Last week we announced our partnership with Twitch and Nexon and the creation of the Battlerite Pro League and Rising Stars, the professional and preliminary Battlerite leagues. There’s a lot to look forward to in esports for Battlerite, and given that the Battlerite Pro League Open Qualifiers are going on, we thought it was a good idea to give an in-depth breakdown of the structure of both of these leagues.

This is not the complete list of everything happening with BPL or Rising Stars (there are still surprises in store!) but by the end of this dev update you should have an idea of how the league will run, how to take part, and what else to look forward to!

Battlerite Pro League

Battlerite Pro League is exactly what is sounds like – the official premier tournament circuit for professional competition in Battlerite. The league is separated into four regions (North America, South America, Europe, and South Korea) and will continue for five weeks, streaming on either Saturday or Sunday depending on the region. The top two teams of each region will earn a spot at a global LAN event this summer.

The division into regions has left some populations of the community unable to compete in BPL, and we will be working with community tournament organizers in these regions to provide them with more support. We will continue to monitor the development of these regions for further inclusion in the future.

For the Chinese community in particular we are working on ensuring a stable network experience that we deem necessary for this level of competition.

The entirety of BPL will be streamed on Twitch at twitch.tv/battlerite (for North America and Europe) or twitch.tv/battleriteSA (for South America). The league officially kicks off on April 29th with the Group Stage.

Qualifying for Season One

The starting teams for the first season of BPL will be determined in a one-time Open Qualifiers, which began on April 12th and will continue until April 15th. A double-elimination open bracket will be held each day, with two teams from every day going on to play in the first season of BPL. Qualified teams will be locked into their region’s league and will not be able to play in other qualifiers.

You can sign up for Open Qualifiers here and watch the stream here.

Format

So – now to get into how is this all going to function as a league. First up, BPL will be divided into two parts – the Group Stage and the Playoffs. Eight teams will participate in each region, and all regions except for Korea will follow the same format.

In the Group Stage, the teams will be split into two groups of four and seeding will be determined via round robin, in which every team will play every other team in their group twice. This ranking will then be used to determine the bracket for the Playoffs.

The first place teams of the Group Stage will claim a spot in the semifinals. Second place teams will play against each other, with the winner going on to the semifinals and the loser playing against the winner of the third place match. First and second place teams will be safe from relegation.

Third place teams will play against each other, the loser of which will play in a relegation match against the third place from Rising Stars (we’ll go over Rising Stars shortly). The winner of this match will play against the loser of the second place match, as stated.

The fourth place teams will play against each other. The loser of that will be knocked out of BPL, the winner will go on to face another relegation match against the 2nd place team from Rising Stars.

In the end, one of the original teams from BPL will be relegated, one team from Rising Stars will be promoted, and there will be two additional promotion/relegation matches.

Prizing will be awarded to the placing of teams participating in BPL, not the teams eligible to play in the next season.

Rising Stars

If you want to be part of in the second season of BPL after the Open Qualifiers, you’re going to have to take part in Rising Stars.

Rising Stars will be a recurring tournament related to BPL and take place two days a week. Like BPL, it will be divided into regions for players to take part in, but unlike BPL it will have a points-based system to determine what teams can move on to the Rising Stars Finals and can compete for their chance to be promoted to BPL.

Rising Stars will not be streamed, although the two promotion/relegation matches will be played on stream as part of BPL.

Day One – Swiss Qualifier

Day one of the Rising Star Tournaments will begin with a Swiss bracket qualifier that anyone can sign up for. For all people unfamiliar with what a Swiss bracket is – it’s one without elimination, in which every team plays a set amount of matches (in this case, 6). Matchmaking is determined by the tournament’s record to pair balanced matches – if a team has won two matches and lost one, their next match will be against a team with an identical score.

This system allows us to give in-game rewards based on the number of wins teams have achieved, allowing teams to see the progress they are making and motivate themselves to compete more and feel that every win matters. Because it’s a Swiss system that anyone can take part in, even a group of friends with some spare time and a bit of curiosity can walk away with something nice.

Day Two – Double Elimination

Teams that have achieved 5 or 6 wins on Day One will make it to Day Two of Rising Stars – a double elimination playoff with additional in-game prizes to be won based on placing.

Placement on Day Two will also grant Qualifying Points (more on them soon), that scale with placement. Rising Stars will repeat three times during the first season of BPL, allowing teams to collect the necessary points to move on to the final stage of this circuit – the Rising Stars Finals.

Rising Stars Finals

Teams that have collected 10 Qualifying Points over the course of the first season of BPL will be invited to take part in the Rising Stars Finals, a Double Elimination tournament with a first place prize of directly moving on to take part in the next season of BPL. Both second and third place teams will be able to compete against current BPL teams on stream in a relegation match at the end of the season. Whoever loses will be knocked down into Rising Stars, and whoever wins goes on to compete in the next season of BPL.

There will be no additional prizes for this stage of Rising Stars – teams who participate should be the ones with the ambition to move forward and on to take part in Battlerite Pro League.

AMA

That’s the short of what’s coming for Battlerite esports in the future, and while there’s still more to share (like I said, we can’t spoil all the secrets yet), we hope that this has you looking forward to everything that’s to come!

Our Esports Coordinator, Boccato, will also be hosting an AMA on r/battlerite, so if you have any additional questions to ask him, hop on over there and he’ll be more than happy to help you out!

For now though, I hope you’re all pumped up for the next day of Open Qualifiers and we’ll see you in the Arena!

/Liz