Dota 2: Plus and the Pro Scene Pre-Qualifiers

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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