WePlay is back with a Dota 2 tournament after a longer hiatus and it is arguably one of the most complicated tournaments formats so far in Dota 2. GosuGamers will walk you through the GSL-group based tournament in this following guide.
It has been almost a year since the dawn of the former WePlay season, held in the pre-crowd funding era but still boasted a neat prize pool of $25,000. In the end, the event was won by Natus Vincere. The tradition of running so called double elimination groups (commonly named GSL groups) continues although altered to include certain elements of the The Premier League where teams challenge off anew in weekly tournaments to gather points and prize money. In the end only eight teams of each region will be competing throughout the main stage of the tournament, lasting a total of six weeks. The format is similar to the established Korean format Code S / Code A, used in StarCraft 2 tournaments. As far as Dota 2 goes, it is however quite new.
Four regions will be represented (Europe/CIS, Atlantic/Americas, China and South East Asia). Each region will send off their top performing team, the team gathering the most points in the main stage, to the LAN finals in Kiev, Ukraine, December 11 to 14 at the International Exhibition Center. Regions will then cross-intervene in pairs (Europe & Americas as well as China & South East Asia) where teams finishing 2nd to 4th will play. Eventually each region pair will send two additional teams to the offline finals, resulting in a total of eight teams at the event playoffs. Qualifiers started yesterday already with the South East Asian being first. The last day of qualifiers is September 3rd, where the second Chinse one ends. For the qualifier schedule, check out the first announcement. Main english cast will be found at JoinDota Red on Twitch.
Furthermore, WePlay are going with the somewhat controversial decision of giving the entire playoff prize pool ($100,000) to the champion whereas the other teams present will have to hope on the community to raise respectable sums for them to share. The winning team will also be guaranteed a spot at the WePlay Convention in Dubai, May 2nd to 5th of 2015. To find out the detailed format of the event, check the longer segment below.
| Amount of teams | Prize pool |
|---|---|
| Total: 32 | 1st - $100,000 + 22.5%* |
| Per region: 8 | 2nd - 22.5%* |
| Invited (total): 16 | 3rd - 17.5%* |
| Qualified (total): 16 | 4th - 12.5%* |
| Invited (per region): 4 | 5th-6th - 7.5%* |
| Qualified(per region): 4 | 7th-8th - 5%* |
| Teams at LAN playoffs: 8 | * = Share of the compendium prize pool distribution |
An additional $100,000 is distributed through the course of the tournament, whereas $54,000 will be earned in the main stage, $6,000 in the first round of Last Chance and $40,000 as qualification rewards ($5,000 per team). If those $5,000 do cover the travel/accomodation expenses for a team, WePlay will cover the rest. More about those sums can be found in the segment below. To sum it up, WePlay announced a total prize pool of $200,000, plus community funding.
The format
The WePlay Season 3 format is already getting mentioned as being notoriously complicated. You can find the full infograph of the format here. Complex as it may be, it is still logical and understandable (unlike certain others...) and at the end of the day it is not too tricky to understand once given some time taking a look at it. To help out with this, GosuGamers will provide a more detailed rundown of format below.
| Mainly this is for those who look at this... | ...but see this |
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Each regional division
The Qualifiers
First off, there are the two qualifier brackets where up to 512 teams compete in each one of them. Out of these 512, the top two teams eventually make it through to the second round. These four teams will then face off in a GSL group. A GSL group consists of five matches, and is essentially a double bracket final without the grand final. The winners of the upper bracket final (M3) as well as the lower bracket final (M5) are ranked 1st and 2nd respectively of the group. You can find a model of such a group here.
Those two teams taking 1st and 2nd of the group will start off in Class S of the main stage, whereas the teams taking 3rd and 4th will have to start one step lower down, in Class A. Four invited teams will also entered here, playing one best-of-three seeding match each against one of the other invited teams. The winners of these will join Class S whereas the losers go to Class A.
Main Stage - Class S
Class S is where you want to be, this is where all the magic happens. The first week will start off with the two top qualifying teams as well as the two top invited teams facing up in another GSL group here. If you don't understand what a GSL group is, then read up above, it's key aspect in understanding the WePlay format to say the least. A GSL group will always end with teams finishing 1st to 4th, ties are not possible. The teams will gather points and cash according to the figure to the right. These points are what eventually settles the main stage rankings.
The team ending third of the group will have to play the second team of Class A for future survival in the Class, winning team will once again play Class S next week whereas the loser drops to Class A. The team finishing fourth (aka last) of the group, will automatically drop down to Class A for next week. Each week (for six weeks) will feature a new set of GSL groups, teams will have to ensure their position to remain in Class S or A. Note however that no team will be eliminated until the end of these six weeks.
Main Stage - Class A
Class A also consists of a weekly GSL group, played parallel to the Class S one. Teams of Class A do not get points (they do however get some cash) but must instead try to finish first in order to join Class S next week, where they have a shot of gathering points. Finishing second is also acceptable as they will play the third of Class S where the winner joins Class S next week.
Note that due to this format, it is still the same eight teams every week but which Class they play in might differ from week to week, depending on how well they do.
Main Stage - Results
At the end of the six weekly GSL group tournaments (each team having played six of them, either in Class S or A), the teams are done gathering points. The one team with the highest amount will automatically qualify for the playoffs in Kiev. Naturally, this applies for every regional division, giving us a total of four playoffs teams at this point. The teams ranking 2nd to 4th will move on to the Last Chance stage. The teams finishing 5th and 6th are done playing this season but will remain to take part in the next one. Same fortune can not be said for the two teams with the least amount of points as they will be eliminated from WePlay. Presumably they can still enter again through qualifiers.
Now we have one team already packing for Kiev, two teams taking a break for now, two teams cursing and flaming each other and three teams buckling up for the next stage. Lets follow those three teams.
Last Chance - Round 1
This is the stage where regions will cross and pair up. The regions are paired Europe/CIS - Atlantic/Americas as well as China - South East Asia. The phrases West and East apply, but do note that at no point during the online phase will a team from West play a team from East.
The third ranked team of one of the pair's region (for instance Europe) will play a best-of-three versus the fourth ranked team from the other region in the pair (in this case Americas). The loser of this match finishes fourth and will not play any more matches in this season, but will return next season. The winner gets $750 and moves on the second round of Last Chance.
What happened to the team finishing second during the main stage? The team skipped the first round of Last Chance and moved on straight to the second round, where we are right now. To continue the example using the pair Europe - Americas, this second round of Last Chance will feature the second ranked team of the European division, the second ranked team of the American one as well as the two winning teams of Round One's matches (described just above). Those two teams can be from either region of the pair, depending on who won the match-ups.
Last Chance - Round 2
This is the very last part of the online phase of WePlay Season 3 (finally, huh?) and is actually just another regular GSL group, the same as basically every single phase throughout the tournament. The four teams described above plays two initial matches, where the winners move on the the so called upper finals and losers move on to play each other. The winner of the upper finals qualify for the offline playoffs in Kiev, loser of the match get one final chance in the lower finals (aka consolidation match).
Meanwhile in the lower match, the team losing is finished for now but will return next season. The winner moves on to the consolidation match to face the loser of the winners match (from just before, remember?). The winner of this very last match qualifies for the playoffs in Kiev. Worth noting is that the consolidation match is best-of-five whereas the other matches of the group are best-of-three.
And that is it! You made it through the format, at least on paper. If you are still confused, all you really need to know is that eight teams from each region will play a bunch of matches again and again before finally the best teams ship off to the playoffs in Kiev, taking place December 11 to 14.
GosuGamers will launch an event page for WePlay Season 3 in the coming days, where you will be able to keep track of news, matches, groups, brackets, penguins, VODs, casters, Puppey-pauses, lunch breaks and whatever else may or may not be relevant.
Source: WePlay.tv
