Last year’s APL format was a fair 4-slot LAN event, with teams competing against different opponents, just like in any other region. Now, what happened this year is that the format was changed into subregions to save money. This creates mainly 2 problems and discrepancies: The wildcard spot (aka the second spot that is assigned to one subregion based on the best-performing international team) doesn’t reflect regional success, and it is in no way similar to anything else in the ecosystem across all other regions. The system is made for the runner-ups to win the next stage. Let me run you through the logistics of it: Kickoff: the better team wins. (Before Stage 1, other teams realize they’d better just practice solely to beat a single team, the Kickoff-winning team. They practice day and night on one model, one playstyle, bans, picks, strats, everything, something unheard of in other regions.) Stage 1: the better team wins again, while the other teams keep refining. Stage 2: the better countering team wins. (Meanwhile, the previous winner, who is now trying to focus their prep work towards the Major, aka studying different playstyles, prepping different things, loses.) And it’s an infinite loop. Whoever is truly the best team will never win all 3 stages unless they give up some day-to-day Major-related activities to focus on a regional-only playstyle. Nothing can save you. You win? Prep for the Major, and eventually you’ll lose to teams that play to counter you. Those teams (who aren’t better than you) will go to the Major and underperform, because their whole identity is made to counter you, so they’ll switch to focusing on a normal, broader practice, which will once again allow the better team to win, and the cycle continues. Nobody outside of this region can understand how hard it is to play against a team that has been practicing day in, day out just to counter you. Let me put it in perspective for you: imagine a team that practices 90 to 120 days solely to beat you. They practice all your maps, watch all your VODs, and base their whole identity on countering you specifically: bans, picks, movement, tempo, strats, all of it. Just imagine that. It’s not prep work for a game, no, it’s happening every day in their day-to-day. Can you blame them for it? Absolutely not. Everyone would rather go to an event than not, even if that implies being totally unready for whatever isn’t CAG, WEIBO and EP. Can you blame the format? Totally. Now let’s talk about the finals format. The league starts before NAL, EML and SAL, and ends afterwards. So the teams that are trying to be competitive at the Major have even less time to prep compared to all the other regions. On top of that, we get a 2-week period between semi finals. And on top of that, we basically can’t hide anything, because anything can go wrong in a Bo3, and since there’s only one spot, you’re basically forced to go all out (or at least show more than what teams in other regions do) because you can’t afford to lose. The system is faulty: it doesn’t guarantee qualification for the actual better quality team. And on top of that, even if the best team does qualify, that very team is at a disadvantage against other regions: less prep time, more stuff being shown before the event, and having to keep the focus on APL while other teams are already prepping for the Major.