Bandai Namco has officially announced the return of the Tekken Online Challenge, an online tournament circuit that showcases the world’s best Tekken players.
Regional stops of the 2021 Tekken Online Challenge
The Tekken Online Challenge goes big this year by adding more stops in its international tour. With the developers improving on the game’s overall online play and connectivity, aspiring fighters can expect some solid changes from the previous TOC season.
Instead of having three US regions (East, West, and Central), US players will now play under the banner of North America alongside Canadian players.
The Philippines will also take up a bigger player pool with the inclusion of Taiwan and Hong Kong into its regional events.
Here’s the list all fourteen stops of TOC 2021:
- North America
- Central America
- South America
- West Europe
- East Europe
- West Africa
- South Africa
- Middle East
- South Asia
- Southeast Asia
- The Philippines & East Asia
- Oceania
- Korea
- Japan
Format of the 2021 Tekken Online Challenge
While TOC 2020 had only one event for each stated region, Bandai Namco amped this year’s competition up by implementing dojo events and a regional final.
Each region will have its own independent circuit where local players can participate in community-run dojo tournaments and a Bandai-hosted Masters event, similar to the previous set-up of the Tekken World Tour 2019 before the pandemic.
These regional events will allow players to earn points on the new regional leaderboard. Bandai will collate your best Masters placement along with your four best dojo placements for your end-of-season score.
By the end of the season, the top 8 players with the most points on the regional leaderboard will go head-to-head in a Regional Final event.
As for the tournaments, Bandai Namco has confirmed that all events in TOC 2021 will have a double-elimination bracket format.
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Michael Murray explains the return of the dojo system
Tekken 7 producer Michael Murray offered some insight on why TOC 2021 is looking to take a more robust competitive system with the returning dojo component.
“It was originally by pitched by Richard “Rickstah” Uehara as a way to involve the community as a whole and reward people for doing their own local scenes,” said Murray.
Building upon that idea, the Tekken team fleshed out the dojo component for TWT 2019 and created another avenue for offline competition that was exciting and fair across regions.
“We wanted to try and find some kind of way to recreate that with the Tekken Online Challenge this year so it’s something I’m personally looking forward to,” concluded Murray.
For more information, you can check out the official Tekken Online Challenge 2021 page.
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