As far as I understand it, titled players can "take away" place of a non-titled player by qualifying from a tournament which they did not have to play. But they will "get punished" by losing the right to choose between the two invitational arenas and will have to play the one to which they had qualified. Given that the schedule of the invitational arenas has not been published yet, it might cause some problems in a few cases. It also seems that one of the two invitational events might be somewhat stronger than the other one. The rules are not perfect, but I am still glad that Lichess has taken part in staging a big qualification cycle.
(By the way, personally I would not speak about titled players taking away a spot of someone else, as they earned it in a competition, although they did not have to. The qualification system was not created by those titled players and some of them wanted to play an interesting event, check their form or just qualify without privileges.)
(By the way, personally I would not speak about titled players taking away a spot of someone else, as they earned it in a competition, although they did not have to. The qualification system was not created by those titled players and some of them wanted to play an interesting event, check their form or just qualify without privileges.)