Following a review of the first couple of months, the team at RLO have been hard at work to restructure itself and work towards new and improved events and content for the future.
Today's announcement includes: - The Return of The Chase
- The restructure of our 3v3 tournament format and temporary removal of the Division System
- The RLO Weekly Bulletin - More things to come
The Return of The Chase
Late last year we ran the first season of The Chase, in aim to further incentivise community tournaments, and raise the level of general competition on all fronts. Excluding a few small hiccups, it's easy to say the first season was a great success. Now we're bringing it back in a more sustainable but familiar fashion, with the same aims as the original season.
Introducing The Chase - Community Series
The Chase Community Series is a 4 week points circuit acting as an umbrella incentive to a number of community tournaments. The Sunday of the 4th and final week in the series, will host a hybrid playoffs bracket where we'll be inviting the top 8 teams from the points circuit, as well as 2 wildcard teams which will be discussed further in this announcement. Following the playoffs, a new 4 week circuit will immediately begin, and the series will repeat.
The 4 week points circuit will feature 11 open community tournaments, where each tournament will have points rewards for everyone participating. Naturally the better you perform in these tournaments, the more points you will earn. The initial tournaments to be included in The Chase Community Series will be:
- 2KF1 3v3 Tournaments - Tuesday nights
- Palehorse 3v3 Series - Thursday nights
- RLO 3v3 Series - Sunday afternoons
The points distribution for each tournament will be as follows:
Moving forward into future months, we'll be looking to review the points distribution to ensure it's fair and balanced for everyone playing, with the potential to add other community tournaments as well.
As mentioned earlier, each points circuit will conclude in a monthly playoffs bracket where the top 8 teams from the points ladder will be invited to compete. The playoffs will replace the respective week's RLO 3v3 series. The monthly playoffs bracket is as follows:
In the same fashion as the original season, the community series will conclude in a hybrid bracket where the top 2 seeds and top 6 seeds hold more value. Alongside the 8 invited teams, 2 spots are reserved for teams who qualify through a tough single elimination bracket prior to the playoffs. These two 'wildcard' teams will face seeds 7 and 8 where they will be at a one game disadvantage in a best of 5 series.
Initially the monthly playoffs will be funded by small excerpts from each supported event's Matcherino funded prize pool, where it will take 12% from both 2KF1 and Palehorse 3v3 tournaments, as well as 50% from RLO 3v3 tournaments. We understand this is not 100% ideal and thus we will be increasing our efforts to gain financial support targeting the community series, where we no longer will have to rely on this system. However for the moment, this system will takes it's place in order to keep the community series effective and sustainable.
We will constantly be looking to balance and improve the community series as we run the first iteration starting next week. Additions you will most likely see in the not so distant future is items such as a division system, and few more tweaks. The rule set encompassing the community series is being finalised and will be released towards the end of this week. The Chase Community Series starts next week with its first tournament being the 2KF1 3v3 tournament on the 16th of May.
The Restructure of the RLO 3v3 Series format and the temporary removal of the division system
With the return of The Chase, it's very clear a number of changes to our 3v3 tournaments every Sunday was necessary. Moving forward the 3v3 tournaments will have a new format, and will temporarily have no divisions.
The new format for our 3v3 tournaments will feature a 2 round swiss format, where the teams with a record of 0-2 (1 quarter of the field) will be eliminated, and every other team will advance to a single elimination bracket. This format will be trialled in this week's 2v2 and 3v3 tournaments in preparation for The Chase. Through this we'll be able to make necessary tweaks to ensure the format is functional and fair.
As for the division system, we know it's exit will upset some people though please know, we do hope to bring it back when we have a greater understanding of how The Chase will affect this region's player pool, and how we can balance divisions in a healthy manner when we reintroduce them.
The RLO Weekly Bulletin
The RLO weekly bulletin aims to mimic the function and purpose of the previous daily bulletin, in which it will provide readers with a list of upcoming tournaments and broadcasts for the week ahead, as well as summarising news and result from the week prior. We found that producing the daily bulletin was very strenuous on our team, thus starting next week, we will be providing the same content though on a weekly basis.
New Things To Come
The team at RLO aren't quite done yet, so look on the horizon for new content and community services to come, where we will looking to mostly target team building and development, as well as a number of other areas within the esports spectrum!
If you have any questions or feedback, please contact a team member through discord.
Have an awesome day everyone! See you all out on the pitch!
- Dover