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[Feedback] Rift Rivals Format

Late For Tea·7/9/2017, 11:28:07 AM·1 votes·479 views

Rift Rivals was meant as a small tournament to pit the EU and NA regions against each other, but is that really what we got? It felt more like a mini-MSI only involving 2 regions, or IEM that it aimed to replace, with individual teams battling it out for the win instead of two regions clashing. In my opinion this is mostly caused by the format of the NA/EU Rift Rivals. When it was announced that the format was changed to a BO-5 finals, I was concerned, and I now feel this concern was justified. Whereas EU/NA Rift Rivals was the most emotional ride, being from EU, the Rift Rivals involving LCK/LPL/LMS and GPL/OPG/LJL were much more exciting to watch.

The problems that were generated by the BO-5 format:

  • One region can completely stomp the other region, going 18-0. Then there is still a final between a 6-0 team and a 0-6 team from the losing region. Does the region that went 0-18 really deserve to be in the finals? All this does is adding a BO-5 finals that will result in a 3-0, which no one is really waiting for. We've seen this back in the NA/EU Rift Rivals, where NA were the clear winners of the group stage, and we just got a 3-0 stomp in the finals that was honestly boring to watch.

  • The current format does not really pit two regions against one another. As stated above, the regional score in the group stage doesn't matter at all because the finals will include a team of both regions. The most important competition going on was the inter-region competition, teams were competing with others teams of their region for that finals spot.

  • One team can carry an entire region. Yes, all 3 NA teams looked better than EU this Rift Rivals, but TSM was definitely a cut above all other 5 teams. If you take TSM out of the equation, the two regions look a lot closer. The current format primarily showed what region has the strongest team, and not what region is stronger overall. This is akin to what MSI, Worlds and even IEM is doing.

What I'd suggest for next year's Rift Rivals:

  • Invite 4 teams from each region, instead of 3 (everyone who made it into the semi-finals of the spring split). This adds more diversity, and gives more teams an opportunity to play. Both regions have more strong teams to offer, such as MSF and H2K (EU) and CLG and IMT (NA). Yes in this case ROC & FLY would have made it to Rift Rivals this year, and likely get stomped, but that doesn't have to be the case in subsequent years. You can either extend the tournament by a day for a BO-1 double round robin group stage, or mimic the the LCK/LPL/LMS format and just have random match-ups, where everyone doesn't necessarily play against all other teams twice.

  • Replace the BO-5 Finals of the best teams to a Relay BO-5. A Relay BO-5 has two advantages over a BO-5 between two teams. First of all, a single team cannot carry an entire region. As the LCK/LPL casters said: "SKT can't just carry the LCK to a win. Every team will have to step-up and pull their weight." I feel this is exactly what the purpose of Rift Rivals is. We already know SKT is the best team in the world, but is the LCK also the best region in the world? SKT would easily win a BO-5, but can be defeated in a BO-1. Then it is up to the other LCK teams to show that they too are good. This will thus mean that you get a competition between the different regions, which is the second advantage. It may promote cohesion between teams of a single region, because they no longer have to compete with each other over that finals spot, but instead have to work together to get the tournament win.

It was mentioned that pro-players prefered the BO-5 format between the best team of each region, and now I'm really curious why they felt this way. I don't know what it's like to play the formats, but a Relay format is in my opinion a lot more entertaining to watch.

2 Comments

GeminiRune7/9/2017, 1:46:25 PM1 votes

Pardon my criticism but I highly doubt you did enough observation to make a thorough feedback for a first time event. Rift Rivals across all five events was truly a scenario of expectation vs reality. But note that every region had a slight difference in regards to their respective formats. And your post seems to only focus on what you watched closely as the viewer rather than every event and their outcomes. To simply break that down on the format perspective:

  • Blue Rift (NA vs EU) and Green Rift (TCL vs LCL) were the closest formats to one another. The only difference being one additional team and a single round robin for Green Rift. Fans ate their hearts out about the Blue Rift because that was the one that mattered in the eyes of the majority of the English base.

  • Yellow (LNN vs CLS vs CBLOL), Purple (OPL vs LJL vs GPL), and Red Rift (LMS vs LPL vs LCK) were all in their own grouping as well. But each of them showed difference teams, the number of games played per team and the format of their playoff rounds.

The diversity of formats kept the interest over the week quite fun in my opinion. But I would wish to see them to be a bit closer to one another in how the event runs. Just to pick apart the problems you had stated onward, as none of those were authentically generated to the degree in which you express:

One region can completely stomp the other region

This genuinely didn't happen anywhere aside for the Green Rift. It was only until the last day for Team LCL that they picked up a win for their team that wasn't Vega Squadron. Other than that it was pretty one sided in their group stages and the finals are currently ongoing as I make the post. While in Blue Rift, NA had two clear winners, they did not blow out the group either as your example states. That's a bit overgeneralizing it don't you think?

The current format does not really pit two regions against one another. As stated above, the regional score in the group stage doesn't matter at all because the finals will include a team of both regions.

That only applies to two of the five Rifts: Blue and Green. And one of those Rifts in Blue preferred the "best representative" format anyway. I can't speak for Green Rift however.

One team can carry an entire region

This only applied to Team GPL with the GIGABYTE Marines. Due to their semifinal format being a King of the Hill, GAM was able to single=handedly sweep OPL to get into the finals. Meanwhile the rest of Team GPL came out of the tournament with no wins under their belt whatsoever

To me, all three of those bullet points only sound like concerns for future Rift Rivals events should they return in the same fashion rather than they are actual problems that arose to the current event format. But who's to even foretell what could happen next time around with an event like this especially if you were one to have believed cases like EU rolling competition, KR minus MVP to win without a sweat, CBLOL to easily take their competition, etc. And the suggestions aren't necessarily appetizing either for a future change as the examples you are providing in the first point are pretty much after the fact. A matter of "What ifs" basically. For the second suggestion: literally the Blue Rift was the only one that was changed due to fans wanting a better and longer format with no relay. Fans just want the best to represent, which unfortunately also doesn't merit the most optimal proving ground to indicate the best out of the region.

III BAKURYU III 7/9/2017, 7:34:06 PM1 votes

I wasn't a fan of the best vs best Finals if one team could be 6-0 and the other being 0-6 for say; I understand it from a tournament perspective but didn't like it whats so ever. I liked the group stage, but after that I would have liked a "survive" mode where the best performing team faced the weakest team from the opposing region and vice versa for the next teams/series.
The way it was set-up NA could have lost in the Finals and EU could have won the whole tournament leaving more ? marks oppose to really having a clear cut winner/region. ( However NA beat EU like 15-6 or something ) NA's #3/4/9 vs EU's #1/2/3 On a rag tho, the whole "Rift Rivals" was really just created out of spite/backlash from the community after MSI with the whole LCK/SKT winning everything and the next International tournament after MSI is obviously Worlds so Riot created a tournament that "any" region can win.....Kinda. Not expecting Rift Rivals to stay around as long as say MSI but who knows, it just felt pushed/rushed to get back any fans that Riot could have lost because of the same script playing out tournament after tournament; so throw in RR where either NA or EU could win an International tournament and hope you get back any fans that left in the process to build back up for Worlds 2017 that will most likely give the same result SKT winning yet again!