Dota 2 News Updates Blog

First of all, let's start with what everyone read: The announcement on gameinformer with over a million views. In the first sentence we find our first clue: Back when the article went live DOTA 2 was already in a playable state. However that must have been a very early build still because it was mentioned on Episode 43 of The Gameinformer-Show that there were still some textures missing. Nothing unusual, since many big developers work on their games without some of the textures until a later stage of development. Some people are expecting a single-player campaign or something similar with cinematics and a story connecting the battles. But even the announcement says that the AI is designed to be functional enough to replace a human member of the team and that we should not hope for a single-player campaign. Besides, VALVe has never made a game with cutscenes that play during the game. Taking control from the player and forcing him to watch a small movie means taking away the immersion. There are only a few examples for cutscenes in VALVe-games and all of them are either in the beginning or the ending of the game. But how much content will we see in the release-version of DOTA 2? (Meaning content beyond the promised DotA gameplay and all the additional features like interactive guides, reconnecting, coaching- and replay-systems.) Wild guess: Not much.

After reading that, most of you have probably made an angry comment on this article already but let's take a look at VALVe's other games, especially Team Fortress 2. It started with 27 weapons and a hand full of maps. There was no story, no loadouts, no customisation, no crafting, no trading and no in-game store. All of that was added post-release. VALVe are known for supporting their games and the community behind it. But that's not all they are doing to enhance the gaming-experience which brings me to something else: Official lore.

Again, we take TF2, Left 4 Dead and their newest title Portal 2 as representatives. It really pays off to follow the games' blogs. TF2 used to be all about RED vs. BLU but since then the TF2-team has released comics and hidden pages with their updates and now every TF2 player knows about the Mann family, Zepheniah's legacy and Saxton Hale. Even the real names of the Soldier, Demoman and Engineer have been revealed. The same is happening with L4D and Portal 2. We will most definitely not see this kind of stuff day one but it will happen, eventually. VALVe has also created trailers for L4D(2) updates and the popular Meet the Team videos. Maybe we will see something similar for DOTA 2 but given the nature of the game, being a top-down 3rd person Action-RPG, we cannot be sure. We do not know what the in-game models or the environment of the game look like so we can't tell if it would fit the game at all. Which brings us to the art-style.

All we know is that the environment uses a desaturated color scheme to make the heroes and effects stick out without making them too flashy. This was confirmed by the creators of the German fan-site Half-Life Portal who visited VALVe-HQ recently. Albeit, they were not able to provide any visual material, they described the game as coherent and quite dark/gloomy/sombrous (translation: “düster”). The developers want to make each hero instantly recognizable by shape, color and animations. They had the same goal with TF2 and succeeded but doing the same for 100+ heroes sounds like a chore.

Some of you might fear that VALVe is not taking this game as seriously as Portal 2 because of the lack of official announcements. But now that the Portal 2 marketing campaign is over they will probably update the blog very soon. Besides, it was also confirmed by Half-Life Portal and giantbomb.com that Gabe Newell has moved his office to work on DOTA 2 personally.

The following part of the article covers the concerns some players have about VALVe themselves and is not directly related to DOTA 2.

Some don't know much about VALVe (somehow) or they heard rumours about this popular company turning against their fans and their own principles. For those who do not know the role VALVe has played in gaming-history I recommend this video series in six parts. It deals with the company's history up to the release of Left 4 Dead 2 and the infamous boycott. Speaking of controversy, a few “fans” seem upset about the introduction of micro-transactions to TF2 and Portal 2. Because micro-transactions are always evil, right? But VALVe's in-game stores do not offer anything game-changing that can not be acquired by simply playing the game. As you can see in this interview with "PC Gamer" and this one with "On The Media" (which deals with VALVe's philosophy regarding piracy), those stores were implemented because people asked for them. Players didn't want to rely on chance to get the items they wanted or they just didn't have enough time to invest into a game. Those players rather spend money than time. A small detail that critics like to forget is that trading was implemented in the same update. There are now 4 ways to acquire any game-changing item: Random drops, crafting using unwanted items, trading with other players or buying them. There are also three weapons/items for each class that can be unlocked with achievements. Of course purchse is the fastest way but that's the point of it. If you do not have to invest time, effort or money you will not see any value in the item you get. By the way, a large portion of the items in the store (and lots of official maps in the game) are community-contributions and the creators are getting quite the share from sales and donations. Sadly, many members of the Steam-community do not inform themselves properly before they complain until it becomes news-worthy.

What this means for DOTA 2 is: There will probably be an in-game store for skins and other cosmetics. But they will never put something for sale that will give you an edge. The announcement mentions that they want to reward contributors so there may even be other ways to acquire such things if you play nice.

So, will DOTA 2 be the best the genre has to offer? Possibly, but certainly not for everyone. Why? Because there will always be those hardcore fans of DotA/Hon/LoL who love every aspect of their game and will reject anything that differs from the experience they have with that game. Sure, VALVe promised to keep the gameplay of DotA exactly like it is but there is no doubt that it will, at least in some aspects, feel different. Many will prefer the new feel but some will rather stay with DotA despite the limits of the engine. Just look at the L4D community as an example. Even though all their beloved campaigns and characters from the old game will be ported over to L4D2 with all its advantages (VALVe's effort to reunite the split community) some refuse to accept the newer game. Something about the older version of the Source engine satisfies them more than the updated one. We've seen this happening with many games, such as Starcraft and Starcraft II.

All we can do now is look for every mention of DOTA 2 on the internet until the blog is updated which will happen soon (+VALVe-time).

This post is dedicated to the relationship between DOTA 2 and the other bigger MOBA games, like DotA, LoL and HoN. This is a very hot topic, as you know, and a lot of discussion has been going on regarding the changes that DOTA 2's release might bring to all of these games and accordingly their communities. Let us try and analyze these relationship by analyzing each game's connection to DOTA 2 separately.

Let's start with Defense of the Ancients. DotA has, undisputedly the biggest player base than any MOBA game and it is the first game of the genre. DotA has managed to keep the core players and it will be hard for any game to change that. DOTA 2, though, has some advantages towards that extend. First of all it has Icefrog, the ever trusted ever loved designer of Dota for the past years. And secondly, it will, as much as possible have the same gameplay with a smooth transition. In my opinion, as long as Valve and Icefrog manage to keep DOTA 2 in a 1:1 content update with DotA then really soon the community will shift to DOTA 2 and make it officially the new core DotA game. DotA has nothing to fear from DOTA 2, only the chance of it being really worse than expected.
So, let's continue with Heroes of Newerth. My opinion is that HoN is the game that is in the worst position than any other. With not enough changes and innovations to the original DotA game, it has mainly only offered a better looking platform with a stable game engine and a good stats system. This is not trivial in any case but at the same time it is not enough to establish a really dedicated player base. Sadly, all of the points HoN did well, we expect from DOTA 2 to do in an even better way. The player base of HoN will decrease dramatically after DOTA 2 comes out, a fact that is being supported by S2's panicked reaction of opening a micro-transactions store.

Finally, let's close this conversation with League of Legends. I believe that LoL is a game that has managed to establish a dedicated player base through differentiating from the original DotA game in many aspects. Apparently there are a lot of fans who like the game for what it is, or has become, and do not look at it as a DotA clone. The game has a unique look 'n' feel and an innovative out-of-game system to support it. Having said that, it is still highly likely that LoL too will see some losses in its player base, but not tremendous ones.