Gaming
The new Dota 2 season has started with a bang amid a flurry of competitive action. Here are the key talking points as the road to The International 8 begins.
There’s no debating that the period post The International 7 is agonising for Dota players and fans alike. Akin to the off-season in football, many are willing for official competition to return. Streamers are doing their best to entertain the masses, but it’s just not quite the same. Fierce competitors would like a well-earned break but instead the manic scramble for finding the perfect new squad begins.
October is here now, though, and we’re now well and truly into the new season. Valve have again reformed the competitive Dota system, with 11 majors and 11 minors confirmed as a minimum for the year ahead, all prior to The International 8. There’s heavy emphasis on performing well and consistently, too. This year, the teams who accrue the most qualifying points will automatically secure a spot at the biggest competition in esports. The majors will remain the most important fixtures in securing a shot at the coveted Aegis of Champions, with the points awarded dwarfing that of the minors. But there are plenty of incentives for teams to play in every competition. By the end of the season, the best of the best will rise to the top with the stragglers left behind.
With DreamHack, ESL One Hamburg, PGL Open and Starladder qualifiers all concluding this past week, we’ve had a look at what the opening set of qualifiers has taught us.
Valve’s promise of healthy scheduling is still not perfect
People rejoiced when they saw the announcement that Valve would manage a schedule and ensure that tournaments would not clash at all. The cynics among the community pointed to Valve’s track record in being famously disorganised to suggest that it would be far from plain sailing. And they weren’t wrong. There’s been a lot of schedule clashes as teams battle it out for spots at the big events. With both the first major of the new season and an array of minors on offer, the Dota competitive scene went from zero to 60 at a ridiculous pace. Suddenly, games were unticketed, teams had to pull out of certain events to accommodate fixtures and it harked back to the manic days pre-Valve’s original Major system, where online qualifiers were more prevalent. For teams on the fringe, tournaments outside of the minors were also being played and thus tier two teams have found themselves inundated with fixtures.
At least there’s no LAN competitions that clash, but there’s actually just days between events which will make it all the more intriguing for teams that have qualified for more than one event. Will teams suffer from burnout from playing too much? Only time will tell.
Momentum will play a huge factor this season
Judging by the qualifier results that have seen Natus Vincere qualify for two of three events and Team Secret snag the European spot for all three, it’s clear that momentum will play a huge part. Team Secret seem to have adapted quickest to life as a new squad and no European squad has come close to beating them. International champions Team Liquid will sit happily in the direct invite slot and represent Europe, but competition for limited spots has never been hotter.
What we’ve most definitely seen so far is that teams that fail to hit the ground running are already missing out on tournaments. With the new format meaning that offline events will likely mean teams competing may not be able to play in the online qualifiers for the next set of tournaments, we may eventually see variety. Take the star-studded lineup of OG, for example. Despite adding Roman 'Resolut1on' Fominok to the roster in place of young star Anathan 'ana' Pham, the record-breaking roster has struggled to find its stride and won’t feature in any of the first three tournaments, including ESL One Hamburg, the first major of the year.
The patch can’t come soon enough
The meta at The International 7 was incredibly diverse – and a wide range of heroes remain viable – but the game seems to have somewhat levelled out as teams have figured out the patch in its entirety. We might have seen a few tweaks to the patch here and there, but the gameplay changes haven’t been quite as substantial as we’d have liked and it’s more or less the same picks and bans every game, at least in the early stages of the draft. Heroes such as Venomancer, Lich, Necrophos, Ancient Apparition, Bloodseeker, Night Stalker and Earthshaker are likely to be picked or banned in near enough every game. With such a huge volume of Dota being played, it’s almost becoming tedious to watch the obnoxious Venomancer spew horrible green bile across multiple heroes resulting in another team wipe.
We’re not urging for changes so monumental that the meta becomes centred around one or two heroes. Instead, we’d like to see suitable adjustments that alter the way teams play and make the captains of each squad have a serious think about what’s best.
The Major/Minor system might not be as good for tier two teams as first thought
With every Valve announcement about the competitive scene, there comes an uncontrollable wave of hype. Many were quick to tout the changes to the esports landscape as brilliant for tier two teams and a chance for them to showcase their ability on a stage, in front of a live audience and fans. So far it’s looking unlikely that it’s truly the case. While the likes of Natus Vincere may not be considered tier one any more, they’re still far from the fringe teams that we see play in the qualifiers. The issue is that there are still too many big names entering the Minor competitions to make it feasible for a team on the outskirts to qualify for a big event. Sure, that may iron itself out in the future, but with the teams that failed to qualify for the first set of events, we can’t see it happening anytime soon.
There is of course the positive of teams getting to play against the best in qualifiers, which previously would only have happened on occasion. But should the big dogs continue to reign supreme then the pipeline dream of having smaller teams compete on the global stage still looks a substantial distance away. With repeated failure to qualify to LAN events and a lack of player ranking points accrued, it could too cause carnage with roster shuffles as those squads have little to no incentive to stay together should they not achieve the results they desire.
There’s good news too
Many of the points above may seem overwhelmingly negative, but we’ve still seen some great Dota action in the last few weeks. New talent is emerging on the commentary side due to the swathe of competitive play and there’s no shortage of matches for the die-hard Dota fan to peruse.
The new system has very much been launched in a traditional Valve style, with a somewhat hands-off, experimental, let’s-see-what-happens approach. It’ll be fascinating to find out how the scene develops over the coming months and whether teams that missed out on the first batch of tournaments can later atone for poor qualifier performance.
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