EPTSome tournaments already do that, but more should do it. Starladder and Dreamhack and ESL etc. should just directly invite the best 2 or 3 teams, and hold qualifiers for the other teams. Complexity and Balkan Bears and Basically Unknown should have to play in these qualifiers, and not EG or C9 or Secret.
My Perspective on ＤｏｔＡ ２ - Page 9
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dizzy101
Netherlands2066 Posts
Some tournaments already do that, but more should do it. Starladder and Dreamhack and ESL etc. should just directly invite the best 2 or 3 teams, and hold qualifiers for the other teams. Complexity and Balkan Bears and Basically Unknown should have to play in these qualifiers, and not EG or C9 or Secret. | ||
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lookfirewood
1212 Posts
World Championships European Cahmpionships Swedish Chamionships Champions League On top of this, there's each national league if you care to follow it. None of these collide, and if they do, the teams are in different leagues so it wont matter for the teams. It's sad for the viewer but that's a minor issue. Too much footie is'nt bad is it? Dota from a swedes perspective: The International BTS WEC Starseries Dotapit Dota2 league Dreamleague ... just to mention a few. The International (WC if u will), is played once a year compared to footie's once every 4 years. Most of the other tournaments collides and many teams attend to most of them. This is the biggest issue i believe. | ||
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spudde123
4814 Posts
Having watched Thorin's video on the matter, I think a proper seeding system could easily solve many issues. Let's take the Summit case as an example. Because EG won the first Summit, they invited them directly to the second one. Why don't more events do this sort of thing? Why should EG, the team that won the previous SL and a bunch of other events this fall, be forced to play the qualifiers again to get to SL LAN? The teams that consistently travel the most are the ones who are some of the most successful, and their schedule would be far easier if their good success in one tournament would be rewarded with a direct invite to the LAN of the next iteration of the event. Sadly because many LANs are pretty small in terms of the number of teams, it's hard to expand this to more than 2 teams per event (in a 16 team event one could comfortably invite 4 or more and still have a lot of room for qualifiers). But if tournament sizes would allow it, a simple invite system based on previous performances for a part of the spots would solve a bunch of issues. The top teams wouldn't clash all that often online so there is more hype left for the LANs. There is actual excitement in the qualifiers to see who is going to take it instead of now that it's more if the favorites play, they also qualify. Or at least if you put teams through qualifiers, does it really have to be a round robin where everyone plays everyone? Why can't it be a properly seeded bracket where the top seeded teams only join the qualifier in later rounds? Because of their success in actually getting to the LAN and placing well (and then being forced to travel), they are awarded with getting some time off and only joining the qualifier in the later rounds against the teams that won the more open portion. | ||
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govie
9334 Posts
On December 16 2014 20:28 smr wrote: but as long as nobody knows how Valve decides who to invite to TI I can't blame anybody. Is every tournament worth the same "points" -> playing every tournament and collecting every 1st to 3rd place is extremely valuable even if you get a few group stage exits in other tournaments. With 1 standout tournament each year you can't expect pros to willingly lower their chances of getting there. Thats why blizzard and riot setups for a proscene are superior to dota's setup, because dota's ticketsystem doesn't favor these kind of "a monopolist is guiding the season kinda setups". If valve openly states the ti-points for tournaments, it would affect the worth of a ticket in the stores directly, valve can never do that as it would kill their own marketplace. | ||
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govie
9334 Posts
On December 16 2014 20:49 spudde123 wrote: With a lot of people talking about "you are not forced to participate in every tournament", I started wondering whether the number of LANs even is really the issue. I feel the problem may be more with every LAN having a long qualifier, and hence all the top teams that actually make it to the LAN have to play official games almost the very next day they get back. There is no time to cool off for the teams nor the fans of these teams after a big LAN. Having watched Thorin's video on the matter, I think a proper seeding system could easily solve many issues. Let's take the Summit case as an example. Because EG won the first Summit, they invited them directly to the second one. Why don't more events do this sort of thing? Why should EG, the team that won the previous SL and a bunch of other events this fall, be forced to play the qualifiers again to get to SL LAN? The teams that consistently travel the most are the ones who are some of the most successful, and their schedule would be far easier if their good success in one tournament would be rewarded with a direct invite to the LAN of the next iteration of the event. Sadly because many LANs are pretty small in terms of the number of teams, it's hard to expand this to more than 2 teams per event (in a 16 team event one could comfortably invite 4 or more and still have a lot of room for qualifiers). But if tournament sizes would allow it, a simple invite system based on previous performances for a part of the spots would solve a bunch of issues. The top teams wouldn't clash all that often online so there is more hype left for the LANs. There is actual excitement in the qualifiers to see who is going to take it instead of now that it's more if the favorites play, they also qualify. Or at least if you put teams through qualifiers, does it really have to be a round robin where everyone plays everyone? Why can't it be a properly seeded bracket where the top seeded teams only join the qualifier in later rounds? Because of their success in actually getting to the LAN and placing well (and then being forced to travel), they are awarded with getting some time off and only joining the qualifier in the later rounds against the teams that won the more open portion. Seems delusional like envy if you ask me, haha (joke ofc)  Less matches, means less ticketsales, means lower prizepools means EE blog whining about prizepools. | ||
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WindWolf
Sweden11767 Posts
Dota casts in general do a good job of explaining what's happening On December 16 2014 20:24 accophox wrote: Cause it's a matter of money. The western scene probably doesn't have salaries for players comparable to that of league players competing in LCS. Prize money remains their livelihood. Each tournament they play in represents a possible payday. And, even then, tournament winnings are not just split 5 ways. There's income tax that must be paid, a portion that may be paid out to the team organization, and a separate share that would go to the manager. That $75k that C9 just won at the Summit 2? You're looking at maybe just over take-home of 10k a player, assuming a 20% tax on the gross, and C9 taking 10k for paying the manager and providing various services to the team. You also have to consider that C9 didn't even qualify either - and would have been paid nothing for the month of games in qualifiers they had to play. With such a top heavy prize distribution, you can't rely on placing 1st in the tournaments you do pick to participate in if you're not by-far-and-far the best. And for those complaining about how much they get paid: EE lives in Toronto - not a cheap city by any stretch of the word. Oh, and here's the kicker: Without TI proping them up, C9's winnings this past year, so far, has been about 380000. Sounds like a lot. Again, let's apply 20% tax, 10% of remaining gets paid to organization (and manager), and suddenly, each player is only receiving 55k per year - certainly better than some people, but in the grand scheme of things, not a whole lot either (considering they should be considered near the top!) That might be true, but on the other hand, will the scene be healthy in the long run bt having teams signing up for every single tournament, even those who they can't fit into their schedule? | ||
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spudde123
4814 Posts
On December 16 2014 20:57 govie wrote: Seems delusional like envy if you ask me, haha (joke ofc) Less matches, means less ticketsales, means lower prizepools means EE blog whining about prizepools. Is "number of matches" actually a selling point that works? Honest question, my personal views on what is interesting and what should sell in my perfect world are probably pretty different from reality. But if that is actually the case, then I feel the teams have to go to a direction where they simply show that they prefer events that are concentrated on well executed LAN events, and drop events with a 2 month long online qualifier that sells itself to viewers by having 200 matches played. As is obvious they simply can't play many tournaments that have that kind of a structure, whereas LAN concentrated events with short qualifiers (or invites for the better teams) are probably far easier. | ||
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slop
United States7 Posts
trading window with roster locks? private (no spectating) pro-team mm ladder with TI invites on the line? stop the players from changing their names all the time... | ||
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zdfgucker
China594 Posts
On December 16 2014 20:49 govie wrote: Thats why blizzard and riot setups for a proscene are superior to dota's setup, because dota's ticketsystem doesn't favor these kind of "a monopolist is guiding the season kinda setups". If valve openly states the ti-points for tournaments, it would affect the worth of a ticket in the stores directly, valve can never do that as it would kill their own marketplace. Is that why SC2 is rapidly declining in success and the other Blizzard Esport titles and meh at best? It's widely known who the best western teams are, even if C9 only participated in, say, 4 major tournaments in 2014 instead of ~10. Player conditions can be improved by having someone represent the players, yeah. But managers are not powerless either. Communicate and if needed, boycott a certain tournament. Or several. Artificially controlling tournaments, especially by Valve, seems stupid. Teams should choose their tournaments better and openly give feedback or boycott. If you don't do that, then that's your own fault and you're not in any position to complain. stop the players from changing their names all the time... Good point, actually. Player names often are VERY immature also. Just thinking of all these anime waifu names from EE makes me cringe. | ||
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Geisterkarle
Germany3257 Posts
While I'm not really against multiple tournaments at the same time, the teams should split up a little ... but then maybe it's a thing about money again: If there are (example) two tournaments at the same time. Does a team only try to qualify (sic) for one of them - maybe usually the one where you could get more money - or both, if you don't manage to get the cut for the "first" (because other Tier1 teams are competing)? If you try for both it can happen, that you are in on both and then you have very little time for all your games or even have to drop out of one - which makes this system crazy stupid! I never see such things in some rules, so I have to ask: How is it, if a team drops out "without reason" ("... sorry, we have to go to the finals of another tournament!"). I, as an organizer would put in my rules, that the teams/players have to play or have to pay a kind a serious fine! (if there are true reasons, like a player is in a car crash, broke an arm and can't play for a month, this is dropped of course). So teams have to think a little bit more before joining a tournament! Some teams already are starting to select more! maybe this turns all out ok by itself! The other thing about the casters. Yeah ... recently I often think two things: 1. ah, those casters again... do they everything? and 2. who and what is this crap? So basically I'm bored or annoyed! Seriously: The community (or whoever) made so much fuzz about Sheever and because of that "today" she is rarely seen and if then as "host" but not as a caster. But if I compare her to some of the people casting high-priced tournaments ... I really would like her back! I actually never understood the troubles; she has a nice voice and I like listening to her! Maybe she is not that deep into the details ... but who cares, which is maybe the problem EE says: Yes, casters know not that much; or let's say, most of them. But that is not the real problem! If I may switch games for a moment, my favourite caster-duo is probably "Tastosis" (Tastless and Artosis for you SC ignorant  ). And I like them, because they work so well together! While both were quite good players themself - so they know stuff! - one (Tasteless) is the entertainer and one (Artosis) is the analyst! And if EE adresses the thing with Pros casting with casters (how that sounds), he wants something like that! And it is true: There are few real knowledgable casters, that really could need a Pro on their side; but as already mentioned, not every pro is "caster material". Maybe they know better but can't explain it or talk "in front of a crowd". If I can switch to SC one more time: One pro player that could do that was/is actually IdrA (now playing heroes of the storm)! He was rare on casting duties but even his haters hat to admit his cool, direct, analysis were incredible! But who is there in DotA? I didn't really follow "The Summit 2" with all those players on the microphone. Who stood out as great caster material!? Ok, this getting too long... maybe later more... | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
I do have to side with the "casting really is exhausting" side of things though. I do think some casters aren't performing to their optimal levels, but the same could be said for some players. In solo-casts filling dead-air; 30 seconds or longer without hearing someone tends to make people think there isn't even a caster, even if there really isn't anything going on in the game that's worth commenting on - it's why you hear strange tangents in solo casts and duo casts. Duo casts have gotten a bit off-topic more-so than normal recently, probably the saturation effect. In duo casts it's already come up in the thread, when there is a lack of synergy between two people. Even if you know someone fairly well outside of casting when they do a cast nerves can make them act a little wonky. Most casters also do their own observing, splitting the effort merely between the observing in a hectic game without making viewers ill is a skill that has to be learned and casting is a gargantuan effort. Part of the attraction of a duo-cast is that it mitigates this a bit by letting one person speak less and observe the map more. There's also the differentiation between the drafting phase casting and in-game phase - it's two separate knowledge bases. A lot of the dumbest things casters say are during the drafting phase where a pro could rapidly correct them, but it comes back to the dead-air thing. If a team takes their maximum time on their second ban then there's really not a ton to talk about while the timer counts down, but generally speaking people want to hear some analysis (especially if they paid for a ticket for a tournament that has said it has casters). To properly cast a high level game you have to be familiar with every t1 player in the scene (because of frequent stand-ins, this has to be known more than just overall team stuff. hell, even knowing who the common stand-ins are is useful), their idiosyncracies, specific habits, hero builds/trends, etc. There are tools now that help with this but it's one thing to look at datdota and notice that venge is getting picked a lot and another to know if the higher priority of picking VS is affecting the draft early or late into the draft. If illidan's team drafts him dragon knight I'm going to sit around puzzled when he doesn't skill breathe fire unless I know that that's his standard personal build (which everyone and their mother has criticized so I think he doesn't play DK at all anymore). Now, all of that research and effort is negated when you cast the same team 15x in a row (as I'm sure has occurred at certain tournaments, or even without being a specific tournament. I know casters have gone from casting the same teams playing two bo3 in a single day one after another for separate tournaments with the same casters). After the fifth game you probably aren't going to be wondering who their mid is. If I were a caster I would probably be pretty awful. I'm not someone who hypes very well, I don't watch every pro-game ever, have a bad habit of letting dead-air occur, my play by play is weak and I am probably notoriously difficult to synergize with. And my camera work leaves plenty to be desired. (I did very briefly do casting a long time ago for TL IH for a short while after ti1, when tl ih were actually a thing- my voice is decent but there's no pay and wasn't really any incentive and in that case RL took over - I would love to cast but I'm probably going to be evicted if I don't find a job in a week so it's basically more of pipe dream fantasy than normal and I've just been bounced from this situation to the next situation like it for the past four years). On players changing their name all the time, Valve seems to already have a system being moved into place to deal with that, where you can only change names every two weeks officially and it appends sponsor names etc. to your profile. I have heard negative rumors that lumi was told NOT to do research after he moved studios as part of why dreamleague was so bad, but eh. Just rumors to my knowledge. | ||
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Mirray
Belarus2 Posts
On December 16 2014 20:35 Hds wrote: You didn't even read the blog, he's not complaining about prizepool at all, but the conditions he and all the players are facing Someone just ban this raging kid or something As u can see not only one subject affected in this post. So you may just gtfo if you are a mindless parrot. | ||
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eejaydubya
United States36 Posts
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hfglgg
Germany5372 Posts
On December 16 2014 18:37 spudde123 wrote: I don't think this is the case. If we look at TI4, there were 6 European teams present: c9, NaVi, Alliance, mouz, Empire and Fnatic. After TI4 everyone had roster changes, and then we have new teams for all of these organizations (except Mouz) as well as Secret and Team Tinker, and some potential challengers. With c9's online playing conditions their qualification to events from EU qualifiers isn't always guaranteed: they've even failed to qualify to SL (though got in after Chinese teams dropped out) and Summit (got in through the redemption vote). If you originally make the decision to just skip a bunch of events, you also take the risk that you either don't qualify partly because of your ping issues, or that you just play poorly at the LAN or have bad bracket draw, and suddenly your results are few and extremely mediocre. It's easy to say now that EG, Secret and c9 have been the top3 western teams after TI and they can afford to skip events. How about TT? Or NaVi? Or VP.P? Or VP? Or Empire who seems to have won a few games the last few days? How do you separate these teams from one another? They all want to prove themselves. Right after TI nothing was guaranteed for c9 either, they had to play events so that they guarantee they get the results they need. i think valve should make the invitation process more transparent so that teams have some kind of security where they stand. they dont need to enclose everything, but an official statement on how many teams of each region are going to the next(!) years international and when the invites are handed out would help a lot. the last years the TI always had a 7/7 split with one additional seed for the last years winner. it was always 2 NA/SEA teams and 5 EU/China and i will bet my ass of that this wasnt a coincidence. if valve would publicly anounce that the best 5 european teams will be invited and the evaluation period is from this years international until the first week of may the next year when the invites are handed out, teams have a pretty solid picture of how their chances are. C9, VG, EG are so far ahead of everyone else in terms of achievments compared to the other teams in their region that they really dont have to play anything at all and they would still be invited, because there isnt any american team that can surpass EG and there arent 5 european teams that can surpass c9 in the upcoming 6 month. But there is a lot of uncertainty and because TI is so big, i can understand when teams dont want to take the risk. the oversaturation thing i still dont really see as a threat. it will solve itself automaticly over time one way or another, either with a lot of dying tournaments or with a diversification of the tournaments in regards to prestige. what kills a lot of hype though is that the quality of tournaments has not developed at all in the last two years. the tournaments are better off financially now than they were back in 2012. teams dont have to cover their own travel costs which leads to a lot of international tournaments, less last minute drop outs and less "i have never heard of these BYOC-teams, but they go 0-3 anyway" teams. but the quality hasnt improved one bit, not from the organisations perspective (day 1 issues, terrible fantasy scheduling, no pre-prepared content for waiting times) and not from the casters as well. the BTS casting at the summit was no different from any online match they did in the last year except for the rare occasions where they had a good pro insight, but that wasnt always the case and even less on the first day. lan tournaments completely fail to distinguish themself from one another and they fail to deliver storylines. you dont create a storyline by putting two guys in front of a desk and let them talk about this random dota match that is going to happen right now in LA/Frankfurt/New York/ Jönköping. what they really should do is capture the drawn out online qualifiers in nice, short clips to see what the teams at the finals went through to be there. add interviews about the hopes and fears of the players and then create something of value in your tournaments. dont rent a venue, dont do shit before the first game starts, pray to gaben that everything went well and call it a massive success even though no one is gonna remember your shitty event except for the one reason it really stands out: it was shitty as fuck and couldnt even compare to a preschool play. | ||
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ItsMeDomLee
Canada2732 Posts
On December 16 2014 19:06 Talin wrote: Would anyone here have bet 1000 dollars that EG wouldn't get a direct invite for TI3 six months before the invites were handed out? If you don't play a couple of tournaments and then flop in one or two that you DO play, yes, your TI invite may very well be jeopardized. Are you insinuating that Dota 2 is a game of chance? That's what it sounds like. It's not, "Oh, we did poorly in this tournament and ended up not qualifying; thank God we're playing in two more that we can get decent results in!" Dota isn't like that. The good teams that matter (read: top 8 at TI) will be consistently good and near the top. EG chose to (because of personnel issues that have been well documented by now) not practice before any lans whatsoever while also withdrawing from certain tournaments. The result? They tanked and lost everything that they played in. They didn't get invited because they weren't good enough and it showed in the qualification matches when they couldn't get through. It's not a coincidence that Demon STILL can't find a team despite being one of the more talented NA players. Also, by playing in less tournaments, C9 should naturally care more about the ones that they DO play in and do better as a result. EE's argument is that they don't care about the games that they play because they play too many. The obvious way to fix that is to play in less tournaments and care about the games that you do play. I don't see how this is debatable. Edit: On the subject of casting, the reason why certain casters who are knowledgeable about the game don't go full hard on "Everyone look at me and bask in my knowledge" is because a lot of the times that will just make you look stupid. Take for example Envy casting during the phase 2 mini-lan portion of DH in one of Alliance's games where he made himself look like the biggest jackass by managing to be 100% wrong about the entire game while essentially foaming at the mouth at how Alliance were giving up on the game and not playing properly. Although I could understand some of the points he was trying to get across, he was far too patronizing of the players and the strategies that they used and only managed to predict everything wrong and look stupid. I don't disagree that more insight could be shown in certain timing windows of lineups and the way that teams approach the game but I honestly don't think the BTS studio is that bad. Godz and LD typically do an acceptable job in most of the games that they cast. | ||
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nojok
France15845 Posts
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NeThZOR
South Africa7387 Posts
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Dorner
Ireland22 Posts
Maybe some current casters need to read it too. http://www.eslgaming.com/article/redeye-guide-being-esports-broadcaster-part-1 | ||
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spudde123
4814 Posts
On December 16 2014 21:51 ItsMeDomLee wrote: Are you insinuating that Dota 2 is a game of chance? That's what it sounds like. It's not, "Oh, we did poorly in this tournament and ended up not qualifying; thank God we're playing in two more that we can get decent results in!" Dota isn't like that. The good teams that matter (read: top 8 at TI) will be consistently good and near the top. EG chose to (because of personnel issues that have been well documented by now) not practice before any lans whatsoever while also withdrawing from certain tournaments. The result? They tanked and lost everything that they played in. They didn't get invited because they weren't good enough and it showed in the qualification matches when they couldn't get through. It's not a coincidence that Demon STILL can't find a team despite being one of the more talented NA players. Also, by playing in less tournaments, C9 should naturally care more about the ones that they DO play in and do better as a result. EE's argument is that they don't care about the games that they play because they play too many. The obvious way to fix that is to play in less tournaments and care about the games that you do play. I don't see how this is debatable. Edit: On the subject of casting, the reason why certain casters who are knowledgeable about the game don't go full hard on "Everyone look at me and bask in my knowledge" is because a lot of the times that will just make you look stupid. Take for example Envy casting during the phase 2 mini-lan portion of DH in one of Alliance's games where he made himself look like the biggest jackass by managing to be 100% wrong about the entire game while essentially foaming at the mouth at how Alliance were giving up on the game and not playing properly. Although I could understand some of the points he was trying to get across, he was far too patronizing of the players and the strategies that they used and only managed to predict everything wrong and look stupid. I don't disagree that more insight could be shown in certain timing windows of lineups and the way that teams approach the game but I honestly don't think the BTS studio is that bad. Godz and LD typically do an acceptable job in most of the games that they cast. At TI4 there were 5 Chinese teams in top8. So that leaves 3 western teams. I can now be captain hindsight and say that it is clear that these 3 are EG, Secret and c9 this year, but was this something the teams could count on when they formed their lineups? What if the the top3-7 turned out to be relatively close this year in the west? Imo not skipping events right from the start is completely understandable because of this uncertainty for starters. And if we go below the top3, qualifying for a lot of LANs gets a lot more difficult, so participating in everything in the hopes of succeeding a few times to get to LAN and prove your worth is even more vital. Qualification for a LAN can be a question of winning one bo1 or one bo3, and there simply are uncertainties involved when we are talking about these sorts of situations. I also maintain that there is a pretty clear difference in games the teams actually want to play, and the games tournaments make them play. Whether one team is better than another should be measured on LAN, where both teams have the same conditions and there often is hype through the live audience. Playing these games for the players is also very different from playing group stage game #99. I think teams may be willing to participate in a certain number of LANs per a few months, but it becomes a problem when to get to each of these LANs they have to play long qualifiers. There are no seeding systems in dota that help with this sort of thing, allowing the more successful teams to skip at least a part of the qualifiers so that they get their time to be in the dark, rest or practice and build hype for future encounters. Concerning the casting, I don't think the level of game analysis is even the biggest thing. I feel with good research to set the basis for the matchup at hand you can go a long way. You can tell the viewers how the matchup has ended previously (often casters don't even know this correctly or don't even talk about this sort of thing at LAN finals, which I can't really comprehend), what sort of trends there are in the drafts for the individual teams and specifically when facing each other, whatever else there may be. I start getting annoyed when we have a LAN final and people can't properly present the context for the game, and any game analysis after that is sort of secondary. I feel for a casual viewer the general context for the game is also far more important, as it's easier to relate to some general storylines over specific tactical aspects inside the game. Of course I understand that for online games it's a bit too much to expect casters to do a lot if they cast 8 straight games every day or whatever, but for LANs I would really appreciate some visible preparation. | ||
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Doraemon
Australia14949 Posts
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