The Weekly CourierThe International Moves To Canada, ESL Announces Birmingham Major, and EG Wins First Pro Circuit Title
Valve Announces TI8
Valve released details about this year's The International, which will now take place in Vancouver, Canada at the Rogers Arena on August 20th to 25th. For the past six years, the event has been hosted in Seattle, neighbor to Valve's headquarters in Bellevue. The move coincides with Key Arena's renovation through 2020, forcing Valve to look for other locations. Valve has yet to announced details about format and number of teams, but it's already expected the top 8 teams from the Pro Circuit will receive invites. Tickets will become available this Friday, March 23rd.
Patch 7.11 released
Dota gets another mini-patch this week, aimed at revamping the gold dynamics during combat. Check out our quick review of the patch.
Resolution Removed From OG
Citing a streak of lackluster performance, OG announced their release of Resolut1on from the team. Resolut1ion was the newest member of OG, joining back in September to replace ana. And while OG said they were optimistic in 2018 after the team's win at MDL Macau, the organization felt that now was the time to change. Coach 7ckingMad will fill the position in the interim. On his release, Resolut1ion wrote “I’m very happy that I was a part of OG. Guys, Tal, Jesse, Gustav, Seb, Johan, Evany, thanks for the priceless experience and knowledge that I got during that time. I’m hoping that this decision will benefit all of us."
Kyle and Complexity Part Ways
The VP and general manager of Complexity, Kyle Bautista, wrote a heartfelt statement on the release of Kyle Freedman from the team. Kyle, most known as "Swindlemelonzz" from his team's 9-12th place finish at 2015, was one of the longest tenured players of Complexity at 4 years, along with his brother, Zfreek.
Bautista cited personality conflicts as the breaking point for the team's roster to continue as is. He chronicled Kyle's accomplishments with the team over the past years--his contributions to the fans and community, his leadership and determination in the team's post-TI5 training, and his deferment of salary to keep the team afloat: "Kyle’s time with our organization has been one of determination and self sacrifice. He put others around him before himself and did what he thought gave the team the best chance to win. I am confident that if he finds the right group of players to surround himself with, Kyle will be a world champion in this game. "
EG Wins GESC
EG went undefeated to take down their first Pro Circuit title at GESC: Indonesia. The 150 points puts them now in 7th place on the Pro Circuit leaderboards.
ESL Announces Birmingham Major
ESL announces their next Major, and the first one to be held in the UK, at Birmingham. It's set to be a 12 team event, with six invites and six regional qualifier winners in North America, South America, China, Europe, CIS, and Southeast Asia. The $1,000,000 prize pool event and one of the final chances for Pro Circuit points leading up to The International will take place on May 23 to 27. .
The International compendium will still be released?
I wonder if Dota Plus will have any effect on sales/prize money, or if Dota Plus revenue is going to be pooled into it also?
punks= satisfied
When will be released The International BP?
Still no article by Dotabuff about Dota Plus. On a scale of 1 to 10, how salty do you think they are now that their DB Plus is redundant?
Dota Plus is only meant to replace the Majors battle passes, there is still going to be a TI battle pass + compendium.
I hope the International compendium will still be released. I will never ever buy Dota Plus.
usually may late april could also be possible
SINGSING AND ADMIRALBULLDOG IS GOING TI8 :)
So it took a little longer than I thought it would, but we are now seeing what I expected to happen a while ago: teams are giving up. Having the top spot is unimportant in the grand scheme of TI, so teams like Liquid, Secret, and VP are beginning to ignore minors. Not such a bad thing I guess, but the fight for top 8 is already extremely tight.
Valve has said in the past that top 8 get automatic invites, while invitations to qualifiers will be based on their own judgments. Yes, they said the points will be factored into their decision, but the mere fact that it isn't exclusively based on the points leaves them open to major criticism when a team with no points gets in ahead of a team with points.
Teams are also very aware of the situation: if currently a team isn't in top 8, and there are more than one of the top 5 teams participating in a tournament, it's wasted time points-wise. Sure, there's practice and money, but there is the looming sense of purposelessness sitting on their backs.
OG just dropped out of the race with 630 points, 60 pts under Mineski, and were sitting 10th at the time. Navi had 1200 points. Even though teams could get invited to qualifiers, they are opting to go through the open qualifiers. There are 10 spots up for qualifier grabs, and teams are still opting for the riskier path because the lions share of spots come from qualifiers.
The point I'm making here is that it's so hard to get points that teams have given up on trying to get into top 8. Navi is the only one even remotely in danger of losing their spot, and they have roughly double the points of the next team. In the best situation, the race for top 8 would get more and more exciting right up to TI, as the teams on the cusp of qualifying fight tooth and nail for those precious few points necessary. Instead, fate has already been determined in spirit, if not quite yet mathematically.
I harp on this a lot, but until it gets traction I'm not going to stop. Here are two great ways to fix this problem:
1. Top 2 spots get a bye to playoffs, no groupstage.
2. Points are spread out further down the placements, possibly to 6-8th, to guarantee more teams get points.
OOH BONUS 3RD: earning closed qualifier spots is solely based on points, and limit the open qualifier slots to 2 per region.
The goal is to never make a game feel like it was wasted energy, and there is always a reason to fight for the spot you have or the spot you want. It would be far better than what we are now seeing, where the top slots are quitting tournaments, and teams in 12th position are giving up.