ESL have announced a revamp of the ESL Pro Tour due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. As offline competition is made impossible by current circumstances, the Pro Tour will shift almost entirely to online play for the 2020/21 season, with a view of slowly re-installing offline play as the situation allows. While this much was expected, the particularly interesting news are a change of format for this season, as well as a boost in prize money for ESL’s weekly cups. Instead of four offline Masters events, the EPT will play out largely in regional online competitions, with global Season Finals, reminiscent of the 2013 WCS Circuit capping off every season. The circuit is still planned to finish offline at IEM Katowice 2021.
Seven Divisions, Three Seasons
The format change sees the international scene split into six divisions, each with their own points ranking similar to the split between international and South Korea previously. The South Korean circuit will continue to run unchanged. We were told that ESL’s main consideration in implementing this new system was to optimize playing conditions and competitive integrity and therefore avoid cross-server play wherever possible. As a result, every division is played exclusively on the home servers of its region unless both players agree to a different server. Players will keep previously earned EPT points and carry them over to the regional divisions.
The player pool of these divisions is not equal across the board, but rather based on ESL’s analysis of player pool depth of different regions — we were told Aligulac and an internal evaluation scheme were used to determine this. The leagues are split as shown below.
Each division is played across a season of three weeks; 25% of the player pool of each region will be invited based on EPT standings while the rest is determined through qualifiers. These invites will be sent out after the conclusion of the TeamLiquid Starleague 5, as that tournament awards EPT points. Every division has a slightly different format, from which a set amount of top finishers re-qualify for the next season. In Europe, for example, the top 12 of the division retain their spots in the league.
The formats for each division:
Europe: Four Round Robin groups of 8 players will feed into a 16-player double elimination bracket. The top four of each group advance; the top 12 of the final bracket retain their spots in the division for the following season.
North America: Two Round Robin groups of 8 players will feed into an 8-player double elimination bracket. The top four of each group advance; the top 6 of the final bracket retain their spots in the division for the following season.
Latin America, Oceania & Rest of Asia, China, Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau/Japan: Two GSL style, 4-player groups feed into a 4 player double elimination bracket; the top 3 of the final bracket retain their spots in the division for the following season.
Which region a player competes in will largely be determined by residency, meaning there will be no possibility for a player to switch regions unless their residency status changes. One concern and, as Apollo admitted, even potential weakness of the system, is non-Korean players currently residing in Korea. The EPT system will allow them to compete both in Korea and in their home region, although Apollo stressed they would have to compete on the server designated for each division unless both players agreed to playing on a different one. More detail will follow in the official rulebook that is to be published soon.
One of the concerns that came up in the development of this regional system, Apollo said, was a fear that ESL would “eat up” too much broadcast time and thereby push out smaller tournaments like Wardi’s online cups. To address this, ESL have consulted with a number of them and are planning to involve them in the coverage of the new divisions and qualifiers—instead of their own streams, they would then be working for ESL directly and be compensated that way.
Prize Money & EPT points
As a result of these format changes, prize money and points distribution have also changed, but the overall prize pool remains the same. There is still a total of $238,500 to compete for every season, now split as follows:
Europe: $84,000
North America: $38,000
Latin America: $17,200
Oceania & Rest of Asia: $14,100
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau & Japan: $14,100
China: $14,100
Season Finals: $57,000
A more detailed overview can be found on ESL’s website.
Season Finals are back!
The Season Finals add an additional week to each season, with breaks in between every season to allow room for third party organizers to step in and contribute tournaments to the circuit. Three seasons are planned in total — Summer, Fall, and Winter, with a yet to be announced global tournament taking place in January, replacing the previously unannounced global event towards the end of the 2020/21 season. The format of the Season Finals has four GSL style groups of 4 players each, from which the top two advance into an 8-player double elimination bracket.
The sixteen spots at these Season Finals are distributed this way:
South Korea: 6
Europe: 4
North America: 2
China: 1
Latin America: 1
Taiwan, HK, Macau & Japan: 1
Oceania & Rest of Asia: 1
Asked about point allocation, Apollo says ESL want players to earn the majority of their points in the regular regional divisions as opposed to Season Finals. They should instead be viewed as a chance for the top players of each season to earn additional EPT points as a reward for their performance — at the very least these could make the difference in seeding at Katowice 2021. These Season Finals will be global, which means the top players from all international regions and South Korea will participate in them.
One interesting aspect we discussed with Apollo was the possibility of returning to offline play should safety measures be reduced or even removed. While he admitted the split into different regions makes a return to the previous EPT system impossible for the remainder of the 2020/21 season, Apollo left the window open for Season Finals to be held offline if the situation allows. All regional divisions will, however, remain online competitions even in that scenario.
IEM Katowice 2021: Mostly Similar
IEM Katowice, as well as the TBA Global Tournament in January, are still planned to take place offline. The format of the Global Finals at IEM Katowice 2021 will remain the same, but there are some obvious differences to seeding. There are still five direct seeds into IEM Katowice 2021. One of them has already been claimed by Rogue at Katowice 2020, another is on the line at the TBA global event in January, and the additional three go to the winners of all three GSL seasons. The other spots will be determined among the regions as follows…
ESL Open Weekly Cups
There will still be EU, NA and Koreans weeklies, but the prize pool of each will be increased by $300 per week, partially as a result of high interest and participation. These cups will also move from Sunday to Monday to avoid clashing with regular division play and third party organizers whose tournaments would also take priority on weekends. On a potential boost to EPT points for these weeklies, Apollo said it was an option ESL would continue to monitor, but they currently wanted to avoid inflating the importance of these weeklies and thereby “making the decisions for players” to compete in them. Points gained from these cups will remain global points and will therefore not be split into different regional points.
ESL are currently in talks with Blizzard to counteract map-hacking and other forms of cheating in its online competitions, a concern Apollo stressed ESL “take very seriously”. The official rulebook for the revamped EPT Circuit will be published by ESL soon. All information can found on their website.
Very cool changes, happy to see that the weekly cups are getting some love after all the attention the community has been giving them. Apollo has done a great job so far!
On May 14 2020 00:07 TL.net ESPORTS wrote: IEM Katowice, as well as the TBA Global Tournament in January, are still planned to take place offline. The format of the Global Finals at IEM Katowice 2021 will remain the same, but there are some obvious differences to seeding. There are still five direct seeds into IEM Katowice 2021. One of them has already been claimed by Rogue at Katowice 2020, another is on the line at the TBA global event in January, and the additional three go to the winners of all three GSL seasons. The other spots will be determined among the regions as follows…
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So the number of points are irrelevant? If the 8th EU player has double the points than lets say Has or Cham, they still don t get the spot? Appart from that point this looks pretty reasonable to me I feel like they could easily put for example Taiwan and Australia together with one less spot and give that one to either EU.
Heavily regionalized play to supplement the weekly cups and deal with server issues is a pragmatic call. There's a lot of changes here, and it looks like ESL put a lot of thouģht into this.
This looks very good overall, obviously a ton of hard work went into this, thank you Apollo.
The prize pool increase to the weekly cup is excellent news, but I'm a bit puzzled by the Monday switch. I feel Sunday was perfect for a lot of people, especially non-pros with day jobs who could compete on the weekend.
If I had to nitpick, I'd say giving China the same number of seeds (2) as latin america and tw/hk/jp/macau is a bit unfair. I would have gone 4/1/1 or 3/2/1. On the other hand, really happy to see most of the seeds going to Korea and Europe, where they should be.
On May 14 2020 00:07 TL.net ESPORTS wrote: IEM Katowice, as well as the TBA Global Tournament in January, are still planned to take place offline. The format of the Global Finals at IEM Katowice 2021 will remain the same, but there are some obvious differences to seeding. There are still five direct seeds into IEM Katowice 2021. One of them has already been claimed by Rogue at Katowice 2020, another is on the line at the TBA global event in January, and the additional three go to the winners of all three GSL seasons. The other spots will be determined among the regions as follows…
[image loading]
So the number of points are irrelevant? If the 8th EU player has double the points than lets say Has or Cham, they still don t get the spot? Appart from that point this looks pretty reasonable to me I feel like they could easily put for example Taiwan and Australia together with one less spot and give that one to either EU.
I don't think there's any other choice with the way the league is set up. You could treat the regional leagues like Challenger and the Season Finals like Premier but then you're heavily weighting cross server play. I like the approach ESL took where they've allocated a set amount of spots to each region, and the players within that region are fighting for those spots.
On May 14 2020 00:07 TL.net ESPORTS wrote: IEM Katowice, as well as the TBA Global Tournament in January, are still planned to take place offline. The format of the Global Finals at IEM Katowice 2021 will remain the same, but there are some obvious differences to seeding. There are still five direct seeds into IEM Katowice 2021. One of them has already been claimed by Rogue at Katowice 2020, another is on the line at the TBA global event in January, and the additional three go to the winners of all three GSL seasons. The other spots will be determined among the regions as follows…
[image loading]
So the number of points are irrelevant? If the 8th EU player has double the points than lets say Has or Cham, they still don t get the spot? Appart from that point this looks pretty reasonable to me I feel like they could easily put for example Taiwan and Australia together with one less spot and give that one to either EU.
I don't think there's any other choice with the way the league is set up. You could treat the regional leagues like Challenger and the Season Finals like Premier but then you're heavily weighting cross server play. I like the approach ESL took where they've allocated a set amount of spots to each region, and the players within that region are fighting for those spots.
Well, that s also true I gues. At least they used Aligulac for it and not WCS Points from last year, as those were quite screwed by the challengers anyways.. It s defnatly not a perfect solution either, but all in all a reasonable one
Edit: In the Top 36 are exactly 18 Koreans and 18 Foreigners as well, so a 50/50 split makes perfect sense from that point at least. It s WAY more EU heavy though, but some compromises had to be made I gues. Time, Special, Neeb and Scarlett are the only non-EU foreigners up there. So its 18 KR 14 EU 2 NA 1 Chinese 1 Latam
I imagine a lot of this will run on Sundays so it only makes sense to move the Cup, why would they run 2 events on the same day. I think this is the best overall solution. Reminds me a bit of WCS 2014/15, just scaled down obviously
This is all very reasonable imo, the format seems like a good solution given the circumstances and the seed allocation is quite fair. Of course you can always argue about the details but in this case, I think it would be a question of moving at most 1 or 2 slots.
Considering the amount of Korean seeds (and taking the inevitable retirements into account), I think both Scarlett and Special should have decent shots at qualifying through KR which would be cool to see.
The regional approach all over again ? Damn this sucks. :/ If I understand corretly, risky and probe are favorites to go for the season finals alongside Maru, Serral, right ?
My only problem is with China having only 8 players/ 1 season final spot. I feel like you could have joined Taiwan with SEA and give only one spot for both. I don't think anyone from SEA has a real shot at beating anyone else at those season final. (Sorry probe ) With that said IDK what the lag is like from TW to Australia Also is Mexico NA or Latam?
On May 14 2020 02:07 stilt wrote: The regional approach all over again ? Damn this sucks. :/ If I understand corretly, risky and probe are favorites to go for the season finals alongside Maru, Serral, right ?
The real question is whether 60k is enough to get Maru to play in an online tournament.
Looks well thought-out and fair. My nitpick is that I'm not a big fan of the 8-person round robin group. I think 4-person GSL-style groups would be better because it can help the players to focus on studying their opponents better. Also the presentation is less confusing.
How much discussions have you guys had with other event hosts to have more events distribute points? Would be cool to have the Red Bull tournament give points like the ESL weeklys
On May 14 2020 03:05 Mettis wrote: How much discussions have you guys had with other event hosts to have more events distribute points? Would be cool to have the Red Bull tournament give points like the ESL weeklys
The issue there is that the Red Bull events aren't equal opportunity. The ESL Weeklies have an event in each region, TSL had qualifiers in each region (kinda and that also didn't go too well).
Whereas the Red Bull events are EU server events with Reynor set up as the final boss which works fine as a standalone event, but not so much when it comes to handing out EPT points.
On May 14 2020 00:07 TL.net ESPORTS wrote: IEM Katowice, as well as the TBA Global Tournament in January, are still planned to take place offline. The format of the Global Finals at IEM Katowice 2021 will remain the same, but there are some obvious differences to seeding. There are still five direct seeds into IEM Katowice 2021. One of them has already been claimed by Rogue at Katowice 2020, another is on the line at the TBA global event in January, and the additional three go to the winners of all three GSL seasons. The other spots will be determined among the regions as follows…
[image loading]
So the number of points are irrelevant? If the 8th EU player has double the points than lets say Has or Cham, they still don t get the spot? Appart from that point this looks pretty reasonable to me I feel like they could easily put for example Taiwan and Australia together with one less spot and give that one to either EU.
I think it would be hard for the EU to have many players with more points than Has since they are more people competing for the points. Has is isolated in a smaller player pool, separate from the EU pool. He competes for points the EU players cannot access. Add to that the comment about season finals not being a dominant point giver. This means that the points the few great players in small regions accumulate have a bigger impact on the final total. Depending on point distribution it might pay off to be a big fish in a small pond. No need to care about Qui-Gon Jin's "there's always a bigger fish" in that situation.
Shades of WCS 2012 here by shifting focus to smaller, continent/region level tournaments. Quite interested to see how viewership is for non-Europe regions!
I wish they kept esl opens on sunday. I think the simple solution that is if there is another tournament giving esl points that day, then for that week only move it back to monday.
But overall happy to see them noticing how successful the weekly cups have been. The best matches and games in sc2 are all coming from there it seems. Best thing to happen to the game in awhile.
I would like to see them give more points for esl cups too but I get they probably dont want to do that during the middle of the year
On May 14 2020 05:02 ssg wrote: I wish they kept esl opens on sunday. I think the simple solution that is if there is another tournament giving esl points that day, then for that week only move it back to monday.
But overall happy to see them noticing how successful the weekly cups have been. The best matches and games in sc2 are all coming from there it seems. Best thing to happen to the game in awhile.
I would like to see them give more points for esl cups too but I get they probably dont want to do that during the middle of the year
I’m pretty sure they moved it because they will have a bigger broadcast almost every Sunday, also it’s not starting until mid June so there are a couple more weeks of ESL opens on Sundays
On May 14 2020 03:04 argonautdice wrote: Looks well thought-out and fair. My nitpick is that I'm not a big fan of the 8-person round robin group. I think 4-person GSL-style groups would be better because it can help the players to focus on studying their opponents better. Also the presentation is less confusing.
8 player round robin group where you play one or two matches a day is in theory better than a gsl group though? Because you can focus on one opponent at a time. Depends how spread out the games are.
On May 14 2020 05:02 ssg wrote: I wish they kept esl opens on sunday. I think the simple solution that is if there is another tournament giving esl points that day, then for that week only move it back to monday.
But overall happy to see them noticing how successful the weekly cups have been. The best matches and games in sc2 are all coming from there it seems. Best thing to happen to the game in awhile.
I would like to see them give more points for esl cups too but I get they probably dont want to do that during the middle of the year
I’m pretty sure they moved it because they will have a bigger broadcast almost every Sunday, also it’s not starting until mid June so there are a couple more weeks of ESL opens on Sundays
The cups will start on Mondays from the next ones.
WCS 2012 was really exciting to watch, so I like going back to more regional play! Seems like the best way to mitigate issues of latency, though obviously there will always be issues with online play. Having to play on the NA server from Korea seems like a good way to create some drawback for double dipping for the GSL + circuit players.
On May 14 2020 05:02 ssg wrote: I wish they kept esl opens on sunday. I think the simple solution that is if there is another tournament giving esl points that day, then for that week only move it back to monday.
But overall happy to see them noticing how successful the weekly cups have been. The best matches and games in sc2 are all coming from there it seems. Best thing to happen to the game in awhile.
I would like to see them give more points for esl cups too but I get they probably dont want to do that during the middle of the year
Hi, starting this week we have TSL on Sundays (and Saturdays) and the week after TSL is finished they will start the Masters Divisions Qualifiers (some of them also probably on Sunday), then there are the different pases of the Divisions which will also take every of the following Sundays, so i think moving the ESL Cups now is the right thing to do.
But atm it seems unclear if they really moved them to Monday or even Tuesday (the official brackets for the Open Cups say Tuesday)
Also the official EPT page, the official announcement, the rule book and the announcement here on tl.net contradict each other in several things.
We have a contact to ESL on the Liquipedia discord, who now helps us with figuring this all out in the next days, so we can properly display everything on liquipedia.^^
Imo the slot distribution is quite unfair towards EU players (with the current rankings not even Clem would make the cut)
percentages of EU players in the last Blizzcon/IEM Katowice (and the upcoming IEM Katowice 2021) Blizzcon: 5/16 = ~31.3% IEM Katowice 2020 (Top 36): 10/36 = ~27.8% IEM Katowice 2021 (Top 36): 7/36 = ~19.4% (in best case it would be 8/36 = ~22.2%, if an european wins the global DH Masters in January 2021)
Rest looks very good to me (except for missing and contradictory information)
Very good news. It's great to see, once again, that ESL are putting so much thought in to creating a reasonable and entertaining system. I trust that they will continue to improve the setup as things progress and everyone learns more.
Maybe we are also getting some idea of how the 2021-22 EPT could look like without region lock. I think it's great that Koreans will participate in the Season Finals.
On May 14 2020 03:41 Waxangel wrote: Shades of WCS 2012 here by shifting focus to smaller, continent/region level tournaments. Quite interested to see how viewership is for non-Europe regions!
They have my view in other regions if they have a good casting crew available for them. If it turns in to Native Language casting as the primary stream, then it becomes less interesting to me. In the areas where players are lesser known, it's hard to get invested in them unless a caster is there to give insight as to who they are.
I like all these pragmatic changes except the weekly cups moved on Mondays. Most of the people will be at work and unable to watch them, unless it is scheduled in the evening.
I thought this is what the points are for? Anybody understood this and care to explain in lamen terms?
Points decide qualification for Katowice in every division. There are 5 spots available for the European division and the top 5 in the European ranking get seeded into the Ro24 at Katowice. Other divisions have their own point systems and different amounts of seeds to play for.
Obviously with 7 different leagues they can't reasonably have qualification decided by a global points ranking. Points are harder to earn in Europe than in OCE, for example.
FYI: We just noticed that the Distribution that was provided to us is technically (because of how double elimination brackets work) impossible. There will be some minor changes to the distributions for the places 11-16 at least in all but the EU and NA qualifiers. It is a very small mistake that easily can happen and will be fixed soon.
Basically ESL wanted to award money for non-existend matches (as in those Qualifier matches qualified players would have to play qualified players).
We contacted an ESL Official about it (with a possible solution) and will fix it as soon as possible on liquipedia (aka as soon as we get the answer from ESL).
On May 15 2020 03:19 DieuCure wrote: Thanks ! Did not know that Korean players were invited, massive bias for the EPT Korea ranking ?
As the slot distribution for the non-korean rankings is set and koreans hence can not qualify via non-korean rankings anymore with that change its no problem. Of course the koreans will be able to "steal" some of the money originally allocated to a foreigner event.
I am glad EPT has responded to the new normal of social distancing with a radical and warranted change to the format. Online is the way to go for at least another year, and this way we are getting the best possible formats for online competitions with the focus on regional seasons. Though I had plans to attend, waiting/hoping for an event like Dreamhack, with its tightly packed convention feel and crowded LAN space offering, to occur any time in the near future is magical thinking. Maybe IEM can happen with severely reduced seating capacity, but most offline tournaments are going to be audience free for awhile and thus might as well go online. I can't complain about the move from Sunday cups, as the replacement is more quantity of high quality SC2. Improved stakes should also boost the cups we still get on Monday. This might be the chance for esports to take market share from stadium sports that it will never relinquish. The slate of online competitions is as good as I can ever remember, and the casting/presentation teams have been at a really high level for awhile.
I thought this is what the points are for? Anybody understood this and care to explain in lamen terms?
Points decide qualification for Katowice in every division. There are 5 spots available for the European division and the top 5 in the European ranking get seeded into the Ro24 at Katowice. Other divisions have their own point systems and different amounts of seeds to play for.
Obviously with 7 different leagues they can't reasonably have qualification decided by a global points ranking. Points are harder to earn in Europe than in OCE, for example.
Oh my god, now I get it
wow that took me waaaay too long. I thought some random people from the Europe Circuit Ro32 get seeded into Katowice,
but it's actually the other way round. That table really threw me of big time
For someone who has attended DH Montreal the last three years, any loose dates available yet on the Fall session so I can do some planning on how to get drunk and watch SC in a hot tub thru the internet?
EPT![[image loading]](/staff/Olli/sc2_divisions_new.png)
![[image loading]](/staff/Olli/Spots_for_Katowice.jpg)
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ESL Pro Tour/2020/21/Masters/Summer
