2 Part Question regarding the Professional Leagues format

AnshenK·8/13/2017, 10:51:03 PM·2 votes·469 views

Why is the LCS format setup the way it is with 2 "splits", playoffs with a "bye" and championship points? -- This makes the entirety of the league confusing and unappealing to current sports fans and thus creates a separation between the things like Football and League of Legends. Why would we not use a format like the NHL does, especially in playoffs...
Why are all the different leagues LCS, LCK, LPL etc all formatted differently? -- Same as above, it creates a separation between the regions and is not consistent whatsoever.

4 Comments

III BAKURYU III 8/13/2017, 10:59:59 PM1 votes

The two splits is really there because it gives the lower tier teams a better chance if they did poorly in the first split, to get their act together so they can have a better chance in the second.
While I personally think it too is confusing but more so unneeded, I do get why tho.
{ Warning, opinionated "guess" I think the LPL/LCK are different companies within League, they each have their own way of doing things similar to the LCS(NA/EU). I personally would love if all of the regions could actually have 1 stable format, but what could be good for 1 might not boast as well.

GeminiRune8/13/2017, 11:16:55 PM1 votes

Why is the LCS format setup the way it is with 2 "splits", playoffs with a "bye" and championship points?

Honestly I couldn't come up with a reasonable answer for the 2 splits even if I tried. In a way I guess it's just how it was decided upon. As for playoffs, since formats are usually varied by either an odd number bracket or KotM format, teams would be issued byes off of that. If there was any solution, it'd be have more teams to allocate either a 4-team or 8-team playoff round that way no byes would have to be given. But then that would not necessarily benefit a team who performed well during the regular season in comparison to say the 6th or 7th place team (should it be 8-team). Not only that, but no region - probably excluding China - has a wealth of teams that would produce a suitable playoff that would be effective. As for Championship Points: think of it as a way for a team to prove their consistency as the season progresses with all of the changes that come along the way against their competition.

This makes the entirety of the league confusing and unappealing to current sports fans and thus creates a separation between the things like Football and League of Legends. Why would we not use a format like the NHL does, especially in playoffs...

I still don't understand why League fans compare sports to League of Legends specifically and no other game for that matter. First off, two different volumes no matter how you want to put it. They cannot be put together as such no matter how you want to think it works that way. Secondly, sports related playoffs such as the NBA and NHL occur over spans of days! Why on Earth would you want a Semifinal best of 5 between CLG and TSM to occur 3 to 5 days out of the week when it could just be done in one sitting? And that's just one counterpoint.

Not the same. Never will be the same. Why even compare?

Why are all the different leagues LCS, LCK, LPL etc all formatted differently?

Every League has its own executive division (term needs verification) that forms the competition and as a result, not every league is or will be the same thing. Of the 13 Regional Leagues, only NA and EU have been the closest knit regions in terms of format and production; EU being the region as of late that's begun to drift off of that similarity. We've gone past the days of Best of 1 Round Robins (barring the LCL which still has them) and some regions still utilize Best of 2 (LNN being one). Not every region is a unified "LCS" if you put it that way. You an even tell by the other acronyms you utilized.

Same as above, it creates a separation between the regions and is not consistent whatsoever.

In a way, yes. In another way, not so much. What's one region's impact in relation to another? And given that most fans only care about the international result, what would it matter to the domestic format unless the outcome was negative? Take the LMS: nobody cared about their domestic competition while they were Best of 2 while others meddled and went into Best of 3 or some different format and they were still touted as a "better region" because of where their teams showed up. Yeah they got Best of 3 immediately after that and took a nose dive in opinion but I highly doubt it really stirs that much confusion and disinterest as a result.

Miror B8/14/2017, 3:08:53 AM1 votes

I'll do my best to answer these

LCS was originally supposed to be 1 giant split with a 6-week gap in between. The reason that plan was scrapped in favor of the 2 splits is because they didn't want certain "juggernaut" teams to dominate an entire year, and thus instead decided to create 2 to give teams more time to adapt.

As for the reason for the different formats, you kinda have to dig into the history of the leagues (namely china). Back when the LPL first formed, the original idea that Rito had was to have 2 different leagues of 10 competing alongside eachother, kinda like if NA had 20 teams. Due to a lack of investors, it was cut back to 2 groups of 5 eventually being adopted by EU afterwards. NA and EU were never given the "double-group" format as an option as at the time of their inception there were few outside investments, while with the LCK they chose to leave it as 1 group of 10 because from what I can understand the owners actually preferred that style.

The Lexer8/17/2017, 1:58:51 AM1 votes

Two points:

Firstly, Football (I assume you're talking American Football), also has playoffs with a bye that is very similar to that of the LCS.

Also, championship points were added a few years ago mostly because spring split was pretty much worthless. The top team goes to MSI, but there is practically no reward for other high placing teams. The teams chosen to go to worlds include the number 1 team in summer (to ensure that the current best team is going), as well as the top team in championship points. The gauntlet for the third spot is seeded based on championship points. This way, teams are rewarded for consistent play across both splits instead of having Spring be a warm-up/pointless split.