Boards›Esports

Change the Amateur Format?

Pippen The Short·10/17/2016, 6:51:34 PM·4 votes·970 views

I really think that Riot is doing a disservice to its competitive scene by keeping the Amateur league so restrictive. Which this year has really done a lot to emphasize that. League is one of the most popular competitive PVP games in the world. However, I think that its status as such might be in jeopardy. One of my favorite competitive Esports to watch is CS:GO despite the fact that I've never actually played the game. League in a way has become a very slow and somewhat stale competition to watch, every single team tries to do roughly the same thing, with the same champions, and it really boils down to these slow paced, don't do anything for fear of making mistakes, kind of games. I still have watched the vast majority of this year's MSI and Worlds, but this has been the most boring season yet.

The MLB has the highest skill caps of all major league sports and it runs 3 minor leagues for a combination of almost 100 minor league teams, more commonly referred to as the "farm system" which is partly what makes the game interesting despite having a rigid, unchanging, set of rules and requirements to play the game. That being said, League of Legends is an always changing environment with loose boarders but endless possibilities within to play the game. But Riot's top competitive structure has somehow managed to not be able to tap into this habitat of creativity and instead has a very predictable competitive play. Riot restricts its Amateur system to 6 teams in the NA, 6 Teams in the, EU. Despite the reality that if it simply opened up to a more flexible system that allowed for people to compete, and added a decay system or some kind of required tournament system to its Diamond+ ranked leagues would find the most talent. It also seems to me that it would be worthwhile to hold some massive online tournament to qualify for an expanded CS series. I personally would up the NACS pool to 24 teams, and up the NA LCS to 12 teams with an opportunity for the top 4 CS teams to move up by playing the bottom 4 LCS teams every year by competing in a best of 5 tournament series before the beginning of the new season. With a massive online tournament for teams to compete for the remaining 20 spots in the CS.

So I don't know, just a thought.

4 Comments

Protroid10/17/2016, 7:46:21 PM2 votes

A lot of non riot organizations host amateur leagues. I actually shoutcast / work for one of them called CompeteLeague.

I definitely agree that more can be done to bring more players into the competitive fold, considering how the game completely evolves from what you would normally see in ranked when you need to work around team play. You build synergy, you try strategies, and sometimes have decent success (or fail, that happens too).

One of the reasons why I love shoutcasting amateur leagues is that people try more things. From Bronze to Diamond, I often find myself more excited for these games because I know less of whats going to happen. The meta is less rigid, teams like to experiment, and watching that evolution is amazing to me.

Dr Poro10/17/2016, 9:01:02 PM1 votes

I disagree that this worlds is showing a very stale meta. Compared to the MSI and the entire season 5 where split push was the dominant style and games were PvE for the first few minutes, this Worlds brings a lot of crazy stuff as soon as the game begins (midlaner roaming at lvl 1 or 2 to bot or enemy jungle). Teams often won because of mechanical outplay and quick-paced macro plays.

But yeah, I can see the value in having an Amateur League Format (even though I wouldn't watch it, I don't even have the time to watch every Worlds match).