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.
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: