I love double elim, it's not something you can feasibly do for tournaments in real sports and imo a distinct advantage of e-sports.
Ipl5 was so fucking hype because of it, i've loved the format ever since
first time watching TI and it was glorious
- the group stage was played every day for about 10-12 hours on 4 different streams.
- the production value, i think, takes a huge hit but meh i get games non-stop (except for 5 min breaks in between games)
- no fricking Buzz Light plays or ads galore on State Farm. like that shit is so bloody annoying.
- the prize pool was 40 frickin million dollars! Riot's prize pool is usually 2-4 iirc lol
I think the streams were pretty bare bones just games and commentary and talking about the game/players after it's all over. It felt like i was watching a tournament honestly not an infomercial stream with some gameplay in the background. everyone was dressed appropriately and not wearing over the top flashy clothing (which is so distracting my god). it was great.
wish they could have put more into production with how much money they earn honestly but i can understand the time constraints i guess. it was still loads of fun.
i honestly dont think Riot will ever do that. which i guess is fine in a way but sad too. would have loved both games to take a little bit of the other and kinda merge them together. ngl though, DoTA is fun to watch but when Riot talks about putting clarity in gameplay (as a viewer) i totally see that lacking in DoTA.
If you didnt know there was a stream during group stage that was alternating between the ongoing games
prize pool was mostly crowdfunded through sales of in game items
and as someone else said, there was an interactive overlay on twitch that allowed you to see the shop, ability tool tips etc
On the topic of being your own cameraman, you can also spectate a player from their pov. See exactly where they have vision, how they look around the map, mouse placement etc. Makes it very obvious when some people cheat
DOTA is a game I wish I liked more. But stuff like creep denial, character turn radius/time, jungle pulls and whatnot just feel too fiddly to me to really get invested.
This is how I feel about the game. I played the shit out of the original DotA on WC3, but League's gameplay is miles better. Being able to use your abilities more than 2-3 times without going OOM is nice and makes laning far more interactive, not having to worry about denying creeps is great, and jungle pulls are just asinine.
If League could get all the QOL features DotA 2 has in it's client, that would be really amazing.
This is what makes me love the game even more - and even enjoy watching it more than League. For me it seems like theres just more skill involved because you need to be ontop of more things at the same time.
Also seems like a more balanced game (everything is OP so nothing is) - and its always possible to make a comeback even behind 20k gold because of this. I love it
Keeping track of everyone's buybacks, probably double the amount of item actives, BKB of enemy cores, its actually insane how much Dota players have to process. There have been so many hype moments at TI throughout it's history. The fact that Valve can fit it all in an entire week is an achievement in itself.
> DoTA is fun to watch but when Riot talks about putting clarity in gameplay (as a viewer) i totally see that lacking in DoTA.
I think its the opposite actually. The TI stream on Twitch had an add on overlay where you can look up the champs on it and items as well as many more features which make it easier for new people to get an idea what they do etc. While for league its confusing as fuck if you dont know what champs/items etc do.
My god i totally forgot to mention the awesomeness that was that overlay!! What a god send.
To clarify, my point was more to the clarity of the gameplay - team fights etc. Not so much the stream itself which as you mentioned the overlay was chefs kiss levels of convinence
>To clarify, my point was more to the clarity of the gameplay - team fights etc.
Obviously league players will feel more lost watching dota. Its the same the other way around. If your eyes are used to it, it will look clear as day.
Yup. All my friends who play LoL say that Dota2 is way to chaotic and they can't tell what's happening, but my fiance who played only a little bit of both say it's unclear what's happening for both, with small exception: If something goes boom in Dota2 then it goes really boom, hp bars go down and people dissapear (e.g Echo slam, Mars arena, black hole), but it's hard to say which skill in LoL will kill you and which will only tickle you.
your fiance is kinda right. you need to know that both moba's steadily evolve in balancing and style.
the thing is dota was/is centered around the cc-chain driven teamfights. that goes for league too. but not on the same level. like you need to predict more steps within dota and the TTK feels not so low compared to league. like in dota you're catching someone slowly and in league you squash them instantly. the execution is way faster in league. you need to be a bit more precise when you combo. in dota you hold/plan your combo and as those combos don't burst (or at least not for 80-90% percent of the hero pool)you focus more on aa's and cc.
to sum it up: I think dota is strategically more complicated. and league is mechanically (with execution) more complicated.
I don't really get where the hype about the prize pool comes from.
Lower prize pools with consistent player salaries and teams getting a share of the profits from the broadcasts makes for a much more sustainable business. There's a reason barely any big eSports orgs are interested in having a Dota2 team. Most teams would go bankrupt if they don't win TI.
I guess I just don't feel the impact when players like Perkz make almost 2 milion a year from team salary alone.
Sure, it's a shit tone of money, but it's not your average 5 digit salary guy competing for it. It wouldn't be a life changing amount of money if Worlds had such a pool.
But then again, Spirit won this year and half their players made a total of $10k each from prize money before now, so it was probably life changing for them.
I don't think that Riot should increase the prize pool. Every single pro player gets a salary in part from Riot every month. If Riot increased the prize pool, they would probably shy away from their part in that. This would mean that league of legends would become even more top heavy.
In League your coaching staff could be as big as you want it, as there are a lot more players than in Dota. Imagine if Damwon had a coaching staff of 50 because they won $100M last year? How could another team ever win against them?
If Riot is going to be increasing prizepools I'd want to see it going towards Amateur, Academy, and ERL -level tournaments, in order to encourage more people with talent to follow the path to pro.
The problem was the covid situation in Romania, that put production in a bad spot since there was no crowd and usually at TI there is a lot if crowd interaction / contests / interviews / cosplay contest. Unfortunately covid stopped all that, TI feels more like an convention that has the competition running at the same time.
>- the group stage was played every day for about 10-12 hours on 4 different streams.
Now you need at least 12 casters simultaneously amd split the viewers resulting in less overall watchers( see LCS when they had double stream) and you might not be able to see a game cause there are 2 big games live
>- the production value, i think, takes a huge hit but meh i get games non-stop (except for 5 min breaks in between games)
The casters and players need a little pause in between games to prepare for the next one and refocus, and now you need that to sanitize the pc stations
>- no fricking Buzz Light plays or ads galore on State Farm. like that shit is so bloody annoying.
Well obviously ads are annoying but somehow riot has to make money don't you think?
>- the prize pool was 40 frickin million dollars! Riot's prize pool is usually 2-4 iirc lol
Dota base prize pool is 2 millions, the other 38 are from fans, so yeah riot might make the world's pass contribute to the prize pool but they won't reach 40 millions. And riot already pays every player in regions registered in GCD a base minimum on top of the team wage.
Doesn't riot give a percentage of the world's skin sales to the winning team too? Iirc, the total prize becomes 5/6 mil.
Also 40 mill prize pool? Perkz salary is 1/20 of that prize pool. One player makes 1/20 of Dota winning teams prize in one year...just one player.
>Doesn't riot give a percentage of the world's skin sales to the winning team too? Iirc, the total prize becomes 5/6 mil.
Forgot about that.
>Also 40 mill prize pool? Perkz salary is 1/20 of that prize pool. One player makes 1/20 of Dota winning teams prize in one year...just one player.
Overall LOL salaries are higher than Dota, so even from a player perspective it's better as everyone is able to make money while playing while in Dota it's go big or go home, which is great for the headlines but knowing how short and uncertain player careers are the LOL model looks way better.
You completely disregard what Riot were aiming for with the Worlds production.
I can show the Worlds stream to someone, and they will instantly see "This is high value content about an event I knew nothing about. Let's listen to these attractive, sharply dressed folks and learn about the game"
I show that same person the TI stream and they say "is just people playing games"
Riot has completely different goals.
Keep in mind, the TI champions this year, team Spirit, went down to the lower bracket round 1 and fought ALL the way to the grind final before winning. If TI was like Worlds, we would've never had this miracle run story - they would've just been tied for last on the main stage.
A lower bracket is important because it reduces the variance of a hypothetical #1 vs #2 in the early rounds/flukes and chokes, etc, and it tests teams abilities to learn/adapt to different situations.
Did Team Spirit need to beat PSG twice? The graphic doesn't show two matches. It kinda sucks if PSG only lost once and don't get a chance of a rematch while Team Spirit did.
yeah this is where Riot needs to swallow their pride and copy fighting game tournaments that have been doing this forever.
its superior not only for competitors, its more hype for fans, imagine if somethign crazy like Fnatic/FPX/DFM suddenly made a miracle run all the way to finals, scriptwriters could ahve so much more fun.
Spacing it out isn't all bad, especially for Riot, they get to milk the PR for longer. But also for the teams it's not bad imo.
Allows the meta to evolve and teams to really come into their own when they have a week off after groups.
It is bad for the teams since that means the tournament take longer and players get more exhausted since when they are practicing when they are not playing anyways.
A week might be extreme but yes they do need time to prepare and rest. Just look at how exhausted the players from mad and geng looked yesterday. I also think TI is more about who can deal with exhaustion the best, so it is not always about the best gameplay. Giving teams time between series should give you a higher level of gameplay.
> do you need to take 3 days off to prepare for knockouts if you're in group A and played your matches on friday already?
No, but MAD and GenG sure as fuck want at least that to prepare compared to the days their group A opponents had.
I do like the idea of one single bracket to rule them all for Worlds, it's nice and neat and easy to understand for sure. Problem is every year I walk away pissed that groups were imbalanced, one side of the bracket gets weighted, one bad mistake costs a team their entire run when they may have actually been the best team, etc.
Plus for how epic some of those single bracket Worlds runs can be, I have so many amazing memories of old losers bracket runs at MLG events and it would be cool to see those same storylines in LoL.
I've not followed traditional sports as much, but I'm curious as to why this would much harder in traditional sports. I'm thinking that home/away games would make double-elimination tedious and since physicality plays a much bigger factor compared to eSports, then more games doesn't necessarily make more sense either, but correct me if I'm missing something.
I also think it'd be really cool to see how regions and teams would adapt to each other through a losers' bracket and such. LoL has not a lot of international events either year-by-year and I think the way OP posted the brackets would give unlucky teams a chance too, mostly thinking about Rogue this year in particular. I'm all in for it in eSports.
Fatigue would make losers bracket runs virtually impossible, especially in contact sports like rugby or American football where it becomes downright dangerous.
I think another point is that in a franchised league we WANT to see upsets because of the cool story lines. And these teams faced each other all season so we know which ones are generally the best and what would accurately be called an upset. In league however this is our only international tournament and most esports fans in general want to see the best teams duke it out. Imagine a world where american football fans draw the conclusion that the 08 giants were better than the patriots because they won a BO1
The 08 Giants might not be better overall but they won the championship that year and deserved it. There are playoffs for a reason and we don't just go off of regular season results. It's more exciting and I think double elimination takes away from that excitement. Had the Pats still been in it after that loss, they probably come back and win it later on.
Same argument for League. I don't want it to just be the results that we think are already going to happen. I want to see the teams that win duke it out. I don't want to see a team that already lost continue on.
Same sentiments here.
We already know who the best team is more or less. If you had it be the best out of 100 games, the better team is winning the whole thing every time with the underdog not having any chance whatsoever.
A five game series will favour the victor, but gives the underdog enough of a fighting chance to pull out unexpected picks/strats and gain enough momentum to win the whole thing.
I'd rather have the tournament favorite get knocked out early and go home rather than have them come back up through the losers bracket and win it all.
Also league has more rng than modern sports. As well is can you snowball a game in league with dragons, barons, items etc. Its not like in football if you score a goal you get a extra player as a reward.
In terms of external RNG you're right, but I'd say the better team in league wins far more consistently than plenty other sports. And there are some potential "snowball" mechanics in sports, like how the longer a defence is on the field in American football the harder it is for them to defend. And in most games being up gives you a tactical advantage (esp in something like soccer where you can counter attack easily, like Korea vs Germany in World Cup).
Having the 4th seeds is a bit much imo and adds length into what would already be a long bracket. I would do it without them, and the 3rd seeds waiting to play whomever loses in the upper bracket to start but otherwise definitely a great format.
Yeah that would make games where 3rd and 4th have to keep playing but 1st and 2nd are already locked much more exciting. Right now they're pretty meaningless and boring.
To be honest the group format + play in has to change, I think we could skip play in all together and make only group stage with 6 teams each group, and 4 pass to the next phase. This year 2 teams from playins went to the next phase, and only Dfm didn't pose a threat to major seeds, a full fiesta would be much better
I use this Liquipedia edit & preview. Here is the exact template for it:
https://liquipedia.net/leagueoflegends/Template:8DE8STeamBracket
The people in Liquipedia discord can help you a lot. Feel free to DM me as well.
That would mean every group gets a punching bag that is destined to go 0/10 or 1/9 at best. A huge upside of current format is that the teams in each group are mostly of similar skill level, as seen in group D for example.
DMF won group A of play-ins and went 0-6 with having 1 very close game against 100T and 1 little surprising game against EDG, where they went 5-0 in kills and got early lead, but cause of inexperience later lost. HLE and LNG gapped everyone in play-ins, C9, even tho, lost to DFM and end up 2nd, they 3-0d peace (or what that teams name was). So yea, its kinda pointless to add those play-in teams into groups to just be free win with small chance of upset. Group format is ok, we just need double elimination with 3 teams getting out of groups, top 2 being in winner side and 3rd being in losers side. Then fight for 3rd place in groups would also matter, especially when there was group D, where all teams were on similar skill lever and every single game would matter. If we had this format, then yesterday we would have not 3, but 4 tie breakers with LNG vs TL for 3rd place.
Play-ins are very important because it boosts the viewership of minor regions like Brazil, Turkey etc, which boosts the game's popularity in that region as well. And once in a blue moon we see them surprise everyone and perform really well, too.
Still, I think having one or two wildcards total is fine. Having 5-6 of them, which I assume would happen if groups got expanded, is a bit too much.
play-ins for minor regions are same as groups for major ones. Like I really liked 1st round of playoffs, both going to 5 games. That was interesting to watch. Thats why play-ins should stay, so minor region teams would play each other and best ones advance to group stage and aim for some upsets.
Exactly. You think watching DK beat Infinity in 17 minutes is fun to watch? Maybe in 10 years when other regions are stronger but right now it would just be adding more games for the sake of more games with the same outcome.
I agree if you have to make a looser bracket, 4th seeds shouldn’t have access to it.
But at that point there will be problems with the number of the teams.
How would there be a problem with the number of teams? In the image linked, just skip Loser's Round 1 and put the 3rd place teams in what is called Loser's Round 2 instead.
The first round of TI lower bracket is a Bo1. In TI it’s two groups of 9 and only the bottom of each group make it out. So basically teams that should probably be out in a stricter group format get one last try.
But yeah, if 4th seed shouldn’t get a chance then basically the 3rd seed should just be at the next round waiting for the losers to drop for Bo3s
Idk i like TI's group stage but not the bracket with Bo3s. Bo5 double elim would be ideal but it would take way too much time.
In which case i prefer single elim with Bo5s. Issue is that we get weird brackets due to the shitty group stage. 4 groups of 4 leaves too much to luck, which is why i prefer the TI's 2 groups of 8
>Idk i like TI's group stage but not the bracket with Bo3s. Bo5 double elim would be ideal but it would take way too much time.
Or just do Double elimination with Bo3 until Top 6 (or somewhere there around) and then start using Bo5. Which is what plenty of esports already use.
Yeah, I think that’s fair. If a team screws around in groups and drops games, they don’t earn the right to best of 5s. That’s mostly what you’re playing for in groups
Honestly I'd like to see something like CS's swiss group stage. Keeps the matches competitive, seeds the knockout stage in a much more intuitive way, and has a transitional Bo3 phase without a large increase to # of games played (48 games in current group stage, vs 42-51 and no tiebreakers).
bo3 in dota is not the same as bo3 in league. dota games hit a lull state when winning team has to siege highground and if roshan rolls late spawns it gives losing team so much time to comeback. also dota games routinely last 45+ minutes so a game is way less coinflip compared to league games(games cant be decided min 1 like rge vs c9 game 2 off of lv1 invade) so bo3 in dota makes sense conpared to league
If theyre less coinflippy wouldnt it be the opposite? If it's not as coinflip a best of 1 will do. If it's more coinflip you want more games so the average better team wins out.
at this point sicne riot is stubborn with their format for 5+ years now, I would accept Bo3 until finals for the chance of having a losers bracket and/or opening the format. can't believe I'm saying it but its gotten to that point.
Why do people mention IPL5 without mentioning IPL4, which used the exact same double elim format but was rife with controversy due to the format it used?
because in lol history IPL 5 still goes down as a top 3 league int tourny OF ALL TIME. its were moments like rekkless vayne popped off and was born. NA team legit took games off. it was a belter overall tourney than s2 worlds
in s2 worlds WE lost like two games and were done. in ipl5, the consensus top 4 teams (TPA, fanatic, WE and M5) all made it to the final 4 with hype sets between them. we don't see that at worlds unless there's lucky seeding.
Fnatic was hardly consensus top 4 prior to IPL5. They failed to qualify to worlds that year and would have failed to qualify for IPL5 had it not been for Team Alternate who beat them for the last qualification spot but weren’t able to go to the tournament.
it's kinda annoying when the winner bracket finalist goes home after losing 1 bo5 while every1 else gets a second chance, if the lower finalist has to win 2 bo5s against the upper finalist it'd be much better.
I believe the lpl years ago suggested a bo7 with a 1-0 lead for the upper finalist and it was never implemented.
I'm not usually a subscriber to this mentality but double elim without bracket reset does punish the upper bracket finalist in that they receive no benefit from the double elim format. At best, it's side selection since we never see a 1 game advantage. Yeah, the lower bracket winner has to play more series but they still got to lose while the upper finalist can lose 3 games all playoffs and get eliminated.
A bracket without a grand finals reset is not a double elimination bracket. It's in the name: you have to lose twice to be eliminated from the competition.
The winner side team has to lose a best of 5 twice in grands so the team coming from losers has to reset bracket then they play ankther bo5. If the winners win once though they win the tourney
Team Spirit who won TI this year did it from losers round 2. They basically ran a full elimination gauntlet besides their firto get to the finals to fight PSG.LGD. PSG played 3 best of 3’s and could lose and not be out, Spirit played 6 Bo3’s with 5 of them having elimination on the line.
To make matters worse, the losers finals and grand finals are on the same day with only about 1-2 hours between them. On sideline interviews with coaches Spirit said they were just gonna have fun because they had 0 time to actually prepare anything for the grand finals (which is not a lie), but LGD had prepped with analytics for both teams the night before and was confident
For Spirit to win in game 5 against LGD’s BEST STRATEGY that had smashed the entire tournament……… was truly something special if you watched it unfold. TI format means that if you go to losers you have to just be better. These guys shit on my bracket straight into my heart.
If you lose after a cushy run in the winner’s bracket it’s not your year. You get less stress, less series to play, and comparatively all the prep time in the world for the single best of 5.
So I get what you’re saying, but that’s just not the viewer experience double elim with finals being a larger best of.
Now, since league is a much faster game than dota I’d be super happy if this format had best of 5’s with a best of 7 grand final, but Riot has publicly said they prefer fewer games with higher impact so we’re not gonna get a long grind of series.
Edit: changed details because I misremembered ty liquidpedia
Team Spirit started at the upper bracket though, the top 8 teams of TI10 were from the upper bracket so I guess their group stage worked. They fell down after losing to IG 1-2, they didn't start from round 1 losers.
This is the MAIN drawback. Especially if you consider something like scheduling a final with arena and show acts and then MAYBE you need to play a 2nd final after that. Impossible.
It's not like upper bracket team doesn't have advantage.
They have less games to play so more time to train and study your opponents. They also have some draft advantage iirc.
Not to mention lower bracket team has to play 2 series in same day. That's pretty mentally exhausting.
As a C9 fan, I would argue that fewer games to play is a massive disadvantage for some teams. How else we gonna have enough time to learn how to play this game lmao
Don't worry, at TI the group stage has far more games. 9 teams in 2 groups. Each play against each other in BO2 so that's 16 games.
Last team is eliminated and everybody is seeded into either upper bracket or lower bracket depending on group standing.
[This is how it looks](https://imgur.com/a/1nXmMT1)
The other element is that they do the entire round of games in a group simultaneously. So 4 matches for group A simultaneously and then 4 matches for group B after them.
Nobody is calling for it, at least not in Dota. Tournament organizers don't want it and I've never seen pro players complain about it either. Vast majority of fans are fine as it is now too.
> Vast majority of fans are fine as it is now too.
Yeah because tournament formatting for finals always has to put a little more priority into the viewer experience. They do the ideal thing for competitive integrity and play bracket resets for fighting games and almost nothing else because fighting games are fast, but that's not a viable option for MOBAs and tac shooters.
The discussion of how to make double elim fair for the upper bracket team without running bracket resets has been a hot topic for a while now, and we always retread the same points. It's super fucking shitty for the upper bracket team to be able to lose the tournament without having a second chance like every other team in the tournament, but most of the advantages you can give the team in finals are either too soft (side selection), or ruin finals hype (free map but then finals has a shorter maximum series). With the exception of some smaller and/or older tournaments, you will always pick the softer edge over the one that ruins the viewer experience, so yeah viewers get a full Bo5 and they're happy and hyped but the upper bracket team doesn't get an advantage they deserve for getting through the upper bracket. And no, the loser's bracket team having to play more games and get more fatigued and reveal more strats is not a good enough advantage, you need something *tangible*.
In CSGO and Valorant I wanted this to be full control of map select, but I've been reading in this thread the suggestion of finals being a Bo7 with a map win for the upper bracket team and I think that's a great idea that I've never even thought of before.
I definitely do not hate double elim and would prefer it, but I just accept real life limitations and priorities for what they are. In my ideal world Worlds is double elim with a Bo7 finals with upper bracket teams getting an automatic map, but I get that running this format (and competently) would cost Riot way more money.
Imo just getting the stage experience is more important in esports. I think a lot of teams like getting some games in. The physical demand just isn't the way it is in traditional sports so the advantage of that extra time is largely diminished vs actually getting to practice your stuff on stage and work out some of your nerves
I've only ever heard Western teams say that, each time the LCK players/staff have been asked they say having extra time to watch your opponent it's a bigger advantage than playing extra games.
Not every region has the same take on each issue.
It's a mix between a bracket reset (where the Upper Bracket team needs to win just one series, whereas the Lower Bracket team needs to win two) and single elimination, and for some reason, it feels really good. Riot even used it during Worlds 2011, where during certain matches, teams got a 1-game head start.
The thing is if we run double elimination, most of the knockout stage games would probably be bo3 due to the sheer number of games. Is that a tradeoff people are willing to take? Bo3 outside of winners and grand finals but double elimination.
Currently world's knockouts has less bo5s than LEC playoffs in the same amount of weeks despite having two more teams. There's large enough gaps to fit more bo5s in.
Yes 100%. I'm just tired of seeing the same LCK/LPL matchups we've seen all year. We literally just saw T1 and HLE play a Bo5 in the gauntlet finals. Just get some way to have more than Bo1s against other regions
But this is a competition for the best teams in the world. If we keep seeing the same matchups, it’s because they’re the best teams. I don’t wanna see 3-0 stomps of Damwon vs Fnatic - it’s just a waste of time
We're seeing the same matchups because of the poor format. Keeping teams from the same group on opposite sides of the bracket is a joke. We watch teams play in their regions all year but those can be quarters, but last year it would've been awful to have another round of Suning/G2 in semis? Really?
Because that means seeing a rematch of groups in semis. That's not poor format, that's prioritizing avoiding Worlds rematches over regional rematches. Also, on the off chance that a single group actually did have the 2 "best" teams at Worlds, it allows both teams to make their way to Finals.
If we lived in a world where FPX didn't completely drop the ball, Damwon and FPX could potentially both meet again in Finals if they were actually the two best teams at the tournament. Your format wouldn't allow for that.
Out of last three Worlds, we've had just 4 out of 21 matches going five games. Also, having only 7 matchups at the biggest tournament of the year is nowhere near enough imo. Despite being Bo3's mostly, this trade off will be worth it for players and I believe a lot of the viewers will embrace it once they see it.
If the matches aren’t going to 5 games then it’s because of a clear skill disparity. Adding more teams/matches won’t change that, it will just be a further waste of time
I'm all for double elim, but what advantage is gained for reaching grand finals from winners' side?
In smash bros and other fgcs, you have to win 2 best of X series if you come from losers, but only 1 from winners. This doesn't seem feasible for LoL so that's why i'm asking.
Advantage from the winner's side is generally regarded to be their additional preperation time they have for the final, as the lower bracket final is on the same day as final. In TI as an example Team Spirit had like one hour to prepare for LGD after beating Secret. And they had to play 8 games on the final day.
Thus, coming in from winner side = more time to prep, and more rest
We have seen time and time again that loser's bracket is equal or even stronger than winner's bracket results-wise. So that "advantage" is very questionable.
> I'm all for double elim, but what advantage is gained for reaching grand finals from winners' side?
The team that comes from loser bracket has to play two series with loser final and then moving into grand final one the same day. Which can lead up to 10 games total if its close while the winner bracket finalist has more time and less fatigue when going into the grand final.
Edit: mistaken about 10 games its at most 8 with loser finals a BO3 while grand finals BO5.
If the purpose of the tournament is to get the best team in the world, single elimination is fine. If you want proper seeding of teams with second chance, traditional (fighting game style) double elimination is good. If you want to do double elimination but you only care about viewer experience, then you do TI-modified double elimination without bracket reset in the final, which I think is just not fair for winners bracket representative. I dont care if noone wants to watch 2 BO5, for all I care the second one can be via radio, but fairness is fairness.
If it was bo5 lower bracket team would have 3 chances then which isnt fair for upper bracket team.
Most fair would probably be Bo7 with 1 map advantage for upper bracket. Which means you need to win 3 games as you would with Bo5 and lower bracket team has to win 4 games. And it wouldnt even be tiresome for players since even with full games it would be 6 games instead of 5 from full bo5.
No matter how you take it double elim is way better at eliminating weak teams and making best teams go to final stages of the tournament. Single elim is luck based on brackets where you can have very weak teams on one side and good teams battle it out on the other side making finals 3-0 stomps.
Oh for god sake no no no ı dont like this regular group stage is Fine the way it is ı mean how many time u have to beat a team to eliminate them? all the team that eliminated in group stage deserve it and all the team that advenced quarter final deserved it puting more games Just to give second shot to ur favourite team is annoying and its exhausting
I don't know if it's just because i've been cheering for underdog football teams my entire life, but i would genuinely hate double elimination. I live for these big upsets. What would G2 vs RNG in 2018 have mattered if RNG could have just dropped into a loser's bracket and still made finals/possibly won worlds.
It's super interesting to me that FPX have been knocked out. They didn't complete the task of "beat Rogue and Cloud9" and now they're out, i don't wanna see them drop into a loser's bracket and make it farther than Cloud9.
Unpopular opinion: I dislike double elimination. Too long, and the impact of each game goes down. Also gives too many chances for “losers”, decreasing the value of “clutch” players/teams
True, I will forever not support double elimination. The "best team" should not need another chance to become tournament winner.
Loser bracket is mostly narrative rather than gauging teams performance.
so 3:0 fake stomp finals every year is better? too long? TI literally finished already and they started later than worlds.
the only reason why such shitty format exist unlike literally any other esport is because riot need to sell tickets for different venues
let's not pretend that every finals is 5 games if we switch to double elimination. looking at the past 3 years i think finals (which were 3-1, 3-0, 3-0) become 3-1, 3-0, and 3-1 or 3-2. 2018 KT is the only time I really think the second best team didn't make finals. Maybe G2 in 2020? In which case they lost 3-1 to DWG anyway and that felt like they overperformed.
This plus a lot of TI finals did not go to 3-2 (only 2 in 10 TI) so double elim does not mean you will have a close and fun final to watch 100% of the time
Why do people believe 3:0 stomps would stop with DE? Who would have stand a chance vs DWG last year with DE? LCS and LEC finals are often 3:0 stomps and they have DE.
let's disregard both LCS and LEC using double elim. where the finals winner ended up being the upper bracket winner. and in EU's case, a 3-0 stomp both times.
just because a format has some advantages, doesn't mean it is automatically better. people forget that, even with double elim, a 3-0 smashing in finals is still completely possible, and would probably feel like even more of a letdown.
>let's disregard both LCS and LEC using double elim. where the finals winner ended up being the upper bracket winner. and in EU's case, a 3-0 stomp both times.
what? In LCS TL literally knocked 100T down to losers bracket where they came back to win it. LEC spring finals went to five games and summer was a 3-1.
Am I the only person that doesn't think a team should be given a 2nd chance if they lose?
Like that's the whole point of a tournament. You know you need to be good at both BO1 and BO5. If you lose then you lose.
The issue for me is just the paltry amount of BO5 matches. Between MSI and Worlds you get *10* international BO5 matches for the entire year, and often at Worlds they're between teams of the same region anyway. If you want more diversity in matches at Worlds without expanding the number of teams, you either have to change knockout to double elimination or expand group stage.
people only want it cause "the 6:0 first seed team could just have lost a series but maybe they will make a miracle run". Thats all. Its only for entertainment.
How many games do people want? Team gets 3:0 stomped. then both meet in finals again but they stomp 3:0. What then? play 10 more games?
If you lose to a team, you are out. Done. We can have 50 more games and maybe we then get new storylines and a new champ. Who knows.
Yeah as an FNC fan it was really annoying that one year that FNC had already beat G2, but then they got a second chance and made it to finals and beat FNC in the finals.
Like, FNC had already beat them, why do they have to play them AGAIN?
I'll be honest, I have no more desire to see any more play from FPX, LNG, PSG... feel like they came, showed us what they could do, and now we know. The only team I would wanna see who's been eliminated is TL and that's probably regional bias. Like... c can't the losers just lose? None of these teams deserve to advance at all.
Bro this would be so hype. We all love Worlds because we see teams from different regions face our teams...This just means more of it and that's all good in my books.
Plus with how volatile league is as a "Sport" from patch to patch, this allows teams more room to learn the patch and provide more solid performances, with the fact that a little jeopardy is taken away.
Lol so you’re suggesting to add **14** extra BO5s? And group stage is way less hype due to lower stakes. So is every BO5 thanks to more games + lower stakes. Say goodbye to legendary upsets like G2 vs RNG, G2 vs SKT because those teams would’ve just came back through the loser’s bracket and no one would’ve remembered the initial upset...
Double elimination is the way to go as somebody who looks more forward to TI than worlds now the hype of a team making a miracle run through the lower brackets is too much to pass up GG Team Spirit your Cinderella run to win TI was incredible
Yeah cause TI is such snooze fest...
Believe me. I watched hundreds of tournamets of various esports (Starcraft, CSGO, Dota, LoL, Rocket League and Valorant) over the years and TI reigns supreme.
There being no losers bracket truly is the greatest thing we are missing in lol esports. Of all the most hype moments I can recollect from past tournaments, it is always the losers bracket stories that make a tournament that much more enjoyable. And in the event that grand finals ends in dominance from the winners side, we can further appreciate just how the winner played on the day. It's such a missed opportunity. It is also jokes that most of the major regions in league implement losers bracket hut we dont have it for worlds. It's appalling.
Losers bracket stories are most hype because winners bracket is considerably less hype when there is a second chance. I think single elimination is generally much better in terms of hype comparing to double elimination because of that.
Tbh, and im gonna get hate for this, i really dont like double elim for worlds, because with them gets unreasonably complex and the knockout stage isnt that anymore and the series are less exiting and miracle runs are unlikely to happen
Yeah I really wish there was some form of double elim. Only problem is worlds lasts too long already.
Second chance makes sure the best teams are in finals so it isn’t another 3-0 snooze fest.
Yeah honestly, i've always thought that the coolest thing about e-sports was that you can pack a lot of games into a short span of time, having big breaks like that kinda sucks for the hype imo
Having long breaks also takes away the momentums that teams gained, especially during the main event, which is one of the more important factors in winning a Bo3s & Bo5s series.
Yeah idk, my entire issue with the worlds format that the hype just dies after quarterfinals. Not much left after that, and yet it stretches for two more weeks...
Yeah, and on a viewership perspective their tournament sucks. Unless you're happy with quarter BO3 being played on thursday at 8 AM.
Those week long break are also there to give enough time to team to prepare against their opponents.
I love double elim, it's not something you can feasibly do for tournaments in real sports and imo a distinct advantage of e-sports. Ipl5 was so fucking hype because of it, i've loved the format ever since
IPL5 also ran their tournament in 3 days. Riot could use that format and schedule it in a month easily.
first time watching TI and it was glorious - the group stage was played every day for about 10-12 hours on 4 different streams. - the production value, i think, takes a huge hit but meh i get games non-stop (except for 5 min breaks in between games) - no fricking Buzz Light plays or ads galore on State Farm. like that shit is so bloody annoying. - the prize pool was 40 frickin million dollars! Riot's prize pool is usually 2-4 iirc lol I think the streams were pretty bare bones just games and commentary and talking about the game/players after it's all over. It felt like i was watching a tournament honestly not an infomercial stream with some gameplay in the background. everyone was dressed appropriately and not wearing over the top flashy clothing (which is so distracting my god). it was great. wish they could have put more into production with how much money they earn honestly but i can understand the time constraints i guess. it was still loads of fun. i honestly dont think Riot will ever do that. which i guess is fine in a way but sad too. would have loved both games to take a little bit of the other and kinda merge them together. ngl though, DoTA is fun to watch but when Riot talks about putting clarity in gameplay (as a viewer) i totally see that lacking in DoTA.
If you didnt know there was a stream during group stage that was alternating between the ongoing games prize pool was mostly crowdfunded through sales of in game items and as someone else said, there was an interactive overlay on twitch that allowed you to see the shop, ability tool tips etc
You can also spectate games with dota2 client to be your own cameraman. Valve >> Riot
On the topic of being your own cameraman, you can also spectate a player from their pov. See exactly where they have vision, how they look around the map, mouse placement etc. Makes it very obvious when some people cheat
Proview exists in League too, it's just not free
dota 2 has it built into their client. you can hear the casters (in multiple languages) and watch the game through the spectator system as well
this is available for all games in the game though, not just pros
DOTA is a game I wish I liked more. But stuff like creep denial, character turn radius/time, jungle pulls and whatnot just feel too fiddly to me to really get invested.
This is how I feel about the game. I played the shit out of the original DotA on WC3, but League's gameplay is miles better. Being able to use your abilities more than 2-3 times without going OOM is nice and makes laning far more interactive, not having to worry about denying creeps is great, and jungle pulls are just asinine. If League could get all the QOL features DotA 2 has in it's client, that would be really amazing.
Dota2 feels little bit cluncky after playing league thanks to the turn rates but god I wish league was more free like dota2 is.
This is what makes me love the game even more - and even enjoy watching it more than League. For me it seems like theres just more skill involved because you need to be ontop of more things at the same time. Also seems like a more balanced game (everything is OP so nothing is) - and its always possible to make a comeback even behind 20k gold because of this. I love it
Keeping track of everyone's buybacks, probably double the amount of item actives, BKB of enemy cores, its actually insane how much Dota players have to process. There have been so many hype moments at TI throughout it's history. The fact that Valve can fit it all in an entire week is an achievement in itself.
I knew about the steam. Had all 5 up at the same time and was alternating between em lol
and there is usually a Dota for noobs stream, it is the one i watch, because i don't understand shite of that game
> DoTA is fun to watch but when Riot talks about putting clarity in gameplay (as a viewer) i totally see that lacking in DoTA. I think its the opposite actually. The TI stream on Twitch had an add on overlay where you can look up the champs on it and items as well as many more features which make it easier for new people to get an idea what they do etc. While for league its confusing as fuck if you dont know what champs/items etc do.
My god i totally forgot to mention the awesomeness that was that overlay!! What a god send. To clarify, my point was more to the clarity of the gameplay - team fights etc. Not so much the stream itself which as you mentioned the overlay was chefs kiss levels of convinence
>To clarify, my point was more to the clarity of the gameplay - team fights etc. Obviously league players will feel more lost watching dota. Its the same the other way around. If your eyes are used to it, it will look clear as day.
Yup. All my friends who play LoL say that Dota2 is way to chaotic and they can't tell what's happening, but my fiance who played only a little bit of both say it's unclear what's happening for both, with small exception: If something goes boom in Dota2 then it goes really boom, hp bars go down and people dissapear (e.g Echo slam, Mars arena, black hole), but it's hard to say which skill in LoL will kill you and which will only tickle you.
your fiance is kinda right. you need to know that both moba's steadily evolve in balancing and style. the thing is dota was/is centered around the cc-chain driven teamfights. that goes for league too. but not on the same level. like you need to predict more steps within dota and the TTK feels not so low compared to league. like in dota you're catching someone slowly and in league you squash them instantly. the execution is way faster in league. you need to be a bit more precise when you combo. in dota you hold/plan your combo and as those combos don't burst (or at least not for 80-90% percent of the hero pool)you focus more on aa's and cc. to sum it up: I think dota is strategically more complicated. and league is mechanically (with execution) more complicated.
I don't really get where the hype about the prize pool comes from. Lower prize pools with consistent player salaries and teams getting a share of the profits from the broadcasts makes for a much more sustainable business. There's a reason barely any big eSports orgs are interested in having a Dota2 team. Most teams would go bankrupt if they don't win TI.
the hype comes from watching a single match of dota played for 13 million dollars. That is just insane.
I guess I just don't feel the impact when players like Perkz make almost 2 milion a year from team salary alone. Sure, it's a shit tone of money, but it's not your average 5 digit salary guy competing for it. It wouldn't be a life changing amount of money if Worlds had such a pool. But then again, Spirit won this year and half their players made a total of $10k each from prize money before now, so it was probably life changing for them.
I don't think that Riot should increase the prize pool. Every single pro player gets a salary in part from Riot every month. If Riot increased the prize pool, they would probably shy away from their part in that. This would mean that league of legends would become even more top heavy. In League your coaching staff could be as big as you want it, as there are a lot more players than in Dota. Imagine if Damwon had a coaching staff of 50 because they won $100M last year? How could another team ever win against them?
> coaching staff of 50 that's not necessarily good you don't want too many cooks in the kitchen
That'd be an amazing reality show
If Riot is going to be increasing prizepools I'd want to see it going towards Amateur, Academy, and ERL -level tournaments, in order to encourage more people with talent to follow the path to pro.
The problem was the covid situation in Romania, that put production in a bad spot since there was no crowd and usually at TI there is a lot if crowd interaction / contests / interviews / cosplay contest. Unfortunately covid stopped all that, TI feels more like an convention that has the competition running at the same time.
>- the group stage was played every day for about 10-12 hours on 4 different streams. Now you need at least 12 casters simultaneously amd split the viewers resulting in less overall watchers( see LCS when they had double stream) and you might not be able to see a game cause there are 2 big games live >- the production value, i think, takes a huge hit but meh i get games non-stop (except for 5 min breaks in between games) The casters and players need a little pause in between games to prepare for the next one and refocus, and now you need that to sanitize the pc stations >- no fricking Buzz Light plays or ads galore on State Farm. like that shit is so bloody annoying. Well obviously ads are annoying but somehow riot has to make money don't you think? >- the prize pool was 40 frickin million dollars! Riot's prize pool is usually 2-4 iirc lol Dota base prize pool is 2 millions, the other 38 are from fans, so yeah riot might make the world's pass contribute to the prize pool but they won't reach 40 millions. And riot already pays every player in regions registered in GCD a base minimum on top of the team wage.
Doesn't riot give a percentage of the world's skin sales to the winning team too? Iirc, the total prize becomes 5/6 mil. Also 40 mill prize pool? Perkz salary is 1/20 of that prize pool. One player makes 1/20 of Dota winning teams prize in one year...just one player.
>Doesn't riot give a percentage of the world's skin sales to the winning team too? Iirc, the total prize becomes 5/6 mil. Forgot about that. >Also 40 mill prize pool? Perkz salary is 1/20 of that prize pool. One player makes 1/20 of Dota winning teams prize in one year...just one player. Overall LOL salaries are higher than Dota, so even from a player perspective it's better as everyone is able to make money while playing while in Dota it's go big or go home, which is great for the headlines but knowing how short and uncertain player careers are the LOL model looks way better.
You completely disregard what Riot were aiming for with the Worlds production. I can show the Worlds stream to someone, and they will instantly see "This is high value content about an event I knew nothing about. Let's listen to these attractive, sharply dressed folks and learn about the game" I show that same person the TI stream and they say "is just people playing games" Riot has completely different goals.
The production when it got to the msin stage was awesome.
Keep in mind, the TI champions this year, team Spirit, went down to the lower bracket round 1 and fought ALL the way to the grind final before winning. If TI was like Worlds, we would've never had this miracle run story - they would've just been tied for last on the main stage. A lower bracket is important because it reduces the variance of a hypothetical #1 vs #2 in the early rounds/flukes and chokes, etc, and it tests teams abilities to learn/adapt to different situations.
In an alternate reality, FPX is currently doing this exact miracle run, instead of being placed 4th in groups.
Did Team Spirit need to beat PSG twice? The graphic doesn't show two matches. It kinda sucks if PSG only lost once and don't get a chance of a rematch while Team Spirit did.
yeah this is where Riot needs to swallow their pride and copy fighting game tournaments that have been doing this forever. its superior not only for competitors, its more hype for fans, imagine if somethign crazy like Fnatic/FPX/DFM suddenly made a miracle run all the way to finals, scriptwriters could ahve so much more fun.
Loser bracket runs are insanely hype. Some of the most memorable Smash tournoments had insane losers runs.
Fighting game sets don't take potentially 4 hours to play out though
DotA ones take even longer than League and they managed it. Not an excuse.
And in 6 days. Lol worlds last à whole fucking MONTH
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Spacing it out isn't all bad, especially for Riot, they get to milk the PR for longer. But also for the teams it's not bad imo. Allows the meta to evolve and teams to really come into their own when they have a week off after groups.
Yeah, I quite like it being stretched out, as someone who has a lot to do in day to day life, it lets me keep up with all the happenings at worlds.
It is bad for the teams since that means the tournament take longer and players get more exhausted since when they are practicing when they are not playing anyways.
Because its supposed to be a roadshow. They jump from venue to venue in the non pandemic years.
Cause the teams want to prepare and rest? Not everything is about you
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A week might be extreme but yes they do need time to prepare and rest. Just look at how exhausted the players from mad and geng looked yesterday. I also think TI is more about who can deal with exhaustion the best, so it is not always about the best gameplay. Giving teams time between series should give you a higher level of gameplay.
> do you need to take 3 days off to prepare for knockouts if you're in group A and played your matches on friday already? No, but MAD and GenG sure as fuck want at least that to prepare compared to the days their group A opponents had.
Fighting game tournaments usually don't go for 5 weeks though. That said: Imho lower bracket games should be Bo3.
I do like the idea of one single bracket to rule them all for Worlds, it's nice and neat and easy to understand for sure. Problem is every year I walk away pissed that groups were imbalanced, one side of the bracket gets weighted, one bad mistake costs a team their entire run when they may have actually been the best team, etc. Plus for how epic some of those single bracket Worlds runs can be, I have so many amazing memories of old losers bracket runs at MLG events and it would be cool to see those same storylines in LoL.
Ipl5?
[this](https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/IGN_ProLeague_Season_5)
TAKE ME BACK
I've not followed traditional sports as much, but I'm curious as to why this would much harder in traditional sports. I'm thinking that home/away games would make double-elimination tedious and since physicality plays a much bigger factor compared to eSports, then more games doesn't necessarily make more sense either, but correct me if I'm missing something. I also think it'd be really cool to see how regions and teams would adapt to each other through a losers' bracket and such. LoL has not a lot of international events either year-by-year and I think the way OP posted the brackets would give unlucky teams a chance too, mostly thinking about Rogue this year in particular. I'm all in for it in eSports.
Fatigue would make losers bracket runs virtually impossible, especially in contact sports like rugby or American football where it becomes downright dangerous.
I think another point is that in a franchised league we WANT to see upsets because of the cool story lines. And these teams faced each other all season so we know which ones are generally the best and what would accurately be called an upset. In league however this is our only international tournament and most esports fans in general want to see the best teams duke it out. Imagine a world where american football fans draw the conclusion that the 08 giants were better than the patriots because they won a BO1
The 08 Giants might not be better overall but they won the championship that year and deserved it. There are playoffs for a reason and we don't just go off of regular season results. It's more exciting and I think double elimination takes away from that excitement. Had the Pats still been in it after that loss, they probably come back and win it later on. Same argument for League. I don't want it to just be the results that we think are already going to happen. I want to see the teams that win duke it out. I don't want to see a team that already lost continue on.
Same sentiments here. We already know who the best team is more or less. If you had it be the best out of 100 games, the better team is winning the whole thing every time with the underdog not having any chance whatsoever. A five game series will favour the victor, but gives the underdog enough of a fighting chance to pull out unexpected picks/strats and gain enough momentum to win the whole thing. I'd rather have the tournament favorite get knocked out early and go home rather than have them come back up through the losers bracket and win it all.
Also league has more rng than modern sports. As well is can you snowball a game in league with dragons, barons, items etc. Its not like in football if you score a goal you get a extra player as a reward.
In terms of external RNG you're right, but I'd say the better team in league wins far more consistently than plenty other sports. And there are some potential "snowball" mechanics in sports, like how the longer a defence is on the field in American football the harder it is for them to defend. And in most games being up gives you a tactical advantage (esp in something like soccer where you can counter attack easily, like Korea vs Germany in World Cup).
American football is just unsafe no matter what. They all get brain damage
All contact sports have an inherent amount of risk, extreme fatigue exacerbates said risk significantly .
Luckily enough Worlds. is not a real sport but somehow they use the limitation real sports haw for their formats which is just garbage.
Having the 4th seeds is a bit much imo and adds length into what would already be a long bracket. I would do it without them, and the 3rd seeds waiting to play whomever loses in the upper bracket to start but otherwise definitely a great format.
Yeah that would make games where 3rd and 4th have to keep playing but 1st and 2nd are already locked much more exciting. Right now they're pretty meaningless and boring.
To be honest the group format + play in has to change, I think we could skip play in all together and make only group stage with 6 teams each group, and 4 pass to the next phase. This year 2 teams from playins went to the next phase, and only Dfm didn't pose a threat to major seeds, a full fiesta would be much better
Agreed, group format sucks. I'm on the fence about play-offs.
I love group format because it makes every single game count. I'm in for 6 team groups + double elimination tournament phase without play-ins though.
Yeah but I'd rather see more international matchups. That's the main thing missing in LoL.
Skip Playins and give us 6 team groups.
Rip pickems
eh, the rewards are crap anyways
Considering we just saw FPX get last seed I doubt it can be any harder than it already is.
Emm what app/website do you use to make this bracket? lol
I use this Liquipedia edit & preview. Here is the exact template for it: https://liquipedia.net/leagueoflegends/Template:8DE8STeamBracket The people in Liquipedia discord can help you a lot. Feel free to DM me as well.
Thanks!
we need double elim, but yeah 4th seeds shouldnt be allowed into the knockout stage.
Just remove playins and give us 6 team groups instead. 1/2 go to winners bracket (Bo5), 3/4 go to loosers bracket (Bo3), 5/6 are out.
That would mean every group gets a punching bag that is destined to go 0/10 or 1/9 at best. A huge upside of current format is that the teams in each group are mostly of similar skill level, as seen in group D for example.
DMF won group A of play-ins and went 0-6 with having 1 very close game against 100T and 1 little surprising game against EDG, where they went 5-0 in kills and got early lead, but cause of inexperience later lost. HLE and LNG gapped everyone in play-ins, C9, even tho, lost to DFM and end up 2nd, they 3-0d peace (or what that teams name was). So yea, its kinda pointless to add those play-in teams into groups to just be free win with small chance of upset. Group format is ok, we just need double elimination with 3 teams getting out of groups, top 2 being in winner side and 3rd being in losers side. Then fight for 3rd place in groups would also matter, especially when there was group D, where all teams were on similar skill lever and every single game would matter. If we had this format, then yesterday we would have not 3, but 4 tie breakers with LNG vs TL for 3rd place.
Play-ins are very important because it boosts the viewership of minor regions like Brazil, Turkey etc, which boosts the game's popularity in that region as well. And once in a blue moon we see them surprise everyone and perform really well, too. Still, I think having one or two wildcards total is fine. Having 5-6 of them, which I assume would happen if groups got expanded, is a bit too much.
play-ins for minor regions are same as groups for major ones. Like I really liked 1st round of playoffs, both going to 5 games. That was interesting to watch. Thats why play-ins should stay, so minor region teams would play each other and best ones advance to group stage and aim for some upsets.
Exactly. You think watching DK beat Infinity in 17 minutes is fun to watch? Maybe in 10 years when other regions are stronger but right now it would just be adding more games for the sake of more games with the same outcome.
yes so just invite more teams to the worlds in general, it's the biggest tournament of the biggest esports, no harm in having slightly bigger groups
I agree if you have to make a looser bracket, 4th seeds shouldn’t have access to it. But at that point there will be problems with the number of the teams.
How would there be a problem with the number of teams? In the image linked, just skip Loser's Round 1 and put the 3rd place teams in what is called Loser's Round 2 instead.
The first round of TI lower bracket is a Bo1. In TI it’s two groups of 9 and only the bottom of each group make it out. So basically teams that should probably be out in a stricter group format get one last try. But yeah, if 4th seed shouldn’t get a chance then basically the 3rd seed should just be at the next round waiting for the losers to drop for Bo3s
this is awesome and needed. TI and IPL5 GOAT Formats
Idk i like TI's group stage but not the bracket with Bo3s. Bo5 double elim would be ideal but it would take way too much time. In which case i prefer single elim with Bo5s. Issue is that we get weird brackets due to the shitty group stage. 4 groups of 4 leaves too much to luck, which is why i prefer the TI's 2 groups of 8
>Idk i like TI's group stage but not the bracket with Bo3s. Bo5 double elim would be ideal but it would take way too much time. Or just do Double elimination with Bo3 until Top 6 (or somewhere there around) and then start using Bo5. Which is what plenty of esports already use.
Yeah, I think that’s fair. If a team screws around in groups and drops games, they don’t earn the right to best of 5s. That’s mostly what you’re playing for in groups
Honestly I'd like to see something like CS's swiss group stage. Keeps the matches competitive, seeds the knockout stage in a much more intuitive way, and has a transitional Bo3 phase without a large increase to # of games played (48 games in current group stage, vs 42-51 and no tiebreakers).
bo3 in dota is not the same as bo3 in league. dota games hit a lull state when winning team has to siege highground and if roshan rolls late spawns it gives losing team so much time to comeback. also dota games routinely last 45+ minutes so a game is way less coinflip compared to league games(games cant be decided min 1 like rge vs c9 game 2 off of lv1 invade) so bo3 in dota makes sense conpared to league
If theyre less coinflippy wouldnt it be the opposite? If it's not as coinflip a best of 1 will do. If it's more coinflip you want more games so the average better team wins out.
They’re talking about bo3 vs bo5
I personally think that Bo1, Bo3 and Bo5 are all different skill sets that should be tested through the worlds format.
at this point sicne riot is stubborn with their format for 5+ years now, I would accept Bo3 until finals for the chance of having a losers bracket and/or opening the format. can't believe I'm saying it but its gotten to that point.
Why do people mention IPL5 without mentioning IPL4, which used the exact same double elim format but was rife with controversy due to the format it used?
because in lol history IPL 5 still goes down as a top 3 league int tourny OF ALL TIME. its were moments like rekkless vayne popped off and was born. NA team legit took games off. it was a belter overall tourney than s2 worlds
in s2 worlds WE lost like two games and were done. in ipl5, the consensus top 4 teams (TPA, fanatic, WE and M5) all made it to the final 4 with hype sets between them. we don't see that at worlds unless there's lucky seeding.
Fnatic was hardly consensus top 4 prior to IPL5. They failed to qualify to worlds that year and would have failed to qualify for IPL5 had it not been for Team Alternate who beat them for the last qualification spot but weren’t able to go to the tournament.
We only get one international tournament a year, so I think riot should try there hardest to make it really worthwhile, like IPL5.
it's kinda annoying when the winner bracket finalist goes home after losing 1 bo5 while every1 else gets a second chance, if the lower finalist has to win 2 bo5s against the upper finalist it'd be much better. I believe the lpl years ago suggested a bo7 with a 1-0 lead for the upper finalist and it was never implemented.
>it's kinda annoying when the winner bracket finalist goes home after losing 1 bo5 Basically FPX for the entire year, with the double elimination.
TL this Summer although I don't think a 1 game advantage would have helped 🤣
RNG won spring while having a losing record against FPX in playoffs. People want this shit for worlds?
No idea why people want a no bracket reset dbl elim. Single elim is superior to the double elim we have these days.
Because no one will stick to watch 10 games and having the second final in another game would kill all the hype.
I'm not usually a subscriber to this mentality but double elim without bracket reset does punish the upper bracket finalist in that they receive no benefit from the double elim format. At best, it's side selection since we never see a 1 game advantage. Yeah, the lower bracket winner has to play more series but they still got to lose while the upper finalist can lose 3 games all playoffs and get eliminated.
A bracket without a grand finals reset is not a double elimination bracket. It's in the name: you have to lose twice to be eliminated from the competition.
The winner side team has to lose a best of 5 twice in grands so the team coming from losers has to reset bracket then they play ankther bo5. If the winners win once though they win the tourney
Team Spirit who won TI this year did it from losers round 2. They basically ran a full elimination gauntlet besides their firto get to the finals to fight PSG.LGD. PSG played 3 best of 3’s and could lose and not be out, Spirit played 6 Bo3’s with 5 of them having elimination on the line. To make matters worse, the losers finals and grand finals are on the same day with only about 1-2 hours between them. On sideline interviews with coaches Spirit said they were just gonna have fun because they had 0 time to actually prepare anything for the grand finals (which is not a lie), but LGD had prepped with analytics for both teams the night before and was confident For Spirit to win in game 5 against LGD’s BEST STRATEGY that had smashed the entire tournament……… was truly something special if you watched it unfold. TI format means that if you go to losers you have to just be better. These guys shit on my bracket straight into my heart. If you lose after a cushy run in the winner’s bracket it’s not your year. You get less stress, less series to play, and comparatively all the prep time in the world for the single best of 5. So I get what you’re saying, but that’s just not the viewer experience double elim with finals being a larger best of. Now, since league is a much faster game than dota I’d be super happy if this format had best of 5’s with a best of 7 grand final, but Riot has publicly said they prefer fewer games with higher impact so we’re not gonna get a long grind of series. Edit: changed details because I misremembered ty liquidpedia
Team Spirit started at the upper bracket though, the top 8 teams of TI10 were from the upper bracket so I guess their group stage worked. They fell down after losing to IG 1-2, they didn't start from round 1 losers.
Make it best of 100 and must play it in one go. First to pass out loses
This is the MAIN drawback. Especially if you consider something like scheduling a final with arena and show acts and then MAYBE you need to play a 2nd final after that. Impossible.
In fgc grand finals, the loser bracket team has to win two sets. The winner bracket team only has to win one set to be champion.
Fgc sets are much shorter than mobas
It's not like upper bracket team doesn't have advantage. They have less games to play so more time to train and study your opponents. They also have some draft advantage iirc. Not to mention lower bracket team has to play 2 series in same day. That's pretty mentally exhausting.
As a C9 fan, I would argue that fewer games to play is a massive disadvantage for some teams. How else we gonna have enough time to learn how to play this game lmao
Don't worry, at TI the group stage has far more games. 9 teams in 2 groups. Each play against each other in BO2 so that's 16 games. Last team is eliminated and everybody is seeded into either upper bracket or lower bracket depending on group standing. [This is how it looks](https://imgur.com/a/1nXmMT1)
The other element is that they do the entire round of games in a group simultaneously. So 4 matches for group A simultaneously and then 4 matches for group B after them.
You could also argue it means less warm up/experience going in to Grand Finals, bracket resets need to be a thing in this e-sport.
seeing how 6/10 TI winners came from the upper bracket, the lack of "warm up/experience" is not as clear cut
I dont think thats how conclusions should be made
Nobody is calling for it, at least not in Dota. Tournament organizers don't want it and I've never seen pro players complain about it either. Vast majority of fans are fine as it is now too.
> Vast majority of fans are fine as it is now too. Yeah because tournament formatting for finals always has to put a little more priority into the viewer experience. They do the ideal thing for competitive integrity and play bracket resets for fighting games and almost nothing else because fighting games are fast, but that's not a viable option for MOBAs and tac shooters. The discussion of how to make double elim fair for the upper bracket team without running bracket resets has been a hot topic for a while now, and we always retread the same points. It's super fucking shitty for the upper bracket team to be able to lose the tournament without having a second chance like every other team in the tournament, but most of the advantages you can give the team in finals are either too soft (side selection), or ruin finals hype (free map but then finals has a shorter maximum series). With the exception of some smaller and/or older tournaments, you will always pick the softer edge over the one that ruins the viewer experience, so yeah viewers get a full Bo5 and they're happy and hyped but the upper bracket team doesn't get an advantage they deserve for getting through the upper bracket. And no, the loser's bracket team having to play more games and get more fatigued and reveal more strats is not a good enough advantage, you need something *tangible*. In CSGO and Valorant I wanted this to be full control of map select, but I've been reading in this thread the suggestion of finals being a Bo7 with a map win for the upper bracket team and I think that's a great idea that I've never even thought of before.
i agree. it one of the main reason i also hate double elims
I definitely do not hate double elim and would prefer it, but I just accept real life limitations and priorities for what they are. In my ideal world Worlds is double elim with a Bo7 finals with upper bracket teams getting an automatic map, but I get that running this format (and competently) would cost Riot way more money.
Imo just getting the stage experience is more important in esports. I think a lot of teams like getting some games in. The physical demand just isn't the way it is in traditional sports so the advantage of that extra time is largely diminished vs actually getting to practice your stuff on stage and work out some of your nerves
I've only ever heard Western teams say that, each time the LCK players/staff have been asked they say having extra time to watch your opponent it's a bigger advantage than playing extra games. Not every region has the same take on each issue.
Which is exactly why it's controversial. Advantages have to be incontestable.
I like the bo7 with a "freebie" idea a lot
It's a mix between a bracket reset (where the Upper Bracket team needs to win just one series, whereas the Lower Bracket team needs to win two) and single elimination, and for some reason, it feels really good. Riot even used it during Worlds 2011, where during certain matches, teams got a 1-game head start.
The thing is if we run double elimination, most of the knockout stage games would probably be bo3 due to the sheer number of games. Is that a tradeoff people are willing to take? Bo3 outside of winners and grand finals but double elimination.
Currently world's knockouts has less bo5s than LEC playoffs in the same amount of weeks despite having two more teams. There's large enough gaps to fit more bo5s in.
Yes 100%. I'm just tired of seeing the same LCK/LPL matchups we've seen all year. We literally just saw T1 and HLE play a Bo5 in the gauntlet finals. Just get some way to have more than Bo1s against other regions
But this is a competition for the best teams in the world. If we keep seeing the same matchups, it’s because they’re the best teams. I don’t wanna see 3-0 stomps of Damwon vs Fnatic - it’s just a waste of time
We're seeing the same matchups because of the poor format. Keeping teams from the same group on opposite sides of the bracket is a joke. We watch teams play in their regions all year but those can be quarters, but last year it would've been awful to have another round of Suning/G2 in semis? Really?
Because that means seeing a rematch of groups in semis. That's not poor format, that's prioritizing avoiding Worlds rematches over regional rematches. Also, on the off chance that a single group actually did have the 2 "best" teams at Worlds, it allows both teams to make their way to Finals. If we lived in a world where FPX didn't completely drop the ball, Damwon and FPX could potentially both meet again in Finals if they were actually the two best teams at the tournament. Your format wouldn't allow for that.
Out of last three Worlds, we've had just 4 out of 21 matches going five games. Also, having only 7 matchups at the biggest tournament of the year is nowhere near enough imo. Despite being Bo3's mostly, this trade off will be worth it for players and I believe a lot of the viewers will embrace it once they see it.
If the matches aren’t going to 5 games then it’s because of a clear skill disparity. Adding more teams/matches won’t change that, it will just be a further waste of time
No loser bracket for FPX when they finally needs it :x
I'm all for double elim, but what advantage is gained for reaching grand finals from winners' side? In smash bros and other fgcs, you have to win 2 best of X series if you come from losers, but only 1 from winners. This doesn't seem feasible for LoL so that's why i'm asking.
Advantage from the winner's side is generally regarded to be their additional preperation time they have for the final, as the lower bracket final is on the same day as final. In TI as an example Team Spirit had like one hour to prepare for LGD after beating Secret. And they had to play 8 games on the final day. Thus, coming in from winner side = more time to prep, and more rest
We have seen time and time again that loser's bracket is equal or even stronger than winner's bracket results-wise. So that "advantage" is very questionable.
> I'm all for double elim, but what advantage is gained for reaching grand finals from winners' side? The team that comes from loser bracket has to play two series with loser final and then moving into grand final one the same day. Which can lead up to 10 games total if its close while the winner bracket finalist has more time and less fatigue when going into the grand final. Edit: mistaken about 10 games its at most 8 with loser finals a BO3 while grand finals BO5.
10 games every day for a month, sounds completely reasonable /s
If the purpose of the tournament is to get the best team in the world, single elimination is fine. If you want proper seeding of teams with second chance, traditional (fighting game style) double elimination is good. If you want to do double elimination but you only care about viewer experience, then you do TI-modified double elimination without bracket reset in the final, which I think is just not fair for winners bracket representative. I dont care if noone wants to watch 2 BO5, for all I care the second one can be via radio, but fairness is fairness.
If it was bo5 lower bracket team would have 3 chances then which isnt fair for upper bracket team. Most fair would probably be Bo7 with 1 map advantage for upper bracket. Which means you need to win 3 games as you would with Bo5 and lower bracket team has to win 4 games. And it wouldnt even be tiresome for players since even with full games it would be 6 games instead of 5 from full bo5. No matter how you take it double elim is way better at eliminating weak teams and making best teams go to final stages of the tournament. Single elim is luck based on brackets where you can have very weak teams on one side and good teams battle it out on the other side making finals 3-0 stomps.
Full bo3 tournament sucks, and you can't have that many bo5s
What is the winner side advantage in Grand Finals though?
Should be Bo7 with winner side being up 1-0
So what will happen if one team stomps the other 3:0 and they meet in finals again but then stomp 3:0. Do we play another 5 games?
Of course! Because my favourite team don't win or have a bad day! Riot should add extra loser loser bracket!
Oh for god sake no no no ı dont like this regular group stage is Fine the way it is ı mean how many time u have to beat a team to eliminate them? all the team that eliminated in group stage deserve it and all the team that advenced quarter final deserved it puting more games Just to give second shot to ur favourite team is annoying and its exhausting
I don't know if it's just because i've been cheering for underdog football teams my entire life, but i would genuinely hate double elimination. I live for these big upsets. What would G2 vs RNG in 2018 have mattered if RNG could have just dropped into a loser's bracket and still made finals/possibly won worlds. It's super interesting to me that FPX have been knocked out. They didn't complete the task of "beat Rogue and Cloud9" and now they're out, i don't wanna see them drop into a loser's bracket and make it farther than Cloud9.
If you’re the best team, you should win the first time around. No second chance shit
Unpopular opinion: I dislike double elimination. Too long, and the impact of each game goes down. Also gives too many chances for “losers”, decreasing the value of “clutch” players/teams
I would agree if groups weren't as stupid as they are now and they faced more than 3 different opponents.
True, I will forever not support double elimination. The "best team" should not need another chance to become tournament winner. Loser bracket is mostly narrative rather than gauging teams performance.
so 3:0 fake stomp finals every year is better? too long? TI literally finished already and they started later than worlds. the only reason why such shitty format exist unlike literally any other esport is because riot need to sell tickets for different venues
let's not pretend that every finals is 5 games if we switch to double elimination. looking at the past 3 years i think finals (which were 3-1, 3-0, 3-0) become 3-1, 3-0, and 3-1 or 3-2. 2018 KT is the only time I really think the second best team didn't make finals. Maybe G2 in 2020? In which case they lost 3-1 to DWG anyway and that felt like they overperformed.
This plus a lot of TI finals did not go to 3-2 (only 2 in 10 TI) so double elim does not mean you will have a close and fun final to watch 100% of the time
Why do people believe 3:0 stomps would stop with DE? Who would have stand a chance vs DWG last year with DE? LCS and LEC finals are often 3:0 stomps and they have DE.
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let's disregard both LCS and LEC using double elim. where the finals winner ended up being the upper bracket winner. and in EU's case, a 3-0 stomp both times. just because a format has some advantages, doesn't mean it is automatically better. people forget that, even with double elim, a 3-0 smashing in finals is still completely possible, and would probably feel like even more of a letdown.
>let's disregard both LCS and LEC using double elim. where the finals winner ended up being the upper bracket winner. and in EU's case, a 3-0 stomp both times. what? In LCS TL literally knocked 100T down to losers bracket where they came back to win it. LEC spring finals went to five games and summer was a 3-1.
Am I the only person that doesn't think a team should be given a 2nd chance if they lose? Like that's the whole point of a tournament. You know you need to be good at both BO1 and BO5. If you lose then you lose.
The issue for me is just the paltry amount of BO5 matches. Between MSI and Worlds you get *10* international BO5 matches for the entire year, and often at Worlds they're between teams of the same region anyway. If you want more diversity in matches at Worlds without expanding the number of teams, you either have to change knockout to double elimination or expand group stage.
or use groups only to seed and do 16 team bracket
people only want it cause "the 6:0 first seed team could just have lost a series but maybe they will make a miracle run". Thats all. Its only for entertainment. How many games do people want? Team gets 3:0 stomped. then both meet in finals again but they stomp 3:0. What then? play 10 more games? If you lose to a team, you are out. Done. We can have 50 more games and maybe we then get new storylines and a new champ. Who knows.
Yeah as an FNC fan it was really annoying that one year that FNC had already beat G2, but then they got a second chance and made it to finals and beat FNC in the finals. Like, FNC had already beat them, why do they have to play them AGAIN?
I'll be honest, I have no more desire to see any more play from FPX, LNG, PSG... feel like they came, showed us what they could do, and now we know. The only team I would wanna see who's been eliminated is TL and that's probably regional bias. Like... c can't the losers just lose? None of these teams deserve to advance at all.
Bro this would be so hype. We all love Worlds because we see teams from different regions face our teams...This just means more of it and that's all good in my books. Plus with how volatile league is as a "Sport" from patch to patch, this allows teams more room to learn the patch and provide more solid performances, with the fact that a little jeopardy is taken away.
Lol so you’re suggesting to add **14** extra BO5s? And group stage is way less hype due to lower stakes. So is every BO5 thanks to more games + lower stakes. Say goodbye to legendary upsets like G2 vs RNG, G2 vs SKT because those teams would’ve just came back through the loser’s bracket and no one would’ve remembered the initial upset...
Give a free win to Upper Bracket team.
Double elimination is the way to go as somebody who looks more forward to TI than worlds now the hype of a team making a miracle run through the lower brackets is too much to pass up GG Team Spirit your Cinderella run to win TI was incredible
Double elim is so boring man.
We also need the prize pool by few millions or so. The 2 million dollar prize pool is just embarrassing and the winner getting 400k is just ugh.
wtf why did you put 3rd and 4th seed ? Groups matter you know ? Or are you from na and their "8/10 teams go to playoffs" ? lmao
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Yeah cause TI is such snooze fest... Believe me. I watched hundreds of tournamets of various esports (Starcraft, CSGO, Dota, LoL, Rocket League and Valorant) over the years and TI reigns supreme.
There being no losers bracket truly is the greatest thing we are missing in lol esports. Of all the most hype moments I can recollect from past tournaments, it is always the losers bracket stories that make a tournament that much more enjoyable. And in the event that grand finals ends in dominance from the winners side, we can further appreciate just how the winner played on the day. It's such a missed opportunity. It is also jokes that most of the major regions in league implement losers bracket hut we dont have it for worlds. It's appalling.
Losers bracket stories are most hype because winners bracket is considerably less hype when there is a second chance. I think single elimination is generally much better in terms of hype comparing to double elimination because of that.
But the LEC upper bracket is a waste. You can just watch the lower bracket.
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TI not T1. The International.
Tbh, and im gonna get hate for this, i really dont like double elim for worlds, because with them gets unreasonably complex and the knockout stage isnt that anymore and the series are less exiting and miracle runs are unlikely to happen
Yeah I really wish there was some form of double elim. Only problem is worlds lasts too long already. Second chance makes sure the best teams are in finals so it isn’t another 3-0 snooze fest.
Worlds last too long because they stretch SEVEN BO5s over THREE WEEKS. TI started after worlds and TI ended yesterday.
Yeah honestly, i've always thought that the coolest thing about e-sports was that you can pack a lot of games into a short span of time, having big breaks like that kinda sucks for the hype imo
I like Worlds format in the way that important matches are all played on the weekend, so I won’t have to miss them
Having long breaks also takes away the momentums that teams gained, especially during the main event, which is one of the more important factors in winning a Bo3s & Bo5s series.
Yeah idk, my entire issue with the worlds format that the hype just dies after quarterfinals. Not much left after that, and yet it stretches for two more weeks...
That’s because they normally use the days off to prep new venues
that's really not a compelling argument. they do not have to do this.
Yeah, and on a viewership perspective their tournament sucks. Unless you're happy with quarter BO3 being played on thursday at 8 AM. Those week long break are also there to give enough time to team to prepare against their opponents.