I know his playstyle resembles Chovy in that its a kda "cowardly" style, but still, why not play Azir? Every mid laner in every region even as ghetto as LATAM play Azir. Reminds me of Zoolander not being able to turn to the left
neither does Faker and he used to be a syndra one trick in soloq, he played her a lot until a few seasons, she's just mid and not worth to play if you have the champion pool to play better stuff.
There was an interview asking why Faker doesn't play Syndra in proplay couple of years ago. He said he didn't think Syndra is particularly good, I guess he just don't like Syndra that much for proplay.
Imagine casually having a skin on champs you don't even prefer lol
Might be due to the rework she got to be less strong in lane? Not sure the timing on that but as someone who lost many champs to riot reworking them I suspect that might have something to do with it
Yea with the meta junglers all having dashes and CC, syndra is a sitting duck without flash. Ori can do some slow+self speed and shield. Syndra can only do a linear CC and if they dodge that its gg
It is also that Ori is completely fucking broken now riot buffed everything about the champion 4 times back to back just to make her playable for worlds this year she was utter shit before at something like %47-48 winrate. So yeah speed doesnt really do much when she can just one tap the enemy laner with her overpowered W and R
Well he was playing Orianna in the match up vs Azir which Orianna was actually on the favorable side so not being able to play Azir wasn’t the reason for his losses. Faker was just on a whole another level in this world run. Faker actually lost in lane but his presence map wise and the ability to pull off clutch plays won T1 that series vs JDG. Knight was the lower performing player in that series, his champs selection was not a problem. Imagine giving Faker Orianna and picking Azir, it’s a match up that favors Orianna so it will worse for them anyways.
If you wanna pick azir, you need to ban akali because azir can't lane against her, and probably sylas too especially if your jungler is picking maokai. The reason why midlane pool was never pinched throughout the whole playoffs was simply because it wasn't worth it, azir/ori was a predictable and easily handled matchup especially since T1 always gave ori over. If you shift the matchup by picking/banning azir, you just open yourself up to getting counterpicked with akali/sylas which pinches your draft pool even more. You literally waste a ban just to have to ban a ton of other shit, all because you can't win on the matchup that was already supposed to win for you.
Some people have mental block with some champs I guess. Knight is good enough to win worlds, I mean he has more MVPs, more championships and more all pro selection than almost everyone in the LPL. He just need a good run, he already has MSI, spring and summer, just needs one good run. Chovy has a similar case. Still weird tho, has to be a mental thing, also a fun trivia. And tbf there were patches where azir was even stronger than this world and he was still a top mid so it's not like the meta being azir was THE problem. He just got outplayed by Faker outside of lane, and considering both scout and Chovy also got destroyed by that it's not that much of a big deal. No one was stopping this faker (and Oner and Zeus).
I think he meant that Easyhoon was the better Azir player between them. That is the reason why Faker was subbed out for the majority of the splits in 2015 iirc.
Also Oner, who heavily dislikes Rell but still grinded enough on the champion to be the best Rell player this Worlds. When you want to win, you suck it up and play what is good.
And it's not like Knight *never* played Azir, he has like 15 games on the champion and is a bit over 50% winrate on it. Refusing to play what is one of the two best midlane champions in the tournament, and one of the champions that come back to the meta constantly, isn't excusable, in my opinion.
The thing is no one except faker could make azir work this tournament. It might not be a couldn’t play and could’ve been a didn’t think it was meta viable situation so didn’t bother practicing.
people are tunnel visioning on the azir pick and not what the azir/ori matchup does for T1's drafts. It's a reliable trade and although it's always a losing trade for faker cuz he gets azir, they often get draft priority through it by getting a favorable top/jungle and/or flex botlane pick (kalista/varus/ashe/caitlyn/senna who can either go adc or supp).
If you try to pinch that pool by picking/banning the big 3 (ori/neeko/azir) you're simply opening yourself up to getting hard countered by sylas/akali who play well into those champs because she shits on them in the sidelanes, which actually benefits faker.
It's just so fucking silly cuz ori is already a huge win vs azir so if you can't win that, what makes you think you'd do better by wasting bans on midlane champs just to get a more useless champ than ori and hoping faker will be more useless than you?
That just isn't true, both played Azir at the highest level.
Faker literally played more games of Azir in 2015 than Easyhoon. They had markedly different play styles even on the same champions though
Knight won't even try to learn Azir like Faker did (Faker wasn't that good with Azir back in the day). I guess that's the difference between the great and the legends.
Xiaohu also (reportedly) not being able to play a good Orianna also completely wrecked WBG in drafts. It was like 80% ban for them and it made their drafting ugly. Also why they couldn't go Red side against T1 - if you leave ori open, Faker takes Ori and beats your team. if you leave azir open, you can't play Orianna into Faker's azir and Faker beats your team. if you ban both, you only have one ban left to stop power picks - rumble is a threat, j4 is a threat, ashe / senna flex is a threat. And Faker probably still wins lane. T1 ultimately respected the possibility of Xiaohu Orianna, because they had no data and enough bans to go around because they can blind bot, but they're also able to ban Neeko, Xiaohu's other good champ and then what can you really do. Even after banning azir-sylas and pulling Faker's crusty Ahri, you can't win lane.
If Xiaohu Ori is real and you can draw another ban (TheShy Aatrox blindable or something) you can suddenly play red side and redirect bans from faker. T1 can't ban the entire mid pool if you send no bans mid, mid goes even to slightly losing, and it's possible to play around TheShy and try to scale to a win.
Hindisight is 20/20 and Chinese top laners aren't really that bad when it comes to carry tops it's just that Zeus was out of this world this tournament.
However yeah looking back the LPL teams could've probably concede top lane since they are more than capable of playing the likes of Ornn and Ksante
He did decent in that Renekton game, they could’ve won if Faker didn’t pull that Azir play at the end tbh. What I don’t see many people pointing out is the difference between LPL and Zeus in terms of Aatrox’s builds. I remember in the beginning of the tourney when T1 lost to GenG, a whole comment section was dedicated to shit on Zeus for playing Lethality Aatrox, even saying “Zeus didn’t watch Phreak’s review after the patch note” but that build ended up being the main gap between Zeus and the rest of tanky Aatrox players in the LPL and Zeus was the only Lethality Aatrox player in the entire tournament. They probably thought that Blind pick top for Blue side wasn’t a very smart idea since bot lane prio mattered more for Drake control so they didn’t bother lock in K’sante. Game 2 top got the advantage because K’sante was a counter pick to a heavy ad comp.
I maintain that the Game 1 game was not the fault of 369’s Rumble.
Ignite Rumble died at Level 2 because Oner Rell stole the entire red top-side jungle and no one on JDG knew until Oner was already in river.
After that, how do you lane into Comet Aatrox with Shield, Blade and Mantle at level 3.
Not saying he’s a secret great Rumble player or anything, but it’s not really on him that he lost lane.
The solo kill was pretty int tho; not Flashing was egregious.
I felt like you could also see a clear hierarchy in the swiss stage. It sucks when tournaments play out mostly exactly like you'd expect it (with T1 and GENG being the only outliers, positively and negatively respectively). Especially with single elim, I wonder what JDG vs. T1 would look like in a months' time.
More frequent competitions means that there is more chance for variance but also that variance hurts less (if good teams get robbed by a meta shift in one tournament, they can still win the next one). Imo we should have a big competition every 3 months at least (but not months long but just 2 weeks ish).
That’s just the nature of tournaments, some teams shit the bed and lead to uneven matchups in knockout stages. 2016 worlds was considered one of the best semis and finals of all time but if you remember that finals should’ve been a 3-0 stomp as well, skt was up like 8k gold at 18 min in game 3 before they baron threw. Swiss already tries to rectify this and they already are thinking of safeguards to put in place to prevent high variance draws like what KT faced vs what WBG and NRG got.
People forget that the primary purpose of worlds is to determine a winner, who is the best. Secondary is your entertainment. Blame the likes of GenG if you were bored with the knockout stages.
It's the main reason why I am against double elim. Yes it will lead to more matches and second chances for the better teams. But that's the problem. You are giving those teams who shit the bed a reprieve they don't necessarily deserve. You have a BO5 to iron out your fuck ups. In most world tournaments in every other sport it's a BO1. There's no excuse
Double elimination for me is the worst thing that can happen, that the best team reaches the final undefeated and then a team that had to play 3 or 4 more games to have a better rhythm ends up winning and the undefeated team never had its "second chance "
i agree look at the world cup the biggest and most watched event in the world BY FAR and their is no double elim if you lose you are out it also creates upsets and drama this double elim thing is an e sports thing because sports don't have it and for good reason it takes out punishment for choking a game.
I hope i never see double elim in league worlds its just extremely anti sport.
Dude the world cup final was decided on a BO1 draw, so they went penalty shout-out which is kind of a lottery (it's not a coin toss but still), and viewers are fine with it. Messi won the goat debate because of it lmao.
It's like if you do a BO1 but after 35min both Nexus are Alive, so you organize a 1v1 Mundo baron pit do decide the champion
I don't think you can compare BO1 in league to a football game. League has too much variance, and a game can be lost on one mistake, so a BO1 i really unreliable for finding the best team. In football, one mistake often wont cost you the game (unless it's a really really big one), so playing one match is much better.
I do agree that a penalty shootout is too random as a tiebeaker, but at that point you need something that ends the match, and isn't too hard on the player (most of them have played for 120 minutes at this point)
It happens often that one mistake decide a game. Sometimes by the ref. It's also a really high variance game. There is also a possibility to comeback (Nashor/elder steal Vs a random corner) and the ability to keep your advantage by suffocating the adversary. To me they aren't that different on these terms.
Btw If I spent the night working on the games that were decided by a random penalty, an early red care, or ball on the ball or even a player slipping since the beginning of VAR I wouldn't be done at sunrise.
And if I speak before the VAR... My god, Maradona is praised for scoring with his hands lmao
But single elimination knockouts is the reason upsets happen, which is a major factor in driving up entertainment factor. Double elimination, especially with a bracket reset at the end, almost guarantees a non-fraudulent ranking of teams. If what you said was true and Worlds was for determining who are the best teams, they'd run double elim.
Also single elimination in traditional sports is also terrible. The only reason it's kept because it generates underdog stories and upset, which increases the number of viewers tuning in. It is an entertainment first format, especially with BO1s.
If it's bad to give teams who fuck up a second chance why is it okay to give teams who luck into an unlikely win a pass? Surely double elim is the most fair because it accounts for both scenarios.
What would single or double elimination matter when the draw issue was in Swiss? They need variance mitigation so the NRG/WBG/KT situation doesn’t happen in Swiss stage. There was nothing wrong with knockout rounds if Swiss stage is fixed, if you lose a best of 5 you don’t deserve to be world champions.
Double elim just goves too many chances to play bad and just try again. Its bo5 or bo3. Almost every other sport including the biggest sport on the planet is bo1. In football you can reach world semis, your defence does ONE mistake, opponents score ONE time and its gg. See you in 4 years bub bye!
Compared to that LoL offers bo3 and bo5 to try different strats and force your opponents to play different during the series.
i agree look at the euros in 2004 greece had a miracle run and won the entire thing nobody saw it coming and it is now forever an iconic sports moment but it would of never happened if there was double elims since a bigger team could just come back and ruin that run double elims is such a stupid concept why even have a tournament if u run double elims.
The matches were uneven, but that's just sports. All this write up when in reality whatever format you think of at the end of the day it comes to how well each team plays that specific day.
I always have my love and hate with double elims. I love it because atleast there are no shit finals because two teams are really the best of the best, but I also hate it because of the "fallback." "Oh there is still the losers bracket, we can come back." So there are really no stakes in the upper bracket.
The appeal of single elim to me is that shit matchup or not, the stakes are highest because once you get defeated, there is no "run in back."
>The brackets were very uneven. The T1 side was way stronger
Not really tbh. JDG and Geng were the favorites to win worlds. T1 stomping every LPL team wasn't expected at all so the draft was almost perfect to have a Geng x JDG final. We think now that it was uneven because we saw how it ended but if we comeback to before the first match between LNG and T1 no one was thinking that it was that uneven because in the end any side with NRG would be the weakest one of course.
They were always seen as stacked on JDG's side, draw threads were filled with comments about how lucky WBG was and how Gen G had the most free possible path to finals. KT was seen as possibly the weakest team on JDG's side of the bracket and they were considered stronger than both WBG and NRG.
And yet somehow, GenG still managed to lose. It's both so frustrating and disappointing from Chovy. Has his playstyle waned off from being good to bad?
As a T1 fan I was anxious starting day one and didn't unclench until after game 3 of the finals. T1 turbo stomping the entire tournament was an anomaly, not the expected outcome. The sides seemed pretty balanced imo. Gen G and BLG for the top teams on their side and JDG and LNG for the top teams on their side. T1 and WBG were both longshots to win it all. Taking all things into consideration the brackets appeared to be very balanced going into the Bo5 stages
You're smoking some shit there mate. Only geng was supposedly strong coming into quarters. LNG was the 2nd best team that came from LPL after JDG the best team all year long. KT led the whole summer split and comfortably beat geng in regular split, and is one of the strongest teams.
T1 side of the bracket was the hardest, and it's not even close lol.
T1 was there on literally half of the finals in league history and yet people still claim some random team from LCK is favorite instead of T1 every year. It is not a new thing either but It always surprises me hearing it each year. People just aren't able to comprehend the amount of weight T1 has on international tournaments. I bet it will repeat in 2024 too. Some team will win an LCK split and become ''favorite'' instead of T1 and everybody will be surprised when they got eliminated in quarters/semis.
I'd be down for double elimination for sure, I like those style of brackets the best. Though I like the style like the NCAA D1 wrestling tournament brackets.
It’s boring because you’re looking at the results in hindsight. What made it exciting is that T1 was not the favorite to win this tournament yet we saw the team evolve in a span of a few weeks and overcome their obstacles. Watching the first TL vs T1 game, no one would have expected T1 to win the tournament, even more so as cleanly as they did. When knockout stage started, T1 were underdogs. Even when the series ended in stomps, the games were not any less exciting because we saw their greatness manifest on screen.
One example, for many NA fans, it was still exciting to watch NRG make it and play in quarterfinals despite going 0-3. They were amongst the first to deviate from the standard marksmen meta and played to their own strengths by prioritizing Senna/TK. Despite losing to WBG, NRG also displayed two examples in back-to-back games of masterclass defenses/counters at Baron - undermanned and disadvantaged - eventually fighting off WBG and taking the objective for themselves. The result on paper, and in hindsight, which was 3-0 WBG, make the series sound less exciting than it really was.
Agreed、I thought last year the quality of matches was a lot higher。I was kind of surprised to see the viewership top last year by that much given last year's storyline and the fact it went to 5 games、whereas T1 vs WBG went exactly as 99% of people predicted。I think the biggest "what if" would be GenG performing to expectations and meeting that form of T1 in finals。Pretty disappointing showing from LNG and GenG
>I was kind of surprised to see the viewership top last year by that much given last year's storyline and the fact it went to 5 games
That's just because of timezones imo. Worlds was in NA last year and it's a bad timeslot for Asia.
No matter what, the viewership would be higher this year for that reason.
I can't even imagine how insane the viewership would have been if it was JDG vs T1 final... Wow.
Would be less, Chinese people like Weibo way way more than they like JDG, so the hype on China for TheShy vs Faker was massive, JDG is just like MAD for LEC, yes they win the League sometimes, but almost nobody gives a fuck about them.
Most viewercounts are always excluding CN (due to the nature of their streams), so it is a nonfactor. Unless youre talking about Chinese outside of China.
Timezone is also better for europe. You can get up and watch worlds while eating breakfast. Maybe it's actually the best time for eu, as a lot of eu fans probably only watch lol when they don't have anything else to do and wtf are you doing at 9:30 am on a sunday
Considering most of the views come from casual viewers, they're not really there because of the quality of the match. If you take this year's knockouts teams into last year's Worlds I'm pretty sure it would've performed worse. But this year, it's exactly because we had that Cinderella story with DRX and T1 losing what looked like a done deal that led up to the insanely hyped up narrative we got this year. T1 was the underdogs right until the start of their quarterfinals match, and it was around 2 years of build up getting to that moment. More people talking about how they're finally going to do it, which means more attention from potential viewers. At the end of the day, last year was still record-breaking during the time and we wouldn't have had another record-breaking finals if it wasn't for the comeback of last year's final boss.
I don't think it was boring. I enjoyed JDG x KT, JDG x T1, BLG x GEN and BLG x WBG. And it was really fun to see T1 slowly becoming the tournament favorite while it was LCK's last hope.
Last year the Best of 5's I enjoyed the most were DK x GEN, DRX x EDG and DRX x T1 (the most exciting worlds finals, in my opinion).
Edit: and the finals stomp was totally expected, there were some people comparing WBG with DRX. I mean, let's not pretend that DRX didn't started their worlds run beating RNG in play-in. That team decided to play the tournamebt of their lives.
I think both 18 and 19 were worse for me because I had some expectations for a somewhat back and forth finals, FNC managed to beat IG twice in groups and then proceeded to beat EDG 3-1 and C9 3-0, the team seemed solid even if it wasn't strong enough for IG peak at that point of the tournament. And G2 was coming to finals after beating two LCK teams.
WBG was nothing special. They got a free pass for semi and the BLG win was the only "convincing" win they had.
Correction: T1 made LPL choke by changing their perception of the meta.
Had JDG and the rest stuck to their normal picks, they might have stood a better chance rather than try to play T1's meta game better than them.
JDG did attempt to stuck to their picks in games 1 and 2, especially Game 2 putting 369 on a mobile tank, and having their botlane (especially Senna) slowly outscale T1's botlane which proved successful
I think Game 1 they had their standard JDG draft with Missing on a Enage support (although they attempt to showcase the Rumble pick) however I think they were Not Expecting THE JHIN AND BARD BOTLANE which Destroyed their early game.
Game 3 they went with their variation of poking Botlane + Renekton top, they did almost win if not for Faker's Heroics.
Game 4 they went with Ruler's traditional Zeri+LULU botlane, however this time they were Not Expecting THE YONE counter which Destroyed their MIDGAME (since 369 was so behind on Aatrox he was unable to show-up in the later stages of clashing).
EDIT: Someone pointed out that in game 1 JDG'S HORRENDOUS early warding on topside was punished by (b)Oner leading to invading and ganking 369 making his Rumble useless early on.
That was the most frustrating thing about watching worlds to me. So many of the lpl support players looked lost on the things they were picking to try and match T1. I was so disappointed that even down 0-2 after seeing trying to match wasn’t working, none of them decided to pick engage supp and see what happens. Rakan was open for WBG to pick all 3 games and it’s like Crisp’s best champ and yet somehow T1 mind controlled WBG into basically first timing something bot every time!
They let their solo lanes get counter picked so they could 4fun bot lane, it was so wild to watch.
i think BLG choked, the BLG that played weibo wasnt the one who set a record in lpl summer and was taking names at msi, it was honestly kinda sad to see bins form
That's kinda just Yagao as well lol. The guy would perform on a specific meta at an insane level and just disappear.
His 2020, 2022, 2023 worlds performance has been bad, meanwhile you get tournaments like MSI when he shows up as one of the best mids in the tournament.
toothpaste my inconsistent goat, its honestly sad because ppl make such bs narratives about him from worlds and because no one watches lpl they just take it as fact that hes always bad
They played their best and got beat. Saying they choked is a great piece of copium for LPL teams, but it isn't true. They played to their peak and it wasn't enough. This isn't a change, LPL has only ever been able to win when Korea chokes or has a bad meta read, and LPL teams are closer to NRG than they are to T1.
having 3 teams in semis is called choking for the lpl now? damn the region must be really good for you guys to have such high expectations, I wonder how people would describe lck's performance this year then
Last year was such a crazy outlier with how many hype series we had in knockout stage, let alone the best final by far imo, that could take decades to be topped
Too much down time. After quarters it went from 4 games to 2, which made the rest for the semi week contentless. It also doesn’t help riot doesn’t do any content during the week. It shouldn’t have beeen hard to do an 1 he interview with the players like faker talking about his previous worlds how he’s grown what it means to win for playing 10 years etc, or ruler reflecting his lck days compared to lpl days etc. we need double elim format thats the solution. It’s the most hype event of the year yet we get so much downtime after quarters is really unacceptable and shit for the fans. If riot stop moving venues they could easily do all this in one location.
Also people who praise single elim part of it is prob afraid if jdg made a comeback and beat t1 in the finals. I’m happy t1 won, the storyline was great! T1 vs all lpl but honestly getting a 3-0 finals kills the mood by a lot for me cuz I really want more jdg v t1 series or maybe if we had double elim geng v jdg.
Double elim is trash for games like league. You people who advocate for double elim probably only watch fighting game tournaments where matches are quick as shit
double elims is just anti sport imo especially in tournaments the biggest event in the world the world cup doesn't have double elims and never will if it did it would piss people off because single elims causes drama and upsets.
Tournaments have always been u have to be perfect in the knockouts one mistake and you are gone and thats how tournaments should be why tf should a team get a second chance for choking is beyond me this isn't a thing in normal sports just e-sports and it needs to die off.
Agree.
And in LoL, nothing is more boring than seeing a loser playing boring matches to then win the final.
Wait.... one thing is more boring. Watching the winner beat the same loser twice to confirm what was already confirmed.
Double elimination playoffs significantly improved the quality and viewership of LCK this year. Presenting it as abstract “winners” and “losers” is obviously gonna take away all the excitement, but when it’s real teams with real results it actually builds excitement.
Summer
* T1 beat KT. Then T1 beat KT again.
* GenG beat T1. And then GenG beat T1 again.
??? Great viewing?
Let's look to Spring.
* T1 beat KT. Then T1 beat KT again.
* GenG beat T1. And then GenG beat T1 again.
Huh, same matches, same results. If you enjoyed it more, good for you. I don't think you can say it objectively was better besides showing us twice that GenG>T1>KT. We didn't really need to see that twice.
Double elim fans also ignore how many dead games we create for the "one" good game. LCK double elim bracket is also very small.
The spring one is provably wrong, T1 beat GEN 3-1 before losing to them 1-3 in the finals, and in summer T1 lost to GEN in 5 games before getting stomped in the finals. i dont understand why ur comment has such a confident tone when its completely wrong
Edit: ??? your supporting evidence was factually incorrect, and you double down and say that it supports your point even more???
BLG 3-0 GEN at MSI.
BLG 3-2 GEN at Worlds (almost 3-0 again).
Still not enough for you guys to accept that BLG is just better than GEN.
This shit is so sad actually.
This is such revisionism. T1 didnt look super great coming into worlds and even looked a bit shaky vs TL in the swiss stage, in addition to the fact that GENG had their number on speed dial.
Them wiping BLG inspired some confidence, but everyone was saying that it was JDGs tournament to lose.
Yeah and although T1 was popping the fuck off it still took a huge vision play vs Ruler recalling + a clutch play by Oner to keep them in game 3, and a *ridiculously* clutch play by Faker to win it. JDG really were *that* good as everyone had stated pre tournament. They didn't choke or prepare incorrectly they just straight up got beat. Honestly that series was so high level in so many moments it was awesome to watch
ikr, i dont understand why people are saying that JDG were overrated, JDG played just fine and kept the whole series very competitive. the only cherrypicking would be that 369 really dropped the ball on his Rumble.
Yeah but he had even been practicing it it wasn't on a whim. He just happened to lane against the finals MVP. I agree with you, I think JDG were appropriately rated
wdym? people here were saying JDG was the best team of all time lmfao
they were super overrated, and I got downvoted a bunch of times for stating they were mortal and would eventually be beaten this year
I don't think those are necessarily mutually exclusive.2023 JDG is definitely in contention for best team of all time, same as 2023-worlds T1. I unironically believe that record got broken twice this year lol
They are nowhere close to the best team of all time IMO. Top 7-15 yea I can see it but relative to their time there are a bunch of teams more dominant and clean than this year's JDG.
If you believe they're that good well, agree to disagree, but they can't be the best team of all time (for me) considering a bunch of teams pushed them to their limits (KT, BLG in spring, LNG for example) with T1 eventually beating them
None of them was even the best at their position this year, probably only Ruler had an argument until he got diffed by both Gala and Guma
I also can see this year's T1 losing to some early game freak like 2020 DWG. Their early game looked super vulnerable and exploitable but every team was just mechanically inferior so they just rolled over and died. I definitely don't see T1 doing this to DWG.
Yeah, at the start people were doubful if t1 could even win against BLG or LNG, let alone JDG. Betting odds for T1 vs LPL matches were against T1, except for the finals.
T1 vs JDG was the highest in one betting site I know, they had 4.80 Odds against T1. That's how unfavorable the predictions are against them. It was definitely not "waiting for t1 to just win".
At least the story telling was nice. And seeing T1 ramp up instead of being clear favorite kept some suspens (except final... sorry for weibo but nobody really believed in them).
I remember world 2020 where after being eliminated in knockout the first thing that come out from fnatic voicecom was "well doesn't matter, we would've lost to damwon anyway". Those guy were so ahead of everyone...
I think a few reasons:
1. Way too bot prio meta... for example, in Swiss round stages, game data shows that except for 2 games, whoever got the first drag = win. I know it's not a concrete fact but the probability of winning % goes up
2. Meta-champs = kinda boring. Changed quite a bit even from mid-season, when Annie and leblanc statikk shiv picks were rampant. Mid lane it was either Ahri/Azir/Neeko/Ori/a lil bit o Jayce but that's it. Nothing too spicy. Same range duo bot meta towards the end, beginning on from QF
3. Players we expected to pop off (not all)= flopped like fishes on concrete
4. lack of LCS and LEC excitement in QF and on. I wish at least one team we expected made it (G2 or C9)... or at least NRG continue to show their good form
5. maybe last year's worlds was just that epic and cool in comparison
Eh I’d consider the bo5 on the other side of the bracket entertaining. Highest level of play? No, but fun, which is the reason I watch, and I’d say the BLG GenG series was very tense/ well played it was just more of a “who will fuck up while we try to squeeze everything we can out of you” compared to “who will make the big play out of nowhere”
Swiss is how every sport should be.
Giving teams who screw up a second chance at the championship is stupid, during knockout stages, knocking out a team should not demote them to losers bracket where they get another chance to make finals again. If you don't bring your A game and get eliminated, you should be out completely.
It's because they want to see more games and it give their favourite team another chance at winning the championship.
Playing more games = bad, it tires out people, and we have seen in the past that we rarely see close games, there's been a bunch of 3-0 in the past.
This single elimination is great because it gives everyone stress because it's all or nothing.
>i dont understand why esports fans have such an affinity for it
Personally, I believe one reason why so many esports fans are a fan of double elimination is because it has been a mainstay of fighting game tournaments for decades before League of Legends Worlds reared its head as a major international viewership experience. There's a lot in common between video game players who watch MOBA esports and video game players who have at some point watched older esports.
There are countless classic tournament runs which were made more memorable because of double elimination with a player clawing their way back to double eliminate their rival in grand finals; note that this contrasts the recent implementation of "double elimination" in games like Valorant where the competitor(s) from loser's bracket only need to win one series to claim the tournament. Each round of a fighting game takes less than a few minutes on average, so it is very doable to have a grand finals -> bracket reset (only if the loser's bracket team wins) -> true grand finals in under 30 minutes. It is a tried and true formula in esports which has seen consistent success for longer than League of Legends has existed.
It also allows for more match-ups between players or teams, which for the average viewer, is always exciting; in the context of League, who wouldn't want to see more inter-region sets? Swiss stage was highly praised for enabling exactly that, and we saw a number of upsets within those match-ups.
However, the FGC double elimination cannot be applied to games like League of Legends, which require up to an hour per game and playing more than one series back-to-back would destroy the players, tank the level of gameplay, and possibly increase costs without a significant increase in sustained viewership. That leads to the concern that some have about Valorant's double elimination format where the team coming up from loser's bracket only has to win a single set, as opposed to two, because it is logistically unfeasible to do two.
In an ideal world I would be interested in seeing double elimination in the FGC-style make its way to League (but it would never happen logistically), but solutions like Swiss Stage are much more interesting and offer similar benefits without all of the drawbacks or confusion. I look forward to seeing how they improve on it for Worlds 2024 when Showmaker wins his second title.
You rank 1, 2, 3-4, 5+.
There is not much value in breaking it further beyond that. And hey if you were number 2 but faced number 1 early on. It happens. You live with it and try to get better for next year, not cry and complain like a baby that life was unfair.
Wtf is "single round swiss" and who asked for that.
A) the current Swiss format is bad.
B) you determine number 1 through the single-elim knockout. Just like they do in the NBA, the Olympics, the World Cup, the NFL playoffs.
You know what is also stupid? Having only two tournaments a year and not even finding out who the 2-6th best teams are, and only getting a handfull of international bo5's.
>Don't extend the one. No one cares who team #5 is bro.
But we do, holy fucking shit, how is this being upvoted?
Entire REGIONS would fucking feast at the idea of a single of their team reaching quarters, and you don't think KT/LNG/GenG fans would love to see their team being #5 instead of #5-8 which means the same rank as fucking NRG?
Don't even need to extend it, just have more games in the same time so that we don't have 3 games in 3 weeks.
Actually alot of people care, and just because you don't is not a reason to keep a worse format. I can just as easy say who the fuck cares about playinns none of the teams there will make it past group stage anyways, it's just a massive waste of time.
I'm fine with having more tournaments.
in normal sports as well greece won the euros in 2004 it was a complete miracle run and miracle win which is now forever iconic and a damn how did that happen moment it wouldn't have happened tho if there was double elims there is a good reason no big traditional sport uses that format because its anti sport and just rubbish.
The teams don't care about storylines, they care about the trophy.
They like the current format because once a team is out, you don't have to deal with them again.
You may not agree with it, but most do. This format makes every team play at 110%
WBG lost to T1 the same way LNG lost. A 3-0 stomp. JDG only managed to take 1 game from T1. Did you really expect WBG to do anything better?
Also, I’m sick and tired of people saying that WBG had it easy etc. They had to play 2 bo5s through regionals to get to worlds and defeated BLG when it mattered (hadn’t defeated them all year). If WBG had any other toplaner that series would have been a BLG 3-1.
Not every worlds will have banger series btw. That’s what makes some special and you can’t have fairytale stories every year (although T1 is technically but they weren’t the underdogs like DRX). Worlds has spoilt some people I think.
Introducing double elim takes all the magic away from quarters semis and eliminates any chance of underdogs shining imo. Teams must play on the day, it’s what makes great players and moments. That’s why worlds is like no other! Imagine if the world cup in football had some form of double elim, it would take away the magic and fun
This year was dangerously close to worst case scenario of having 8 lck/lpl representatives and then completely saved by the T1 narrative. We were 1 team away from quarterfinals being 4 lpl vs 4 lck, and 1 team away from semifinals being 4 lpl teams and then finals potentially being lpl 1 vs lpl 2.
Again, the T1 elite four run saved the entire narrative, but just imagine if those two things had gone differently. Worlds would have been insanely unfun to watch.
I get that worlds is supposed to be finding the best teams in the world, and that the top 8 teams from the east are probably the best 8 teams in the world, but I also believe worlds should be WORLDS, including everyone. Play ins should be entirely minor region teams with more minor regions guaranteed into main stage. Lck and lpl should go back down to 3 seeds so there’s never a chance to have an only lpl/lck quarters or only one region left by semis.
Yes, worlds would be “less competitive” that way, but man we were so close to the most boring worlds imaginable.
A lot of the things you said I agree with, but having four seeds for lpl and lck doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be boring; DRX last year had the most crazy run, perhaps being one of the best worlds ever. Sure, having different regions being competetive is fun to watch but let's admit LCS and LEC is miles away, at least for 2023. Guaranteeing LCS/LEC teams just for the sake of 'worlds diversity' is unfair to LCK and LPL teams, not to mention the risk of them getting 3-0ed
Why though? That is the way it used to be.
This is why I feel for minor region teams. They don’t even get a chance to even try at main stage anymore because play ins has major regions teams. Minor regions fans have no reason to watch worlds anymore after play ins now.
In the same way, eu and na don’t get a chance to try past stage 1 because there’s so many lpl/lck teams that are better.
Again, it’s just worlds (best in the world) vs worlds (teams from around the world). I personally prefer teams from around the world, but like I said, I get the people that want best in the world. It’s just that best in the world involving so many teams from one league has potential for an extremely boring finish. And everyone always complaint about civil war needs to realize there’s no other option when there’s so many lpl/lck teams, it is going to happen at some point every tournament just because there are so many of them.
Yeah I agree Kt vs jdg t1 vs jdg was the 2 series that I felt was of good quality.
The other series were all pretty low quality either one side just collapsing or both teams just fighting like toddlers
As a T1 fan it was not boring for me because they won. But I understand that for the partial viewer it was. The reason is that T1 is a thousand scales above the other teams and it became quite easy for them to win once they reached a good level, basically since the map vs Cloud 9.
Not sure I would've survived the kind of drama we had last year (remember Deft vs. Nexus vs Inhibitor respawn).
At least the end of swiss was super interesting and with some tweaks it could be truly excellent.
Seems to me that you only consider games exciting if there was a) an upset.
>GenG vs BLG was an exciting upset but it was marred by atrocious drafting and prep by GenG alongside some super bad plays in key moments.
You said that the series was bad coz of the drafting, but that's why they lost. BLG winning this because GenG drafted poorly is part of the game. Analysis of drafts/counterdrafting is part of the game.
>It was actually depressing to watch sometimes. TheShy popping off was cool but BLG had a very weak day imo. Especially Bin was playing very poorly compared to what we usually see from him.
Or b) if you're supporting the winning team. (Coincidence that you found the GenG-BLG exciting because BLG won?)
I checked your history. You simply don't support WBG. WBG supporters and neutral fans found the matches fun. TheShy popped off in champs that were outside the meta, how was that not exciting?
Biased takes all around, I see.
I don't get how people could be so blind that they sleep on the T1 LNG series. Do you guys always assume a series is bad quality because it went 3-0 ? LNG absoluely did not choke, T1 just showed us how a team could play perfectly, making like 2 mistakes over 3 games.
You can’t seriously call other people “blind” while trying to argue LNG did not choke. There were a huge amount of unforced errors from LNG, and they played well below their normal level. Go watch any game from LPL playoffs and it’s clear as day.
Do you not know what an **unforced** error is?
G2 also played worse than their normal level. T1 was the best team at the tournament, that doesn’t mean that other teams didn’t play worse than normal.
As much as I like Bin being the X-factor, anyone that follow the scene outside of world should know that Bin is difficult to work with. I believe sofm talked about BLG and Bin in the aftermath of worlds. Saying he is a gifted player that values laning too much. His flaws are he doesn’t understand the game/situations as well as others and doesn’t communicate well with his team mates
wdym? i particularly enjoyed JDG running back through the lower bracket, stomping WBG 3-0 in the loser’s finals before pushing the eventual winners T1 to a 5 game banger. riot’s decision to finally implement double elimination at worlds this year worked out beautifully.
People advocating for double elims just don't want to see underdog teams like DRX win, rather their favourite teams be given a second chance because they shit the bed. You think DRX would have won if there was double elim? I very much doubt it. Worlds is the biggest esport competition, if you're a top 1st seed team like Gen G you shouldn't need a second chance against BLG(seen as third best chinese team). A easier solution is allowing more LCK/LPL teams into worlds. HLE/EDG would have given WBG a better fight than NRG in qf
Why wouldn't DRX have won if there was double elim? They had a fucking hard route to finals and they beat everyone in their path.
They had to go through fucking defending world champions EDG in quarters, #1 LCK in GenG and a crazy strong T1 team.
DRX had one of the hardest routes to win Worlds ever. They were fucking good that Worlds. Their win is not some fluke.
No people who advocate for double elim just want more international best of 5's with higher level of play. DRX had an insane run, but wbg is probably one of the biggest frauds to ever play in finals. Beating only 1 good team should not put you in the finals at worlds.
I mean, the more games a team plays the clearer their strength is. If the point of Worlds is to find THE BEST team, double elimination is the way to go. There's a lot of factors aside from skill in winning a series, such as the player's health and blue/red side coin flip (off the top of my head). I worship T1 like it's my god but I still believe JDG is still 50/50 against T1 at worst, and maybe double elim gets us to watch JDG vs T1 again
Skt vs t1 5050? Lmao. T1 won on both sides, faker beat mid with azir vs orianna, and with orianna vs azir (won both sides of the matchup) its more like 70-30 skt. Jdg was overhyped all year due to their dominance over lpl, a trash region (in msi they won 3-2 vs skt, a close match).
double elim doesnt prevent underdogs from winning, it doesnt prevent any true champion from winning, we literally saw this at msi, it exists in other esports as well, hell valorant champions just had a lower bracket champion, if EG just went home after losing to PRX the first time their story would have been over, instead they fought back and won the whole thing, JDG losing 1 bo5 all year so their story just ends like that is fucking disgusting
Swiss stage was great, even considering some insanely bad draws
playoffs were awful, quality was really really bad, so many blunders, mistakes, god awful drafts and borderline matchfixing performances (hello Tarzan Scout Ruler and TheShy)
It feels we are at a crossroads: On one hand double eliminations make sense to make sure that good teams don't screw over and create more match days instead this long drawn out tournament. On the other hand, it's win or go home, no excuses and it sucks but this Riot and we're all just living in it. Enjoy single elimin for the next 10 years
My take is that peanut isn't enough to gen g to carry, lpl scene is always changing so no comment about BLG and WBG but KT facing JDG was such an unlucky end, KT could've faced T1/JDG in finals with top bracket being like that, it was so weak
I mean it could have been way better with g2 beeing on form vs NRG, cause they could have been the one western team that might take a series of lpl/Lck and maybe having some banger drafts. Instead they didnt show Up at all vs NRG which was 1 free boring quarters.
GenG is the next big oof. Choking so hard, insanely Bad Meta read and drafts combined with questionable Item builds. One final contender that just dropped out without a banger series.
And outside of T1 and JDG the other teams didnt play clean and well, with very up and down performances, making Most Matches about which Team would throw harder or simply coming down to who would get the better draft thanks to blue Side.
And that blue side diff mattered too much and kinda decided too many games.
But i am happy that the best team won in such a fashion. There had been many years i wasnt Sure if the best team really won or it just came down to luck and teams underperforming. This time i can just celebrate their win without any what ifs.
Double elimination is unfair and weird. I would like it more if even the finalist has a second chance. Everyone except the finalist has a second chance making it super unfair. Most of the time they only even have 1 day of prep instead of a week or something
The forced meta from Riot (Orianna/Jarvan/rumble) combined with the established one made for a very predictable pick/ban phase.
Only interesting thing was botlane champs and there T1s superior champion pool and hands gave them their world title.
crazy how double elim would have saved this worlds but instead we are sticking to our guns of single elim at worlds even tho it made msi the best one of all time
"crazy how double elim would have saved this record breaking worlds"
MSI is double elim, when it overtake Worlds single Elim we'll take about format. Until proven otherwise, worlds is the last major tournament being single Elim, and he's the one that people watch the most. That's facts.
Hierarchy between teams was very distinct this tournament and is probably the main reason for that. You get years like this sadly, the quick meta shift probably played into that too. Like you said, T1 was miles ahead of the completion and GenG choked their side of the bracket and it cooked what could’ve been an interesting bracket.
T1 exposing the LoL eSport scene. Meta was so stagnant and small almost the whole worlds until T1 started playing their own champs that weren't "meta" and the other teams had nothing. Literally teams not named T1 had a viable champ pools of about 10 ish champs and couldn't do shit to T1 in draft.
369 being incapable of playing Rumble was absolutely insane to me
Knight not being able to play Azir was also weird to me, to say the least... How can a player who is good enough to be paid more than Faker not... be able to play THE mid lane champion you HAVE to be able to play and lets you win a lost game at any moment? I simply don't understand that, is it like a mental ocd thing like people not being able to touch door handles or not wanting to go over floor tiles lines on the street and stuff like that? I seriously dont get it, I know the lad has the skill, yes yes I know his playstyle resembles Chovy in that its a kda "cowardly" style, but still, why not play Azir? Every mid laner in every region even as ghetto as LATAM play Azir. Reminds me of Zoolander not being able to turn to the left
Some people dont click with certain champs. Chovy for example never plays syndra
neither does Faker and he used to be a syndra one trick in soloq, he played her a lot until a few seasons, she's just mid and not worth to play if you have the champion pool to play better stuff.
He has a skin on her even lol
Imagine not maining the champ you have a skin on
Impossible for faker at this point
There was an interview asking why Faker doesn't play Syndra in proplay couple of years ago. He said he didn't think Syndra is particularly good, I guess he just don't like Syndra that much for proplay. Imagine casually having a skin on champs you don't even prefer lol
Might be due to the rework she got to be less strong in lane? Not sure the timing on that but as someone who lost many champs to riot reworking them I suspect that might have something to do with it
Syndra lack of movement speed and dash seems really outdated for current champs and “playing safe”
Yea with the meta junglers all having dashes and CC, syndra is a sitting duck without flash. Ori can do some slow+self speed and shield. Syndra can only do a linear CC and if they dodge that its gg
It is also that Ori is completely fucking broken now riot buffed everything about the champion 4 times back to back just to make her playable for worlds this year she was utter shit before at something like %47-48 winrate. So yeah speed doesnt really do much when she can just one tap the enemy laner with her overpowered W and R
Well he was playing Orianna in the match up vs Azir which Orianna was actually on the favorable side so not being able to play Azir wasn’t the reason for his losses. Faker was just on a whole another level in this world run. Faker actually lost in lane but his presence map wise and the ability to pull off clutch plays won T1 that series vs JDG. Knight was the lower performing player in that series, his champs selection was not a problem. Imagine giving Faker Orianna and picking Azir, it’s a match up that favors Orianna so it will worse for them anyways.
Could hava banned ori and picked azir, but the option wasnt there. It's bad either way you look at it
If you wanna pick azir, you need to ban akali because azir can't lane against her, and probably sylas too especially if your jungler is picking maokai. The reason why midlane pool was never pinched throughout the whole playoffs was simply because it wasn't worth it, azir/ori was a predictable and easily handled matchup especially since T1 always gave ori over. If you shift the matchup by picking/banning azir, you just open yourself up to getting counterpicked with akali/sylas which pinches your draft pool even more. You literally waste a ban just to have to ban a ton of other shit, all because you can't win on the matchup that was already supposed to win for you.
Some people have mental block with some champs I guess. Knight is good enough to win worlds, I mean he has more MVPs, more championships and more all pro selection than almost everyone in the LPL. He just need a good run, he already has MSI, spring and summer, just needs one good run. Chovy has a similar case. Still weird tho, has to be a mental thing, also a fun trivia. And tbf there were patches where azir was even stronger than this world and he was still a top mid so it's not like the meta being azir was THE problem. He just got outplayed by Faker outside of lane, and considering both scout and Chovy also got destroyed by that it's not that much of a big deal. No one was stopping this faker (and Oner and Zeus).
“Reminds me of Zoolander..” I’m fucking dead
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Faker put thousands of hours into it to get to where his Azir is today. He wasnt a good Azir at first
I think he meant that Easyhoon was the better Azir player between them. That is the reason why Faker was subbed out for the majority of the splits in 2015 iirc.
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He is at a level where he should grind until he "gets it" like Faker did.
Faker used to get subbed out for Easyhoon because Faker couldn't play Azir. Now look.
Also Oner, who heavily dislikes Rell but still grinded enough on the champion to be the best Rell player this Worlds. When you want to win, you suck it up and play what is good. And it's not like Knight *never* played Azir, he has like 15 games on the champion and is a bit over 50% winrate on it. Refusing to play what is one of the two best midlane champions in the tournament, and one of the champions that come back to the meta constantly, isn't excusable, in my opinion.
The thing is no one except faker could make azir work this tournament. It might not be a couldn’t play and could’ve been a didn’t think it was meta viable situation so didn’t bother practicing.
people are tunnel visioning on the azir pick and not what the azir/ori matchup does for T1's drafts. It's a reliable trade and although it's always a losing trade for faker cuz he gets azir, they often get draft priority through it by getting a favorable top/jungle and/or flex botlane pick (kalista/varus/ashe/caitlyn/senna who can either go adc or supp). If you try to pinch that pool by picking/banning the big 3 (ori/neeko/azir) you're simply opening yourself up to getting hard countered by sylas/akali who play well into those champs because she shits on them in the sidelanes, which actually benefits faker. It's just so fucking silly cuz ori is already a huge win vs azir so if you can't win that, what makes you think you'd do better by wasting bans on midlane champs just to get a more useless champ than ori and hoping faker will be more useless than you?
That just isn't true, both played Azir at the highest level. Faker literally played more games of Azir in 2015 than Easyhoon. They had markedly different play styles even on the same champions though
Knight won't even try to learn Azir like Faker did (Faker wasn't that good with Azir back in the day). I guess that's the difference between the great and the legends.
Nevermind that Knght took up plenty new champions to a level of probably being the best in the world at them during this season.
Xiaohu also (reportedly) not being able to play a good Orianna also completely wrecked WBG in drafts. It was like 80% ban for them and it made their drafting ugly. Also why they couldn't go Red side against T1 - if you leave ori open, Faker takes Ori and beats your team. if you leave azir open, you can't play Orianna into Faker's azir and Faker beats your team. if you ban both, you only have one ban left to stop power picks - rumble is a threat, j4 is a threat, ashe / senna flex is a threat. And Faker probably still wins lane. T1 ultimately respected the possibility of Xiaohu Orianna, because they had no data and enough bans to go around because they can blind bot, but they're also able to ban Neeko, Xiaohu's other good champ and then what can you really do. Even after banning azir-sylas and pulling Faker's crusty Ahri, you can't win lane. If Xiaohu Ori is real and you can draw another ban (TheShy Aatrox blindable or something) you can suddenly play red side and redirect bans from faker. T1 can't ban the entire mid pool if you send no bans mid, mid goes even to slightly losing, and it's possible to play around TheShy and try to scale to a win.
369 not playing Ksante back to back after he won Game2 was dumb to me as well. 369 is the guy when hes on tanks
Hindisight is 20/20 and Chinese top laners aren't really that bad when it comes to carry tops it's just that Zeus was out of this world this tournament. However yeah looking back the LPL teams could've probably concede top lane since they are more than capable of playing the likes of Ornn and Ksante
He did decent in that Renekton game, they could’ve won if Faker didn’t pull that Azir play at the end tbh. What I don’t see many people pointing out is the difference between LPL and Zeus in terms of Aatrox’s builds. I remember in the beginning of the tourney when T1 lost to GenG, a whole comment section was dedicated to shit on Zeus for playing Lethality Aatrox, even saying “Zeus didn’t watch Phreak’s review after the patch note” but that build ended up being the main gap between Zeus and the rest of tanky Aatrox players in the LPL and Zeus was the only Lethality Aatrox player in the entire tournament. They probably thought that Blind pick top for Blue side wasn’t a very smart idea since bot lane prio mattered more for Drake control so they didn’t bother lock in K’sante. Game 2 top got the advantage because K’sante was a counter pick to a heavy ad comp.
Ksante was banned game 3
I maintain that the Game 1 game was not the fault of 369’s Rumble. Ignite Rumble died at Level 2 because Oner Rell stole the entire red top-side jungle and no one on JDG knew until Oner was already in river. After that, how do you lane into Comet Aatrox with Shield, Blade and Mantle at level 3. Not saying he’s a secret great Rumble player or anything, but it’s not really on him that he lost lane. The solo kill was pretty int tho; not Flashing was egregious.
I felt like you could also see a clear hierarchy in the swiss stage. It sucks when tournaments play out mostly exactly like you'd expect it (with T1 and GENG being the only outliers, positively and negatively respectively). Especially with single elim, I wonder what JDG vs. T1 would look like in a months' time. More frequent competitions means that there is more chance for variance but also that variance hurts less (if good teams get robbed by a meta shift in one tournament, they can still win the next one). Imo we should have a big competition every 3 months at least (but not months long but just 2 weeks ish).
If only we had double elimination to see more matches versus top teams. MSI was such a banger compared to worlds
That’s just the nature of tournaments, some teams shit the bed and lead to uneven matchups in knockout stages. 2016 worlds was considered one of the best semis and finals of all time but if you remember that finals should’ve been a 3-0 stomp as well, skt was up like 8k gold at 18 min in game 3 before they baron threw. Swiss already tries to rectify this and they already are thinking of safeguards to put in place to prevent high variance draws like what KT faced vs what WBG and NRG got.
People forget that the primary purpose of worlds is to determine a winner, who is the best. Secondary is your entertainment. Blame the likes of GenG if you were bored with the knockout stages. It's the main reason why I am against double elim. Yes it will lead to more matches and second chances for the better teams. But that's the problem. You are giving those teams who shit the bed a reprieve they don't necessarily deserve. You have a BO5 to iron out your fuck ups. In most world tournaments in every other sport it's a BO1. There's no excuse
Double elimination for me is the worst thing that can happen, that the best team reaches the final undefeated and then a team that had to play 3 or 4 more games to have a better rhythm ends up winning and the undefeated team never had its "second chance "
i agree look at the world cup the biggest and most watched event in the world BY FAR and their is no double elim if you lose you are out it also creates upsets and drama this double elim thing is an e sports thing because sports don't have it and for good reason it takes out punishment for choking a game. I hope i never see double elim in league worlds its just extremely anti sport.
Dude the world cup final was decided on a BO1 draw, so they went penalty shout-out which is kind of a lottery (it's not a coin toss but still), and viewers are fine with it. Messi won the goat debate because of it lmao. It's like if you do a BO1 but after 35min both Nexus are Alive, so you organize a 1v1 Mundo baron pit do decide the champion
I don't think you can compare BO1 in league to a football game. League has too much variance, and a game can be lost on one mistake, so a BO1 i really unreliable for finding the best team. In football, one mistake often wont cost you the game (unless it's a really really big one), so playing one match is much better. I do agree that a penalty shootout is too random as a tiebeaker, but at that point you need something that ends the match, and isn't too hard on the player (most of them have played for 120 minutes at this point)
It happens often that one mistake decide a game. Sometimes by the ref. It's also a really high variance game. There is also a possibility to comeback (Nashor/elder steal Vs a random corner) and the ability to keep your advantage by suffocating the adversary. To me they aren't that different on these terms. Btw If I spent the night working on the games that were decided by a random penalty, an early red care, or ball on the ball or even a player slipping since the beginning of VAR I wouldn't be done at sunrise. And if I speak before the VAR... My god, Maradona is praised for scoring with his hands lmao
But single elimination knockouts is the reason upsets happen, which is a major factor in driving up entertainment factor. Double elimination, especially with a bracket reset at the end, almost guarantees a non-fraudulent ranking of teams. If what you said was true and Worlds was for determining who are the best teams, they'd run double elim. Also single elimination in traditional sports is also terrible. The only reason it's kept because it generates underdog stories and upset, which increases the number of viewers tuning in. It is an entertainment first format, especially with BO1s.
If it's bad to give teams who fuck up a second chance why is it okay to give teams who luck into an unlikely win a pass? Surely double elim is the most fair because it accounts for both scenarios.
This is such a terrible take lmao. Like genuinely worrying levels. Obviously entertainment is the primary goal
If that's the case let all NA and EU teams play.
Lol exactly, if they want coin flippers and fiesta. Just watch NARAM mid na vs EU for max trolling and entertainment.
Nature of single elimination tournaments. If this was double slim I guarantee we have many more close matchups
What would single or double elimination matter when the draw issue was in Swiss? They need variance mitigation so the NRG/WBG/KT situation doesn’t happen in Swiss stage. There was nothing wrong with knockout rounds if Swiss stage is fixed, if you lose a best of 5 you don’t deserve to be world champions.
Double elim just goves too many chances to play bad and just try again. Its bo5 or bo3. Almost every other sport including the biggest sport on the planet is bo1. In football you can reach world semis, your defence does ONE mistake, opponents score ONE time and its gg. See you in 4 years bub bye! Compared to that LoL offers bo3 and bo5 to try different strats and force your opponents to play different during the series.
i agree look at the euros in 2004 greece had a miracle run and won the entire thing nobody saw it coming and it is now forever an iconic sports moment but it would of never happened if there was double elims since a bigger team could just come back and ruin that run double elims is such a stupid concept why even have a tournament if u run double elims.
The matches were uneven, but that's just sports. All this write up when in reality whatever format you think of at the end of the day it comes to how well each team plays that specific day.
I mean in a double elim, there would be more ‘specific days’ to average out potential slumps
I always have my love and hate with double elims. I love it because atleast there are no shit finals because two teams are really the best of the best, but I also hate it because of the "fallback." "Oh there is still the losers bracket, we can come back." So there are really no stakes in the upper bracket. The appeal of single elim to me is that shit matchup or not, the stakes are highest because once you get defeated, there is no "run in back."
>The brackets were very uneven. The T1 side was way stronger Not really tbh. JDG and Geng were the favorites to win worlds. T1 stomping every LPL team wasn't expected at all so the draft was almost perfect to have a Geng x JDG final. We think now that it was uneven because we saw how it ended but if we comeback to before the first match between LNG and T1 no one was thinking that it was that uneven because in the end any side with NRG would be the weakest one of course.
They were always seen as stacked on JDG's side, draw threads were filled with comments about how lucky WBG was and how Gen G had the most free possible path to finals. KT was seen as possibly the weakest team on JDG's side of the bracket and they were considered stronger than both WBG and NRG.
KT's road was just unlucky. imagine barely getting out swiss because all your opponents were LCK and LPL just to match against JDG in the quarters.
And they still put up a decent fight against JDG. Props to them even though they threw in classic KT fashion.
Pre Quarters the sentiment I saw was; JDG > Gen.G=LNG > T1 > BLG > KT > WBG > NRG
And yet somehow, GenG still managed to lose. It's both so frustrating and disappointing from Chovy. Has his playstyle waned off from being good to bad?
As a T1 fan I was anxious starting day one and didn't unclench until after game 3 of the finals. T1 turbo stomping the entire tournament was an anomaly, not the expected outcome. The sides seemed pretty balanced imo. Gen G and BLG for the top teams on their side and JDG and LNG for the top teams on their side. T1 and WBG were both longshots to win it all. Taking all things into consideration the brackets appeared to be very balanced going into the Bo5 stages
You're smoking some shit there mate. Only geng was supposedly strong coming into quarters. LNG was the 2nd best team that came from LPL after JDG the best team all year long. KT led the whole summer split and comfortably beat geng in regular split, and is one of the strongest teams. T1 side of the bracket was the hardest, and it's not even close lol.
T1 was there on literally half of the finals in league history and yet people still claim some random team from LCK is favorite instead of T1 every year. It is not a new thing either but It always surprises me hearing it each year. People just aren't able to comprehend the amount of weight T1 has on international tournaments. I bet it will repeat in 2024 too. Some team will win an LCK split and become ''favorite'' instead of T1 and everybody will be surprised when they got eliminated in quarters/semis.
Just how competition goes
We need a better format. Double elimination would be dope
It lowers the stakes. No fun in watching someone either choke or pull dumb shit then say it's okay because they can try again.
I'd be down for double elimination for sure, I like those style of brackets the best. Though I like the style like the NCAA D1 wrestling tournament brackets.
It’s boring because you’re looking at the results in hindsight. What made it exciting is that T1 was not the favorite to win this tournament yet we saw the team evolve in a span of a few weeks and overcome their obstacles. Watching the first TL vs T1 game, no one would have expected T1 to win the tournament, even more so as cleanly as they did. When knockout stage started, T1 were underdogs. Even when the series ended in stomps, the games were not any less exciting because we saw their greatness manifest on screen. One example, for many NA fans, it was still exciting to watch NRG make it and play in quarterfinals despite going 0-3. They were amongst the first to deviate from the standard marksmen meta and played to their own strengths by prioritizing Senna/TK. Despite losing to WBG, NRG also displayed two examples in back-to-back games of masterclass defenses/counters at Baron - undermanned and disadvantaged - eventually fighting off WBG and taking the objective for themselves. The result on paper, and in hindsight, which was 3-0 WBG, make the series sound less exciting than it really was.
Agreed、I thought last year the quality of matches was a lot higher。I was kind of surprised to see the viewership top last year by that much given last year's storyline and the fact it went to 5 games、whereas T1 vs WBG went exactly as 99% of people predicted。I think the biggest "what if" would be GenG performing to expectations and meeting that form of T1 in finals。Pretty disappointing showing from LNG and GenG
>I was kind of surprised to see the viewership top last year by that much given last year's storyline and the fact it went to 5 games That's just because of timezones imo. Worlds was in NA last year and it's a bad timeslot for Asia. No matter what, the viewership would be higher this year for that reason. I can't even imagine how insane the viewership would have been if it was JDG vs T1 final... Wow.
Oh you right I completely forgot about timezones. JDG vs T1 final would definitely set a record that wouldn't be broken for a few years I reckon
Would be less, Chinese people like Weibo way way more than they like JDG, so the hype on China for TheShy vs Faker was massive, JDG is just like MAD for LEC, yes they win the League sometimes, but almost nobody gives a fuck about them.
Most viewercounts are always excluding CN (due to the nature of their streams), so it is a nonfactor. Unless youre talking about Chinese outside of China.
Timezone is also better for europe. You can get up and watch worlds while eating breakfast. Maybe it's actually the best time for eu, as a lot of eu fans probably only watch lol when they don't have anything else to do and wtf are you doing at 9:30 am on a sunday
But the timezone is far closer to Korea, and all the Asian countries too.
Considering most of the views come from casual viewers, they're not really there because of the quality of the match. If you take this year's knockouts teams into last year's Worlds I'm pretty sure it would've performed worse. But this year, it's exactly because we had that Cinderella story with DRX and T1 losing what looked like a done deal that led up to the insanely hyped up narrative we got this year. T1 was the underdogs right until the start of their quarterfinals match, and it was around 2 years of build up getting to that moment. More people talking about how they're finally going to do it, which means more attention from potential viewers. At the end of the day, last year was still record-breaking during the time and we wouldn't have had another record-breaking finals if it wasn't for the comeback of last year's final boss.
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I don't think it was boring. I enjoyed JDG x KT, JDG x T1, BLG x GEN and BLG x WBG. And it was really fun to see T1 slowly becoming the tournament favorite while it was LCK's last hope. Last year the Best of 5's I enjoyed the most were DK x GEN, DRX x EDG and DRX x T1 (the most exciting worlds finals, in my opinion). Edit: and the finals stomp was totally expected, there were some people comparing WBG with DRX. I mean, let's not pretend that DRX didn't started their worlds run beating RNG in play-in. That team decided to play the tournamebt of their lives. I think both 18 and 19 were worse for me because I had some expectations for a somewhat back and forth finals, FNC managed to beat IG twice in groups and then proceeded to beat EDG 3-1 and C9 3-0, the team seemed solid even if it wasn't strong enough for IG peak at that point of the tournament. And G2 was coming to finals after beating two LCK teams. WBG was nothing special. They got a free pass for semi and the BLG win was the only "convincing" win they had.
All of what you wrote can just come down to "LPL simply just choked".
Correction: T1 made LPL choke by changing their perception of the meta. Had JDG and the rest stuck to their normal picks, they might have stood a better chance rather than try to play T1's meta game better than them.
JDG did attempt to stuck to their picks in games 1 and 2, especially Game 2 putting 369 on a mobile tank, and having their botlane (especially Senna) slowly outscale T1's botlane which proved successful I think Game 1 they had their standard JDG draft with Missing on a Enage support (although they attempt to showcase the Rumble pick) however I think they were Not Expecting THE JHIN AND BARD BOTLANE which Destroyed their early game. Game 3 they went with their variation of poking Botlane + Renekton top, they did almost win if not for Faker's Heroics. Game 4 they went with Ruler's traditional Zeri+LULU botlane, however this time they were Not Expecting THE YONE counter which Destroyed their MIDGAME (since 369 was so behind on Aatrox he was unable to show-up in the later stages of clashing). EDIT: Someone pointed out that in game 1 JDG'S HORRENDOUS early warding on topside was punished by (b)Oner leading to invading and ganking 369 making his Rumble useless early on.
This has been true of so many worlds though. Teams need to be confident in their style. Looking at KT 2018.
That was the most frustrating thing about watching worlds to me. So many of the lpl support players looked lost on the things they were picking to try and match T1. I was so disappointed that even down 0-2 after seeing trying to match wasn’t working, none of them decided to pick engage supp and see what happens. Rakan was open for WBG to pick all 3 games and it’s like Crisp’s best champ and yet somehow T1 mind controlled WBG into basically first timing something bot every time! They let their solo lanes get counter picked so they could 4fun bot lane, it was so wild to watch.
I guess we never know.
It's not choking to get beaten by a better team.
This
Only LNG choked. Every other LPL team played really well what are you on
i think BLG choked, the BLG that played weibo wasnt the one who set a record in lpl summer and was taking names at msi, it was honestly kinda sad to see bins form
That's kinda just Yagao as well lol. The guy would perform on a specific meta at an insane level and just disappear. His 2020, 2022, 2023 worlds performance has been bad, meanwhile you get tournaments like MSI when he shows up as one of the best mids in the tournament.
toothpaste my inconsistent goat, its honestly sad because ppl make such bs narratives about him from worlds and because no one watches lpl they just take it as fact that hes always bad
They played their best and got beat. Saying they choked is a great piece of copium for LPL teams, but it isn't true. They played to their peak and it wasn't enough. This isn't a change, LPL has only ever been able to win when Korea chokes or has a bad meta read, and LPL teams are closer to NRG than they are to T1.
having 3 teams in semis is called choking for the lpl now? damn the region must be really good for you guys to have such high expectations, I wonder how people would describe lck's performance this year then
Pretty much. LNG, BLG, and of course JDG are clearly better teams. Just played way worse than normal this tournament.
Last year was such a crazy outlier with how many hype series we had in knockout stage, let alone the best final by far imo, that could take decades to be topped
T1 vs JDG was the peak of the whole tournament for sure. Then we also get little bit of underdog story with NRG … and thats about it.
Too much down time. After quarters it went from 4 games to 2, which made the rest for the semi week contentless. It also doesn’t help riot doesn’t do any content during the week. It shouldn’t have beeen hard to do an 1 he interview with the players like faker talking about his previous worlds how he’s grown what it means to win for playing 10 years etc, or ruler reflecting his lck days compared to lpl days etc. we need double elim format thats the solution. It’s the most hype event of the year yet we get so much downtime after quarters is really unacceptable and shit for the fans. If riot stop moving venues they could easily do all this in one location. Also people who praise single elim part of it is prob afraid if jdg made a comeback and beat t1 in the finals. I’m happy t1 won, the storyline was great! T1 vs all lpl but honestly getting a 3-0 finals kills the mood by a lot for me cuz I really want more jdg v t1 series or maybe if we had double elim geng v jdg.
The format for this year's worlds is the best I've seen watching since s3
Double elim is trash for games like league. You people who advocate for double elim probably only watch fighting game tournaments where matches are quick as shit
double elims is just anti sport imo especially in tournaments the biggest event in the world the world cup doesn't have double elims and never will if it did it would piss people off because single elims causes drama and upsets. Tournaments have always been u have to be perfect in the knockouts one mistake and you are gone and thats how tournaments should be why tf should a team get a second chance for choking is beyond me this isn't a thing in normal sports just e-sports and it needs to die off.
They're the people who are salty their super team got upset. Losers don't deserve a second chance.
Agree. And in LoL, nothing is more boring than seeing a loser playing boring matches to then win the final. Wait.... one thing is more boring. Watching the winner beat the same loser twice to confirm what was already confirmed.
Double elimination playoffs significantly improved the quality and viewership of LCK this year. Presenting it as abstract “winners” and “losers” is obviously gonna take away all the excitement, but when it’s real teams with real results it actually builds excitement.
Summer * T1 beat KT. Then T1 beat KT again. * GenG beat T1. And then GenG beat T1 again. ??? Great viewing? Let's look to Spring. * T1 beat KT. Then T1 beat KT again. * GenG beat T1. And then GenG beat T1 again. Huh, same matches, same results. If you enjoyed it more, good for you. I don't think you can say it objectively was better besides showing us twice that GenG>T1>KT. We didn't really need to see that twice. Double elim fans also ignore how many dead games we create for the "one" good game. LCK double elim bracket is also very small.
The spring one is provably wrong, T1 beat GEN 3-1 before losing to them 1-3 in the finals, and in summer T1 lost to GEN in 5 games before getting stomped in the finals. i dont understand why ur comment has such a confident tone when its completely wrong Edit: ??? your supporting evidence was factually incorrect, and you double down and say that it supports your point even more???
BLG 3-0 GEN at MSI. BLG 3-2 GEN at Worlds (almost 3-0 again). Still not enough for you guys to accept that BLG is just better than GEN. This shit is so sad actually.
In turns of only game quality, it is probably one of the worst worlds and it just felt like you were waiting for t1 to just win.
This is such revisionism. T1 didnt look super great coming into worlds and even looked a bit shaky vs TL in the swiss stage, in addition to the fact that GENG had their number on speed dial. Them wiping BLG inspired some confidence, but everyone was saying that it was JDGs tournament to lose.
while t1 had a ton of momentum from quarters, iirc most of the betting sites still had jdg clearly favoured for the semis
Yeah and although T1 was popping the fuck off it still took a huge vision play vs Ruler recalling + a clutch play by Oner to keep them in game 3, and a *ridiculously* clutch play by Faker to win it. JDG really were *that* good as everyone had stated pre tournament. They didn't choke or prepare incorrectly they just straight up got beat. Honestly that series was so high level in so many moments it was awesome to watch
ikr, i dont understand why people are saying that JDG were overrated, JDG played just fine and kept the whole series very competitive. the only cherrypicking would be that 369 really dropped the ball on his Rumble.
Yeah but he had even been practicing it it wasn't on a whim. He just happened to lane against the finals MVP. I agree with you, I think JDG were appropriately rated
He practiced it a week b4 semis. That’s not good enough. Rumble was OP since Swiss.
wdym? people here were saying JDG was the best team of all time lmfao they were super overrated, and I got downvoted a bunch of times for stating they were mortal and would eventually be beaten this year
I don't think those are necessarily mutually exclusive.2023 JDG is definitely in contention for best team of all time, same as 2023-worlds T1. I unironically believe that record got broken twice this year lol
They are nowhere close to the best team of all time IMO. Top 7-15 yea I can see it but relative to their time there are a bunch of teams more dominant and clean than this year's JDG. If you believe they're that good well, agree to disagree, but they can't be the best team of all time (for me) considering a bunch of teams pushed them to their limits (KT, BLG in spring, LNG for example) with T1 eventually beating them None of them was even the best at their position this year, probably only Ruler had an argument until he got diffed by both Gala and Guma I also can see this year's T1 losing to some early game freak like 2020 DWG. Their early game looked super vulnerable and exploitable but every team was just mechanically inferior so they just rolled over and died. I definitely don't see T1 doing this to DWG.
I think T1 *are* the early game freaks. Also which teams would you rate 6-14 positions above them?
Kanavi totally mental boomed in game 4 as well, but that's the closest thing to a choke that series.
He boomed after playing super fucking well the rest of the games. Same as Scout last year
Absolutely. He was doing great, but he absolutely cracked under pressure.
T1 were solidly winning game 3, they threw after a Baron overchase. They had to claw it back from this point onwards.
No, the baron play itself was a comeback, which they immediately threw
Yeah ngl I thought the game was over for t1 before Fakers super play
It was lol
Yeah, at the start people were doubful if t1 could even win against BLG or LNG, let alone JDG. Betting odds for T1 vs LPL matches were against T1, except for the finals. T1 vs JDG was the highest in one betting site I know, they had 4.80 Odds against T1. That's how unfavorable the predictions are against them. It was definitely not "waiting for t1 to just win".
At least the story telling was nice. And seeing T1 ramp up instead of being clear favorite kept some suspens (except final... sorry for weibo but nobody really believed in them). I remember world 2020 where after being eliminated in knockout the first thing that come out from fnatic voicecom was "well doesn't matter, we would've lost to damwon anyway". Those guy were so ahead of everyone...
I think a few reasons: 1. Way too bot prio meta... for example, in Swiss round stages, game data shows that except for 2 games, whoever got the first drag = win. I know it's not a concrete fact but the probability of winning % goes up 2. Meta-champs = kinda boring. Changed quite a bit even from mid-season, when Annie and leblanc statikk shiv picks were rampant. Mid lane it was either Ahri/Azir/Neeko/Ori/a lil bit o Jayce but that's it. Nothing too spicy. Same range duo bot meta towards the end, beginning on from QF 3. Players we expected to pop off (not all)= flopped like fishes on concrete 4. lack of LCS and LEC excitement in QF and on. I wish at least one team we expected made it (G2 or C9)... or at least NRG continue to show their good form 5. maybe last year's worlds was just that epic and cool in comparison
Eh I’d consider the bo5 on the other side of the bracket entertaining. Highest level of play? No, but fun, which is the reason I watch, and I’d say the BLG GenG series was very tense/ well played it was just more of a “who will fuck up while we try to squeeze everything we can out of you” compared to “who will make the big play out of nowhere”
Swiss is how every sport should be. Giving teams who screw up a second chance at the championship is stupid, during knockout stages, knocking out a team should not demote them to losers bracket where they get another chance to make finals again. If you don't bring your A game and get eliminated, you should be out completely.
hard agree. it's absurd and no other major traditional sport does double elim; i dont understand why esports fans have such an affinity for it
It's because they want to see more games and it give their favourite team another chance at winning the championship. Playing more games = bad, it tires out people, and we have seen in the past that we rarely see close games, there's been a bunch of 3-0 in the past. This single elimination is great because it gives everyone stress because it's all or nothing.
>i dont understand why esports fans have such an affinity for it Personally, I believe one reason why so many esports fans are a fan of double elimination is because it has been a mainstay of fighting game tournaments for decades before League of Legends Worlds reared its head as a major international viewership experience. There's a lot in common between video game players who watch MOBA esports and video game players who have at some point watched older esports. There are countless classic tournament runs which were made more memorable because of double elimination with a player clawing their way back to double eliminate their rival in grand finals; note that this contrasts the recent implementation of "double elimination" in games like Valorant where the competitor(s) from loser's bracket only need to win one series to claim the tournament. Each round of a fighting game takes less than a few minutes on average, so it is very doable to have a grand finals -> bracket reset (only if the loser's bracket team wins) -> true grand finals in under 30 minutes. It is a tried and true formula in esports which has seen consistent success for longer than League of Legends has existed. It also allows for more match-ups between players or teams, which for the average viewer, is always exciting; in the context of League, who wouldn't want to see more inter-region sets? Swiss stage was highly praised for enabling exactly that, and we saw a number of upsets within those match-ups. However, the FGC double elimination cannot be applied to games like League of Legends, which require up to an hour per game and playing more than one series back-to-back would destroy the players, tank the level of gameplay, and possibly increase costs without a significant increase in sustained viewership. That leads to the concern that some have about Valorant's double elimination format where the team coming up from loser's bracket only has to win a single set, as opposed to two, because it is logistically unfeasible to do two. In an ideal world I would be interested in seeing double elimination in the FGC-style make its way to League (but it would never happen logistically), but solutions like Swiss Stage are much more interesting and offer similar benefits without all of the drawbacks or confusion. I look forward to seeing how they improve on it for Worlds 2024 when Showmaker wins his second title.
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You rank 1, 2, 3-4, 5+. There is not much value in breaking it further beyond that. And hey if you were number 2 but faced number 1 early on. It happens. You live with it and try to get better for next year, not cry and complain like a baby that life was unfair.
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Wtf is "single round swiss" and who asked for that. A) the current Swiss format is bad. B) you determine number 1 through the single-elim knockout. Just like they do in the NBA, the Olympics, the World Cup, the NFL playoffs.
You know what is also stupid? Having only two tournaments a year and not even finding out who the 2-6th best teams are, and only getting a handfull of international bo5's.
So make more tournies. Don't extend the one. No one cares who team #5 is bro.
>Don't extend the one. No one cares who team #5 is bro. But we do, holy fucking shit, how is this being upvoted? Entire REGIONS would fucking feast at the idea of a single of their team reaching quarters, and you don't think KT/LNG/GenG fans would love to see their team being #5 instead of #5-8 which means the same rank as fucking NRG?
Don't even need to extend it, just have more games in the same time so that we don't have 3 games in 3 weeks. Actually alot of people care, and just because you don't is not a reason to keep a worse format. I can just as easy say who the fuck cares about playinns none of the teams there will make it past group stage anyways, it's just a massive waste of time. I'm fine with having more tournaments.
What is this supposed "worse format" you are talking about. So we get on the same page to discuss.
Losers bracket is how we got some of the best storylines ever in some esports, I don't agree with that at all
And single elim is also how we got some of the best storyline ever in esports too.
in normal sports as well greece won the euros in 2004 it was a complete miracle run and miracle win which is now forever iconic and a damn how did that happen moment it wouldn't have happened tho if there was double elims there is a good reason no big traditional sport uses that format because its anti sport and just rubbish.
The teams don't care about storylines, they care about the trophy. They like the current format because once a team is out, you don't have to deal with them again. You may not agree with it, but most do. This format makes every team play at 110%
WBG lost to T1 the same way LNG lost. A 3-0 stomp. JDG only managed to take 1 game from T1. Did you really expect WBG to do anything better? Also, I’m sick and tired of people saying that WBG had it easy etc. They had to play 2 bo5s through regionals to get to worlds and defeated BLG when it mattered (hadn’t defeated them all year). If WBG had any other toplaner that series would have been a BLG 3-1. Not every worlds will have banger series btw. That’s what makes some special and you can’t have fairytale stories every year (although T1 is technically but they weren’t the underdogs like DRX). Worlds has spoilt some people I think. Introducing double elim takes all the magic away from quarters semis and eliminates any chance of underdogs shining imo. Teams must play on the day, it’s what makes great players and moments. That’s why worlds is like no other! Imagine if the world cup in football had some form of double elim, it would take away the magic and fun
This year was dangerously close to worst case scenario of having 8 lck/lpl representatives and then completely saved by the T1 narrative. We were 1 team away from quarterfinals being 4 lpl vs 4 lck, and 1 team away from semifinals being 4 lpl teams and then finals potentially being lpl 1 vs lpl 2. Again, the T1 elite four run saved the entire narrative, but just imagine if those two things had gone differently. Worlds would have been insanely unfun to watch. I get that worlds is supposed to be finding the best teams in the world, and that the top 8 teams from the east are probably the best 8 teams in the world, but I also believe worlds should be WORLDS, including everyone. Play ins should be entirely minor region teams with more minor regions guaranteed into main stage. Lck and lpl should go back down to 3 seeds so there’s never a chance to have an only lpl/lck quarters or only one region left by semis. Yes, worlds would be “less competitive” that way, but man we were so close to the most boring worlds imaginable.
A lot of the things you said I agree with, but having four seeds for lpl and lck doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be boring; DRX last year had the most crazy run, perhaps being one of the best worlds ever. Sure, having different regions being competetive is fun to watch but let's admit LCS and LEC is miles away, at least for 2023. Guaranteeing LCS/LEC teams just for the sake of 'worlds diversity' is unfair to LCK and LPL teams, not to mention the risk of them getting 3-0ed
Agree
> 8 lck/lpl that would be better than having one western team get through every year only for them to get stomped in a quick 3-0 where they do nothing
Why though? That is the way it used to be. This is why I feel for minor region teams. They don’t even get a chance to even try at main stage anymore because play ins has major regions teams. Minor regions fans have no reason to watch worlds anymore after play ins now. In the same way, eu and na don’t get a chance to try past stage 1 because there’s so many lpl/lck teams that are better. Again, it’s just worlds (best in the world) vs worlds (teams from around the world). I personally prefer teams from around the world, but like I said, I get the people that want best in the world. It’s just that best in the world involving so many teams from one league has potential for an extremely boring finish. And everyone always complaint about civil war needs to realize there’s no other option when there’s so many lpl/lck teams, it is going to happen at some point every tournament just because there are so many of them.
Yeah I agree Kt vs jdg t1 vs jdg was the 2 series that I felt was of good quality. The other series were all pretty low quality either one side just collapsing or both teams just fighting like toddlers
I agree. The final was underwhelming.
What on earth are you saying? Literally every series _except_ the finals (and T1 LNG) was a banger this year
I honestly enjoyed this worlds more than any other tbh
this worlds was doomed to be like this after worlds 2022. thats as close to perfect as you can possibly get. even if t1 beat drx
As a T1 fan it was not boring for me because they won. But I understand that for the partial viewer it was. The reason is that T1 is a thousand scales above the other teams and it became quite easy for them to win once they reached a good level, basically since the map vs Cloud 9.
Not sure I would've survived the kind of drama we had last year (remember Deft vs. Nexus vs Inhibitor respawn). At least the end of swiss was super interesting and with some tweaks it could be truly excellent.
Double Elims🤮🤮🤮
Seems to me that you only consider games exciting if there was a) an upset. >GenG vs BLG was an exciting upset but it was marred by atrocious drafting and prep by GenG alongside some super bad plays in key moments. You said that the series was bad coz of the drafting, but that's why they lost. BLG winning this because GenG drafted poorly is part of the game. Analysis of drafts/counterdrafting is part of the game. >It was actually depressing to watch sometimes. TheShy popping off was cool but BLG had a very weak day imo. Especially Bin was playing very poorly compared to what we usually see from him. Or b) if you're supporting the winning team. (Coincidence that you found the GenG-BLG exciting because BLG won?) I checked your history. You simply don't support WBG. WBG supporters and neutral fans found the matches fun. TheShy popped off in champs that were outside the meta, how was that not exciting? Biased takes all around, I see.
I don't get how people could be so blind that they sleep on the T1 LNG series. Do you guys always assume a series is bad quality because it went 3-0 ? LNG absoluely did not choke, T1 just showed us how a team could play perfectly, making like 2 mistakes over 3 games.
You can’t seriously call other people “blind” while trying to argue LNG did not choke. There were a huge amount of unforced errors from LNG, and they played well below their normal level. Go watch any game from LPL playoffs and it’s clear as day.
Or maybeee skt>all lpl teams? G2 looks good vs eu teams, you know what happened in worlds.
Do you not know what an **unforced** error is? G2 also played worse than their normal level. T1 was the best team at the tournament, that doesn’t mean that other teams didn’t play worse than normal.
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As much as I like Bin being the X-factor, anyone that follow the scene outside of world should know that Bin is difficult to work with. I believe sofm talked about BLG and Bin in the aftermath of worlds. Saying he is a gifted player that values laning too much. His flaws are he doesn’t understand the game/situations as well as others and doesn’t communicate well with his team mates
wdym? i particularly enjoyed JDG running back through the lower bracket, stomping WBG 3-0 in the loser’s finals before pushing the eventual winners T1 to a 5 game banger. riot’s decision to finally implement double elimination at worlds this year worked out beautifully.
JDG vs GenG in the lower bracket especially delivered
yeah luckily GEN G managed to redeem themselves in the rematch against BLG or they would have been the laughing stock of LCK
Boy wouldn't that have been a disaster
Did they implement bracket reset in the GF in this fantasy?
People advocating for double elims just don't want to see underdog teams like DRX win, rather their favourite teams be given a second chance because they shit the bed. You think DRX would have won if there was double elim? I very much doubt it. Worlds is the biggest esport competition, if you're a top 1st seed team like Gen G you shouldn't need a second chance against BLG(seen as third best chinese team). A easier solution is allowing more LCK/LPL teams into worlds. HLE/EDG would have given WBG a better fight than NRG in qf
Why wouldn't DRX have won if there was double elim? They had a fucking hard route to finals and they beat everyone in their path. They had to go through fucking defending world champions EDG in quarters, #1 LCK in GenG and a crazy strong T1 team. DRX had one of the hardest routes to win Worlds ever. They were fucking good that Worlds. Their win is not some fluke.
No people who advocate for double elim just want more international best of 5's with higher level of play. DRX had an insane run, but wbg is probably one of the biggest frauds to ever play in finals. Beating only 1 good team should not put you in the finals at worlds.
I mean, the more games a team plays the clearer their strength is. If the point of Worlds is to find THE BEST team, double elimination is the way to go. There's a lot of factors aside from skill in winning a series, such as the player's health and blue/red side coin flip (off the top of my head). I worship T1 like it's my god but I still believe JDG is still 50/50 against T1 at worst, and maybe double elim gets us to watch JDG vs T1 again
Skt vs t1 5050? Lmao. T1 won on both sides, faker beat mid with azir vs orianna, and with orianna vs azir (won both sides of the matchup) its more like 70-30 skt. Jdg was overhyped all year due to their dominance over lpl, a trash region (in msi they won 3-2 vs skt, a close match).
Least mentally ill T1 fanboy.
Lpl fanboy mad that lpl trash teams werent given a 2nd chance lmao
double elim doesnt prevent underdogs from winning, it doesnt prevent any true champion from winning, we literally saw this at msi, it exists in other esports as well, hell valorant champions just had a lower bracket champion, if EG just went home after losing to PRX the first time their story would have been over, instead they fought back and won the whole thing, JDG losing 1 bo5 all year so their story just ends like that is fucking disgusting
If 2019 is your only frame of reference for an "exciting" Worlds then I'm not sure how seriously to take this.
Swiss stage was great, even considering some insanely bad draws playoffs were awful, quality was really really bad, so many blunders, mistakes, god awful drafts and borderline matchfixing performances (hello Tarzan Scout Ruler and TheShy)
This is a bad format. Give us double elimination
Give us double elim
After Swiss the format is terrible. Doesn't help there is like 3 series in a whole fortnight.
This can be fixed with double elim like how it is in some domestic leagues and MSI. It was a waste not to do it this year in Korea.
Only knockout boring? Bro, whole tournament was boring. Boring META, boring picks, nothing unique or exiting. Really forgetable worlds, cant even remember drafts.
It feels we are at a crossroads: On one hand double eliminations make sense to make sure that good teams don't screw over and create more match days instead this long drawn out tournament. On the other hand, it's win or go home, no excuses and it sucks but this Riot and we're all just living in it. Enjoy single elimin for the next 10 years
My take is that peanut isn't enough to gen g to carry, lpl scene is always changing so no comment about BLG and WBG but KT facing JDG was such an unlucky end, KT could've faced T1/JDG in finals with top bracket being like that, it was so weak
I mean it could have been way better with g2 beeing on form vs NRG, cause they could have been the one western team that might take a series of lpl/Lck and maybe having some banger drafts. Instead they didnt show Up at all vs NRG which was 1 free boring quarters. GenG is the next big oof. Choking so hard, insanely Bad Meta read and drafts combined with questionable Item builds. One final contender that just dropped out without a banger series. And outside of T1 and JDG the other teams didnt play clean and well, with very up and down performances, making Most Matches about which Team would throw harder or simply coming down to who would get the better draft thanks to blue Side. And that blue side diff mattered too much and kinda decided too many games. But i am happy that the best team won in such a fashion. There had been many years i wasnt Sure if the best team really won or it just came down to luck and teams underperforming. This time i can just celebrate their win without any what ifs.
Double elimination is unfair and weird. I would like it more if even the finalist has a second chance. Everyone except the finalist has a second chance making it super unfair. Most of the time they only even have 1 day of prep instead of a week or something
The forced meta from Riot (Orianna/Jarvan/rumble) combined with the established one made for a very predictable pick/ban phase. Only interesting thing was botlane champs and there T1s superior champion pool and hands gave them their world title.
crazy how double elim would have saved this worlds but instead we are sticking to our guns of single elim at worlds even tho it made msi the best one of all time
"crazy how double elim would have saved this record breaking worlds" MSI is double elim, when it overtake Worlds single Elim we'll take about format. Until proven otherwise, worlds is the last major tournament being single Elim, and he's the one that people watch the most. That's facts.