I'll just go ahead and preface this by saying there is every chance I may just be overlooking something and/or haven't looked in the right places.

But I've noticed something odd about who actually gets to play in the DD tournaments. It's either all the 'old crowd' (people who've played this mode forever and a day) or people Dom's advertizing has baited over from SR, the 'rookie' (people with little to no Dom experience) SR teams who always get face stomped.

So...why are there no 'new Dom-rookie' teams? (Comprised entirely of people with light to moderate Dominion-centric experience; no 'It's a new team formed by 2-3 of the old guard who got bored/split from their old teams'.)

DD's team finding forum is pretty much outright dead. No one ever answers the 'Looking For Teams' posts. The 'Recruitment Center' is full of dead topics only bumped by people who apply not realizing the original post is several months out-dated. Pretty much there is no fresh 'Dominion-oriented' blood being pulled in.

To embellish an outsider's perspective it almost makes the tournament look a bit jokey. You have the same best-of-best teams pretty much trading the 'winner' slot between a small group of 3-4 over and over (I know the players try their best and love the mode but as a spectator DD is indeed quite stagnant and predictable at the moment); with the 'outsiders' being invited in almost as a cruel joke. I know it's not likely intended; but here's what it sorta looks like: "Here you go folks; let's take these swordsmen, who have no experience using polearms, and let them fight lions with spears! Oooh~ look at that arm being ripped off!"

In truth it's almost like the Mid-ELO Dom community is either too scared (after watching the SR teams made an example of) or too apathetic (not motivated by RP prizes, ect.) to want to participate. Personally I'd like to see this fixed. We need more Dom-oriented names. We need more rookie-teams (more than one or two every 2-3 months acting as the 'exception' rather than the 'rule) that we know aren't automatically going to be shark chum the moment they jump into the pool.

Maybe even in a more extreme measure I think it's time DD needed to grow outwards and split itself into separate, tiered tournaments. For now just two, which for lack of better terms we'll just call 'Rookie' and 'Pro'. Rookie being exclusive only to players who've never won a DD more than twice; Pro requiring a minimum of three wins in the Rookie circuit to move up. Just as a very rough outline suggestion mind you.

So; thoughts? Am I missing these teams entering in somewhere? (And if so where are these buggers hiding? They don't post here. They don't post in DD.)

Apathy here! /wave

I thought this was always the unspoken rule about DD and hence why I've never been interested. It's a joke. Putting aside my complete apathy for e-Sports in general, I've no desire to dither around in a few potentially balanced matches before suddenly getting annihilated by a far superior team. Challenging competition is fun, sure, but that's not it.

I've stated it before: the problem with DD is that the only people who hear about it are the ones who already know, whether they care or not. There isn't a Mid-Elo community to support it because it doesn't have the numbers to separate itself from the high-end of low elo and the bottom end of top elo. The forum sample size is so small that everyone sticks to those two camps or sit on the fringes and trade between both or neither. The high Elo people are pretty much the community because they have the most reason to be involved - they've gotten past the unpleasant bits of the ladder and are going to want to support the game mode if they've stuck with it this long. The middle Elo people, as far as I've seen, either don't care or aren't nearly as outspoken.

(Less tournament/forum community related, more game mode "community [if you can call it that] related)

Middle Elo players in terms of the map either get turned off by the OP spam of that level, kicked back down the ladder, or grit their teeth or deal with it because it's better than the alternative game modes (at least as far as my experience has gone: I refuse to rise to that level so I play balanced picks and stay stuck as a result of not putting in a ridiculous amount of tryhard to get out =\). SR has the population for there to be transient levels of play between just low-mid-high, but when it comes to Dominion everyone sticks firmly together and people moving between are either temporary visitors or rare. There isn't an opportunity to jump from regular play to playing against the old guard because there isn't any sort of path between, you have to jump straight from one to the other. It's fairly similar to suddenly jumping several hundred Elo in one go. (Oh, right, they don't use that system anymore, do they? Several leagues it is now, I suppose?)

My perspective is that there is no incentive to get better on this map <edit: for a long and personal reason that basically means bottom and top Elo is fun, mid-elo is OP spam and complete lack of sportsmanship>.

TL;DR dat ish.

Honestly, the old players/teams need to retire. As in, not play in in the formal competitive tournament. They can have fun games and even mentor players if they want but we need to get them out so a new era of players can be ushered in.

To be honest I'd had a similar thought, although in a much more compromising vein, when I saw that 'mentor' topic floating around. (After all in competitive anything no matter how much the old guard may be considered 'old hat', you cannot simply say 'Okay, out.' That's quite unfair to them. However I agree they should be an end goal to be conquered; not a 'Welcome to Boot Camp Day 1' hazing stick to bash newbies around with. For the full comparison; does Riot welcome new teams to LoL by saying 'Here; your first ever tournament match is against last year's world champion.'?)

As is, I admit this sounds almost like an 'anti-prize'; but bear in mind this is only a rough suggestion and would need refining to benefit everyone involved:

-Players on the winning team, who have won more than X amount of times, are not allowed to participate in the next DD as a full team. Instead they are granted the privileged of captaining 'DD Sanctioned Mentor Teams'. These teams are comprised of the captain, a reception of the prize and certified by DD Administration as someone with the right mindset and knowledge to perform the role of 'teacher' (I.E: No 'What the hell are you doing!?' types), and four players who have never (or up to a certain number) participated in a DD Tournament up until this point. These will come from a waiting list of people per-registering far in advance. There will be no 'I deny my spot because I don't want X to be my captain' without penalties; potentially up to blacklisting from future DD SMT registration.

In doing so you create a constant rotation of new players; who may actually have a chance of victory due to having the guidance and skills of a high-caliber player. This also eliminates one of the other barriers to entry by removing one 'Guaranteed Super Loss' which also seems to be an intimidation factor amongst the Mid ELOs. In theory, this does not also act as an outright 'punishment' to the winning members. Just because their team does not get to participate next time, doesn't mean the individuals cannot sign on elsewhere as free agents. (And of course their team may fully reassemble by the DD proceeding.)

I would though, suggest some form of compensation be given to 'Mentors' who willingly accept their role though. I.E: So long as you, then mentor, fulfill your task to the utmost of your abilities and maintain manners and respect for your team (again; the 'no raging' clause), you will receive $5 worth of RP at tournament's end; regardless of your team's final standing.

More of a thought exercise than a full on serious suggestion though.

I'll let one of the DD Admins correct me if wrong; but I'm pretty sure they try fairly hard not to pin new teams vs old teams in the first round. Allowing new teams to fight only new teams for that Round 1 match-up. Usually new v old matches early on are unavoidable quirks of 2nd/3rd round bracketing.

Just to interject my own personal opinion; I'd be fine if I met up with a top-tier in the mid rounds and lost, if just entering for fun (which is my only objective in desiring to enter DD).

Alas that is not possible due to the aforementioned Mid-ELO entry problem. There seems to be, from my observation, no teams entering for fun. Only old-top-tier teams and groups, pre-formed from SR teams, drawn in from Reddit posts.

Oh man, mentoring? Do we get, like, paid for it and stuff?

20$ per hour of lesson, I teach you how to carry badmates to glory with copious amount of facediving.


See, the funny thing is, there are enough decent players that don't seem to be in any teams floating around in solo queue to form competitive opposition (check out Seafood's terror premade not winning 100% of their matches). They... just don't seem to be forming the teams. Probably for the lack of caring, who knows. Or maybe they get randomly dispersed into "mid-elo" teams and are discouraged when they can't win with those.

I know I'd form a team but it's been so messy lately that I've had trouble planning out the time

Sakuri Ono: it's the opposite, seeding is aimed to stop regularly seen top teams eliminating each other early, which of course means they need to face newer teams.

Hmm...that's a rather unpleasant thing to do then.

I shall have to speak bluntly on this; otherwise I fear I may circle the topic too vaguely:

DD should be targeted towards growing Dominion. Throwing a fresh bullfighter against the meanest, ugliest, demon-cow spawn you have does little to encourage new matadors from stepping into the ring. For the sake of expanding the community this should really be reversed; New should fight New. Battling the Old is a privileged for the victor, not a punishment for the uninitiated.

Again, forgive my bluntness:

But if old teams have complaints about having tough matches in the first round they should be ignored for the time being. The needs of the community in the long term are greater than their small collective's in the short term. I would like to think those who have stuck with Dominion for as long as they have would be willing to make adjustments to facilitate future growth.

I will expand upon this by attacking a potential future counter- This opens up the possibility for a new team to only fight new teams all the way to the finals; resulting in a relatively 'dull' final match where the result is a pub stomp.

My counter- That's a good thing. Even if you get defeated reaching the 'top X' in any form of tournament play is a massive 'carrot-on-a-stick' for encouraging future play. Reaching the top tier and finding out how strong the 'master' is gives you motivation to come back again and try to beat them down with your newly learned skills. Whether or not it makes for 'a boring show' is pointless. Is DD being sponsored by private-advertisement investors? Is there someone with an commercialism stake to lose if the finals aren't Goliath vs Behemoth and pulling in as many viewers as possible? No; there's not. There's no one needing to be appeased; as such there is no excuse for the attentive focus not being squarely on new player encouragement/benefit.