The Dota 2
2018 Pro Circuit is over, and the results
are in. The eight teams receiving a direct invite to, not
Seattle, but the Rodgers Arena in Vancouver, Canada, are (in order of
Dota Circuit Points) Virtus Pro, Team Liquid, PSG.LGD, Team Secret,
Mineski, Vici Gaming, Newbee, and
VGJ.Thunder (stands for Vici Gaming Jeremy – after Jeremy Lin, NBA
player and team mascot).
With an estimated
twenty-five million dollar prize pool, there are ten more teams who
can pass through Open qualifiers, into Regionals, and finally to the
main stage at TI8.
Before
an in depth analysis of regions and teams, I wanted to talk about a
new-ish feature, and a few other changes to Defense
of the Ancients 2.
Released
on March 13th,
2018, Dota
Plus,
is billed as “an evolution of the Battle Pass … a replacement of
the Majors Battle Passes with a new type of service that doesn't
depend on a specific start and end date, and one that we can
continually add features and content to over time.”
It
is supposed
to
“Enhance your daily Dota experience with Dota
Plus,
a new monthly subscription service designed to help you get the most
out of every match you play.”
Does it replace the Battle Pass with adequate features? Does it help
you get the most out of every match you play?
Valve
is correct when they claim Dota
Plus
includes a variety of features, but most players may find them
underwhelming for the $3.99 monthly subscription. First, Dota
Plus
allows players to level up a hero by completing minor challenges and
winning games. Leveling up a hero unlocks a badge and chat wheel
dialogue options. Second, completing challenges earns the player
Shards. Third, Shards can be spent to purchase hero sets or Relics.
Relics replace the Inscribed
Gems
which players use to able to slot into items. Each Relic tracks a
particular stat for that hero. There are four gold relics and ten
silver Relics per hero. It's a good idea in theory, if one wants to
pay for this, but the Relic system has already demonstrated its
flaws. For instance, the hero Pangolier
originally had a Relic which recorded how much Pure damage he
inflicted (as opposed to Physical or Magical damage). This was a
Relic of his, because a popular item for the hero inflicted Pure
damage. But the item (Monkey King Bar) was changed to do Magical
damage, and Pangolier was left with no means to inflict Pure damage.
Valve eventually changed the Relic to record a different type of
damage, but this alteration proves the Relic system is a waste of
time, as items, abilities, and play-styles change, Relics will be
altered and their original stats lost.
In
addition to leveling heroes, Dota
Plus
also includes an Assistant. Fourth, the assistant suggests which
items to build, which abilities to choose, which lanes to start in,
and which heroes to pick based on the heroes one's teammates and
enemies have selected. These features are already available to some
degree on third party websites such as Dotabuff
and OpenDota.
But having them in the client doesn't seem so much as an advantage
as a further solidification of the public meta. Other players will
feel they have the evidence to back up their criticism of any choice
which deviates from the Dota
Plus
approved norm. Fifth, Dota
Plus
includes some in-game, real-time, analytics. When Reddit says Dota
Plus
is pay-to-win, this is what they mean. The subscription gives the
player access (as the game unfolds) to detailed death summaries and
farming benchmarks. This latter includes, how many last hits and
denies a player should have (based on the hero they are playing), and
what their network is and what it should be. I could be wrong, but
prior to Dota
Plus
the only method of knowing one's networth was to add up the value of
all one's items. But this system doesn't work as well as one might
think either. Some heroes can be played in multiple positions and
Dota
Plus
doesn't know how to differentiate.
Dota
Plus
includes four final features: post-game analytics, an addition to the
spectator graphs, seasonal terrain, and free access to Battle Cup.
Post game analytics adds additional data and seems a small, but
reasonable bonus. Most spectators can access only gold and
experience graphs, but Dota
Plus
subscribers can also see the predicted chance of victory. Without
access to the algorithm it's impossible to know how much detail and
effort Valve have put into estimating the victor, but this feature
feels pointless. The win probability graph strongly correlates with
the gold graph, with a few exceptions. That's when it's not broken.
The seasonal terrain, temporary, blah.
And
Battle Cup. My favorite part of Dota, playing a with a four other
people routinely in a tournament format. The cost of Battle Cup is
included in Dota
Plus,
or one can pay a dollar instead.
In
short, Dota
Plus
is mostly stuff taken the Major Compendiums, a few new ideas, some
pay to win, and bits of it broken. It's inferior to the Compendiums,
and only reason I could recommend it is if one were playing on
playing three or four Battle Cups a month, because you are already
going to pay 3 or 4 dollars.
The
final question, when a subscription of Dota
Plus
ends, what does the paying player keep? Not much. Hero levels, chat
wheel dialogue, Relics, the Assistant and all the analytics, the
probability graph, and the seasonal terrain disappear. All that one
retains is, any sets purchased with shards and the ability to pay a
dollar to play Battle Cup. If one chooses to resubscribe it all
comes back with nothing lost, but it feels like a substantial loss
after the first subscription ends and you're left with nothing, not
even the relics or hero levels. Of course that's Valve's purpose.
Once you've played with Dota
Plus,
regular Dota can feel inferior. And the company was even brutally
selfish enough to set subscriptions to automatically resubscribe, so
most players ended up paying for a second month even if they had
planned on quitting (and if you cancel and then resubscribe, it
resets your subscription to automatically resubscribe, again).
Whether one feels Dota Plus enhances their Dota experience is up to
them, but myself, it's not worth forty dollars a year.
Now back for a quick consideration of the invites to The
International 2018.
With eight teams receiving direct invites and ten more spaces to
fill, Valve recently released the rules of the Open and Regional
Qualifiers. Most years a Regional included six to eight invited
teams and two teams from the Open Qualifiers, but because of their
rules for what constitutes a team this year (which Valve is changing
for next year), there are almost no teams directly invited to the
Regional Qualifiers, and there are many more Open Qualifier spots.
There
are six regions and this is how the eighteen spots for The
International 2018
have been meted out. China has four invited teams and two Qualifier
spots for six in total. Europe has two invited and one Qualifier for
three. The Commonwealth
of Independent States have one invited and one Qualifier for two.
North America has zero invited but three Qualifiers for three. South
America has zero invited and one Qualifier for one, and South East
Asia has one invited and two Qualifiers for three. Of course,
invited isn't the best term, more like earned (or qualified), but
it's a term of habit since this is the first year Valve made its
method of invitation transparent.
On Reddit there is a question of whether this final tally of teams
from each region is fair, based on the performance of teams this
season.
For myself, I keep a system measuring the strength of the teams, and
these are my top 18.
Tier 1:
Liquid
LGD
Virtus Pro
Tier 2:
Secret
Vici Gaming
Tier 3:
VGJ. Storm
Optic
TNC
Newbee
Mineski
Tier 4:
Fnatic
FlytoMoon
LGD.FY
Pain Gaming
Evil Geniuses
OG
Tier 5:
VGJ.Thunder
The teams in red are the directly invited teams. There's one obvious
oddity, VGJ.Thunder had some phenomenal luck in the middle of the
season but have played exceptionally poorly since. We'll examine
each team's chance in more detail once Regional Qualifiers have
finished but for now the question is, do the amount of regional Qualifiers match the performance of each region during the 2017/2018
season?
Europe has only one Qualifier spot, and OG is the only EU team in the
top 18, check!
South American, the only region to win neither a Minor nor a Major,
has only one spot in Pain Gaming, correct!
South East Asia has two spots, for TNC and Fnatic, good again!
Now
here is the controversy. Quite a few pros, casters, and redditors
believe North America has one too many Qualifier spots. I say,
untrue. They deserve those spots, whether one is looking at my
rankings, or the Dota
Pro Circuit Rankings
which
show that the 9th,10th,
and 11th
strongest teams (based on points earned) are all from North America.
Some say, EG doesn't deserve a spot because they shuffled their
roster. But according to that theory, no region deserves any more
invites. It's an argument which can be turned on any region. The
truth is North America deserves its three. But does China deserve
its two? No. According to DPC points they deserve no spots, and
according to my ranking, one for LGD.FY. Zero would be unacceptable,
so China should receive one spot. Why did Valve gave them two? It's
China's year.
And CIS should've received that final slot, to make them two
Qualifiers. FlytoMoon is in my rankings, while both FlytoMoon and
Navi are in the top 16 for DPC points.
Of course, Valve isn't going to change anything now, regardless of
what people think. It's too late to claw back a spot, but maybe
they'll choose better next year.
That's it for Dota for about two or three weeks, until the Qualifiers
are completed and we have the full eighteen team list.
Next week, back to the conclusion of The Banner Saga 2
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