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The Long Ladders
This article contains spoilers of
StarLadder season 5 and The Defense 3.
Recently two of the larger tournaments in western
dota concluded with Virtus Pro victorius against Fnatic in the finals of The
Defense 3, and No Tidehunter beating Fnatic in StarLadder season 5 finals. This
led to much discussion on the topic of lengthy online tournaments and the lack
of LAN tournaments on the scene, especially in North America. Both Starladder
season 5 and The Defense 3 had LAN finals, but only after prolonged group
and knockouts stages. The length of, and amount of teams competing in these
competitions has come under scrutiny, as scheduling conflicts and teams
dropping out of competitions has unfortunately become very common.
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We're sure Fnatic will win a major competition
soon, they're just too good not to.
|
There has been a lot of discussion on
online tournaments recently, especially in regard to tournament length and the
seeding/bracketing systems of teams taking part (check out this recent Dota Insight). Good examples to
consider are the previously mentioned Defense and StarLadder, and the
controversial RaidCall EMS One Season 1.
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| "All the games will be played in a single
elimination best-of-three format until the grand final which will be played in
a best-of-five." |
The Ems One bracket has taken a lot of
flak recently due to the fact that two of Mousesports, No Tidehunter, Fnatic
and Na'vi will be eliminated at the Quarter finals stage; there is no losers
bracket to drop down into. This is unfortunate as everybody wants to see the
best teams reach the finals of competitions, and more popular teams in the
finals means more viewers; more viewers means bigger prize-pools for teams in
the future. The danger in that mentality, however, is that teams will end up
being seeded on popularity rather than merit. The bracket for Ems One
wasn't randomized the first placed teams in one group would play the
second placed teams in another. The "lower" skilled teams (sorry) of
RoX, DD.Dota and Absolute Legends fully deserve their places in the finals,
placing higher than Team Empire and Team Liquid; DD.Dota finished top of their
group ahead of No Tidehunter. Cyborgmatt, in the previously mentioned Dota
Insight podcast, argues that it is the lack of a loser’s bracket that is the
main problem with the tournament. A loser’s bracket would provide more games
meaning more potential revenue, meaning a better quality of tournament. The
flip-side to this argument, however, is that with a loser’s bracket the
match-ups have less importance as losing a game isn't the end of the
tournament.
Cost vs. Revenue
The balance between the cost of running
an effective online tournament and potential revenue has been discussed at
length recently due to the increased length and number of online tournaments. This
has led to fixture clashes and teams dropping out of competitions because of
congestion; it has also led to viewer burnout, resulting in tournaments having
less emotional impact. The Defense 3 is a good example of this as it ran from
26/11/2012 to 30/03/2013; that's just over 4 months. There is no way a high
level of interest can be maintained in a tournament than runs for that long,
and The Defense 3 just seemed like less of big deal in comparisons to previous
iterations of the
tournament. If a tournament has to be 4 months long to have a $20,000
prize-pool, fair enough, but the previously mentioned Ems One which is running
for just about a month has a prize-pool of $35,000. The balance of money is
also better from Ems One, with the teams placed 5th-8th taking $2000; this is
more than 4th placed Liquid took from the Defense 3, a "bigger"
tournament.
There is no easy solution to this
problem unfortunately. Tournament organizers will always want to get
the most out of every competition they run, and more revenue
for organizers means more prize-money for teams. It's great to be
able to turn on a stream at any time and watch a game of professional Dota, but
there's no point watching games that have no importance in a small
online tournament that's spanned several months as soon as The International
weekend rolls around.
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