Ansibled Profile Joined November 2014 United Kingdom 7479 Posts Last Edited: 2015-01-08 14:50:22 January 08 2015 02:34 GMT #1



First Impressions



SBENU Champions Spring kicked off today with perhaps the 2 best teams in Korea, SK Telecom T1 and NaJin e-mFire. This year will bring us a vastly different Champions experience, and so I wanted to write down some of my first impressions of the new season. I'm not sure it will be particularly interesting to read, and I'm sure my terrible ability to write stuff contributes, but I just wanted to organise my thoughts on the changes.



New Format



The format for Champions this year has been announced for a while now, but the stream today cleared up some of the positives and negatives of this format for me. It helps, of course, that we kicked off with SKT and NaJin but having best-of 3's so far looks like it will lead to much more satisfying individual game days. In Summer last year, Shield going 1-1 with their entire group was a fairly unsatisfying way for them to make the playoffs. The story between SKT and NaJin would have been so much different today if we didn't get to see the third game, so this is definitely a welcome change to me.



I'm unsure of the value of substitutions between games in a series and if it will be a common occurrence, it opens up teams who have a variety of players to more strategic choices but at the same time it feels like it could have a negative impact on overall team strength by limiting the amount of practice and play one line-up can have together should teams opt for this. That said, it is fairly interesting and today's games certainly showed some potential for interesting substitutions. I'm curious if the ability to substitute players between games in series will carry on to the playoffs and also to Worlds. Riot/KeSPA/Whoever are acting to bring the different leagues closer to sharing a similar format, so it will be interesting to see what the LCS/Worlds will look like in this regard.



The only real concern I have going forward is that with the mass exodus of players and the removal of sister teams we will end up with some low quality games. Looking at you, CJ. This realistically isn't any worse than it was before in Champions groups with teams like Bigfile Miracle or the infamous Team Dark, but there are going to be a lot more games featuring these teams. The standard certainly isn't as low, however. The problem I see with it is that it may make the playoffs less interesting, whereas before it felt like there was a larger pool of contenders to win and a little more uncertainty about team strength due to them coming from different groups. Right now, based on the pre-season, it looks like NaJin and SKT are far ahead of everyone else. This should hopefully improve over the season, and I'm optimistic by the time we get there we should have some exciting games.



New Stream



While the new format shows a lot of promise to deliver exciting games, the moving of the stream to Riot Games was, from my perspective at least, an incredibly unwelcome change. I understand that the stream is more accessible to a lot of people now without the requirement to pay for HD, but this has never bothered me and simply put I would prefer a high-quality product that I have to contribute a very minute amount to than a mediocre product that is free.



The move of the broadcast from the OGN channel to the Riot Games channel has caused the quality to drop from 1080p to 720p. There are some people who might not care, especially if you're going from 480p to 720p instead, but the difference is very noticeable. OGN has set the highest standard for broadcasting for a long time now, and I really don't like to see it taking steps backwards. It's 2015, 1080p should really be the standard Riot set. It seems unacceptable that random Twitch streamers can broadcast higher quality streams than Riot can.



I don't know how much you'll think the quality drop is a problem, but I spent a short amount of time making a comparison video and a few screenshots of the difference between the pre-season games and the Riot broadcast. I don't know how to video edit but I think it shows the difference well enough. It's disappointing that a change in Twitch channel forces the quality to be so much lower.

















SBENU Champions Spring kicked off today with perhaps the 2 best teams in Korea, SK Telecom T1 and NaJin e-mFire. This year will bring us a vastly different Champions experience, and so I wanted to write down some of my first impressions of the new season. I'm not sure it will be particularly interesting to read, and I'm sure my terrible ability to write stuff contributes, but I just wanted to organise my thoughts on the changes.The format for Champions this year has been announced for a while now, but the stream today cleared up some of the positives and negatives of this format for me. It helps, of course, that we kicked off with SKT and NaJin but having best-of 3's so far looks like it will lead to much more satisfying individual game days. In Summer last year, Shield going 1-1 with their entire group was a fairly unsatisfying way for them to make the playoffs. The story between SKT and NaJin would have been so much different today if we didn't get to see the third game, so this is definitely a welcome change to me.I'm unsure of the value of substitutions between games in a series and if it will be a common occurrence, it opens up teams who have a variety of players to more strategic choices but at the same time it feels like it could have a negative impact on overall team strength by limiting the amount of practice and play one line-up can have together should teams opt for this. That said, it is fairly interesting and today's games certainly showed some potential for interesting substitutions. I'm curious if the ability to substitute players between games in series will carry on to the playoffs and also to Worlds. Riot/KeSPA/Whoever are acting to bring the different leagues closer to sharing a similar format, so it will be interesting to see what the LCS/Worlds will look like in this regard.The only real concern I have going forward is that with the mass exodus of players and the removal of sister teams we will end up with some low quality games. Looking at you, CJ. This realistically isn't any worse than it was before in Champions groups with teams like Bigfile Miracle or the infamous Team Dark, but there are going to be a lot more games featuring these teams. The standard certainly isn't as low, however. The problem I see with it is that it may make the playoffs less interesting, whereas before it felt like there was a larger pool of contenders to win and a little more uncertainty about team strength due to them coming from different groups. Right now, based on the pre-season, it looks like NaJin and SKT are far ahead of everyone else. This should hopefully improve over the season, and I'm optimistic by the time we get there we should have some exciting games.While the new format shows a lot of promise to deliver exciting games, the moving of the stream to Riot Games was, from my perspective at least, an incredibly unwelcome change. I understand that the stream is more accessible to a lot of people now without the requirement to pay for HD, but this has never bothered me and simply put I would prefer a high-quality product that I have to contribute a very minute amount to than a mediocre product that is free.The move of the broadcast from the OGN channel to the Riot Games channel has caused the quality to drop from 1080p to 720p. There are some people who might not care, especially if you're going from 480p to 720p instead, but the difference is very noticeable. OGN has set the highest standard for broadcasting for a long time now, and I really don't like to see it taking steps backwards. It's 2015, 1080p should really be the standard Riot set. It seems unacceptable that random Twitch streamers can broadcast higher quality streams than Riot can.I don't know how much you'll think the quality drop is a problem, but I spent a short amount of time making a comparison video and a few screenshots of the difference between the pre-season games and the Riot broadcast. I don't know how to video edit but I think it shows the difference well enough. It's disappointing that a change in Twitch channel forces the quality to be so much lower.



I'm sure some people will call me a picky elitist, but I'd rather the option to pay for a better quality stream existed than to get a lower quality one that is free. I've supported the OGN English broadcast for years now, and 7$ a month was some of the best value for money in terms of content returned I've ever spent. It was completely worth the 7$ and I'd rather pay to get 1080p back.



It's not a deal-breaker, I'm just not used to the blur.



The Riot stream also killed the OGN sub chat which while perhaps not the largest draw was certainly a fun part of the experience, including the emotes. There will be no more ognTSMs or lckTSMs in the Riot Games channel, because you get banned for it. If you ever connect to Facebook to join the cancer that is that chat anyway.



There is also the concern that this is the first step in Riot consolidating broadcasts to all be done in-house by them, a change I would very much not want to see. While this seems unlikely for the moment, I really just have to question what the reason for the change was. I'm sure Riot could have worked with OGN to provide access to 720p (or preferably 1080p) content for more people without the need for the change in channel. OGN has spent the past 2 years building up a recognisable presence in the West, I find it unlikely that anyone who would want to watch Korean League of Legends would have any difficulty in finding OGN had they somehow not already heard of it. What reason is there to move everything to one channel, besides causing a headache of scheduling and the very real possibility that this will get messed up further along the line? This is the main problem I have with this move, it doesn't seem to accomplish anything significant while having a lot of possible drawbacks aside from the quality. Attracting new people to watching OGN is a very good thing, and free 720p helps to do this obviously, but for me it's not worth the downside at the moment. Riot supporting OGN by putting the stream on lolesports and in-client would accomplish much the same thing while keeping OGN independent.



SKT vs NaJin



I'm not going to actually talk about this too much, because I've already wrote more than I planned. The series between SKT and NaJin was at least redeeming of the blur, as it was very entertaining. Seeing Easyhoon outerperform Faker on Xerath was an unexpected result and I hope SKT will move away from picking champions like Xerath for Faker early, especially on red side. Easyhoon looked incredibly solid in the game that he played, I'd love to see him change team so that he will get some more game time. As much as SKT seem dedicated to using him at the moment, you have to feel that by the time the games get more important and the competition steps up he's not going to see anywhere near to as much play as Faker, which may end up being kind of a waste. The final game saw Wolf get a well deserved MVP with some amazing roams, and Faker getting a pentakill on Leblanc. Pretty much the way Champions is supposed to be. Bengi is seemingly still Bengi however.



For NaJin, the highlights of the series seemed to be their solo lanes. Duke and Ggoong were impressive at least in the game that they won, it didn't really feel like this series was the best to judge Ohq from. The second and third games showed why SKT is probably the best team in Korea at the moment. NaJin just got destroyed so it's not entirely his fault, but the Kallista pick didn't really seem to achieve much other than a few cool moments of throwing Braum at people.



The games were exciting, although I'm still more hyped to see the Samsung roster play. Samsung Fighting!







I'm sure some people will call me a picky elitist, but I'd rather the option to pay for a better quality stream existed than to get a lower quality one that is free. I've supported the OGN English broadcast for years now, and 7$ a month was some of the best value for money in terms of content returned I've ever spent. It was completely worth the 7$ and I'd rather pay to get 1080p back.It's not a deal-breaker, I'm just not used to the blur.The Riot stream also killed the OGN sub chat which while perhaps not the largest draw was certainly a fun part of the experience, including the emotes. There will be no more ognTSMs or lckTSMs in the Riot Games channel, because you get banned for it. If you ever connect to Facebook to join the cancer that is that chat anyway.There is also the concern that this is the first step in Riot consolidating broadcasts to all be done in-house by them, a change I would very much not want to see. While this seems unlikely for the moment, I really just have to question what the reason for the change was. I'm sure Riot could have worked with OGN to provide access to 720p (or preferably 1080p) content for more people without the need for the change in channel. OGN has spent the past 2 years building up a recognisable presence in the West, I find it unlikely that anyone who would want to watch Korean League of Legends would have any difficulty in finding OGN had they somehow not already heard of it. What reason is there to move everything to one channel, besides causing a headache of scheduling and the very real possibility that this will get messed up further along the line? This is the main problem I have with this move, it doesn't seem to accomplish anything significant while having a lot of possible drawbacks aside from the quality. Attracting new people to watching OGN is a very good thing, and free 720p helps to do this obviously, but for me it's not worth the downside at the moment. Riot supporting OGN by putting the stream on lolesports and in-client would accomplish much the same thing while keeping OGN independent.I'm not going to actually talk about this too much, because I've already wrote more than I planned. The series between SKT and NaJin was at least redeeming of the blur, as it was very entertaining. Seeing Easyhoon outerperform Faker on Xerath was an unexpected result and I hope SKT will move away from picking champions like Xerath for Faker early, especially on red side. Easyhoon looked incredibly solid in the game that he played, I'd love to see him change team so that he will get some more game time. As much as SKT seem dedicated to using him at the moment, you have to feel that by the time the games get more important and the competition steps up he's not going to see anywhere near to as much play as Faker, which may end up being kind of a waste. The final game saw Wolf get a well deserved MVP with some amazing roams, and Faker getting a pentakill on Leblanc. Pretty much the way Champions is supposed to be. Bengi is seemingly still Bengi however.For NaJin, the highlights of the series seemed to be their solo lanes. Duke and Ggoong were impressive at least in the game that they won, it didn't really feel like this series was the best to judge Ohq from. The second and third games showed why SKT is probably the best team in Korea at the moment. NaJin just got destroyed so it's not entirely his fault, but the Kallista pick didn't really seem to achieve much other than a few cool moments of throwing Braum at people.The games were exciting, although I'm still more hyped to see the Samsung roster play. Samsung Fighting! Highest IQ LL User - MSI 2019 AND Worlds 2019 'StarCraft is just a fairy tale told to scare children actually.'