It is EVO 2016 and Juan “Hungrybox” DeBiedma has just made a deep run into the loser’s bracket culminating in a best-of-five against Adam “Armada” Lindgren in the grand finals. Those not familiar with the fighting game tournament structure, it is usually a double-elimination bracket proceeded by a group stage known as ‘pools.’ This may sound similar to the structure of major Dota 2 tournaments, but there is one major difference: the ‘bracket reset.’ The winner’s bracket finalist has a distinct advantage over the loser’s bracket finalist in this style of grand finals. If the loser’s bracket finalist wins the first set of games the bracket is ‘reset,’ which means the winner’s bracket finalist is ‘knocked down’ to the loser’s bracket and a final match is played.
Spoilers for a five year old Grand Finals below (I think you should go watch it before. If you have not already, it is one of the greatest grand finals I have watched across all esports tournaments.)
The grand finals begin and Hungrybox immediately goes up two games riding the momentum from his lower bracket run. Armada holds out to take the first match to game five. Hungrybox ends up winning, forcing the reset.
So, what does any of this have to do with professional Dota 2?
Hungrybox and Armada themselves have nothing to do with Dota 2, but the bracket reset does. As an avid watcher of tournaments in the fighting game community, or FGC for short, nothing gets me more excited than the possibility of a bracket reset. Watching someone make a dominant run in the lower bracket only to face the seemingly impossible task of winning two sets against the player having the best weekend so far elicits emotions from me that very few Dota 2 grand finals have ever done.
It’s time for the Western Europe TI10 Qualifier Grand Finals and Tundra Esports has made a dominant undefeated upper bracket run while knocking off names like Team Liquid and OG in the process. The grand finals is a rematch between the loser’s bracket finalists OG (who lost to Tundra in the winner’s bracket already) and the winner’s bracket finalists Tundra Esports in a best-of-five series. Tundra musters up a 2-1 lead and is looking to secure their spot at The International 10 with one more win. OG ends up winning games four and five, knocking out Tundra Esports. The tournament is over. There are no second chances for Tundra. Their season is over just like that.
Now back to EVO 2016. Armada has been dominant in the singles bracket, only dropping one game to Lucky in round one. He is having a great tournament and has a great advantage coming into the finals. He has been rewarded for his hard work and great play up to this point by being given a match advantage over the eventual Loser’s bracket finalist Hungrybox. Hungrybox would go down 2-1 early on in the second match. The same situation OG would find themselves in five years later. He too, would go on to complete his comeback and win EVO. Armada had two chances and lost both, while Hungrybox overcame the impossible to prove that he deserved the trophy more than anyone else that weekend.
Now I don’t want to come off as an OG hater, so I’ll preface what I am going to say with this: Having TI10 without OG there to not only defend their title but to try and three-peat would have been awful. They won and deserved to be at The International 10. With that said, however, watching OG win the Western European qualifiers was one of the few times that a final result of a tournament left a bad taste in my mouth. Tundra had made a powerful upper bracket run, but for what? Essentially nothing. OG lost to Tundra and got a second chance. Why not Tundra too? So does Dota 2 need a bracket reset? Probably not.
Let me explain. I think bracket resets are awesome and an integral part of the FGC tournament experience, but it isn’t feasible in Dota 2. If every game goes to an average of 45 minutes and the two series go to 5 games each; that would be nearly 8 hours of Dota (and that doesn’t even include panels/drafts/and other breaks)! I like watching Dota as much as the next person, but there is no way I could sit through that. I do think, however, that there should be a distinct advantage to being the winner’s bracket finalist. One that would award them for being the best team up to that point. This could be achieved in a bunch of ways: a game advantage, a not-so-feasible bracket reset, a new pick order, the list goes on and on. I think two options stand out and are feasible inside the Dota 2 tournament framework. The first is that there is no coin flip for game one, the winner’s bracket finalist gets to choose both side and pick order. The second is the winner’s bracket finalist starts a game up in a best-of-five series.
While both of these are feasible, I do not believe that starting a game up on the loser’s bracket finalist is very good from a viewer standpoint. A finals series that lasts all of two games would not be enjoyable to watch, and I would think not to play in either. Starcraft tried the one-game advantage, and the community was split on it at the time. Looking through the grand finals matches during that time, almost all of the matches were also short, with the winner’s bracket player winning. As much as I like the idea of the winner’s bracket finalist having an advantage, this is too far in the extreme for the highest level of Dota 2.
I think the best option would be to implement a side and pick order advantage to the winner’s bracket finalist for game one. This gives teams a solid incentive to compete in the winner’s bracket and gives them a decent advantage in the finals. Looking through old joindota.com threads and liquiddota.com forum posts there seems to be a consistent rebuttal of ‘X team had to play more series than the winner’s bracket finalists, that should already be an advantage!’ The winner’s bracket team is surely more well-rested, but I think we forget these are professional players. These players do this for a living, they are used to this much Dota 2. This argument also ignores the fact that the loser’s bracket team can also ride a wave of momentum into the finals, nullifying much of the ‘advantage’ of rest that the winner’s bracket team has. This large game one advantage would surely set the winner’s bracket team well on the road to success while giving the loser’s bracket finalist a final uphill battle to face.
If you guys have any interesting ideas on grand finals formats or just want to let me know I’m an OG hater, I would love to hear it in the comments below!
Bottle Crow 