I think the biggest problem with the partnership league is that the safety NET for partnership teams is so strong it can take away from competition. However, economically it seems almost like the only way to
To be fair, while org owners only get half the GUARANTEED return, their maximum return is much higher if the team performs well. Thus, while reduced investment would make sense, half is probably a bit low given the increased upside of the team performs (potentially indefinite time in the league). Also, while you're probably right about relegation, there is the additional option that Riot could simply decide not to renew contracts with certain teams and give longer-term contracts to ascension teams on a case by case basis.
yea this is a good point. for someone like G2 this is perfect (although g2 didn't sweat through ascension, they just got lucky to bid and sign the players)
You're right that the return doesn't necessarily decrease, but I do think he addresses that, saying that an org will most likely have to further invest in the team for each year in order to have the chance of extending their stay, rather than coasting for the two years and trying to make the maximum amount of profit in that time, which is what he supposes orgs would rather do.
I think the main thing to me is that I think orgs are a much more stable foundation to grow attachment to for a fan especially with how volatile the scene can be and how player's form can drop off so quickly, so to me it just feels more correct to have a system which reflects the shifting of orgs based on performance and not just relegating and shifting the players to a partnership org. Most likely some degree of bias bcuz of my love of traditional sports like football but players can come and go but ill always back the club And yes by keeping partnership orgs it makes it easier to keep attachment to the same orgs but it still feels sour to give much worse performing teams than ascension teams a free pass just bcuz theyre partnered, and if a org is larger/more fans theyll more frequently be promoted from t2 anyways due to larger capacity to invest
1 team plays the other twelve teams in a bo1 swiftplay, only one side. 5x12 = 60 minutes for each team. 12 hours in one week, regional league done. We can discuss the hiring cost over email 😎
I would really like to see players contracts and length etc more public the way they are in sports. I know players themselves don’t want it, however it helps transparency for investors who often cannot truly calculate future prices. As well as teams and players can set the market under the scrutiny of the public eye.
i feel like riot needs to make tier 2 more appealing to both viewers and orgs. maybe make playoffs and mid season faceoff regional lans. also allow for more teams per region in t2 so orgs have a higher chance of making it to t2
@@butterandbreadsticksYeah Riot needs to help more off-season tournaments, I know Ludwig Tarik was supposed to be 8 or 12 teams but Riot only gave them an opportunity for the tournament a few weeks before the season started
@@CHill-42ngl, unless theres sonething to play for, off season tournaments are just not interesting outside of the personalities involved. No one will care who wins because its meaningless. Its just a flaw of riots calendar. Ik burnout might be a problem but just extend the season. We got like a week break from shanghai and stage 2 which should be like 3 or 4 weeks instead to better pace it
@@cronggpal I think off-season is important though. Sen kinda proved that, with new patches/players you need a lot of reps in a competitive environment. I think the reason Ludwig Tarik and the Sentinels invitational were so competitive were because tier 2 teams were invited and they wanted to prove they were deserving of a tier 1 spot. Riot needs to spread the season out though, by like 6 weeks
good analysis egg. id say the ascension format benefits the current ascenders. my belief is they should reduce every region's partners from 10 to 8, and then make 4 possible slots from ascension to IL for each region.
I always hoped they would change the auto relegation for Ascension teams, I do agree that this is a little shaky for teams in the top 3-6 brackets in t2 but overall I think it's better for competition. I'd say you're probably right about it dis-incentivizing orgs from investing in t2, but as far as I can tell org's already aren't doing that so I think Riot is okay with making that sacrifice and will just rely on orgs signing whoever wins Ascension.
If this does hurt Tier 2 that is among the worst possible outcomes. Just ask Overwatch pros what the gutting of Tier 2 does to an esports scene. For the moment though, I'm more concerned about potential issues between partner orgs and ascension ones. I can already hear the gnashing of teeth over "Why does the ascension org that invested in a real team that put up a respectable but not Champions performance have to fight for their lives but the partner org that went winless gets a free ride?"
i get why he's unhappy as an investor but i dont think he really understands the point of VCT's current model. its not a traditional promo/relegation esport. its a entertainment product where a bunch of orgs were chosen for their stability and brand, and a few t2--> t1 spots were added because LoL's franchising has been disastrous for t2 scene, players and community reception (and OWL's). the ascension spots were added to create some interesting opportunities for players to get exposed. I don't think Riot intended for t2 to be sustainable at all for orgs even if they ascend, but that ascension orgs (guest slots) can be a showcase for top tier 2 talent to eventually get signed to a partner org. Ludwig with Moist wants to ascend and then permanently be a t1 esport org but thats probably not gonna happen under this format.
@123rtXd Yeah but 1 year makes it very hard to allow players to gain experience together in order to be able to make a run. G2 is an anomaly because they were Tier 1 before franchising. I think 90% of Ascension teams will finish in the bottom half the first year and if they survive whatever the chance to stay up is they'll do better
@@CHill-42 if 5 players do not look good in their full year of VCT that 5 man roster does not have the potential to be better and should be relegated back down.
@123rtXd You're dumb, if a squad of 5 college age kids does bad in their first season it very well could be nerves and it can take a while to adjust to the pressure, having to move to a new city away from family and friends, and playing on LAN and dealing with a crowd. Fir a lot of Ascension teams they'll only have had 1 or 2 LAN tournaments before
My biggest problem is cutting your guaranteed time in half. I liked the fact that each year one of the ascension teams would rotate, or in the case of the new rules fight for their place
Its not just 2 years going down to 1 year means half the investment, gaining fans to buy bundles and so on requires a team legacy, building a legacy in 1 year is MUCH harder specially if you are not playing well to make the master tournaments.
I think that like the 13-12 team thing and all that stuff is good but the 2-1 year change is interesting. I would say that it favors viewership over the orgs in that we have a cycle of new teams coming in if the last team didnt preform well and sucked viewers get to see a new team in the spot. I think that helps for the season bc if a team was promoted -preformed shitty and the prg doesnt have the money to spend yr 2 as a veiwer you can reliability expect around a similar preformance to previous year which not great. And obviously its bad for the org to only have 1 yr guaranteed cause duh. My question then is why was this decision made bc i dont feel like the pro is better than the cons here idk would like to see what others think and where the holes in my thinking are
Wasn't it always 12 since teams got relegated every 2 years? I thought when the third ascension make it to VCT, the first ascension team would get relegated locking the league to 12 teams
it just needs another year to make it 3 years for the ascension winner and the rest are good changes it forces the ascension teams to be competetive. talk abt the vct challengers changes too
With your G2 example winning champions the problem comes when G2 does win, but G2 org holds them in contract jail fucking everything with nothing to be done.
i think its really disappointing if 2 challengers teams make champs and one gets relegated. i also wish the term was 2 years and each time you make champs it was an additional year, but these changes would probably mean more fluctuation in the number of teams in each league so not sure.
so lets say m80 make it this upcoming year and lets say m80 and G2 aka the guard if the both make champs hypothetically 3 years in a row they dont have to win but does that mean that no ascension team efforts would be rewarded for 3 year even if they win like that seems like a massive flaw i know it probably happen but if it does you will look back and say damn this is a bad idea we did 3 years of competing for nothing
@@edwardrodriguez358 Even if they get eliminated at the same place in the bracket, the teams can not place the same in the tournament. Let's say both M80 and G2 lose all of their games at champs and get eliminated with a 0-2 record. To figure out which team placed higher than the other you would look at which team won the most maps. If both teams lost all maps they would look at other factors. However I can't remember exactly what those other factors are or their priority ranking :)
All I'm saying is the furia/mibr relegation would NOT be contested by anyone except furia and mibr. Putting a fire under ascension teams so they focus on performing better while the worst teams in all these IL's could literally make no changes to how bad their team is and face no consequence for taking space that other teams might be able to thrive in is wack, even with a 3 year contract update/review. (also idk if they commented before but vansilli at the end saying "what the FUCK are you doing" lmao)
Am I dumb? Can anyone explain how the leagues were going to end up with 14 teams? Surely in 2026 we’d have had 12 teams regardless? (G2 drop down, moving us from 12 to 11. Then new Ascension winners join whoever got promoted the year before to make 12 again) I know it’s irrelevant now just been bugging me for ages!
They should increase masters to 16 teams and make champs to 24 teams so that it becomes more viable as a goal for the ascenders (and make viewing more fun
If that's the case then you're just not getting the best teams out of your region who deserve to compete at international events, and instead you're gonna have what, fuckin' NRG or BBL competing at international events which just ruins the level of competition...
I dont like it, i am one of the psychopaths who watch every match(except china only wolves for china) and watch tier 2 (Polaris, and NA) and im already seen and watching every year orgs drop and orga join depending on performance but imagine theres not even a prize anymore, or even making it all the way to have to play against players who havent had as much stage time as other teams
To be honest I don't get it why franchised teams just have the privilege of staying in tier 1 no matter how shit they play. A better decision is to bump down a shit team than a decent team from ascension.
If riot invest into the production for the big matches of acsension maybe increase the prize pool for winning and going up, maybe we can generate enough fandom for T2 to be kinda like college football in Ameria is to the NFL in the future. Where yeah the goal is still to play at the top but the hype people have for the "amateur" scene and its championships(Promotion) is equally as hype as the T1. Its gonna take YEARS for that to happen but if they do this right maybe it'll work.
Josh's main argument seems to be that the players that were part of the org that got relegated after doing well (or even winning champs) would just end up as a whole on a different team. But when do we ever see that happening? Even this year we saw players get split from one another after doing well but their org not making it. Besides, if G2 wins champs, gets relegated, and the players all go to C9. It is a significantly worse story liner when playing against the ''reigning champs'' when it's a different org. Sen Vs the reigning champions C9 when C9 went 0/10 or something last year is just silly.
You must have missed a significant portion of the video if you felt that was his "main argument" in any way. While I do think he struggled with his precise wording at certain points, his primary argument was clearly in regards to how the Ascension changes disincentivize risk-averse org owners from investing in tier 2. But even in regards to the relegated orgs under the current system, I don't think his main point was that a championship roster would always get picked up as a whole. The point was that even if their org gets relegated to tier 2, a group of tournament-winning players will certainly be able to stay in the tier 1 ecosystem, even if they aren't able to stay together-which they might, it happened with the former Guard roster and they had only won Ascension and the Apeks core who were only second in their Ascension, it happened with FPX/Navi, and it (mostly) happened with Optic/NRG. Of course there will only be so many examples because there are only so many teams that won tournaments in 2022 but didn't get chosen for partnership in 2023. Maybe people don't like the idea of a successful roster splitting up, but that is already a risk and always will be, even for permanently partnered organizations-most notably Loud after 2022 and EG after 2023. Teams change rosters all the time, even if they're successful. It might be because their players became more valuable and the org is no longer able to compete with other offers. It might be that they think they can upgrade the roster even though the roster was already good. It might be due to the financial circumstances of the org. It may be that a player has to step away from competition for personal reasons or other external circumstances like visa issues. It might be that some of the players have a falling out. Roster changes happen all the time whether a team is good or bad and it's something you just have to live with. And that's not to mention that a team won't necessarily be able to maintain their success even if they keep their entire roster unchanged.
Idk why Riot is tying themselves in knots to not just do regular pro/rel Edit: I'm not saying necessarily that they should do pro/rel ig it's weird that they are tip-toeing as close to pro/rel as they can
Thank you Wilkinson, my bald jelqing king
He is the Gel King
Josh Jelqingson
gel kings son
Thank god wilkinson is here to tell me my nuanced and well researched opinion 🙏🙏
Finally, Wilkinson has posted and I now have an opinion on the subject
I think the biggest problem with the partnership league is that the safety NET for partnership teams is so strong it can take away from competition. However, economically it seems almost like the only way to
To be fair, while org owners only get half the GUARANTEED return, their maximum return is much higher if the team performs well. Thus, while reduced investment would make sense, half is probably a bit low given the increased upside of the team performs (potentially indefinite time in the league). Also, while you're probably right about relegation, there is the additional option that Riot could simply decide not to renew contracts with certain teams and give longer-term contracts to ascension teams on a case by case basis.
yea this is a good point. for someone like G2 this is perfect (although g2 didn't sweat through ascension, they just got lucky to bid and sign the players)
You're right that the return doesn't necessarily decrease, but I do think he addresses that, saying that an org will most likely have to further invest in the team for each year in order to have the chance of extending their stay, rather than coasting for the two years and trying to make the maximum amount of profit in that time, which is what he supposes orgs would rather do.
I think the main thing to me is that I think orgs are a much more stable foundation to grow attachment to for a fan especially with how volatile the scene can be and how player's form can drop off so quickly, so to me it just feels more correct to have a system which reflects the shifting of orgs based on performance and not just relegating and shifting the players to a partnership org. Most likely some degree of bias bcuz of my love of traditional sports like football but players can come and go but ill always back the club
And yes by keeping partnership orgs it makes it easier to keep attachment to the same orgs but it still feels sour to give much worse performing teams than ascension teams a free pass just bcuz theyre partnered, and if a org is larger/more fans theyll more frequently be promoted from t2 anyways due to larger capacity to invest
1 team plays the other twelve teams in a bo1 swiftplay, only one side. 5x12 = 60 minutes for each team. 12 hours in one week, regional league done. We can discuss the hiring cost over email 😎
cooked so hard i can see the kitchen burning down
I would really like to see players contracts and length etc more public the way they are in sports. I know players themselves don’t want it, however it helps transparency for investors who often cannot truly calculate future prices. As well as teams and players can set the market under the scrutiny of the public eye.
Isnt there the GCD? Pretty sure val has that, albeit its pretty haed to find
thank you for providing me my opinion gel king wilkinson
i feel like riot needs to make tier 2 more appealing to both viewers and orgs. maybe make playoffs and mid season faceoff regional lans. also allow for more teams per region in t2 so orgs have a higher chance of making it to t2
additionally i think introducing more tournaments for t2 teams such as maybe a t2 vs t1 tournament which allows t2 teams to get more recognition
@@butterandbreadsticksYeah Riot needs to help more off-season tournaments, I know Ludwig Tarik was supposed to be 8 or 12 teams but Riot only gave them an opportunity for the tournament a few weeks before the season started
@@CHill-42ngl, unless theres sonething to play for, off season tournaments are just not interesting outside of the personalities involved. No one will care who wins because its meaningless. Its just a flaw of riots calendar. Ik burnout might be a problem but just extend the season. We got like a week break from shanghai and stage 2 which should be like 3 or 4 weeks instead to better pace it
@@cronggpal I think off-season is important though. Sen kinda proved that, with new patches/players you need a lot of reps in a competitive environment. I think the reason Ludwig Tarik and the Sentinels invitational were so competitive were because tier 2 teams were invited and they wanted to prove they were deserving of a tier 1 spot. Riot needs to spread the season out though, by like 6 weeks
There's our Egg-Nerd. Thank you, Jelkinson.
good analysis egg. id say the ascension format benefits the current ascenders. my belief is they should reduce every region's partners from 10 to 8, and then make 4 possible slots from ascension to IL for each region.
RIP
GE DFM
EG MIBR
KOI GX
@@cronggpal sounds good to me tbh
Finally these videos are back, I fkn love em pls keep making em jelqinson
I always hoped they would change the auto relegation for Ascension teams, I do agree that this is a little shaky for teams in the top 3-6 brackets in t2 but overall I think it's better for competition. I'd say you're probably right about it dis-incentivizing orgs from investing in t2, but as far as I can tell org's already aren't doing that so I think Riot is okay with making that sacrifice and will just rely on orgs signing whoever wins Ascension.
12 teams seems like a much nicer number for organizing
I was waiting for this
If this does hurt Tier 2 that is among the worst possible outcomes. Just ask Overwatch pros what the gutting of Tier 2 does to an esports scene. For the moment though, I'm more concerned about potential issues between partner orgs and ascension ones. I can already hear the gnashing of teeth over "Why does the ascension org that invested in a real team that put up a respectable but not Champions performance have to fight for their lives but the partner org that went winless gets a free ride?"
ludwig isnt too happy with the 1yr change either
i get why he's unhappy as an investor but i dont think he really understands the point of VCT's current model. its not a traditional promo/relegation esport. its a entertainment product where a bunch of orgs were chosen for their stability and brand, and a few t2--> t1 spots were added because LoL's franchising has been disastrous for t2 scene, players and community reception (and OWL's). the ascension spots were added to create some interesting opportunities for players to get exposed. I don't think Riot intended for t2 to be sustainable at all for orgs even if they ascend, but that ascension orgs (guest slots) can be a showcase for top tier 2 talent to eventually get signed to a partner org. Ludwig with Moist wants to ascend and then permanently be a t1 esport org but thats probably not gonna happen under this format.
@123rtXd Yeah but 1 year makes it very hard to allow players to gain experience together in order to be able to make a run. G2 is an anomaly because they were Tier 1 before franchising. I think 90% of Ascension teams will finish in the bottom half the first year and if they survive whatever the chance to stay up is they'll do better
@@CHill-42 if 5 players do not look good in their full year of VCT that 5 man roster does not have the potential to be better and should be relegated back down.
@123rtXd You're dumb, if a squad of 5 college age kids does bad in their first season it very well could be nerves and it can take a while to adjust to the pressure, having to move to a new city away from family and friends, and playing on LAN and dealing with a crowd. Fir a lot of Ascension teams they'll only have had 1 or 2 LAN tournaments before
My biggest problem is cutting your guaranteed time in half. I liked the fact that each year one of the ascension teams would rotate, or in the case of the new rules fight for their place
Its not just 2 years going down to 1 year means half the investment, gaining fans to buy bundles and so on requires a team legacy, building a legacy in 1 year is MUCH harder specially if you are not playing well to make the master tournaments.
I think that like the 13-12 team thing and all that stuff is good but the 2-1 year change is interesting. I would say that it favors viewership over the orgs in that we have a cycle of new teams coming in if the last team didnt preform well and sucked viewers get to see a new team in the spot. I think that helps for the season bc if a team was promoted -preformed shitty and the prg doesnt have the money to spend yr 2 as a veiwer you can reliability expect around a similar preformance to previous year which not great. And obviously its bad for the org to only have 1 yr guaranteed cause duh. My question then is why was this decision made bc i dont feel like the pro is better than the cons here idk would like to see what others think and where the holes in my thinking are
25:00 wait I thought Riot WILL review their partnerships every 4 years? Did I misremember that or no?
Yeah i rwmember this too
thanks for giving me an opinion to have !
Wasn't it always 12 since teams got relegated every 2 years? I thought when the third ascension make it to VCT, the first ascension team would get relegated locking the league to 12 teams
Bro looking like Dr. Eggman with the bald head and villain mustache. 😂
it just needs another year to make it 3 years for the ascension winner and the rest are good changes it forces the ascension teams to be competetive.
talk abt the vct challengers changes too
I wouldve thought be better than half the partnered teams would be a good stay in franchising but okidoki
G2 fan and this is great, waking up at 3 am for Shanghai sucked tho
With your G2 example winning champions the problem comes when G2 does win, but G2 org holds them in contract jail fucking everything with nothing to be done.
Common Gel King W
good for the viewers, bad for the t2 players/investors i think
How could there ever be more than 12 teams in a league if an acension team leaves after 2 years?
i think its really disappointing if 2 challengers teams make champs and one gets relegated. i also wish the term was 2 years and each time you make champs it was an additional year, but these changes would probably mean more fluctuation in the number of teams in each league so not sure.
so lets say m80 make it this upcoming year and lets say m80 and G2 aka the guard if the both make champs hypothetically 3 years in a row they dont have to win but does that mean that no ascension team efforts would be rewarded for 3 year even if they win like that seems like a massive flaw i know it probably happen but if it does you will look back and say damn this is a bad idea we did 3 years of competing for nothing
In that case the lowest placing of the two teams still has to play a finals match against the top Ascension team to stay in the league.
@@lonelyliam1811 what if they are even match wins
@@edwardrodriguez358 Even if they get eliminated at the same place in the bracket, the teams can not place the same in the tournament. Let's say both M80 and G2 lose all of their games at champs and get eliminated with a 0-2 record. To figure out which team placed higher than the other you would look at which team won the most maps. If both teams lost all maps they would look at other factors. However I can't remember exactly what those other factors are or their priority ranking :)
bruh they just need to create another BO5 for relegation both team, its not hard
All I'm saying is the furia/mibr relegation would NOT be contested by anyone except furia and mibr. Putting a fire under ascension teams so they focus on performing better while the worst teams in all these IL's could literally make no changes to how bad their team is and face no consequence for taking space that other teams might be able to thrive in is wack, even with a 3 year contract update/review. (also idk if they commented before but vansilli at the end saying "what the FUCK are you doing" lmao)
I just wish every 3-5 years 1 partnership team was revoked of their spot. That way there's a big incentive for orgs to invest
Our Based Jelqer once again with some based takes
I was hoping for 16 teams but ig logistics was too much?
Am I dumb? Can anyone explain how the leagues were going to end up with 14 teams? Surely in 2026 we’d have had 12 teams regardless? (G2 drop down, moving us from 12 to 11. Then new Ascension winners join whoever got promoted the year before to make 12 again) I know it’s irrelevant now just been bugging me for ages!
this is basically killing tier 2 scene imo
Was it ever alive
They should increase masters to 16 teams and make champs to 24 teams so that it becomes more viable as a goal for the ascenders (and make viewing more fun
If that's the case then you're just not getting the best teams out of your region who deserve to compete at international events, and instead you're gonna have what, fuckin' NRG or BBL competing at international events which just ruins the level of competition...
Riot mentioned somewhere that the partnered teams will be reviewed every 4 years. Will add the tweet to this comment if I find it.
damn so NRG about to crush t2 next season.
I dont like it, i am one of the psychopaths who watch every match(except china only wolves for china) and watch tier 2 (Polaris, and NA) and im already seen and watching every year orgs drop and orga join depending on performance but imagine theres not even a prize anymore, or even making it all the way to have to play against players who havent had as much stage time as other teams
they will review partnership teams every 4 years no?
To be honest I don't get it why franchised teams just have the privilege of staying in tier 1 no matter how shit they play. A better decision is to bump down a shit team than a decent team from ascension.
If riot invest into the production for the big matches of acsension maybe increase the prize pool for winning and going up, maybe we can generate enough fandom for T2 to be kinda like college football in Ameria is to the NFL in the future. Where yeah the goal is still to play at the top but the hype people have for the "amateur" scene and its championships(Promotion) is equally as hype as the T1. Its gonna take YEARS for that to happen but if they do this right maybe it'll work.
Some of these comments r so stupid where im finding myself questioning if they even watched the video or have any semblance of critcal thinking
i think they suck for T2
Josh's main argument seems to be that the players that were part of the org that got relegated after doing well (or even winning champs) would just end up as a whole on a different team. But when do we ever see that happening? Even this year we saw players get split from one another after doing well but their org not making it.
Besides, if G2 wins champs, gets relegated, and the players all go to C9. It is a significantly worse story liner when playing against the ''reigning champs'' when it's a different org. Sen Vs the reigning champions C9 when C9 went 0/10 or something last year is just silly.
You must have missed a significant portion of the video if you felt that was his "main argument" in any way. While I do think he struggled with his precise wording at certain points, his primary argument was clearly in regards to how the Ascension changes disincentivize risk-averse org owners from investing in tier 2.
But even in regards to the relegated orgs under the current system, I don't think his main point was that a championship roster would always get picked up as a whole. The point was that even if their org gets relegated to tier 2, a group of tournament-winning players will certainly be able to stay in the tier 1 ecosystem, even if they aren't able to stay together-which they might, it happened with the former Guard roster and they had only won Ascension and the Apeks core who were only second in their Ascension, it happened with FPX/Navi, and it (mostly) happened with Optic/NRG. Of course there will only be so many examples because there are only so many teams that won tournaments in 2022 but didn't get chosen for partnership in 2023.
Maybe people don't like the idea of a successful roster splitting up, but that is already a risk and always will be, even for permanently partnered organizations-most notably Loud after 2022 and EG after 2023. Teams change rosters all the time, even if they're successful. It might be because their players became more valuable and the org is no longer able to compete with other offers. It might be that they think they can upgrade the roster even though the roster was already good. It might be due to the financial circumstances of the org. It may be that a player has to step away from competition for personal reasons or other external circumstances like visa issues. It might be that some of the players have a falling out. Roster changes happen all the time whether a team is good or bad and it's something you just have to live with. And that's not to mention that a team won't necessarily be able to maintain their success even if they keep their entire roster unchanged.
There should be no partnership teams. At all. It’s actually ridiculous that a team can sit at the bottom for years on end with no penalty.
Idk why Riot is tying themselves in knots to not just do regular pro/rel
Edit: I'm not saying necessarily that they should do pro/rel ig it's weird that they are tip-toeing as close to pro/rel as they can