Unexpectedly Valve announced a rework of the DPC system that’ll have place starting next year. According to the organizers their system should become more structured and well-ordered. In addition, this system allows to cultivate tier-2 and tier-3 scene in every region, creating a competitive climate.
Valve plan to take Major tournaments back into their own hands. Now competitive year will be divided into 3 seasons: Autumn, Winter, and Spring. Within each season there are 6 regional leagues. Best teams from each league will go to the final event of the season – Major. The year ends with The International as always.
Each regional league is divided into two divisions (higher and lower) that consist of 8 teams. For the first season Valve will place teams to high and low divisions by themselves and after that teams will be able to promote or be relegated depending on the results.
Based on the results of the first Fall season, the last two teams of the highest division will be moved to the lowest, while the first two teams of the lowest division will be promoted. At the same time teams relegated from the lowest division will be replaced with teams that have passed through open qualifiers.
With qualifications for the Major tournament everything has become much easier. Now the first teams from the top division are automatically invited to the play-off stage of the tournament, while the second place goes to the group stage. At the same time in some particularly strong regions, third and fourth placed teams will be also invited to the closed qualifiers for the major.
Matches within divisions are strictly fixed according to the schedule and are held in the best-of-3 format in round robin system. Each such cycle will last 1.5 months. Our guys from the CIS region will play on Thursdays Fridays, and Sundays.
At the same time, prize pool at Majors will be halved in comparison with last years. For the first place the team receives $200,000, for the second $100,000, for the third $75,000, etc. The points system has also changed, points will be distributed as follows: 500, 450, 400, 350,300, 300, 200, 200. And this is only for winning the Major tournament. The top five teams in the highest division also receive 500, 300, 200, 100 and 50 points.
Yes, the prize pool has dropped, but Valve decided to support every team and allocate permanent prize funds for divisions, which will be distributed among the teams depending on their place.
In highers division the first team receives $30 000, the second $28 000 and all subsequent teams get a $ 1000 less. Teams of the lowest division receive $17 000, $16 000, $15 000, $11 000, $9 000, $7 000 but two relegated teams get nothing.
This is definitely not going to benefit the best teams in the world, who will have to play one and half months for $30 000. At the same time they will not be able to go to side events. So Valve have yet to solve this problem.
In addition, the developer also reported that the coverage of the higher divisions will be given to studios but the second division will be freely broadcasted in Dota.
There will be also a kind of transfer window in Dota. Within that system, you can change players only between these three leagues. At the same time changing one player a team loses 15% of already scored points, so it is not recommended to change players in the final stages before the main event of the year.
Top 12 teams at the end of the season get to The International, while the system with open qualifications was abandoned. Now each region will have an additional closed qualification for the top 8 teams that did not qualify for the tournament after the points distribution.
In General we can see that Valve is working to make the tournament system more streamlined, and it is commendable. If this system will settle in and will be finalized, then we will have an additional solid argument in favor of the fact that esports is really becoming a professional competitive environment.
From boomakers point of view everything will also become much easier and clearer. It will be easier to predict the results because you’ll have the possibility to track the team’s form on a weekly basis. In addition, player motivation will no longer be something that is behind the scenes.
Also the density of games per unit of time will increase, which should have a positive impact on the opportunity for games as well as the threshold for entry of young players. From our part, we hope that the unified system will allow to stabilize the system and make it possible to play at any time.
Image credit: Valve
