The Manila Major Invites - Page 5

On April 27 2016 18:59 Dysisa wrote:
I, too, wish we had tourneys with qualifiers only so the dream of a tourney full of teams playing as badly as Team Spirit or Team Archon can finally be real. I'm glad Racket is with me in this dream.

On April 27 2016 19:02 spudde123 wrote:


Liquid, OG, MVP, Wings, VGR, Fnatic, coL, Alliance and NaVi. By my count 9 out of 12 invited teams to Manila are teams who were not getting any sort of invites after TI5. Instead they've performed well in online qualifiers, they've gone to LAN and eventually performed well enough to get invites in the future. Meanwhile LGD dropped their invite status for Shanghai, VP has lost their invite status, so have CDEC, original VG and EHOME. VGR and Wings even got invites to Manila despite either being a completely new team or having fairly minimal international results pre Shanghai by qualifying to an event and winning it. I don't really see how it is so difficult to break through? You obviously have to show you are better than some of the former invited teams, but it's not like there is a lack of opportunity.

On April 27 2016 19:04 Racket wrote:

It is if the quals spots are reduced to 1 per region.

On April 27 2016 19:02 Racket wrote:

It would be nasty, people would complain that with Secret there the tourney would be better even tho they lost two b03 due to cheese while trying to qualify and ended up out of that tourney.

That is what I want, EG, Secret, and Liquid players salty. Salty posters is what makes me hot.

On April 27 2016 19:06 spudde123 wrote:


There are plenty of other tournaments where you can show that you are worthy of an invite. NaVi, VGR, Wings and Alliance are recent examples of this. The qualifier is not the only way to get in.

On April 27 2016 19:06 Dysisa wrote:

A man of my own heart.

On April 27 2016 19:13 Racket wrote:

Sure, so why would you reduce spots to 1 per region when countless tourney showed many teams are up to the task?
Let them fight for 3 spots instead of giving them rusty knives and throwing them to the pit.


XD

On April 27 2016 19:21 f0xteam wrote:




hey lets make them 5 while we are at it

On April 27 2016 19:13 Racket wrote:

Sure, so why would you reduce spots to 1 per region when countless tourney showed many teams are up to the task?
Let them fight for 3 spots instead of giving them rusty knives and throwing them to the pit.

On April 27 2016 18:15 spudde123 wrote:
Concerning invites vs qualifiers, I don't feel negatively about invites in general for the majors. The majors and TI form the vast majority of the available prize money. If we went to the qualifier extreme and there were no invites at all, then the ability of players to make big money is reliant on a few individual series a year in those qualifiers. There would be plenty of luck involved too. You could suck the entire year, win that one series over a team that has been better than you all year, and make more money than them. Also in that case not only would the majors be a huge time commitment for the players, but they would surely also heavily prioritize preparing for the qualifiers, which means even less viable dates for other organizers to hold LANs.

On the other hand if teams are invited based on what they do in several tournaments, there is clear incentive to perform in events outside of the majors. It is more likely that the teams who get to the major are ones who are not just flash in the pan teams. Though of course even with the current system there's generally a few spots that are open for teams that became hot just at the right moment, NaVi, VG and Wings in this case.

Although each qualifier only has 1 spot, it's not like the teams in there didn't have their chances throughout the year. They constantly play in tournaments, and if they actually did better than some of the invited teams they would be in contention for those invites themselves.

On April 27 2016 19:06 spudde123 wrote:


There are plenty of other tournaments where you can show that you are worthy of an invite. NaVi, VGR, Wings and Alliance are recent examples of this. The qualifier is not the only way to get in.

On April 27 2016 18:49 Racket wrote:
I am just pointing out that people is biased af but can't accept it. Tend to call out teams because to them only numbers matter but they are not able to do the numbers of their own team.

On April 27 2016 19:29 StarVe wrote:


I'm just a bit annoyed, that it's so hard to qualify and break into that circle of invitees. You say there'd be plenty of luck involved, too much reliance on very few games and such, but to a ton of teams it's already like that, just not the very established ones. I'm not saying the top teams are bad and don't deserve to be there, but I think it can be a problem that teams become "established" via a good performance at a (mostly a Valve) tournament, then start to receive invites to other LAN tournament based on that performance and newfound status and subsequently ride the coattails of that success to even more invites to other LANs and possibly another Valve tournament through by virtue of simply existing and not sucking too much.

What bugs me is that teams that have shown decent-okayish results at earlier tournaments almost have an incentive not to play a lot of games because the risk to lose their status as an 'established' team is bigger than the chance to solidify their position in the scene.

For example, Alliance and OG, two teams that in an 8 team invite scenario I would have been very much on the fence about have played only three and five Bo3 series respectively ever since the Shanghai Major, also in tournaments they got a direct invite to. If they didn't get one, they might have played even less. OG played at one single LAN and no online games at all. LGD literally got lucky enough that somebody at Starladder decided to invite them over another Chinese team like Newbee or VG.R and gave them the chance to play some games at LAN. There was no merit to that decision after the reshuffle, probably just random assessment of team potential and how it'd affect viewer interest. EHOME got similarly lucky but blew it completely. VP before the roster shuffle coasted heavily on the back of their TI5 results.

I'm not trying to say teams don't deserve their spots, they very well might, but I want to see the teams play more again, especially when the scene is so competitive at the moment. Teams like OG and Alliance are undoubtedly in a small slump when facing up against top teams in the scene. For me, preferably I'd want to see them solve that through playing more games, getting in practice in a competitive environment and proving their worth, showing they're deserving of any invites they might get to upcoming tournaments.

How cool to watch was the recent Na'Vi resurgence? Seeing the team start working out better and better while simultaneously entertaining the viewers? Pretty cool, if you ask me.

Maybe teams like Secret don't need that as Major champions and therefore absolutely secure invites but I think a lot of teams might benefit, it'd make the competition fairer again, it'd make the scenes more competitive again and it'd be a lot more entertaining for the people watching the streams and broadcasts.

There used to be a lot of talk about oversaturation of the scene and how 'having top teams play every day' is detrimental to the scene but in my opinion at the moment with the introduction of the Majors by Valve we have a bit of an undersaturation if you will. We're mostly deprived of top teams throughout the year and the overreliance on invites coupled with the giant prize pools of Valve tournaments almost provide too much of a focal point that makes it a bit too hard to break into the circle for my liking.

Yes, it's beneficial for established teams, but it's the newcomers that have to rely a bit too much on luck. I want more openness instead of trying to narrow it down even further.

On April 27 2016 18:46 sweatbomb wrote:


Actually the current roster of EG has won nothing. You think inviting teams because of performance on the previous patch is dumb but your ok with them inviting a completely different EG team than the one(s) that won those tournaments?
Ok fanboi.....

On April 27 2016 19:29 StarVe wrote:
ESL One was an eight team tournament that also had oNE qualifier per region with three direct invites. The qualifiers were held ages ago with different rosters even, Empire were lucky that ESL didn't break under the reddit pressure to give their spot away to Na'Vi because of the roster changes. Still a tournament that's pretty hard to get into, but a qualifier team won it and only 1/4 semifinalists was an invited team, with the two remaining invitees going out in groups.

SL/i-League was six invites and one EU, one CN qualifier. Very hard to get into. Still, a qualifier team won it.

Dotapit was four invites, two EU, one American and one Asian qualifier. More open tournament, with a qualifier team actually winning it and 3/4 invitees going out in the first round.

Yes, you can argue that it shows that qualifiers are working, but you can also argue that we could easily see more teamings having breakout tournaments if we allowed for a bit more openness.

On April 27 2016 19:40 spudde123 wrote:


I agree with a lot of what you said, but concerning how difficult it is to break through I made a post above to show how many teams have changed in the "invite circle" post TI5. It's easily the majority, and 2 teams that are there all the time are basically Secret and EG, who have been top3 in both of the majors. Secret was also surely in danger of losing that invite status at Shanghai because of how mediocre their performance was between the majors. There's definitely luck involved in breaking through, but a lot of teams have managed to do it.

But I do definitely agree that the scene needs the top teams to play a bit more. Every tournament putting everyone in qualifiers brings issues along with it. The teams that actually qualify to LANs simply don't have time to play qualifiers for every LAN, if they also don't want to burn themselves out before grinding even harder for the majors. Then if the tournaments don't get the top teams to compete, their viewer numbers are likely to go down. There's some completely legit reasons for why some teams need to be invited to LANs if they are to come.

However, I don't think the current system is really ideal. There should be some sort of regional competition that gives the fans a chance to see Secret, EG etc. play on a more consistent basis. I don't really know how it should be organized atm though, as I said I don't think the solution is to just put everyone in qualifiers all the time either. It is not realistic to expect teams to play qualifiers to everything while traveling from continent to continent, and all this for tournaments that money wise are far less important for them than the majors. If more LANs were regional or something it would be a different story, but that's not really the case atm.

On April 27 2016 19:45 TanGeng wrote:

I too would like to see more qualifiers not less. I feel like if we just had 4 invites, it would be much better than this 12 team outcome.

On April 27 2016 19:59 BoesFX wrote:
The only reason that I can think of that Valve give 12 invites is to justify giving SEA teams 1 qualifier spot

On April 27 2016 20:10 Taf the Ghost wrote:


You really don't understand what a "meritocracy" is if you think what Valve has done isn't one. All of the teams that got invites either have stable group of international LAN results over the year or very lately. No one has gotten an invite on nostalgia. It's on play over the past 6 months.