Here are my thoughts on the International 5. This is the 3rd International I've watched and, aside from Liquid doing it and Alliance's victory, was an extremely enjoyable experience. This post will start the big picture and next post I'll talk about some things I saw happening at the micro-level. Finally, I have a post related to the consequences, unexpected and otherwise, of this TI as teams once again will begin their prep for next year.
Group Stages The group stages were done in a simple but satisfying way. The key points are:
- two groups of 8 teams - pretty self-explanatory
- round robin style matching to determining seeds
- 3 points for a 2-0 and 1 point for a 1-1 - this point system, as EE pointed out in his interview with Hotbid, could encourage collusion among the teams. The basic idea is that 3 teams could intentionally go 2-0 and 0-2 with the other two teams. This gives three 3 points and a very good shot at making it in to the winners bracket.
- Complexity and CDEC surprised everyone with their solid play and finished top 4 of their respective group.
- 3 games were usually going on at the same time. This is necessary, but a pain if you want to watch your two favorite teams. The updates provided at the bottom on draft and who won allowed you to switch to games that might prove more interesting.
- Some of teams that ended up doing really well started in the lower bracket. Notably were Vici Gaming and Virtus.Pro.
- Some of the favorites to win the whole things ended up in the lower bracket after the second round of upper bracket play. Whith LGD gaming made it to the lower bracket finals, Team Secret finished more poorly than many hoped for. I was in a pool with some guys I play dota with and everyone except for two other guys and me had Secret going all the way. I had Evil Geniuses and won the whole things.
- The games weren't as exciting as TI3 but they were way better than TI4. Check out the VP vs. Secret series, VG vs. Cloud 9 game 1, Complexity vs VP, Secret vs IG games 1 and 2, EG vs CDEC game 3.
- EG was able to figure out how to dismantle CDEC in the finals after getting crushed by them in the upper bracket. PPD did a vlog about it here.
- No spoiled heroes this TI. Unlike the Techies last year, we didn't see the Pitlord make his debute.
- Kaci hosted the event and did some interviews but she got on my nerves by the end. She needs to up her DOTA 2 knowledge and get away from yelling in a very high pitched voice. In fact, lets just get her away from yelling and encouraging other people to yell (poor March).
- The main event panel was hosted by Paul Chaloner and he kept the conversation moving but not always in the right direction. I think he will continue to get better as he becomes more familiar with the game. I don't think he should self-deprecate in front of millions of people who are the same skill level as him.
- The 3 Merlinis + Synd offered some great insight to the matches played one stream 1 for the group stages. Maybe next year this could be expanded to all streams even if it's just the announcers +1 or +2 people.
- Deamau5 playing at the end was too big of a surprise and the camera work was atrocious; constantly zooming in and out with flashing lights gave me nausea. I like Deadmau5 but the performance was very anti-climatic when compared with the games that had just been played. Maybe he could have played before or during the games and transitioned into closing the event.
- All the casters were great. There wasn't a single point in time where I felt like they missed things or made errors when it came to the game.
- I think there need to be more Immortal Treasures related to your compendium level. This would encourage users to level it up and allow those of us who didn't get all of the "golden" treasures to feel not quite as gypped for leveling up their book.
What things did you think were done well at this years event? Were done poorly?
Thanks for reading and stop in soon to read part 2.
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