Why the worlds tournament is a hoax and winning doesn't tell us anything about who the best is.

Muchkk·Oct 9, 2016·2 votes·1,401 views

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).

32 Comments

Yordle XayahOct 9, 20162 votes

Yeah... bit hard to make up excuses for TSM when H2K 4 - 0'd their group (with a 2 - 0 over EDG) after a 1 - 2 week

MuchkkOct 9, 20161 votes

How is that relevant? The thread is about best of 1's, and how they are actually statistically proven to knockout the objectively better team. (At least in a competition that is relatively close). TSM's group is just a good example, since TSM, though won the same amount of games as RNG, showed greater consistency, beating the number 1 seed in the group, and beating the worst team in the group. As oppose to RNG, which took two games off TSM, however lost twice to Samsung, and even lost to splyce. Each group is independent of one another, and one example of what you would consider a fair group win, is not exactly statistical analysis, nor do you even have sample size to back you up. As oppose to literal sports history, proving that in a close competition (which this season has been agreed had been established across most or all regions), the objectively better team loses more often in a best of 1 competition.

Yordle XayahOct 9, 20163 votes

Let me ask you this: Would you have made this thread had TSM qualified???

MuchkkOct 9, 20161 votes

To be totally honest, probably not, but my subjective bias about TSM shouldn't take away from the question, of is this system really healthy for producing the most competitive worlds teams out of groups? My motive may be questionable, but regardless, it sparked this question, and if im continuing on the honesty trail, had TSM qualified, I wouldn't have made this thread, but that doesnt mean that if the roles were reversed, RNG would still at least deserve a tiebreaker, whether I would want one or not for TSM sake, RNG would deserve it.

Yordle XayahOct 9, 20161 votes

{quoted}

To be totally honest, probably not

I'm done then. You make this topic out of frustration of TSM not being able to beat RNG, the day after H2K 2 - 0 EDG who were the higher LPL seed.

It's so easy to make excuses, but it's THIS simple: Perform, or go home.

MuchkkOct 9, 20161 votes

You proved nothing though, the question was if this was truly an optimal competition, thanks for wasting my time and everyone elses?

Yordle XayahOct 9, 20161 votes

My team, FNC didn't even qualify for Worlds. I won't go around making pointless excuses about the Bo2 system EU has. The team didn't perform, they don't deserve Worlds.

TSM didn't do what they had to. The last game it was Bjerg v 9 other players. No matter the "system" a team that allows itself to do that at Worlds doesn't deserve to move on, and they didn't. Accept it.

MuchkkOct 9, 20161 votes

You proved nothing though, the question was if this was truly an optimal competition, thanks for wasting my time and everyone elses? I conceded my inspiration for the post was TSMs loss, but the topic is still valid, and a discussion worth genuinely having, unless you don't care about seeing the best teams perform, the best teams play at worlds. At least i'm honest, but you dont care about the sanctity of competition, and by ignoring the real question, have displayed the opinion of not "perform or go home" but "win a fucking coin toss, or go home".

Yordle XayahOct 9, 20161 votes

I proved you are really bias and upset because of TSM. I don't know about others, but I find it really hard to take you seriously at all because of that. You can come up with all the excuses you want, but only the teams that are able to adapt and perform deserve to move on.

Perform, or go home. If you have a problem with that, tell that to H2K or ANX.

MuchkkOct 9, 20161 votes

That's incredibly ignorant. A bias can skew an opinion on an argument, but my point is irrelevant to TSM, and my bias. My point of the post is to start a conversation on improving the health and competitive nature of league esports. My point has nothing to do with TSM. That's like saying a manchester united fan predicting barcelona would win champions cup because of objective statistics, is wrong because of their bias to manchester united. Best of 3's would be better for competitive worlds group stages, I had the statistics in sports, to back it up, can even provide links to sources. You are arguing that my bias towards a team that I like, makes my statistics or argument false? I have a problem taking someone so stupid they think facts are irrelevant because they don't understand how bias works, seriously. Never went to college I would presume.

Yordle XayahOct 9, 20161 votes

The system is not optimal, but the only reason why you bring it up and care about is because your team lost. Had TSM moved on, you wouldn't complain about the system, which is pretty hypocritical because you only complain about it when it hurts your team. But alright dude. Anything that floats your boat. Seems it really affected you.

ZielmannOct 9, 20162 votes

That's a long post to explain that you don't understand what group play is. There's this little thing called the World Cup, perhaps you've heard of it? It starts off with teams split into groups where they play a single round robin to determine who makes it out of the group stage. By single, I mean they play just one match against each of the other three teams in their group to determine the winners. League does a double round robin, where each team plays every other team in the group twice. From your standpoint, this should make it even more legit than how they play the World Cup.

So... are you saying the World Cup is a hoax, too?

MuchkkOct 9, 20161 votes

The world cup starts qualifications, bringing the best players from their country, subjectively (mostly objectively), when they go into round robin there are i believe 8 groups, rather than 4, each with good teams, however, thats where the skill gap comes in, and group of death is a very serious thing in the world cup. Where 3 to 4 teams in a group are favorites to leave the group stages, you then remove 2 of the favorites of the tournament. Think if brazil, germany, argentina, are in the same group, 1 of those teams would probably be a favorite over those who win another group. (okay maybe not brazil right now lol), but imagine if germany were knocked out, and italy made it out of another group. Could you really argue that germany didn't deserve it, and Italy deserved it more? There is a huge loss to the sanctity of competition. The world cup is a fantastic competition to watch, because their are a lot of competitive teams, but no it is definitely not the end all be all of perfect competition.

ZielmannOct 9, 20161 votes

And what exactly do you call the regular season play plus the end-of-season tournament in each region to determine the top teams from those regions to make it to the group stage, if not qualifications?

Honestly, the more I think about the comparisons, the more clear it seems to me that the worlds format is heavily influenced by the World Cup (or a similar approach). Who cares that there are more groups? That's irrelevant...there are more teams playing, too. If LoL ever ended up with a league for every country, it would also need a larger number of groups...

They generate 4 pools of teams. The first contains the top seeded countries, and the other three are region-based
They then populate each group with one team from each pool. Due to putting the top seeds all in one pool, they actually avoid the 'death group' scenario you talked about, assuming you're talking about having 3 top seeds all in one group (as in your example). Sure, the random factor across the pools would allow for the possibility of an 'easier' or 'more difficult' group to exist. But realistically, if a team makes it into the bracket stage, no matter what group they came from, if they don't deserve to be there they'll get knocked out quickly by a better team. Or else they'll win and prove they actually were better than people gave them credit for.
There are some additional checks in place to make sure they don't wind up with too many teams from one region in a group (more than I care to go into here, but you can look it up if you care to find it)

Does that sound at all familiar? If not, then you've probably not even bothered to read the Worlds formatting before making your post. There are a few differences, but the concept is similar. League only draws from 3 pools of players to fill just 4 groups, for example. But they also have checks in place to make sure no group has two teams from the same region.

Is it a perfect format? Certainly not. Really, I don't think anything possibly could be. It sounds like the most satisfactory thing to you would be every team playing every other team in at least one Bo5 in one giant round robin. Then the team with the most wins would be crowned the champion. But that would be impractically long to play, and also honestly a bit boring to watch. The format they use seems to be a good balance of exciting to watch and pretty balanced overall. If a team perceived as 'better' doesn't actually make it out of group play, can we really consider them better? If a team perceived as 'weaker' makes it through a 'weak' group, but then they beat teams that made it out of tougher groups in the bracket stage to make it into the semis or finals, can we really consider them weaker?

Miror BOct 9, 20162 votes

Fun fact: dating back to the 2000 season the team with (or tied for) the 2nd best record in the NFL has actually won twice as many superbowls as the team with the best record. Also a fun fact, two of those four teams are the patriots.

Also have to heavily disagree with you on this one, if only because you completely ignored the fact that the entire western hemisphere was doing bo1's up until last split. It also happened in EU in summer 2015, guess which two teams made the semi finals of worlds playing on those formats.

Your points about sol also completely ignore the brilliance in the first pick by RNG. If I'm them pre-draft, I'm thinking "these guys haven't had to play it vs them at all in any important games, whether it be the semifinals vs CLG or the first week of worlds, let's take it and see how much prep they have against it". Clearly they didn't have much as they took ryze of all things (something who has a hard time shoving the wave/roaming alongside sol until around lv8 or so) and got beaten by the macro-roams.

TSM lost not just one game, but three games (just as many as RNG). To suggest they're somehow better and more consistent than them is adorable, and reeks heavily of "fanboyism". TSM lost, get over it, start rooting for C9.

MuchkkOct 9, 20161 votes

"Brilliance" is hardly the term to use. They had first pick, so of course pick the champion that makes it so your midlaner cant lose for you, but can make it a 3v2 in the bottom lane, to help your only good players. As for consistency, its not the number of games, its the fashion in which they won or lost, and who they won or lost too. TSM beat the first seed in the group, and never lost to the worst in the group, as oppose to RNG, which could never beat Samsung, and were the only team in the entirety of the group to lose to splyce.

Miror BOct 9, 20161 votes

{quoted}

"Brilliance" is hardly the term to use. They had first pick, so of course pick the champion that makes it so your midlaner cant lose for you, but can make it a 3v2 in the bottom lane, to help your only good players. As for consistency, its not the number of games, its the fashion in which they won or lost, and who they won or lost too. TSM beat the first seed in the group, and never lost to the worst in the group, as oppose to RNG, which could never beat Samsung, and were the only team in the entirety of the group to lose to splyce.

You can't lose on aurelion sol? Last I checked his record in competitive was hovering around a 60% win rate (on par with the likes of cassio and current syndra) with plenty of teams being able to neuter him entirely whether it be with counter-picks or just making him unable to leave lane. I still think you're kinda ignoring how "Brilliant" it was for them to take it, over the other open options like elise/poppy/jayce (the latter two being hotly contested top lane picks as of late). I'll definitely be checking around for interviews to try and find out RNG's mindset behind that, but the fact they chose it into a team who clearly hasn't had any practice against it on a stage is something that not only redefines the importance behind pick/ban, but also shows that perhaps they're going into games with a different mentality than the other teams.

MuchkkOct 9, 20161 votes

In the current state of the game, mid laners are in short supply as of now. I think aurelion sol is objectively the best for competitive play, and he was removed for much of the group stage, I think every game he isn't banned in the future, he will be in every single game that has syndra banned out, and maybe even some where it's syndra v aurelion. Aurelion changes the game entirely, makes whatever mid lane pick you have, entirely irrelevant at level 1 and on, length of irrelevancy depends on the pick you have. As we've learned from C9, every single lane better sit wayyyyyy behind their tower and not CS past the first way, because after he clears that first wave, he could go to any lane he wanted to on the map, while the other mid laner has to stay back and CS. Effective post first minion wave, every lane is either 2v1 or 3v2.

ThugWalrusOct 9, 20162 votes

It's not a true 1v1 though, since each team plays each other multiple times. The group stage would more accurately be seen as the regular season, as whoever has the best record moves to the "playoffs" or the quarters. Everything past the first round is not a best of 1 format anyway, it's a best of 5, so I kind of disagree with the premise of your argument. Yeah sure TSM might beat RNG in a best of 5, but they were eliminated not based on that, but by their inability to win enough games to qualify for the "playoffs."

MuchkkOct 9, 20161 votes

I definitely see where you're coming from, one could argue that group stages is actually a psuedo best of 3 format. However, the arguemnt falls apart when you said "inability to win enough games to qualify for the playoffs", if it's an argument for number of games, there should've been a tiebreaker since, both teams actually won the same amount of games. Especially when TSM is considered the more consistent team, and would be favorites to win a best of 5 (a format favoring the better team, even from a best of 3's, since sample size would be larger).

ThugWalrusOct 9, 20161 votes

That's not really true. If we consider groups as the regular season, then this was handled much like any other sport. Most major league sports in N. America have a season, at the end of which if 2 teams are tied, they do not play a tiebreaker series, the person who gets the playoff spot is determined by a tiebreaker. I will use the National Hockey League (NHL) as an example since that is what I know, but I think the NBA and NFL are similar. In the NHL, if two teams play an 82 game season and both finish with 95 points, who gets the playoff spot is determined not by the two teams playing, but by who had the most wins in regulation time, if that is equal then it is who had a better goal differential, if that is equal then it is who won more games against eachother etc. In this worlds scenario, both teams finished their regular season (groups), but the "playoff" spot went to RNG because they won more games against TSM. It is a perfectly legit method of tiebreaking used in many professional sports.

MuchkkOct 9, 20161 votes

It may seem like a reasonable method of tiebreaking, but is it the most honest when proving who the better team is? A tiebreaker would have been more proving, creating a larger sample size of games played between the two teams in question, and having the sample from the group stage played prior to the tiebreaker game (which wouldve been established to be equal). It's not so much an attempt to give TSM an extra chance to get out of groups, but an attempt to have the best teams leave groups (frankly i think TSM would've lost in quarter finals).

ThugWalrusOct 9, 20161 votes

Well the fact is that although you can always find a better method of determining which team is better than another team, you have to make a cutoff somewhere, and most have chosen to have that cutoff after a set number of games. I mean is the best of 5 the MOST honest way of determining the most skilled team? Why nota a best of 7? Why not a best of 9? why not a best of 55? Saying a best of 55 is better than a best of 9 is better than a best of 7 is better than a best of 5 have as much merit as your argument, but we, and riot, recognize that time constraints exist. You can disagree with the limits they've set, but then if your team wins, someone can just as easily come along as say "pshh X team would never have won if it was a best of 7 instead of a best of 5." These are the parameters of the tournament that have been agreed on, and RNG is better than TSM given these parameters.

SlappybiscuitOct 9, 20161 votes

Actually in all tie-breaking scenarios (for every single tournament of any game) head2head matchup is the first tiebreaker. So because TSM lost the head2head they lost the tiebreaker.

KazaLyn ShaoOct 9, 20161 votes

Eh, I was never a fan of the whole format of team sports tournaments before. I'm not really a fan of it now either, especially given that this is supposed to be a best of 5 competition, except early on because time constraints and everyone else does it this way. What? The format of other sports tournaments is not applicable to League, because we use a best of 5 format FOR A REASON. Don't know why we abandoned that so we could pretend we're pro football.

MuchkkOct 9, 20161 votes

I'm saying that best of 3's/5's is a decent format for a tournament. The format of other sports is applicable, in the sense we can use those as a guideline to creating the most competitive blueprint for both regional seasons, and worlds. As for regular season, a relegation system (though understandably disliked by many organizations of a young, relatively non-established sport [for monetary reasons]) would allow for a format allowing only the best players to consistently play at the top level in their region, assuming that the league is formatted to allow for competitive play (as it is now, with best of 3's in regular, and 5's in playoffs). It would however, be understandable to make the move towards franchising at the early years of the sport, allowing for more consistent pay to players, and easier monetary distribution to organizations.

SlappybiscuitOct 9, 20161 votes

Be honest with yourself. No matter how TSM lost, you fanboys would find an excuse. Last year it was our jungle was trash, two years ago it was our jungle was trash. This year its we lost a bunch of games against the team we were competing against why cant we advance?

MuchkkOct 9, 20161 votes

This thread isn't entirely about TSM, TSM was an example, it is fine to disagree with me on whether they deserved to get out of groups, but the thread is about whether or not best of 1's is a genuinely competitive way to prove the best team in the world.

SlappybiscuitOct 9, 20161 votes

Win your group and play the best of 5s in the next stage. If a team cant make it out groups they dont genuinely deserve to be called the best in the world. Being able to adapt to in-game situations should be as important as being able to adjust in between games.

YambrinZOct 9, 20161 votes

The results are the results. Just like the bronzelords who blame everyone but themselves for being in bronze......TSM lost because they werent as good as world talent....the end.

MuchkkOct 9, 20161 votes

Fair enough thoughts on TSM, thoughts on best of 1's as competitive format?

hotarseOct 9, 20161 votes

I don't want the best team to always win. I want the underdogs to be able to win on a good day against all odds. The fact there's a chance for upsets makes games interesting to watch. If the best team always won, it'd be boring as fark.