I’ve been putting this off for way too long – writing about the VALORANT version of CLASH… which we are getting, and it’s called PREMIER. I have a lot of thoughts because I’ve played in many iterations of “organized competitive” within CS, Fortnite, SC2 and it’s always exciting no matter what flavor it takes.

For the uninitiated, CLASH is a game mode in league of legends, with the goal of being a gateway to organize and REAL competitive play closer to what the pros are playing. You buy in to a tournament that happens every so often on weekends and you get to play two single elimination brackets to win cosmetic rewards and in game currencies 🙂

One thing is for certain – organized play DOES need to be integrated within VALORANT. This is where you’ll actually be able to build a true connection between the average player and VALORANT esports. The great thing about esports, is you have access to be able to do it from home, it enables people to get at their competitiveness much easier than almost any other hobby. A system enabling organized play will unlock that even further.

So what SHOULD it look like? Well, this week we got our first glimpse of what it will be.

So, while this isn’t fully detailed. We’ll be able to play in weekly matches and tournaments to attempt to qualify for a playoff. That’s already better than clash – where you pay to play in two tournaments for rewards. You get placed in a random single elimination bracket against other teams with combined solo queue ranks similar to yours.

But it’s still not much. Let’s talk about the things I really really hope “PREMIER” gets right.

1. INDEPENDENT RANKING

I think it is imperative that your team’s rank has NOTHING or very little to do with each individual’s “competitive” rank for a few reasons.

Regular ranked mode is drastically different from what team’s will be able to achieve or not achieve. I’ve seen SO MANY ESEA A+ players (virtually the highest rank in CSGO ESEA, level 10 faceit, Radiant or Global which are all open pug systems with different levels of buyins) who are hardstuck in their lowest league (open division), even with other A+ players. The skills needed to take your team up in tiers are WAY different than what you will build in a PUG (current ranked). That doesn’t mean Radiant/Immortal players won’t be mostly good at Premier – but they SHOULD have to prove it.

And yes – I will feed your ego, there are low diamond players like caster Vansilli (sorry Vans but also this is props) who I would 100% prefer to have on my team than some of the low radiant players I get in my ranked games… and you will FREQUENTLY see teams with lower average MM ranks winning in officials.

People WILL definitely devote more or less time to the two separate game modes – and that’s a good thing. People should be able to choose which mode they care about. Once Premier comes out – I want to be playing majority premier, and only be using ranked to keep my mechanics up and test certain angles or setups etc… some people may not be Radiant because it’s not their focus, but players should not be held back in Premier because of that.

With that being said – when Premier first launches – no I don’t want to be pub stomping players who have never played a match for the first few seasons, nor do I want new players to be struggling against even the least experienced teams. It is definitely ok to use individual ranks from MM as a baseline to set skill levels – in fact that’s the only way to do it… but it should diverge FAST. Similar to how your unranked MMR will set your initial ranked MMR before you do placements…

So how should this independent rank work?

Well IMO – each individual unique team (with subs) should end up with a TEAM MMR… and then once you play a season – each individual player should be assigned their own individual “premier” MMR or rank as well. So you’d end up with two. The former to put your team in the right divisions – and the latter to form the basis of MMR of new teams or random PUGs (Pick up Groups that you would play one off tournaments with).

With the high level of trust I have for most of the following points – this one…. “independent ranking” is my biggest ask, because I’m not sure this is the most obvious path… and Clash is significantly tied to your regular MMR (resets if you didn’t play a season of clash and goes back to being tied to your ranked MMR).

2. INCENTIVES

Only Riot really knows what they are willing to offer as incentives – but one thing is certain, there has to be some to generate the amount of participation that they want from these events. A path to pro is an incentive – yet it will not be enough for the majority of players who have no desire to go pro.

• You can offer prize money ($$$).
• You can offer skins or points to buy or upgrade skins (VP).
• You can offer upward mobility (qualify for the next tier)
• You can offer downwards mobility (don’t be bad or you’ll get relegated to the previous tier)

Scaling the incentives will be important – and I think the main point here is that you MUST have some, and you must be flexible in scaling them to adjust behavior.

You need to be able to adjust player behavior to address a lot of problems that might come without proper motivation:

• Smurf teams will be less likely if there is a long term reason for them to play on their mains (upward mobility, better prizes at higher tiers).
• Teams won’t practice or attempt to win if there’s participation trophies.
• Teams will break up and forfeit matches.

As you can see – it’s super important that prizes and incentives are done right. This is the SOLE reason clash in LoL has failed (to be the competitive player’s solution, it has succeeded very well at being decent gateway to competitive), is weak long term incentive – and why most Fortnite in game tournaments are failing now, because their incentives were improperly scaled and there was no long term incentive ever.

3. HOW TO PRACTICE

Currently – the only way to actually practice organized play is by looking for scrim discords. This is a suitable place for people who know about them. Other people 5 stack in ranked – which just has crazy mixed and generally poor results.

If there are good incentives – there also needs to be good practice… whether or not Riot tackles this issue is yet to be seen.

Ideally – you would be able to get your team together or a pug at anytime and queue a scrim on a specific map that you are working on virtually 24/7. SOMEHOW OG esports that were completely unsupported by both first party devs (riot) and third party devs (ESEA) were able to organize this. Back in my day (lol) in 1.6, you could GENUINELY get a scrim at 10AM EST and 4AM EST within 20 minutes. Only once the main ways to play became MM solo queue systems (ESEA pugs) did that start to falter, but I can’t imagine we have the same player base numbers that we can’t support a widened scrim window… right now in VAL you’re lucky to get a scrim at 7pm in open discords. (other than high level pros whos schedule is obviously earlier).

It’s not enough to just have 5 stack where everybody still cares about their own individual rank and stats (this is why 5 stacks are less fulfilling than scrims btw, but it’s also why people even queue 5 stacks in the first place). If this happens WITHIN the game it would be INSANELY good – almost more valuable than the PREMIERE/event system itself.

If you can do BOTH – you have a vibrant, lively practice system AND a tournament system. They will support each other in perpetuity almost REGARDLESS of incentives. At the very least buy or support a third party system that you are comfortable promoting!

4. SCHEDULING

Most league systems allow for teams to schedule the match at a time that is acceptable to both sides. In a fully automated system such as this one – it is less easy, because you need a massive pool of teams available during specific times to account for proper matchmaking.

How do you make this flexible to break the schedule barrier for a decent portion of the player base – especially when you have servers with different time zones in every region.

Start by hosting only during peak hours (7pm-10pm in the server’s given time zones). As time goes on and popularity expands – start hosting events off of peak times even if there isn’t MASSIVE participation just to give people the opportunity to play and participate.

Obviously major qualifiers or serious satellite tournaments have to be scheduled at a specific time – because teams cannot silo themselves to only play against their own time zone or like 3pm only teams because that would be an unfair advantage in the quality of teams they might play.

5. TEAM FINDERS

No competitive game has gotten this right. Not a single one. If you have a team based game – you must have some plan for how your players can find teams… or how teams can find players.

This is the lifeblood of getting new players into the system. Without it – eventually people will lose interest as their friends lose interest.

I really really hope that VALORANT adds some sort of “suggested teammates” system, or improves their social features. Leaving this entirely to motivated players looking through discord is not enough.

It doesn’t even need to even be in the game – just promoted.

Shoot – make a bumble or tinder app for VALORANT we’re already all e-dating anyways. Just think of the value.

6. ALLOW THE PROS MOST OF THE TIME

On the one hand, you want the pros to play because actually playing against pro PUGs and such is a great incentive… if it’s actually possible for little Timmy to end up playing against shroud’s stream team pug… not only does that create insane content opportunities, but the incentive to your player base is HUGE.

One of the reasons why Battle Royale’s did so well because it was very possible to end up fighting popular streamers, content creators and pros. This is partially one of the reasons ranked KIND of works. Even though the pros probably hate it in that environment, I think they will LOVE this environment though because they can completely control their own team, as long as you can make it somewhat competitive for them.

So definitely allow that opportunity for – because without it you’re basically having everybody play in a complete vacuum where there isn’t really that opportunity to blow up because of it.

WITH THAT SAID – the pros should be prevented from “griefing” in any qualifier that actually matters, satellite tournaments to enter challengers, etc.. not a single player who is already within that scope of tournament should be allowed to participate – and those tournaments and events should be clear that this is the case from the get go.

7. STREAM SNIPING PREVENTION

This system is going to be a CONTENT farm. VALORANT games with comms are insanely fun to watch forever. This means streamers need to have the opportunity to stream… delay less preferably… but if that’s not possible a way to incentivize playing with delay (twitch please c’mon man where are the features, any day now).

I have no ideas here, I wish I did but I would just sound incredibly uneducated and uninformed – but it’s definitely something riot need to consider.

If nothing is done – that content farm will be dry as hell. “Streamer mode” is definitely NOT enough.

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DON’T GET WHY THIS IS PROFITABLE?

I did want to include something – I think a lot of casual players will probably start to get upset about the fact that Riot is prioritizing something like this and not new game modes or whatever… so let’s write a little about why this is profitable to both ALL players and Riot themselves. Most devs would choose to cater to the mass audience for profitability… HOWEVER.

1. Massive events drive MASSSIVE player participation – which is incredibly profitable for devs, because all these extra logins create people looking at the shop… this is the most obvious – but HOW much? Fortnite proved that they can create recurring competitive events that drive almost DAILY login peaks of hundreds of thousands of players across the globe on top of the regular average player base. It’s also a reason why they did so many themed in game events (concerts, end of season stuff whatever) which also drove media and content. VALORANT can’t do that yet outside of esports events, but you best believe more devs are going to look into event driven sales.
2. Converting casual players into competitive players is always SUPER difficult, systems like this where you have safe low stakes ways to REALLY dip your feet into a REAL competitive experience are crucial.
3. As a business you need to focus on MAINLY getting new players, but too many devs forget about generating long term and forever players. Systems like this do that (as well as REPLAYS WHERE ARE THEY REPLAYS REPLAYS REPLAYS PLEASE REPLAYS <3).
4. More $$$ = more features 🙂

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I hope you enjoyed this read – I’m really really excited for Premier and even without being released yet it’s an ABSOLUTE game changer for VALORANT. This game is so much more enjoyable when you trust your teammates and you rise together… I get why solo queue is so popular, but I promise you EVEN if you were ringing for 4 strangers who are all friends, it’s STILL more fun because you can trust even the OTHER team believes in themselves together as well.

I truly think if you expose people to organized play properly, you can create players out of them FOREVER.

Goal of this was to start discussion and get people thinking about what they want from the system, whether you agree with the points or not… and just to generally get people hype about the POTENTIAL down the line, even if some of these features are not included off rip.

One thing I will stress as well, and they did the same:

It’ll be interesting to see what the remaining 40% includes, but don’t declare a failed launch just cause some features aren’t missing, they may be coming, nor is every single feature necessary for a good sustainable product, profit generating product.

THANKS!