4Game

Having watched the recent Animajor with the over the top Anime style, talent outfits, thematic stages, memes, laidback atmosphere and all the other cool things that have become part of the Dota 2 tournament identity in the recent years, I came to realize that the laidback style is both a blessing and a curse.

After getting to enjoy panels consisting of people like Aui, Jenkins, Tsunami & Ephey it became appaling to me how desperately we need to have an influx of new people into the scene. I am EU based and the difference between what we got from these people and what we got from the EU regulars seemed incredibly stark.

I'm a decently high MMR player and it feels to me, that because of the laidback, joking and non-serious style of conducting panels/analysis has made a lot of the Tier 1 Dota 2 talent completly complacent in their analysis and understanding. It seems like some of them don't even enjoy nerding out about Dota anymore. It feels to me like I hear the same five run of the mill statements about Dota strategy, the same generic statements about drafting phase (hello "Pick stuns win Dota") and the same generic jokes (haha "Kyle wrong xd").

The difference seemed so big because we acutally got Ephey fact-checking alot of the meaningless bullshit generic statements during some of her very first panels, because she actually put effort into researching teams that played in that series & is good at the game. We also got Aui who seemed honestly annoyed that he didn't get to talk about Dota and had to endure some pointless rants about pointless things, because we are laidback and cool. I feel like I have yet to hear him cast/panel and not learn something new. And then we got Jenkins who even though can barely be considered serious, is a breath of fresh air and what he has to say about Dota is infinitely more relevant because he's acutally trying to improve and compete in the game in Div1 NA. Also shoutout to OG's like Cap who are still trying to be the best versions of themselves reaching new peaks in MMR & branching out into voice acting.

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TLDR: Leave the memes and funny stuff to Slacks and make Dota 2 panels about Dota 2 & great again.