Valve is “releasing” Dota 2, so wave goodbye to battle passes
Whereas I hate to confess it, Dota 2 has been comparatively stagnant for some time now. Valve’s premier MOBA recreation has dropped off of the radar slightly lately, struggling towards competitor League of Legends. The New Frontiers replace, nonetheless, breathed a gust of much-needed recent air into Dota 2, and Valve isn’t stopping there.
In a June 19 replace prefacing the sport’s tenth anniversary, Valve seems to be again on the recreation’s previous, its present state, and the way Dota will look sooner or later. The primary adjustments proposed are directed on the battle cross system, which the devs are intentionally planning to shift away from.
Battle passes are the spine of Dota’s content material, filled with cosmetics, in-game forex, and extra. They’re the one actual content material drops we see, however all of that’s set to vary following the colossal New Frontiers replace.
Having frequently positioned content material within the battle cross to boost its worth, the devs rapidly observed that their sole focus was solely on getting ready the battle cross, limiting their capability to strive new issues. This is a matter, nonetheless, as Valve notes that “most Dota gamers by no means purchase a battle cross and by no means get any rewards from it.
“We made a deliberate alternative earlier this 12 months to run an experiment: to take a number of the assets that will usually produce Battle Cross content material and as an alternative put them in the direction of extra speculative updates, together with options and content material that couldn’t match right into a Battle Cross. Whereas work remains to be in progress on future updates, the primary of those has shipped: New Frontiers and patch 7.33 couldn’t have shipped as they did if we have been focusing all our efforts on producing Battle Cross content material.
“We’re going to proceed on the trail that began with New Frontiers,” Valve continues. “This implies we’re constructing all kinds of options and content material for the sport, delivered in several methods. We’ll nonetheless ship a spread of cosmetics over the 12 months, however we’re additionally going to ship extra various updates for all Dota gamers to get pleasure from.”
However what does this imply for The Worldwide? In any case, the cash Valve earns from battle cross content material trickles immediately into the TI prize pool.
“Work is effectively underway on a TI-themed replace to ship in September. The replace will nonetheless contribute on to the prize pool, with a give attention to the occasion, the gamers, and the video games, however new beauty objects received’t play a notable half. It is a vital change from the previous couple of years, so to make it clear that we’re shifting focus in the direction of the occasion and away from the large reward line of cosmetics, we’re deliberately not calling this replace a Battle Cross.”
“By releasing Dota’s replace and content material cycle from the timing and structural constraints of the Battle Cross, we will return to creating content material in the best way we all know finest: by developing with enjoyable concepts of all scales and shapes, and exploring them with you,” Valve concludes, and truthfully, that is nice information.
I delved again into Dota following the New Frontiers replace (I’m a sucker for Muerta) and it seems like a brand new recreation. With future innovation on the playing cards, I genuinely can not wait to see what occurs subsequent.
In the event you, like me, are excited by this announcement, we’ve got a listing of the very best Dota 2 heroes for inexperienced persons, in addition to a rundown of the entire finest Dota 2 customized video games to cross the time.
