State of the Meta: Pro Burnout
Look, I love me some professional League of Legends, but at a certain point you have to wonder if Riot is going a little overboard with their scheduling.
Most traditional sports have seasons that are only a few months long, generally capping at around four. Major League Baseball goes a little longer, but it’s still less than half a year (unless you make playoffs, but that’s a different story). That gives plenty of time for the athletes to be with their family, relax at home, and just generally enjoy not having to practice constantly.
Professional LoL players, meanwhile, have two competitive splits that last two and a half months apiece, on top of playoffs and global tournaments. If you’re a particularly skilled team, you may do nothing but play League of Legends for the majority of a year, once you factor in MSI, Worlds, Rift Rivals, and making domestic playoffs twice. Even then, they’re not done - the All-Star event, with its new focus on competition over fun, means that skilled pros have only about a month to not think about the game.
And while professional LoL players don’t have to worry about injury as much as major league baseball or footballs players, they also spend a significantly higher time practicing. Teams in North America practice up to 14 hours a day, and some teams go all the way to 16 hours a day, every day. Doing that for a majority of a year is almost certain to cause burnout, and we’ve seen multiple older pros like Froggen, Doublelift, and WildTurtle have to take time away from the game just to relax.
The upshot of this hyper-competitive marathon season is that certain players who could have had a long and fruitful career end up burning out much more quickly than they might have otherwise. I don’t blame them - if I had to live away from my family for ten months of the year, playing LoL for fourteen hours a day, I’d probably get sick of it quickly. Churning through pro players, therefore, is not something that Riot should be striving to do.
Solutions? Revert MSI and Worlds to major regions only, with a play-in for non-major regions. They now take significantly less time, which gives pros a bit more of a break. Additionally, Riot could consider making just one split, but giving teams every other week off. That way there’s a little less drive to stay at the top of your game week after week. And please, for the love of Bard, return the All-Star event to being a for-fun tournament. Trying to force pros to compete so soon after Worlds is just cruel.
Obviously this means significantly less esports than I’d enjoy, but it does mean that the pros get more rest and can play for years to come. I’d love to see guys like Rekkles and Perkz have decades-long careers, and more than that, I want to see these guys maintain their love for the game. That’s more important than our short-term enjoyment.
Let me know your thoughts on the professional season in the comments, and be sure to like and reblog this post if you enjoyed it!
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