Things I would love LCS to do next split/s

III BAKURYU III ·Aug 8, 2017·6 votes·702 views

So this will be a rant/opinionated topic, I know I will get lots of hate and toxicity and such but do your worst !
This is 100% opinionated meaning it's just MY thoughts, if you have such opinions and thoughts let me hear them.

Some things I won't talk about is the champion diversity because I personally just don't care, considering I'v been watching league for 5 years now and I'm use to the same 20 or so champions each split. Topics are more around my own values and such.

First I'm glad about the franchising - I'm not an owner or a business person so while I personally can't talk about the negatives I can talk about the positives as a "fan"

It will most likely build sponsors and such for investors to buy into the product, which will in turn profit Riot into making more $ to pay players, coaches and the working staff the reasonable $ that they deserve as such. It will also shine some light onto the league from say commercials and ads which again the reason is because of $. Say what you will but it's a wise move on Riot's part. Will it pay off ? Who knows but currently I personally like the move.

Spring Split and Summer Split - Joined I'v never been a fan of the Spring split regular season + Playoffs + Summer Split + Playoffs

2013-2015 Was a really bad order of things for Worlds, for example the winner of the Summer Playoffs was given the #1 seed was something that made some sense given that representative team was the best so close to Worlds, giving that region and that team the best shot to win Worlds, but I never liked it, understood it but didn't care for it. Now with the point system it's gotten even more combobulated with points, summer playoff winner and regional and etc it's too much honestly. One thing I touched about before getting stoned about 2 years ago was to combine the Splits into 1 season; Riot could either give every team a new clean slate at the start of each "split" or halfway point of the season so teams that were at the bottom and now 0-0 to start the second half or teams keep and continue from where they left off; for example: TSM starts the season( first split but remember it's a season now) 14-4, they can either continue after a 2-4 week break 14-4 or start back 0-0 depending on Riot's decision. This will give teams that are bad during the first half a restart if they didn't have their players or the meta was bad for them etc. The reason for this
Some teams like to use subs but in a split 18 game series just isn't something that can be trifled with, look at C9 they used a top sub for the bulk of the season and while they ended the split 4th place they were under-pressure the whole split. Players needing rest to recharge can't cause 1 series loss means making the playoffs or being eliminated from contending playoffs. So with franchising around the corner and teams being here for good, I think it would be wise if teams had a longer season to try out such investments/players and not worry as much because of the 2 split-18 series.
Look at the NBA 82 games and yet, certain teams sub out their top players for 30-40 games because the season is long enough to do so, the LCS is different, and that's why NA doesn't have the talent as it wants because again, in 2 splits teams are worrying about playoffs/worlds etc instead of building talent for the future. { I know I haven't really been clear on this, so please give me questions or retorts so I can be more clear on this topic}

Riot has player stats for splits, which is great but not enough or consistent stats

Wheres player's average stats per game, wheres the team's stats per game(dragons per game, towers per game) I know I touched on this many moons ago and go such answers like " they don't care", " it's not important".
Well, they should "care" stats are very important for any sport because it adds a extra "it" factor. People compare MJ to Kobe one of the first things they go to are stats, championships, etc and yet, Riot doesn't do this consistent enough. I'm not talking bad about riot far from it, I just want Riot to include stats in a consistent manner because in my eyes it's important moving forward.
Blue shirt guy " How good is TSM" Red shirt guy " They're good, they're 14-4" - OK, but certain fans can't see or find out from Riot themselves stats that makes teams such as TSM great, what's their average barons per game, what's their total dragons during such split? Who knows because Riot doesn't seem to "care" or are too lazy to do so. Instead people like me, random people who take the time to do such things seem to be more willing to do such work instead of Riot themselves. In which I get " they have computers and they can do it themselves, so they don't really need to hire people like you to record such stats" - So DO IT ! Point is and away from ranting my own vendetta(not being hired) is that stats isn't something that should be taken lightly is all.

Small point and while IDK if NA/EU have different orgs or bigwigs or what but can EU actually have identical scheduling as NA.
Some positive or non-ranting topics that I do like at the moment

I like the added minutes played within the splits, um, I think that was a very smart move from Riot and adding it was something that I personally asked for a couple years ago, so while I think it has nothing to do with me personally, I like to think Riot listened and to them Thank You for that if they do indeed saw my plead to involve minutes played.
I love The Dive the podcast that Riot has created, I think that's something that doesn't get enough attention or love from the community. It talks about patch notes, champions, NA/EU standings etc and I feel like any true fan of League barring away from " this champion is OP OP OPPPPPPPPPP" should considering listening and paying their respect to Riot and the workers/casters who take the time to do such great work in creating content that actually makes sense. I say "makes sense" because about a year ago, Riot had a show that was in my opinion "stupid and dumb" it talked about stuff like who's foot does this belong to and let's play the meme game that really felt like for 5 year old's, so I thank Riot for giving use content that can be fun to watch and talk about but also for the more mature and dedicated fans of the LCS.

More consistent topics such as trades, rosters etc It's annoying finding out about topics like teams trading X player within different sites, ESPN at times does a better job than Riot themselves producing content that revolves around their own product. I personally have to hop on social media to just find out if X player has been traded or will play etc and I think Riot/the players themselves really need to bring such decisions into the spotlight if they want this to be an established "sport".
Players playing in booths A subject that has been touched by several fans around the league, is the stadium crowds can be heard by players. Which in turn the casters can also be giving certain players/teams advantages because they can be heard by the players. I think some games such as LCK have a 5-6 sec delay from the casters but that's a minor delay but something that can't be forgotten tho either. I think it's just so easy for X player to really just pull down their headset from their ears just so slightly so they can hear their team but also hear the casters pointing out topics in games that players can counter on because of it.

Those are just a few things that I personally would like to either be changed or thought about or just given the time to really be constructed for a better environment/league scene.
Thank you for giving me your time and hope to read comments that aren't toxic but are viable points.

15 Comments

SilvaSlayaAug 11, 20173 votes

I like that you touched on things that you personally like instead of random stuff. the franchising will probably work now that winning teams at worlds will now make more money than the prize they get at the world finals. hence the new skin selling happening starting with this worlds. A lot of teams making money off of icons and stuff is a good start for basic prep but I'm sure their will be more to come.

On the last section League has also mentioned that they know players can hear them and the players themselves have already spoken that normally they cant tell what is exactly being said unless they have their headphones off and we ourselves also know that since they do mic checks during games all the time where we hear what the players hear and what the players can hear is also monitored by a 3rd party during each match with someone outback listening thru headphones.

For the 5 year old comment you have to remember a large amount of the player base for league of legends is 13-18 years old so if they have something foolish like that their just covering all their basis.

I mostly agree with you about the player stats per game part thou they are starting to cover it more, like when a certain player steals 3 barons in a game or even once they will occasionally look up info to see if their was a game where they did it maybe more than once, but at the same time we have to remember that this info is looked up and given to the casters as these games are going its easier to look up percentage statistics when you only have 10 seconds to supply the info.

Other than that I think you put a lot of thought into these and its probably easier to send it straight to them if it means that much to you.

III BAKURYU III Aug 11, 20171 votes

Franchising, while I don't know.......everything(like the business side of things) I like to think it's good in a sense that it will bring in $ and while some people may think Riot are just in it for the $, they need to realize that's how business works etc. Sponsors such as NBA teams' are investing into League and it can all be rooted from franchising.
Moving away from the "How can teams be competitive if they isn't a "relegation tournament" with franchising we could possibly see for example Burger King invest into league and the whole "BurgerKing/Bjergsen" meme may be real in the near future.

The headphone thing is something I personally would like NA to do in the future, I still think teams/players can hear the casters and fans in a sense that it would be best to put them in booths. Korea did it, it doesn't hurt as far as image or separating the players from the fans sort of say, it's just something to look into is all.

You're right about the 5 year old comment, out of line from me and I apologize. At the same time tho, during when I think PTL was on air or going on, there wasn't really any content for anyone outside of the "Me want meme" "fart jokes" etc age group, there was really a 2 year span where the only content that was actual "mature" content was from someone like a Thorin or Monte that would cover the other age groups with their videos.

The stat thing is something that's more ? for me because, for example: if Doublelift had 5 kills in a game, very rarely do the casters be like "oh, D-lift's career average kills is X per game" while it is hard, at the same time the casters who are casting such games with D-lift should actually have certain stats already written down, this isn't 2011/12 anymore where you just say a bunch of memes and say " outplay", Riot is trying to actually be a real "sport" of sorts, start acting like it or just don't try to be something you're not.

I'v sent multiple e-mails to them, such as Have real interviews with the players, show the minutes played in the stat page of the site, add real content for the more mature(and when I say mature I don't mean the "I'm better than you" people that some may think I am, far from it). There are things I want to believe Riot did and listened but as far as sending them e-mails straight to them I get the same feedback " Put it on the boards" - Trust me, I've seen them enough mail that I think they may have actually blocked my a$$. lol

Thank you for sharing and for reading my post !

NipsahoyAug 8, 20172 votes

tldr means too long didnt read

III BAKURYU III Aug 8, 20171 votes

Ah, thank you; I get "tldr" on most of my posts, nice to now know what it means.

PrismalDawnAug 8, 20171 votes

tl;dr

Also pick more champs.

III BAKURYU III Aug 8, 20172 votes

I don't know what tl;dr means but I said I wouldn't touch on the "more champs" subject because it's too difficult to really add variety without making the players play champions that they don't think are either good or are bad, in which Riot would pretty much need to do updates to champions etc like every day. I understand the argument tho and fully get why tho.

PaquayAug 9, 20172 votes

It means too long; didn't read. Usually someone summarizes the main points after for people who are not looking to read the entire thing, but want a 15 second synopsis. Like, tl;dr - I think that A is fine but I'd like to see X, Y, and Z changed and am super happy they already fixed B.

Basically, without adding anything he is just saying your post was too long to read. It's a dick comment that's unnecessary, hence the downvotes.

More to the topic, I agree the most non-sensical part of League's pro scene is the whole spring split/summer split. I do think it should be combined. If they are concerned about player burnout, they could always implement unique scheduling the same as pretty much every other sport. Teams could have bye weeks, or a couple of weeks with 1 game. You could also take a mid-split break or as some North American sports do: have an all-star break half way through the season.

As to being too hard to increase champion diversity, I agree it is super tough to balance. There are going to be soloQ stompers, and awesome team-oriented champs. One (bad) idea I have is that starting half way through the season, and champion that has not been picked in the current season gets what you could call a "bounty" starting off. For that week any champion that was not previously picked would get an additional 50 starting gold. That's it. The following week it would raise to 100 gold. And continue to climb 50 gold each week until a champion is picked. This would basically take into account a single 36 game season as opposed to 2 splits.

I think that would open the door for a more diverse champion pool during pro games. It would also add a lot more strategy because you would have to balance at what point a champion is worthwhile considering the starting boost. You'd also have to try and guess when they would get picked so if you did find value in a champion, you didn't wait too long and have someone else grab them and remove the bounty after that current week. Just an idea.

Tl;dr - tl;dr means too long didn't read. PrismalDawn is rude. Agree on a single, longer split. Add a bounty to reward non-picked pro champions.

III BAKURYU III Aug 9, 20171 votes

I try putting my posts in some type of bullet point with dotes and paragraphs, if I had the knowledge to really get what I'm aiming for in 1-2 sentences I would, but in this community you pretty much need to cover all bases or expect a s$itstorm of everyone on both sides of the ball, if you don't explain in detail about X subject, you know ?

" hence the downvotes " - Yeah, never makes sense to say something on a post if you didn't read much of or any of it. I thank you for your honestly and for explaining it to me.

                                        Season Combining

" I do think it should be combined. If they are concerned about player burnout, they could always implement unique scheduling the same as pretty much every other sport".

Riot somewhat fixed the Spring split being not 100% useless as it was, but I personally don't care much for the point system, nor the auto qualified Summer Split Winner(I get why, so it's X region sending it's best team ATM to Worlds) but it's just.....bad, to me. If the splits were combined it will give teams more time for subs to actually grow instead of teams feeling the pressure of only 18 games/series, but instead 36 series is more tolerable to use subs and not feel the heat of missing playoffs etc.
Jan - Aug is a good chunk to add 1-2 weeks for teams to rest and regroup, combining the Spring/Summer is no different than not doing so, but I personally think it would help future talent grow, if given the time to do so, something NA just never seems to actually give the time to do so.
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                                    Champion Diversity 
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Your idea about champion diversity is very interesting and makes sense honestly, I was thinking of a "X week" - something catchy where players have to play a champion that they haven't played yet, or play a champion that fans vote for, or play a champion that they haven't played in the last X amount of games. 36 game series/18 or so weeks, Riot could introduce something like that say, 4 times within the Season(Spring/Summer) or something.
Your idea about the gold again, is something different and would help fix the diversity. I do think something does need to change, I personally don't mind fully but I'm not blind, I too get annoyed seeing the same champions too.

Thank you for the conversation without being rude and you should do your own post/topics on matters, I would read them and give you some insight.
Later

PaquayAug 11, 20171 votes

Hey Bakuryu,

Any time. I enjoy talking about LCS and think it is very fun to watch. I only started playing League and watching LCS last December, so I'm still pretty new to it.

I think another thing that would help to increase LCS exposure/views is to have a production team that creates highlights of the games. Sinply put, unless you have nothing else going on in your life, there is almost no chance you have to watch every match each week. I love being able to watch a 5-10 minute highlight on how the game started, progressed, and ended.

All other sports have this because they know the average person doesn't have enough time to watch it all.

There are YouTube channels that solely make these videos of big plays/funny plays/bloopers from streamers and such, and they get hundreds of thousands of views each week. You'd think it would be fairly simple for Riot to hire a production team to edit and produce these highlights. More people would watch, and I think it would increase interest.

And I do agree on champion diversity and how it gets stale and boring. If I'm going to watch a few games each week, it's going to be my team, and the ones where a rarely played LCS champion is picked.... unless it's TL and P1. I can't watch that snoozer, lol. :P

III BAKURYU III Aug 11, 20171 votes

Hey Paquay, Highlights/Fan's favorite games Few people in the past talked about having not only a quick recap of such videos, but also having a "grade" system with such videos. For example: NFL.com you can click on a video and watch the highlights of either the whole game or highlights of certain parts that will get noticed within the full highlight, the next thing is the "grade system", in which fans get to vote on games that they enjoyed the most. Either a scale of 1-10 or pick your favorite series with that specific week etc. Showing the highlights if one wishes to do so, will indeed get people interested in say 10th place teams because even tho most times fans know for example Team Liquid, will lose they still want to see their games. As well as the "grade system" fans letting each other know which games are a good watch.

                                                          Fans and Riot

Life is difficult and while Riot doesn't do X thing the do so within their "own" little group, what I mean is the more people the more the $ has to be divided and while Riot could pay or have a bigger staff to do something that in the long-term could pay off, they would rather have their minimum employees do it, or get fired/released etc. The point the smaller the team, the better and it goes both ways too, as I pointed out with dividing the $ between each other.
It is however, getting kinda ridiculous when outside parties either fans or other sites do a better job at things that Riot themselves are more than capable of doing. I'm not saying Riot are lazy animals or anything but when you see a half built building being constructed by a licenses constructor, and you see a fully built house from a hobo, it's kinda sooth-saying sorta speak. I'm not asking for Riot to be perfect but when it's easier to get news, videos etc about the LCS from ESPN.com or from looking player's facebooks for news, that's alarming to say the least.

                                                               Production

The production crew from Riot, are my least popular crew established/worker mainly because it feels like it's cheaply done. You watch the "match of the week" and it has like the same "song" or noise in the background, it's the "WoOOO" background like "Let's go, let's go, let's go" everytime, the Trailers for the start of every split that comes out are called "sneak peaks" but when it's literally the exact same trailer once the season starts as it was for the "sneak peak" that's annoying.
The only time I was actually impressed(and don't get me wrong, I love the production crew. I'm not saying they're like a 1 out of 10, but when it comes to fans, this is my complaints, it's what fans do). was the Madison square Garden's CLG vs TSM trailer 2015 Summer.

III BAKURYU III Aug 9, 20171 votes

Something also about the Season instead of splits, is the MVP and All-NA awards. Each split 15 players are named All-NA 1st - 3rd, Rookie, Coach, MVP twice a year, it gets very jigsaw ish, Let's be honest All NA 2nd and 3rd doesn't even matter and having those awards given out twice is messy and feels like candy during Halloween. It will also give fans, players, coaches, voting parties more time to actually name a MVP with more games under every player's belt.
Another thing is the Playoffs, a reason why "Playoffs" are exciting is because of the journey of such, the best v the best if you will, having two playoffs per year to the normal fan will most likely be "exciting" but to some fans like myself who have been watching LCS for 5-6 years now the Playoffs just aren't as exciting as they once were, eliminating and narrowing down to a single playoffs, while not the popular change is something that will need to be focused if Riot does indeed combine splits. Look at other sports for that matter, The Superbowl is the Superbowl because it happens once a year, having 2 NA Finals per year, doesn't feel like the grand spectacle as it seems or could be.
I don't know, just something I thought about.
Later again

Miror BAug 8, 20171 votes

Two things I'd personally like to see change for the 2018 NA spring split:

-Promote Tom to the "Big Leagues": As someone who has constantly watched NACS for most of the past 2 years, "OptimusTom" has kinda grown on me if only because he is one of the few casters who brings a giant backpack full of statistics to each game and clearly tries to inform the audience as much as possible of what they're seeing. Putting him with someone like Zirene or 2017 NA rookie of the split CaptainFlowers could put out a scarily good product and would engage fans that aren't into random fart humor and indoor pets who are attracted to balding heads. Sorry Phreak.

-Slightly longer breaks between series': Taking this one from the LCK if only because they implement it quite brilliantly. Typically you'll see a 3-5min break between games and a 10-15min break between actual series, with the idea being that the longer break allows you to do the "bathroom/snack break" and clear your head of the previous series. Perhaps they could use the longer break to do more PTL-related stuff, or potentially just put up more stats.

III BAKURYU III Aug 8, 20171 votes

I don't know Tom or "OptimusTom" but I'll look into the situation mainly because you said "stats" so that peaked my interest.
The break thing is interesting and actually something I thought NA would have already done, I mean after each game we see(audience) a video about the Dive or interviews etc but it's like 1-2 mins and back into the game. With some days only having 1-2 game series and potentially LCS being stretched out from Monday-Sunday with franchising and possible more teams in the future(NA/EU combined ?) I think more production will also go into the scene, as well as actual breaks.
Not going to lie tho, sometimes I get annoyed watching LCK and having to wait like 45 mins to watch the next game even after a series with different players but suppose those people called "the casters" need a break too every so often lol.

RageLessPlayMoreAug 9, 20171 votes

[deleted]

III BAKURYU III Aug 9, 20171 votes

Indeed, I can see the argument on everyside because champion diversity is something that needs to be focused on down the road but I also can see why pros etc only play certain champions. Let's face it, Riot takes forever actually balancing or making bad champions(Urgot) viable to play after like 4 years of fans saying " Urgot rework, upgrade, buff etc" instead we get hundreds of skins and buffing champions that were pretty much already strong, or nerfing champions that it doesn't matter if they do in fact get nerfed because of their op kit.

I do think we a longer season Spring-Summer combined, Pros would be more willing to play other champions because it's close to 36 game series before Playoffs, instead of 18 were if teams don't try their best and play the same ol' OP champions can fall 0-4 in the standings and at that point the season is over.

Lots of factors go into this but to some fans they can only see their own argument.

Thanks for the comment, hope to hear from you in future posts.