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Sean

Dota Today 15: James Lawlor with Synderen

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Great discussion! Part of me wonders if Valve should stop doing the International altogether. Letting the community find its own way seems so at odds with the big money tournament that Valve puts on every year. I think TI makes a lot of sense for Valve, it has been the tournament that made me more seriously check out the game. So if I'm typical in anyway then it's a great method of getting new players into the game. But I can't help but wonder if there will be a point in time when it starts holding the game back. Anyway, pure speculation on my part. I think Synderen is totally right that for now the game is still growing and things are getting better.

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This episode was great. I'm really curious to see how the Asian championship factors into the tournament landscape going forward. I assume the winner gets a de facto invite to the International, but I wonder if Valve will make that explicit.

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Hey guys, great episode! Have you heard of the Capcom Pro Tour for Street Fighter? They did what you discussed this episode, assigning independent tournaments as qualifiers for the Capcom Cup at the end of the year. It made for a great way to follow the players through out the year. And it led to a lot of dramatic moments leading up to the Cup as players were vying for the last open spots.

 

Thanks for the podcast! 

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This pure, wild, irresponsible conjecture but it wouldn't surprise me for TI5 to be the last one (or any future tournament) and Valve says "go forth, community, do your thing."

 

That would be the most Valvian thing ever. (Not saying I hope they do, I'm in the camp of wishing they did MORE, to be honest, but it wouldn't surprise me.)

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If it means fewer resources for other projects--despite loving Dota--then I'm in the camp of wishing they don't do more.

 

Also, any suggestions for me(James)/us on stuff to do/cover is more than welcome.  It would be fun to occasionally do a stream, or play a game with people in the Dota guild if there were any interest.

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Synderen is my favorite personality in the Dota scene, I really hope he does end up coming back to guest again at some point. 

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I realize there's a heavy taboo in DoTA2 circles against recognizing the existence of Riot Games, but it seems insane to have such a long speculative discussion about tournament structure without so much as a passing allusion to the system that exists for what is essentially exactly the same game, except not developed by Valve.

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The problem with the Riot comparisons is that Riot is the LoL company but Valve is not the Dota 2 company. Valve is notoriously hands off with the community and the scene beyond TI. If you're talking about the future of Dota 2 esports, arguing the merits of Valve following Riot's model is kind of a dead end (from what we know now anyways).  

 

I would actually love for there to be an internationally recognized governing body (that includes player advocates) that can take the esports side of things out of Valve's hands (since they don't seem to want it anyways). If nothing else, I feel like there NEEDS to be a strong player's union. Part of the "over saturation" problem is that the owners ROI in a team drops with every tournament they don't attend, and there is already SO MUCH churn in players and line ups (no doubt part of the reason Valve wants to deal with players and not teams).

 

There'll be a perverse incentive to run players ragged until they burn out if owners are left alone to consolidate and run the show. 

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The problem with the Riot comparisons is that Riot is the LoL company but Valve is not the Dota 2 company. Valve is notoriously hands off with the community and the scene beyond TI. If you're talking about the future of Dota 2 esports, arguing the merits of Valve following Riot's model is kind of a dead end (from what we know now anyways).  

 

I would actually love for there to be an internationally recognized governing body (that includes player advocates) that can take the esports side of things out of Valve's hands (since they don't seem to want it anyways). If nothing else, I feel like there NEEDS to be a strong player's union. Part of the "over saturation" problem is that the owners ROI in a team drops with every tournament they don't attend, and there is already SO MUCH churn in players and line ups (no doubt part of the reason Valve wants to deal with players and not teams).

 

There'll be a perverse incentive to run players ragged until they burn out if owners are left alone to consolidate and run the show. 

 

Yep, this.  What is the point? We could've talked about the SC MLG circuit as well, but I don't see the point of talking about how Riot organizes and sponsors all of their tourneys when Valve is never going to do that.

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Yep, this.  What is the point? We could've talked about the SC MLG circuit as well, but I don't see the point of talking about how Riot organizes and sponsors all of their tourneys when Valve is never going to do that.

 

But... but... you spent most of the episode talking about ways in which you'd like to see Valve do more organizing and/or sponsoring of tournaments.  What's the point of this entire cast if Valve is "never going to do that?"

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But... but... you spent most of the episode talking about ways in which you'd like to see Valve do more organizing and/or sponsoring of tournaments.  What's the point of this entire cast if Valve is "never going to do that?"

 

I don't think "what we'd like to see Valve do" was the crux of the conversation.

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It was more discussing Synd's diagnoses of the various problems related to the pro scene from different points of view.  I don't know if I'd like to see Valve do more or not because there are very real trade-offs to any "solution" one can present, and I think that was more the crux of that part of the conversation.

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A lot of the very same problems that Synderen brought up exist in the LoL pro circuit as well.  That's why I think it's kind of insane to not even mention Riot in a discussion of problems like:

  • Making pro play financially viable for players (and coaches)
  • Dealing with roster changes
  • Clarifying tournament qualification and eligibility
  • Spreading prize money out, instead of paying everything out in a single annual tournament

The fact that LoL is essentially the same game as DoTA2 is relevant as well.  Some of these problems are pretty specific to 5 v. 5 team play; a comparison to Starcraft tournaments wouldn't address any of the team issues; a comparison to LoL addresses exactly the same team issues.

 

I do understand the "Valve just won't do that" argument, when it's a response to a particular proposed solution to a problem.  I do not understand it as a blanket dismissal of any comparison at all to the way Riot manages play-for-money.

 

I'm also a bit suspicious of the oft-repeated assertion that "Valve just wants to empower the community, instead of taking the reins themselves."  This is patently untrue for many aspects of DoTA2, first and foremost of which is the ongoing development of the game itself.  No part of the game code is open-source.  No part of the development process even allows for public input.  It's clear that some people in the scene have the ear of people inside of Valve, but that's a far cry from community-driven development.  

 

Second, the game's infrastructure is a Valve monopoly.  If you want to set up a server and have a game with your friends or co-workers on your own LAN without going through the game-maker's servers, then you'll have to play some game other than DoTA2.  It's worth remembering that it doesn't have to work that way-- this is Valve's decision to centralize and control the game, rather than turn it over to the community.

 

And then there's the hat store.  Valve might let you set up your own branded booth inside the store, but your customers will have to check out through Valve's cash register.  If you want to make your own magic sticker book for your tournament, you're out of luck-- only Valve gets to do that.  Valve have chosen the iOS model for their store, not the "let the community do it" model.

 

"Let the community do it" is Valve corporate mythology, not reality.  The company may very well see an advantage in getting the community to do some of the lower-margin or more labor-intensive aspects of promoting competitive play, but we should be careful about parroting "Valve wants to empower the community" when there are some very obvious and important ways in which Valve clearly does not want to do that at all.

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A couple of things I took away from the podcast -

 

Valve is The Dota 2 Company. I thought it was somewhat funny to hear the oft-leveraged gamer criticism that a company is allocating resources wrong and to go "finish a game" leveraged against another portion of a company. The event planners, sound designers, project planners for live stage events don't have other roles in game development. I can't imagine they're anything but dedicated full time to producing the events they do. They are Dota2 employees. I applied to an esports project coordinator role at another company, and from the description and role requirements I don't know that there's any way I could have been used in any sort of other development. I mean if you just imagine it was me, I can't suddenly be rolled on to creating Half Life art assets. Unless they accept MS-Paint...

 

Secondly, the money. Again with the sports analogies, but the pro gaming scene is very analagous to Major League Baseball. The guys in MLB are completely set. If you're on a roster for like 2 months ever you get a pension and healthcare for life. If you make it, you've made it. If you toil in minor league baseball and you aren't fast tracking, you might be making less than minimum wage, eating peanut butter 3 times a day, and sharing an apartment with 5 other guys so you have somewhere you can afford to live. There's more money at the top, and it's nice that Dendi makes a nice living, but to have a vibrant, changing community you need dozens or hundreds of viable teams. Puppey and Dendi are the Jeter and ARod of Dota. They don't need to win TI to be rich and famous. The number of guys who make a nice living from streaming and sponsorships has to be like 25-50 in the West, right? The money needs to not be concentrated at the top. There needs to be large handfuls of teams who don't make it to TI for every team that does who can still point to the books financially and be ok. I don't think I have answers for how to do that, but just saying prize money is going up doesn't actually mean everyone's making more money.

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I'm not sure it makes that much sense to talk about League of Legends. They have a different model, but they also have a different sized player base and culture. They are dealing with their own growing pains. http://www.pcgamer.com/league-of-legends-and-the-troubles-with-talent-acquisition/

 

People sometimes talk about the problem with the competitive DOTA scene as if this is some sort of solved problem, and DOTA is going down some other wrong path. For all e-sports has grown, its still very much the wild west for now.

 

All that being said, this question of all the money going to the very top is an interesting one. I am very curious about what it is like to play in the 16th best DOTA team in the world. What does that person's life look like?

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All that being said, this question of all the money going to the very top is an interesting one. I am very curious about what it is like to play in the 16th best DOTA team in the world. What does that person's life look like?

 

Few people care who is #12 or #16, people mostly care about the top 6 teams in the world, maybe 8. It's notable when a team goes between tiers, like Na'Vi and Alliance. 

 

Probably the only difference is constant roster changes since there's no sponsors, less time to practice than players on Tier 1 teams, and less money to travel with which leads to less exposure to both the top teams and stream viewers.

 

4ASC has no sponsors http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/4Anchors

The team that used to be LAJONS is now NiP, http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/LAJONS http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Ninjas_in_Pyjamas 

Empire and Alliance both still have many sponsors listed http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Team_Empire http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Alliance

 

Getting 16th at TI4 got you 0$. 14th got 21k$.

At TI3, 8th got 43k$, 9th to 16th got you nothing.

 

The problems the competitive scene aren't solved but there's some lessons to be learned from other games. Like SC2's WCS system and WCS points being assigned to tournaments, region locking. 

 

I really enjoyed this episode in particular, it's been a while since I listened to a podcast that had someone who was active as a pro player talk about the game and tournaments. joinDota and the GD studio did some of that but Tobi didn't feel like the guy to lead a calm discussion, and GD is dead quiet. State of the Game had interesting talks about tournaments and game balance about SC2, this episode really reminded me of that. You guys were a bit more focused on actually talking instead of imitating a laugh track.

 

Synderen wasn't the best guest but the greatest guest so far, I hope you guys will manage to do another one with him!

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I'm not sure it makes that much sense to talk about League of Legends. They have a different model, but they also have a different sized player base and culture. They are dealing with their own growing pains. http://www.pcgamer.com/league-of-legends-and-the-troubles-with-talent-acquisition/

 

People sometimes talk about the problem with the competitive DOTA scene as if this is some sort of solved problem, and DOTA is going down some other wrong path. For all e-sports has grown, its still very much the wild west for now.

 

All that being said, this question of all the money going to the very top is an interesting one. I am very curious about what it is like to play in the 16th best DOTA team in the world. What does that person's life look like?

 

It makes perfect sense to talk about League of Legends in this context. For the intents and purposes of this discussion, they might as well be the same game. It's perfectly reasonable to bounce ideas off of their methodology, see what works, compare what you've thought of to what they've done, etc. Riot has basically made the statement with their wallet that being a professional game player can be your job for as long as you can stay in the league. The team stipends are the same no matter where you place on the season. I mean, I think it's totally valid if you decide you don't like any of it, but I think it's silly to not take lessons learned from how the other half lives.

 

Few people care who is #12 or #16, people mostly care about the top 6 teams in the world, maybe 8. It's notable when a team goes between tiers, like Na'Vi and Alliance. 

 

Probably the only difference is constant roster changes since there's no sponsors, less time to practice than players on Tier 1 teams, and less money to travel with which leads to less exposure to both the top teams and stream viewers.

 

4ASC has no sponsors http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/4Anchors

The team that used to be LAJONS is now NiP, http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/LAJONS http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Ninjas_in_Pyjamas 

Empire and Alliance both still have many sponsors listed http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Team_Empire http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Alliance

 

Getting 16th at TI4 got you 0$. 14th got 21k$.

At TI3, 8th got 43k$, 9th to 16th got you nothing.

 

The problems the competitive scene aren't solved but there's some lessons to be learned from other games. Like SC2's WCS system and WCS points being assigned to tournaments, region locking. 

 

That's kind of what I mean. Does TI Team #16 still exist 6 months later (The answer is actually no, it was essentially disbanded through allegations of match fixing which sounds FASCINATING. TI #15 also disbanded)? To get to TI, outside of about 8 teams is what you're doing pausing your life to make a run at one big shot to cash in, or can Dota actually be your job? Making your living by winning a few tournaments a year is not a good business model. It's weird to ask this considering the podcast discussion, but is TI actually inviting more teams than the professional Dota scene can support year round?

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Second, the game's infrastructure is a Valve monopoly.  If you want to set up a server and have a game with your friends or co-workers on your own LAN without going through the game-maker's servers, then you'll have to play some game other than DoTA2.  It's worth remembering that it doesn't have to work that way-- this is Valve's decision to centralize and control the game, rather than turn it over to the community.

 

There were a number of debatable points in this post, but I just wanted to highlight the comment about no LAN play in DOTA 2, which hasn't been true for at least a year.

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There were a number of debatable points in this post

And to simply assert that without saying which points you take issue with is disingenuous.  Either tell us what, specifically, you disagree with, or move along.  Otherwise you're attempting to discredit a comment without providing any evidence or argument.

 

 

no LAN play in DOTA 2, which hasn't been true for at least a year.

 

If it is now possible to download a DOTA2 server executable, disconnect your local LAN from the internet, fire up the DOTA2 server executable on your LAN, and then play a game of DOAT2 with your firends or co-workers using that local server, please tell me how to do this.

 

Bonus points if you can tell me how to do this without any part of the games being reported back to Valve.

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Finally got around to listening to this cast.  I was actually pretty shocked that Riot wasn't mentioned once during the entirety of the conversation, and I'm at least glad that the topic has gotten some discussion here.  

 

All of the problems raised in the podcast have been considered and addressed (for better or for worse, but at least addressed) by Riot.  They have brought an unquantifiable level of consistency and quality to their tournament scene, and I think that the success of the LCS shows that they are doing something right.  

 

The longer I've followed esports, the more I've come to believe that the game's producer needs to be very involved for their esports scene to thrive.  Apples and oranges, but Blizzard realized this way too late with SC2, and that scene is pretty much dead.  I'm afraid Dota is slowly heading down the same path.

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For what it's worth I don't think SC2 is at all dead. It's just been blown past by LoL, Dota, CS, and Hearthstone (Blizzard probably isn't hearthbroken that it has 2 of the 5 or so most popular streaming & competitive games). It was first and as such didn't have the advantages of improving on a predecessor. I don't think Dota is headed that way, either. It's consistently one of the most popular streamed games. It's just that outside of That One Big Tournament it's completely unstructured. League from 2-3 years ago before every region was integrated was sort of like that, except they had a really broad points system for tournaments. It was kind of exciting. Tiny little tournaments with a "pro" team and amateurs. Competitive gaming's frontier. In terms of knowing when and what to watch, and people actually being able to make a game a job it's so much better now, however.

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And to simply assert that without saying which points you take issue with is disingenuous. Either tell us what, specifically, you disagree with, or move along. Otherwise you're attempting to discredit a comment without providing any evidence or argument.

If it is now possible to download a DOTA2 server executable, disconnect your local LAN from the internet, fire up the DOTA2 server executable on your LAN, and then play a game of DOAT2 with your firends or co-workers using that local server, please tell me how to do this.

Bonus points if you can tell me how to do this without any part of the games being reported back to Valve.

As near as I can tell the LAN option requires an authentication to the Dota 2 network and then allows you to host entirely local games. The most recent info I can find is from when they first added it back in 2013 though. Could have improved by now, but I doubt it.

Also dude, calm down.

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