EWC

Say what you like but the truth is that this event is probably already top3 internationals in my book.

The format is amazing - 12 (TWELVE) matches in 1 day, most of them being really competitive and entertaining, is something we've never seen in VCT and the sad part is that it had to be 3rd party tournament to show us that BO1's are actually good. Take notes Riot.

There's no excuse for Riot to keep making Masters with 8 and 12 teams when there's literal proof now that you can have 16 teams and still finish within 2 weeks.

Valorant felt like real eSports to me for the first time since 22' and if there's no major schedule change for next year with the addition of 3rd Masters, then Riot will just show how much they don't care about this game taking over the FPS and Tac Shooter scene.

There's always a way, but there's always an excuse too. They choose their path.

0/64 holy shit

"BO1's are actually good" 0/8
a lil edit: looking at ewc's format overall weirdly enough they have only 1 BO1 in the format, the opening match in groups. still weird. if they made that a BO3 then this would be a legit tourney with a playoff style just like lock in

who cares bruh, just be happy we got more games

Stopped reading after the first sentence, pretty obvious u havent been around for long

The community if the main reason why this game will probably never overtake CS :)

bottom 3 international event easy

good take, don't care about these militants

Top tier rage bait, maybe they would integrate a third masters in for future. Cs has so many shit happening since they have lot of gambling money coming in all the time also just gonna put it out there that a person just spends way more money to get an S tier cs skin than a top tier valo skin. Also yeah go on the zellsis word to say that a game with a 5 year history can't overtake a game with a 15+ year history.

bait or not op is right imo bo1 for opening matches are not bad

im sorry but the production is NOWHERE near VCT level, the casters are meh (the new ones i mean VCT ones like mitch and tom are still great), and the replays and observers are just not it. Not to mention the fact that they are playing on online servers on 30 ping (and i think cryo even lagged out once)

The format is amazing

12 matches in 1 day featuring all the team is great, wayy better than LOCK IN, since it took multiple days to compensate bo3 to see all the teams (yes 16 teams to 32 teams). I support EDG and the amount of times I heard "map 1 is just aim map, no big deal etc" excuses, I HATE IT. I want to every team to try win every round, in which bo1 support that. The PRX vs BLG game & SEN vs BBL is perfect example of it, it makes the team preventing losing too much round differential and keep the game close. For the team that just gave up EDG & TH, is deserved, just start in lower elimination then have the bo3 starts as elimination game.

Masters with 8 and 12 teams

8 team masters just doesn't feel competitive, there's only fkin 8, get more representation in. 12 teams are also shit, Free bye to playoff and then complain about it? All teams should start in groups/swiss stage, playoff teams perform like shit and get top 8 is undeserved.

Valorant felt like real eSports to me for the first time since 22..... with the addition of 3rd Masters

I agree Masters 3 is needed (3 masters + 1 champs), in VCT we have 4 regions, have all 4 regions hold those 3+1 event.

Overall

• BO3 is good when teams try from map 1, not start at map 2. Team A throw map 1 and Team B throw map 2, and only took map 3 seriously.
• BO1 is only good at the start of tournament to make serious team through to qual for playoff and to get rid of teams to lowers elimination who just gave up the map not making it close cause they don't bother strengthening their map pool. BO3 is always preferred after the starting opening game.
• Instead of masters 1 having 8 team tourney, I'd much prefer this EWC format with 16 teams (even though RIOT won't able to do 2 broadcast/2 matches venue), seeing more teams with starting bo1 -> bo3 onwards is much better than watching 8 teams tourney.
• 3 masters full BO3 + champs bo3 won't fit in current VCT calendar, 1 masters with this format will make it possible. MORE TEAMS.

Its a good third party tournament. Anyone rating it higher than that is just trying really hard to stick it to the anti EWC crowd, im convinced of that lol

Sure ig

Gosh dang, how much are they paying?

This is not the example you need to show that bo1s are good. Its quite the opposite since it doesnt even attempt to understand why bo1s are useful.
We've had PLENTY better implementations in t2 already and people have still disliked them.

The reason you would do bo1's is to speed up aspects of large group stages. Either to increase the amount of teams that can participate (1) or to use it to increase accuracy of the format in a shorter time frame (2) that cant fit a full bo3 round robin

(1) Look at https://www.vlr.gg/event/2540/challengers-2025-north-east-samsung-odyssey-split-3/lower-swiss-phase for example.
This is how you use bo1s in an eliminating format. 3 wins/losses, only qualifying/eliminating games are bo3.
The bo1 allow for far more teams to partake, while choosing (pseudo) swiss as the format (isnt punished as badly by the inaccuracies of bo1s).

(2) You can also do full bo1 round robin group stages where the idea is to maximize the amount of games in a shorter split. This allows the format to reward the consistent teams without being influence by a lucky group draw (see this years vct format for a bad example).
https://www.vlr.gg/event/2389/challengers-2025-t-rkiye-birlik-split-2/league-phase

EWC just fails at all the positives I talked about. It doesnt understand what bo1s can do. It (very on brand with the rest of the event tbh) just wants to go for the biggest numbers possible, without giving 2 shits about the competitive design of their event.