After months of silence, Valve is trying to make up for lost time. They recently had a lot of new announcements for Dota 2. One that’s sure to get the interest of fans is the announcement of a new hero for the popular MOBA game. Assuming everything works on time, a new hero should be arriving by the end of November.
As if that wasn’t enough, Valve also said in a post that after the November release, the update is going to be “followed by more that are spread throughout next year with the next one in the first quarter next year.” Valve also said that they’re planning to spread out the updates during the year instead of having new content and updates “centered around The International.”
So what else did Valve announce? Well, they made some changes to the Dota Plus subscription. You can read more about that here.
Then there is the issue of guilds and the fact that they’re here to stay in Dota 2. This should be good news to many players, especially those who often play with friends. Learn more about that here.
Player Behavior and Toxicity
In addition to updates, online games also need to deal with player behavior and toxicity. Valve said that while there’s “some upcoming stuff that is still in development,” some of the work to curb negative behavior is already available without the need for updates.
Players should be happy to know that Valve is working to improve their smurf detection systems. As a start, Valve said that they’ve already “started separating new accounts from entering the pool of normal and new players.” This means that smurf accounts get matches with other smuf accounts, even if a party only has one player that’s a smurf.
Smurf accounts are now also likely to inherit any of the negative behavior scores from their alternate accounts to limit their negative impact when playing. Valve has also made a few more improvements on making new accounts converge to their correct MMR faster.
In addition to all the smurf account battles, Valve is working to increase its ban of booster accounts by improving the detection system. Within the past month it appears that Valve has managed to ban at least 14,000 accounts. Valve did admit that they are still working to address this issue.
Finally, when it comes to player toxicity and behaviors that ruins games, Valve is working on a Overwatch-style system that’s going to be similar to what is being done with CS:GO. However, Valve said that they “aren’t ready to share more information about this yet, but we will as soon as we are able.” For those not familiar, the Overwatch system being used by CS:GO is in essence a system that allows the community to regulate itself. For example, members that have enough experience and knowledge can review gameplay footage and help resolve any issues when it comes to player behavior.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you think Valve's efforts to fight negative behavior will pay off? Are you excited for the new Hero? Let us know in the comments section below.
