How professional Dota 2 has changed in 2017

In 2017, Valve completely changed the way they approached professional Dota 2 and introduced a new system. Let’s also review the problems of old Majors and explain why Valve is trying to fix them in Dota Pro Ciruit.

Seasons and Tickets: How Did They Work?

Since the launch of Dota, the professional arena has always revolved around The International. A season will start with invites in May and end in August. Victory from September to April has no effect on invites – everything is determined at the end. season.

In April 2015, the system was restructured. Valve introduces 3 more Major events with The International. They realized the game lacked scale across seasons and that the teams had no goals or motivation to compete while waiting for TI. At the time, this was seen as the solution.

But they were wrong, when things got worse. The season is divided into several parts, but only the last one matters. Even the winners of the Fall (fall) and the Winter Major (winter) were afraid of not being invited to TI. Until 2017, no one knew how Valve selected the teams to invite to TI.

So what has changed?

A month before The Internatioanl 2017, Valve introduced a new competition system for Dota 2. Valve dropped the invites and the season was split into 3 parts. From there, the Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) was born – a series of Major and Minors tournaments. Teams will receive bonus points depending on the tournament and the rank they achieve. The 8 most successful teams will receive invitations to attend The International 2018.

So DPC makes the whole season one block. Now, every win matters no matter what time of year it is or how big the reputation of that BTC, including the list of participating teams. Sometimes we feel that Valve organizes too many tournaments and the importance of tournaments for teams.

Now it’s not just about winning the last Major of the season to guarantee the team a ticket to TI. Teams will have to attend most events if they don’t want their team to land low in the final standings and cause them to miss out on a Minor in February. The most successful teams will receive invitations to attend. Major and Minor, the other teams have to pass 2 or 3 qualifiers a month before. After the first 3 events, players started complaining about the amount of games they had to play against the same opponents. This is easy to understand. Since there are a total of 27 tournaments in the DPC: 11 Major and 16 Minor.

Shuffles (transfer season): how they used to happen

In the period 2011 – 2014, the barrier to transfer was almost non-existent and teams were free to change members. At the time, the players received their invites, not their own teams, so changing members didn’t pose a problem for the teams. Tickets to TI are announced 2 months in advance of the event, so the new roster lock-in only happens for 1 year.

After the Major was announced, Valve forced teams to lock rosters every 2-3 months, which once again split the season. The obvious goal is to keep players from changing teams. The Major system and squad lock worked at first, except in the case of Artour “Arteezy” Babaev. In the 2015/2016 season, Arteezy fans had to constantly change shirts quite a few times because he always switched from Team Secret to Evil Geniuses during the open qualifiers of The International 2016.

But admittedly it has had a positive effect, organizations have reason to work on the roster for at least a few months. In the end, a total prize pool of 3 million USD is the main goal for the teams to pursue.

So what has changed?

The squad lockout was introduced into the 2017/2018 season, with some modifications. With the DPC points system introduced, Valve now has a way of punishing teams for replacing 1 or more players during the no-swap phase. If the player attends the LAN event with another player, the main team will receive 75% of the points and the 5th player will receive 50%. If the team plays with less than 4 players in the main roster, they only receive 25% of the total bonus points.

Now teams must consider carefully before making substitution decisions. DPC points are awarded to the players, not the team, and the team’s ranking is based on the three best players – a factor to consider when deciding on a substitution.

While the latter only affects teams with disappointing results after a few wins at the start of the season, in the long run this limitation will improve the international scene: the top teams won’t change. members change more often, and the transfer fees in esport are getting closer and closer to those in traditional sports.

Organizing events: how was it before?

In the past, Valve only cared about The International. Although Valve sponsors the Major and creates a list of invited teams, 3rd party organizers like ESL, Perfect World and PGL are still responsible for everything else.

Perfect World’s failure at the 2016 Shanghai Major is a failure of Valve and the entire competition system. This event was a mess. The opening ceremony was ruined, continuously delayed, the practice area was not available, and even the competition area had to be closed before everyone finished. Players feel uncomfortable in makeshift and unvented game rooms. Caster complains of poor working conditions, no internet and ‘super long’ working hours – 15 to 17 hours per shift. Perfect World also lost the keyboard of Roman “RAMZE666” Kushnarev.

A failed Major is a big deal, but what about a company that has the guts to beat Valve? On May 9, 2017, an unnamed RuHub employee posted a test message to Valve on Reddit talk about PGL’s attitude about organizing events. According to him, PGL made it difficult for the Russian casters team working at The Boston Major 2016 and The Kiev Major 2017. Both events were held in moderation, so Valve has no reason to worry much, but PGL will not be holding any Major at DPC.

So what has changed?

Unfortunately Valve hasn’t changed anything in 2017 about event organization and again, they still trust 3rd parties to organize events. Contrary to expectations: these organizations are now given more power – they are free to choose the format of the competition and the teams to be invited. As a result, only 8 teams participated in each of the first tournaments of the year. This format may be acceptable at the Minors, but when so many DPC points and millions of dollars are involved, they should not be applied.

Dota 2 fans don’t like how discriminatory organizations are, although the organizers of the first two Majors, ESL and DreamHack, have apologized for the format. According to them, these events were planned before the DPC was announced, so it was too late to change.

Here, one will wonder when Valve should step in and introduce a minimum number of teams to attend, to make major events more prominent, or more important in terms of prize money. . Otherwise, nothing will turn the Majors into a second 2017 PGL Open Bucharest – where there is no live audience there.

Fortunately, Valve is still looking after the DPC and has blocked unusual intentions from organizations. On November 23, Valve forced Mars Mediato to invite EHOME, who at the time was not allowed to qualify for the MDL Macau. According to Valve, this intervention was necessary because Mars Mediato violated the terms of the DPC when it agreed to a deal with ACE, and such agreements should not affect the professional scene.

So what went wrong?

Valve removed the old problems that occurred during the Major and made the professional Dota 2 system more structured, but it wasn’t perfect – simply because the plan didn’t go as planned.

The scoring system is almost perfect, but the way it is applied is confusing. By Valve’s design, Majors award more DPC points than Minors: the system was created with the intention of encouraging top teams not to participate in minor tournaments to play against weaker teams. Valve forced the tournament organizers to hold qualifiers in all 6 regions.

However, qualifying for the Minors was no different from the Major’s. Team Secret blocked OG into the SL i-League Invitational Seaon 3 and PGL Open Bucharest in Europe, and Natus Vincere became the final boss of the CIS qualifiers. With less well-known teams, only Keen Gaming, Team Kinguin and the South American team paiN Gaming found success.

Long term vision

While there are a lot of new issues popping up in DPC, it’s likely they’ll be resolved naturally in the long run, and a few system changes from Valve are sure to be on the way.

In addition, Valve should participate in part of DPC events. If the world’s top teams decide they’re ready to go to the 2nd Minor for an additional $300,000 in prize money, these tournaments will forfeit points. In that case, the 15 Majors with 16 participating teams, the open qualifiers and the slots per region could be split equally.