Doublelift Reveals His Wildest Tournament Idea After League Classic Showmatch

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League Classic is getting closer to release, and Riot Games is hosting showmatches around the world to get fans excited about the mode. We sat down with Peng “Doublelift” Yi-Liang after his victory in the LCS League Classic showmatch between TSM and CLG to discuss his thoughts on the game mode, the biggest differences compared to modern League, why new players should jump into Classic, and his future plans for creating content around it.

This is already your second showmatch. Was the first one more fun, or was the second one better since the game has changed a bit?

Doublelift: I think the first one was a little cooler in terms of the venue because there were so many people, but the second one was more nostalgic for me because it was CLG vs TSM, and that’s something I lived through. I’d say they’re kind of tied. That’s a bit of a cop out answer, but I really enjoyed both.

Luca: In terms of gameplay, Riot made some adjustments between the two matches.

Did you notice any difference from the first match to the second one?

Doublelift: I actually did not notice much difference. The champs are the same and they did not really add or remove any. The biggest difference was just how different the vibes were. In the first showmatch, everyone was not taking it that seriously, and I had to be the guy saying, ‘Maybe we should try to win this, you know?’

But in this one, it was TSM vs CLG, so there was already a bit of rivalry there, and my team came out of the gate really wanting to win. We were immediately thinking about the most OP team comps, the most OP champs, and the best builds. So I think the level of seriousness was a lot higher in this one for pretty obvious reasons.

The second one was a content game, right?

Doublelift: Yeah. It was kind of a content game, but I did not think Kassadin was that broken, actually. We did not really understand what was that OP yet, and then in game three, we were back to tryharding.

Now that you have seen more champions, who do you think is the most OP one so far?

Doublelift: I mean, it is all mid champs. It has to be Gragas, AP Yi, and Kassadin; absolutely 100 percent. Also, the game is so imbalanced. Range supports are just so broken compared to melee supports. I think that is the whole point of it. It is really imbalanced.

I thought about it and asked myself, why not just go back and balance it so Kassadin is not as OP and all that? But I think the whole point people want to experience again is the janky and crazy stuff that you could play back then. I would say the most OP stuff is usually mid lane champions, and then for bot lane it is range supports plus Vayne or Corki. They are just so strong.

Luca: Everything looked so goofy in terms of the game, and it was really fun to watch from the outside. But as players, you all looked like you were enjoying yourselves too, everyone had smiles on their faces.

Do you think that fun events like this, are something League has been missing in recent years?

Doublelift: Yeah, I think fun stuff like this has definitely been missing. There is a limit to it, right? If every single week or every single month there was some sort of fun showmatch like this, people would naturally get tired of it. That is how it goes with anything that gets done too much.

But there was nothing like this for so many years that I think people were basically starving for showmatches, rivalry matches, nostalgia matches, and stuff like that. League of Legends was pretty perfect for it. It is an important time for a lot of us pros, but also for a lot of people who played back then. It was the time when you first got into the game, and it looked and played really differently.

The feelings you had about it were still special, though. It is cool to see it and think, ‘Oh, I remember that, this was so OP.’

You just get to go back down that path and revisit those memories. This stuff is awesome. It has been received really well. The community loves it, and everyone who is playing seems to love it, too. So I hope they do more stuff like this in the future, but they do it tastefully, so they are not milking it too hard.

CLG and TSM at LCS League Classic Showmatch on July 24
Photo by Stefan Wisnoski/Riot Games

Luca: You were speaking about remembering things, but I actually do not remember anything because I never watched any classic game and I never had the chance to play it.

If you had to explain old League to a new player in three words, how would you describe it?

Doublelift:

Janky, imbalanced, and fun.

That is what it is. It is a very old game design. It was basically just, let us do it like this, and almost nothing makes sense. Items cost really random amounts. They can range from 2000 gold to 4000 gold.

Modern League has a lot more systems. There are more systems around items, waves, plates, and all of that. But when you play old League, it is all about the champions and the items you are playing. That is literally the only thing that matters. Baron is not that important. Drake is not that important. Gold is not that important. It is just who has the most OP build and champion.

It definitely takes me back to the kind of League I enjoyed back then, and I can compare it to modern League and see there are things I like and things I do not like.

So the final verdict is, was old League better than the current one?

Doublelift:

Oh, absolutely not. It was not better. The game has only gotten better since then.

There are parts of it that I liked and still like, but at the end of the day, the game had to get a lot better for people to keep playing for 15 years. It had to improve. So many games have come out since then to compete with League and try to take people’s time and attention away, but people are still stuck with League because it has gotten better every single year.

Doublelift at LCS League Classic Showmatch on July 24
Photo by Stefan Wisnoski/Riot Games

Luca: When we think about old League, nostalgia, and all the things that were cool or broken, new players do not really know old League. You are playing the mode because you have that nostalgia.

Why should a new player hop into Classic and experience it? If you had to convince them to try the mode, what would you say?

Doublelift: I would say just come into it with an open mind. It is definitely not the same game at all, and so many things have gotten better over time. You just have to appreciate it for what it was, almost like an alternate dimension of the game you play now.

Back then, the fact that you had to grind for runes and level up your account to get masteries was stupid. It did not make any sense. Why should a new player have fewer stats than someone who has grinded for rune pages and stuff?

If you think the game right now is imbalanced, and a lot of people do, they hate mages, they hate how weak tanks are, they think lethality champions are broken, there are already a lot of things people complain about. But League Classic is so much more imbalanced than modern League.

Riot has done a very good job of making it so the worst champion in the game is not that much worse than the best champion in the game. There is a big difference in modern League, obviously, but not that big. You can play Shyvana, Heimerdinger, and Jayce and still do well. You do not need to play meta champions all the time.

In League Classic, there are broken things, okay things, and terrible things, and there is a huge gap between them. So if you come in with the mindset of experimenting and trying to figure out what is okay and what works, it makes you appreciate how much the game has changed since then.

Will we ever see a Retirement Home tournament in League Classic?

Doublelift:

I would love to do something like that. One thing that would actually be pretty funny would be to bring in new generation players who have never played it, we classic players grew up with the game.

But I think what is funnier is bringing in players who only came in recently and have never played League Classic, then making them go back, play it, and figure it out. That has not been done before. I have a bunch of ideas for tournaments we could do with Classic or otherwise that could be really cool.

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