TI5 Invite Discussion Thread

Newbee were trash at DAC, that much is true, but the team has shown signs of improvement since. And they've shown relatively long term roster stability, which is something Valve has put some emphasis on.

There's nothing wrong with there being the idea of the previous champions getting a free pass in terms of playing in my eyes. And even then, it's not like Newbee are playing thaaat bad. Not like say Na'Vi post TI4 changes.

Sad that NiP didn't get a direct invite, but given how many good teams there are in Europe, I'm not entirely shocked. Nor am I said that MY got an invite over them. Just means that the Ninja's have a more dramatic road to the final ;)

Well, a little disappointed in the invites, but i did predict it right :D

I think the qualifiers will be interesting. Top one qualifies and 2nd place all go to Seattle to play in a wildcard event. With this in mind i could see both Alliance and NiP playing at TI.

Alliance winning the Qualies, obviously.

Europe is really stacked though. On their day any of them can beat just about any other. I expect the Swedes to come out on top, but HR could ruin the party (they are Alliances bane, afterall). All other regions seem a little more straightforward. I expect Rave/MVP to be top 2 from SEA, Tinker/Summers Rift from US and CDEC/HGT/TongFu from China (a bit more contested).

Really excited for this now.

Imagine I tell my League friends to watch TI, and they watch a Summer's Rift game... :D


Back on topic, I feel the teams that were invited are fair, just not too sure about the last two.

Yeah, i was watching Bulldog's stream earlier and 7ckngMad was saying, basically, they need to change the system.
NA has Team Tinker.
SEA has Rave and MVP

Now the other 2 regions with teams to at least that level:
Europe has Alliance, NiP, NA'VI, Burden United, HellRaisers, maybe even 4ASC, PR and Vega.
China has TongFu, EHOME, CDEC and HGT.

So how is it fair that they get equal qualifiers? They should maybe have Eastern and Western qualifiers, or just throw everyone in the same pot and random the 4 groups of 10 teams.

I would have loved to see NIP invited, but I picked Alliance over them on my invite predictions. Both are great teams, but I think Alliance still deserved that spot. They've been playing very well over the past few months.

Wasn't really down with VP getting picked. Also the Europe scene is just flooded with teams atm.

I can understand why a lot of people were unhappy with Newbee being picked but they did have success after TI4 till 6.8 came out. They slowly became more and more erratic in their wins though.

But I did expect them to be invited only on the grounds that they won last time. If they flame out at this TI then it will be their own fault.

Newbee deserved their spot as defending champions, who maintained 3/5 of their TI4 roster.

Virtus.Pro also deserved their spot based on merit. They have been consistently better than the teams that didn't get an invite. They're just not as popular in the West as the Swedish teams.

I'm disappointed RAVE weren't invited, but I feel they can get through the qualifiers.

The knock on Newbee is that the biggest piece of their TI4 championship run was Xiao8, so while they do have stability, they have yet to prove that they can win on a consistent basis without him.

The issue with the idea of doing TI qualifiers in random groups, is that it essentially means you have to do it by LAN's, to prevent ping issues.

And LAN's are very expensive. If you are doing multiple lans for multiple different groups (Or one mega LAN), it'll cost Valve a fortune. So whilst not the most fair way of doing it, doing it by region is more practical, and more cost efficient for them. (I know, they do make millions off of TI, but you can still appreciate the reason why. Especially if Valva are going to be hosting 4 major lans now instead of 1)

I feel the only way the defending champions of The International should not receive a direct invite back, is if they completely switch roster, or disband completely.

As Newbee are still active, maintained 3/5 of their roster (although switching captain) and did not disband, they had to be invited to defend their title.

Just how I see it.