While it is great to have Dota 2 fantasy transition from the just TI to a seasonal format for the DPC Leagues, there are a lot of improvements that can be made.
Fantasy games are something that makes the sport or esport you love a lot more enjoyable. It adds an additional layer to the experience, one which tests your knowledge and prediction capabilities as compared to your friends and others who are invested in it. While people outside might not realize the charm of fantasy, the ones who are ardent investors of time and emotion, including me, know the amount of joy it has the potential to bring (and heartbreak, of course).
A total of 35 million people around the globe are a part of Football fantasy leagues associated with the National Football League (NFL) games in America. Nearly 9 million play Fantasy Premier League, the most popular football (soccer) related fantasy game out there, vying to be one of the top managers in the world, which is something in which I have spent many enjoyable hours.
Considering my abundant love for Dota 2 and fantasy games, it isn’t a surprise that I was excited when Valve announced they would be bringing Dota 2 fantasy out of the compendium and make it a regular feature of the game for the DPC Leagues. Having structured leagues with all teams playing a certain number of games is the perfect recipe for a fantasy game. Of course, it is fun to play the fantasy game related to The International, but that is just two weeks in a year, which isn’t a lot of time to be excited about Dota 2 fantasy. However, the way the fantasy is structured makes it a lot less exciting than the potential it has.
Valve made the announcement about bringing fantasy play to the DPC Leagues on the 24th of November 2021. In a nutshell, the current Dota 2 fantasy has the following rules:
● Each fantasy roster is comprised of five player cards
● Every fantasy player gets to pick six rosters, one in every region
● Each DPC region is its own fantasy league
● Scoring done on a weekly basis
● Fantasy points will be based on the best placement in six DPC regions
● 10 player packs will be available, the rest of the player slots will need to be filled by purchasing card packs
● In the case a series goes to three games, the top two scores from the three games for a player will be considered
The rewards for the seasonal fantasy are:
Now I see where Valve are going with this.
Having teams in all DPC Leagues will not only motivate viewers to keep tabs on all the regions, but it will also make them spend on cards for all regions, getting more of the green in the pockets of Valve. And let’s be fair, it is a business, so it is natural that the makers of the seasonal fantasy keep monetization at the top of their minds.
There are some glaring issues with it though, the result of which can be seen by the amount of excitement towards the fantasy game. I played the TI10 fantasy with a lot of excitement, but the seasonal fantasy hasn’t nearly had that effect on me. After opening the 10 packs and setting up a team for the NA DPC League, I completely forgot about it for two weeks. On enquiring with my Dota 2 playing friends, against whom I’d competed in the TI10 fantasy, I saw that none of them had fielded even a single team for the seasonal Dota 2 fantasy. This can’t be a coincidence, and what I see with this group of people is a microcosm of the entire Dota 2 community.
Why could that be the case? Let’s take a look at what the issues are and what the possible solutions could be.
Issues and Possible Fixes
There are a lot of degrees of freedom currently associated with the game, and some constraints need to be put on the rosters to make it enticing. While looking at the issues, I will make some comparisons with Fantasy Premier League, as it is one of the most popular fantasy games out there.
1) Six rosters are too many
There aren’t too many people who wish to check and manage six fantasy rosters for the same game each week. The good part about The International fantasy is that there is just one roster of five players. Of course, it needs to be changed every day for those two weeks, but it is a lot less tedious than doing so for six rosters. Granted that the potential for players to make the list for top 10% rewards is higher in this case, but a lower chance of that with better competition through a single roster would be a better system.
There can be multiple ways to implement this:
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Rosters can be picked in only one region, but their scores will be compared with every region.
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Rosters can be a combination of players from all regions.
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Each roster is allowed to have only one player from each region.
My personal choice would be to go with option number 3, which would have one roster and players from at least five of the six regions, making viewers keep an eye out on multiple regions and giving them a reason to purchase cards from all regions.
2) Who can we select in our rosters?
Dota 2 fantasy has always been about picking the best players in the business and expecting them to deliver. The only thing that needs to be checked in TI fantasy is which of the top teams play more games on a particular day, and that’s the best approach to be taken for seasonal Dota 2 fantasy as well. If, let’s say, Tundra Esports is dominating the competition in the EU DPC League, the best solution is keep all five Tundra Esports players in your roster, and hope the bonuses on your silver and gold cards are better than what others have. That isn’t really a fantasy skill being called into play.
But what about the teams that aren’t in the top four of the Division I League? Are they to be completely ignored? In the current version of the fantasy game, the answer is yes. While everyone will flock to own players from Evil Geniuses, Undying, 4Zoomers and Quincy Crew, no one will want Arkosh Gaming players in their fantasy rosters, unless of course, they are planning on a conducting ritual to open the gates to the nether realm.
Fantasy Premier League has a great way around this – player pricing. Every team has a budget and the players from the top teams are priced highly while players from teams at the lower end of the table are low priced. Fantasy teams have to make the right choice of players while making sure the budget doesn’t go overboard, which is where the managerial skill comes into question.
In a similar way, if Dota 2 fantasy rosters can be given a budget to work with, with player pricings decided based on position in the previous season, it will bring players from all teams into contention (yes, even Arkosh) and make for a lot of diverse teams throughout the fantasy universe, instead of five players from one team.
Fantasy Premier League also has the concept of substitutes, but that is something that doesn’t apply a lot to Dota 2. In case Dota 2 seasonal fantasy does adopt a model based on team budget, there are a couple of ways to go in terms of making changed to the team every week:
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A completely new roster can be chosen for the new week with the same budget.
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A roster will be allowed to make only one or two changes a week, and the budget available will be based on the cost of the player being sold.
Considering the fact that football teams typically have just one game a week, but Dota 2 teams can have either one or two games a week, it would probably be fair to allow fantasy players to completely revamp their rosters every week, as is the case now.
3) Ranking System
No fantasy players want to say to their friends, “Hey, my Dota 2 fantasy percentile for this week is 95!” No one. The best for a fantasy player to mark his/her progress is total points scored (which is in there) and the overall rank out of the total number of players.
Percentile isn’t a bad indicator of performance, but having an absolute number in terms of points and rank amongst a certain number of players is always a better metric.
It’d also be useful to see the total number of points a professional player has scored throughout the season, but that isn’t the most necessary of stats for seasonal Dota 2 fantasy.
4) Rewards
Rewards or prizes is hands down the most lucrative factor in Dota 2 fantasy. Not that it is the only factor that draws fantasy warriors towards the game, but the will to check in every week, make changes and keep track of how teams are doing are bolstered the most by the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
The current rewards consist of Dota Plus Shards and Winter Treasures. With all due respect, these are absolute garbage. Valve is a multi-billion dollar company and can definitely offer some better goodies to generate a strong interest within the community for the seasonal Dota 2 fantasy battle. There can be weekly, monthly and seasonal prizes, which will ensure there is some impetus for players to do well in a week even though they might have lost out on the chance to gain a good seasonal rank.
Prizes that fantasy players care about can include:
● Exclusive voice chatwheel lines
● Signed player cards
● Arcanas
● Battle Pass (there’s one on its way)
● Battle Pass levels
● Trip to The International
Trip to The International might seem a lot, but is it? If the winner, the first placed fantasy warrior each season, is promised an all-expenses paid trip to The International (there would be three every year, which isn’t too big a deal considering the Battle Pass earnings), it would make the game an overnight success. After all, traveling to TI is every Dota 2 fan’s, for a lack of a better word, fantasy!
Besides these changes, I'd also like to see player cards be tradable with friends and silver and golden cards removed from the game, but that might be asking for a bit too much.
Overall, it is a positive thing that fantasy has been moved from the Compendium to the everyday game for the DPC Leagues. Changes are necessary, which is exactly what Dota 2 statistician Ben “Noxville” Steenhuisen mentioned after Valve made the announcement. The steps outlined above are just some of the many ways the game can be made better. While I don’t expect everything I’ve mentioned to be implemented anytime in the near future, even one big leap in the right direction can be helpful to ignite the extinguished excitement in the hearts of all the Dota 2 fantasy warriors.
