As the VALORANT Champions 2022 end and the League of Legends Worlds Championship 2022 is on the horizon, fans are demanding a VALORANT Champions style format at the Worlds.
Riot Games is a prominent video game developer and publisher founded in 2009. Their first game is League of Legends, one of the most played games in the world, initially released in 2009. For a long time, League of Legends was Riot’s only game, up until 2019, where Riot games announced that they were making three new games. One of the games that were announced was an FPS game, codenamed Project A, later officially named VALORANT.
When VALORANT was initially released, it was a huge success. Almost every big-name gamer or casual player was playing it. The game gained peak viewership on twitch on April 7, 2020, with over 1,726,074 viewers. Not only VALORANT, but League of Legends also gained its peak viewership on twitch on November 6, 2021, with over 3,082,609 live viewers.
Since VALORANT and League of Legends were top-rated games, people started to play them competitively. After a while, both received their very own official world-class tournaments. League received the League of Legends Worlds Championship in 2011, and VALORANT received VALORANT Champions in 2021. In both tournaments, players from around the world compete against each other to see who is superior.
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What is VALORANT Champions Format?
For those who are unaware, here is the format of VALORANT Champions.
The tournament is divided into two stages, Group Stage and Playoffs.
In the group stage, 4 groups of four teams compete in a double-elimination format. All the matches will be played in a best of 3, and the top 2 teams will advance to playoffs.
In the playoffs, 8 teams will compete in a double-elimination bracket. All the matches, excluding the finale and lower bracket finale, will take place in a best of 3. The lower bracket and the grand finale will be in a best of 5.
What is Worlds Format?
League of Legends Worlds is divided into 4 stages. Play-In Round 1, Play-In Round 2, Group Stage, and Knockout Stage.
There are 2 play-in rounds. In the first round, Twelve teams are divided into two groups where they play in a best of 1 match. Top teams will advance to the group stage; meanwhile, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th teams in each group advance to play-in round 2. The bottom 2 teams in each group are eliminated. In round 2, all matches are played in a best of five. Two winners will advance to Group Stage, while Four losers will be eliminated.
In the group stage, all sixteen teams are divided into four groups where they play in a best-of-1 match. The top two teams advance to the knockout stage, while the bottom two teams in each group are eliminated.
In the knockout stage, Eight teams play in a single elimination bracket where 1st placed team of each group faces 2nd placed team from another group, and all the matches are played in a best of 5.
Why VALORANT’s format is better than the Worlds’ format?
There are many reasons the VALORANT Champions is better than League of Legends Worlds. Such as having more best of three’s, shorter yet exciting matches, etc. But the main reason is that Champions play in a double-elimination format meanwhile Worlds play in a single-elimination format.
How a double elimination format works is that there are 2 brackets, upper brackets or winner brackets and lower brackets or losers brackets. First, all the teams play in the upper brackets. Then, once a team loses a match in the upper bracket, they move to lower brackets, where there is a chance that they can still win the whole tournament.
Meanwhile, in a single elimination, if you lose a match once, you are eliminated from the tournament. There is no coming back or getting better after a night of preparation.
In VALORANT, only the best team wins because of this double-elimination format. The reason is that if a team loses the first time, they can always analyze their mistakes and be better in their next match.
But with single-elimination, some teams win just because of good luck rather than being a good team. Moreover, play-ins and group stages of Worlds are filled with the best of 1’s. This means the team who deserves to win might not even get a chance to compete in the knockout stages.
For this reason, League of Legends players has been asking Riot to add double-elimination at Worlds for years. However, Riot has been complete silence over this issue. And with so much negligence, many players are “begging” at this point.
Will Riot Ever Implement Double-elimination at Worlds?
In Worlds 2021, Riot’s global head of esports, John Needham, stated that they want to deliver the most exciting competition that’s great for fans to view and fun for the teams to participate in. So they are considering a double-elimination format for the Worlds.
So there are chances that we might see a similar format to VALORANT in the future.
