Dota 2 -

[Tour of Italy]

I’ve been watching the NA BTS Pro League because I’m a disgusting subhuman who likes North American Dota for some inexplicable reason, and it’s taking me back. PPD and Fear have resurrected the SADBOYS name and they’re about the middle of the pack right now, with EG predictably at the top of the pile, with fucking iceiceice as their offlaner of all people. He was my favorite CHN/SEA player by a long shot when I last followed the pro scene, so it’s nice to seem him again, and he’s still in good form.

It all started when I clicked a Purge video on a whim and bam, I’m in it again. Not as deep as I was, but poking around cautiously.

I played a few games against bots and was absolutely blown away at how quickly the muscle memory came back, even though it’s been nearly 4 years since I played with any regularity, and I was never very good to begin with.

 

[Opiophile]

Exciting news for Dota 2 fans everyone. Valve is releasing a Dota anime on Netflix. It's going to follow Dragon Knight and Mirana apparently? Anime is something that doesnt interest me much, but i will check this out for sure just to see how it turns out. Valve has done ZERO advertising over the last decade for Dota, besides the very minimal adverts for The International every year. Hopefully this will bring in some new players that we desperately need! Here is the teaser trailer that was released a day or so ago.

Following this announcement, beloved community member Sir Action Slacks posted a video on his youtube channel. His video calls upon all dota fans and community members to help make an in-game tutorial (it would be made as a custom game of course) for the new players this anime might bring to the game. Fucking fantastic idea, and he lays out why Valve's old tutorial failed, and what his plans are to avoid the same issues. For anyone interested, here is a link to that video.

 

[ZMOT]

Following this announcement, beloved community member Sir Action Slacks posted a video on his youtube channel. His video calls upon all dota fans and community members to help make an in-game tutorial (it would be made as a custom game of course) for the new players this anime might bring to the game. Fucking fantastic idea, and he lays out why Valve's old tutorial failed, and what his plans are to avoid the same issues. For anyone interested, here is a link to that video.

to this day I'm still baffled why valve doesn't use the assets they already have and use it for singleplayer/coop stuff to get people into dota proper (and possibly double-dip with microtransactions).

was kinda excited to hear they were doing some pve stuff, but it was gated behind the pass and only temporary, so... yeah, no thanks gabe.

 

[Kotol]

to this day I'm still baffled why valve doesn't use the assets they already have and use it for singleplayer/coop stuff to get people into dota proper (and possibly double-dip with microtransactions).

was kinda excited to hear they were doing some pve stuff, but it was gated behind the pass and only temporary, so... yeah, no thanks gabe.

Maybe, and this is a gigantic maybe, they tested the water with the compendium/battlepass, like they did with role queue. I remember there were some files found in Underlord that suggested that they were working on a roguelike/roguelite dungeon-crawl sorta PVE mode. Then they did Aghanim's Labyrinth and implemented some roguelite elements like random upgrades during the game and permanent upgrades between games.

Valve was also working on an RPG that took elements from Monster Hunter and Dark Souls, but they scrapped that like Valve always seems to do and tried to focus on Axe from Dota for a while before canning that as well. Who knows, maybe after the Agh's Labyrinth they saw that many players enjoy some PVE as well.
If Valve can keep up the hype/ marketing they got from the Dragon Knight Series announcement, they should really implement a tutorial/PVE story mode for Dota to get new players hooked.

IMO, some small changes cana already greatly increase the numbers of players willing to get through the rough learning phase of Dota. Like, why not bring back the new player reward chests? Or give them some tasks like "play 10 games" or "win some games" or "win 1 game as a carry/support". And when they finish the tasks, give them 1 free month of Dota+ and let them earn some shards to buy random shit for they favourite hero. I know it seems silly and almost like a bribe, but there is a reason people are willing to grind through the shit (smurfs, feeders, griefers, assholes, lots of new shit to learn) in League of Legends. I believe some people can be influenced to keep trying just by having the game tell them "Oh yeah, you want that shiny stuff? You can have it, you can even have it for free, buuuuuuuut you gotta play at least 10 games to give it a try." and some people will take the bait and give the game a fair chance. Well, as fair a chance as you can give an ARTS/MOBA, whatever you want to call it. Because both games require a lot of time to even understand what you are doing and why you are doing it.

Gotta take a shower for mentioning League. I dislike it for many reasons, most of which aren't even the gameplay itself.

 

[ZMOT]

Maybe, and this is a gigantic maybe, they tested the water with the compendium/battlepass, like they did with role queue. I remember there were some files found in Underlord that suggested that they were working on a roguelike/roguelite dungeon-crawl sorta PVE mode. Then they did Aghanim's Labyrinth and implemented some roguelite elements like random upgrades during the game and permanent upgrades between games.

Valve was also working on an RPG that took elements from Monster Hunter and Dark Souls, but they scrapped that like Valve always seems to do and tried to focus on Axe from Dota for a while before canning that as well. Who knows, maybe after the Agh's Labyrinth they saw that many players enjoy some PVE as well.
If Valve can keep up the hype/ marketing they got from the Dragon Knight Series announcement, they should really implement a tutorial/PVE story mode for Dota to get new players hooked.

for me it goes even beyond dota, or at least the moba - you already have all those assets laying around, but there are plenty of people can't or don't want to deal with the multiplayer, so why not do a diablo clone? or some lite rpg for the lore, which then bridges back to the main game? there are plenty of ways you could extend the dota brand (and then milk it), but I guess valve is content with milking dota/csgo and the dead body of tf2...

 

[Kotol]

for me it goes even beyond dota, or at least the moba - you already have all those assets laying around, but there are plenty of people can't or don't want to deal with the multiplayer, so why not do a diablo clone? or some lite rpg for the lore, which then bridges back to the main game? there are plenty of ways you could extend the dota brand (and then milk it), but I guess valve is content with milking dota/csgo and the dead body of tf2...

So much wasted potential, it makes me sad...
The world and lore of dota has so much potential for almost any game genre. But I agree, an RPG or Diablo clone is the most obvious choice.
I still hope that Artifact and Underlord can make a comeback (that is, if Valve puts out some updates any time soon). Who knows, if the DK series gets people excited to play the game, Valve might consider actually putting in some money and effort into one of their cashcows for a change. Wish TF2 could get a lot of love too.

A man can dream

 

[Kotol]

Sorry for double posting and for being so late but Artifact is ded...

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/583950/view/3047218819080842820

Also, if you want to look at some cool Dota related art, here is what they added before they axed the game:

Artifact Foundry last update art

2355 views on Imgur: The magic of the Internet

imgur.com

What a waste. Now I know what the remaining FFXIV players felt like before A Realm Reborn, only that this time there is no rework/relaunch planned, so...
It's free on Steam and you have all cards unlocked from the beginning, so if you're curious, you can take a look. If anything, each card has some lore with voice overs, so if you're a lore nerd, you should definitely check it out.

 

[Tism the Return]

Getting back into Dotes with my friends made us all remember why we stopped playing, every now and then we'll get a couple losers that despite playing the game for half a fucking decade according to their Steam account still manage to go the entire game 0-99999999999 and buy maybe one complete item other than boots while simultaneously fucking over everyone else's farm.

 

[mewmew]

Im a support main getting back into the game after a 5 year hiatus, message me here or on steam MeowKing

Not the best but I watch videos and know how to pull/stack ward decently

Omniknightn main

 

[thrusting]

Trying to take dota serious is the most draining thing ever. Having your teammates sperg out during draft cause they don't get the exact role they want combined with 50+ minutes games where both teams suck equally makes me wanna pull my eyeballs out. Got to ancient pretty easy by playing risk averse carry and getting 2 items ahead. Best strategy is to mute everyone once you smell even a hint of autism.

 

[737 MAX Stan Account]

I last played this game in 2016, all the friends I used to play it with got TDS and I never got back to playing it. Is it worth getting back into?

 

[Thiletonomics]

Two big bits of news came out this week. The first one is that Sweden decided to cuck Valve by refusing to allow them to host The International in Stockholm this year, after The International was cancelled last year because Corona-chan happened. The other big news is that the long begged Spectre Arcana is out, in the form of yet another Battle Pass.

I do wonder why so many DOTA 2 players want to drop tons and tons of cash on cosmetics, to the point that the community got outraged when The TI Battle Pass was cancelled for this year, and then this happens. It reminds me of whales in gacha games, looking at you DSP, except for paying to win, you pay to make one hero look prettier. Granted, some DOTA 2 players are to the point that they ONLY play DOTA, and nothing else. The only other games that I can think of where they only play one game would be either sports games, as some people seem to love to buy the new FIFA/Madden/NBA 2K game every year, and Smash players, namely Melee ones. And yes, I can understand the argument of being able to sell the cosmetics when you quit the game, but you're only getting Steam credit, unless you use shady 3rd-party TOS-violating sites, and Valve still takes out a portion of the sale as a transaction fee.

Not to mention that if another gaming company were to dare to sell their microtransactions like how Valve does, they would be absolutely crucified by the community, i.e. EA and the Star Wars Battlefront 2 fiasco, but when Valve does, gamers go full on "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY" mode, and "BLESS LORD GABEN", in a very North Korea Dear Leader-sort of way.