Many Dota 2 personalities have spoken out against the seeding, or the lack of it, at the ChongQing Major.
Looks like controversies have a special relationship with ChongQing Major. Before, there was the racism controversy which led to Kuku being banned from the Major. Now, the Dota 2 community has taken up an issue with the seeding at the ChongQing Major.
Just a couple of days ago, the organizers announced the group seeding. It does not seem to have sat well with the Dota 2 community.
Davi ‘Moo’ Hull, the carry for J.Storm, was left disappointed after his team was placed 1st in the NA closed qualifiers, yet was seeded in group C with Vici and Liquid. The second team in the group is The Pango. J.Storm and Pango stood first in their region, while Vici and Liquid both were 2nd place holders.
The seeding, overall, seems arbitrary, as we can see from the tweet below.
— DIm_V-uk (@inbloom_kkk) January 17, 2019
Moo’s ire was backed by Jack “KBBQ” Chen, the manager for Forward Gaming. He talked about how the seeding seemed arbitrary, and how it would undermine the whole process.
Just got word of the seeding process at the meeting. Seeding is never easy in dota. That said, we and many other teams tried to take the seeding matches seriously only to now find that their weight is much more arbitrary than what everyone is playing them for at the time
— Jack Chen (@KBBQDotA) January 16, 2019
Isn’t the whole point that teams need to prove themselves every time and each event stands alone instead of being overly dependent on the results of the first major of the season?
He also questioned that if there was no seeding, why were the teams told that the seeding matches would matter.
If we want people to not make a mockery of seeding matches and take them seriously (especially when we’re told that they did factor into some seeding decisions) then it seems obvious that teams should know what they’re playing for and that it actually matters when they do
— Jack Chen (@KBBQDotA) January 16, 2019
There were questions regarding how seriously the teams took the matches, but KBBQ retorted by saying that some teams did and this excuse could be used in the future as well.
Some teams do and all teams are asked to and forced to play them because they mean something. It makes no sense to go back and not use them because you think teams didn’t take them seriously anyway. Couldn’t anyone say they didn’t take anything seriously and use that logic too?
— Jack Chen (@KBBQDotA) January 17, 2019
He also questioned the transparency of the system, saying that the previous performance shouldn’t matter when the whole point of the new system was to start from a clean slate.
When an organizer uses “but there could be a group of death of c and y teams if we used them” to then apply their own standards to prevent that one possible “bad” outcome, it turns seeding matches into a farce AND applies subjective standards on strength of teams
— Jack Chen (@KBBQDotA) January 16, 2019
That undermines the entire point of seeding matches. Isn’t the whole point that teams need to prove themselves every time and each event stands alone instead of being overly dependent on the results of the first major of the season?
— Jack Chen (@KBBQDotA) January 16, 2019