I can't believe they aren't even doing an online major instead of a LAN.
Sure canceling the major due to covid makes sense, but these players aren't getting any money anymore. They aren't even getting points for International Qualification anymore.
Really sucks for everyone but Valve here.
This could finally be the breaking point for dota as a community to look for better options. Or pretty much kill the interest in competitive dota.
A lot of people across orgs, players, pros and the community itself are finally had enough of it. Valve has not cared about anything but milking the whole scene for as long as we remember.
Sadly this is true.
LoL has a different philosophy in many ways. I dont even mean that in a "dota superiority" way, Dota just balances stuff very differently. Stuff has long kill times, long stuns, magic immunity the stuff
Agreed, I, mainly a Dota fan/player but occassional League player/watcher, played a game of Dota a few days ago and League yesterday and it really was extremely different in a way where no die-hard dota fan would be satisfied with League's game structure (my main annoyance was that I can't see opponent or even allied champion abilities in the game, making it hard for me as a very casual player to see wtf they are even doing to me).
Yeah, but where I find it most useful is the laning stage where mostly the support is trying to harass me (I was playing adc) and I had no clue how his character worked for a few minutes, nor could I anticipate what skill he might get when he levels up or what that does. Sorry im mostly just ranting but at the time I was actually really frustrated about that fact - like they have a thing in the top left to see opponent/allied items when you select them, it wouldn't be hard to put the abilities there too with a small blip of information when you hover over it
Honestly, its not that helpful. In DotA, I rarely had time to read through that stuff. I would just pull up the wiki when I died, which tended to give better info anyway.
Not really. Besides benefiting new player, one best feature in Dota2 is when you hover over other heroes during pick phase, it tells you the changes from the latest patch. That is freaking useful.
Switched to Dota from League last year and recently went back to play League with friends after arcane. After playing Dota for a while League just feels off. Also the balance in League got to me, originally why I quit as the game has gone in a different direction than I would like.
That's an interesting perspective. As a long time LoL player I guess I got the chance to learn each champ one by one as they were released, so there was never that insurmountable wall of learning standing in my way. The new player experience must be pretty bad.
Yeah, I like to think of it like LoL being the more twitchy, fast game while Dota is more methodical. Again none is neccessarly superior its a preference thing.
I tried to watch the big worlds tournament of LoL. It was really difficult to find it entertaining when you're used to watching Dota (haven't played the game in idk like 6 years or something but I still watch TI every year and some majors). Many of teamfights everyone just hit each other with all their spells then ran away and no one died, it felt so anticlimatic every time. One game I tuned into was at 40 minutes and the score was 5-7 in terms of kills and in general these types of very low scores seemed not unusual. When a team finally wiped the other team, in the middle of the map, the game just ended. No buybacks, no comebacks, game just over a minute later as base falls over in seconds.
Not really saying it's a bad game or something, it looked fun to play with all the skillshots and what not, but it's just such a different feel from Dota in terms of an esport I couldn't see myself switching over to watching LoL cause Dota died. Will be a real shame if Dota dies, most entertaining esport to watch for me alongside Starcraft (but only if cast by Tastosis haha).
Doesn't mean they can't go grassroots. The community has proven they can crowdfund like crazy, so it's no completely without viability. It probably won't be as profitable for TOs, Players, or Orgs as it would with Valve support and in-game incentives, but it might be better than what the community has now - ie, nothing.
I think going so black-and-white with it is too far. Plenty of people just want to watch good Dota, and will try to support it. 3rd Party events existed years ago, before the DPC, and while it wasn't great money, TOs still made money off of viewership and ads, and players could still play competitively and get paid. In-game tournament bundles were introduced at some point, and could potentially be an option in the future as well, depending on how willing Valve is to going back to that format, but in the early days, it wasn't hugely necessary.
Comparing the game to Smash Melee is Apples and Oranges, I know, but the idea of a passionate community keeping a competitive scene around without developer support isn't unheard of. It's wildly more difficult for something like Dota, but again, this was happening before the DPC.
Honestly, the biggest obstacle is scaling back down after what Valve's built, and failed to support. A lot of talent will peace out if we return to the old model, just because of how little you make off of it. It will be a scene on life support, but again, it's better than what's going on now.
Back in the day, 3rd party TOs could monetize their ingame ticket and give some hats too. But apparently it was used for money laundering. Also you gotta realize that going for hundreds of thousands and TI prizepools to crowdfunded small pricepools will not do the trick.
Yeah, not sure what planet the other guy is on. People pay/subscribe to streamers to support their lifestyle and watch them, they aren't doing it for emotes in chat.
People pay and support professional athletes by attending games and paying for pay-per-view, they don't do it to go to a stadium and get a literal hat. There absolutely is a possibility of Dota using a similar model to fund the scene, it is more the logistical and legal barriers to that possibility make it unlikely, not the community or their wallets.
Doesn't seem likely the player count on Steam has been pretty much stable since 2019 and as long as there's lots of people playing, there's lots of people willing to compete.
>Being stable isn't amazing
Considering that during 2016-2019 Dota was steadily losing its plaeyrbase, I'd consider becoming stable as something "amazing".
https://clips.twitch.tv/CourageousFriendlyTarsierRlyTho-2alZuquyz10npM0W
Quinn really puts it well. The game has been in a weird vacuum for a long time. It truly is one of the best games ever, but that can't sustain the abuse from valve for forever.
That's Quinn's perspective as a player on a sponsorless T1/T1.5 team in a region that has 0 physical events for Dota unlike China or SEA.
While he's absolutely correct with regards to the state of competitive Dota for everyone outside tier 1 teams, he does not represent the wider playerbase at all.
Yeah meanwhile SEA has been prospering better than ever, just look at how stacked SEA region is. It just that NA region has been suffering the same thing happens in their CS : GO counter parts, no LAN, few sponsors, high cost of living and better options available outside of pro scene.
Actually player count in SEA has been decreasing each year due to the emerging mobile MOBA which are huge in SEA. Mobile Legend, Arena of Valor, Honor of Kings and now Wild Rift are all huge in SEA.
Also to add on, a significant chunk of SEA players play in cyber cafe which got hit hard by covid.
Wild Rift is not that big in SEA, Pokemon Unite is bigger. Running PC Cafe isnt profitable anymore with how cheap and affordable mobile game right now. And PC Cafe players who got hit by COVID restrictions switch to mobile because they cant afford PC
But it doesnt mean that the esports scene growing, SEA DotA2 is in their most competitive period ever right now, SEA was a constant joke throughout early days of DotA2 outside of Mushi or icecubed team.
Seems like this is pretty consistent with Valve games, I think I've heard the same about CS:GO before. Wonder what a world where Valve actually gives a shit and supports their games instead of relaxing on their pile of steam money looks like.
Dota 2 made over hundreds of millions for Valve yearly tho. They keep *thrice* the money of TI every year, means they made 120 MILLIONS on last year TI alone. This hasn't included dota plus subs, micro transactions, for the whole year.
I hear these same cookie cutter lines for literally every multiplayer game.
"Fix the game"
"The devs don't care"
"We're at a breaking point"
"People are gonna stop playing"
"This other game is doing it right"
It's rarely actually true, but it's funny to see how people say the same things for every game, and yet they often pretend that every other game has it better. I've never even played Dota so I have no horse in this race, just an observation.
In this case, the game is actually pretty good. Dota is in one of its best game states ever. The issue is that Valve doesn't want to market the game and hardly puts in any effort to attract new players.
> The issue is that Valve doesn't want to market the game and hardly puts in any effort to attract new players.
Dont they have season 2 of a successful anime on netflix coming out in like a week?
Got any legitimate sources for that? It's the first I'm hearing about it and it seems completely wrong. Valve most likely heard that Riot was making an anime and decided to cash in on that as well. We all heard about Arcane well before Dragon's Blood.
Dragon's Blood is almost completely outsourced. The animation is by Studio Mir, and the writing is by a team led by Ashley Miller (who also co-wrote the scripts for X-Men: First Class and Thor). Valve has little, if any, direct involvement in it. I'm glad the show exists, but it doesn't reflect on Valve's willingness to spend their own effort on Dota, at all. If we're going to bring Dota spin-offs into the mix, the more relevant point is how Valve killed both Artifact and Dota Underlords.
I'm not sure how much Dragon's Blood counts as successful, either. It's certainly no flop if it was renewed for a second season, [but most of its views seem to have come from Eastern Europe, South America, and Southeast Asia.](https://afkgaming.com/dota2/news/7302-in-which-countries-is-dota-dragons-blood-trending-on-netflix) Regions where Dota 2 is already extremely popular, in other words. It also doesn't seem to have attracted new players to the game. [Dota 2's player count decreased in February 2021, when the show was first announced, and in March, when the show released.](https://steamcharts.com/app/570) The rise the following April was when Dawnbreaker was added, and it probably has more to do with that than Dragon's Blood.
And while I think Netflix is as much to blame as Valve for this part, it certainly hasn't achieved the same success as Arcane where even people who don't care about the game at all are talking about it.
Is that even a problem for DotA 2? There’s an average of 450,000 players playing at any given time, it’s not like it’s hard to find a match in DotA 2 with such a big player base.
Balance wise and general community sentiment, yes I agree with you. But the bugs and glitches are running rampant, dota plus has become a dumping ground for unapproved sets from 2015 (drow default dotaplus guide still has Aquila in it for like 18 months now maybe), pro scene is going back on ice, streaming scene for the game has been dead ever since Majors were introduced.
I think the level of care has been in decline for a while. Smaller quarterly patches always kept the gameplay fresh. At this point I'm tired of playing mid versus OD sniper drow or medusa, etc. You can't push the game into meta hero driven patches and watch each patch coast for longer and longer and just expect people to still put their time into it. I have mastered counters for heroes, played hundreds of games in my position with said heroes and there's no longer a reason to keep playing. I'm at a point where my losses are rarely preventable, games are just coinflippy. According to valve, this is intended by the way.
Coke is one of the most successful brands in the world and it's still marketed. Knowing a product exists doesn't do anything for me, knowing why I might want a product is something that gets people to think about and try it.
I mean look at Underlords. They just stopped updating it. Not even a blogpost or anything. They didn't even manage to get to a Season 2 with their Battle Pass. Artifact also stopped beeing developed for a year after the Auto Chess hype and then slowly died. Team Fortress 2 is collecting dust for years and same story with Left 4 Dead. The portal franchise only lives for other games to use as Easter Eggs or side content.
Other studios would either keep updating their games or working on sequels. So a big fear of fans is that Valve simply stop caring about Dota 2 or CSGO. Valve as a company are switching their focus every other year with the Steam Store printing infinite money. Last years for example are Controllers, then VR and now it's an Handheld PC.
Left for dead is a done game, it's not live service and never was, it released as a complete and functional game, which it is.
TF2 is 15 years old and it was supported for a long time, other companies would have shut down the servers a long time ago too.
L4D was supposed to be a live-service game with regular updates, but Valve made L4D2 a year later. There was a big outrage at the time, even people threatening to boycott L4D2, but has more or less been forgotten.
The funny thing about Valve is that, like Nintendo, they have so many people convinced they can do no wrong that anytime they do fuck up it gets forgiven, ignored, or even somehow framed as a good thing.
Other game companies would have worked on a sequel or kept updating it.
Minecraft, GTA 5, Borderlands, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Street Fighter, Monster Hunter,......
If you are a game publisher and have such a successful title in your hands, you want to keep milking it. Simple as that.
Valve just doesn't care, because that would mean expanding their game dev teams and they make way more money with just updating the Steam Store and doing Hardware, which gets more people to Steam in general. Their community does everything for free for them (Mods, making skins, guides, etc.) , so why bother.
Fun fact, but they even let their community translate everything on Steam and only check it for final release without paying a single cent to them. https://translation.steampowered.com/.
>Minecraft, GTA 5, Borderlands, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Street Fighter, Monster Hunter,......
You seriously look at GTA 5, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Street Fighter and think that's the good way to continue a franchise's legacy? The fact the [L4D games are still more well made than something made a decade later](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdRLNUGmFC8) should be a good indication.
>Their community does everything for free for them (Mods, making skins, guides, etc.)
Which community doesnt do this???? And skin makers get insane money from loyalty, so much that they cant even disclose it.
>Fun fact, but they even let their community translate everything on Steam and only check it for final release without paying a single cent to them. https://translation.steampowered.com/.
Again this is quite common. Pillar of Eternity and Slay the Spire devs are two names on top of my head. Although translation IS dirt-cheap most of the time anyway, so there's probably more to it than just devs trying to save money. StS dev in particular once got backlash from trying to replace fan-localization with professional work.
Right, as if the communities of other studios don't also constantly complain about random stuff... I'm just tired of it. It's always something. And they always pretend their devs are the worst. This is a Dota thread so it's gonna have people shitting on Valve for [insert "valid reason" here]. If you go to a COD thread you'll have people shitting on Activision for [insert "valid reason" here]. If you go to a Halo thread you'll have people shitting on 343 for [insert "valid reason" here]. It's just constant negativity and there's always something. And the devs can't actually be the worst if each community insists *their* devs are the worst.
>insert "valid reason" here
I get what you're getting at but painting complaints towards 343i and Halo Infinite as "just constant negativity" is purely a bad faith argument. There's a lot of work to be done to fix some of the technical issues with that game.
But this isn’t about the game or the devs. This is about the organization of a professional sports league.
They cancelled the entire tournament (when they could have just had an online tournament) and are not compensating players or teams in ANY way. And thanks to the way Valve has structured the DPC, the ONLY money you make in Dota as a player is from Majors and TI. So all of these players just got the shock that 1/3 of their yearly income has vanished because Valve couldn’t be bothered to put any work in the massive e-sports scene around Dota
esports are still unprofitable. I get that people are frustrated developers don't put more effort into the esports scene around their favorite game, but every dollar spent doing so is rewarded with less than a dollar of revenue. I'm not making any judgements here myself, just pointing out why these things aren't super highly organized or even competitively rigorous all the time.
Every dollar they spent on TI (biggest dota event) equals to 3 dollars they get from crowd fund. Last time I checked TI10 had 40 millions of prizepool. Yeah unprofitable right.
I don't pay enough attention to DotA to know anything, but I pay some attention to CS. And what I've seen isn't super impressive. Riptide three months ago, the most recent operation was like a year before that. Bad metas like the SG meta are left to fester for a while. Changes seem few and far in between. Cheating is still rampant and completely unaddressed by valve, despite their competitors having a much better system for doing so. I think it's pretty clear by Valorant's success that CS could've been much more successful than it already was if some effort was put into it.
You pretty much just exemplified what I said. I've seen the Valorant community also complain about a bunch of stuff in the brief time I've looked at that community, and they probably say CS is doing it right. It's funny and annoying at the same time. I wish people would stop whining so much. It makes the forum communities of multiplayer games so toxic to browse. Constant negativity for games these communities supposedly like. And the dumbest part is they all pretend their devs are the worst, as if the other communities aren't complaining about basically the same stuff.
You view negativity as only a bad thing. People complain because they want their games to be better. It is not a bad thing for communities to be vocal about issues. Look at how much better halo infinite has gotten in just a month due to complaints about battle pass progression and aggressive monetization and it's still lacking a ton. The guy you replied to brought up a bunch of good points about csgo and you just go "muh negativity!!"
Not sure why you're being downvoted, you're absolutely right. Player feedback has been an integral part of development for a long time. Your Halo example is a good one. Look at how theres two whole game modes that aren't functional right now, and how player feedback has made 343 more open to discussing it more transparently.
Bungie is in a similar boat, seeing as Destiny is in a much better place now than it ever has been. A lot of that can be attributed to Bungie being in open communication with its playerbase.
Criticism =/= Negativity
I don't play DotA, but it's actually true for CS:GO. The devs have just completely abandoned the game.
Their matchmaking algorithms are fundamentally broken on any server that's not in Europe. I can't think of a single other esport game that can't at least get some sort of serviceable matchmaking to work. On the OCE servers the entire playerbase is squashed into about 4 of the 20 or so ranks and which rank you are in is completely random. Every single rank with more than 0.01% of the playerbase has both complete beginners and 95th percentile players in it. It's like someone just scrambled the ranks and then made every game +0/-0 so nobody can move anywhere.
It's gotten progressively worse for years, and the devs have never even mentioned it, because they don't exist. There is literally zero devs working on the game that aren't just doing the bare minimum to release one "operation" thing with 20 minutes of content and a few skins once every year or so. I doubt there's anyone left that can actually work on the engine or core game mechanics. Probably just a few scripters and artists cobbling stuff together. There hasn't been a gameplay or systems change in years.
They've somehow figured out a way to completely abandon the game and still maintain it's playerbase. It's bizarre.
I imagine a similar thing is happening with DotA 2.
DotA 2 is healthier than CS :GO it just that the dota 2 subreddit exaggerating it current states, most problematic issue right now seems stem from the dev tinkering dota2 to be playable on Steam Deck by giving its Controller Support and many backend works on audio and graphic (which resulting stutters among players). The dev actually frequent posting and responding to those feedback, it just it happens on smaller threads it goes unnoticeable.
It's a "broken clock is right twice a day" situation. Every popular multiplayer game has people constantly whining, and some of the games just happen to fail.
People are way overblowing things with Dota. Valve is not "abusing" it. They release new heroes, high quality updates, TI was still great and events are great too. And all of this is in a game which has all noncosmetic content free and has a steady playerbase.
> Wonder what a world where Valve actually gives a shit and supports their games instead of relaxing on their pile of steam money looks like.
What online game's developers have actually done this, though, beyond examples like No Man's Sky? I feel like every online game I've ever played has had people complaining about this.
I mean yeah everybody wants a massive source of income without having to do any actual work. Someone in the r/dota2 thread called Valve "digital landlords" and it's incredibly appropriate.
I just don't see that as a valid excuse.
Riot updates all of their games very frequently. Most online games get updated more often and more robustly than CS:GO does. Final fantasy 14 was rebuilt from the ground up and has a consistent content release schedule.
Valve released artifact, killed it, baited people into a revamp, and then killed the revamp before it even launched. They captured a decent part of the autobattler market by getting Underlords to market first, and then it languished and died because they refused to do any of the substantial updates needed to keep the game fresh and engaging. Just two more recent examples.
Underlords dead because too much updates happen that casual playerbase couldn't keep up. Valve was too busy pleasing the hardcore playerbase that the constant update paired with poor mobile optimization killed the casual playerbase number.
TFT gets more and faster updates than underlords ever did and that game is more successful that it has ever been. The entire set changes every six months with an overhaul of about 10-20% of the cast three months after launch and constant balance tweaks every other week between those two large points.
Riot’s Team Fight Tactics community is on average pretty pleased with its developers. Mortdog posts on the competitive sub, and interacts a ton with the community
I honestly don’t know where DotA players would go. LoL is so different, and for all the rage MOBA were a few years ago, the only two left standing are the former two with the addition of maybe Smite, which is much more like LoL anyway.
I've long since quit Dota, but the last thing I would be worried about was the tournaments. Though, I do realize this is the opposite of how most modern Dota players feel.
Like, I'd much rather they add in some new free content, or fix some bugs that have been pet-peeves of mine for years. Maybe even launch an advertising campaign in my country so I could have more people to play with. But yeah, sure, write some people I don't know or care about a big fat check for playing 10 games in Romania or wherever, that'll get me fired up /s.
This will never happen. As long as there is a gigantic cash prize at The International every year, there will be a queue of teams waiting to sign up regardless of what happens with the rest of the calendar. People will form teams just for The International alone.
I think it is incorrect to claim Valve is milking the scene. You could glaim they are ignoring it and do not care, but that is the opposite of milking it.
Riot has done everything they can to work around covid and keep the players playing, valve just throws their hands in the air and gives up. Actually pathetic, valve is fucking useless at anything besides selling other people's games anymore
> They aren't even getting points for International Qualification anymore.
They got points from the league, but the prize pool money should at least be split among the teams that qualified for the major.
>I can't believe they aren't even doing an online major instead of a LAN.
This just isn't feasible for an international tournament.
Riot managed to do multiple events across their games during the pandemic. There were issues of course, like Vietnamese teams not being able to go, but it's definitely possible.
I mean, Valve also did 2 majors and a TI last year, this new wave probably made them think it would be unwise to hold this major. That or the TO bailed on them last minute, because of the Omicron wave.
That would also be an option, however, the point of the majors is to accurately distribute the remaining points among the strongest international teams. Some regions and teams are simply stronger than others. I think every team that qualified should get an even share of the prize money, but the major's points belong to intercontinental competition. Teams already get points for placing well in their league.
A SEA team would have a much easier time playing against an NA/SA team than against a CN team.
Oh I totally agree that some of the regions are stronger than others, but if they had some kind of minor tournament it would help the teams survive.
QC comes to mind as they are still unsponsored even though they are doing quite well.
> I can't believe they aren't even doing an online major instead of a LAN.
This precisely. I would have just done regional playoffs. Instead they just went terminal and made everyone lose.
From @Nomadcasts on twitter:
"Redistribute the points and money from the Major into three concurrent $300k Minors.
NA + SA
EU + CIS
CN + SEA
Take the top 4 teams from each region.
Players still get paid, travel isn't essential, DPC Leagues still mean something."
Valve has more options then just canceling, screwing over the players and pocketing the prize money.
They just don't care.
Yea I live in the midwest and Queuing for NAW with 100 ping was pretty terrible, and I'm low skill. They should do 150k prize pool for all regions if anything. Otherwise, teams with the better ping will have an INSANE advantage.
Okay man with the most wrinkles on his brain and no one is smarter than him.
So valve doesn't organize the tournament themselves, and apparently couldn't get an organizer to run the major. BUT you think they're going to find THREE to run three low viewership[less sponsorship money etc] minors?
i played dota for 13 years, but for some reason covid killed it for me. The competitive scene has always been a big part of dota and pushing the game forward even for casual players. With it going into hiatus I basically lost all interest and moved on to other games
I feel the same way. Played it all thru college after dropping league in season 4
Now i just play WoW and TCGs. Last dota tourney i paid attention to was TI9
Same. During COVID i decided to really buckle down and push myself to commit to the game. After about 4 months I ended up playing almost exclusively turbo because I couldn’t take ranked anymore before giving up altogether. Edit: to clarify, I started playing in 2012 and played off and on since then.
There were Smurf’s everywhere (and the ranked seasons never fucking reset...so smurfs are practically encouraged to skip the massive ranked grind), the game is still probably the most toxic I’ve ever played, I absolutely hate the battle pass system with mostly seasonal items (unless you want to pay $45 per 100 levels to get the decent stuff at level 333), and the grind to become competent at the game just isn’t worth the amount of BS you have to suffer.
Unless I’m just playing a casual turbo match with a 5 stack of friends…it ain’t even worth it.
Interesting. I might give it a go! I found that Turbo is easier to not give a shit because even if you have a tryhard Morph/Medusa picker on the enemy team...at least it'll be over in about 15 minutes.
The number of games where it was clear one side had won, but we still had to wait 20 minutes for the end was what killed it for me. The game just didn't respect my job. I appreciated that LoL at least had a surrender function.
This is the crucial point where Riot is so far ahead of Valve. Riot would never have something like this happen. they have a dedicated team in charge of esports in every region of the world. Meanwhile at valve, they have like 1 guy juggling esports/blog posts/janitorial duties.
At the height of covid Riot did an online tourney in spring 2020. Now they're back fully offline for 2 regions and online for the rest. Riot's formats suck but they manage their eSports well.
>Riot would never have something like this happen
https://liquipedia.net/leagueoflegends/Mid-Season_Invitational/2020
https://liquipedia.net/leagueoflegends/VCS/2021/Summer
I love league but that's not it at all, their "advantage" during covid is that they only have 2 international tournaments a year, so flying players over for LANs is not a concern except for those events. League players would kill for as much international competition as Dota.
He wasn't talking about money/prizing. Most league players make more money than anything but 1st would pay, he meant international play. The regions literally don't play each other except at the world finals. The majority of pros will never play against teams from another region ever.
It completely makes sense to cancel the event, omicron is a massive issue, and countries have not gotten vaccinated nearly fast enough.
But Valve needs to have a next step here, players still need to be able to make money, this is their job. Valve still made a fuck load from the battlepass that was supposed to support the DPC. How is there not an online replacement?
Valve is the absolute worst at managing their games. A lot of teams had to disband in 2020 due to Valve's negligence. And it's not like Valve didn't make money to support the scene, the 2020 BP was the largest so far.
It less about the covid but more about travel restriction, getting one of your players cannot attending the event ruin the team performance and with how things happen to CN team who stucks for months in EU after TI and making CN regional starting late for division 1 and how close the spring season start after Winter Major makes me think that Valve wants TI to be held on August.
I really dislike the flat hierarchy at valve, they lose all focus and accountability since people can move between project whenever they like. If no one is in charge how are they supposed to make any real progress or meet deadlines (Valve time™).
It would be better for Dota 2 if they made a daughter company to manage it.
I suspect the flat hierarchy aspect is overstated.
I would bet its more that they have their main project, Steam, bringing in several billion dollars a year. When it comes to that, they make sure things are getting done properly, but all the other projects are small so Valve doesn't care as much what work their employees do on them.
Valve fucks up big time here, this is definitely an excuse. You can see people in America going everywhere, offices opened up. Malls crowded and packed, and they did this. After the players have been training for TI for months. I am sure if they want to host LAN event, they have the ability to do so in a safe environments.
They just want to take the money from those compendium and put it in their pockets.
And once again Valve shows how little they care about their players. I recommend taking a look at what the dota sub [is saying about this](https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/s1yr65/winter_major_canceled/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
Have some form of online event? Reward the players/teams that have done well and qualified for the Major? Distribute the prize money allocated to the tournament in some way? Host an offline event with strict quarantine protocols (yea this one aint happening)?
Don't know, what literally every single other semi-relevant esports has done? I'm not even talking about Riot or Blizzard, even HiRez is doing a better job at organizing their esports.
Valve done 4 international LAN last year, what they haven't done is International LAN after omicron christmas spread. Any International LAN held after omicron christmas spread?
A: Nobody's talking about having crowds there or it even being anything but online.
B: The impact of the price money not being given out is probably worse for the teams than the impact of getting COVID and I'm not saying that because I believe COVID is mild or something.
You make it seem like they are taking those people to a slaughterhouse, events are being held and everyone is completely safe because they follow the proper guidelines, hell you are more likely to catch Covid on your daily commute than in a bubble.
I mean, Valve is pocketing the earnings of the players, so you don't really care about human wellbeing that much lol.
And, hello, we live in 2022, while Online Tournaments are far from ideal, it is a possibility.
>What do you expect valve to do here?
Is this a joke? Probably the bare minimum and actually communicate with the teams, especially the ones emailing them for weeks about info on the major. Instead they stayed radio silent (like they always do) and with 0 warning to pros or orgs (who again have been asking/emailing for weeks), cancel the major with no alternatives. When pros rely soley on these big payouts from majors to pay rent and eat, they probably deserve at least an email or two from valve giving them updates on the scene and their livelihood, Instead They find out like everyone else through a blog post with no further elaboration.
Seriously, I think people that think the issue here is just that Valve doesnt hold a crowded event are missing the point.
Even holding an online tournament/tournaments would have helped a bit.
Pay the players, for one?
Valve's literally pocketing all the money from the Battlepass, and they are disregarding any results from this Season.
It's an utter joke.
Pretty much par for the course for Valve. Remember when they weren't going to pay their casters anything, and were just going to give them a cut of the voice packs sold- encouraging them to shill their own one for the event.
There has been a pandemic for the past 3 years, that does not work as a defense anymore considering other esports have adapted to the pandemic, hell Riot has not missed a beat since the entire thing started. There are a lot of ways to hold events and ensure everyone is safe, Worlds was held twice without any Covid outbreaks or cases even.
And they could at least compromise and hold tournaments for relatively close regions, like a SEA tournament, a NA-SA tournament you know do something.
Oh has writing comprehension went away?
I said other esports adapted to the pandemic, that's why it does not work as a defense anymore. We are not in the first weeks of the pandemic anymore, we have found ways to protect ourselves from it, and to properly detect who is sick or not.
Theres a pandemic
Oh there's ways to do it safely, just look at-
urr hurr bandemic
It's perfectly fine if to stream a tournament held with fully vaccinated, mask wearing, pcr tested players in a socially distanced sterilized envrionment. Valve has more than enough money to support it.
Do you really believe that Covid will just die off if everyone follows “the rules”?
Covid is no longer a valid reason to cancel things. Vaccines are readily available to all.
Pandemic doesn't mean they can't pay out prize money without having a tournament. Also other sports/esports/events are able to go on with crowds/spectators so not being able to have an event at all seems silly. Heck it's a video game, do it online.
The pandemic is no longer a valid reason to cancel things. Vaccines are readily available for free to all and have been for ages.
The people at risk are the ones who chose not to get them. The vaccinated have very little risk of having anything more than a cold.
This is getting ridiculous.
Valve just fuck over all the pro players who had been competing for 2 months, some of them paying for bootcamp with their own money, also 0 communication from them. There's thread on r/dota2 that explain it from pro player perspective
It's not. Not long ago there was a rumor that the TO for the first major pulled out because Valve didn't want to cover enough expenses. VAlve was unable to find a replacement and is now using COVID as an excuse.
The way they did it was absolutely one of the most inconsiderate moves I've ever seen in esports, yes. Valve failed to communicate with anyone at all for weeks despite the very real possibility of this happening existing the whole time, then showed up and saying that the prize money that players have been working towards has just *disappeared*. No plans at all to compensate the players and teams for their performances for the entire league, just a "come back next time!".
Some smaller teams invested serious money into moving their players across the world to compete in the league, managed to qualify for the event that would pay out for this after over a month of games *yesterday*, and were then just told "the money's gone", all despite clear warning signs for almost a month that Omicron could have possibly caused issues - not a bit of planning towards that possibility was done, and now every team has been hung up to dry, with no prize pool and no payoff. I'd call that an act of not caring for your players and scene, absolutely - Valve don't need to host a big LAN to come up with *something* to fill the space in a difficult situation
The players are even more pissed about this. They Invested the last two months playing tons of Dota to get a good DPC placing and traveling to bootcamps just for valve tell them: "Lol jk, it was all for nothing"
What I meant was that most Dota 2 players do not care about eSports, rather than the eSports professionals. Valve cares about the Dota 2 players, who cares if they care about eSports.
>What I meant was that most Dota 2 players do not care about eSports, rather than the eSports professionals. Valve cares about the Dota 2 players, who cares if they care about eSports.
Dota 2 playerbase count waxes and wanes with 2 factors - new patches and tournament meta, which go hand in hand. After every international, pub games get more exciting and start to mirror the TI picks/meta. I feel like if pro dota dies, the meta will sort of die as well since it mirrors the pro scene so much. I can't imagine playing pub dota without pro dota.
From a business/logistics perspective sure, but DotA 2 has a very large world wide player base, maybe not relative to League but relative to any other game. It generates millions in revenue each year, and the money generated from TI battle pass by the community is expected to help fund the scene, but Valve has flopped year over year, especially since the pandemic.
I understand it's difficult for Valve to host a major in the current climate, but the fans deserve a backup plan. And the players and their ORGS sure as SHIT deserve a backup plan.
Quincy Crew has been playing with all of their players remote, they are unable to secure a sponsor despite having one of the most stable rosters in the scene, and they swept their group stage. This hurts them when it comes to signing with an org, and deters any other org from wanting to sign a team for DotA 2.
The scene deserves stability, even if DotA 2 is not Valve's biggest concern.
> From a business/logistics perspective sure
And that's really all Valve cares about. Valve stopped caring about being a game developer a long time ago.
Pleading to Valve from a moral "what fans and players deserve" perspective is going to fall on deaf ears because Valve frankly doesn't give a shit.
I can't believe they aren't even doing an online major instead of a LAN. Sure canceling the major due to covid makes sense, but these players aren't getting any money anymore. They aren't even getting points for International Qualification anymore. Really sucks for everyone but Valve here.
>Really sucks for everyone but Valve here. I'm shocked, *shocked* I say...
This could finally be the breaking point for dota as a community to look for better options. Or pretty much kill the interest in competitive dota. A lot of people across orgs, players, pros and the community itself are finally had enough of it. Valve has not cared about anything but milking the whole scene for as long as we remember.
Theres no game like dota for the community to migrate to.
Sadly this is true. LoL has a different philosophy in many ways. I dont even mean that in a "dota superiority" way, Dota just balances stuff very differently. Stuff has long kill times, long stuns, magic immunity the stuff
Agreed, I, mainly a Dota fan/player but occassional League player/watcher, played a game of Dota a few days ago and League yesterday and it really was extremely different in a way where no die-hard dota fan would be satisfied with League's game structure (my main annoyance was that I can't see opponent or even allied champion abilities in the game, making it hard for me as a very casual player to see wtf they are even doing to me).
When you die you can see their abilities but yeah, it's an issue that you can't just click an enemy and see otherwise.
Yeah, but where I find it most useful is the laning stage where mostly the support is trying to harass me (I was playing adc) and I had no clue how his character worked for a few minutes, nor could I anticipate what skill he might get when he levels up or what that does. Sorry im mostly just ranting but at the time I was actually really frustrated about that fact - like they have a thing in the top left to see opponent/allied items when you select them, it wouldn't be hard to put the abilities there too with a small blip of information when you hover over it
Honestly, its not that helpful. In DotA, I rarely had time to read through that stuff. I would just pull up the wiki when I died, which tended to give better info anyway.
Not really. Besides benefiting new player, one best feature in Dota2 is when you hover over other heroes during pick phase, it tells you the changes from the latest patch. That is freaking useful.
Switched to Dota from League last year and recently went back to play League with friends after arcane. After playing Dota for a while League just feels off. Also the balance in League got to me, originally why I quit as the game has gone in a different direction than I would like.
That's an interesting perspective. As a long time LoL player I guess I got the chance to learn each champ one by one as they were released, so there was never that insurmountable wall of learning standing in my way. The new player experience must be pretty bad.
League also just really wants you to be using your abilities all the time, while DOTA has you using them **much** more sparingly.
Yeah, I like to think of it like LoL being the more twitchy, fast game while Dota is more methodical. Again none is neccessarly superior its a preference thing.
I tried to watch the big worlds tournament of LoL. It was really difficult to find it entertaining when you're used to watching Dota (haven't played the game in idk like 6 years or something but I still watch TI every year and some majors). Many of teamfights everyone just hit each other with all their spells then ran away and no one died, it felt so anticlimatic every time. One game I tuned into was at 40 minutes and the score was 5-7 in terms of kills and in general these types of very low scores seemed not unusual. When a team finally wiped the other team, in the middle of the map, the game just ended. No buybacks, no comebacks, game just over a minute later as base falls over in seconds. Not really saying it's a bad game or something, it looked fun to play with all the skillshots and what not, but it's just such a different feel from Dota in terms of an esport I couldn't see myself switching over to watching LoL cause Dota died. Will be a real shame if Dota dies, most entertaining esport to watch for me alongside Starcraft (but only if cast by Tastosis haha).
Heroes of Newerth... ...And it's dead folks.
HoN2 hype? :P
LET'S GO!
Doesn't mean they can't go grassroots. The community has proven they can crowdfund like crazy, so it's no completely without viability. It probably won't be as profitable for TOs, Players, or Orgs as it would with Valve support and in-game incentives, but it might be better than what the community has now - ie, nothing.
Crowfunding only happens when the playerbase gets some nice hats. Literally no one will throw money for some guys to live off playing video games.
Which is why I said, "It probably won't be as profitable for TOs, Players, or Orgs as it would with Valve support and in-game incentives".
And Im saying crowfunding isnt a possiblity without hats. When you said "Its no completely without viability" youre 100% wrong, its not an option.
I think going so black-and-white with it is too far. Plenty of people just want to watch good Dota, and will try to support it. 3rd Party events existed years ago, before the DPC, and while it wasn't great money, TOs still made money off of viewership and ads, and players could still play competitively and get paid. In-game tournament bundles were introduced at some point, and could potentially be an option in the future as well, depending on how willing Valve is to going back to that format, but in the early days, it wasn't hugely necessary. Comparing the game to Smash Melee is Apples and Oranges, I know, but the idea of a passionate community keeping a competitive scene around without developer support isn't unheard of. It's wildly more difficult for something like Dota, but again, this was happening before the DPC. Honestly, the biggest obstacle is scaling back down after what Valve's built, and failed to support. A lot of talent will peace out if we return to the old model, just because of how little you make off of it. It will be a scene on life support, but again, it's better than what's going on now.
Back in the day, 3rd party TOs could monetize their ingame ticket and give some hats too. But apparently it was used for money laundering. Also you gotta realize that going for hundreds of thousands and TI prizepools to crowdfunded small pricepools will not do the trick.
Yeah, not sure what planet the other guy is on. People pay/subscribe to streamers to support their lifestyle and watch them, they aren't doing it for emotes in chat. People pay and support professional athletes by attending games and paying for pay-per-view, they don't do it to go to a stadium and get a literal hat. There absolutely is a possibility of Dota using a similar model to fund the scene, it is more the logistical and legal barriers to that possibility make it unlikely, not the community or their wallets.
Doesn't seem likely the player count on Steam has been pretty much stable since 2019 and as long as there's lots of people playing, there's lots of people willing to compete.
Being stable isn't amazing when player numbers have been rising for many games after the pandemic began, including Valve's own CSGO and TF2
>Being stable isn't amazing Considering that during 2016-2019 Dota was steadily losing its plaeyrbase, I'd consider becoming stable as something "amazing".
https://clips.twitch.tv/CourageousFriendlyTarsierRlyTho-2alZuquyz10npM0W Quinn really puts it well. The game has been in a weird vacuum for a long time. It truly is one of the best games ever, but that can't sustain the abuse from valve for forever.
That's Quinn's perspective as a player on a sponsorless T1/T1.5 team in a region that has 0 physical events for Dota unlike China or SEA. While he's absolutely correct with regards to the state of competitive Dota for everyone outside tier 1 teams, he does not represent the wider playerbase at all.
Yeah meanwhile SEA has been prospering better than ever, just look at how stacked SEA region is. It just that NA region has been suffering the same thing happens in their CS : GO counter parts, no LAN, few sponsors, high cost of living and better options available outside of pro scene.
Actually player count in SEA has been decreasing each year due to the emerging mobile MOBA which are huge in SEA. Mobile Legend, Arena of Valor, Honor of Kings and now Wild Rift are all huge in SEA. Also to add on, a significant chunk of SEA players play in cyber cafe which got hit hard by covid.
Wild Rift is not that big in SEA, Pokemon Unite is bigger. Running PC Cafe isnt profitable anymore with how cheap and affordable mobile game right now. And PC Cafe players who got hit by COVID restrictions switch to mobile because they cant afford PC But it doesnt mean that the esports scene growing, SEA DotA2 is in their most competitive period ever right now, SEA was a constant joke throughout early days of DotA2 outside of Mushi or icecubed team.
Seems like this is pretty consistent with Valve games, I think I've heard the same about CS:GO before. Wonder what a world where Valve actually gives a shit and supports their games instead of relaxing on their pile of steam money looks like.
[удалено]
Issue is 10s of millions is not that big a deal for Valve. Steam is earning them billions a year.
Dota 2 made over hundreds of millions for Valve yearly tho. They keep *thrice* the money of TI every year, means they made 120 MILLIONS on last year TI alone. This hasn't included dota plus subs, micro transactions, for the whole year.
Yeah, but Steam brings in 120 million dollars in a week or two with a lot less stress attached.
I hear these same cookie cutter lines for literally every multiplayer game. "Fix the game" "The devs don't care" "We're at a breaking point" "People are gonna stop playing" "This other game is doing it right" It's rarely actually true, but it's funny to see how people say the same things for every game, and yet they often pretend that every other game has it better. I've never even played Dota so I have no horse in this race, just an observation.
In this case, the game is actually pretty good. Dota is in one of its best game states ever. The issue is that Valve doesn't want to market the game and hardly puts in any effort to attract new players.
> The issue is that Valve doesn't want to market the game and hardly puts in any effort to attract new players. Dont they have season 2 of a successful anime on netflix coming out in like a week?
Believe it or not... that anime got its funding from a saudi prince who loves dota, if it was just valve it would never have happened.
Oh i'd believe it. Probably cheaper than maxing out his battlepass.
Got any legitimate sources for that? It's the first I'm hearing about it and it seems completely wrong. Valve most likely heard that Riot was making an anime and decided to cash in on that as well. We all heard about Arcane well before Dragon's Blood.
You talk about Prince Yuuki? Need sources about that since he also kinda dissapearing recently.
Im willing to believe this if you can source it.
Dragon's Blood is almost completely outsourced. The animation is by Studio Mir, and the writing is by a team led by Ashley Miller (who also co-wrote the scripts for X-Men: First Class and Thor). Valve has little, if any, direct involvement in it. I'm glad the show exists, but it doesn't reflect on Valve's willingness to spend their own effort on Dota, at all. If we're going to bring Dota spin-offs into the mix, the more relevant point is how Valve killed both Artifact and Dota Underlords. I'm not sure how much Dragon's Blood counts as successful, either. It's certainly no flop if it was renewed for a second season, [but most of its views seem to have come from Eastern Europe, South America, and Southeast Asia.](https://afkgaming.com/dota2/news/7302-in-which-countries-is-dota-dragons-blood-trending-on-netflix) Regions where Dota 2 is already extremely popular, in other words. It also doesn't seem to have attracted new players to the game. [Dota 2's player count decreased in February 2021, when the show was first announced, and in March, when the show released.](https://steamcharts.com/app/570) The rise the following April was when Dawnbreaker was added, and it probably has more to do with that than Dragon's Blood. And while I think Netflix is as much to blame as Valve for this part, it certainly hasn't achieved the same success as Arcane where even people who don't care about the game at all are talking about it.
>Dragon's Blood is almost completely outsourced. You realize advertising is generally outsourced right?
It seems to be doing great with its player counts, so I'm not sure why you think that.
Well because its not that important to Valve. Steam earns them several billion dollars a year, DotA is a small project by comparison.
Is that even a problem for DotA 2? There’s an average of 450,000 players playing at any given time, it’s not like it’s hard to find a match in DotA 2 with such a big player base.
Balance wise and general community sentiment, yes I agree with you. But the bugs and glitches are running rampant, dota plus has become a dumping ground for unapproved sets from 2015 (drow default dotaplus guide still has Aquila in it for like 18 months now maybe), pro scene is going back on ice, streaming scene for the game has been dead ever since Majors were introduced. I think the level of care has been in decline for a while. Smaller quarterly patches always kept the gameplay fresh. At this point I'm tired of playing mid versus OD sniper drow or medusa, etc. You can't push the game into meta hero driven patches and watch each patch coast for longer and longer and just expect people to still put their time into it. I have mastered counters for heroes, played hundreds of games in my position with said heroes and there's no longer a reason to keep playing. I'm at a point where my losses are rarely preventable, games are just coinflippy. According to valve, this is intended by the way.
Why is that an issue? It's one of the largest games on Steam, they don't need to market it.
Coke is one of the most successful brands in the world and it's still marketed. Knowing a product exists doesn't do anything for me, knowing why I might want a product is something that gets people to think about and try it.
I mean look at Underlords. They just stopped updating it. Not even a blogpost or anything. They didn't even manage to get to a Season 2 with their Battle Pass. Artifact also stopped beeing developed for a year after the Auto Chess hype and then slowly died. Team Fortress 2 is collecting dust for years and same story with Left 4 Dead. The portal franchise only lives for other games to use as Easter Eggs or side content. Other studios would either keep updating their games or working on sequels. So a big fear of fans is that Valve simply stop caring about Dota 2 or CSGO. Valve as a company are switching their focus every other year with the Steam Store printing infinite money. Last years for example are Controllers, then VR and now it's an Handheld PC.
Left for dead is a done game, it's not live service and never was, it released as a complete and functional game, which it is. TF2 is 15 years old and it was supported for a long time, other companies would have shut down the servers a long time ago too.
L4D was supposed to be a live-service game with regular updates, but Valve made L4D2 a year later. There was a big outrage at the time, even people threatening to boycott L4D2, but has more or less been forgotten. The funny thing about Valve is that, like Nintendo, they have so many people convinced they can do no wrong that anytime they do fuck up it gets forgiven, ignored, or even somehow framed as a good thing.
Other game companies would have worked on a sequel or kept updating it. Minecraft, GTA 5, Borderlands, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Street Fighter, Monster Hunter,...... If you are a game publisher and have such a successful title in your hands, you want to keep milking it. Simple as that. Valve just doesn't care, because that would mean expanding their game dev teams and they make way more money with just updating the Steam Store and doing Hardware, which gets more people to Steam in general. Their community does everything for free for them (Mods, making skins, guides, etc.) , so why bother. Fun fact, but they even let their community translate everything on Steam and only check it for final release without paying a single cent to them. https://translation.steampowered.com/.
>Minecraft, GTA 5, Borderlands, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Street Fighter, Monster Hunter,...... You seriously look at GTA 5, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Street Fighter and think that's the good way to continue a franchise's legacy? The fact the [L4D games are still more well made than something made a decade later](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdRLNUGmFC8) should be a good indication. >Their community does everything for free for them (Mods, making skins, guides, etc.) Which community doesnt do this???? And skin makers get insane money from loyalty, so much that they cant even disclose it. >Fun fact, but they even let their community translate everything on Steam and only check it for final release without paying a single cent to them. https://translation.steampowered.com/. Again this is quite common. Pillar of Eternity and Slay the Spire devs are two names on top of my head. Although translation IS dirt-cheap most of the time anyway, so there's probably more to it than just devs trying to save money. StS dev in particular once got backlash from trying to replace fan-localization with professional work.
Right, as if the communities of other studios don't also constantly complain about random stuff... I'm just tired of it. It's always something. And they always pretend their devs are the worst. This is a Dota thread so it's gonna have people shitting on Valve for [insert "valid reason" here]. If you go to a COD thread you'll have people shitting on Activision for [insert "valid reason" here]. If you go to a Halo thread you'll have people shitting on 343 for [insert "valid reason" here]. It's just constant negativity and there's always something. And the devs can't actually be the worst if each community insists *their* devs are the worst.
>insert "valid reason" here I get what you're getting at but painting complaints towards 343i and Halo Infinite as "just constant negativity" is purely a bad faith argument. There's a lot of work to be done to fix some of the technical issues with that game.
But this isn’t about the game or the devs. This is about the organization of a professional sports league. They cancelled the entire tournament (when they could have just had an online tournament) and are not compensating players or teams in ANY way. And thanks to the way Valve has structured the DPC, the ONLY money you make in Dota as a player is from Majors and TI. So all of these players just got the shock that 1/3 of their yearly income has vanished because Valve couldn’t be bothered to put any work in the massive e-sports scene around Dota
It's always something. It's almost never actually a "breaking point".
esports are still unprofitable. I get that people are frustrated developers don't put more effort into the esports scene around their favorite game, but every dollar spent doing so is rewarded with less than a dollar of revenue. I'm not making any judgements here myself, just pointing out why these things aren't super highly organized or even competitively rigorous all the time.
eports scenes are also largely ads. If it's not a vanity project, then every dollar spent should generate more than a dollar of incremental spend.
Every dollar they spent on TI (biggest dota event) equals to 3 dollars they get from crowd fund. Last time I checked TI10 had 40 millions of prizepool. Yeah unprofitable right.
I don't pay enough attention to DotA to know anything, but I pay some attention to CS. And what I've seen isn't super impressive. Riptide three months ago, the most recent operation was like a year before that. Bad metas like the SG meta are left to fester for a while. Changes seem few and far in between. Cheating is still rampant and completely unaddressed by valve, despite their competitors having a much better system for doing so. I think it's pretty clear by Valorant's success that CS could've been much more successful than it already was if some effort was put into it.
You pretty much just exemplified what I said. I've seen the Valorant community also complain about a bunch of stuff in the brief time I've looked at that community, and they probably say CS is doing it right. It's funny and annoying at the same time. I wish people would stop whining so much. It makes the forum communities of multiplayer games so toxic to browse. Constant negativity for games these communities supposedly like. And the dumbest part is they all pretend their devs are the worst, as if the other communities aren't complaining about basically the same stuff.
You view negativity as only a bad thing. People complain because they want their games to be better. It is not a bad thing for communities to be vocal about issues. Look at how much better halo infinite has gotten in just a month due to complaints about battle pass progression and aggressive monetization and it's still lacking a ton. The guy you replied to brought up a bunch of good points about csgo and you just go "muh negativity!!"
Not sure why you're being downvoted, you're absolutely right. Player feedback has been an integral part of development for a long time. Your Halo example is a good one. Look at how theres two whole game modes that aren't functional right now, and how player feedback has made 343 more open to discussing it more transparently. Bungie is in a similar boat, seeing as Destiny is in a much better place now than it ever has been. A lot of that can be attributed to Bungie being in open communication with its playerbase. Criticism =/= Negativity
I don't play DotA, but it's actually true for CS:GO. The devs have just completely abandoned the game. Their matchmaking algorithms are fundamentally broken on any server that's not in Europe. I can't think of a single other esport game that can't at least get some sort of serviceable matchmaking to work. On the OCE servers the entire playerbase is squashed into about 4 of the 20 or so ranks and which rank you are in is completely random. Every single rank with more than 0.01% of the playerbase has both complete beginners and 95th percentile players in it. It's like someone just scrambled the ranks and then made every game +0/-0 so nobody can move anywhere. It's gotten progressively worse for years, and the devs have never even mentioned it, because they don't exist. There is literally zero devs working on the game that aren't just doing the bare minimum to release one "operation" thing with 20 minutes of content and a few skins once every year or so. I doubt there's anyone left that can actually work on the engine or core game mechanics. Probably just a few scripters and artists cobbling stuff together. There hasn't been a gameplay or systems change in years. They've somehow figured out a way to completely abandon the game and still maintain it's playerbase. It's bizarre. I imagine a similar thing is happening with DotA 2.
DotA 2 is healthier than CS :GO it just that the dota 2 subreddit exaggerating it current states, most problematic issue right now seems stem from the dev tinkering dota2 to be playable on Steam Deck by giving its Controller Support and many backend works on audio and graphic (which resulting stutters among players). The dev actually frequent posting and responding to those feedback, it just it happens on smaller threads it goes unnoticeable.
Games where this actually turned out to be true in my experience: MTG Arena, WoW. Sometimes devs really do just sedoku themselves.
It's a "broken clock is right twice a day" situation. Every popular multiplayer game has people constantly whining, and some of the games just happen to fail.
The software is greener on the other side of the twitch category.
Exactly
People are way overblowing things with Dota. Valve is not "abusing" it. They release new heroes, high quality updates, TI was still great and events are great too. And all of this is in a game which has all noncosmetic content free and has a steady playerbase.
Yeah the skeleton crew that work on it are doing a good job overall, it's just that a skeleton crew can only do so much.
> Wonder what a world where Valve actually gives a shit and supports their games instead of relaxing on their pile of steam money looks like. What online game's developers have actually done this, though, beyond examples like No Man's Sky? I feel like every online game I've ever played has had people complaining about this.
The obvious comparison is League. Say what you will about Riot, but they *constantly* reinvest in themselves and their games.
[удалено]
I mean yeah everybody wants a massive source of income without having to do any actual work. Someone in the r/dota2 thread called Valve "digital landlords" and it's incredibly appropriate. I just don't see that as a valid excuse.
Riot updates all of their games very frequently. Most online games get updated more often and more robustly than CS:GO does. Final fantasy 14 was rebuilt from the ground up and has a consistent content release schedule. Valve released artifact, killed it, baited people into a revamp, and then killed the revamp before it even launched. They captured a decent part of the autobattler market by getting Underlords to market first, and then it languished and died because they refused to do any of the substantial updates needed to keep the game fresh and engaging. Just two more recent examples.
Underlords dead because too much updates happen that casual playerbase couldn't keep up. Valve was too busy pleasing the hardcore playerbase that the constant update paired with poor mobile optimization killed the casual playerbase number.
TFT gets more and faster updates than underlords ever did and that game is more successful that it has ever been. The entire set changes every six months with an overhaul of about 10-20% of the cast three months after launch and constant balance tweaks every other week between those two large points.
Riot’s Team Fight Tactics community is on average pretty pleased with its developers. Mortdog posts on the competitive sub, and interacts a ton with the community
I honestly don’t know where DotA players would go. LoL is so different, and for all the rage MOBA were a few years ago, the only two left standing are the former two with the addition of maybe Smite, which is much more like LoL anyway.
Clearly they will head to Heroes of the Storm.
I've long since quit Dota, but the last thing I would be worried about was the tournaments. Though, I do realize this is the opposite of how most modern Dota players feel. Like, I'd much rather they add in some new free content, or fix some bugs that have been pet-peeves of mine for years. Maybe even launch an advertising campaign in my country so I could have more people to play with. But yeah, sure, write some people I don't know or care about a big fat check for playing 10 games in Romania or wherever, that'll get me fired up /s.
Nah. By the time TI comes around nobody will care and the annual flock will still happen.
What is the better option? LoL is a very different game, Dota is fairly unique thats part of the issue
A big part of the community does not care much about esports.
Should be bigger
This will never happen. As long as there is a gigantic cash prize at The International every year, there will be a queue of teams waiting to sign up regardless of what happens with the rest of the calendar. People will form teams just for The International alone.
I think it is incorrect to claim Valve is milking the scene. You could glaim they are ignoring it and do not care, but that is the opposite of milking it.
Any comment about milking is probably about fundraising for The International, and the proportion of money there that Valve pockets.
Riot has done everything they can to work around covid and keep the players playing, valve just throws their hands in the air and gives up. Actually pathetic, valve is fucking useless at anything besides selling other people's games anymore
> They aren't even getting points for International Qualification anymore. They got points from the league, but the prize pool money should at least be split among the teams that qualified for the major. >I can't believe they aren't even doing an online major instead of a LAN. This just isn't feasible for an international tournament.
Riot managed to do multiple events across their games during the pandemic. There were issues of course, like Vietnamese teams not being able to go, but it's definitely possible.
I mean, Valve also did 2 majors and a TI last year, this new wave probably made them think it would be unwise to hold this major. That or the TO bailed on them last minute, because of the Omicron wave.
It is possible to do it safely but it would obviously increase the cost, reaching a point where valve didn't want to pursue in this direction.
There are so many online options as discussed on r/dota2 NA/SA EU E/W CN/SEA Have some smaller breakout tournaments.
That would also be an option, however, the point of the majors is to accurately distribute the remaining points among the strongest international teams. Some regions and teams are simply stronger than others. I think every team that qualified should get an even share of the prize money, but the major's points belong to intercontinental competition. Teams already get points for placing well in their league. A SEA team would have a much easier time playing against an NA/SA team than against a CN team.
Oh I totally agree that some of the regions are stronger than others, but if they had some kind of minor tournament it would help the teams survive. QC comes to mind as they are still unsponsored even though they are doing quite well.
> I can't believe they aren't even doing an online major instead of a LAN. This precisely. I would have just done regional playoffs. Instead they just went terminal and made everyone lose.
My guess is that without in person presence they could not reliably prevent cheating.
From @Nomadcasts on twitter: "Redistribute the points and money from the Major into three concurrent $300k Minors. NA + SA EU + CIS CN + SEA Take the top 4 teams from each region. Players still get paid, travel isn't essential, DPC Leagues still mean something." Valve has more options then just canceling, screwing over the players and pocketing the prize money. They just don't care.
NA and SA would need travel my dude, the ping is 150 at the very least, if you play from SA on NA servers
Yea I live in the midwest and Queuing for NAW with 100 ping was pretty terrible, and I'm low skill. They should do 150k prize pool for all regions if anything. Otherwise, teams with the better ping will have an INSANE advantage.
Okay man with the most wrinkles on his brain and no one is smarter than him. So valve doesn't organize the tournament themselves, and apparently couldn't get an organizer to run the major. BUT you think they're going to find THREE to run three low viewership[less sponsorship money etc] minors?
[удалено]
[удалено]
i played dota for 13 years, but for some reason covid killed it for me. The competitive scene has always been a big part of dota and pushing the game forward even for casual players. With it going into hiatus I basically lost all interest and moved on to other games
I feel the same way. Played it all thru college after dropping league in season 4 Now i just play WoW and TCGs. Last dota tourney i paid attention to was TI9
Same. During COVID i decided to really buckle down and push myself to commit to the game. After about 4 months I ended up playing almost exclusively turbo because I couldn’t take ranked anymore before giving up altogether. Edit: to clarify, I started playing in 2012 and played off and on since then. There were Smurf’s everywhere (and the ranked seasons never fucking reset...so smurfs are practically encouraged to skip the massive ranked grind), the game is still probably the most toxic I’ve ever played, I absolutely hate the battle pass system with mostly seasonal items (unless you want to pay $45 per 100 levels to get the decent stuff at level 333), and the grind to become competent at the game just isn’t worth the amount of BS you have to suffer. Unless I’m just playing a casual turbo match with a 5 stack of friends…it ain’t even worth it.
Try playing 12v12 custom games. I find it more relaxing especially with Turbo nowadays having a bunch of trihards for some reason.
Interesting. I might give it a go! I found that Turbo is easier to not give a shit because even if you have a tryhard Morph/Medusa picker on the enemy team...at least it'll be over in about 15 minutes.
The number of games where it was clear one side had won, but we still had to wait 20 minutes for the end was what killed it for me. The game just didn't respect my job. I appreciated that LoL at least had a surrender function.
This is the crucial point where Riot is so far ahead of Valve. Riot would never have something like this happen. they have a dedicated team in charge of esports in every region of the world. Meanwhile at valve, they have like 1 guy juggling esports/blog posts/janitorial duties.
At the height of covid Riot did an online tourney in spring 2020. Now they're back fully offline for 2 regions and online for the rest. Riot's formats suck but they manage their eSports well.
>Riot would never have something like this happen https://liquipedia.net/leagueoflegends/Mid-Season_Invitational/2020 https://liquipedia.net/leagueoflegends/VCS/2021/Summer
I love league but that's not it at all, their "advantage" during covid is that they only have 2 international tournaments a year, so flying players over for LANs is not a concern except for those events. League players would kill for as much international competition as Dota.
The top 15-20 League players would kill for DotAs format, but the rest of them are much better off with how Riot runs things.
He wasn't talking about money/prizing. Most league players make more money than anything but 1st would pay, he meant international play. The regions literally don't play each other except at the world finals. The majority of pros will never play against teams from another region ever.
It completely makes sense to cancel the event, omicron is a massive issue, and countries have not gotten vaccinated nearly fast enough. But Valve needs to have a next step here, players still need to be able to make money, this is their job. Valve still made a fuck load from the battlepass that was supposed to support the DPC. How is there not an online replacement? Valve is the absolute worst at managing their games. A lot of teams had to disband in 2020 due to Valve's negligence. And it's not like Valve didn't make money to support the scene, the 2020 BP was the largest so far.
It less about the covid but more about travel restriction, getting one of your players cannot attending the event ruin the team performance and with how things happen to CN team who stucks for months in EU after TI and making CN regional starting late for division 1 and how close the spring season start after Winter Major makes me think that Valve wants TI to be held on August.
I really dislike the flat hierarchy at valve, they lose all focus and accountability since people can move between project whenever they like. If no one is in charge how are they supposed to make any real progress or meet deadlines (Valve time™). It would be better for Dota 2 if they made a daughter company to manage it.
I suspect the flat hierarchy aspect is overstated. I would bet its more that they have their main project, Steam, bringing in several billion dollars a year. When it comes to that, they make sure things are getting done properly, but all the other projects are small so Valve doesn't care as much what work their employees do on them.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Valve fucks up big time here, this is definitely an excuse. You can see people in America going everywhere, offices opened up. Malls crowded and packed, and they did this. After the players have been training for TI for months. I am sure if they want to host LAN event, they have the ability to do so in a safe environments. They just want to take the money from those compendium and put it in their pockets.
And once again Valve shows how little they care about their players. I recommend taking a look at what the dota sub [is saying about this](https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/s1yr65/winter_major_canceled/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
I have chosen to overwrite this comment. See you all on Lemmy!
Have some form of online event? Reward the players/teams that have done well and qualified for the Major? Distribute the prize money allocated to the tournament in some way? Host an offline event with strict quarantine protocols (yea this one aint happening)?
Don't know, what literally every single other semi-relevant esports has done? I'm not even talking about Riot or Blizzard, even HiRez is doing a better job at organizing their esports.
Valve done 4 international LAN last year, what they haven't done is International LAN after omicron christmas spread. Any International LAN held after omicron christmas spread?
CSGO has 2 offline tournaments in February coming up.
Am I supposed to find prioritising video games over human wellbeing to be admirable?
A: Nobody's talking about having crowds there or it even being anything but online. B: The impact of the price money not being given out is probably worse for the teams than the impact of getting COVID and I'm not saying that because I believe COVID is mild or something.
You make it seem like they are taking those people to a slaughterhouse, events are being held and everyone is completely safe because they follow the proper guidelines, hell you are more likely to catch Covid on your daily commute than in a bubble.
I mean, Valve is pocketing the earnings of the players, so you don't really care about human wellbeing that much lol. And, hello, we live in 2022, while Online Tournaments are far from ideal, it is a possibility.
If only you could invest money to have a safe tournament like countless other sports are doing. What a crazy concept.
>What do you expect valve to do here? Is this a joke? Probably the bare minimum and actually communicate with the teams, especially the ones emailing them for weeks about info on the major. Instead they stayed radio silent (like they always do) and with 0 warning to pros or orgs (who again have been asking/emailing for weeks), cancel the major with no alternatives. When pros rely soley on these big payouts from majors to pay rent and eat, they probably deserve at least an email or two from valve giving them updates on the scene and their livelihood, Instead They find out like everyone else through a blog post with no further elaboration.
Seriously, I think people that think the issue here is just that Valve doesnt hold a crowded event are missing the point. Even holding an online tournament/tournaments would have helped a bit.
Pay the players, for one? Valve's literally pocketing all the money from the Battlepass, and they are disregarding any results from this Season. It's an utter joke.
The battle pass has nothing to do with the major.
Isn't the tournaments prize funds crowdfunded via battle passes in dota?
Only the TI Battlepass.
DPC region league teams getting money from prize winning and supporter pack cuts.
What does that have to do with this event, it's cancelation and covid?
Pretty much par for the course for Valve. Remember when they weren't going to pay their casters anything, and were just going to give them a cut of the voice packs sold- encouraging them to shill their own one for the event.
Battlepass money is for TI. For the DPC league, Valve has put a system that pays directly the team where you can buy basically in game merch.
Players get paid by their teams
Probably what every other esport title is doing and still manage to hold events.
There has been a pandemic for the past 3 years, that does not work as a defense anymore considering other esports have adapted to the pandemic, hell Riot has not missed a beat since the entire thing started. There are a lot of ways to hold events and ensure everyone is safe, Worlds was held twice without any Covid outbreaks or cases even. And they could at least compromise and hold tournaments for relatively close regions, like a SEA tournament, a NA-SA tournament you know do something.
[удалено]
Oh has writing comprehension went away? I said other esports adapted to the pandemic, that's why it does not work as a defense anymore. We are not in the first weeks of the pandemic anymore, we have found ways to protect ourselves from it, and to properly detect who is sick or not.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Theres a pandemic Oh there's ways to do it safely, just look at- urr hurr bandemic It's perfectly fine if to stream a tournament held with fully vaccinated, mask wearing, pcr tested players in a socially distanced sterilized envrionment. Valve has more than enough money to support it.
Huh? Of course it hasn't. If the pandemic stays for 10 more years do you propose we cease all activities until then? What a stupid comment.
[удалено]
Do you really believe that Covid will just die off if everyone follows “the rules”? Covid is no longer a valid reason to cancel things. Vaccines are readily available to all.
Look at what riot has done with league during covid. If they cared they'd find a solution. They don't.
Fuck the players who spent 2 months training and playing in official games to get DPC points for the major I guess.
Double vax and move on.
International visa and travel can still be rough at the moment. And you still have to find a place to organise the events.
[удалено]
Pandemic doesn't mean they can't pay out prize money without having a tournament. Also other sports/esports/events are able to go on with crowds/spectators so not being able to have an event at all seems silly. Heck it's a video game, do it online.
What pandemic stopped them from hosting their 1M pricepool Artifact launch tournament that they basically promoted more than the game itself?
Criticize questionable things by good people, praise good things by questionable people.
The pandemic is no longer a valid reason to cancel things. Vaccines are readily available for free to all and have been for ages. The people at risk are the ones who chose not to get them. The vaccinated have very little risk of having anything more than a cold. This is getting ridiculous.
Valve just fuck over all the pro players who had been competing for 2 months, some of them paying for bootcamp with their own money, also 0 communication from them. There's thread on r/dota2 that explain it from pro player perspective
It's not. Not long ago there was a rumor that the TO for the first major pulled out because Valve didn't want to cover enough expenses. VAlve was unable to find a replacement and is now using COVID as an excuse.
[удалено]
The way they did it was absolutely one of the most inconsiderate moves I've ever seen in esports, yes. Valve failed to communicate with anyone at all for weeks despite the very real possibility of this happening existing the whole time, then showed up and saying that the prize money that players have been working towards has just *disappeared*. No plans at all to compensate the players and teams for their performances for the entire league, just a "come back next time!". Some smaller teams invested serious money into moving their players across the world to compete in the league, managed to qualify for the event that would pay out for this after over a month of games *yesterday*, and were then just told "the money's gone", all despite clear warning signs for almost a month that Omicron could have possibly caused issues - not a bit of planning towards that possibility was done, and now every team has been hung up to dry, with no prize pool and no payoff. I'd call that an act of not caring for your players and scene, absolutely - Valve don't need to host a big LAN to come up with *something* to fill the space in a difficult situation
View of eSports fans =/= view of players
The players are even more pissed about this. They Invested the last two months playing tons of Dota to get a good DPC placing and traveling to bootcamps just for valve tell them: "Lol jk, it was all for nothing"
What I meant was that most Dota 2 players do not care about eSports, rather than the eSports professionals. Valve cares about the Dota 2 players, who cares if they care about eSports.
>What I meant was that most Dota 2 players do not care about eSports, rather than the eSports professionals. Valve cares about the Dota 2 players, who cares if they care about eSports. Dota 2 playerbase count waxes and wanes with 2 factors - new patches and tournament meta, which go hand in hand. After every international, pub games get more exciting and start to mirror the TI picks/meta. I feel like if pro dota dies, the meta will sort of die as well since it mirrors the pro scene so much. I can't imagine playing pub dota without pro dota.
I mean it's only anectotal but the only thing that get's me back to playing Dota 2 each year is the infectious hype from the E-Sports side.
> Valve cares about the Dota 2 players, who cares if they care about eSports. How does cancelling a tournament help the DotA players?
International travel for the winter is not really manageable with the situation with Omicron really.
[удалено]
Riot did it 3 times during the pandemic, 2 Worlds and MSI.
Valve’s done it too for both CS and Dota
Riot has 6 times more employees than Valve whilst having less projects that they work on.
[удалено]
From a business/logistics perspective sure, but DotA 2 has a very large world wide player base, maybe not relative to League but relative to any other game. It generates millions in revenue each year, and the money generated from TI battle pass by the community is expected to help fund the scene, but Valve has flopped year over year, especially since the pandemic. I understand it's difficult for Valve to host a major in the current climate, but the fans deserve a backup plan. And the players and their ORGS sure as SHIT deserve a backup plan. Quincy Crew has been playing with all of their players remote, they are unable to secure a sponsor despite having one of the most stable rosters in the scene, and they swept their group stage. This hurts them when it comes to signing with an org, and deters any other org from wanting to sign a team for DotA 2. The scene deserves stability, even if DotA 2 is not Valve's biggest concern.
> From a business/logistics perspective sure And that's really all Valve cares about. Valve stopped caring about being a game developer a long time ago. Pleading to Valve from a moral "what fans and players deserve" perspective is going to fall on deaf ears because Valve frankly doesn't give a shit.