Image source @Visual China
Text | Hedgehog Commune, Author | Ouyang, Editor | Shi Can
Nearly half of May has passed, and major events have occurred one after another in the domestic sports field.
First, on May 6, the Olympic Council of Asia announced that the 19th Asian Games originally scheduled to be held in Hangzhou in September 2022 will be postponed, and the Shantou Asian Youth Games will also be cancelled; also on May 6, FISU International University Sports Federation The official Weibo of the conference announced that the Chengdu 2021 Universiade will be postponed to 2023; on May 14, the Asian Cup China Organizing Committee issued an announcement that the 2023 AFC Asian Cup will be held in another place.
In the third year of the epidemic, the impact is still continuing, and there are too many uncertainties in the holding of competitive events.
On May 13, the “RNG replay event” of the League of Legends mid-season championship game triggered a huge discussion on the Chinese Internet, and players’ backlog of dissatisfaction and anger began to spread in various online communities. At the same time, because of the huge influence of the League of Legends e-sports event on a global scale, the controversy of this event is far more than the emotions of domestic players. League of Legends players around the world are paying attention to the three rematches on May 14. .
What the hell is going on here? Where do all the emotions come from? What is the result of the rematch?
RNG, why the rematch?
For many friends who may not have paid much attention to this year’s MSI (League of Legends Mid-Season Championship), the topic of “RNG Rematch” on the afternoon of May 13th appeared a bit sudden on the Weibo hot search list.
The first thing I want to know is: why does RNG want to rematch?
Let’s start from the beginning.
Since its inception in 2015, the mid-season championship has attracted more and more attention. Although it is not as hot as the S series, it is quite exciting for the spring championships of each division to gather together every year. The title of “MSI champion” is also very exciting. Very valuable.
On March 30, 2022, the League of Legends event announced that the 2022 Mid-Season Championship will be held in Busan, South Korea. From May 10 to 29, top teams from various regions will compete for the Mid-Season Championship crown.
When the official announcement was made, many players questioned the relevant Weibo due to concerns about the epidemic prevention situation in South Korea, hoping that the expedition teams in the LPL division could participate in this mid-season championship online.
In fact, due to the changes in the domestic epidemic, the regular season of the LPL division’s spring season has been adjusted to an online competition from March 15. Except for the LGD battle and the WE team competing in their respective home games, other clubs are basically connected in Shanghai. And as the epidemic situation in Shanghai became more severe, on April 6, the League of Legends event issued an announcement on the adjustment of the playoff schedule, announcing that the LPL playoffs will continue to be played online after the postponement, and the finals will be postponed to April 23. More than a week behind schedule.
On April 21, the League of Legends event updated the information on the mid-season championship, and finally confirmed that the LPL team will remotely participate in the 2022 mid-season championship in Shanghai. Judging from the feedback, most fans in the LPL region are still satisfied with this decision.
But the question also lies here. What problems does online competition have for e-sports events?
The first is the network problem. Depending on the region, the network delay will inevitably be affected. This is an extremely important factor for professional players. The other is about the actual competitive environment. There are no referees and no unified Competition headphones, still competing in the familiar base environment, this has indeed caused some discussion.
So on May 11, the first game day of the Mid-Season Championship, Naz Aletaha, global head of League of Legends esports events, responded to these questions.
Due to the Shanghai blockade and control policy, equipment personnel and others have no way to enter the RNG base. However, under the necessary infrastructure, the organizer provides a uniform 35ms delay for all players, and has placed multiple cameras and microphones in the base to monitor at the same time. Players screen, with the support of the online referee to monitor the RNG game, and he also explained the problem of the game headset.
But after the explanation, there are still many doubts.
The real outbreak came at noon on May 13th, when Alex Francois, the global head of Riot Games event operations, issued a statement:
“Three days into the 2022 Mid-Season Championship, after conducting a wider technical assessment of the match and training environment, we found that the delays presented in all match logs differed from the experience in Busan. Therefore, we will start from today The match starts with configuration changes to reduce overall latency on the match stage.
In addition, this issue affected all the teams participating in Busan, especially RNG participated in the unanticipated situation of different delays between the two sides. Therefore, from a competitive fairness perspective, we decided to replay all three games with RNG. The replay will end with all other group matches by Sunday, May 15. The first replay is scheduled for tomorrow. We apologize to the players, teams and fans for this, and promise to continue to work with the players, monitor the competition environment, and commit to maintaining the fairness of the competition. “
At the same time, they also added in the comment section that they did not find a significant difference in Ping value in many tests before and during the game at the beginning, however, after collecting more detailed player feedback, they designed and ran a special Debugging the debugging method, only then did I find that the “Delay Tool” did not calculate and display the correct Ping value in the venue.
As soon as this announcement came out, domestic and foreign players were frying. The topic of #RNGrematch# quickly entered the hot search list on Weibo, and as of 22:00 on May 14th, the number of views had reached 740 million.
This means that the 3-0 RNG will go back to 0-0 and play another round with the previous three opponents. Even with the announcement of the replay schedule, three consecutive games will be played after the main game on May 14. In short, RNG will face three different group stage opponents three times in a row. And on the afternoon of May 13, when the announcement was released, it was RNG’s three consecutive games, which may indeed have an impact on the mentality.
Regardless of the reaction of the public opinion, RNG, as a professional team, accepted such an arrangement.
In the subsequent group stage match on May 13, RNG re-conquered three games in a row, pulling the score to 3-0, and even ADC player GALA reproduced his own five kills in the game against RED, it seems that morale No effect.
Amid the debate, the game continued.
E-sports public opinion competition
Faced with this incident, how did the parties react?
Before the announcement of the rematch decision, overseas media and netizens represented by South Korea had quite a few opinions on RNG’s online competition.
What overseas media and netizens are more concerned about is that the RNG players who compete in their own bases have no on-site referee supervision, no cameras, and they can even listen to white noise without wearing headphones. Other competition areas must also maintain a ping value of 35. , that RNG has “privilege”.
The reporter of the Korean media Kookmin Daily also tweeted, saying that “the organizer has been asked to confirm the relevant facts” and believes that “just not listening to white noise is a huge advantage.” Netizens from other countries also asked questions about the details of the organizers, believing that there were indeed inappropriate arrangements.
There are also different opinions in domestic discussions, with many supporters and some doubters.
Until the decision of the “replay” was announced, the anger of domestic players could not be suppressed.
In the debates of all parties, it seems that this is no longer a struggle about the strength of e-sports, but a “midfield battle” of public opinion, domestic and foreign practitioners in the field of e-sports, KOLs, and even professional players, coaches, and management team members. , have come down to express their views on the rematch.
Many commentators and hosts rushed to the front. Miller, Guan Zeyuan, Huang Xudong, Yu Shuang, etc. all expressed their shock at the incident, and many overseas English-speaking commentators also expressed their views in different ways.
In terms of clubs and players, it is more about “cooperation because of the profession”, but from the perspective of the response, it is impossible to have no emotions.
After the rematch decision was announced, the RNG players posted blogs one after another, posing in unison with the emoji emoji of “balance”. Head coach Zhu Kai and the manager also responded with a post, explaining the team’s cooperation and efforts in this MSI. RNG’s official Weibo also released a pre-match cheering video to express their attitude.
After discovering that the schedule of the rematch was to play against three teams in a row, the dissatisfaction of the domestic audience with the rematch surged again. Playing three games back-to-back, or facing three different opponents, sounds really a bit of a disadvantage.
Overseas, the decision to “replay” is also complicated.
Some people think that such a rematch is meaningless, and the organizer of the event should be responsible for it; some people think that this is a decision that must be made. Although the ending may not change, it reflects the fairness of Riot Games. . The debate is still going on, and overseas netizens also have their own obsessions with Riot Games’ “favoritism”.
All in all, this is indeed a development that many expected.
9-0 RNG
Of course, by now, everyone must have known the result of the replay. RNG successfully won three replays and won the group stage 6-0. In the eyes of many, they even won 9-0.
Objectively speaking, even after learning of the decision to rematch, most domestic players should not have too much anxiety about whether RNG can still qualify for the tournament. The previous few games have been enough to show the absolute strength of RNG in the group. Even if there are three more games, it is more likely that they will win the tournament.
What makes domestic players even more angry is an “attitude”.
In competitive events, no one wants to be labeled as “taking advantage”. A match that cannot be participated in on-site due to objective reasons has already progressed to the middle of the group stage under the consent and supervision of the organizer, but will be beaten back to 0. The points will be re-matched, and it will indeed be “unwilling”.
This is also what many domestic commentators have said. It was originally the negligence of Riot Games as the organizer, but the contestant RNG took the responsibility, that is, it took on the question of “taking advantage” and the risk of losing the game. In any case, I can’t understand it. .
We may be able to review the many controversies of the past year from this.
In May 2021, after the end of the last MSI, RNG, who won the championship, was questioned as an “unsteady championship”.
South Korea’s Seoul Sports issued a statement saying: “Riot Games is a Chinese company and is 100% controlled by the Chinese game company Tencent. In addition, the fact that it has assigned a favorable schedule to the Chinese team while overturning the existing rules makes the Chinese game company Riot Games has been controversial for giving a good deal to their team RNG to win.”
The controversy stems from the MSI held in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland in 2021. The schedule of the semi-finals has caused a lot of controversy. The teams that have qualified for the first round of the previous MSI groups will play in the front position, which should have been first. The DK who played on the next day was arranged to play the next day, and if he won the next day, he would go on to play the final BO5.
Faced with doubts, Riot Games responded: “All passengers flying to China must undergo a blood test for lqM antibodies within 48 hours before departure. This means that RNG must go to the local laboratory in Reykjavik on Saturday for blood draws. , which happened to conflict with the team’s game that day. We have done everything we can to find alternative flights so that RNG can play smoothly on Saturday, but due to the impact of the epidemic, the travel regulations are very strict, and we have not found any viable Alternative. So, we decided to move RNG and PSG to Friday and DK and MAD to Saturday.”
Before this controversy, due to the strong commercial profitability of the domestic market, there were already remarks overseas that “Riot games prefer the Chinese market”. They believed that due to commercial considerations, they would try their best to let the audience in the LPL competition see their satisfaction. development to gain more attention and economic transformation. After the announcement of RNG’s decision to participate online this year, overseas players felt that the “bias” of Riot Games was confirmed.
Although it is said that competition should return to competition itself, it is inevitable that too many things in the commercial society are composed of complex interests and wrestling, not to mention the development of League of Legends e-sports so far, it has realized that no game has reached before. business peak. In this context, there is only “as fairness as possible”, and even the game version is bound to have “injustice”.
What can be confirmed is that among these many “injustices”, the “attack” between different countries and races must be the least needed, and there is no need to fight against the same parties on the Internet for this reason.
Is RNG rematch the optimal solution in a limited range? This question is too complicated.
We are justifiably angry at the rematch decision that RNG received, and we do need to face up to the possible differences in perceptions, which are spaces for dialogue that should exist.
At this moment, the most important thing is to say: RNG Come on!
media coverage
Investment Community Titanium Media IT Home NetEase News TechWeb NetEase News Lei Technology
Related events
- RNG rematch 2022-05-16
- “League of Legends” developer Riot Games was ordered to pay $100 million for alleged gender discrimination 2021-12-28
- “League of Legends” Riot official game forum announced to close next week2020-03-03
- Tencent and Roit develop mobile version of “League of Legends” 2019-05-22
- Tencent and Riot Games jointly established Tengjing Sports2019-01-10
This article is reproduced from: https://readhub.cn/topic/8g3x4x9cPfr
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.