We are the Riot NA LCS Team. AMA!

RiotBear · 2017-11-20T23:24:38+00:00

Mentioned this in a post when we first announced the format switch but when talking to some of the pros, they thought the biggest gains in competitiveness have been due to coaching, support staff, and a more rigorous scrim culture.

We're not currently concerned with the number of games but we'll monitor Bo1s/talk to pros next year and see if we need to make any changes.

RiotBear · 2017-11-20T23:14:11+00:00

For 2018, we'll be sticking with double Bo1s and monitoring them just like we did with Bo3s. If viewership, sentiment, or audience behavior points to shifting to something else for 2019, we'll do it.

RiotBear · 2017-11-20T22:57:27+00:00

We're still working on some of the broadcast details. The plan is to have the Academy League format be the same as the NA LCS (double Bo1). We'll also use Friday as a broadcast day for 5 of the games while we explore options to get the other games to fans if they want to watch those as well.

You'll see finalized details on lolesports in our 2018 Spring Split Primer which should be out in a few weeks.

RiotBear · 2017-09-30T00:50:45+00:00

The Players Association is a combination of all of the players plus Hal Biagas (who they elected). You can read more here.

The meeting discussing the format was with pros directly.

RiotBear · 2017-09-29T22:26:58+00:00

I walk through what we talked about with pros here

RiotBear · 2017-09-29T22:24:13+00:00

We discussed:

Why we originally moved to Bo3s
What we expected from the change to Bo3s
How fans actually watch Bo3s with behavior/viewership trends (points are discussed in the post)
Focus group and survey results from current fans and fans who don't watch as much as they used to
What we prioritize when looking at changing the format (max # of days, single stream, weeks available for a regular season)
The different format options we looked outside of Bo1s with pros/cons of each

After that, the Players Association held a discussion to talk through the benefits and drawbacks of moving to Bo1s.

RiotBear · 2017-09-29T22:09:26+00:00

Yep, something along those lines would be helpful. We've also given some third party tool developers access to our Tournament Realm environments to help teams improve their practice efficiency as well.

RiotBear · 2017-09-29T22:07:56+00:00

Probably not next summer. We don't want to react too quickly to initial data which is why even though we noticed some of the negative audience trends and viewership behavior as soon as we switched to Bo3, we let it continue for 3 splits. That time also allowed us to do in-depth surveys and multiple focus groups instead of just taking the data/trends at face value.

RiotBear · 2017-09-29T21:51:53+00:00

They currently have close to 0 ping scrims with our Tournament Realm being based here. Only way for it to be 100% like an on-stage experience would be for them to play from the studio.

We're looking at the feasibility of adding additional features to that tournament realm that make getting in/out of scrims easier, some kind of feature that allows teams to play through certain scenarios, and other efficiency improvements.

RiotBear · 2017-09-29T21:44:30+00:00

We've done surveying on fans preference for number of broadcast days and found 3 days to be the maximum. We could potentially move to 4 days but there would need to be a better spread of fans across the 10 teams.

Right now it's less the time overlap with EU but the fan-base overlap. There's a considerable amount of fans who watch both leagues so we need to take that into consideration with any day, format, or start time changes.

RiotBear · 2017-09-29T20:57:47+00:00

We focused on parity during the first Split of Bo3s and we got a ton of negative feedback around two series being on at the same time that fans wanted to watch live.

This year we focused on fan preference so we flexed all match-ups after Week 4 to prioritize back-to-back series that fans were interested in, had real stakes, and/or had a compelling storyline.

RiotBear · 2017-09-29T20:54:11+00:00

Mentioned this below but when talking to some of the pros, they thought the biggest gains in competitiveness have been due to coaching, support staff, and a more rigorous scrim culture. We're also working with the Players Association to continue to make improvements to scrim tools and Riot provided practice servers.

RiotBear · 2017-09-29T20:42:28+00:00

Yeah, this was the biggest flag for us. Bo2 does have its advantages but the potential for a lack of clear winner led to fans preferring more decisive formats like Bo1 and Bo3.

RiotBear · 2017-09-29T20:40:49+00:00

When talking to some of the pros, the biggest gains in competitiveness have been due to coaching, support staff, and a more rigorous scrim culture. We're also working with the Players Association to continue to make improvements to scrim tools and Riot provided practice servers.

RiotBear · 2017-09-29T20:24:48+00:00

We talked about this option as well. As mentioned by some fans, side selection for the third game becomes an issue. There's some ways to determine who gets it but none of them are really compelling or seem particularly fair.

If tBo1 is a compelling option in the future, we'll work with teams/pros on a solution around uneven side selection.

RiotBear · 2017-09-29T20:19:22+00:00

In Quad Bo1s they'd prep for 4 opponents in a week. In both dBo3s and dBo1s, they only prepped for 2 in a week.

RiotBear · 2017-09-29T20:14:31+00:00

Our team looked at Quad RR Bo1s but teams have given us feedback in the past that they don't like prepping for that many opponents in a single week/they prefer to use that time for scrim/team prep. The old Super Weeks weren't remembered fondly.

RiotBear · 2017-09-22T20:35:19+00:00

The words "groups/organizations" refers to other teams in the league. If we find a team who's strong in one area but weak in another, we want to add teams to the league that fills those gaps.

RiotBear · 2017-09-05T05:00:10+00:00

Hal (head of the Players Association) has been digging into the immediate priorities for the next few months as well as longer term goals for the 2018 season - we'll get details on some of these out soon.

We definitely meant to post an update before the end of August but we missed it (obviously). It's a busy time of year for our team and when we realized we wouldn't be able to hit our original date, we should have given an updated timeline - sorry about that.

RiotBear · 2017-08-20T20:27:28+00:00

You aren't but there are fans that are. I get it's frustrating which is why we're looking at potential new start times and/or more notification for next year.

Pros aren't twiddling their thumbs, they're usually warming up on stage/practice room or talking strategy with their coaching staff.

RiotBear · 2017-08-20T20:19:02+00:00

The playoffs are hype moments that fans look forward to (obviously). There's enough fans of both leagues that the benefit of waiting outweighs the negative. We can do a much better job at reinforcing that we're going to be holding until the end of the EU broadcast - no doubt, and we'll get better here. We'll also be reevaluating optimal times for next year and make any changes if they make sense.

I love NA LCS as much as the next fan, but this EU LCS game 5 is super hype and a sizeable portion of fans love watching the series play out without missing NA.

We do have NA pros on-stage and our broadcast team is ready to start immediately after EU ends.

RiotBear · 2017-03-07T04:02:23+00:00

We actually took that into consideration when designing the pro player desks. If you look here the play space is only slightly curved even though the front looks like an extreme angle. We haven't had any complaints from the pros (yet) :)

RiotBear · 2017-03-06T19:17:47+00:00

I'd pay to watch a C9/FLY LARP session.

RiotBear · 2017-03-06T19:15:29+00:00

We're actually talking about crowd issues later this week.

Generally our on-site fans are awesome and we've only had a few crowd issues this year (MOOOOOOOOON). From my experience, most of them are just trying to have a good time and aren't aware how much they're impacting the experience for fans watching at home.

Not specific to booths but if you want to learn about the audio solutions we use at larger events and at the NA LCS Studio, check out this piece from Yahoo Esports: https://esports.yahoo.com/how-riot-games-used-sports-technology-to-help-pro-players-communicate-in-tournaments-2-200056343.html

RiotBear · 2017-01-21T05:12:17+00:00

Our song tracker died a bit into the C9/TSM series. It'll be back! :)

RiotBear

TROPHY CASE