I’m just going to go through all the suggestions/comments people wrote at the end of the form and reply to them here. Hopefully this will help clear things up and answer any questions people have/had about my proposal.
Thank you for all the responses, I responded to all the submissions that I could. If your suggestion/comment isn’t replied to here, it either was written later than when I started writing this, was just a meme, or was blank.
I might write a part 2 to this if I get more submissions, if you still haven’t filled out the form, please fill it out here:
https://forms.gle/rgiz1m4bUkAhtrLu5
This whole system to me seems way too complicated, and as things get more complicated they tend to become prone to abuse. I’m confident there will be a way to make a team way to rigged, and unless you use it you’re guaranteed to lose. This either needs a lot of thinking of ways to prevent abuse or a way to simplify the whole system.
- Akono
I think that’s fair to say that there definitely will be people who will try to min/max their team with people who are sandbagged or what not, but I did try to put “safety nets” in the rules to prevent teams from abusing some form of system. Adding a minimum mmr to each bracket in theory also adds a max mmr for each bracket because they won’t be able to be within the mmr bracket of each division because there’s a mmr floor in place. In terms of complication, I wanted to just add as much detail to the initial post as I could initially just to throw as much info out as I could.
i like how mini is so i wouldn’t want to see it go but this is also a cool idea so idk if maybe run this instead of a mini once see how it goes then if received well swap every offseason with this and mini or find another time to run this maybe during the main season
-goatsatan
Yeah I’ve talked to other admins and some friends about this as well of just trying it out for 1 season of mini and seeing how it goes and reimplementing mini after trying it out for a season or just replacing it or scrapping it entirely. It generally just depends on how people feel about it in general though, wouldn’t want to scrap mini for a season for something no one wants then have everyone complain that they got something that no one wants.
I wouldn’t want to run this during the main rd2l season because there’s a strong possibility that players drafted to a team they don’t like in main season who are also playing with a 5 stack of friends in this “mini” would obviously be more occupied and willing to push to win with the team they enjoy playing with and leave their main season team by the wayside. Obviously this goes both ways, but I wouldn’t want to detract from main rd2l season.
I feel like a captain’s cup style tournament with variable game types would be interesting (AD, ARDM, Reverse CM, SD, etc…)
-Zoompa
We’ve ran a tournament in the past with a different draft/not a CM draft and it was a complete disaster. It sounds fun in theory, but 95% of the time people will just meme pick dumb heroes and waste people’s time.
“Registration of 5 man, 4 man, 3 man, and solo teams will be accepted” → No duo registrations? Who gets to do the draft? Does the 4 man team pick a solo sign up or does a solo sign up choose a 4 stack?
-Alaska
So the distinction from duo’s and 3/4/5 and solo revolve around the proposed draft. Because teams of 3–4 players will be the teams in the draft drafting the players, I wanted to keep every PLAYER in the draft a solo player rather have some awkward situation where you draft 2 players with 1 pick or something like that. Would get really difficult with a draft style if there were duo pairs as well as solo players. You would probably have to just scrap the draft entirely and either assign all the duo pairs to teams of 3, then assign solo players to the rest of the teams, which is definitely a way to do it, but I felt the draft would be a more fun solution and that’s what matters :)
I don’t know really, the draft part of it is a REALLY rough idea, and it definitely needs more thought put into the logistics of it. I just think it would be the most FUN way to fill out the unfilled teams as most people LOVE the auction draft of the regular mini. I was going to order teams based on the average mmr of the stack.
I think this could be cool for a bi-weekly or monthly thing. I think mini is a great place to meet new people around your skill level, and the pre-made teams kinda nullify this aspect
-Hungryphenix
Yeah I think we can definitely run draft cup style events using premade teams instead of a draft and keep the normal mini/main format. I personally find mini a bit redundant to main, but that’s obviously just personal thinking and probably an anti-mini bias. Regardless, the BIG downside to this proposed format to mini is meeting new people. I think allowing solo sign ups as well as incomplete team signups definitely helps remedy that. Anecdotal evidence of course, but friend stacks are already extremely prevalent in the middle divisions of mini as is so I don’t think allowing them to stick together and play as a group as well as allowing people to meet some new friends and sign up solo would be problematic or against the inherent goal of mini of meeting new players around your skill level.
my main concern is that as a new player (ive done 1 mini and 3 regular seasons) i feel this would be less fun for me than regular mini. Normal mini is another way of meeting people and even if i was drafted onto a team of 3 or 4, they would all already be close and i would be the odd man out.
-Zithkor
Yeah I’m not going to sit here and blow smoke up your ass and say that solo players won’t be at an inherent disadvantage in a mini format that allows premade stacks. I think we could have a situation where we group teams by “full 5 stacks” and teams that weren’t full at signup to at least help reduce the difference in impact of chemistry that a stack of 5 friends will inherently have. Not sure. Given the amount of responses asking to run this tournament WITH mini, we could just make this proposal STRICTLY full, premade teams, and keep mini how mini is for solo sign ups as well.
shouldn’t be an mmr floor for the lowest division
-TheJohan
The mmr floor is the same floor that’s already implemented in mini and main season. Being above 2k is TECHNICALLY a rule in signups, but that rule was implemented only 2–3 seasons ago I believe and any player that was playing/played a RD2L season before the rule was implemented got grandfathered in and is allowed to play while being below the floor.
Also, the mmr floors for each division also act as an upper limit mmr for each division, if we allowed a 50 mmr account to play in the 3k bracket they could get a 6k player to just stomp every game and fill the rest of the team with some sub 1k players.
This is a good format to run on and off with mini, don’t think 2 at the same time will work. I would suggest tighter mmr spreads for each division. I.e. 6.5k avg with floor of 5.5k or even 6k, rather than the noted 5k floor
-Staylin
I’ve thought about and talked with others about running premades instead of mini for a season and then running mini instead of premades. I think that’d be an ideal solution, but if there’s enough interest I think there could be a way to run both in-between main seasons, but overlap them so they’re not being played at the same time. I also do not want mini, main, or premade tournaments to overlap, or at least overlap as little as possible.
Yeah the mmr spreads for each division were very rough estimates to each division and we could definitely move them around depending on the amount of interest in playing. I think the mmr spread remaining fairly large works well for the lower divisions, but I do agree that tighter mmr spreads should be implemented the higher up. I’m just not sure there’d be enough teams to warrant say a 5k division and a 5.5k division ON TOP of the 3.5/4.5/6.5+ divisions
increase mmr cap
-Paradise
You could fit a 10k mmr player into the 6.5k bracket given the current rules I laid out. Given this, I should probably add a player mmr cap to the highest division :)
As for team cap — not sure if there’s enough of a playerbase to justify a 7k capped division or something.
bad idea because this will lead to rigged or unbalanced teams and some players who dont have a team might potential be unable to play if they no team is looking for players.
-Dr.Zzzz
This format definitely favors teams that are all friends, actively play together, and have chemistry playing dota together, but I don’t think a premade stack format will inherently lead to more rigged or unbalanced teams than the normal mini format already has. There’s plenty of evidence that shows players WAY above the mmr average of a division playing in a certain division, Apex playing div 2 mini this past season, immortal soundproof going division 4 both come to mind just off the top of my head. This on top of captains who A) know how to do auction drafts and B) know the pool better than other captains, lead to rigged and unbalanced teams every mini season.
As for not being able to find a team, if we ended up doing it exactly how I proposed it, there would be no way we let players go undrafted and not able to play. If we got enough signups for everyone to fill out their teams we would either cut signups off there or just create 5 stack teams of solo players. Obviously not the best solutions, but everyone playing is 1st priority.
I think the proposed reform sounds okay, but it feels like solo (or any non 5 stack) players are punished for it. If you don’t have a premade team, your team is just likely to be strictly worse than the teams that are a premade 5 stack. I don’t mind the idea of premade teams, or making mini premade only, but having a mixture of the two just seems kinda bad imo.
-bsvhsvj
Yeah definitely. I think with the majority being on board for both this AND mini being ran instead of this format replacing mini, we could run both and for teams that want to sign up as premades get placed into this format and people that want to play mini as a solo player will get placed into the normal mini pool. Not sure if there’s enough interest in that or enough players to make both work, but could be worth looking into doing. Possibly keep both the “mini and premade mini” in the same bracket but have them on opposite sides so the winner of premade plays the winner of mini.
Generally though, the idea to allow a mix was mainly due to this being a proposal to completely replace mini and if that ends up being the case, we would need to cater to all players, solo and stacks, equally.
Premade teams are antithetical to RD2L as a whole. The entire idea of RD2L is to meet new players and play with new players. There are a plethora of other places where you can form a team and play with that pre-made team. MMR average caps are silly since there are tons of players who play either below or above their MMR that can be abused in these types of systems. These discrepancies are currently resolved by the captains understanding which players are value or anti-value in terms of their MMR. Routinely in mini currently, certain players who are the same MMR cost vastly different amounts in terms of their cost during the auction draft.
-Kstigs
Nothing you said was untrue, but given the size of RD2L I don’t think making a version of RD2L that included premade stacks would be a bad move. The core values of main season would still make RD2L appealing for the same reasons its appealing now, this would just add another option for players who want to play with their friends and don’t want to go through the trouble of overdrafting for their friends in the mini draft and whatnot. Given the ability and the size of RD2L to put together large tournaments I think we should use that to put out and run as many tournaments as we can if there’s interest from the playerbase.
Average cap in a vacuum is pretty useless, yeah, but with a mmr floor and mmr ceiling along with the average cap then it starts to get more balanced and less fuckery is possible like having a 6k playing with 40 mmr players or something dumb like that.
We could possibly swap to a system of “badge maximum” instead of average team mmr, like how AD2L is ran currently. Sandbagging is a big issue, but with main season and past mini+main seasons, I think adjusting players would be much easier for us to do given past drafts. Ex: not allowing a player who signed up for the past main season at divine 3 to play in an ancient capped league.
I’m not going to lie and say that there’s definitely not skill differences between players at the same mmr, but that’s inherently present in every format of a draft style tournament. Yeah with auction drafts you can put more money on players who are better than others at the same badge/mmr, but that’s also the case for people like Treebeard who aren’t the best divine x player in the pool, but get picked for a TON of money in mini because of who they are. Point being, I think a lot of the differences in value between players of the same badge come down to personality of the player/popularity in addition to the actual skill difference.
Have people sign up on a list and then you can make teams from that list in a non draft format, where people just take their friends and yeah
-OFF
That’s definitely a cleaner, more efficient way of assigning teams to players to unfilled teams or grouping solo signups into teams. The main part of the draft was mainly to just add a fun aspect to the format. The mini auction draft is almost universally liked, so keeping that seemed like a good idea, but probably just includes more headaches than anything.
My brain has melted from this. This was probably the biggest waste of time, but whatever.
General consensus on the responses so far:
Most people enjoy mini (50% like mini, another 33%’s enjoyment varies season by season)
Over 90% of respondents find the mini format at least acceptable
Over 60% of respondents would be interested in a premade RD2L league
Around 45% of respondents are in favor of running both mini AND a premade league. Only 20% of respondents don’t want a premade league implemented
