New MDI format moving forward

[Relapses]

Looks like the MDI is changing for TWW Season 2:



The big take-away here being that what was previously the MDI is essentially being eliminated and what was previously "The Great Push" is now going to be referred to as the MDI. The other big change is the spec restriction during group stages... seemingly mirroring the popularity of "Fearless Draft" in League of Legends.

Here are the rules for that, referenced above:



This is being implemented to help stave the meta slaving which is prevalent during these tournaments. Presumably, this will lead to a better viewing experience, though I'm not sure if it'll go over well with the tournament participants. This is going to increase the practice requirement quite significantly as teams will likely need to time the highest keys with what are essentially off-meta picks. (Teams will need to use the meta comps early to prevent themselves from getting eliminated early in the competition.)

Still, it's nice to see Blizzard changing things up. MDI/TGP have stagnated for awhile so hopefully this will help breathe new life into the tournament. Thoughts?

[Tech614]

Good changes, TGP was always better than the MDI and diversity clause stops us from seeing the same comp all weekend.

[Nzx]

Looks like the MDI is changing for TWW Season 2

That spec requirement is "you think you do but you don't". It's completely meaningless from a viewer perspective (with the exception that some of the health bars at the top of the screen MIGHT be different colours - if they don't just play fire -> frost or whatever) but for a player it's absurdly more time spent practicing pulls. I honestly believe this will kill interest for a lot of teams.

[Tech614]

That spec requirement is "you think you do but you don't". It's completely meaningless from a viewer perspective (with the exception that some of the health bars at the top of the screen MIGHT be different colours - if they don't just play fire -> frost or whatever) but for a player it's absurdly more time spent practicing pulls. I honestly believe this will kill interest for a lot of teams.

Every tank and healer on teams capable of going deep is fully capable of multi classing. That means they only need 1 dps also capable of it. It's no where near the amount of practice you think it is, it's more about optimizing the strengths of different specs in different dungeons. To the viewers actually paying attention to how the strategies change with different specs it's far from meaningless.

[Nzx]

Every tank and healer on teams capable of going deep is fully capable of multi classing. That means they only need 1 dps also capable of it. It's no where near the amount of practice you think it is, it's more about optimizing the strengths of different specs in different dungeons. To the viewers actually paying attention to how the strategies change with different specs it's far from meaningless.

Multi classing isn't hard. But, if the strategies change for hardcore viewers like you that are "paying attention", that means the new strategies have to be practiced. In order to practice them, you need to know what classes you're playing day one and what key level you're pushing them to, and then you need to know what specs you're switching to and what key level you're pushing them to, and then because the strategies are changing what you can pull on a prot paladin with GoAK vs what you can pull on guardian with incarn vs what you can pull on DH with meta are all different, and they're all different again at +18 vs +20. A pull you can handle with resto shaman and blood DK might be impossible without the BDK because of the self-sustain which means you need to practice the entire dungeon with tank/heals/one dps different to the first times you practiced it.

All of that, and what the viewer actually sees is the same bars with different colours. Maybe one team pulls an extra big kobold in their first pull of DFC or something with their A team and they don't pull it with their B team - for a viewer it's one instance of one short pull, for the players it's hours and hours and hours of practice and limit testing.

[Stickiler]

Every tank and healer on teams capable of going deep is fully capable of multi classing. That means they only need 1 dps also capable of it. It's no where near the amount of practice you think it is, it's more about optimizing the strengths of different specs in different dungeons. To the viewers actually paying attention to how the strategies change with different specs it's far from meaningless.

I'm really interested to see the different teams' approaches to it. I can imagine some teams will try and essentially "game" the system. Maybe deciding that the DPS can multiclass better, so they have their tanks and heals switch out for one run on the first day, so the three DPS specs get tagged as the "most used", allowing them to run their best tank/healer specs on the second day, along with their alternative DPS specs.

Which still achieves the end goal, we get to see more specs, but I personally enjoy watching the strategies employed by professional teams to get around new restrictions.

- - - Updated - - -

Multi classing isn't hard. But, if the strategies change for hardcore viewers like you that are "paying attention", that means the new strategies have to be practiced. In order to practice them, you need to know what classes you're playing day one and what key level you're pushing them to, and then you need to know what specs you're switching to and what key level you're pushing them to, and then because the strategies are changing what you can pull on a prot paladin with GoAK vs what you can pull on guardian with incarn vs what you can pull on DH with meta are all different, and they're all different again at +18 vs +20. A pull you can handle with resto shaman and blood DK might be impossible without the BDK because of the self-sustain which means you need to practice the entire dungeon with tank/heals/one dps different to the first times you practiced it.

All of that, and what the viewer actually sees is the same bars with different colours. Maybe one team pulls an extra big kobold in their first pull of DFC or something with their A team and they don't pull it with their B team - for a viewer it's one instance of one short pull, for the players it's hours and hours and hours of practice and limit testing.

Congratulations, you've discovered the difference between amateur and professional sports. To the average person watching, it's essentially insignificant(people are just kicking a ball around, other than some brief moments of brilliance), but to the players it's weeks/months/years of training and strategy building.

And it'll also far more clearly delineate the good teams from the truly great teams, because the truly great teams will be able to pull out the same performance, even with the added restrictions

[Relapses]

And it'll also far more clearly delineate the good teams from the truly great teams, because the truly great teams will be able to pull out the same performance, even with the added restrictions

See -- I kinda take issue with this particular line of reasoning. Yes -- this will result in the better teams winning but there's another half of that equation to consider. The players most likely to win a competition like this are the ones who have already been winning these tournaments. They're literally professional gamers. One of the cool things about the MDI/TGP is that there was a bit of a home-grown blend to some of the teams. If you're just a guy who seriously fucking owns at WoW, you could reasonably make a name for yourself at one of these tournaments. This is going to happen less under a system like this because the teams that are going to have the most time to invest in practice are the ones who have been winning anyway. It's just going to make the gulf between the Echo's and Mandatory's and the rest of the WoW playing populace even wider.

Is that worth a better viewing experience? I'm not sure. I'm not even sure this will be a better viewing experience. We'll see more specs being played, sure, but I think we're also going to be witnessing a lot more mistakes. I'm excited to see how it plays out but I'm not 100% bought into the idea of it being a full dub just yet.

[Biomega]

If you're just a guy who seriously fucking owns at WoW, you could reasonably make a name for yourself at on e of these tournaments. This is going to happen less under a system like this because the teams that are going to have the most time to invest in practice are the ones who have been winning anyway

I get where you're coming from, but realistically you need to be more careful in distinguishing "making a name for yourself" from "having a shot at winning". Absolutely randos who are just insane at M+ could make a name for themselves - but they had no real shot at winning. Not in the MDI, and not in TGP. You cannot expect to win these events without putting in insane hours. Talent, they all have at that level.

In that respect, I don't think anything is going to change substantially. Skilled whizz kids are still going to get a shot a being seen on stage, but are not going to get any better or worse shot at winning, which really they were never going to either way. M+ simply thrives too much on ungodly amounts of practice and prep, because it's effectively a speedrun competition and those are just kind of all about scaling with reps on top of already being really good.

I'm also not sure this will be a better viewing experience in any substantial way, but that's because I never thought spec homogeneity was that big a deal for the viewer experience. It was a big deal for the player experience because the unwashed M+ PUG masses are all monkey-see-monkey-do simpletons, but the viewer experience mostly suffered from the usual problems with viewing WoW, and the added problem of having multiple screens to watch at once in case of TGP.

[Nzx]

Congratulations, you've discovered the difference between amateur and professional sports. To the average person watching, it's essentially insignificant(people are just kicking a ball around, other than some brief moments of brilliance), but to the players it's weeks/months/years of training and strategy building.

Get a grip. When Blizzard pay the players like it's a professional sport then they can have more leeway for imposing absurd practice time requirements on the people who are providing free advertising revenue for them. At best what will happen under this new rule is teams won't bother practicing any other strats because the time requirement is already ridiculous for what amounts to being paid in 'exposure', and the final day when the spec restrictions kick in will be a clown fiesta of people dying over and over and making next to no progress using comps they haven't played before.

This isn't a professional sports league. This is getting the weekend football teams full of plumbers and carpenters around your city to play in a round robin tournament for $500 each if they win, but expecting that they'll take off work on a Friday so they can play 15 hours of football over the weekend, and spend four hours a night at practice Monday through Thursday for no compensation whatsoever. If you want to get any money whatsoever you need to do this a minimum of three weeks in total,

And it'll also far more clearly delineate the good teams from the truly great teams, because the truly great teams will be able to pull out the same performance, even with the added restrictions

Lmao - yes, this new requirement for switching specs will definitely show us finally that Echo and Mandatory aren't the true greats because for sure some new team will come along and prove that only they can play three different specs to their main ones on the final day of groups. Just say you want to see other specs and you don't care that it costs the people playing dozens of hours more time in an already dumb practice volume environment if you get to see an orange bar in details instead of a blue one, you don't have to go crazy making up all this bullshit even you don't believe.

[Biomega]

At best what will happen under this new rule is teams won't bother practicing any other strats because the time requirement is already ridiculous for what amounts to being paid in 'exposure', and the final day when the spec restrictions kick in will be a clown fiesta of people dying over and over and making next to no progress using comps they haven't played before.

That seems very unlikely. Many specs play effectively the same, in the larger scheme of things - just on different timers, with different performance distributions, and perhaps a few key utility changes. Nothing that would result in "people dying over and over", because that's just going to lose you the competition RIGHT quick.

Instead what's likely to happen is that this will all turn into The Not-So-Great Push as we don't actually see world-record key level pushes but instead just fairly high ones you can do with a spec setup that's below S tier.

That is, if we don't see the opposite: the big teams playing it safe by playing A-tier setups first, and then saving the S-tier setups for the last day. Though that could potentially give non-favorite teams an in if they decide to field the S-tier setups first. A bit of a metagame thing to figure out, though realistically I don't think this will actually make any kind of real impact and it only applies to group anyhow.

Best case we get a bit more excitement as the second-rate teams ride a bit closer and graze the tails of the big bois, but I doubt it will actually affect outcomes much. And I'm doubtful if that kind of manufactured tension will actually create a more enjoyable viewer experience. But who knows, maybe I'm wrong and it's the kind of US-TV-style drama this event needs.

For the top teams, it will be trivial to have three specs to swap, and it only affects the group stage anyhow. I daresay the biggest impact from all this is symbolic, with Blizzard buying themselves some cheap "see, we're LISTENING and we're DOING SOMETHING!" goodwill while not actually upending the status quo in any kind of meaningful way.

[Ghost of Cow]

That spec requirement is "you think you do but you don't". It's completely meaningless from a viewer perspective (with the exception that some of the health bars at the top of the screen MIGHT be different colours - if they don't just play fire -> frost or whatever) but for a player it's absurdly more time spent practicing pulls. I honestly believe this will kill interest for a lot of teams.

Yeah, I never understood the viewer complaints about "omg same spec again" as if it's actually making a difference to you if that healer is Holy or Resto.

People just like to complain, really.

[Puri]

Hm, while I've always preferred the concept of the great push over the MDI, but it was barely watchable as you have four splitscreens all showing different instances and stages where you barely recognize something at all, and when it gets interesting in one of the screens it turned to a fullscreen showing a different group while you actually wanted to know how the other group deals with a specific boss/trash.

If they continue the MDI style concentrating on two teams competing then this is a non issue. But if not, I don't think I would watch it.

[Biomega]

Hm, while I've always preferred the concept of the great push over the MDI, but it was barely watchable as you have four splitscreens all showing different instances and stages where you barely recognize something at all, and when it gets interesting in one of the screens it turned to a fullscreen showing a different group while you actually wanted to know how the other group deals with a specific boss/trash.

If they continue the MDI style concentrating on two teams competing then this is a non issue. But if not, I don't think I would watch it.

Unfortunately, the dilemma we're faced with is that while the viewing format of the MDI was better, the viewing content of TGP is vastly more interesting. And there's really not a good way to square this.

[Tech614]

I'm really interested to see the different teams' approaches to it. I can imagine some teams will try and essentially "game" the system. Maybe deciding that the DPS can multiclass better, so they have their tanks and heals switch out for one run on the first day, so the three DPS specs get tagged as the "most used", allowing them to run their best tank/healer specs on the second day, along with their alternative DPS specs.

Tank is 100% one of the specs getting changed out from day 1. There is not a large gap between tanks at the high end right now and you can probably viably use a VDH, Prot Paladin or Prot War for these keys on day 1 and then use the one that is better on the rest of the weekend. Healer is likely in that same boat as well. The difference between the 2nd best and best healer/tank specs is not even remotely close to the gaps DPS have in meta M+ play where the spec needs great aoe, great priority and great survivability.

- - - Updated - - -

Get a grip. When Blizzard pay the players like it's a professional sport then they can have more leeway for imposing absurd practice time requirements

Oh these poor MDI players being forced to use much practice time gun to head from John Blizzard!

If they're doing it, it's because they want to do it. Get a grip is indeed ap, but for you not the other guy. You sound like you don't even know what the fuck you're talking about because they already have long practice hours for largely doing the exact same thing they have to do here. Experimenting with comps.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, I never understood the viewer complaints about "omg same spec again" as if it's actually making a difference to you if that healer is Holy or Resto.

People just like to complain, really.

If you don't think it makes a difference then you don't even understand what is happening on the screen at the event. The strats and routes are specifically curated around the comps, you have different comps then you don't see every team using the exact same strat/route.

[Itisamuh]

Eh, not a fan. Not that I watched much MDI in the first place, but it was a hell of a lot better than TGP for a spectator experience. Four screens of teams in different dungeons on different keys makes it near impossible for a casual or first time observer to tell who is actually doing well without the commentators telling you. At least with the MDI it was a direct competition, with clear rules to tell who is winning and easier commentary to follow. The forced spec variety might seem more interesting on the surface, but to me it feels like a cop out solution for the fact that they suck at balancing. This will just force teams to arbitrarily nerf themselves at different times. Why even bother having a main if you will be unable to play it?

[Tehalbino]

Immediately upon reading this my first reaction is that we're going to see teams sandbag and intentionally not 2 or 3 chest early keys in as many dungeons as possible.

Even if they change it so for a weighted key level that would risk locking out your 'main' team composition via the last 3 or so runs the viewing and playing experience will suffer because you're going to get to the final day and see the teams struggle. And most likely the 'best' team is already going to be there by not having any of their classes restricted and then just absolutely destroy the rest.

[klaps_05]

Unfortunately remains irrelevant and uninteresting to watch as shown by dead viewership until they make it an actual team vs team tournament, not a pve race.

[Veiled Shadow]

Multi classing isn't hard.

Multiclassing absolutely is hard - keep in mind we're talking about playing 4+ specs at the very highest echelon of play. Even in top guilds there are players notorious for not being diverse in choice of alts for splits/in general - to bring up an example from the MDI itself, at the end of Legion Method EU / Echo used a DPS DH for a number of runs over the superior WW monk largely due to their player's comfort.

[Tech614]

Immediately upon reading this my first reaction is that we're going to see teams sandbag and intentionally not 2 or 3 chest early keys in as many dungeons as possible.

Even if they change it so for a weighted key level that would risk locking out your 'main' team composition via the last 3 or so runs the viewing and playing experience will suffer because you're going to get to the final day and see the teams struggle. And most likely the 'best' team is already going to be there by not having any of their classes restricted and then just absolutely destroy the rest.

Only the run that contributes to your high score counts for the spec rule so I'm not sure what you're talking about with this theory. Should probably read the rules before coming up with loop holes that don't exist.

- - - Updated - - -

Multiclassing absolutely is hard - keep in mind we're talking about playing 4+ specs at the very highest echelon of play. Even in top guilds there are players notorious for not being diverse in choice of alts for splits/in general - to bring up an example from the MDI itself, at the end of Legion Method EU / Echo used a DPS DH for a number of runs over the superior WW monk largely due to their player's comfort.

Basically all tanks and healers running the MDI multi class the entire role already to play whatever is needed. That's already 2 of the 3 you need.

[Ghost of Cow]

If you don't think it makes a difference then you don't even understand what is happening on the screen at the event. The strats and routes are specifically curated around the comps, you have different comps then you don't see every team using the exact same strat/route.

Yes, and people actually trying to pay attention to that are a vanishingly tiny minority.

Also, don't oversell the whole routing by comp thing TOO much. It's not that huge of a difference, other than some comps not being able to handle the same size/difficulty of pulls in most cases. People aren't gonna have their mind blown by the hot new strats when the team that runs a dungeon as Fire Mage turns around and runs it with a Frost Mage.