The Most Unusual Format in Professional League of Legends
In the professional League of Legends scene, there are 4 regions previously considered the Major groups, consisting of LCK, LPL, LEC, and LCS. Additionally, the remaining regions are collectively referred to as Minors, although among these, PCS and VCS have significantly outperformed and even surprised the Major representatives multiple times. However, there is one region that consistently remains in the “trench” group and has never been able to escape, despite having some decent foreign players, which is the LJL – the Japanese League of Legends scene.
Accordingly, the LJL has a rather strange format: with a total of 12 teams, after each round, the team in the lower ranking will have the opportunity to choose their opponent for the next match. If they choose a higher-ranked opponent and manage to defeat them, the points gained will be higher than normal. However, this has led to a peculiar situation recently.
Specifically, the team ranked 10th, Deltan (which was already certain to be eliminated), chose the team Bamboo Juice (which still had a chance to make it to the top 6). Unfortunately for Bamboo Juice, they lost. Not only did they miss out on the top 6, but this team was also eliminated. However, what is noteworthy is that even if Bamboo Juice had won, they still wouldn’t have enough points to enter the top 6 (since Deltan’s low rank would only provide very few points for Bamboo Juice).
Thus, there will be teams that still have a chance to compete for a high spot, but because they were “chosen,” they could potentially “disappear.” And there are teams that originally had low rankings but still have opportunities to compete and improve their positions, even when it seemed like everything was settled.
The League of Legends Community Shakes Their Heads at the Odd Format
In reality, this format will bring a lot of excitement for both viewers and the teams, while also being quite difficult to calculate since one never knows when they will be chosen. But because of this, the matches will be more surprising and the overall developments will be even more anticipated. However, according to many fans, major tournaments will find it difficult to apply a format like the LJL’s and will lead to much controversy and “schemes” for teams to take each other down.