Sentinels dominated the recently-concluded VALORANT Champions Tour Masters One tournament. The team escaped the clutches of the region's toughest teams with no defeats. Above all, Sentinels shut down FaZe Clan in a 3-0 sweep despite the lack of a winners bracket advantage. Now, players from both sides of the VCT grand finals discuss the importance of having advantages for upper bracket teams. Currently, VALORANT players engage in heated discussions about the latest hot topic for the title.

Should Riot institutionalize an upper bracket advantage system for VALORANT?

THE VALORANT WAY

Sentinels player Shazeb “ShahZaM” Khan took to his personal Twitter to show his dissatisfaction with the system present in VCT NA Masters. ShahZaM claims the absence of an upper bracket advantage to be unfair but their team still emerged undefeated in the tournament.

“If there is a double-elimination bracket and every team gets to lose twice, there has to be some sort of advantage, whether it's a bracket reset or a map advantage. It should be significant. If you lose a whole series during the tournament and you climb back up through the lower bracket final, the upper bracket winners that have not lost should have a map advantage, in my opinion.”

Previous VALORANT events included a one-map advantage system for teams that make it to the grand finals through the upper bracket. Many players expressed their confusion towards the lack of the advantage in a major tournament.

Interestingly, ShahZam's own teammate Jared “zombs” Gitlin expressed his nonchalance with the absence of an advantage. However, zombs later said that he believed Riot should give the upper bracket team an advantage.

ACROSS THE AISLE

FaZe player Zachary “ZachaREEE” Lombardo agreed with ShahZaM's position despite having lost the grand finals in a 0-3 sweep.

“I can't think of something that would really help for the upper bracket. Obviously, for pick bans, they have stuff, but in VALORANT, there are only five maps right now, so if you’re playing VALORANT best-of-five, there is no ban, so you cant give them a nice pick ban advantage because there are not enough maps for that.”

Other famous esports titles offer various advantages for upper bracket teams and players. Most Fighting Games require loser's bracket players to reset the grand finals series in order to win. The teams and players of VALORANT continue to be split on the issue.

The main problem is Riot's initial use of the upper bracket advantage system only to drop it for some unknown reason. Esports titles mostly operate on the bracket system that it's best suited for. Hopefully, Riot Games settles on a final unified system for all of its events moving forward. Undoubtedly, VALORANT will continue to grow in popularity.