Last weekend Team Vitality organised its own Valorant tournament, the new European stage of the Valorant Ignition Series. Eight teams competed against each other over three days of competition and in the end it was, unsurprisingly, G2 Esports who won. Beyond the results, several lessons can be drawn from this competitive weekend.
Winner G2 Esports
G2 Esports assumes favorite status
G2 Esports with its 5-star recruitment was clearly a favorite in the competition. The whole roster was on the level. During the qualifiers, during the pools and during the playoffs, G2 lost sets but never a match. We have confirmation that we'll have to take the team very seriously.
Mixwell is currently the best player in Europe
The scene is still in formation and there are surely still a lot of undiscovered talents. The captain and former CS:GO pro player, Oscar "mixwell" Cañellas Colocho shows that he's currently one of the best in Europe. According to the statistics of the tournament, he has the best personal score and the best kill/death ratio.
Davidp made a good impression at G2 Esports
You may have forgotten, but David "davidp" Prins isn't (yet) a full member of the G2 Esports team. He isn't under contract unlike his four tournament partners and it isn't yet known what will happen next. In addition to winning the competition, davidp had strong individual performances with Sage. Good enough to give him a real contract?
The state of the European scene
Lack of structure in Europe
Behind G2, there weren't a lot of big organisations in the tournament. Contrary to North America, which has massively invested — with FaZe Clan, T1, or 100 Thieves — Europe is a bit more cautious for the moment. The organizer of the competition, Team Vitality still has no roster...
Hyp and his team finished second
Damien "HyP" Souville managed to finish second in the competition with Prodigy. This is good news for the former Overwatch pro who recently left his HypHypHyp team project. It's also revealing of the level of the European scene. Prodigy is more an organization-agency of players than a team in its own right. It creates mixes for specific competitions, going back and forth according to needs and availability. There is no regular training and long term planning... Yet it's this mix this combination that ended up on the second step of the podium.
A much smaller prize pool
Often the cash prize goes hand in hand with the fame of the tournament. It can be noticed that the European tournaments aren't particularly generous at the moment. The tournament prize pool was only $16,914. This is much less than the American T1 x Nerd Street Gamers Showdown which offered $50,000. The amount is even lower than the next Japanese stage ($46,796) or the Asia Pacific stage ($20,000).
Streaming point
Streaming still in progress
On the streaming side, we were a little disappointed this weekend. On the first day of the Main-Event, the viewership had a hard time taking off and surpassed 2,000 viewers. We suspect that the technical issues weren't of a great help at that time, but more generally it's true that the spectator mode lacks a little dynamism in Valorant. We only see the players' point of view and the casters have little flexibility.
A popularity deficit
During the last day of competition, it was quite striking to see that Mixwell stream was much more popular (almost twice as much) than the official stream. We observe that the competitive scene of Valorant is still little followed.
Format and meta
A format that has its limits
There isn't yet a well defined format for Valorant tournaments. Each tournament adopts different modalities. For the Vitality European Open, after qualifying phases, the Main Event was played with eight teams. This one was divided into a Group Stage (four qualified teams) then into Playoffs, with a double bracket (upper/lower).
A thoughtful format that offered a maximum of matches, but with only eight teams in Group Stage and four in Playoffs, we had the impression that we were going in circles. Twice we had a G2/Prodigy and Prodigy/Fabriken matches with the same winners each time.
Viper always forgotten
Viper's long been known to be one of the worst agents. Critics have pointed out that her ultimate isn't always useful. With Patch 1.02, there was hope for the toxic chemist. She has received several interesting buffs. In the end, in this competition, we have seen that the top players continue to sulk. With only 5.21% pickrate, she was almost absent from this tournament.
For your information, agents' podium is composed of Cypher (74.65%) Sage (72.92%) and Raze (67.71%).
Original content by Tipsalewo.
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