Gaming
It rocketed the DAC prize pool to the second highest in Dota history, but are compendiums needed?
With the dust settling on Dota Asian Championship 2015, the second largest tournament of the game’s life (at least by prize pool size) there remain a few questions to be answered. No, they’re not related to how Sumail managed to break records for both most deaths in the first four minutes and fastest Bloodstone of the tournament in the final game. Nor are they even about why Team Secret failed to reach the finals given their 15-0 streak in the group stage. No, the question we should be asking is: do we even need compendiums anymore?
Of course, that staggering final prize pool ($3,057,519) would still be sat at $250,000 without the community’s help. The 1,123 percent increase in total winnings surely added gravitas to the finals, and without the $1.2million cheque Evil Geniuses picked up, Sumail Hasan Syed would not be Pakistan’s first, and highest earning, eSports superstar. Pakistan now sits 31st on the list of top earning eSports countries. The country claims only three professional players.
From the financial side of things, then, yes. Compendiums are the dream tournament organisers didn’t even dare to have. Easing the burden on sponsors and developers and handing fans a tangible way to show their support for their game. But does Dota need that anymore?
The Compendium’s original intention from Valve was to improve the connection between fans and players, and give them a way of competing via predictions. A noble intention, and one which also worked as a unique marketing tool for the event and the game – an aspect that is now, arguably, unnecessary.
Looking instead from a purely practical standpoint, Compendiums are a nightmare. Anyone who has bought one for a major tournament, especially DAC and The International’s magic books, will know the disappointment of having one. In both cases, each level up the more points you earned, and levels unlocked more immortal treasures.
On the surface, $10 for the chance to earn yourself some free swag is a good deal, but the reality often sours our hopes. Levels need points, and point drops are just as fickle as the new “fairer” item drop system Valve implemented with patch 6.83, all but doing away with your Battle Level entirely. The alternative is buying points, but raising your compendium’s level enough to start earning treasures requires three or four packs of 2,400 points, each costing the same as the compendium itself.
Valve’s decision to scrap the item drop system, awarding rarercosmetics to higher level players, provisionally ended the current compendium model last year. But the success of DAC’s compendium shows that fans still wish to contribute to the competitions their favourite teams will be in as well as nabbing some good-looking sets in the process.
But this win-win situation for organisers and fans doesn’t have to come at the expense of shoddy implementation and long waits for stretch goal items to be designed and handed out (as happened with TI4’s music packs and base customisation items). Other tournaments, like the upcoming DotaPit, have chosen to offer multiple packs for fans to support them with, containing just item bundles, or alongside a ticket to watch in-game.
Separation of incentives is smart, and it all goes to the same place anyway, so why keep the headache when you can get straight to the good stuff instead?
League of Legends developer Riot, meanwhile, has gone one step further, and steadfastly refused to sweeten the pot using crowdfunding, maintaining that lower but much more regular income for LCS players will lead to a more professionalised set up, while Valve expects all but the elite finalists of its biggest tournaments to fund themselves.
But which side do you sit on in the debate? Do we need compendiums any more, or are they still great value for money? A temporary solution to eSports’ growing pains, or an essential part of their structure for years to come? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments below.
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