VALORANT Pros Voice Criticism Of New VCT Format, Call It "An Absolute Joke"
The VALORANT Professional Community has been voicing their criticism of the new VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) format, with various professionals giving their two cents on the situation.
The head coach for Luminosity Gaming Jared "mac" Schneider went as far as to call some aspects of it "an absolute joke." Since then, various other professionals especially from the North American scene have weighed in on the same issues, highlighting the volatility of this year’s VCT in the qualifying stages.
What's The Problem With The VCT Format?
The main issue brought up by the pro community has been the new open qualifying format - which the majority of professional teams will have to commit themselves to if they want to play in the most prestigious and Riot Games-funded tournament circuit of the year. In a reddit comment, mac elaborated on the issue, explaining:
"What I have issue with is that you play one open qualifier tournament to get that spot, and if you miss that spot, you’re sitting out of VCT for 3 full months.
"If you don’t hit top 12 in NA in a single 4-day 128-team open at the tail end of January, you are sitting out of VCT for 3 full months. You then aim for another open in early May. If you don’t hit top 12 in that one, you’re entirely out of VCT (which has only been happening for just over 3 months at that point) and presumably don’t have anything major to play in for at least 5 months, until whatever new tourney stuff riot and third party TOs try out in Q4 2022 after September champs concludes."
By contrast, 2021’s VALORANT Champions Tour had six open qualifiers which gave several high calibre teams second chances including teams like Sentinels who ended up winning one of the Masters events they had failed to qualify in the first instance for.
Team Envy’s Jaccob "yay" Whiteaker echoed the concerns while also adding that additional balance changes to the game were likely to add further volatility to the results, impacting competitive integrity in the process.
Is This Really The End Of The World?
Other players like XSET’s Brendan "BcJ" Jensen offered a different angle on the format, stating that Riot was implicitly trying to encourage third-party tournament organisers to step into the competitive void next year to fill the calendar, devaluing VCT to not be the be-all and end-all of VALORANT competition of 2021.
Throughout their game’s competitive history, Riot Games were unusually receptive to community feedback, implementing changes professionals had spoken out for on several occasions. Whether or not Riot will be able to solve the issues raised by the community on the format of VCT is yet unknown, though the difficulty of changing their entire circuit for the year makes it an arguably harder problem than in previous instances.
