I really don’t have time atm to write a full-blown feature (dissertation is killing me and this is my way of procrastinating; I also need to get this out of the way so I stop thinking obsessively about it), so have a hastily-written piece on Medium instead. Initially I thought of doing a thread on Twitter but that’s messy as hell and wtf word limits, so now this post exists.

*post starts here proper*

There was a period between 2015–2016 when all the wildcard teams would play each other and a relative tier list could be constructed, but it’s become much harder these days with far less games and more segregation. What we have atm is ‘dynamic’: it takes the past two years into consideration, including MSI and Worlds. That’s fine in and of itself. What becomes more murky to gauge is how far teams go.

Take MSI for example: the play-in stage has eight teams divided into two groups. Only two teams qualify for the 2nd stage; they are hence considered under the system as having performed better than those which did not qualify.

That’s two out of eight teams. Riot does not differentiate between the six teams that did not qualify regardless of results

This is the first problem. The second problem is the bye given to the best team from a ‘minor region’. ‘Best team’ here refers to the team which made it furthest, and in the past two years this has been teams from Vietnam. The difference between getting to the group stage at MSI and the 2nd round of play-ins is MASSIVE and has ramifications which can carry on for years due to the seed system in place.

Teams from VN have been automatically seeded into the group stage at Worlds in 2017 and 2018 based on their MSI performances, while 3rd seeds from LPL, NA/EULCS, LMS have had to be in play-ins. Already that seems kind of whack, but that’s not the worst. By that notion they’re already considered to have performed ‘better’ despite not having played a single game! Take note that this is coming from a VCS fan, who theoretically has a lot to gain from this. It won’t stop me from calling problems out, however.

Reason: Riot only takes into account how far a team got, and most non-major regions can’t win in a bo5 against a team from LPL or even NA/EU, BUT if your region gets to the 2nd round of MSI, loses to either NA/LMS and beats the other1st round qualifier, you’ve already secured yourself a better seed for the next two years without having to beat a team from NA or LMS. That makes very little sense to me. Not only does MSI have severely limited slots, it also has poor seeding, which exacerbates the problem later and perpetuates a cycle where teams which are in the middle are unlikely to get worse, and those at the bottom cannot climb up without winning a ridiculously tough bo5. Got seeded to play against LPL’s 3rd seed at Worlds? There goes your chances for the next two years.

The funniest thing about this is that SEA is directly benefiting from GAM’s performance at MSI 2017; as GAM was under the SEA region back then, their achievements have carried over not only to their own region, but to future SEA teams as well — leading to the initially incredulous Pool 1 seed that SEA received for MSI 2019.

Riot might call it ‘dynamic seeding’ but the format used and the poor seeding makes it such that teams never really get the chance to move up; teams from LPL quite clearly don’t belong in the play-in stage, no matter how ‘badly’ they did in 2015, and getting stomped 3–0 by them is utterly depressing. A lot of regions only get two chances a year to play against good teams, so this magnifies the gulf even further. A second look really needs to be taken by those who handle this stuff (I don’t know atm who), because these circumstances makes proper seeding all but impossible.

Maybe you don’t care because you just want to see good teams play, that’s fine to me. But if we’re going to integrate the play-in stage into intl events, we could at least have them play more games so that they get properly seeded, and THEN we can think about perhaps giving more slots to teams that perform consistently well. Because rn the odds are so stacked against teams with only one slot and they play so few games that it’s insane we even allow this only because they get less attention and their primary language isn’t English (except OCE).

So to recap: very limited amount of games, exorbitantly difficult to ‘prove yourself’ if you start at 1st round of playin, regions like NA/LMS get protected because they have more teams entered to begin with and it does not matter if 2/3 teams play like shit as long as one gets super far. Oh and meritocracy is dead, but that’s worth another post on its own.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

RTs and shares are appreciated so that these problems get more visibility, because I don’t believe that teams from minor regions should be given such a minuscule amount of games in such a poor format . Tweak the format if you must, but the current format is full of flaws and we can never properly seed teams the way it is atm.