Why the worlds tournament is a hoax and winning doesn't tell us anything about who the best is.
Best of 1's is a terrible way to start play a competition, especially with a game like league of legends. Statistically speaking, best of 1's in american football shows that the team with the best regular season, wins the superbowl less than half the time. Think back to when the patriots went 18-0 in regular season, and didn't win the superbowl, despite being quite obviously, the objectively best team in the league at the time. If you want league of legends worlds to be won by the best team in the world, and group stages should be done in at least a best of 3 fashion. (to clarify, this best of 1 argument only applies to similarly skilled teams, for a while, korea clearly was the best country in the world, think an nfl team playing children, barcelona playing any team from the americas, or basketball in the olympics for the US) I'm curious if riot even wants it to be competitive though. Best of 1's gives the relatively bad teams a chance to win, making it exciting for underdog fans. The way regular season is played however, provides the best teams from each region, but then decides the people who move on past groups are the luckiest ones, and the best team past quarters are essentially guaranteed to win, meaning you could essentially cut out all of the best teams in the world, and give the cup to a team who clearly was not the best, or leave 1 group winning with objectively the best team to survive, and the rest of the tournament is a joke, and obviously theirs to win, etc. Why do you think you get crap games against wildcard teams because what is often times the objectively better team knows that their entire tournament could fall flat to a crap team cheesing them doing a stupid play that if they get lucky, works, near entirely removing the better team from the tournament, since each game is so crucial in the group stages. How do you keep league of legends competitive? Keep, but refine, the relegation system in regular season, and stop making worlds competition a huge joke. Frankly most of the time, you can predict the outcome of the tournament during, or after quarterfinals, based on which groups seeds got bullshit lucky wins, and which groups objectively good teams made it out. To be fair this years worlds with ANL doing so well and surprising everyone, i think is an outliar, i don't totally think ANL completely got out of groups through luck, i thought they were a very good team, and their occasional odd picks were more meta enlightening then cheese (though there was still some classic wildcard cheese that helped them out). CLG very competitive, I thought did deserve a real chance at worlds (not a bullshit two weeks of flipping a coin). Finally TSM went even in groups with RNG at 3-3, however they didnt get a tiebreaker since two of their losses were to RNG. I see that as another crap group coinflip. Samsung seemed by the end of week two to be the best team based on overall performance, and deservedly made it out of groups, but look at how inconsistent RNG was. They went even, and lost to objectively the worst team in the whole competition in splyce. Yet because they got lucky first game (as doublelift said got disrespected), and played a champion like aurelion sol (a champion which could be argued is a pick that helps the worse team win), TSM doesnt earn a rematch, despite having beat the 1st seed in the group, and not losing to the worst team in the entire competition? How could you rationalize that RNG was the better team, and deserved a spot in the real worlds competition, if they play so inconsistently, a best of 5 would inevitably be their downfall. RNG will lose in quarterfinals, because they are objectively, a terrible team relative to most other teams at worlds, and not actually capable at playing at a competitive level, without significant luck. (To explain the aurelion sol thing, bjergsen, I think most agree, is objectively the better laner than xiaohu. By picking aurelion sol, xiaohu didn't have to play the game against bjergsen, aurelion sol allowed xiaohu to shove the lane at level 1, get all the CS, and then make it a 3v2 in the bot lane, because uzi was the only way to win the game, it effectively removes all of midlane from the entire game. There are no minions to siege with because aurelion can literally clear them, move bot to make a move, and whether or not it works, he is mobile enough he can walk back up continue to get every single CS, and move somewhere else on the map. APDO wasn't salty ranting when he said aurelion sol was broken, and anyone could play with him. Since, xiaohu could kill the CS and then just sit anywhere else on the map, from level 1, while every single other champion in the game [now taliyah as well] cant shove a lane or move like him around a map, at level 1. I'm not trying to really rant about aurelion sol, i main mid lane, and frequently play aurelion sol, but frankly, everyone who plays aurelion sol that knows what their doing, gets rid of the question who the better mid laner is, who the better team is, because they remove the mid lane equation entirely from the game, and just play 1 man up on whatever lane aurelion sol want to win.) Korea permabans aurelion sol, because its another factor that removes the question (who is the better team) from the game; It instead becomes (who got to first pick aurelion sol).