Maelstorm assessed the prospects for the “death” of Dota 2

Dota 2 caster Vladimir Maelstorm Kuzminov spoke about the state of the game and its professional scene. On his personal Telegram channel, he discussed how Valve could retain the MOBA audience.

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There are more and more questions and concerns about what will happen to Dota. It’s important to separate gaming and e-sports here. Game. Nothing. She's doing great. Online is huge, but its decline is miniscule. What can be done better? Introduce a more intense seasonal battle pass (like the carnival now). Full of awards. In terms of its level of development, the current battlepass in Dota is even too good. All these dialogues, plots. All this took a colossal amount of resources, but the season battle pass should be boring bullshit that only makes the player strive for a reward or simply rewards. This mechanic has been partially implemented, but more is needed. Ideally, do 1-2 major events a year. Like a diertide or godnya. Regular gameplay patches. If you do this, the game will live for another 20 years with at least 500,000 online.

Kuzminov believes that the e-sports direction of the game has two development options.

Cybersport. There are 2 ways here. First. Do everything yourself. An example is almost any game where the main competitions are held only by the developer. We could go on for a long time, but we all know one thing: it won’t happen. Second. Give everything, BUT with obligatory support and supervision. In Dota this will look like dividing tournaments into 2 clusters. With or without developer support. Without support, anyone can conduct it in any way they want, but few will be interested in it. With support - the most juice. What is this? First of all, this is an opportunity to earn money at the tournament. That is, the introduction of battle passes, tickets, crowdfunding and other goodies for organizers. Something that allows the organizer to earn money directly from the game, and the more, the better the tournament itself is in all respects. At the same time, of course, it will be important to regulate both the number of such tournaments and many of their aspects. Including sponsors, format and much more. The main thing here is priority. The tournament should want to be the coolest, and this coolness should be rewarded by the game itself. Now this is not the case. Now all tournaments except for the Inter are separated from the developer and therefore they have no incentive to be the best. Well, yes, but what's the point? What good is it if they say about your tournament that it is better than others if you don’t earn anything from it? If you have a budget, we’ll master it. And no matter what altruism oozes in the veins of organizations, business always wins. No matter how much you want to do better, if you don’t get paid for it, then your enthusiasm will quickly fade.

Maelstorm compared the proposed option with the system in the CS2 competitive scene, and also suggested what would happen to Dota 2 if Valve decided to leave everything as it is.

In fact, such a system works in the CS and works well. Moreover, it is tied as strongly as possible to crowdfunding. Just read how much negativity and fear there is because sticker sales have fallen. At the same time, look at what the tournaments look like there. Of course, Dota is Dota, but even in it the tournaments looked 10 times better while the organizers were fighting for the title of majors. Why? Because then there was not even a direct, but a potential benefit. If everything remains as it is, then we will survive as is, we will not get used to it. From int to int, thank you for not canceling it. And in fact, int is still tournament number 1. Why? Yes, because this is a tournament from the developer.

Earlier, Team Spirit manager Dmitry Korb3n spoke about the future of the Dota 2 competitive scene. He believes that in the absence of serious changes, the professional discipline may cease to exist within the next few years.