Hello everyone! I'm happy to be talking to you again, but I'm not excited about the reason I am here -
addressing our Dota 2 roster failures.
For those who expect an announcement of the new NAVI roster today, it won't happen.
It's practically impossible to get it done and would be silly of us to rush things at this point.
I'd like to sum up the results of this season and analyze the mistakes, including my own.
As well as fill you in our future plans.
Regarding the previous season, it started off really well, I think we put together a pretty good roster,
everyone was doing their job and we had a clear leader, good relationships and atmosphere,
which brought the results.
We put on a decent showing at the DreamLeague Major, and put up rivalry with VP in our region.
Winning Adrenaline Cup as well. There were no negative signs, I'd be honest, I was expecting a bright future.
I wrote after our loss in TI qualifiers that I was the first one to blame because I make the decisions.
I'm not talking about the decisions about Vova and Akbar, I've already explained them,
I mean the LeBron's recent replacement, not because Fedor didn't fit into the team or is a weak player, he is a great player.
But the thing is that LeBron, considering his weakness in terms of micro,
was a part of the team, he was selfless in the game and outside of it, he was a part of our system.
In his post, Danya said he was opposed to this change, it is true, he was the only one against it.
I made the decision listening to the majority, because the guys saw the problem specifically with the player.
None of the players found the problem to be in their own actions, attitude, laziness, lack of desire to compromise.
They believed the team's problem was the skill of a single player.
There had been a suggestion to replace him before Epicenter, but I insisted we wouldn't change anything until after the event.
LeBron received another chance and we travelled to Epicenter.
I believe if the series against NewBee had gone a bit differently, especially the end of the game,
which we should've closed out, in my opinion, and we should've made it into the winners' bracket,
probably we could've avoided making the replacement, and I am certain we'd perform better in TI qualifiers.
At least we'd get a slot in the closed qualifiers, and we'd have a chance to win them,
because apart from Mega Lada and Slozhniy Memas losses, we won a lot of CIS qualifiers with Nikola.
However, I made the decision, I think it was wrong, and it lead to our defeat in Open Qualifiers,
which never happened in the history of our organization before.
It'd be wrong to deny that everyone's responsible to some degree: players, coach... Manager and analyst of course to a lesser extent,
but the final decision was mine, so I take all the responsibility.
Regarding the future of the roster, as one or two years ago - there are two options.
There are two approaches to forming a roster: first approach is the one that Sneg used when forming VP -
a captain and strong leader picks the players he wants to play with himself, it was Solo in that case.
But to be honest, there was not only the captain as they had a backbone because he played with Noone,
and they invited Pasha, with whom they played for a while in Vega.
Then they invited Ramzes and Lil, and it worked, they kept that roster for a long time, so that approach worked for them.
However, we can say the same about another approach - a team without a clear leader,
but with a clear distribution of responsibilities - a great example is FTM.
Yesterday we watched them play, they looked stronger than Espada, Espada is also a great and promising team,
but in general FTM looked much stronger than other teams in the qualifiers.
The players in that team, apart from Nongrata, were rejected from their own teams.
There were kicked, removed, the teams didn't need them.
Iceberg, Silent, ALWAYSWANNAFLY are seasoned players, but in one way or another they didn't fit in their previous teams.
They have a coach, who does the drafting and analysis, and the team trusts him, from what I heard.
They follow a different approach: they don't have a certain leader, they have people with leadership qualities,
but they compromise well and have their own distinct responsibilities.
Probably the case is similar to what Danya wrote in his message to the fans - faith.
They have faith in each other, in their coach, team, every teammate, draft and other stuff, and it works.
I'm slowly moving towards the future of our current roster.
We've made a decision to move the current roster - including the manager, analyst and coach - to inactive until the end of August.
We are not going to announce the disbandment.
Some people might think we want to do the "New Era" move again
and announce in a couple of months that Danya and Vitya stay, and we'll invite 3 more...
No, that is not the goal, let me explain, it's much simpler.
If we decide to go with the strong captain approach, probably some of our guys would suit his expectations and plans.
Objectively speaking, if we follow the captain approach, the captain must have the absolute power to choose.
So there is a chance that some of the guys will stay.
If we decide to go with a systematized hierarchy of responsibilities, there is also a chance someone will stay.
Regarding the possibility of some of the players to stay, and how many people might stay...
It's hard to predict yet, but I'll tell you my opinion.
I think the chance of more than one player remaining is very low.
Why? Because we want to start over with a clean slate.
The guys have a certain background together, certain memories, past defeats, unresolved issues, which might get in the way of building a new team.
I don't want to guess, it will largely depend on the approach, but it is my opinion.
I'd like to get back to Danya's message to the community he posted yesterday.
A lot of things he said really resonated with me and I can relate to them.
I've already mentioned faith and I believe it is the key.
And Danya picked really good examples.
Sometimes faith alone is enough to get results.
I really hope that these words got through not only to me and a portion of fans,
but also to some pro players and at least will make them think about it.
Regarding the staff that's working with our Dota 2 roster,
they will also go inactive until the end of August.
Their future will depend on the vector we choose for the team,
the people we'll put our faith in and how well they'll stack on a personal level,
how well these people can coexist and effectively cooperate.
I'd also like to discuss a few points from Danya's post.
I'm really glad he put it together, it should've been done a long time ago.
He broke a lot of myths that were flying around.
And I personally heard from some players joining NAVI questions about Dendi having special conditions,
or making percentage from sponsorship contracts -
this is not the case, Danya said that and I can confirm it.
None of NAVI players get any cut from sponsorship contracts.
The second myth, regarding media stuff.
That we're holding onto our media presence, that us, him and we're all holding on to media and that we fully depend on it.
The fact that Danya has been on the team for so long has nothing to do with media or sponsors.
It's a matter of being loyal and faitful, our excellent relationships and having faith in him,
and his faith in the team, the organization, the brand.
Moreover, media drops down because of our loyalty.
Danya is now a like a "red flag" for esports media, haters, bandwagoners and others.
On the contrary, we can't push our content to the fullest when the team is showing poor results,
we can't post their pictures and so forth, because it triggers a backlash.
Our media activity largely depends on the team's success.
There's a direct connection: when the team is winning,
the Youtube views, the number of followers and subscribers, comments and conversions and so on are growing.
So I want to put this topic to bed once and for all.
Media is not the reason we hold on to certain players.
Neither of NAVI's contracts say a single word about the necessity of having Dendi or Zeus or S1mple in the roster.
It doesn't affect our relationship with sponsors in any way,
it is solely our principles, a part of our corporate culture.
We get attached to people and they get attached to us.
And there's nothing more about it.
That being said, and given that we have no room for mistakes,
there are no untouchable players in the current roster, we'll be making our decision with a cool head.
We have two months for that.
It doesn't mean we're going to announce the new roster on 29 or 30 of August.
It might happen sooner, it might be done step by step.
Maybe someone from the current roster will request a transfer or get an offer and decide to join another team.
We will inform your right away once something comes up.
Not to make announcements of announcements out of it, but just to keep you posted.
To wrap it all up, I want to discuss an important topic that Danya brought up in his post.
I'm talking about haters, bandwagoners, all the dirt and negativity that's present in the Dota 2 community, and esports community overall.
I'm certain this isn't just a problem in our community, but it's a global problem.
This problem is because people's actions are unpunishable on the Internet.
The problem exists because of people without personal life, interests,
they interfere with other more successful, more talented people's lives.
If you go to any football or basketball player's, singer's, famous person's page, you'll see almost the same thing.
There are comments like "you'd better practice", "you'd better stop singing", and so on.
It's the same everywhere, it's not unique to our community.
It's hard to change this, I doubt we can do something about it even together,
but we can influence the messages of opinion leaders in the community. I'm addressing all the representatives of the community:
representatives of the teams, players, former players, casters, analysts.
We must be more careful, avoid evaluative judgments, be more tolerate, more objective,
because we don't always see the whole picture.
It's important to remember that behind every nickname there is a human being,
with their emotions, feelings, family, relatives, who also hears and reads this feedback.
That's how the world works, how our community works.
Quite often negative or positive image depends on you, so I'm asking you to be more positive, and less negative.
We should make our community better, because we are a part of it.