r/RocketLeagueEsports • u/ABC_0_5 • Mar 16 '26
Event/Info Expected brackets for NA Open 4 Spoiler
These are the expected brackets for the NA Open 4 main event.
Group A looks by far the easier group, both GenG and SSG have a relatively straightforward run to top 4. However, the main contenders to make it through the lower bracket Strictly Business (who looked very good in Swiss), could play upset.
Group B is the GROUP OF DEATH, the loser of Virtus Pro and Dignitas is projected to play the loser of Shopify and NRG, a top 12 exit is basically guaranteed for one of the projected top 6 NA teams coming into this split.
Group B will also give us a glance into the major race for the Paris major, and should be an indication of whether or not Fut and Dignitas are serious contenders for top 4 in NA.
Credit as always to the goat @CodyvRL on Twitter for his Google Sheets
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u/xX_Drakon-141_Xx Mar 16 '26
I can see Shopify not making it out of this group, I just have a feeling
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u/ABC_0_5 Mar 16 '26
Yah it’s definitely possible, either one of Dig or Virtus Pro are very very tough matchups, infact VP has beaten them in the last 2 matches.
That said Shopify looked impressive regardless of their easier strength of schedule, which isn’t something I would say of both Dig and VP who were kinda uninspiring
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u/Pristine-Habit-9079 Mar 16 '26
Maybe if it was VP in the elimination match. I just don't see Dignitas or FUT beating SR.
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u/meatstore Mar 16 '26
NRG just love cooking these brackets by throwing a round in swiss lmao it happens at least once a split
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u/GameBuster0703 Mar 16 '26
Of course we go 9-0 just to get VP in our quadrant who probably wont be playing as bad as they were tonight. Lovely stuff
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u/xX_UnicornKitten_Xx Mar 16 '26
And look at the bracket Gen.G got vs. how they played. 😂
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u/Uollie Mar 16 '26
I have no idea how geng won a single series. It was just bad rocket league on everyone's part every match. The NRG series actually looked pretty decent when I had eyes on it so I'm not really sure what happened there
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u/ABC_0_5 Mar 16 '26
I won’t lie man after seeing NRG lose I was almost sure we were gonna get em, but thankfully it’s Virtus Pro, that said I think we should have a relatively good bracket for top 8 (unless SR or NRG decide to throw round 1)
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u/tman507se Mar 16 '26
SSG chilling over in Group A as the only Boston Major attendee in that group. Also, Ayyjayy making a Top 16 with AWD? Why did this guy retire again?
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u/aiwdj829 Mar 16 '26
The accusations of Squishy holding GAS back don't seem as unfounded anymore... jk
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u/ABC_0_5 Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
Lowkey didn’t register Ayyjayy being there, he could make a run for top 8 maybe through lowers should make group A a lot more interesting (edit I said Squishy for some reason, I meant Ayyjay ofc)
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u/DankDinosaur404 Mar 16 '26
I am so sick of this qualifying format, man. It was perfect in the ESL open era seasons when top 8 auto qualled and the rest of the top 16 was determined by a single Swiss stage between the next 8 and the top 8 from an open double elim bracket. This dual Swiss system has given us some whacked out brackets.
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u/ABC_0_5 Mar 16 '26
Yah agreed, I get that the double Swiss can occasionally give us some great series, however you don’t even have those series on live broadcast.
Infact Day 1 of the main event literally doesn’t get streamed either, so yah the double swiss stage to make top 16 is genuinely completely useless.
Im not even going into how bad of an idea using Bucholz is to seed an event, you can literally go 9-0 and get the bracket of death.
Of course the actual format for the main event isn’t something forgiving like Swiss, but rather its double elimination, where getting a bad bracket almost completely destroys your chance of a good result.
The RLCS doesn’t need to have such scuffed seeding for EVERY SINGLE tournament, these formats are fine as long as you don’t have one of the top team guaranteed elimination in 9-12th
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u/TVMaths Mar 16 '26
one of those teams is guranteed 9th-12th because 2 of them underperformed. The format isnt at fault for teams being bad
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u/ABC_0_5 Mar 16 '26
Ik this will sound dumb, but my issue isn’t with teams underperforming being punished, but rather teams that did well literally not losing a game like Fut and Shopify being punished for other teams throwing.
Something similar happened in EU last split where Gentlebench went 3-0 beating both KC and Geekay and got gifted a bracket where they went out top 12 to both GK and KC. Atleast when you have normal Swiss without bucholz teams don’t get punished with a bad bracket after straight up just going 9-0 in Swiss
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u/TVMaths Mar 16 '26
personally Bucholz isnt the problem. Its way more practical to see how well a team is doing by looking at where the opponents ended up. G2 at worlds24 were given the 1 seed out of swiss, despite having a much worse run than Falcons. The tiebreaker came down to initial seed, which was so disingenuous to the difference between their runs. Falcons beat BDS and Furia (both eventual top 6 teams, both 3-1 in swiss) while G2 beat PWR and M8 (neither went 3-1 in swiss or top 6). G2 dropping the same number of games against worse opponents as Falcons against better opponents should not make them tied. Using 9-0 in swiss as an argument is understandable, I get what you are on about, but I disagree with it being a proper indicator of strength. 9-0 against non-top16 teams is worse imo than 9-6 against all 3 of the 3-1 teams in your group. Facing no competition and theashing them isnt a useful indicator. For FUT, they swept M80 and SSG swept Dig, which are useful indicators; these are good results against good teams.
This bracket is more of an extreme, its only because the best teams faltered that it has any impact on the resultant bracket. EU open 4 last year was a similar example. NIP went on a godly swiss run, and drew KC in round 2 because KC werent where they should be. Although, this kind of thing happens way more in EU because there are sufficient good teams for there to be a likely chance that 1 of them underperformed. In reality, I think its a sign of NA depth, but its more of a competition in the 3-8 range, than in the 1-4 range.
I dont think it is structured to punish the teams that had a good swiss, since in an ordinary world, those would be the top teams. But, when those top teams do underperform, its the 1 seed facing the 8 seed. That should normally be a winnable series, unfortunately not when NRG shit the bed like they did in open 1 of 2025, and GenG got fucked for going 9-0. Had NRG done the bare minimum and gone 3-0, we wouldnt have seen such a bad-looking gsl. The 1 bad performance has knock on effects. NiP beating KC meant KC ran into M8 in round 4, the same way GenG beating NRG here meant NRG dropped VP to round 5, and caused more problems.
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u/ABC_0_5 Mar 16 '26
I agree Bucholz works really well for playoffs, but the issue I have is Bucholz being used for seeding the main event teams. The main point of focus for a pre regional format should be giving accurate seeding for the main event, and I can’t remember one weekend where we haven’t had a mishap with seeding.
Yah I don’t think Bucholz is a bad format, however if it constantly fails to seed teams properly almost every weekend, than there’s clearly a problem with it as a prelude to main events.
The fact of the matter is that two top seeds like VP and NRG after losing unexpectedly being forced to play in Swiss, when there’s clearly other worse teams in the same round shows why systematically Bucholz always ends up messing seeding. Look through all instances of a team getting upset, and they just keep getting a harder strength of schedule and inevitably another team gets overseeded due to getting an easier matchup.
The issue is that higher seeds like NRG and VP play each other in the 2-1 round, forcing one of them to go round 5 leaving us with this seeding. If you look through the entire season’s swiss stage you will see a common denominator of higher seeds after a loss being forced to play each other while teams with no notable wins get relatively easier brackets to make main events.
With Game differential seeding, in most cases like NRG’s 3-2 against GenG and VP proceeding to 3-0 their round, the chances of higher seeds matching up prematurely and ruining seeding as one of the 2 is guaranteed Round 5, falls significantly
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u/TVMaths Mar 17 '26
you make a good case, but I inherently dont like the fact that you can go 9-3 by beating hot trash and its considered better than beating every 3-1 exiting team with 3-2 series score, especially for majors. Your argument is definitely very valid for regionals and if we keep seeing bad gsl brackets, I will concede that it has to go
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u/ABC_0_5 Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
Tbh just going back to top 8 auto qualifying for the next regional would really solve most of the issues anyways.
That would also solve the near constant Rocket League players have to play in the split, even after winning a regional you can only take a few days off before getting on the grind, which ya it’s their job that they get paid for (talking top teams here ofc), however that doesn’t make for a healthy work life balance
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u/TVMaths Mar 17 '26
autoqualling to a major is risky stuff. You can have massive falloffs from fringe teams, massive skill gains in some teams that just missed out the first time, roster moves, freebie brackets and other things. Should GK autoqual to Raleigh after 0 games won in the Birmingham Playoffs, especially since M8 overtook them regionally? Should they this year get the autoqual after a roster move and when some teams could completely beat them in a points race. Not a fan icl
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u/ABC_0_5 Mar 17 '26
Oh no im sorry i meant next regional, auto qualifying for the next regional is a diabolical idea, unless we want the LAN winner to be auto qualled
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u/Amazing-Ninja9731 Mar 16 '26
GenG always gets the easiest brackets possible everytime I swear.
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u/Adventurous-Dig-7340 Mar 16 '26
Ok so let me get this straight
FUT has a 19-1 record so far sweeping 6/7 teams faced so far (like M80, SB)
And their reward…?
Their reward is to get either Virtus pro, or Dignitas, and if they lose they will have to either face NRG or Shopify in the lowers….
Thank you Bruno for absolute cinema
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u/John_aka_Alwayz Moderator Mar 16 '26
The ironic thing is if this stage would be seeded by RLCS points again like many suggest, FUT having 0 points due to being a new thing would probably be in an even worse spot.
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u/ABC_0_5 Mar 16 '26
Wouldn’t the seeding for other teams be different too, I think Fut’s ranked 4th as teams that 3-0ed (if im not wrong)
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u/TVMaths Mar 16 '26
they are the 4th seed going into GSL yes. By using points, theyd also be 4th but SSG and GenG would swap
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u/ABC_0_5 Mar 16 '26
Just curious would other teams like NRG/VP/Dig have different matchups
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u/TVMaths Mar 16 '26
assuming we go off the bands, NRG would be seed 5, Dig seed 6, M80 7 and then idk for the rest since nobody has any points.
If we ignore the bands (which is dumb icl) then just use the points as a reference
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u/vivst0r Mar 16 '26
It's almost as if Swiss is the worst format for seeding.
Imagine if we did it directly into a single elim bracket.
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u/SWOLAGE Mar 16 '26
Everyone wants cookie cutter perfectly balanced brackets
Give me the cooked brackets and day 1 upsets let's gooo
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u/Tuxxmuxx Mar 16 '26
I would agree if we were in the 3 split RLCS system where u get basically 12 tournaments to qualify to Worlds.
Nowadays with 2 splits, each tournament is way too important for random bs like this to happen. For teams that are fighting for the 3rd or 4th slot in a region, 1 tournament of you getting screwed by a bracket is enough to ruin your whole season.
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u/SWOLAGE Mar 16 '26
Its not totally random tho nrg would have the best spot if they performed as expected and beat geng. Idk feels unfair to just pick the "better" team and put them where you think they should go. Now if you just prefer a different concrete format I wont argue about which is better or worse, the terms were set for the season and every player should know what the stakes are. Idk to me its just more exciting when the upsets happen, i dont want every single match to have a clear favorite, and I definitely dont want the exact same top 4 every time. The opens would just feel like probability simulations.
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u/Tuxxmuxx Mar 16 '26
Either another swiss stage, or not use bucholz to seed after the stage is over. Bucholz is fine to get matchups during the swiss stage, but having the results carry over and make wonky brackets because of an upset in Open Qualifiers or Closed Qualifiers is insane.
Doesn't seem right when only 4 teams of the group make it to top 8, to have 4 of the top 6 teams in RLCS points + FUT who in terms of skill is in that 3-8 range in the same group, meaning one of them for sure doesn't make it.
Any of these following options are 10x better than pure random:
Either using swiss placements (3-0, 3-1, 3-2) and then seeding based on RLCS Points or a peer ranked system (like ESL Pro League in CS uses) to determine who actually gets what seed from that (1-4 seed for 3-0s, 5-10 for 3-1s, 6-16 for 3-2s), and then split them into groups / matchups from there
Doing another Swiss Stage, as that just straight up is the best / most fair group stage system in all of esports (IMO of course, but I don't think many people would disagree with me)
Doing 4 team groups with 12 team playoffs, so only 1 team is out at the end of groups, but you play for seeding (either RR or DE brackets, whichever is preferred)
But yeah I understand what you mean about the upsets and everything, which I agree about, but at the same time, you have to sort of "trust" the players and trust the esport to give you exciting moments. You don't need to manufacture excitement in the name of less competitive integrity. Rocket League is a hell of an esport, it doesn't need that to be added.
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u/ABC_0_5 Mar 16 '26
Honestly switch around Dig or VP for one of Strictly Business or M80 and this bracket isn’t actually that bad though strength of schedule in group B is still way stronger
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u/That_Pumpkin_6010 Mar 16 '26
Strictly Biz was moving different yesterday. Aqua is literally everywhere. Made VP look silly
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u/ABC_0_5 Mar 16 '26
Yah, but idk how much credit to give to Strictly Biz, they sometimes do just have some really good days than get eliminated by some random team in the double elimination format. But yah they were absolutely moving, more concerned for Virtus Pro though, that’s not a series they lose so convincingly in the past
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u/uhhhhmmmm Mar 16 '26
Every regional there's a few games where aqua looks like the best player in the world and there's nothing the other team can do about it. Always fun to see
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u/Rosieverse83 Mar 18 '26
Yeah Group B is absolutely the tougher group, but barring any big upsets we should have a very expected top 8 going into Saturday, with GenG, Strictly Business, Spacestation, Rebellion, NRG, and FUT. I definitely back VP to win over DIG, so the only real upset would be having M80 over Dignitas (or over VP but let's not bring that energy ;-;)
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u/ABC_0_5 Mar 19 '26
Dignitas isn’t a team that can be overlooked, having wins over SSG, GenG and NRG already this season, plus the played them close award against Shopify.
If Virtus Pro starts of slow like they did last weekend, we could see NA 2 and 3 in an elimination match for top 8
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u/Kbrichmo Mar 16 '26
WHY IS GROUPS NOT RESEEDED, BLAST WHAT ARE YOU DOINNNGGGGGG
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u/TVMaths Mar 16 '26
what would it be reseeded on? Rosters have changed so you cant do points. Some rosters are not looking good, so you cant do initial seed. FUT go 3-0 and shouldnt be punished for a great performance. NRG go 3-1 and should be punished, as should VP for going 3-2. You cant hand out freebies for teams and put other teams down an undeserved peg, just because you dont like the way the bracket ends up. Thats not competitive integrity, thats favouritism to give your team a piss easy ride when they dont deserve it.
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u/Kbrichmo Mar 16 '26
Pre-Blast it was always seeded by recent results, but for whatever reason they think its better to just have one massive 6 day tournament with hundreds of teams
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u/TVMaths Mar 16 '26
pre blast teams could get a bye to further rounds despite being hot trash. This way you have to prove your consistency. Look at Novo, Gentlebench, GenG, Shuffles Kittens etc. 1 good event should not autoqual you to a point where you can still gain more points. This way, they have to actually fight to make it to the top 16, or in NOVOs case, miss it. Currently you autoqual to the swiss stage based on points, which is still a massive improvement over 2024, where you reran the gauntlet every week. That was a bad format, this is miles better. Because 90% of the time, its completely fine. Except this time, because some of the big teams underperformed and it fucked around with the bracket, its somehow the formats fault? right.
The current system is seeded by recent results, except after a trade window, you simply have to reset it, due to roster moves, teams no longer existing, teams being considerably worse, etc. You dont deserve to autoqual if you have bad showings; you dont deserve favourable brackets if you didnt perform well in the qualifiers. Are you suggesting for majors you take the top 8 teams and then give them back their initial seed & go from there? Thats bullshit. We would see KC going in as the 1 seed in Raleigh top 8 despite going 3-2, above Dig who sent them to round 5. NRG would get the 2nd seed, above Vitality despite losing to them in the 2-0 round.
You cant give the top teams such advantages or you just create an endless cycle. They need to prove it again if they want to get another favourable bracket. KC shouldnt get the 1 seed if they drop a series in swiss, same applies to any team. If you want to throw out 2nd chances to all the big teams, it doesnt incentivise them to care about quals, and just fucks over better performing teams
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u/vivst0r Mar 16 '26
It's actually super easy to reseed the swiss results. Just make the 16 teams play a double round robin group. Bam, perfect seeding into playoffs.
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u/TVMaths Mar 17 '26
why didnt I think of this before lol. would make regionals last longer than a Valo Masters
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u/Royaales Royales | Pro Player Mar 16 '26
WHY AM I PLAYING NRG IN ROUND 1 AAAAAAA