I agree and disagree at the same time here, yes it's good to have runner ups (let's say if top players are 2.4-25k, runners up would be 2-2.2k+) motivated and it will happen at some point if this is big enough, but let's be realistic, any top esport currently (at least from the ones I know which are CSGO, LoL, Fifa and CoD) started with big tournaments / scene for the top players, most of them had to earn their place trough qualifier that's true, and there were quite some suprises, but after that, most of those big titles got academy / sister teams and even exposure leagues where you start there, grow up and at some point if you're good enough you just get hired by proper proffesional team, guess if at some point we're in the same case it will also naturally happenProblem with invitationals (this goes also to any small-scale (on participant count) expert tournaments) is that if you keep protéging just a few select players, you basically artificially support their being on the top, because they get more serious practice and attention and the like, while the "runner-ups" are left to dry, not getting the opportunities to improve in the same manner, therefore being artificially kept below the decks.
Competitive scene needs to grow from the bottom up, not being kept on steroids from the top.
P.S: I miss playing RTSL early seasons (2-5) of AoM, it was so damm fun :D