The Aftermath of Dota 2 Reborn: Looking Back and Ahead

Early Beginnings 

The wonderful game of Dota has been around for a little over a decade. What started out as a simple custom map for Blizzard game Warcraft III in 2003 has grown into an international phenomenal. Little did mystery creator IceFrog know that someday his game would be the platform where millions of dollars are at stake.

The first incarnations of Dota was terribly unbalanced for competitive play. Crystal Maiden’s Ultimate basically obliterates opponents in range while simply casting a spell near Silencer would, well, silence your hero. The list of crazy over powered stuff goes on.

In 2011, Valve began the Beta testing of Dota 2 in an attempt to further polish the game prior to release. In the same year they started what would be then known hence as the World Cup of Dota 2, The International. Introducing competitive play in its early builds would pave way for the importance of balance. Both sides should have an equal chance to win. With a balanced game, individual player skill and decision making becomes the determining factor into edging out your opponents. Dota 2 was then officially released in 2013 after a meticulous two year Beta.

Dota 2 Reborn

Today, as much as some people would disagree, Dota 2 is  pretty balanced. Even though, some Heroes are picked more than the others, all Heroes have their respective strengths and weaknesses in particular niche strategies. Now Dota 2 Reborn has come out of Beta and is now mandatory for anyone wanting to enjoy a match.

Reborn introduces a bunch of interesting new stuff into the game. There are proper ward spots now at the edge of the map to catch those sneaky heroes such as Batrider and Tinker. They were there before but now the map design makes it more apparent that you can actually place wards there and even stand there.

                                                          source: Reddit

Remember those times in pub games where you accidentally bought two couriers and the spare just sits at the base being idle because the AI programming for delivering items was iffy at best? Well now the courier AI is smarter than ever and you can make full use of a spare courier without the need for unnecessary micro.

But as with many new releases comes with it a plethora of new bugs (No, Weaver not you.). Players were experiencing FPS drops left and right at the earliest builds so the game is unfortunately not as optimized as it should be. Though fortunately all around ping in games seems to have improved all around. A new engine means it will be more taxing on your rigs so maybe its time for an upgrade people. For some time also there was an interesting game breaking bug that plagued Dota 2.

The Dire Ancients were stacking themselves automatically. Even if you were standing at the restricted zone or even if you placed a ward they would still spawn. So Dire would easily have multiple stacks at convenient opportunities for massive experience and gold swings. Forget about the Roshan, we have to contest the Dire Anceint stacks!

For a game as dense as Dota 2, everyone loves stats like average Gold Per Minute (GPM) and ‘Player Scouting reports’. Reborn introduces a revamped Player Profile page that introduces the Play style Pentagram as well as some nifty Lifetime stats. Which begs you to ask yourself the question: ‘After XXXX hours of Dota 2, have I improved as a player?’ Yeah, sure some people may solely play Dota 2 for the purpose of having fun and don’t really care about winning (I’m looking at you Techies players) while some want to try their very best to succeed. But there should be proper balance: have fun, go for the win, and keep the salt out of it.

New Profile Interface in Reborn from Dota Official blog

So what does everyone think of Reborn so far?

Anything new is also prone to scrutiny. After the release of Reborn some players reported some bugs while others expressed their dissatisfaction because it looks complicated. During the first few months of its release, players can still choose between Source 1 and Reborn. Most opted to play in Source 1.

But now that Valve took down Source 1, players have no choice but to play in Reborn. Complaints about Reborn are posted in Reddit like ping spikes, graphical issues and some bugs with heroes or items.

Professional players like Artour “Arteezy” Babaev expressed their opinion about the Reborn.

Reborn bugs has its perks (source: reddit)

Valve is slowly fixing these bugs. They were able to address some of the concerns regarding Reborn and they were able to do something about it. The stacking of the Dire Ancients was already fixed and a few others. Some players lauded Valve for their efforts and is satisfied with how Reborn is doing so far.

Amid the complaints, the game crashes and the salt, players still play Dota 2. The total number of players in Dota 2 even reached to over 12 million. It will still take a while before Reborn stabilizes. The beta of Source 1 didn’t come out perfect either and it took years before it became balanced. So what players can do for now is to report the issues and hope that Valve will be able to fix it.

Featured image: Dota 2

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