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Fantasy LCS changes for the 2016 Summer Split

Riot··1 votes·39,216 views

The last Split of Fantasy LCS was wild. Now it's returning for the 2016 LCS Summer Split on May 26.

With so many roster shakeups and explosive players, we had countless opportunities to take big risks and reap big rewards in the fantasy points column in Spring. And if what we've seen from the LCS teams lately is any indication, the 2016 NA LCS Summer Split is going to be just as exciting.

New Fantasy Scoring Options

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Fantasy LCS aficionados have been asking one question since we announced the NA and EU LCS format changes last year: How will Fantasy LCS scoring work? Well, it's finally time to answer that question! (And share some of the other new upgrades coming to the Fantasy LCS experience this Split.) As we mulled over the many different ways we could score fantasy points in the new formats, we found two formats that really stood above the rest.

They were both strong scoring formats that rewarded different player strengths and each had their own pros and cons, so which was the right choice? Ultimately, we realized that the right choice was to let you decide which format is right for each of your leagues. But before we dive into how you choose, let's take a look at the two scoring systems.

First Two Games

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The First-Two-Games scoring system is exactly what it sounds like: only the first two games played in each Best of 2 (Bo2) or Best of 3 (Bo3) match are worth fantasy points. This scoring system emphasizes balance between the EU and NA regions, and rewards players with consistent performances.

We believe this is the most balanced option, where NA and EU players will likely score similar fantasy points. It's also interesting to note that when an NA player's match ends after 2 games, the First Two Games scoring system functions exactly the same as the previous scoring system. Both NA and EU players would get standard points for every game they played (2).

If the NA player's match has a third game, that third game is simply ignored for Fantasy LCS purposes.

Best Game

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The Best Game scoring system is just as straightforward: only the highest-scoring game for each pro in their Bo2 or Bo3 match is worth fantasy points. This scoring system is a little more wild and prone to extremes, as it rewards exceptional, stand-out performances.

And while this scoring system is more fair than giving points for every game played in both regions, it definitely still favors NA pros who will often have more opportunities to score big in their Bo3 matches.

So Which is Right for You?

The default scoring system for Fantasy LCS Leagues in the Summer Split is the First Two Games scoring system, because we believe it offers the most balanced points for both regions. But both scoring systems offer exciting Fantasy LCS experiences, so we want you to be able to choose between them. When you begin your draft of a new Fantasy LCS league, you'll be able to select which of the two scoring systems that league will use.

You will be able to change the scoring systems during league setup while inviting other players. However, once you start the draft, the scoring system will be locked in.

Personally, I'm going to be using both scoring systems across my different leagues this year. I'm excited to go all-in on some risky picks in the Best Game format, and rely on my usual favorites in the First Two Games format. And we'll of course be giving advice for both scoring systems in our weekly Fantasy LCS articles here.

See our Draft Guide for tips on drafting for the 2016 LCS Summer Split here!

We've also put together an infographic showing the differences between the two scoring systems in order to help you decide which scoring system is right for you.

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League and Draft Improvements

We've also added other quality-of-life improvements to Fantasy LCS that'll help league commissioners keep things running smoothly. First up, the commissioner can remove owners from their league before the Draft happens. This way, owners can be swapped out without needing to rebuild the entire league.

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Once the owner lineup is locked in and draft time rolls around, the commissioner can perform a ready check to make sure everyone is online and ready for the draft to start. They can wait for everyone, or Force Start if someone can't make it. But, in the past, those oh-so-impolite AFK owners continued to slow down the draft with their long pick times. Well, Live drafters, rejoice! Autopicking just got faster.

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Autopicks now happen in eight seconds, instead of the full 60 that they used to take. Any owner can manually turn Autopicking on or off at any time during the draft, but Autopicking turns on automatically for anyone who doesn't select a pick on their turn.

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More Fantasy Goodness Soon

We're excited to hear what you think of the new scoring formats and which one (or both) you're going to try with your friends this Summer Split.

While you wait for Fantasy LCS to start up again on May 26, be sure to read our Survival Guides (NA, EU) and Schedule breakdowns (NA, EU) for the Summer Split. And don't miss our massive Draft Guide for insight into which players we think are poised to dominate Fantasy LCS this Summer.

Josh Augustine's favorite champion is Sona, he's never enjoyed a Darius, and he will always go for the kill, even when he knows he shouldn't. He currently works as a game designer at Daybreak Games. He’d love to talk with you on Twitter.

55 Comments

steinberg16 votes

why not just average? take aggregate points / games played. Favors no one and doesn't make any games throw aways. Also, why can't lck/lpl we added into the fantasy pool?

Glørÿ1 votes

Different format and the asian format and games played,etc. are completely different.

Shadowatom1 votes

Only LPL would have a different format since they have 12 teams and 2 groups. LCK is actually the same format NA just changed to with the exception being their playoffs (B5 teams, a Bo3 wildcard match, and it's a gauntlet format). The main reason is because No one would pick NA and EU players if everyone could pick Korean players.... well, maybe once the top 7-8 teams in Korea have been poached, but the point still stands that most people would start with the Korean players.

CoTrow3 votes

This. The obvious solution that isn't even an option...

macdshifty1 votes

Similar to best game format, it would be unequal in judging the different leagues because they play different amounts of games...so not obvious solution.

Duck NA1 votes

Yes, it is obvious and fair solution. For example if a na player made 10,15 and 20 score and an eu player 15,15, they will make the same score which is the best and right in my opinion. Because 10 + 15 + 20 = 45/3 = 15 and 15 + 15= 30/2 = 15 too, so they should do the same score, but in the way the fantasy is now in one way the na player will be overworth and in another lessworth.

Gahlo1 votes

Averaging makes games with poor score or great scores more impactful when less games are played. This make EU players very erratic in their scoring, which favors NA.

III BAKURYU III 1 votes

The fantasy still favors NA if you pick the game mode where you get the 2 of the 3 better games.

EU Game 1 Xpeke goes 1-0-3 Game 2 Xpeke goes 0-3-0 Your stuck with the 1-3-3

But in NA you are given another chance if you do play that game mode.

Dan Braum2 votes

You misread it.

"The First-Two-Games scoring system is exactly what it sounds like: only the first two games played in each Best of 2 (Bo2) or Best of 3 (Bo3) match are worth fantasy points."

"third game is simply ignored for Fantasy LCS purposes."

Hope I helped! :)

III BAKURYU III 1 votes

I thought I saw BEST of game too ?????? I thought I read and heard about 2 game modes????

Gahlo1 votes

Yeah, the first option is the first two games from each region. This lets keep EU and NA on an even footing, but in a fantasy perspective makes the possible 3rd games in NA mean nothing.

The second option is best game, which takes a single best game for the week. This means that every game has fantasy impact, but due to only NA being Best of 3 gives NA players more opportunities to put up a good score if they make it to game 3.

HandDa1 votes

if you guys are not happy with it, give this site a shot. http://www.tfansport.com/

It's using avg stats and it also includes LCK players. Besides, it offers an categories option. Just like Fantasy Basket Ball, you are competing over 10 categories, like K,A,D, minions, dmg dealt, dmg taken and etc, which sounds fun

MAGA MAN X 20201 votes

They should allow LCK/LPL but only allow you two imports; regardless if they're NA/EU like Huni and Hybrid or LCK.

Cöb2 votes

Everyone saying how dumb this is when im just here hyped and ready for this to come back

Spoo2 votes

I honestly wish they'd mix the two. Best game, of the first 2 games. Each team has a chance to make a clutch game and statistically NA = EU in terms of odds for players to reach a certain point threshholds that the drafter wants.

tplegs07081 votes

insanely good idea! MUCH AGREED [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

Th4ren2 votes

I was really hoping that they would announce some sort of open league so you didn't need a bunch of friends that are also interested in order to start a league. A lone person can usually just go online and play fantasy against random people in other sports I haven't been able to play since the first split it was introduced :(

Simulcrash1 votes

It would be nice to have a "Join random league" option instead of clicking on every forum link.

Doge the alt1 votes

Isn't the Best Game thing unfair? Since EU has 2 Games and NA has 3 NA players will be more likely to have a better "best game"

Das BrotatoChip1 votes

This is dumb. Score should just be an average across games. If two games are played, then it's total score divided by two. If three games are played, then it's total score divided by 3.

"Best game" is ridiculous too. The ONLY way this pays off is IF the series goes to three games AND the player scores more in that third game than in BOTH previous games combined. I don't foresee this happening too often in general, and I see very few fantasy players taking the risk to begin with. We all know that consistency in fantasy LCS is a myth anyways.

Spoo1 votes

Averaging scores is a terrible idea.

  • Teams that start off with a piss poor game 1/game 2 can make that up on game 3 easily meaning that NA players would become more optimal than EU. On top of that, it rewards the team for that week too much in NA in case their's a champion must have advantage on side choice. From a math standpoint NA could score 1 + 2 + 3 =6/3 = 2, EU could score 1 + 5 = 6. Which player would you choose? Instantly I would choose NA because the average over 3 games is a safer pick.

  • Averaging rewards mediocrity. Ever heard of the bell curve. Think of it this way. Roll 1 6-sided die. Odds of every number is the same. (So the die result is essentially balanced.) What happens when we add more die. The average die roll went from 3-4 to 7. Now, the weighted result of the numbers is no longer even. Rolling a 1 or 12 now has a 1/36 ..that basically took the 13% chance of rolling a 1 to less than 2.5%. That's about 5-6 times the difference. You're thinking...that's only die. But its not. Statisticians use stats like this to estimate results of games. So what happens when we throw more games into the average? Everybody for the most part will seem to have the same range of points each week (except for maybe a few key outliers). For me this is very boring. I enjoy fantasy leagues for those weeks sometimes where i either crush or get crushed by someones team having a tremendous week. Averaging games loses this feeling entirely as I'm willing to wager most weeks will be very close.

  • Real time stat tracking as a player would be impossible for most people....unless you're talking about averaging the total resulting points of all three games. But it still isn't the best idea because then if you want to see how much your player needs to win you the week, you need to think...is he EU or NA. What about the opposing team if he has player's left to play? I hope you can see this point. I don't know about most people, but I love calculating clutch point totals. This is what makes me watch those less important matches to see if my player can make a hero play for my point total.

Th4ren1 votes

You didn't finish your math in your first paragraph: 1 + 5 = 6/2 = 3. If you are using averages then you divide by the number of games so this point is important, though I feel like you should have known this. The big issue here is after not finishing your math you also said you would take the player in NA even though if you did the math correctly the EU player scored better. It's hard to really get a handle on your concepts when your proofs are... wrong :/

I'm pretty sure I disagree with you and also when you factor in the fact that these bo? series are against the same teams there is more likely hood of a snow ball in NA. Consider, if a certain player does well in games 1 and 3 there would be greater up side, but if a player does well only in the second game then it wouldn't mean as much which means EU players would be more flat and NA player would be higher risk higher reward. keep in mind that in either league a player is only likely to have a really good score or a really bad score for 2 games because in a bo3 you still only play that 3rd game if one team hasn't already won the first 2.

your second paragraph is kind of pointless in this case, but your 3rd actually make sense and it has to do with the fun factor so it's more applicable to what is still basically a game.

My Name is1 votes

WHY ISNT LCK/LPL IN THIS? They now have the same format, just put it to where it's only 9 weeks. LCK is going to 11, and LPL is doing 10. and what about the LMS?

Shadowatom1 votes

LPL and LMS both have different formats/number of teams. LPL has 12 teams, with 2 groups of 6 with a double round robin within the groups and a single round robin against teams in the opposite group. LMS only has 8 teams. While you could argue that it's close enough, that isn't that great of an argument considering getting things as close as possible would create the most fairness.

With all that said LCK should be able to be included because they are literally the same format with the exception of their playoffs, but they may just be excluding them since it would more than likely just come down to who can draft the best Korean players.

My Name is1 votes

I've seen NA players score more than a good number of LCK Players per game. Also we don't know how all the NA/EU will do. They might do well, they might pull a clown fiesta, anything could happen in the world of fantasy sports.

[slayer-pantheon-popcorn]

HandDa1 votes

I think first 2 games doesn't make sense because, 3rd game usually is the most intensified game, simply taking it out doesn't sound right.

Roll a dice 2.5 times(Avg. BO3) vs Roll a dice twice, is it fair? Best game is heavily in favor of NA players, I bet it won't take long for most people realized NA players are heavily favored.

if you guys are not happy with it, give this site a shot. http://www.tfansport.com/

It's using avg stats and it also includes LCK players. Besides, it offers an categories option. Just like Fantasy Basket Ball, you are competing over 10 categories, like K,A,D, minions, dmg dealt, dmg taken and etc, which sounds fun

Wrosgar1 votes

I feel like I've missed something. Why does EU have less games? Looking at schedules and amount of teams, it looks like there are 10 games a week over 9 weeks for both regions, with both regions having 10 teams.

On top of that, if each region has the same amount of games why is either new mode necessary? What was wrong with just letting every game count for the players. What about player trading mid season? For the highest score one, if I don't own a player when he has a really high scoring game, but then pick him up later, does that high scoring game still count towards an LCS total?

I really enjoyed smaller leagues where I could fight against other people in the league to pick up hot players or potentially risk losing a player from my draft to pick someone up for a special week due to favorable matchups and what not. From what I'm seeing with these new systems, it seems to be against this method and it's 100% about picking your players from the start of the draft and just ignoring fantasy LCS until the season is over. Maybe I'm missing something here though.

Eleshakai1 votes

EU plays best of 2s - meaning two games per 'match'(it's 10 matches per week not 10 games) NA plays best of 3s - meaning 2-3 games per 'match'(still 10 matchers per week).

EU will play 20 games, while NA will play anywhere between 20 and 30.

Wrosgar1 votes

OOOOOHHHHH so every single match is best of 2/3? Similar to Korea? That makes way more sense...

Eleshakai1 votes

exactly. NA is using best of 3s, so on every scheduled day that they play, the team will play a full best of 3(so it will either end 2-0, 2-1, 1-2, or 0-2). For EU, they're doing Best of Twos, meaning they play two games and there is the chance of a tie(meaning either 2-0, 1-1, 0-2).

Riot is hoping to evaluate both systems, see which one fits better for their specific ecosystem. If they find that both work for their respective regions, they may keep it as is, but of one works dramatically better than the other, they'll probably adopt it for both regions... judging by the previous messaging they've had.

Mech hi1 votes

can we get the ability to have fantasy with other people

Simulcrash1 votes

Two things:

  1. To help alleviate the scoring issues, could it be an option to have a league (4 maybe 6 person) from only one region (NA or EU)? This is still a good idea regardless of different Best-of series.
  2. Why are there still no points for rift scuttler? I can understand no points in the first split because of point balancing issues, but why not now?
Turgid AF1 votes

  1. You could just make an agreement between the players in your league to do that. It's not like Riot will come in and force you to put players from both regions onto teams.

  2. Because that is best tracked by Team points. Scuttlers aren't really that important an individual objective, and so are just scored with farm, but they help the team to win and that creates points. It's indirect, but so is scuttler value in-game.

Simulcrash1 votes

dope. 2) Why are there still no points for rift HERALD? I can understand no points in the first split because of point balancing issues, but why not now?

Turgid AF1 votes

Probably still point-balancing. Herald hasn't really developed into a consistent objective yet. Maybe once teams consistently value it they'll figure out what it should be worth.

YaJpTpOg4C1 votes

These comments are so dumb

Laugh more1 votes

I wish you didn't need a community of friends to play fantasy league. I would love to participate but I don't know anyone else interested. I wish Riot would just set up one exact way fantasy league should go and pit everyone against everyone where you don't need to have friends to play.

MAGA MAN X 20201 votes

If only Europeans didn't love ties so much. Just goes to show the need for a unified format.

Simulcrash1 votes

If only NA didn't need a winner so much...

Mr Smee 011 votes

I'd love to have the option to auto-join a league, instead of trying to be invited, or trying to find people to invite. That is the only thing that has been keeping me from playing fantasy LCS.

RooTsMan1 votes

Am I the only one that thinks Riot didn't take any of my recommendations into account from the last split? I'm glad that they managed to come up with a way of solving the scoring system with the introduction of the best-of format, but as far as I'm concerned the main issues with Fantasy LCS as it stands involves the actual criteria involved in scoring. Sure, the league draft is important, but honestly, that takes little precedence over actually including rift herald as a team-objective worth some points.

All I want is a stats page that tells me how the players and teams stack up against eachother on a weekly basis (is it too much to ask for a head-to-head stats option for any future matchups that's available on the stats page and NOT on the trade page?), for team gold to be scorable stat (team gold difference plays a big role in ALL pro-LoL games I've seen, so why can't it be worth some points?), and for certain roles on teams to be rewarded for their team play (it's not fair to bench a solo-laner that wins the game for you despite split-pushing all game and having a low-KDA from not being in teamfights, don't you think?).

As for my thoughts on the scoring systems they've opted for, honestly either works just fine if you think about it. But these scoring systems could have been avoided altogether if they'd made the Best-of format the same for both regions, meaning a Bo3 format for both the EU and NA LCS; that way they'd spend more time making changes to Fantasy LCS using our recommendations rather than trying to come up with scoring system options for us to choose from.

Beezý1 votes

3/6 slots left open! Come join this LCS Fantasy! Planned start time is 10:30pm EST

http://fantasy.lolesports.com/share/join/league/1115628/mvtGaC8qscHXoHUX5XQx

D4shD4nce1 votes

http://fantasy.euw.lolesports.com/en-GB/league/1126937

here's mine

join :^)[zombie-brand-facepalm] [zombie-brand-facepalm] [zombie-brand-facepalm] [zombie-brand-facepalm]

Kairu7771 votes

Is anything being done in Fantasy scoring dealing with in-between games subs? No way to lose points when they make last minute subs and it throws off the fantasy league T.T

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