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In my first Dota 2 game, all my friends started laughing at me when I bought two sets of boots from the store. “What?” I said. “You need a pair of shoes …”
If you hadn’t guessed from that anecdote, my friends (even though they tried their best) weren’t the best Dota 2 teachers, and I bounced around the game pretty quickly. But Valve is now trying to make the game much more beginner-friendly, introducing several important features to help new players learn the ropes, along with some tools to help returning players. Oh, and he’s cracking down on veterans who try to sneak into groups of beginners using Smurf accounts.
Dota: Dragon’s Blood Trailer
The update coincides with the release of the Dota: Dragon’s Blood anime on Netflix earlier today, which will likely inspire many viewers to try their hand at the game. Valve explained in a blog post that “the first steps of discovering Dota sometimes feel overwhelming” and wants today’s update to help with that.
“Different players have different needs and we have found that linear tutorials alone are not effective in helping people learn the game,” added Valve. “Instead, we believe that a combination of diverse tools and resources has the greatest potential to help new players learn based on their specific needs.”
The first one is a streamlined version of the store that will make item exploration less scary for new players. It will provide a guided experience that tells players exactly what to build and will reveal new options as players build each item. Once a new player feels like they have mastered the basics, they can choose to use the regular store.
New players will also be introduced to a “mission-like objective system”. This features four levels of progression and contains tutorial-like scenarios to train players in specific game elements and procedures for using the client. To accompany the player’s objectives, there is also a new set of rewards, with each of the four levels providing some benefits to incentivize players to complete missions.
In anticipation of Netflix’s release of the Dota anime, a community effort managed to come up with its own tutorial for new players, and quite sweetly, Valve is including this in a section of their new goals. “If we see other similar activity in this community space, we will also consider adding it in the future,” Valve added.
To give new players much-needed background information, Valve is also adding a glossary, hero recaps, board assist, and in-game wizard tips (basically Clippy) to provide helpful hints for new players in matches. live. New players will also receive two months of Dota Plus for free, giving them access to “Plus Assistant, Hero Progress, Chat Wheel, pranks and everything in between.”
On top of all that, there is a new player mode, which limits the pool of heroes, allows players to exit matches without penalty, and pairs them with other new solo queue players. For those who want to practice with bots, these have also been updated and will now support new skills and changes to the game. Once a player has mastered the default bots and heads to co-op, they will be placed with community-created bots (a bit more challenging).
And if newcomers want help from the community, they can access New Player Chat – a dedicated chat channel that should provide a welcoming environment for questions. Experienced players will only have access to the channel if they have a high behavior score and will be kicked out of the chat if they misbehave. Another new addition is a flexible training system that will allow new players to ask experienced players for guidance, even in the middle of a match.
That’s a ton of changes for newcomers, but if you’ve been away from the game for a while, there’s something for you too: returning players will now be placed in a “special calibration” mode that takes into account how long you’ve been. been been absent. This means that Dota will be “sensitive to monitoring how your skill compares to the last time you played, putting you in good games so you can have fun catching up on everything that changed while you were away.” A nice addition that should make the return less daunting.
In light of the anticipated influx of new players, Valve is also cracking down on Smurf accounts (when a seasoned player creates a new account to fit into easier games). Valve will focus on the new accounts created starting today, where it has “a lot of confidence in its smurf behavior and spoiling the game.” But it will occasionally manually ban older accounts that “clearly ruin the game.” Anyone who sells accounts, raises or tries to ruin games will also get a main account ban. And for cases where Valve isn’t 100% sure it’s a Smurf account, those players will be placed in a group of other suspicious Smurfs until a decision can be made. Hopefully, these measures should prevent genuine new players from encountering undercover veterans in their first few games.
Along with all these changes, Valve has also updated the Dota 2 website and says that you can expect to see the next game update (including a new hero) on the “Friday following the Singapore Major.”
So that’s a pretty big set of changes, and we’ll have to see if the combination of the Netflix show and the learning tools will breathe new life into the Dota 2 player pool. Not that it’s doing badly – Dota 2 is consistently. one of the most played games on Steam, and is currently in second place with 333k concurrent players (via Steam Charts). I’m even thinking about sticking a toe in again, I think I’d better buy myself some boots for that.
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