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A supersaturation of Esport events

Diamonesd·2/2/2015, 1:44:06 PM·3 votes·1,151 views

I have been playing League of Legends since season 1 and every year esports gets bigger. Right now, I believe it has gotten too big.

For example, the LCS is boring as fuck right now. Mostly because of the analyst desk in my opinion, but overall, the games are boring as well. In NA, there does not seem to be enough talent to fill team spots. Watching streams like Voyboy in challenger offer better gameplay than watching the LCS. Right now, their number one goal needs to be reducing time between games in the LCS. I do not want to watch analyst talk about a game I just watched wherein there is nothing really to talk about. Even when there is something to talk about, they don't analyze it well.

More to my main point though, the Esports scene has too many teams and too many leagues to make watching League of Legends worth it. What I mean by this, the NA scene does not interact with the other leagues, but they all compete for the number 1 spot. That does not make sense. If Riot continues to make the World championship the thing that teams aspire to, then we need to have meaningful competitions between regions. If you think about other sports like Basketball, I am a fan of the bulls ( I live in Chicago), on average, the Bulls have two games a week against many teams in the NBA. The LCS should work this way.

To watch the LCS in full takes 7 hours of your time. Of course I can watch one game and then turn it off and watch another later, but that takes away fan interaction. If Team Liquid plays a game against TSM on tuesday night and plays a game against C9 on Friday, what this does for every team is it gives them time to prepare for each team they play and also it gives the fans a regular schedule similar to real sports. I am not sure the LCS has enough fans though to segment the games off like this. What happens on Saturday and Sunday is I get tired of the game because if I were to watch the LCS, I just watched 10 games, taking 14 hours over a 30 hours of Waking time. I would much prefer watching 10 games over the entire week.

So I have a number of issues with how the LCS works right now.

  1. Players/Teams are not performing well. You can get better games watching a Challenger streamer than you can watching an LCS game.
  2. No meaningful interactions between Regions
  3. The LCS is too long of a broadcast to stay interested. The games need to be segmented across the entire week. This will give teams proper time to prepare against specific teams and it will save fans from spending their entire Saturday and Sundays watching the LCS.

My third issue, if fixed, can actually help my second issue. If it was scheduled correctly, we could have broadcast of one game from each region maybe every night. For someone like me who thinks the LCS takes too long, I wouldnt watch all the games that night, but I would watch the Region I follow. For those who like watching long broadcast, it would give them a range of teams and styles to watch. They could watch a game featuring Faker over in Korea, Pawn in China, somebody in Europe (I have no idea who plays there to be honest) and Doublelift in NA. I would tune in for the NA game, but this would give fans of Esports variety on the same day and also split up the very long segments we currently have on the weekends. It would have a similar amount of games, but each NA team would not be playing and there would not be a saturation of games for each region. (Having one game or match from each region broadcasting everyday does not mean they are broadcast at the same time)

7 Comments

Vixanys2/2/2015, 5:35:47 PM3 votes

{quoted}

  1. Players/Teams are not performing well. You can get better games watching a Challenger streamer than you can watching an LCS game.
  2. No meaningful interactions between Regions
  3. The LCS is too long of a broadcast to stay interested. The games need to be segmented across the entire week. This will give teams proper time to prepare against specific teams and it will save fans from spending their entire Saturday and Sundays watching the LCS.

First, while I agree a lot of this is the metas fault not the players.

Second, You cannot compare region eSports to region locked NBA/NFL/NHL/NBL competition. You only see International Competitions for sport for like those mentioned in the Olympics or some special effect (World Allstars or some such bullshit). Which is extremely similar to League. IEM San Jose, IEM Katowice/Cologne, IEM Taiwan not to mention the World Finals.

Lastly, I think the Analyzing of every game and interlude is what the main fault is with exaggerated LCS days. Most other regions (CN/KR) play two-three matches (Best of 2 or 3) and spread them out. Which is fine, but I don't believe the best of 1 format the EU/NA LCS have need that. They just need to cut out the Interviews and analyzing until after all the matches are done or push them all into the PTL review.

To clarify, OGN (I refuse to call it the LCK), they do minimal analytic work on the matches after each game (like 3-5 minutes all done by the casters both Korean/English) then 5 minute break in case of roster swaps or team changes. Then MVP interviews after a match. Whereas EU/NA have 5-10 minute interviews after each game. 10-15 minute analyst desk talk, and 3-5 minute break between each match.

The 30 minutes between each game (because 1 game matches) as compared to 5 to 8 minutes can really drag on...

In the end, I think they just need to shut up, maybe do an interview. And leave the analyst desk for post day consideration and PTL (Wednesdays). Fix this un-interesting meta, which may be contributed to players adjusting (its only been out for a couple of weeks). So we can all just enjoy some League!

Retillin2/2/2015, 3:38:27 PM2 votes

#1 I am shocked at how bad some of the teams have performed so far. (some of the teams really look worse than the challenger teams that lost out on the spots)

#2 This has really been an issue for a few years now. I am not sure what they can do to change it.

#3 Each day is an ALL day event now. Just watching the western teams is 4 full days of streaming League. Just too much asked of fans to commit.

You didn't say it, but this is my biggest grip so far. Season 5 has been, through only two weeks mind you, the single most boring time to watch the game. This current meta, whatever you wish to call it, is dull and lifeless. Oddly only Team 8 and Gravity have seemed to be aggressive and entertaining. It's so bad you can tell it's draining on the casters when Kobe or Jatt get excited for a jungle steal at the 35 min mark. There is just no action. So little kills and team fights. But this has to do with Riot placing champions that have a lot of mobility at the top of the power ladders. It's so easy to escape right now that mistakes are not punishable.

Smart Kitty2/3/2015, 2:39:44 PM2 votes

I'd really like to see the third suggestion come to life. I've felt the same way ever since I started watching. I'd be pumped for LCS, but I'd be so tired after watching the first few games that by the time it gets to the 3rd-4th one I'm dosing off. Especially the days where we get long, boring games (80 mins Col vs CRS) as opposed to more exciting ones.

prozak822/4/2015, 8:53:30 PM2 votes

I thought it was pretty dumb to expand to 10 teams when there aren't even enough good players IMO to field the 8 teams we already had.

Rhlax2/2/2015, 3:59:10 PM1 votes

For example, the LCS is boring as fuck right now.

I agree with you. Every game is very similar, and predictable. It's not even about champion pick diversity... RPG elements will always lead to snowballing, in real esports there is no snowballing.

wishlist: I would like to see teams able to allocate starting gold, more map randomness, more map/champ interaction.

Diamonesd2/2/2015, 1:53:33 PM1 votes

I also want to add, the dissolution of the top Korean teams has really hurt the scene as well. What happened to the Korean powerhouse teams? why did they break up and ruin competitive play... They were not only good, but were also fun to watch, unlike EU and some NA teams.

Albireo2/3/2015, 8:54:32 AM1 votes

It's not really new, there were a lot of tournaments before, from a lot of regions, but it was kinda hard to track due a lot of them were not even cast in english nor promoted directly by Riot to us, like now with the whole addition of the LKS - LPL

I would love to see best of 3s instead of one match per team, because, a lot of times is "well, they lost in champ select, gg" and the way they let change players in korea beetween matches is really cool and let teams to have a second chance or a way to not just change tactics but the whole team style with diferent players, it's really awesome to watch.