The first week of the North American and European League of Legends Championship Series is over and the dust is starting to settle. We saw TSM looking amazing with their new support, Immortals reminding everyone why they are the best and Apex Gaming showing that retired doesn’t necessarily mean bad. With this many games, it’s pretty hard to keep up.
We also got our first look at the new formats that will be played throughout the split. NA plays a best-of-three while EU plays a best-of two. Riot essentially doubled and tripled the amount of games played on the LCS stages with this change. They’ve also increased the amount of games you need to watch in order to keep up with everything that’s going on in the LCS.
In order to get all these games in, Riot has created two new Twitch channels for each region, LCS1 and LCS2 . Games happen simultaneously, meaning that if TSM are playing against immortals and Team Liquid facing off against Apex, you have to choose which game you want to watch. Switching back and forth is doable, but gets really bothersome trying to track when each game ends.
Other regions, like LMS and LCK, use a best-of-three or two format and have been doing so since their inception. NA and EU always lagged behind, since unlike the other regions, Riot has full control over these regions. Riot is trying to streamline as much of their game as possible. First, they changed all the Splash Arts in the game so that they are uniform across regions and now they want to do the same with competitive League of Legends.
I know it’s only week one, but I absolutely hate the LCS change. I used to love sitting down on a Saturday at noon, plopping down on the couch and watching my favorite video game played at the highest level for hours on end. Everything I needed to know would be encapsulated in that block over a two-day period. There were a lot of games to watch, but they were all manageable.
Now, it’s impossible to watch every game; trust me, I’ve tried. I missed TSM Biofrost’s breakout performance because I wanted to see what Team Envy was bringing to the table. Every time I switched streams, I missed an important team fight or objective taken on the other one. Watching two games of League simultaneously isn’t easy, especially when so much is happening on both of them.
I understand that NA and EU needed this change. International tournaments like IEM and the World Championship play in best-of-threes. Regions like Korea and Taiwan have been dominating NA and EU when they meet because they more comfortable with these longer series.
Korea is also the best region to utilize substitutes, bringing in new players in the middle of a series. In EU or NA, it’s more of a gimmick than an actual strategy. Last night Team Liquid and TSM fought, and TL decided to sub in their benched player, Dardoch . He put up a better performance than Moon, but still lost both games. TL struggled to adapt to each jungler’s play style and got out rotated and caught out by the much more cohesive five-man group of TSM.
I want NA to be the best region. CLG showed amazing skill at MSI, earning a second-place spot against every other region. Still, I’m not sure if changing how the LCS works will fix it. As the season goes on, there will be less important matches taking place. Last season I would skip over Renegades and NRG because those games would usually be stomps.
I’m sure the streaming schedule will be better to watch as the season progresses. If this is how we strengthen NA and EU as regions, I’m willing to give it another week.
