Cover-Credits:
The Group Stage of the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) 2022 has concluded and the top six teams are gearing up for yet another grueling best-of-one double round-robin set up in the Rumble Stage of the tournament. Apart from the conversations around the artificially inflated latency of 35 ms at the Busan LAN, the other major point of discussion has been the tournament format of MSI in general. Fans got to witness a handful of interesting games but let us be honest, most of the matches in the group stage were clear stomps that ended very quickly.
Dominant teams once again proved why they are branded as such and the underdogs had to play multiple games without ever really having a chance of winning in the first place.
Let us get into the details of the tournament’s format first.
Riot Games decided to stick with the same format for MSI as last year. In 2021, Riot did away with the Play-In stage of the tournament and instead made it so that all the teams would directly be seeded into the group stage.
The tournament is divided into three stages: The Group Stage, the Rumble Stage, and the Knockout Stage. The first stage included all the 11 teams split into three groups, with two having four teams and one with three. Every group played a best-of-one double round-robin and the two best teams from each group advanced to the next stage.
The Rumble Stage is where all the six teams will play another double round-robin against all other teams to identify the top four teams for the knockout stage. Again, it is a best-of-one format. Well, the Knockout Stage has the remaining four teams competing in a single-elimination bracket in a best-of-five format.
Why is the MSI format boring?
The fact that only the top teams from every region participate in the tournament means that there are only a few competitors. With only 11 or 12 teams at max competing, Riot could definitely show some creativity. The fact that the tournament mostly features best-of-ones until the knockout stage shows that you are out of the show if you have one bad day. Secondly, teams that are already losing, need to play humiliating matches again and again because the tournament model dictates so.
For instance, let us dissect what transpired in Group C this year at MSI 2022. The group only had three teams competing because the League of Legends Continental League (LCL) could not send a representative to the event because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and due to the LCL (Commonwealth of Independent States) Spring Split being canceled. As a result, this group did not play a double round-robin setup but instead played in a quadruple round-robin. Simply put, every team had to face each other FOUR times. In the first three days of the MSI 2022, ORDER from Oceania had already lost four games which meant that the team was facing a do-or-die situation moving into Day 5, which had only Group C matches scheduled.
AFK Gaming
Interestingly, the top two teams from Group C were decided right off the bat on Day 5. G2 Esports locked in its Rumble Stage spot from the first game and Evil Geniuses, the second. However, ORDER still had to play three more games to close out the groups, knowing very well that it was out of contention and it could not even play spoilsport since it was just three teams competing.
What do the forerunners of the tournament think of the Group Stage?
For clarity, the major regions in League of Legends esports are the League of Legends Pro League (LPL, China), League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK, Korea), League of Legends European Championship (LEC, Europe), and League of Legends Championship Series (LCS, North America).
These regions have the upper hand over minor regions of -
Pacific Championship Series (PCS)
Vietnam Championship Series (VCS)
League of Legends Japan League (LJL)
The Liga Latinoamérica (LLA)
Turkish Championship League (TCL)
Campeonato Brasileiro de League of Legends (CBLoL)
League of Legends Circuit Oceania (LCO)
The fans and the teams know very well that the minor region teams usually falter in the group stage of the tournament. However, there have been instances of teams like Pentanet.GG and PSG Talon which have reached the Knockouts.
Pro players from teams including G2 Esports from LEC and T1 from LCK have commented that playing against the minor teams seemed like warm ups.
After the group stage was over, G2 Esports support Raphaël "Targamas" Crabbé wrote on Twitter, “Only a few days till MSI begins, cheers to OCE & NA for the warmup.”
Likewise talking about drafts and the games at MSI during a post-game interview, T1’s support Ryu "Keria" Min-seok said, “We’re playing groups like we would play in scrims and experimenting with new picks. I think that we’ll have a definitive champion tier list by the Rumble Stage.”
To everyone’s surprise, Keria even played Rumble support in the Group Stage of MSI 2022. Would you call it creativity or is it being disrespectful and lackadaisical?
Seeding just the major regions into Groups
In fact, the MSI format used to have a separate stage called the Play-Ins. In this stage, teams from the minor regions competed for three spots in the main event of MSI. Teams from China, Europe, and Korea were invited directly to the Main Event, while the other regions’ teams had to qualify through two rounds in Play Ins.
The Play Ins were part of the MSI format till 2019 and following this MSI was called off in 2020 due to the pandemic and Riot ultimately did away with this format in 2021.
If the minor region teams got to play each other in a similar setup, fans could witness matches of the same level of competition instead of one-sided thrashings and humiliations. However, the contention is that when minor regions alone battle it out, the tournament could potentially lose out on viewership.
In the case of MSI 2022, teams from across the world had to fly to Busan, Korea, self-quarantine for a week’s time, and play on 35 ms on LAN. The minor regions have it worse because is it really worth all the sacrifices if you are out of the tournament in the first three days?
What are some other formats that Riot can try?
Here are some potential formats Riot Games can experiment with for a better tournament for both the fans and the teams:
A singular best-of-one double round-robin featuring all the teams
It might be better to have each team play one another in a BO1 so that every team gets to experience different regions’ playstyle and picks instead of playing the same three teams within one’s bracket. The point of contention would be that the teams will have no say in the side selection and to combat this, this phase could very well be a double round-robin so teams play on both red and blue sides. Simply put, 20 games each of better quality with the only drawback being that it would be a long phase of the tournament.
Swiss format at MSI
A Swiss-system tournament is basically a non-eliminating tournament format that has a fixed number of rounds and not all teams play all the other competitors. Teams meet one-on-one in each round and are paired with other teams that have a similar score at the tournament. The winner would be the team with the highest aggregate points earned in all rounds.
Additionally, the pairings in a Swiss format would depend on the results of the previous rounds and could add to the spice of regions doing last-minute, creative prep work to take on their opponents.
The drawback of this format is that it could work well if the tournament has many participants. But since MSI has only 12 or 11 teams in total, it might not be all that interesting because it will again lead to a major-regions-pitted-against-minor-regions situation.
An integral point to note is that Riot Games will probably never explore the possibility of having dual streams to accommodate more games since it does not do well with the metrics like peak viewership numbers and it has to conclude the tournament within 15 days.
It is highly unfair to ask a minor region team that seldom has any international experience to take on the defending MSI champion Royal Never Give Up (RNG) or arguably the best organization in the history of LoLEsports - T1 and prove its worth by beating these mammoths.
The Rumble Stage of the tournament is kicking off on 20th March and this stage will certainly have entertaining matches since all major regions will take on one another in a span of five days. However, it will be interesting to see whether Riot makes modifications to MSI next year or makes Worlds 2022 a double-elimination tournament after weighing the pros and cons and taking in the suggestions and feedback from the community.
