[2019] Twitch rivals isn’t what it used to be

Hi! I've been one of the Rioters working with Twitch on Twitch Rivals for both Summoner's Rift and TFT. We totally hear this feedback as well as the feedback from the streamers who have been participating in Twitch Rivals the last few times. Personally, I wish we could have alternated more between the "role robin" format and the fixed team format. What's been preventing us from doing this recently is simply time. I think to make the best fixed team format for Twitch Rivals, the teams and streamers need to be able to scrim and build up hype behind their team. We haven't been able to give them this and so the "role robin" format has been our default because of it. That said, we've definitely had quite a few "role robin"'s recently and please know the community and streamer feedback is heard and we'll do our best to try for another fixed team format soon.

Haha thank you and hope you have a lovely weekend as well :)

Planning an event between two companies takes time and often isn't set in stone until shortly before the event is set to take place. That time period often isn't enough to allow teams to get to know one another and play together to practice/scrim.

One of the pieces of feedback we got from streamers in the first Twitch Rivals is that the scrim portion and getting to know each other in advance was the best part of having assigned teams. While we could create teams on the day of and let people build chemistry by playing (and that wouldn't take needing much time before the event, which is fair), we didn't want to remove one of the parts of that format that streamers said they liked most. That said it's totally possible to have teams set on the day of, which is an idea we can pitch to the streamers to get their feedback.

That's fair feedback - the last couple events have lacked a bit of promotion and so I know a lot of the community was caught unaware or only found out after the fact.

We cannot change smash.gg because that's a Twitch-owned element of Twitch Rivals. All Twitch Rivals events are posted on that site.

As for plans on another fixed teams event - again it's something I'm definitely interested in pursuing but as of right now, there is no planned upcoming Twitch Rivals event outside of TwitchCon. I'd personally love for the next Summoner's Rift event to be a fixed team format but I'm not sure when that will be just yet.

Those are always unfortunate situations. There are substitutes ready at the beginning of each event. It's difficult (and unfair) to ask a sub to stick around for hours during the tournament without guaranteeing they can play. The rules that Twitch, Riot, and the participants agree to state that a certain amount of a pause time can be given but ultimately the game can't be held on pause indefinitely, and starting that specific game over isn't always fair to those who have played it out so far. While we recognize a 4v5 isn't fair, the circumstances that lead to it are hard to prepare for and hard to solve when they do happen. In the two instances a 4v5 has happened, we've made sure that there's a solution for the game that immediately follows, but I think that's the best we're currently able to do given the nature of online tournaments + scheduled live broadcasts.