» Category: Announcement

RCS Season 7 Comes to Europe

Following our recent announcement of the RCS Powered by start.gg, it is time to bring back Official Rivals Championship Series events to Europe!

Time to hit the jackpot!

Format and Schedule

After two seasons of online only events due to the pandemic, it is finally time to bring back RCS LAN events to the EU! We have worked directly with community leaders from the region to tailor a season balancing several different countries for LAN events and maintaining four separate online events between July 10th and January. We hope the spread of in-person majors and the accessibility of online events can work in harmony to provide the best RCS season yet for the European Region.

Here is our official schedule:

European Season 7 Reward Structure

As seen above, the official lineup of events for the EU RCS is varied and exciting to say the least. Each LAN event will receive $400 as a default pot bonus directly from the Rivals team, while every single event will also be eligible for funding through the start.gg RCS Tier System. This means that LAN events can receive a total of $900 each, and Online events can receive up to $500 each.

Finally, this season we are happy to re-introduce Champion Skins to the RCS. Our four newcomers have yet to receive any DLC skins, and there is no better time than the present to announce that Champion Olympia and Champion Mollo will be available as free prizes to all participants of specific Online events. Players who enter either the RCS July or RCS August Online events will receive Champion Olympia. More information on Champion Mollo will be revealed as Season 7 progresses!

EU Season 7 Finals

The EU specific RCS Finals in Seasons 5 and 6 were initially created to work around an uncertain world with a raging pandemic. What came to pass grew into a celebration of the EU scene that had not been seen before. Instead of sending out a single champion to the United States the EU scene saw its best players square off one final time in each season for the highest stakes of each respective year. The EU Finals has become a staple for the EU scene, with it being the main place for exciting side events such as Doubles and Crew Battles to send off the year in style.

Travel restrictions have loosened up, but the unforeseen delay of Genesis 8 still proves that even the best laid plans are capable of being uprooted. We are happy to announce that following a discussion with the EU T.O.s, the EU Online Finals will in fact be making a return. This event will have an open compendium goal, the same as North America, with all proceeds feeding directly into the community.

Players may earn points through our official lineup of events, or through EU community events that qualify as RCS Bronze-Gold. The final event to count towards the regular season tally will be the final official tournament in December (Dates are TBA).

Ranking Guidelines

The European panel has put together guidelines for the Season 7 EU Power Rankings. Players and Tournament Organizers can expect events that follow that fall under the following scope to count towards the end of season rankings.

• All events announced as official events in the EU RCS Season 7.
• Offline events that achieve Bronze or greater status as RCS opt-ins.
• Online Majors ran by the EU scene during months without an official online bracket.
• Events accepted by the EU PR council. Tournament organizers can apply for their brackets to count here.

Links!

We are aware that this post has a lot of information to digest, so please refer to all relevant links in this one convenient spot!

• RCS Season 7 League Page
• RCS Shop
• EU RCS Online – July
• Regen 2022
• Bifrost 4
• EU RCS Online – August

Registration is now OPEN for all of the above events!

Following our exciting opening event last weekend, it’s finally time to reveal all that Season 7 has to offer. We already know players have heard the rumors and are looking forward to offline events returning on a larger scale. However, there’s also plenty of new developments to share…

This year we’re proud to announce that the Rivals Championship Series is powered by start.gg! Start.gg is providing $20,000 in prizes for our new community event opt-in system that gives more support to grassroots events than ever before. With the Rivals Championship Series’ history as one of the oldest start.gg leagues, we’re thrilled to have their support for our community in season 7. Let’s get into the details.

New Event Tiers and Global Community Support

For the first time, organizers from anywhere in the world can add their event to the Rivals Championship Series. $20,000 in cash prizes provided by start.gg is up for grabs, spread across events that join the league. These community events can qualify for pot bonuses and league points based on entrant counts.

Pot bonuses are given out on a first come first serve basis, but there’s plenty to go around with enough to support 40 bronze, 40 silver, and 10 gold level events throughout the season. Events past these amounts will still receive league points for standings. There will also continue to be an RCS event tier that features our premier handpicked events with even more opportunity for prizes through the return of our Championship Chest compendium.

Make sure to apply with your own event or tell your favorite TO to add their tournament to the Rivals Championship Series. In addition to being eligible for prizes and points, they’ll also appear on the league schedule for easy access for players.

With new event tiers being added this season, we’ve also revamped our point system. As usual top pointholders will receive additional rewards at the end of the regular season depending on their region.

NA RCS Premier Events Full Schedule

We mentioned offline events were back in a big way, and this year we’re bringing Rivals to 7 majors around the country along with 2 online events. Registration is open for events listed from now until October, so make sure to sign up for any you have your eye on to save on travel costs.

Power Rankings

With the addition of community events and new tiers, competitors may be wondering how this changes our annual end-of-season power rankings. While points and tiers will be used on the circuit for the purpose of prize support and the league standings, rest assured our power rankings will use additional methods to evaluate performances. With an influx of large offline events as well as lots of online data this season should be able to provide a great setting to decide the top 50. Look for a detailed article on that methodology to be released before our first online event this June.

European and World Regions

As of today, events anywhere in the world may apply for the new league and reap the benefits of the community support from start.gg. European competitors can also look forward to a Season 6 power ranking coming soon from their community panel, along with an official Season 7 event schedule. We look forward to other regions being able to receive more support than ever before by applying to the league once their events are published.

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We hope you’re as excited as we are about the upcoming events and new developments in season 7 of the Rivals Championship Series. Make sure to check out our start.gg league page to start signing up, creating or add an event, or even get a peek at the new Champion Olympia skin coming soon. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Each year we look back on the previous competitive season and the players who influenced our scene by creating a Top 50 Players list. Season 6 (September 2021 – April 2022) was an exciting return to form, with our first offline Majors since COVID in 2020 sharing the spotlight with four unique online events.

Our first event back, Riptide, shattered records in both offline attendance and in registration speed – capping our 256 player Rivals singles event just hours after it was announced! Meanwhile online events let players all across the country get involved, with new competitors and old vets alike. The RCS Finals at Genesis 8 saw a delay from its initial January date due to COVID concerns before finding a new home in April and becoming our largest in-person finals to date.

The power rankings this year are a unique case from previous seasons due to the balance of online and offline events in a truly hybrid season. Our adaptation of mixing four online events and three offline events during the post-vaccine period of the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped Season 6 into a truly one-of-a-kind experience. Our wonderful community full of competitors, tournament organizers, volunteers, commentators, and spectators have made Season 6 an incredible ride. Thank you to everyone that has been a part of such a beautiful and complicated era of Rivals.

Before we delve into the rankings this year, here’s an introduction on how the list was formed along with our events list and hidden bosses.

View more articles in the Season Six NA Rankings Series:

• • Introduction (You are here.)
  • #50-41
  • #40-31
  • #30-21
  • #20-11
  • #10-1

Player Qualifications

Our goal for Season 6 initially was to require a minimum of three events in order to be ranked on this year’s Top 50. Given the difficulty of accurately placing players with only two events under their belts, and the variety of available online events, this seemed like the best option. We announced every event that would count towards the rankings at the start of the season, but an unexpected delay to our Finals at Genesis 8 threw a wrench into things.

After some deliberation, it was decided that players who would miss our Finals due to the date change should not miss out on their opportunity to be ranked. The decision was made to lower our required events to two, since players could have been counting on their ability to attend Genesis 8 as their last event.

For the Season 6 RCS Rankings, we only considered players with two or more events from the list below to be eligible for the Rivals Top 50.

Methodology

This year we brought back the panel system from Seasons 3, 4, and 5 with a bit of a twist to accommodate the hybrid season. Players were ranked based on their best three eligible events, including consideration for their wins and losses to land them at their results. Disqualifications from losers bracket were considered as losses for the player that DQd, while not giving their opponent an artificial bump beyond their better placement. Finally, players who entered the minimum number of events (two) were scrutinized more heavily than others due to the lack of data to go off of. In the end, neither the considerations for DQs, nor the minimum event considerations affected player placements too heavily.

Events carried the same weight potential between online and offline except for the RCS Finals, which was weighted heavier due to the high stakes and the fact that it was our grand finale. While the overall weight of the six majors had the potential to be the same, it was clear that some events were strictly more competitively stacked than others. The weight of events in order are as follows: Genesis 8, Heat Wave 4, Riptide, RCS Crystal, RCS Fireworks, RCS Hot Springs, RCS Melody. In general, the council favored consistency among events above individual peaks.

Once this ranking system was completed, a council made additional adjustments to the order based on head-to-head results, activity, and other data. This group consisted of players and tournament organizers from across the country in order to accurately represent the various regions of North America: Jack Ryan (formerly EDC | Junior), MSB, Nbad, Protagify, SBS, and Sparx21. Additional data was provided by Menace13, who had no input regarding final placements of the Top 50.

We’d like to thank all of our panelists for dedicating their time to putting this together for the community, as well as Tax1k for our sleek Season 6 steampunk player cards, and CyberHex for additional graphic design support.

Hidden Bosses

Players given the title of Hidden Boss were recognized by the panel as major threats to tournaments this season that just didn’t quite meet the requirements to be ranked.

Bullets, Halite, Lattim, Proux, Squanto