2016 LCS Spring Split Rules Changes

TL;DR: As we kick off each new LCS Season, both in NA and EU, we take a close look at our LCS ruleset to ensure that we are addressing issues that might affect competitive integrity, players, teams or any other element of the game. You can keep up with these detailed changes via our change log and the 2016 LCS Official Rules but in this post we’ll be outlining a few of the most significant changes and what they mean for the 2016 LCS Season.

The 2016 LCS ruleset contains updates to a few policies including:

• Playoffs: During Playoffs, matchups will now be reseeded in the semifinal round so that the #1 seed will face the lowest remaining seed and the #2 seed will face the highest remaining seed. This is designed to reduce the incentive to place lower in the regular LCS season to set up for an easier run to Playoff finals. We’ll also be closing a loophole so that going forward, any player who has competed in the CS Playoffs will not be allowed to compete in any phase of the LCS Playoffs - and vice versa.
• Competitive Patch/Tournament Realm: Champions who have not been available on the live service for more than one week (previously two) will be automatically restricted. We’ve lessened this time due to a couple of factors, but primarily because a shorter break from release helps to preserve a connection between the Live environment that fans are playing at home (and pros are using to practice) and the Tournament realm.
• Subs/Loans: We’ll be limiting each player contractually to one organization, but also adding a formal loan process by which players can be listed on more than one roster - allowing for movement between CS and LCS rosters.
• Revamped Promotion/Relegation System: Auto promotion/relegation will be replaced with a Bo5 tournament with double elimination after round one. We believe that over time we can gradually reduce the relegation risk that LCS teams face to encourage greater stability of the league year-over-year, as well as helping LCS organizations attract longer term sponsors. Please read on for full information.

Playoffs (7.3.11)

From the 2016 LCS Season, we’ll be implementing reseeding in the Semifinal Round, meaning that the #1 seed will face the lowest remaining seed and #2 seed will face the highest. With this move, we’re hoping to eliminate the incentive for teams to strategically lose games during the end of the LCS season to place lower and have an easier path to finals. By forcing reseeding, teams will be incentivized to place higher to avoid tougher matches in Playoffs.

We’ll also be closing a loophole that previously permitted LCS players or those that compete in LCS playoffs to play in the CS playoffs which we believe would be overly disruptive and unfair. Going forward, players will be locked into one playoff or another, and cannot compete in both. It’s our hope that this helps avoid situations in which LCS players operate as ‘hired guns’ to unfairly impact a CS playoff match.

Competitive Patch & Tournament Realm (8.4)

In previous seasons, concerns about balance issues and bugs affecting newly released champions led us to keeping new champions disabled for 2 weeks for competitive play after they were available on the live service. We believe that maintaining a link between the live and tournament realms is important for fans watching along at home - and for pros shuttling between practice and competition space. While we’ve learned from experience and cut down greatly on the amount of bugs within a champions’ early lifespan, adding champions earlier within their release schedule also increases the need for adaptability and tests players and teams’ skill levels.

To clarify with an example, if Imaginary Champion A was released on February 1, 2016 (just a hypothetical, Reddit detectives!), that champion would become eligible to be used in all LCS matches at the start of the first LCS competitive week after February 8th.

Subs/Loans (3.2)

This year we’ve added the requirement that all Challenger players be signed to contracts to provide more stability for players in that scene and to offer teams similar poaching protections granted to LCS teams. This made the previous precedent of some players playing in both CS and LCS difficult.  We believe that having a clear contractual standing with one defined team is important - hence why we’re limiting each player to committing to one contract, either CS or LCS.

To ensure that we’re not limiting opportunities for players, we’ve created a formal loan process by which players can be listed on more than one roster. Prior to the trade deadline (March 1st for Spring Split), and with a formal loan agreement in place, we’ll allow players to move freely between LCS and CS teams.  This should ensure playing time for LCS subs without preventing them from acting as subs when necessary.  There’s no cooldown or limitation on when they play on which team, as long as it’s before the trade deadline.

After the trade deadline, players can only be on one roster for the remainder of that split.  This works for sister teams as well, which allows teams like Team Liquid to take advantage of their CS lineups when planning the the best starting roster for their LCS team.  We’ll be monitoring this rule and expect some evolution over the first few splits as we see organizations experiment with loan structures. Ultimately we think ensuring contracts and protections for players in CS is a big step forward for the semi-pro scene.

Changing Promotion/Relegation (7.3.15)

We know this is a more foundational change to the LCS going into the 2016 Season, so here’s a few more details about how it’ll work and why we’re making this change.

Instead of an automatic auto-relegation for the lowest-placed LCS team/auto promotion for the CS champion and two Bo5 matches between 8th/9th LCS and 2nd/3rd CS respectively, we’ll be hosting an elimination/promotion tournament for the bottom 3 LCS teams and top 2 Challenger teams. Here’s the format we’ll be using.

Round 1 - Day One

Match 1: LCS 10th Place vs CS 2nd Place (Bo5, loser eliminated)

Round 2 - Day Two

Match 2: LCS 8th Place vs Match 1 winner (Bo5, winner promoted to LCS)

Match 3: LCS 9th Place vs CS 1st place (Bo5, winner promoted to LCS)

Round 3 - Day Three

Match 4: Loser of Matches 2 and 3 (Winner promoted to LCS, loser eliminated)

As the league has grown and teams have been steadily leveling up, we no longer need automatic relegation to ensure that there’s sufficient churn to maintain a healthy LCS ecosystem. For the 2016 season we’ve redesigned a format that prioritizes the 3 best overall teams making it out of the promotion tournament and into LCS, rather than focusing on single ‘CS vc LCS showdowns’ or automatic churn. Promotion/relegation exists to ensure that the most talented teams gain access to the LCS, and we believe that this new format offers a fairer and competitively thorough way of ensuring that the best overall teams stay in the LCS.

We’re aware that the prospect of auto promotion offered a motivational ‘carrot’ for CS teams (just as auto relegation offered a ‘stick’ for LCS teams) and that this increases the number of steps needed to break into the LCS. With the increasing quality of top-tier CS teams however, we’re confident that teams of LCS caliber (whether they were LCS or came from CS) will still claim their rightful place by making it out of the tournament.

We hope this breakdown helps add context and color behind the changes to the upcoming LCS season. To review all changes in detail, check out the official 2016 LCS ruleset and our change log which shows side-by-side changes from 2015. We’ll be hosting an AMA in the next few weeks to address 2016 LCS season changes, but we’ll be hanging out here to answer questions here via comments so feel free to drop us a line.