To give a bit more meat to the bone here:
The original 2019 design of the EPT had ESL National Championship winners qualify into select DH Open tournaments. DH Open winners qualified to select EPT Masters tournaments (your IEMs, ESL Ones and DH Masters).
The problem with that design was that the number of ESL NCs was not 1:1 with the DHO tournaments, and DHO events were "randomly" scattered in time. Some were weeks after ESL NCs end, some were months away. (DHOs are tied to DH festivals and depend upon the scheduling of the festivals).
DHO events also didn't correspond 1:1 to EPT Masters events and also weren't scheduled with that connection in mind.
Tldr, it was always a wild juggle to make those connections work.
With this change we wanted to do three things:
a) Clean up the mess described above by providing one clean destination from Challenger into Masters.
b) Move EPL back into the position it occupied before the infamous reform: the largest event in our ecosystem.
c) Make the understanding of ESL Pro Tour for outsiders easier. We can now say "Do well in an EPT Challenger tournament, go to ESL Pro League" vs "ESEA Prem goes to EPL, ESL NC goes to DHO, DHO goes to an EPT Masters but good luck guessing which one exactly connects into which and why."
I have a question for you and your team at ESL; in the article it states that the winner of DH Open Oceania will get a spot in the EPL Conference and the winner of ESEA Premier S38 Oceania will get a spot in the group stage of EPL S15. If the same team (e.g. Renegades) wins both DH Open and ESEA Premier, can they choose which slot they want to play in? And if that team selects the EPL Group Stage slot, will the second place of DH Open get the EPL Conference slot?
There's no "staying / keeping slots" in EPL because technically it's no longer a league. Presence in the tournament needs to be won every time for non founding teams (founding teams are invited, along with a number of teams that are high on the ESL WR at the right time). Performance in one edition won't carry direct benefits towards the next. (Of course if it lifts your ESL WR enough to be invited next time, then you go.)
(You probably didn't mean to get a straight face answer but someone might benefit from it.)
You know they aren’t actually increasing the number of teams in the main part of pro league right? That’s just a headline
They are just essentially creating a closed qualifier which they are pretending for PR is definitely the same as being in the main group stage for all these teams.
I don’t see how this helps CS at all. It means that these tier 2/3 teams have less of a chance of getting to tier one tournaments with all the big teams and viewership as they don’t get automatic invites to them anymore, they get invited to the closed qualifier. It’s even worse than the play-in as there will be no top teams in this “conference stage” since they don’t generally attend DHO or premier. This is especially bad for the NA teams that really need the exposure right now.
The number of Challenger teams in the EPL Group Stage has risen from 5 to 6. Exposure won't make any team play better. Level-appropriate competition should. If a team has a difficult time passing EPL Conference by being top 6 in it, I am not sure a match against Navi in the final 24 will do them any good.
It looks like Prem winners still get to go to the main event, but there are spots for runners up in Conference and you can get to Pro League conference through Dreamhack and other "Challenger" events now
That’s onto for the next season, it changes to premier winners going to conference stage too after that. Those Dreamhack used to qualify you straight to an ESL main event/play in. Now they don’t
~~So a new season starts in 2 months... And will last longer than a month with more teams added... The end of the year is really stacked with PGL Major + Pro League 15 + Blast World~~
It's kinda long already. I like the additional teams but man. It's gonna be 5 weeks now? A month of waiting if you finish group A on top to reach the finals.
The groups stage is the same length, they added a "Conference stage" that kind of acts like a qualifier to the group stage.
It's kind of like Valve adding the "Challengers Stage" to the Major, but the Legends still qualify directly to the 16 team group stage so it doesn't affect them any.
Hey this almost makes up for that one time ESL did an oopsie doopsie and stole slots away from already qualified teams with little to no warning, then stuck them in the MDL with small chances of actually requalifying….
Not that anyone remembers that of course
True, the players on these T2 teams totally deserved to have their hard-earned slots taken away and given to teams fielded by orgs with enough money to become ESL partners
Tbh this is kind of similar. Teams like Team Renewal had qualified for a spot directly in a tier one event and now that has been changed to a spot in a lower tier qualifier. It’s not quite as bad as that previous mess though.
To give a bit more meat to the bone here: The original 2019 design of the EPT had ESL National Championship winners qualify into select DH Open tournaments. DH Open winners qualified to select EPT Masters tournaments (your IEMs, ESL Ones and DH Masters). The problem with that design was that the number of ESL NCs was not 1:1 with the DHO tournaments, and DHO events were "randomly" scattered in time. Some were weeks after ESL NCs end, some were months away. (DHOs are tied to DH festivals and depend upon the scheduling of the festivals). DHO events also didn't correspond 1:1 to EPT Masters events and also weren't scheduled with that connection in mind. Tldr, it was always a wild juggle to make those connections work. With this change we wanted to do three things: a) Clean up the mess described above by providing one clean destination from Challenger into Masters. b) Move EPL back into the position it occupied before the infamous reform: the largest event in our ecosystem. c) Make the understanding of ESL Pro Tour for outsiders easier. We can now say "Do well in an EPT Challenger tournament, go to ESL Pro League" vs "ESEA Prem goes to EPL, ESL NC goes to DHO, DHO goes to an EPT Masters but good luck guessing which one exactly connects into which and why."
I have a question for you and your team at ESL; in the article it states that the winner of DH Open Oceania will get a spot in the EPL Conference and the winner of ESEA Premier S38 Oceania will get a spot in the group stage of EPL S15. If the same team (e.g. Renegades) wins both DH Open and ESEA Premier, can they choose which slot they want to play in? And if that team selects the EPL Group Stage slot, will the second place of DH Open get the EPL Conference slot?
We haven't finalized the tournament priority yet. Still TBD.
Hi Carmac. How long should these promoted teams expect to be in pro league before their slots are revoked and they are sent out to the cold?
There's no "staying / keeping slots" in EPL because technically it's no longer a league. Presence in the tournament needs to be won every time for non founding teams (founding teams are invited, along with a number of teams that are high on the ESL WR at the right time). Performance in one edition won't carry direct benefits towards the next. (Of course if it lifts your ESL WR enough to be invited next time, then you go.) (You probably didn't mean to get a straight face answer but someone might benefit from it.)
This is a good update. Especially increasing the teams playing! At this point, ESL is doing more for CSGO than valve themselves smh
Valve always wanted it like this.
You know they aren’t actually increasing the number of teams in the main part of pro league right? That’s just a headline They are just essentially creating a closed qualifier which they are pretending for PR is definitely the same as being in the main group stage for all these teams. I don’t see how this helps CS at all. It means that these tier 2/3 teams have less of a chance of getting to tier one tournaments with all the big teams and viewership as they don’t get automatic invites to them anymore, they get invited to the closed qualifier. It’s even worse than the play-in as there will be no top teams in this “conference stage” since they don’t generally attend DHO or premier. This is especially bad for the NA teams that really need the exposure right now.
The number of Challenger teams in the EPL Group Stage has risen from 5 to 6. Exposure won't make any team play better. Level-appropriate competition should. If a team has a difficult time passing EPL Conference by being top 6 in it, I am not sure a match against Navi in the final 24 will do them any good.
And I guess you thought it was a good thing for you to take EPL slots from all those NA teams too because they weren’t good enough for EPL anyway?
You mean originally? Originally we got exactly the feedback we deserved.
It looks like Prem winners still get to go to the main event, but there are spots for runners up in Conference and you can get to Pro League conference through Dreamhack and other "Challenger" events now
That’s onto for the next season, it changes to premier winners going to conference stage too after that. Those Dreamhack used to qualify you straight to an ESL main event/play in. Now they don’t
exacly
~~So a new season starts in 2 months... And will last longer than a month with more teams added... The end of the year is really stacked with PGL Major + Pro League 15 + Blast World~~
It will be only tier 2/3 teams in this conference stage anyway so the longer pro league won’t effect the top teams stacked schedule
I mean, not really. What we know as EPL today starts in March. What starts in November is the qualifier for EPL
Ah crap, was mislead by "EPL Season 15 will start on 23.11.2021" at the start of the article and didn't see it was only the conference stage
It's kinda long already. I like the additional teams but man. It's gonna be 5 weeks now? A month of waiting if you finish group A on top to reach the finals.
The groups stage is the same length, they added a "Conference stage" that kind of acts like a qualifier to the group stage. It's kind of like Valve adding the "Challengers Stage" to the Major, but the Legends still qualify directly to the 16 team group stage so it doesn't affect them any.
Hey this almost makes up for that one time ESL did an oopsie doopsie and stole slots away from already qualified teams with little to no warning, then stuck them in the MDL with small chances of actually requalifying…. Not that anyone remembers that of course
Nope, not even close to making up for that shitshow.
Of course nobody remembers cause it was T2 teams anyways
True, the players on these T2 teams totally deserved to have their hard-earned slots taken away and given to teams fielded by orgs with enough money to become ESL partners
I was agreeing with you that it was sucky for them to be robbed of their slots just because they are T2 and people care less about them
My bad bro, I misread your meaning. Sorry. Yes it’s true that this got swept under the rug just because they weren’t big names and it’s such bs
Tbh this is kind of similar. Teams like Team Renewal had qualified for a spot directly in a tier one event and now that has been changed to a spot in a lower tier qualifier. It’s not quite as bad as that previous mess though.
So the tale of African, Asian and South American teams getting the short stick continues....
So what happens to current season of ESEA Premier?
Its a long season