At the end of each season we look back on the previous competitive year, and the players who influenced our scene, by creating a Top 50 Players list to honor and celebrate our greatest competitors.
Season 8 brought an exciting return of the community-ran Grassroots League (GRL). Both the RCS and the GRL circuits held their own unique ranking systems that rewarded players with vouchers to different events. The RCS brought the point leader and one player that had never been to Genesis to the RCS Finals at Genesis X, while the GRL circuit gave smaller vouchers to the highest performing players to attend the next event in the circuit before eventually inviting eight player to the Grassroots League Invitational after the Top 50 Ranking period concluded.
The season featured just one tier of RCS events but different tiers of GRL events. Only specific GRL events counted for Rankings as listed below in the article, while every RCS event qualified. Players were required to attend a minimum of four qualifying events, with at least two of them being part of the RCS.
RCS Season 8 was an exciting and bitter-sweet period for the community, and for our team here at Aether Studios. We made the announcement that the RCS would go on hiatus after Genesis X in order to focus on the final stretch of development on our sequel, Rivals 2. This news wasn’t easy to share, but we know that as long as players are willing to pick up a controller the game will still be there. The GRL and associated community events throughout the season were nothing short of inspiring for us to see, while the RCS brought some of the most hype moments in the history of the game. Season 8 brought us story-lines from across the community, while introducing the first ever razor-thin race for Rank 1 between not two, but three different players.
Everyone at Aether Studios would like to give a massive thank you to our tireless community leaders, our rockstar competitors, and every single person that made this season possible through competition, viewership, donations, or otherwise. We would not be here without you.
View more articles in the Season Eight NA Rankings Series:
As usual, events must meet a certain threshold of competition, attendance, and region diversity to count towards Top 50. In RCS Season 8 we ran seven separate RCS events that were guaranteed to count for rankings, while the greater community put together eleven “Showcase” events of their own as a part of Grassroots League (GRL) and one final event after the conclusion of GRL in December.
| Season 8 RCS Ranking Events |
|---|
| RCS July |
| Hitfall 2 |
| Riptide 2023 |
| The Big House 10 |
| Heat Wave 6 |
| RCS December |
| Genesis X |
| Season 8 GRL & Community Ranking Events |
|---|
| Major Upset |
| Rivals Recess Major 3 |
| GoTE4TheKids8 |
| COST 2023 |
| CREST 2 |
| Get On My Level 2023 |
| Super Sunnyshore |
| The Reef |
| Two Day War |
| Hurricane |
| TAPS 6 |
| Santa Paws |
Player Qualifications
Our goal for Season 8 was to keep the number of required events higher to match the community events that would count for the rankings this year. It was decided that four events would be required to qualify with at least two of them being RCS tournaments. These guidelines were strict, but the community once again rose to the task to bring their own events to the table, providing ten additional LAN and 2 additional online events to our Top 50 standards.
Methodology
This year we brought back the well established panel system from Seasons 3 – 7. Players were ranked based on each of their eligible events, including consideration for their wins and losses to land them at their results. Disqualifications from the losers bracket were considered as losses for the player that DQd, while not giving their opponent an artificial bump beyond their better placement.
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 RCS events had the potential to be the same, it was clear that some events were strictly more competitively stacked than others and when considering two players of near identical skill, offline events would edge out online events. In addition, the community events landed in tiers of their own. The weight of events in order were largely used as tiebreakers when considering two players of similar skill and were not a major consideration other than if they were the Finals, RCS, or Community. The weight of events in order are as follows: Genesis X, Riptide 2023, Heat Wave 6, Hitfall2, The Big House 11, RCS July, RCS December, GoTE8/GOML 2023/TAPS 6, Super Sunnyshore/Major Upset/Two Day War, Rivals Recess Major 3/The Reef/Santa Paws/Hurricane/COST 2023/CREST 2. While events are considered in different weights, this was only a partial deciding factor. In general, the council favored consistency among events above individual peaks.
Once this ranking system was completed, the panel made additional adjustments to the order based on head-to-head results 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: CyberHex, Jack Ryan, 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 KELLZ for our brand new Season 8 player cards.
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. Each player listed placed Top 8 at a RCS event or Top 12 at the RCS Finals.
