DOTA Announces "DOTA Plus"

rgMekanic

[H]ard|News
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
6,943
DOTA has announced a new subscription program called "DOTA Plus." The subscription will cost you $3.99 per month and offers Hero Leveling, so as your progress with a hero you get Reward Shards and new chat wheel responses; Hero-specific challenges to get more XP for leveling up your hero; Hero Relics, see Achievements; as well as a weekly reward and new Plus-exclusive items.

That is all standard fare of a subscription within a free to play game, but where things get strange are with the addition of "Plus Assistant." Plus Assistant gives real-time item and ability suggestions "generated from data gathered across millions of recent games at each skill bracket." As well as a "Death Summary" for a timeline of what happened, "Lane Strategy" during the pre-game draft, the Assistant will give suggestions on how to move, as well as all kinds of analytics and a "win probability graph"

I'll say I'm not a DOTA player, and not a fan of the genre in general. However I do play several free-to-play games, and several of them have an optional subscription service of some kind. While the first half of the list is fine and dandy, I don't know how the whole "Plus Assistant" isn't just blatantly pay-to-win. I feel for all the DOTA players, at $3.99 a month, this smells like another one of those "Make you an offer you can't refuse" type things. Thanks to cageymaru for the story.

The collective knowledge of the Dota community is vast, and every day, in millions of games played around the world, it grows. Now, with the help of Plus Assistant, that global repository of Dota knowhow can be brought to bear on every single game you play.
 
Last edited:
I really like the idea of curbing the steep learning curve of the genre. I personally don't care enough to research "best builds" or "best counter gear for a given situation," but having an assistant that can provide that information is awesome. That is a fair premium option though, considering the amount of "free" money steam gives. (I sold my preorder PUBG deluxe edition skin set for over $3500 in steam wallet funds, best $40 ever spent.)
 
Yeah, for anyone familiar with Dota this will be a non-issue. The learning curve of the game is colossal, and there are already public hero guides, the main flaw of which is how outdated they quickly become.

Things like last hitting, creep aggro, proper farming in the jungle, controlling meepo clones etc, will be unaffected because those aren't choices, those are the game's core mechanics. In terms of explaining what item choices are worthwhile, all this does is save those subscribed, the hassle of going watching a pro streamer or pro player explain the exact same thing on youtube, or making a thread on r/learndota
 
I don't know, the 3.99 would make me a better Dota player if I cared to play the most toxic of toxic games that are MOBA's

Toxic, toxic, toxic, all we hear about is toxic. MOBA communities aren't toxic! They're weaponised toxicity, they're fucking nerve gas and bio weapons with a side of third degree burns administered by thermonuclear enema.
 
I love DOTA because it's a game that ends and begins... No matter how much I play, there is no "level up" because we all start at the same level each game. If they start tossing in advantages for a subscription, that's where I bounce. Not liking the sounds of this to be honest...
 
Having read this, it doesn't sound that bad. It's basically Big Data at your figertips, not a team fight helper like the H description sounded like.
 
I love DOTA because it's a game that ends and begins... No matter how much I play, there is no "level up" because we all start at the same level each game. If they start tossing in advantages for a subscription, that's where I bounce. Not liking the sounds of this to be honest...
Then you need to actually read it
Whether you enjoy a wide variety of heroes, or play hundreds of games with just one or two, every game with a hero now earns you XP towards that hero's level progress. As your hero level advances, you'll unlock new tiers of hero level badges. Each level grants Reward Shards, and each tier grants new Hero Chat Wheel responses. Just play a single game with a hero to unlock the first of your progression rewards.
In other words, it's cosmetic crap that doesn't affect gameplay. It's chat emotes, character badges, some stat tracking unlocks, etc. You can read it for yourself right from the link in the article.

Of course what this doesn't resolve is... the amount of toxicity in that game. Trash talking? I've got no problem with trash talking the other team, that's just part of the game. When people spend their play time just coming up with whatever insulting shit they can to say to their teammates... that's when it becomes toxic and annoying. I work all day, get home, go to load a game, don't want to spend 40 minutes either getting berated by some 12 year old with some new word he learned on the playground but still uses incorrectly, or having to just mute/ignore everyone at the start of the match and throw any concept of communication in a team game right out the window.
 
I don't know, the 3.99 would make me a better Dota player if I cared to play the most toxic of toxic games that are MOBA's

To be fair, all MOBAs are toxic. I've played SMITE, LoL (for years), DOTA 2 (also for years) and Paragon. All of the communities were hostile and toxic. League, in my personal experience, was the worst, though I've heard both sides of that coin.

The only MOBA I've played that wasn't extremely toxic was Heroes of the Storm. Mostly because all chat wasn't possible.
 
I love DOTA because it's a game that ends and begins... No matter how much I play, there is no "level up" because we all start at the same level each game. If they start tossing in advantages for a subscription, that's where I bounce. Not liking the sounds of this to be honest...

I understand that and agree with the sentiment, but none of this information is any different than information already available to us. We can already get player build guides from people like Torte De Leni (or however you spell it), and we have Dotabuff for things like game analysis. All this does is add most of this information into the UI.
 
If I was still playing a ton of DOTA I would pay for this. I’ve finally moved on though.
 
To be fair, all MOBAs are toxic. I've played SMITE, LoL (for years), DOTA 2 (also for years) and Paragon. All of the communities were hostile and toxic. League, in my personal experience, was the worst, though I've heard both sides of that coin.

The only MOBA I've played that wasn't extremely toxic was Heroes of the Storm. Mostly because all chat wasn't possible.
On that respect you can turn off all chat in Dota 2 and LoL as well and makes for a more enjoyable experience.
 
As a Dota 2 player, I don't see this as P2W. There are already very similar tools that are free. What this does is just enhance the enjoyability of the game for those that already probably spend money in it. For those that don't invest money into it, it's not an issue. Everything is either always core, or completely situational in this game anyway.
 
In a game that's less about natural raw reaction time and more about skilled decision making and teamwork, having a tutorial type assistant would be quite valuable for lower tier players. While this should probably be a free service for beginners or extremely low tier players, they are obviously monetizing another aspect of the game. However, this seems to directly impact outcome of matches, and would put casual players without the service at a competitive disadvantage, creating the old pay to win scenario. While veterans, who are vocal about game changes probably won't blink at a tutorial type program telling them which lane their character is designed for, at lower levels these types of support tidbits actually make a difference.
 
I am so tempted to be the Leeroy Jenkins of MOBAs just to piss people off.

You mean join the army of them? There are enough that you'll probably get annoyed with one another that you're not the most annoying.

HoTS seems to be the last game I enjoy despite the toxicity, but it's hard. Draft sucks up so much time and then people still lack the basic knowledge of how to draft so it ends up being a waste of time; then QM gives such random results it can be maddening just getting steamrolled based on the comps.
 
Back
Top