★ Game Horseshoe Original
LPL officially announced that the summer tournament will launch a new competition system, with grouping and global BP. This is a very big change, especially since the global BP will bring unprecedented changes to a Bo3. Last year, the LEC and LCK respectively reformed their old formats, and the LCS also canceled its spring point system earlier, and tickets to the finals were mainly based on summer results. Today, the LPL also ushered in major changes, which means that the 4 major regions currently have 4 different formats, so which one has the better format?
Traditionally fine-tuned LCK
LCK has a total of 10 teams, regular season Bo3 double round-robin, 5 game days a week, each team has to play 18 Bo3 games, the top 6 advance to the playoffs, and the relegation system has been canceled after the league, so the bottom 4 will not have any relegation penalty.
In the first round of the playoffs, 3 against 6, 4 against 5, and the winner is selected by the first in the regular season. From the second round, the semi-finals will start the double-elimination stage, and the teams that win the upper bracket and the lower bracket will meet in the finals. There are still spring and summer points to determine the ownership of tickets to the World Finals, with the No. 1 seed for the summer crown, the No. 2 seed with the highest points, and the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds determined by the bubble match.
The new format of the LCK is just a few double-elimination tweaks to the old traditional format of the past. Since the number of club places has not been expanded since the alliance, the regular season has been followed by a Bo3 double round-robin.
The most traditional double-loss LCS without points
The North American LCS format is an outlier because they abruptly eliminated the points system in previous seasons. Spots in the World Finals will be determined by the results of the Summer Tournament, with the top three teams being the teams that will represent the LCS in the Finals. The corresponding Spring Tournament will only determine the MSI spot. Originally, LCS was 10 teams, but with the ratings getting lower and lower in recent years, coupled with last year's strike, 2 clubs were finally disbanded, and now only 8 teams remain.
The regular season Bo1 double round-robin, only 2 days of games on the weekend, each team has to play 14 Bo1 games in the regular season, and the top 6 advance to the playoffs, which is also the bottom 2 of the league without relegation penalty. The top four of them go to the upper bracket, and five or six go to the lower bracket. LCS is the most traditional double-elimination format, meaning that the regular season will decide the upper bracket and the lower bracket, and the playoffs will go straight to the double-elimination and all Bo5. So the fifth or sixth place is the most stressful, because if you lose one game, you will go home, and the top four have a certain margin for error.
Like the LCK, the first round of the playoffs is also misplaced, with 1 against 4 and 2 against 3 to ensure that the teams ranked higher in the regular season have an advantage. The losing team goes to the lower bracket and fights five or six people to the death. North America, which has no points, only uses this format to determine the world quota, and the championship and second season are the seeding order.
3 seasons, 3 stages, 1 finals of the LEC
The European LEC was reformed last year, from the spring and summer competitions to the winter competition + spring competition + summer competition + annual finals, and the winter, spring and summer have each have 3 different stages.
In the first stage, there are 10 teams, Bo1 single round-robin, and the top eight advance to the next round, of which the top six enter the upper bracket and the seventh eight enter the lower bracket.
In the second stage, 8 teams lost Bo3 twice, and finally 4 teams advanced to the next round of Bo5, that is, the 2 teams that entered the winning round and the 2 teams in the third round of the lower bracket.
In the third stage, the four teams will lose Bo5 twice, and the upper bracket and the lower bracket will determine the final champion.
To put it bluntly, the second and third are all stages, and they are also the playoffs collectively referred to in Europe, but there will be a difference from Bo3 to Bo5, so they can't be generalized. Europe's new format caters to all formats, from Bo1 to Bo3 to Bo5 and Double Loss. The most exciting is of course the single-cycle Bo1, if LGD comes, I'm afraid there will be a chance to get the first promotion. Those who do not perform well will be eliminated directly, so giving 3 seasons is also considered to give those teams who are prone to overturn because of Bo1 to make room for error. A bad performance in one season is an accident, and if you finish at the bottom of all three seasons, it is hopeless.
There is a points system, and the 6 teams with the highest final points will participate in the annual finals of the LEC. The final ranking determines the World Finals ticket and seeding order. If a team wins the Winter Championship + Spring + Summer Tournament in a row, it will be directly guaranteed to the World Finals. Last year's G2 was one spring race short, and this year's G2 is expected to be the first team in LEC history to win the Triple Crown.
LPL's new competition system grouping global BP
The new format of the LPL is a bit of a stitching weird, it looks complicated, and it adds too many elements from other formats. The first is to divide the 17 teams into 4 pools, and since one more team is not divisible, pool 3 is 5 teams, divided into 4 groups according to the pool draw.
The first stage of the 4 groups is to determine the ranking within the group through the Bo3 double circulation global BP.
The top two teams in the 4 groups all entered Group A with a total of 9 teams (the group with 5 teams took the top three), and the bottom two teams in the 4 groups entered the 100 million group with a total of 8 teams.
In this way, a new group of strong group A and weak group B is formed. Therefore, through the Bo3 single cycle normal BP in the group, the new ranking will be determined, and the top 7 in Group A will directly advance to the playoffs (or the top two will have the qualification to play directly from the double defeat), and the 8-9 will be the top 4 in Group B, a total of 6 teams will determine 3 places through the normal BP of single Tao Bo5. So far, all 10 playoff teams have been decided.
It's not complicated, and the global BP is only used in the first phase. Compared to the old format of the past, this is indeed a lot more cumbersome.
Pros and cons of the new format
Our personal interpretation is that this new LPL competition system is only used to increase LPL viewing and ratings, and in essence, it has little impact on the environmental intensity of the competition area. Since Riot didn't officially use global BP in the international tournament, it didn't make much sense to overuse the global format, but fortunately, the global BP introduced by the LPL was limited to the first phase. To some extent, this will not affect the participation in the World Championship, and will also increase the spectacle of the first stage of the LPL. After all, the overall Bo3 is still a test of the depth of the hero pool of professional players, and it is also a bit helpful to improve the tactical reserves of professional teams.
The playoffs are unchanged, they are still ranked 1-10 according to the rankings, and the format is the same, and there will be a double defeat when you enter the semi-finals. The most intense stage should be the intra-group single-cycle Bo3 after the A and B groups. Especially in Group A, because some of the weak teams have been eliminated, the competition for the top 7 of the 9 teams will be extremely fierce.
The summer games are lively
To put it simply: the global BP of the 4 groups in the first stage will be very interesting, the 9 grabs and 7 in the second stage of Group A will be very intense, and the 6 into 3 life and death Bo5 in the third stage will be equally exciting, and the overall system changes in the regular season stage are still worth looking forward to. After this reform, LPL has also become the most complex and longest competition area among the four major regions. If you look at it from the perspective of increasing ratings, it is clear that the multi-stage format of LPL and LEC is more popular.
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★ The game Horseshoe is original, and commercial reproduction is prohibited without permission
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