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2015 Season Considerations: Increasing Participating Teams

Riot·7/11/2014, 2:21:34 AM·2 votes·27,419 views
I’m Nick Allen, League Operations Manager at Riot and I’m here to introduce a new blog series from the eSports team with the goal of explaining the thinking behind some of our choices. To kick off this series, I’m going to share one potential change that is being seriously considered for 2015. I can’t promise it’ll happen but wanted to make you all aware that it’s on our radar. For 2015, we are exploring increasing the number of teams, from 8 to 10, in both the NA and EU LCS. We’re considering this change for a few core reasons:
  • Shortened splits that allow for longer, more exciting playoffs
  • Consistent schedule with no Super Weeks
  • Player and team matchup diversity
  • Playoff optimization
One of the most compelling reasons for why we'd consider moving to this new structure is to promote a more exciting, action-packed league that's digestible for the viewer. We’ll be able to design a season that introduces more variety in teams and matchups, ultimately creating a more diverse and exciting experience for viewers and players. We know our current schedule structure with Super Weeks is demanding and rigorous for players and fans. Moving to a 10 team structure offers us more flexibility around the league format, and remedies some of these scheduling headaches. We could potentially eliminate Super Weeks and shorten the regular season with improved, longer playoff schedules. Right now, we’re feeling like 1-2 weeks of playoffs are too short. We want to make them more exciting, with proper buildup to the final matches for the championship title. We’re currently considering 3 weeks of playoffs. Under this new system, every team participating in the playoffs would be safe from relegation. Playoffs should be focused on winning and progression, not relegation. With any big changes, we know there are pros and cons. Our biggest concern is the depth of talent available to fill and support these additional teams. But based on the performance of Challenger Series teams and the long term advantages addressed above, we currently believe this is the right direction to take the league. With a couple of seasons under our belt, we’re continuing to develop our competitive ecosystem. As the league, teams, and players continue to evolve, so must our format and policies. We know there may be a few challenges, bumps, and bruises along the way, we’re committed to keeping the health of the league as our top priority in any decision we make. Keep an eye out for posts similar to this going forward to stay updated on our direction and rationale for the rest of the season and moving into 2015.

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136 Comments

Superbian7/11/2014, 2:44:02 AM20 votes

I think this is a great idea. If they're removing Super Weeks, my guess is they're going from an 8 team/28 games each format to 10 team/20 games each. That would make for 10 games a week (5 a day), over ten weeks. As part of their goal is to make playoffs longer, and make all playoff participants guaranteed a spot in the next split, that means Top 8 make playoffs, bottom 2 get relegated. Any other setup fails to meet the stated criteria. This allows for a full quarterfinal, semifinal and final. This is also better for the overall growth of the league, as one split isn't always enough time for a new team to get adjusted to the LCS, so kicking 3/8ths of the teams into relegation and possibly out of the league each split creates a little too much turnover.

Yasukeh7/11/2014, 2:41:26 AM13 votes

There aren't enough good challenger teams to justify having more than 8 spots. This seems like a feasible thing to do in 2016, but currently its just going to end up being more Velocity's in the LCS, while allowing top 8 teams to skip relegations entirely.

big teej7/12/2014, 4:50:30 PM7 votes

but I like super week......

Sideway7/11/2014, 3:34:49 AM6 votes

Honestly, we need a winter LCS split. Each team would play each other twice, making 90 games instead of 112. 270 season games over 224. We see more champions, more strategy and upsets every match. If we could play challenger games before LCS ones, we could be hype for LCS as to downgrading in production quality in the current setup.

Frère Daz7/11/2014, 4:23:46 AM6 votes

Have you considered switching to Best Of 2 as well? Seems like a much better system than this terrible Best of 1 format

b0nequad7/11/2014, 3:34:41 AM5 votes

How about we get best of five semi and quarter finals. I'm sick of watching a best of 3 decide so much after a long season. Same for worlds. Best of three's have no place in high stakes play offs. They are rather disappointing after such a journey

Grinchery7/11/2014, 3:50:50 PM3 votes

i would say that this sounds great apart from one thing, i as a fan love super week, because you will be able to watch every team, wether they are your favorite or not, on a given day, and not need to wait for a specific matchup that you may be wanting to see. However the rest of the plan sounds great, cause more teams does mean more diversity in the matches.

Falcon7/11/2014, 2:36:59 AM3 votes

This most likely will just increase the "LMQ" type of teams in the LCS. True Challenger teams are not at the level of LCS teams but that has a lot to do with not having the dedicated lives like LCS players do. I feel its worth a shot but NA and EU need to adapt the LPL rule of only 2 foreign players per team or we will just be getting the runts of Korea and China coming over again.

iWillFeastYou7/11/2014, 7:25:26 AM3 votes

im nick alan fight me

iLician7/12/2014, 2:55:20 AM3 votes

COMPLEXITY IS STAYIN BABY WOOHOOO

HappilyZerg7/11/2014, 9:16:40 PM2 votes

I'm really for this Riot! Growing the scene will help everyone get better by allowing the big teams to play with little ones. It might take a bit for some of the Challenger teams to catch up when introduced, but I think they definitely will.

Jedi Knight Noil7/11/2014, 9:59:15 AM2 votes

I want a kind of World cup where teams are about nationality... just for a month for one competition, would be great!!!

Drumbird7/11/2014, 2:33:31 AM2 votes

I hope this means more games! :D

VelGodd7/14/2014, 10:09:58 PM2 votes

My concerns about this are if each team only plays each other twice. That to me really isn't enough to see the parity or disparity between them. Each team should play each other at least 3 times. Also, like what someone else mentioned, we need better match highlight shows, and it would be nice to hear from the losing team as well as the winning team, perhaps even together. It would be great to hear each teams perspective in key plays as well as winner and loser talk to each other about specific plays, if any, that stood out.

Also previously mentioned, part of growing the scene is getting more stable and predictable with viewing. I think that 10 hrs a week isn't much while 2 5 hrs day isn't always the easiest thing to catch, and if you happen to just miss one match you often get spoilers if you try to finish watching the stream. Maybe instead of just having all the games over 2 days we could have them split up over the week.

Crazymonkey10137/11/2014, 1:41:26 PM2 votes

Does this mean playoffs will have 8 teams?

ThaddeusMike7/11/2014, 5:58:44 AM2 votes

I generally like this idea, but I do have some reservations. First, the good:

  1. Growing the scene. LCS teams get some level of support from Riot. This is far from perfect, but being an LCS team carries some amount of money and legitimacy with it. Giving more teams this sort of backing will help grow the scene. Smoothing out the schedule might allow them to do some nice things for the players.
  2. The splits are currently just a bit too long. How much really changes over the second half? Sure, some teams do rise or fall, but how much of that is adapting to new patches or just the general rhythm of hot and cold streaks that you get in any competition? (that is not a rhetorical question. If anyone has a good answer I would love to hear it).
  3. Expanded playoffs could be really fun, especially in a shorter season. They aren't guaranteed to be. Right now NA is in a spot where expanded playoffs would be great because of the parity, but last split it wasn't. Expanded playoffs do allow the best matches to be better, and that is a good thing so I'm counting this as a net positive.
  4. If this is part of a scheduling change that includes letting top western teams play Korean (and ideally Chinese and SEA) teams, that would be spectacular and would outweigh any of my concerns. Unfortunately, that isn't something we can yet say.

now for the bad:

  1. There are already sometimes games that are easy to just write off. NA doesn't have that problem this split, thanks to some excellent upsets and a relatively balanced batch of teams. However, it has had that problem in previous splits, and Europe has some of that problem now, and it could well be exacerbated by introducing new teams. However, this concern is mitigated (not eliminated, but mitigated) by the fact that teams would only play each other twice.
  2. Fewer games between the top tier teams. This raises the importance of each individual game, but it also means we don't get as accurate a picture of each team's ability.
  3. Opportunity cost. This is my biggest worry. Riot puts a substantial amount of money into each team. If this comes at a net increase in cost, I have to wonder if it is the best use of E-sports money. S4 has been far better than S3, but the big concern is still the lack of international competition. If the cost of 4 new teams could be spent to have just one more international tournament, or to improve one existing international tournament significantly, then right now it is the wrong call. Now, if Riot does open the door for top western teams to find ways to compete in Korea on their own initiative, that would be the best of all options, even though it would almost certainly come at the cost of parity in the LCS.

The ugly: 10 week schedules with 10 teams would presumably be each team playing each other team twice, for a total of 18 games per team. Would there be byes or would teams only play 1 game certain weeks? I'm not sure how I feel about either option.

Velandria7/11/2014, 3:12:34 AM2 votes

There's a long standing philosophy that to be the best you need to play against the best. I think expanding to ten teams gives a great opportunity to the top tier challenger teams to set themselves up to take that next step by getting to play against the best the LCS has to offer. Plus with esports growing, the leagues need to grow as well. Happens in all other sports.

meow8887/24/2014, 2:35:53 AM1 votes

I really like the Super Weeks especially the ones in the 1st and final weeks. Opening with a Super Week helps put a decent number of games on the board. For those of us who root for teams not at the very top the final week Super Week is like a pennant race all rolled up into a single weekend for who will make playoffs (yeah!) and who will be going to relegations (groan). Also for people a bit far away from the studios (for me it is 7 hours each way) it gives us a bigger incentive to watch the games live (Yeah!!).

seangaresismydad7/30/2014, 4:22:13 AM1 votes

This needs to happen. Now all that is needed is a purpose for the Spring Split.

KSHarrison7/11/2014, 6:45:22 AM1 votes

I love the idea of an easier schedule for players now. I love the idea of no super week. I love the idea of a better playoff format. However, is moving to 10 teams the only way to accomplish all of this? If this change means setting up a 10 team / 20 game split, here are three disadvantages I can see with that:
.

  1. Each team plays each other only twice, instead of 4 times. While we've had a lot of fun this split seeing low ranked teams upset top teams, history has shown so far that this is uncommon. More likely, the 10 team / 20 game format means we'll have half as many exciting clashes of titan teams in the top 3, but we will have just as many "stomps" of lower teams, since we'll have 2 games each for the 7th and 8th place, just as now, but also 2 more games for the 9th and 10th spots each. So just as many "stompy" games; half as many top rate matches.
    .

  2. We will need to have 5 matches per day. 4 matches already runs I think 4-5 hours of production time; you can do the math on a 5 match day, twice every weekend. I think there is such a thing as viewer exhaustion, at least I have felt that way when super week comes around. I actually think I watched fewer games this last superweek than I do on a normal weekend, and I actually felt I missed out on a lot of stuff because of it. What helps now is if you have 2 quality matches, people can easily sit through one "less interesting" match as a bridge. This will be harder to make happen in a 10 team / 20 game format.
    .

  3. While some people will argue the quality of competition will be more fierce with more teams, I disagree. Actually, because top teams play less, the average level of competition may decrease. There's no evidence except EU last split, even in Korea, that bottom teams can closely compete with top teams (even in EU this was obviously not the case toward the end of the split). Far more valuable for the competitive development of a top team is playing another top team. There's a lot less to learn playing a team beneath your level.

seangaresismydad8/15/2014, 7:56:34 PM1 votes

DO IT

Bronze Johnny7/14/2014, 6:59:19 AM1 votes

Instead of having more teams in LCS better switch to bo3 format like ogn. That would be way better.

C1ock7/14/2014, 10:06:18 AM1 votes

I think adding two more teams would be great and increase competition. Curious how relegation would go or if you even have it. I wold hope that the finalist for the Challenger series just got in the LCS for the 2015 season. We will see though. I support this.

CosmicMoose7/14/2014, 3:11:15 PM1 votes

I think that this sounds like a pretty good idea. Though, I do love super weeks! Extending the length of the playoffs would be really nice to see, and I do agree with the fact that teams should be focused on improving, and not having to be concerned about relegation's. Worrying about relegation's on top of preparing for your next team match-up can take a negative toll on anyone. I am all in favor of this idea!

Glørÿ7/14/2014, 6:35:30 PM1 votes

I really do hope that there are 10 spots, The current 8 teams are great as they are, even if there are a weaker 3 in the NA LCS but Coast/Team 8 Really do have a good shot but instead of them knocking out an already good team why not just add two more spots for more teams. Even last split everybody believed that both of the C9 would make it but EG/ SUPA HOT CREW proved their worth.

Charles Arwin7/14/2014, 9:57:46 PM1 votes

That's exciting news! A friend of mine pointed out that asian teams might be considered to have an advantage due to their league structure including more best of 3s (or 5s). They are prepared better as far as tournaments are concerned. I feel there is a point to it. Now you guys probably spend a little more time than us thinking about the structure of the league... Anyway: I'd really like to hear more about your ideas concerning the Playoff structure in particular ;)