Summer is almost here, and we're excited to announce the next chapter of Rivals esports in the Rivals 2 Championship Series. As more and more events continue to spring up around the world, we want to help highlight the tournaments, players, and organizers that make grassroots scenes like ours so special.
Our goals this year are to:
Highlight more events running Rivals.
Highlight the players competing.
Help make sure events have the information they need to run a great Rivals event.
And help better connect players to those events.
Here's some details on what we're planning:
This year, instead of only having select premier events, we'll be featuring a tier system for offline events similar to some of our older circuits. The tiers are determined simply by entrant counts, and once an event hit a tier, they can't be downgraded. Events will be able to join the circuit through an open application, and be listed on our circuit page for one easy place to browse, see schedules, and find registration links. These are the breakpoints for each tier:
Bronze
Silver
Gold
Entrants:
25 minimum
50 minimum
100 minimum
Events that have previously appeared on the circuit and have hit 100 entrants in the past can automatically be included as gold events and bypass the application process.
While more events means more options, we also don't want players to feel overwhelmed with an uncapped point system. To help keep competition fair, only each players' top 4 highest finishes in gold tier events, and their top 2 highest finishes in bronze and silver events combined will count towards the end of season voucher. Here are circuit points breakdown for each event tier:
Note that circuit points have always been a flat system for the leaderboard/vouchers that is unrelated to power rankings. End of season power rankings take into account other more detailed information to accurately weight events and competitors. Tiebreaker information on circuit points will be available in the full R2CS rules.
One repeated piece of feedback last year revolved around players not knowing what equipment would be at events, as well as what they could expect for streams and rulesets. As we all know, running tournaments on PCs is especially difficult since there are so many different hardware configurations out there.
To help make sure every event can give the best experience to players, this year we'll be making an expanded guidelines booklet available that has all the information events need in one place. We know resources aren't the same across every event, but for events who can guarantee things like 120hz monitors, minimum PC specs, etc. we'll work with them to signify this for the season.
We want to make it easier for events to run smoothly, and also create a resource to keep players and organizers tapped in together on what plays best.
This year the top circuit pointsholders at the end of the season in the North America, Europe, and World regions will receive travel vouchers to our finals event.
Bronze and Silver events that opt in can expect to receive DLC giveaways like previously released skins and palettes to give out to their participants. Gold events will be able to offer an exclusive new DLC type to be announced soon.
This preview article covers the basic information for the circuit this year, but full details will be provided with our circuit page coming soon. We'll be sharing more details on how to apply for organizers, start tracking standings, and begin highlighting opt-in tournaments scheduled for June or later once the page is up. Offline events are a huge part of the scene, and we hope players have fun wherever they choose to compete this year!