Part 1: The Invite System Is A Complete Mess And I Sound Like A Conspiracy Theorist For Hating North America

Excludes Super Major SEA, NA & EU Qualifier

I think I speak for everyone when I say that SEA got the worst draw of DPC 2017–2018. Well, and South America, but that was expected. We’re gonna have to give away a few awards.

All Might Award for GOING BEYOND PLUS ULTRA

Virtus.Pro just breaks all statistics in the DPC — although winning three Majors will do that. And their reward is insanely important, deciding to skip qualifiers and decline invites to get some well needed rest, unlike the lower ranked teams who have to be in three countries in two weeks.

Passive GPM Talent Award for Excellence In Mediocrity

Newbee for the most event invites with 13, one over Liquid with 12 and Secret with 11. Despite going to the same amount of events as Team Secret, Team Secret has double the points per event of Newbee. Even with that, Newbee have been able to stay in the Top 8 and are currently in the position of “going to TI8 by default unless people step it up”.

ppd Was Right Award for Invite Bullshit

Evil Geniuses only won 3 qualifiers and got invited 8 times (10 at the end of season) to events for a current total of 1335 points. Fnatic won 10 qualifiers and was invited to only 1 event for a current total of 950 points. Of the events Fnatic did not qualify, 6 were qualifiers won by Mineski. Hell, Mineski has performed the same as EG with only 3 total invites to events (6 at the end of the season, all 3 given after their win at DAC). There is simply no excuse for this. Being the strongest team in the USA should not give you an invite when the SEA region is doing better than you but is forced into a bottleneck of qualifiers.

/r/dota2 Award For Biggest Controversy That Probably Won’t Matter

Na’Vi with Lil’s points taken from his time at VP is currently 100 points per event. Na’Vi without Lil’s points is currently 34 points per event. At this stage, this shouldn’t matter at all as they’re still way out of the top 8… unless Na’Vi go second place in a Major or third place at Super Major — the extra 794 points could in theory be enough to push them to 8th place and knock out VGJ.Thunder.

The Law Requires That I Answer No Award for Least Effort In Enforcing a Rule

South America. Every single event has only had 1 South American team, with no second qualifier team or invites. 22 events, 22 spots. In a circuit where only the top 4 receive points and the only teams worth caring about are the top 10 in the world, this was going to happen no matter what. There was zero consistancy for these teams to actually play on LAN and it’s left us with three teams that are in Tier 2 but constantly battling each other over the one invite bottleneck.

What I Want To See For DPC 2018–2019

STEAL THE CS:GO SYSTEM AND WORK IT TO DOTA 2.

Qualifiers: Any team that changes roster loses their position in Majors or Minors and must go through Qualifiers again.

Minor: 2 qualifiers from every region (12 qualifiers) + regulation of 9th-12th teams from previous Major (4 invites). Top 8 go to the Major.

Major: Top 8 of Previous Major + Top 8 of Minor. Top 4 gain points towards TI9.

(Alternative — top 4 of Previous Major + Top 8 of Minor for a 12 team Major but don’t do this please)

16 team minors? Nobody wants to run that.

Do two minors with 8 teams that feed into the one major, with stipulation that once you qualify for one you can’t qualify for the other.

What’s the point?

This does two things. It removes a ton of invite bugs and region bias that can influence results which solves the NA vs. SEA problem. It also allows Minors to be exclusively focused toward the teams in the top 10 to 20 mark to gain experience quickly which would be a godsend for regions like South America, North America and CIS with a ton of really good Tier 2 teams fighting over one qualifier slot and then getting LAN tournaments spread out between them.