Should An Upper Bracket Advantage Be Given In VALORANT Tournaments?

Last weekend, the discussion around tournament formats transpired in the VALORANT scene, with prominent esports figures such as Christopher "MonteCristo" Mykles and several pro players such as Hunter "SicK" Mims and Pujan "FNS" Mehta making their points on Twitter.

While several other aspects were discussed (such as the amount of games that teams would have to play in a single day), most of the arguments revolved around whether or not a team entering the grand final through the upper bracket should be given an advantage in the form of a default map win, to start the best of five series with the score at 1-0 in favour of the upper bracket team.

So what’s the best format? Who is right, and how is that determined? In order to structure the arguments on both sides, we have several points to weigh up against each other to come to fruitful systems which maximise the potential of a double-elimination format, keeping the interest of all parties in mind.

What should a competitive format try to achieve?

In trying to create a tournament format, roughly three aspects generally have to be considered, with some goals conflicting with one another on certain aspects. 

Maintaining competitive integrity is one of the highest aspirations for a tournament format. Trying to maintain fairness between competitors, while also assuring that the teams are competing under the best possible conditions is the goal. Questions like “Is the best possible server location for both teams to compete on chosen?” or “Are adequate anti-cheat measures taken?” are considered to maximise competitive integrity. 

Another important factor is the workability of a tournament format, asking if the system works with the available resources from both players and organisers alike. Could an additional tournament day be added given the production cost for the tournament organiser and the schedule of the teams?

Last and certainly not least, the entertainment factor of a format also has to be considered. The level of engagement that a format creates has been credibly demonstrated with the introduction of tournaments into both the Call of Duty League and Overwatch League, showing that tournament formats will increase viewership over regular-season play very likely due to an increase in the entertainment factor. Similarly, tournament rules should be subjected to a thorough look in what it does to the hype factor of any given match. 

By the nature of things, the entertainment factor will conflict with aspects of competitive integrity. While competitive integrity would love to consistently produce the best team as the winner of the tournament, which for instance would be achieved by playing a lot more games, a best of 21 for each stage is neither workable nor entertaining. The best solutions negotiate between these fronts, giving and taking to find a robust system.

So should an advantage be given to upper bracket teams?

Given that the upper bracket team hasn’t lost a match in the playoff bracket while the lower bracket team has, most would agree that an advantage would have to be given in some way. We can expect the vast majority of parties to agree with this point, with the main topic of discussion revolving around the size or form of the advantage given weighed against the aspect of competitive integrity, workability and entertainment factor. Fortunately, we have a couple of options to choose from to find the best system for VALORANT esports.

What about map advantage?

It may be argued, as MonteCristo is, that the inherent advantage of the upper bracket team is that they had to play one or two fewer matches than the lower bracket team. Given that every series entails a probabilistic threat of being eliminated, this advantage could be argued to be sizeable.
 

Some pro players have fielded the counter-argument that this might not even be as big of an advantage as it may appear, given that the team gets to benefit from warming up in a competitive setting and enter the series with momentum. On the surface, this appears to be confusing on several levels, though a spout of tournaments in the history of CS:GO showed a pattern in which lower bracket teams were more likely to win the grand final.

However, there are several observable aspects so far in VALORANT beyond the inductive argument that speak against this theory. First and foremost, if pro teams believed this to be the state of affairs, it follows that they would have an incentive to throw a match in the upper bracket to incur the advantage from the lower bracket run. Of course, if this was to become a strategy, it would be a smoking gun against the argument, and tournament organisers would do well to shut it down with a change of rules. No such behaviour has been spotted to the best of our knowledge so far.

Analysing the, granted, very small sample size of tournaments categorised as A or B Tier on Liquipedia, we can spot twelve tournaments who ran double-elimination tournaments up to the grand final. So far, in the matches where no map advantage was given to the upper bracket team, the winner bracket finalist won the event three out of five times (with one of those games being a best of three, instead of a best of five).

If we turn our attention to tournaments in which the winner bracket finalist gained a map advantage, the score is currently 6-1 in favour of the upper bracket team. The one upset loss from the lower bracket team happened in the Pittsburgh Knights Invitational Gauntlet Series in which Gen.G had won the upper bracket final held in a best of one format against TSM. In the final, despite the default map win, TSM came back winning the best of three in 2-1.

Given the volatility of one map results which the upper bracket final was played in, it puts the final in an arguably different light. However, what the rest of the examples tentatively show is that in all likelihood, and under an admittedly very small sample size, there’s little reason for fans to tune into a final if the outcome of it is a major motivator to watch for them, given that almost always, the team advantaged with a map win would go on to take the final. For obvious reasons, this pattern is a killer for the entertainment factor, to a point where it may be argued that competitive integrity may have to give way.

Even if we believed that the map advantage was to be fair and earned, a grand final that is decided before it starts will not consistently gather an audience that will make any system workable. Even in closer finals such as the FaZe Invitational in which TSM and Sentinels squared off, it may be argued that the default map win stole the opportunity for a highly entertaining fifth map.

Are there alternative ways to reward upper bracket grand finalists?

Throughout traditional sports and esports, many different systems have been tried in an effort to improve the double-elimination format. Some of the arguably worst iterations for entertainment are used in Overwatch Contenders and Judo by never allowing the lower bracket to merge with the upper bracket, giving a team that had lost a series no chance to compete in the grand final, and putting them in the third spot at best. Competitive integrity might be argued to be hurt by this system, given that variance in performance is a viable concern on a day to day basis, and given the number of games a team has to play on any given tournament day. Double-elimination in part is a format to assure the best possible final, giving the theoretically best team in the world a chance to come back if they were caught off guard on an off-day, vastly increasing the probability of a good final, which again, helps the entertainment factor. 

Another suggestion that has been made is referred to as “bracket reset” and is used in esports like Rocket League. In this system, the winner of the upper bracket will have to be beaten in two best-of series (let’s say a best of three of best of threes). If for instance Sentinels had lost 3-0 against Team Envy in the Popflash finals, a bracket reset would’ve put the teams in a second-best of five series, with the justification being that each team had to lose two best-of series in order to be eliminated from the tournament. With a theoretical total of 10 maps played during the grand final, we would either have to add another tournament day to the schedule or we’d have to inflict upon competitive integrity and submit the players to a gruesome day of competition, approximately eight hours of play at the minimum. Adding another tournament might also not be as trivial as it may appear, inflicting on the aspect of workability and possibly entertainment factor, causing problems in the resources and expected excitement received in turn. 

A third option is a more mild advantage, giving the upper bracket team the option to either choose the first map or to get ban advantages within the map draft. No standardised system is so far used in tournaments that have refrained from using a default map win in their double-elimination brackets. We can see that the map draft advantage is highly contextual to the specific advantage given in terms of map draft, given that there’s a wide divide in the expected value of a team being allowed to choose every single map or perhaps just getting the first ban on a map. 

The advantage is not as sizable, as either the bracket reset or the default map win advantage but it still is considerable, and doesn’t inflict upon the workability and arguably less on the entertainment factor of the grand finals. The argument from a competitive integrity standpoint is subjective and is hard to argue without a representative amount of tournaments having given any consistent method of giving out a map draft advantage.

Conclusions

It might be a valuable thought exercise to evaluate the outlined solutions in a point system. Of course, these evaluations are reductive and should serve as a conversation starter on the platform they are posted on. Here are mine as I evaluate them currently:

No merging of the lower bracket
Competitive integrity = 2.5/5
Workability = 5/5
Entertainment = 2/5
Total = 9.5/15

No extra advantage
Competitive Integrity = 4/5
Workability = 5/5
Entertainment = 5/5
Total = 14/15

Default map win
Competitive Integrity = 4/5
Workability = 5/5
Entertainment = 3.5/5 
Total = 12.5/15

Bracket reset, no extra match day
Competitive Integrity = 3/5
Workability = 4/5
Entertainment = 3.5/5
Total = 10.5/15

Bracket reset, extra match day
Competitive integrity 5/5
Workability = 2.5/5
Entertainment = 4
Total = 11.5

Map draft advantage (here: First map pick goes to upper bracket winner)
Competitive integrity = 4.25/5
Workability = 5/5
Entertainment = 4.5/5
Total = 13.75

The chosen method should be discussed in an open forum to make sure that all parties (tournament organisers, professional players and audience) get to defend the matter. Additional data may be required to arrive at a sound decision, which is exactly what these early stages for VALORANT esports should be used for. Given the state of the world, experimentation and exclusion of unfit ideas should be one of the goals of this bout of tournaments, and the ones to come, so that offline events, once the world opens up and the esport has developed, have as much knowledge as possible to create interesting, workable and fair competitive environments for us all to enjoy.
 

Images via Riot Games and B Site Inc.