A Riot-approved fully region locked construct where teams like complexity and Ehug would be given plenty of presentation and LAN experience between getting destroyed at the only 1 international cross region even that is allowed to occur a year

k0pf

Germany180 Posts

January 17 2015 01:04 GMT

#42

I dont know if one TI a year is "good or bad for esports" but i like it. And the fact that the pricepool at TI4 was so high was in no way valves fault. They just said "Hey guys here is the one turnament we host every year, like every year." and ppl started throung huge amounts of money at them. What should they have told us? "Uh sorry we said the money would be for the prizepool of TI4 but we decided to only take 1/4th of the money oft this turnament and the rest will bespent later."?

In my opinion they just did what they told us they would do. That's a nice thing nowadays.

The only real problem with TI is that its so fucking stupidly hard to tell and secretly messured whos going to get an invite. Valve should rly work on that and make it public. Maybe a little like the WCS system works.

Zaphid

Czech Republic1860 Posts

January 17 2015 21:40 GMT

#43

Well, the only reason TI4 ballooned so much was because of all the shiny cosmetics and Valve allowing people to throw their money at them. I'm sure that if any other tournament came out with similar value for money, they would enjoy a lot of success as well, Summit 2 and XMG CD were pretty successful.

In the end, you get prize money thanks to giving people a good deal, all the talks about "supporting the tournament/players" are usually just somebody whining about not getting enough sales in a politically correct way.

Of course, there's still the problem that Valve are the only ones randomly changing the rules of the game and little bit more transparency regarding their development would certainly help. Sudden removal of battle boosters for example. If an organization could schedule a tournament a year in advance, set the theme, hire the artists, get the hype going, start selling the whole thing ahead of schedule instead of trying to give out all the unlocked rewards after the event has ended, they would surely enjoy a lot of success.

Aldehyde

Sweden939 Posts

January 17 2015 22:32 GMT

#44

On January 14 2015 14:01 PuroYO wrote:
A one tournament sport like Cross-country which has the world cup and no one cares about anything else? Yes.

A one tournament sport like Footballs world cup? Yes

A one tournament sport like American handeggs super bowl? Yeah.

Nothing wrong with that.

Super Bowl isn't a tournament, it's a single game between the two best placing teams in two separate leagues to my understanding.

Football isn't a one tournament sport unless you ONLY count the world cup. I also don't see why you would mention the world cup and not Champion's League or whatever. It's in the clubs where the players actually make their money.

To me, the current situation with the International being so much bigger than anything else is both cool and so, so, so boring.
It makes for situations like Newbee that was specifically put together for TI4 and then they stopped playing. It sucks.

On January 14 2015 18:41 aboxcar wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

I categorically disagree. TI being once a year and the biggest is good for Dota, and good for the professional scene.

1) Dota playerbase is healthy, great hype created. this should be obvious to all.

2) imagine if instead of 1 tournament with $10 million prize pool, we had monthly tournaments with $1 million prize pool. then you would really see what it means to be a "one tournament sport"

3) if as asserted other tournaments don't matter, why do all teams participate? even teams such as newbee who are virtually guaranteed an invite to the next TI still participate, so something in your premise is incorrect. even in the case that top teams participate only for practice, this shows that these tournaments have value. teams without a guaranteed invite also feel pressured to participate as much as they can, to build their CV as it were. EE I believe also mentioned this, so indirectly TI has added value to the other tournaments.

3b) even if tournaments were smaller and top teams pulled out (such as starladder/i-league) this creates room for tier 2 teams. because the best teams can choose to focus on the most prestigious tournaments, other teams have a proving ground and opportunity to win some prize money. this is not really a necessary consequence of having one huge tournament during the year, and it is not guaranteed to always be this way, but my point is that one large tournament (or larger tournaments) and other comparatively small ones is not necessarily "bad"

4) what is "deplorable" about a team being formed to win TI, and then actually winning it? what is deplorable about a competitive landscape wherein players try to form the strongest team they can?

In your second point, are you trying to imply that having ten 1 million dollar tournaments is the same as having one 10 million dollar tournament? Or are you actually sensible and saying that ten 1 million dollar tournaments is preferable?
I would way prefer that over the current model and I am clearly the embodiment of sensibility.

Maybe Valve could put up a prize pool for the entire year and with a compendium that covers all of Valve's tournaments that year. They could just delegate their tournaments to other organizers like MLG, Dreamhack, Starladder, Perfect World etc. if they feel that doing it themselves would stretch them too thin.

I guess that sounds very much like what Riot's doing but I feel like there's a definite middle ground to explore.

More than anything, I want Valve to stop being so quiet about this sort of stuff. I understand their hesitation to talk about projects that aren't done but they kind of have to understand that Dota 2 is about more people than themselves at this point.

Hopefully the people it affects directly (organizers, players, casters) are more in the loop but it oftentimes seems like Valve does whatever the fuck they feel like without informing anyone.

-Edit- I probably should have read the thread like I usually do before commenting. That way I wouldn't have to repeat the same things that have already been said...

Saechiis

Netherlands4989 Posts

January 18 2015 02:03 GMT

#45

I think TI should have a little more emphasis on awesomeness and a little less on money.

Snerd

United States125 Posts

January 18 2015 04:55 GMT

#46

On January 14 2015 21:36 BongChambers wrote:
God I hope TI5 wont be as bad as TI4 was. Dota really doesn't need another TI4 right now :/

What was wrong with TI4? I personally enjoyed it a lot and am wondering what it was about it that made people dislike it.
My only complaint was that the schedule wasn't really fluid. Had the WB Finals on the first or second day or something.

Liquid`Nazgul

22427 Posts

January 18 2015 12:11 GMT

#47

This is absurd both football's are enormous throughout the year. The idea that football only matters once every four years lmao.

Murlox

France1699 Posts

January 19 2015 18:29 GMT

#48

One could argue that TI also has a positive effect on other tournaments prize pools, and thus to a margin of the scene. It drags everything up.

Which, in turns, favors the "lesser" teams. So yeah, maybe the top teams do not give 2 shits, but the lesser ones are now presented with a better chance to grab serious money throughout the year (and maybe even better chances to win them, if the top teams are not interested).

The yang of the yin.

Just my 2 cents,

Very good OP, thank you.

Drow

Canada60 Posts

January 21 2015 19:17 GMT

#49

I think a scene structured similar to tennis would be a good way to organize things. Having 4 major tournaments is definitely not too many for them to still be meaningful while allowing smaller tournaments in between to still be possible. Automatically qualifying highly ranked teams for any tournament they want to attend while still leaving the possibility for unproven teams to qualify. I think it would also increase the stability of teams since their wouldn't be a huge period where winning is relatively meaningless.

Ofcourse the huge thing holding back the scene from this approach or anything similar is the lack of an organization to control and set the groundwork.

Edit: I really like the structure of football (soccer) as well, allowing teams to work their way up into higher leagues. It works a bit better with teams changing rosters and the possibility of a World Cup like tournament sounds fun, and Canada might be competitive unlike football :D

RuiBarbO

United States1340 Posts

January 25 2015 15:32 GMT

#50

Seems to me that since alternative prize pools have grown pretty substantially, there is a bit more money floating around for the less-known teams. I guess the biggest problem seems to be when, like the OP says, teams like Newbee throw together a lineup a few months in advance, then win the whole tournament. That's just kind of boring, and what do you know, TI4 ended on a pretty boring note.

I feel like maybe the problem isn't that TI4 has a disproportionately huge prize pool but rather that certain teams/players don't have to follow any sort of clear, story-building trajectory to make it to the grand finale. If you look at the NBA, people follow those teams religiously because the teams themselves are meaningful. TI4 Newbee was not a meaningful team because through an unfortunate combination of circumstances they actually didn't have to craft an image of themselves (at least not that I remember... Certainly not like NoTidehunter in the build-up to TI3) before they became millionaires.

Anyway, definitely agree that it's hard to feel much emotion about the smaller tournaments that happen, even though I'm not sure prize pool is the (only) root cause. I did find my interest in the DAC go up substantially when I realized that you could watch in DotaTV without purchasing the compendium. It felt like it was much more relevant to Dota 2 as a whole, and it might feel even more like that if there were more to keep us engaged with it.

nimdil

Poland3758 Posts

February 09 2015 10:22 GMT

#51

I don't think Valve has any interest in tuning TI down. The money in the tournament makes the title - as a whole - more recognizable. People say "wow - 10m$ tournament, more than golf/tennis grand slam tournament". They don't care that golf & tennis have a lot healthier landscape with just few super tournaments on top while dota2 has one super-uber tournament on top and nothing remotely comparable through the rest of the year.