Why ban top teams from competitions?
7891 times Posted by admin on 2010-05-11

As of late, the Malaysian DotA scene has had many DotA LAN competitions – more than once every two weeks. Yet, ironically, their DotA scene seems to receive very little coverage. Perhaps this is because, if one were to look closer, the teams which receive the most international coverage – those whose presence would make competitions newsworthy, the widely accepted top teams in Malaysia, are banned in almost all Malaysian DotA competitions.

As of the start of this year, INC^Excello, Nirvana.MY, and team Kingsurf, were teams banned from most competitions due to their consistent top-notch performances in both local and international competitions. A newly formed team MUFC managed to get themselves banned from competitions very quickly after rising to the top of the Malaysian DotA scene in a few months, although they did manage to net themselves a few “free” wins before they were banned.

 Kingsurf team line up

The inherent question though, regarding these bans, is not how the community determines which teams get banned, but why. The official Malaysian DotA rankings place Kingsurf at 6th position, yet they are still constantly banned from competitions (the 4th and 5th placing teams are not). Even then, due to popular opinion and whatever past achievements, it seems preposterous to question how the community determines which teams are simply “too good to participate” in their competitions.

The question then, is why.

Surveying around, the community seems to be divided on this issue. To quote, “if the top teams keep winning, the newbie teams won't even bother to join because they will lose, so no matter how hard they play, the top teams will win.” A random player from Singapore says “it's a good way to encourage the lesser skilled or newer teams to participate in a competition.”

“Does banning teams help? Yes, but only if there is proper implementation. You can't ban teams forever and in order for a constant growth in numbers, they eventually have to meet.”
- Random forum member

There is not much resistance to the banning of top teams – after all, players from other teams have no reason to go against something that benefits them, and players from the top teams can't voice their opposition without seeming selfish. There are however, many opinions held by the community to go against banning these teams. To quote, “if you keep whining on losing in the 1st round of the competition fighting pro teams, then don't join any competitions until your fully prepared.”

So, what now?

Definitely, the rationale for banning top teams from competitions is strong, but even with very little actual resistance, there are still many who feel that banning top teams from many LAN competitions is detrimental to the scene in the long run.

As the team leader of MUFC, the newest banned team, says regarding being banned from many competitions, “it doesn't matter as long as there are platforms for all the teams to play”. A veteran team leader of a Singaporean DotA team agrees. “It's ok as long as there are still competitions that the top teams can participate in.” A random forum poster also said “I think the best way is to separate those top players rather then banning them. It will be totally unfair for them cause they all also want to play competitions.”

   MUFC team line up

As it currently stands though, as the team leader of MUFC says, the current scene “doesn't motivate people to be good as in the end they'll just get banned.” Some others also say that “it will affect the performance of the top teams as they lose motivation to continue playing.” Truly, as of late, the top Malaysian teams have had very little international showing. But the general consensus is that all will be fine if there is a sufficient number of competitions for all teams to join.

 NIRVANA team

 
XLO team
 

There are a number of suggestions to improve the current situation in the Malaysian DotA scene. One of them is to invoke a tier system to determine the maximum skill level of a competition, and basically have bigger prizes for the competitions that have a higher skill level, which is being done in an arbitrary sense as the biggest Malaysian DotA competitions are usually (but not always) open to all teams. Another is to have multiple divisions for the same competition, separating the bracket into pros and amateurs and having them only meet each other in the finals, a concept that was successfully tried out once in Singapore, but has yet to be replicated. Nevertheless, many people agree that it is simply not healthy, both for the community and for the top tier of teams, to perpetually ban the top teams from competitions.