New Frontiers DOTA 2

DOTA2 has recently launched the “New Frontiers” version 7.33 update. The entire update includes the game map, hero attributes, neutral items, matchmaking mechanism and game interface, which is very informative.
As the designer of the best balanced MOBA game in the world, ice frog has not disappointed the players who like DOTA2. Although the game version number is not as leap as seven years ago, but the 7.33 version can afford people’s expectation of “DOTA4”.
Compared to the previous game map, the map in 7.33 has been expanded by nearly 40%, and with it comes a richer variety of neutral buildings. The addition of Lotus Pond, Gate of Twins, Tesseract of Pain, and Observer has given the map more “Battleground”, which in turn has increased the pace and confrontation of the game.

The most surprising change is the adjustment of the game’s matchmaking mechanism. In the matchmaking adjustments, Valve and ice frog wrote this, “Let’s be honest: there are 8 billion people on the planet, and 99.99% of them play Dota like rookies. This means that matchmaking is a challenge, especially since there are people who play Dota well and like to play with people who are not as good at Dota as you are. We’ve done a lot of work and calculated a long time to improve the quality of matchmaking across the board for the full range of players.”

“smurf”, is a problem that many competitive games encounter. In the past, Valve has tried many ways to make the ladder score more scientific and accurate. This time, the game has introduced a newly ladder confidence mechanism that calibrates and adjusts a player’s ladder score more precisely through confidence, rather than simply by winning and losing matches ± 25 points. In this way, the majority of ordinary players will be able to match with players of closer strength and avoid being “smurf”, thus significantly improving the game experience.
The system will no longer automatically assign teams to those high scoring championship players, but the two captains will take the initiative to pick their teammates according to the order of BP. In the past, the game of high-scoring roadies only stayed in the selection of heroes and the matching of lineups. Now, from the moment of choosing teammates, the game has already begun. The Valve’s description in the update log is, “Now if the game is not played well, you can blame no one but yourselves, ranking brother.”

In our opinion, such an adjustment will largely enhance the spectacle of the ladder home game and the live game show effect. Imagine, it was just a single row of professional players or anchors, but after adding the link of picking teammates, there is a high probability that the single row will turn into a blackout.
The past two years DOTA2 in gameplay updates have not made much change, the numerical balance of heroes and props is really easy to give people a sense of caution, many voices from the community are also questioning whether Ice Frog has really run out of talent. The loss of players year after year is to some extent affected by the slow progress of the game update.

But through version 7.33, people must admit that Ice Frog has once again proved to DOTA2 and even to gamers around the world that he is still the genius game designer and the man who knows DOTA2 best in the world.
In the past, people would always put e-sports and games in opposition to each other, but this is not the case. In recent years, while the majority of games are constantly lowering the threshold of the game, DOTA2’s content and gameplay are getting richer and more complex. This will certainly increase the learning cost of the player base, but somehow this can also stimulate the players’ desire to explore.

Creating a deeper game with more possibilities and playability is the key to keeping DOTA2 alive over the years. As long as players are willing to keep exploring for this, then DOTA2 and TI will always exist.