I’ve had a lot of thought about improvements I’d like to see to the DPC season and started to sketch them out, but it became obvious it’s such a huge job trying to come up with a perfect circuit. I’d still like to share a few ideas, but on Twitter, it’s very limiting…

First of all, I’d like to see the minors removed completely. They don’t work for tournament organisers, are hard to sell sponsorship for, still cost a lot of money to produce and don’t really do much for teams either (other than the winning team of course). They also don’t really provide a suitable route to TI or the Majors for tier 3 or below teams.

Rather, I’d stick to the five majors format, I think that mostly worked, though qualifiers moving a bit to provide some breaks would be good and removing the minors would also help the schedule logjam. It would also allow 3rd party tournaments to enjoy some time in the spot light, something that has been sorely missing this last 12 months, through no fault of their own.

Format wise, I would love to see a 24 team major. There are several reasons for this, but mostly its because it offers a much better chance to tier 2 and tier 3 pro teams and better regional opportunities too. I’d open Africa and the Middle East as a new region and provide them with one slot.

I know you might think that’s crazy, but lets be honest, we all thought that when it happened in South America and look how far they came in 2 short years. Dota is a global game, lets make it global for everyone.

Likewise, we can talk about how many slots every region gets, but use a co-efficient to figure it out like UEFA does for UCL. With 24 teams, every region gets more slots anyway… I’d also work on the prize payments so that more of it filters through the teams and players lower down. This isn’t rocket science and Nahaz and Noxville have both come up with perfectly good ideas on prize money spread in the past. My firm belief is that the Majors provide a regular season in pro dota and therefore should also provide a regular income of sorts too, not just to the elite few winners or top finishers, but the season should provide a stable place for players to earn throughout the year.

You may argue teams need to provide higher salaries and while I’m absolutely for that, we also get in to the sticky problem of why some of the biggest teams dont invest in dota and thats a subject for another time (its complicated, messy and would divert away from the point I’m trying to make here, but perhaps another time).

In terms of the Major with 24 teams, 4 groups of 6, top 2 go to upper bracket, middle two go to bottom bracket, bottom 2 are done. You could even do two groups of 12 just so every team gets plenty of games and experience. I’d also ask the top 8 finishers back to the next major (again removing some of the scheduling issues and giving tier 3 teams a bigger chance to qualify), much like the CS majors and the next 8 finishers get direct invites to the qualifiers.

And in terms of longer event, sure a little longer, but not much longer and certainly any of the TO’s could cope. It does cost more sure, but this is where I’d take part of the prize money from TI to cover this. I’ve not done precise calculations, but even if it cost $1m more per major (which is grossly inflated), it would still only reduce the total prize money at TI to $29m, still an extraordinary and life changing amount. It would also protect the one big event Valve loves to have every year, while supporting a wider, more global and deeper player pool throughout the regular season.

Perhaps it could also help some of the more grass roots opportunities too and provide early prize money for online leagues and ladder systems that could then go on to provide future talent. But again, I’m just rambling.

These ideas weren’t fully fleshed out, there may be better ideas, particularly from smart people in the scene but these were just my rambling thoughts as I went through TI and thought I would share for discussion.