“Competitive” TFT

Video

Summary

A lot of messages get lost and no action gets taken. I tried to list out the main points of each person’s twitlongers/videos to make sure we can try to improve the TFT scene and not let any input go to waste. None of this means anything if nothing actually changes

Soju

1 tourney per set

EV bad

Format bad

No investment from Riot

Mortdog

He has no say in the esports scene

Why do people participate in tournaments?

How high should the prize pool be?

Designing a game is for making a good game, not for making a competitive scene

Bebe

Casual balancing = good for long term of the game

Not Riot’s job

Making TFT stars

Has the time gone and passed?

Ramkev

Sample Size and format bad

lack of innovation and change in tourney formats over the sets

Tournament realm is horrible

Feedback for tournaments–where do we put it?

Agon

No investment = no chance

Easy missed opportunities for advertising

Retention of players —> more money for Riot long term

Reddit

Tournament timing: Not before start of patch

Qualifier Circuit Style

Point format: 8-1 vs 10-1

Summary – Below are notes of shared points from all the twitlongers. It also has my input on some of the takes, but it’s simplified so I would watch the video for details

1. Only one tourney matters per set
   1. How does this affect different players
      1. Pro streamers?
      2. High level players?
      3. Aspiring players?
   2. Suggestion: Have a Main set and a half set winner. Also I would think more people would care about the main set because it has more players, so Worlds during the half set doesn’t make sense to me
2. Tournament EV
   1. Prize Pool causes low EV
   2. Overlays – missed opportunity from tourney organizers for monetization
   3. Suggestion: Have some way to make winning a tournament more prestigious (maybe through brand name tourney organizers?)
3. Tournament Formats
   1. Sample size is too low
      1. 3 Game Knockouts are bad
      2. Maybe change to 3/4 eliminations instead of 1/2?
   2. Point Format: 1-8 vs 1-10
      1. ‘but this doesn’t change many outcomes!’
         1. Results do change when you change the point format
      2. In a pool of very similarly skilled players, some games are impossible to top 4 (imagine playing against 7 versions of yourself, you would have games at every placement). Let’s not give arbitrary bonuses to Top 4 and Top 1
   3. Considerations from Production team
      1. Long event = more expensive -> lower prize pool
      2. There is only one major tourney organizer in NA –> no competition in the space –> no major incentive to innovate/improve
   4. Proposed rough draft format: 3 games, top 6 make it, divide points by 2 (or any number), 3 games, top 6 make it.
      1. Pros:
         1. solves afks (except extreme circumstances)
         2. rewards consistency
         3. has decent tiebreakers from the division of points
         4. doesn’t increase play time
      2. Cons:
         1. doesn’t reward winners that much, albeit slightly
         2. still 3 games deciding whether you get knocked out
   5. Live vs VOD – I feel like we definitely want live games…
   6. Making stars – Having the same players compete over and over
      1. Who would make the cutoff? 10,000 viewer stream? 1,000 viewer stream? 100 viewer stream? would they need to be Challenger?
      2. We would miss out on Kiyoon (and many others) if we declared stars in Set 1. Polt would be discredited if he was promoted before he proved he was good
      3. Nepotism would for sure occur. There’s enough nepotism in this space already, we don’t need more–especially if we are talking about the world championship cycle (for fun and 3rd party tournaments are different)
   7. Tournament Timing
      1. Start of patch vs end of patch
      2. Honers vs Innovators who should be rewarded more?
   8. Why do people participate in tournaments?
   9. Open feedback – where does it go?
4. Investment from Riot
   1. Tournament Realm – no excuse to not have this work when players work so hard to qualify
   2. LoR comparison – if TFT has higher viewership/playerbase, why does Riot invest more in LoR?
   3. How high should the prize pool be? If we quadrupled prize pool, EV would be ~$4 up from ~$1
   4. No communication channels such as YT, Web, Discord
   5. Retention of TFT players —> more money for Riot long term
   6. Is it Riot’s job to grow the scene? I don’t think so, but they would benefit from it the most if it got big
   7. Is it too late to make a competitive scene? Was Set 3 the time?

A lot of issues don’t have visible solutions yet. Many players say “this is bad” but offer no improvements, but honestly this format is very difficult because there have not been 8 player free for all RNG games that we can easily copy. I feel like the tourney format I propose (3/4 making it through) only works for top 128, 64, and 32 formats and would not be great for a top 8 format.