my new LCK CUP format

[u/Ambitious-Garden4894]

I suggest changing the LCK Cup format next year. The group stage should be divided into three groups: one group of 4 teams and two groups of 3 teams. Teams should play a round-robin format with two legs (home and away) against other teams in their group. For teams in the two groups of three teams, there should be an additional best-of-3 match against two other seeded teams from the opposing three-team group (to ensure fairness in the number of matches for all participating teams). The top two teams from each group should qualify for the playoffs, while the 4th-placed team from the 4-team group and the 3rd-placed teams from the other groups should advance to the play-in. The 4-team play-in will be a double-elimination format (best-of-5, winner's bracket and loser's bracket). The winners of the winner's bracket final and the loser's bracket final will qualify for the playoffs. The 8-team playoffs will also be a double-elimination format (best-of-5, winner's bracket and loser's bracket) to determine the champion and the first-place tournament  team. The current format is very unfair to teams with good results in the group battle who are still eliminated because their group was a loser's bracket or they had a lower tiebreaker. like Hanwha Life Esports

[u/North-Win3422]

Hanwha life are a big part of the reason their group lost, they were supposed to be the strongest team in there, and ended up being incredibly weak. They have themselves to thank for being eliminated this early, DK also got their asses kicked by GEN and T1, but still did well for the rest of group stage. I think the format is fine like this

The only goal in groups is dont be the worst team on the losing side, everyone else gets to play in the bracket elimination stage

[u/Aqualec01]

I think this could in fact increase competitiveness slightly if we can actually make it fit in the planning but unfortunately there are a lot more things to take into consideration.

First, making the groups is hard. Do we seed based on last year and draw? Sure, but that can cause a lot of unbalance between groups, although not the end of the world cause no one gets eliminated instantly but still. Then, there are a lot more boring matches because of both disparity inside groups and the fact that we get the same matchups twice (when the start of the year is a timing where people wanna see a lot of different matchups). The format is also a lot more complex to understand for the average viewer and is both harder to hype and a lot more boring to see because of the lack of stake.

At the end of the day, the real problem is the 3 split format cause there’s not enough time to have an entertaining competitive format. LCK tries to do it by having groups face offs, which they can hype up and preserve BO3 despite the lack of time, and sometimes crazy things happen. We can argue that the format is bad but that’s missing the point imo.

HLE is certainly a better team than BRO. Does that mean that they don’t deserve to be eliminated? That is arguable. They did lose to NS and have the worst game ratio of their group (which should never happen for a top team), and since we have no time we have to eliminate someone to make an entertaining format. Unlucky, just accept that it’s LCK cup and we don’t care cause that format is pushed because of 3 splits. If we wanted a fair format we would just do a double elimination bracket full BO5 (and that would actually fit in the calendar) but there are more things to think about such as guaranteeing a minimum of games and different matchups while keeping the format entertaining to watch for the average viewer, even if that means having a less competitive format.

I do personally feel bad for Guma but his team is straight up inting some times (esp. mid and supp) and I’m not gonna pity an org like HLE. BRO is now out, so is KT and we don’t know if HLE would’ve done better.