DOTA2

[Trippy]

The audio quality is horrid right now on the International streams. The broadcaster audio keeps cutting out.

[Lounge]

$8,800,000 - Live broadcast of the after party, with special guest Darude

Kill me.

I think the Darude thing is kindof a throwback to DreamLeague Winter 2013 when he performed and drowned out a grand finals match.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdr92fs90IU

[Fordel]

Absolutely, and it was at Dreamhack because Sandstorm has been a twitch chat meme staple for awhile now. Either in response to someone asking 'what song is this' or Sandking doing anything exciting.

[Megrim]

It comes. Make your last absolutions, sacrifices and offer your last prayers. It will begin soon.

[Thrawn]

It comes. Make your last absolutions, sacrifices and offer your last prayers. It will begin soon.

"After in International" isn't at all vague. 

Doesn't even say which International, could be 10 years yet.

[Fordel]

Well, that's one way to make people start pumping money back into the Compendium 

[Johny Cee]

So, prize pool is over $8 million.  This train could bust through the second set of stretch goals, and there is a pretty good chance that the International will mint 5 new millionaires! 

[Fordel]

Some of the immortal Items are fantastic. My Windrunner has a speed tail now! I'm still god awful at her but she looks great!

[Johny Cee]

Some of the immortal Items are fantastic. My Windrunner has a speed tail now! I'm still god awful at her but she looks great!

WR cloak is fantastic.  New Crystal Maiden nova animation is also pretty good, but the problem is that CM had alot of good headpieces that make her look adorable, and the crown is a big step down.  Lion's fish is cool.  Those are the only ones I've played with, but the Death Prophet model looks pretty cool. 

Actually got a few games in today, but its been a while and I'm sooooo rusty for my MMR.

On that note, I'm also incredibly glad that Dota isn't a game that oversexualizes the female characters....  after playing some Smite, and remembering what League looks like, its nice to have practical wear.  Except for QoP, because she's a bondage demon and most of her lines are innuendo ("Crystal Maiden....  are you really, I wonder?")


Been playing around with the Carry WR builds (mid/semicarry, not safe-lane farmer) against bots, and it actually seems legit.  Bottle into Phase Boots into Maelstrom (for right click damage and farm ability), then go Agh's and finish with either a major damage item (Crit, MKB) or go Blink.  Usually I went Phase/Tranquil into Force/Orchid on my offlane WR, but Maelstrom just makes a huge difference.  A big part of that may just be I started playing WR when her ult was so useless that you didn't skill it.

Now?  Even without Agh's and just Maelstrom you can man fight most carries and kick some ass.  With Agh's, you are running around with a machine gun...  land a shackle, ult someone, they should be mostly dead before the stun wears off.  If they try to fight you, just windrun.  If they run, just windrun and chase.  15 second CD, so it's possible to use it twice in a teamfight or to immediately push a tower after the teamfight.

[Fordel]

She's a very useful and versatile hero, but she's still a poor man's Mirana currently. Those two like to trade places as the patch cycles move along over time.

[Hoax]

So for those of you that do not follow closely the second of the four big pre-TI4 lans has completed.

After the west was destroyed in Shanghai, with C9 especially getting humiliated by the Chinese, things were looking grim going into the 6-team lan in Los Angeles. Then the great American hope (EG) came back from an awful group stage showing to eliminate 4 of the 5 teams in the tournament (including the two Chinese squads) battling back in the loser bracket all the way to winning grand finals, where they were down 2-1 and won 2 elimination games to close it out.

So there is a little more hope that TI4 will be competitive outside of the big 5 Chinese squads, Na'Vi looks like they are starting to train finally. North America has a real team for once. Next up: Dreamhack this weekend which is a six team western only lan.

[Johny Cee]

So, Justin Roiland (showrunner/voice actor of Rick and Morty) wants to do a Rick and Morty announcer pack.   

http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/2827wq/rick_and_morty_dota_2_vo/

[Johny Cee]

The International 4 prize pool just passed $10 million.  If the prize distribution is the same as previous years, each member of the winning team will walk away with a million dollars.

[Falconeer]

And two Chinese team have been denied visas and might actually desert the tournament!

Someone in the US Immigration office is a DOTA 2 player trying to give USA an unfair advantage?

[Johny Cee]

And two Chinese team have been denied visas and might actually desert the tournament!

Someone in the US Immigration office is a DOTA 2 player trying to give USA an unfair advantage?

Actually, only one team (a Chinese team) is still without a visa for four players.  The SEA team (Malaysian I think) had an interview with officials and worked out the visa issues.  It's the internet, so random nonsense information abounds, but the team having trouble is a new team based in an "at-risk" geographical area of China with young/new players.  They made it in to the tourney through a qualifier, so not a "name" team that has traveled for a big tourney before.  

Your guess is as good as mine whether it's team management dropping the ball or running into a difficult US official.  Even if they can't work out visa issues, it is a team that played in through a qualifier and not a name team so shouldn't really affect anything.  Especially since this year's format has an eliminator before the live stadium matches to get down to 8 teams from 16.

Edit:

Corrected some words.

[Johny Cee]

There is an ongoing kerfuffle with Fnatic and TI4.  It seems that one of their players has some ongoing social anxiety/depression issues that only emerged after the deadline for the roster switch.  Conflicting emails were sent to Valve from the organization ("he can't play, we need a sub") and the player ("I'm good to go, but they are telling me to sit out"), with Fnatic then trying to lay blame on Valve.

At this point, its unsure what is going to happen with the team for TI. 

[Malakili]

Another example of "eSports" being by and large amateur hour.

[Johny Cee]

Dota is getting big time mainstream press from this, and in all likelihood there is going to be some  .  $10 million prize pool is Big News, but so much of the "professional" scene is really half-assed and run horribly.  The visa issues, which is probably just bad team management, the fast one at Fnatic, etc.

God help us if a major news outlet digs into some of the behaviors of the star players...  Way too much creepy vaguely (or outright!) sexist/racist/homophobic nonsense that is a legacy of internet behavior by young adults.

Part of the reason why I only really like to watch Purge videos...  nearly everyone else makes me think that they would benefit from a decade of maturity or a thorough ass-kicking (preferrably by a transgender mixed race man from Brazil, so as to tick off most of the boxes on what these people find acceptable to make negative comments on). That is really going to be the constraining factor on e-sports growth:  most of the athletes are assholes that say/do some incredibly dodgy things that society wouldn't accept from a real professional athlete. 

[Falconeer]

I don't understand. Don't they already have subs? Really, what if one or two of your players get the swine flu a day before the matches? It makes sense that you have to lock a roster, but how deep is this roster?

[Fordel]

Teams almost never have dedicated subs, anyone good enough to be a sub for a team is good enough to be a starter on another team. Only a handful of the most successful teams might have something resembling a sub and that's usually a 'retired' player doing casting/PR for the team and not a active and practiced player.

[Falconeer]

I see. Thanks. I wonder how this will eventually change in the future, since no other sport works like this but all other sports have amazing players warming the bench. I guess it'll take a big accident on one of the major teams during a final to start considering the potential issue. Maybe this one!

[Johny Cee]

I don't understand. Don't they already have subs? Really, what if one or two of your players get the swine flu a day before the matches? It makes sense that you have to lock a roster, but how deep is this roster?

1. Basically, Fnatic wants to switch out their main line-up a few weeks before the tourney.  So everyone has been practicing and game-planning around the old line-up.

2. Valve posted an email exchange that looked like the player (Era) was eager to play and would be cleared to play, but the team had "fired" (the player's words) him for the summer and were going with a replacement.  It looked like Fnatic was trying to fuck over the guy to optimize their chances.  A bunch of new emails were published where the player kind of recanted, but under what pressure?

3. There is some uncertainty around when this became an issue and the timing of the actions.  Another team made an injury swap before the deadline (Fear for EG) due to an issue with his elbow that means he isn't medically cleared until after the summer.  The Fnatic thing just blew up a couple weeks ago, after the deadline, and there is more than a whiff of the team org trying to better their odds by fucking over the guy.

4. No policy for subs/stand-ins.  Valve invites 5 players on a team, those are the 5 players you use.  Sucks if 2 guys get swine flu right before the tourney.  On the other hand, I could see how having allowed subs means that the best financed/organized teams would go with a stable approach of signing up alot of talent and moving the line-ups around based on who you were playing and performance.  Something that the smaller/newer teams couldn't do.

Other tourneys have wildly varying rules on stand-ins....  there was some recent tourney where internet people were up in arms because a team sent a line-up with three stand-ins and only two regular members of the team.  Or for instance Korea (weak Dota scene) has done a fair amount of bringing in temporary big name players to bolster the team's chances of winning a big event.

I see. Thanks. I wonder how this will eventually change in the future, since no other sport works like this but all other sports have amazing players warming the bench. I guess it'll take a big accident on one of the major teams during a final to start considering the potential issue. Maybe this one!

Wrote the above before your post.

Basically the issue with dedicated subs or stretching your line-up is the issue with major pro sports:  Big money teams are then going to go to a line-up plus bench, locking up talent, and be able to swap out players based on matches or how players are performing lately.  It's probably inevitable, but starting that this early seems like a recipe for killing the newer/smaller teams and locking up emerging talent.

A more mature sport it's probably fine, though everyone likes to complain about it in other pro sports when management uses it's wallet to guarantee performance...  but right now to me it would sound like pushing team organization over players and player talent.

[Ingmar]

The other thing is there are essentially a rules-limited number of teams in pro sports. LeBron can't say 'fuck this!' and go start his own team in Wichita by rounding up a sponsor and 4 friends. There's a bigger supply of players than slots in pro sports, but in gaming teams can just kind of infinitely form to match the number of players.

[Falconeer]

Your points are all very valid, I tend to agree. I just find it incredibly cruel to think that one team could lose the chance for a 5 Million first prize by having one of the players hit by a car on his way to the venue the day of the final. I guess there should be at least an emergency sub rule for at least one player. Hey, with such big prize pools and such a low level of maturity, how long before teams start poisoning each others' food the night before the match?

[Bann]

Your points are all very valid, I tend to agree. I just find it incredibly cruel to think that one team could lose the chance for a 5 Million first prize by having one of the players hit by a car on his way to the venue the day of the final. I guess there should be at least an emergency sub rule for at least one player. Hey, with such big prize pools and such a low level of maturity, how long before teams start poisoning each others' food the night before the match?

The only reason valve made such a harsh ruling against Fnatic was due to the fact that the player in question, Era, had written an email directly to Valve saying he was being forced out of his team. Valve replied to him saying that Fnatic was not allowed to do this.

You can read the emails in question at the dota 2 blog, here.

http://blog.dota2.com/2014/06/6608/#more-6608


I think Valve makes the right call here. The rule should be - the 5 players we invited are the 5 players that will attend. For extenuating circumstances, contact us on a case by case basis. That has been done in the case of EG fear/mason and an exception has been granted. If it can be determined that Era is unable to play to the satisfaction of Valve, then they can allow a substitute at their discretion. The reason the play-in Qualifiers happen the week before is so that if anything unforseen happens with an invited team, you have backup teams already on-site ready to roll.

[Falconeer]

Ah! I love this line from the Valve representative:

When we invite a team of five players, we are in fact inviting those five players. Each of those players is allowed to control their participation in our tournament solely. To be clear, no, no one else can make the decision about participating in our event other than the player. 
The only way Fnatic will competing at The International will be with you sitting in one of the five seats.

So unlike sports, the focus here is the players not the organization (team). I think I like this, although I am curious to see how it will evolve. As I mentioned earlier, the prizes are getting so crazy high that people are only just starting to freak out about it. In a few years I can only imagine the worst kind of scams and morally questionable things happening in order to "secure the best chances to win". In this case for example, if Era happens to play, and they lose suppsedly due to his poor performance, his teammates will accuse him of having ruined their chances to change their lives. If they left him home and won, he could accuse them of ruining his life. Hell, million dollars are truly life changing.

[Johny Cee]

Your points are all very valid, I tend to agree. I just find it incredibly cruel to think that one team could lose the chance for a 5 Million first prize by having one of the players hit by a car on his way to the venue the day of the final. I guess there should be at least an emergency sub rule for at least one player. Hey, with such big prize pools and such a low level of maturity, how long before teams start poisoning each others' food the night before the match?

The other problem I can think of with subs:

How do you determine who can be a sub?  Do you let teams cherry pick the best talent from teams that didn't make TI as a sub for a couple months?  That would favor established teams/players who have the connections and the bankroll to get the top independent talent over marginal or less-established teams.  Roles are pretty specific so its not like you can have just one designated sub, either, so your top teams would line up 2-4 people I'd guess.  Are teams required to set a sub prior to invites and qualifiers?  Who actually could line up a decent player that far ahead of time who isn't already in the race for a TI spot?

It's one of those problems due to the immaturity of the market and scene.  In 10 or 20 years, we'll probably see a player stable approach take off, with a bench and some developing talent and a roster of 10 or 12.  It's just not something that you can really do now outside of specific exceptions at the tourney organizer's discretion.

[Malakili]

I don't see why, after qualifiers, teams shouldn't have a week or two to solidify their teams, possibly including substitutes.  This could include loan players from teams that didn't qualify if the two teams could come to an agreement.  The real problem is that the concept of a team itself is nebulous in professional gaming.   That's why KESPA got started in Korea, although it's definitely possible to be critical of them too. 

Without any kind of coherent structure though, it's just a big mess.  I don't really have a problem with what Valve is doing, but it shows the weakness of the scene in general that this sort of thing doesn't have an obvious answer. 

[Fordel]

Ah! I love this line from the Valve representative:

When we invite a team of five players, we are in fact inviting those five players. Each of those players is allowed to control their participation in our tournament solely. To be clear, no, no one else can make the decision about participating in our event other than the player. 
The only way Fnatic will competing at The International will be with you sitting in one of the five seats.

So unlike sports, the focus here is the players not the organization (team). I think I like this, although I am curious to see how it will evolve. As I mentioned earlier, the prizes are getting so crazy high that people are only just starting to freak out about it. In a few years I can only imagine the worst kind of scams and morally questionable things happening in order to "secure the best chances to win". In this case for example, if Era happens to play, and they lose suppsedly due to his poor performance, his teammates will accuse him of having ruined their chances to change their lives. If they left him home and won, he could accuse them of ruining his life. Hell, million dollars are truly life changing.

All those things would happen even if the prize pool was 5 grand instead of 5 mil. Hell it has happened 

E-sports teams are nothing but drama bombs waiting to happen.

[Johny Cee]

News:

1. All visa issues have been resolved.  The Chinese team that was having issues posted a picture of their 4 guys that had the visa problems walking around in Seattle.  They are all like 18/19 and look really fucking young, which is probably where the problems came from in the first place.

2. Prize distribution has been announced, you can find it here:  http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/07/04/dota-2s-the-international-prize-pool-distribution-revealed-newcomer-streams-promised/

Flatter than previous years, but still heavy towards the top.  The winning team, at the present prize pool amount, will bring home $4.8 million while the runner up only pockets $1.4million.  Even the 7th-8th place teams will bring home just under $500,000.  9th-14th will bring home between $20k and $50k.  15th-16th gets nothing.

Basically, if you top 8, then you are guaranteeing a solid 6 figure income for your team members in 2014.  Should go a long way to reducing the line-up instability we've seen in previous years with teams imploding after a failed run at the International.

[Fordel]

No, it won't do anything for that. You'll still see musical chair rosters post TI. Even Navi rotated their roster after a TI, and they're record is money money and more money.

[Bann]

We are 1 day out from the start of this thing. Who ya got?

I've got DK as my favorite. I do think the Chinese (DK/IG then Newbee, then VG) are ahead of the rest, and they all can take a series off each other. Ill stick with DK because I think they are more innovative then the rest of the East. My Darkhorse (and rares!) are on Empire to finish top 3.

[Rasix]

That is just a massive price pool.  Riot is going to struggle to compete with that sort of money.    LoL Worlds are also going to have massive visa issues since they're playing in 3 different countries (Japan, Singapore, Korea).

Yay.  I love this tournament.  Best esports event of the year.   I have no idea what to expect since I really haven't followed the DOTA2 scene very well since the last International.

[Fordel]

I'm rooting for Liquid even though they won't go anywhere at all and the team is full of horrible people.  


Navi, Alliance, IG and DK are the consistent teams that will all place in the money probably. They have the rosters and history to do very well again. Everyone else is too random, unknown or inconsistent to really get a handle on.


The 'Russian' teams are exciting, aggressive and prone to feed and tilt. Game will be over in 20 mins win or lose.

The Chinese teams are boring, conservative, efficient and have counters to all the known strats. They fall apart once they have to improvise or deal with anything new. Will systematically crush you otherwise.

The European teams are exciting, creative, efficient, but usually have some major gap or flaw in their game to exploit. It's often face palm inducing.

The SEA teams are like lesser known versions of the Euro teams, mostly. I don't see many of their games honestly.

The Korean teams (are there any Korean teams   ) are lesser known versions of the Chinese teams, minus the years and years of Dota1 experience.

The NA teams are almost all a joke, full of drama and shitty play. Outside of Navi'US, expect nothing from NA teams.



-edit- http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/The_International/2014#TeamLiquid_pieces_on_each_of_the_playing_teams has links to all the TL.net articles on each team.

[Johny Cee]

The Korean teams (are there any Korean teams   ) are lesser known versions of the Chinese teams, minus the years and years of Dota1 experience.

MVP is a "Korean" team (only a couple of Koreans).  I don't think Korea is about Chinese style play of farm-farm-farm, and anyway most Korean teams are full of players from outside Korea.  

The NA teams are almost all a joke, full of drama and shitty play. Outside of Navi'US, expect nothing from NA teams.

I thought EG was one of the top 4/5 heading into this?  Or not technically an NA team?

Edit:

Apologies!  It actually looks like MVP Pheonix is Korean!  Many of the teams in Korea (including the other MVP team) are majority foreigners, or only Korean ethnically but grew up outside of Korea, with a couple native Koreans.