Jan 23, 2020

Dota 2 - Ward

Just in time for Lunar New Year and the Rat's time in the cyclical place of honor, the Treasure of Unbound Majesty is now available.

Packed full of sets for Drow Ranger, Visage, Undying, Storm Spirit, Dazzle, Kunkka, Arc Warden, Dark Willow, and Rubick, this treasure also includes the chance to unbox a rare Puck set, very rare Legion Commander set, or an extremely rare Templar Assassin set.

Available for $2.49 in the Dota 2 store, you can claim one of these treasures as a gift for completing the New Bloom rewards line—which also unlocks this year's seasonal New Bloom Celebrations and giftable spins on the rewards wheel.

Jan 21, 2020

Best PC games 2020: great games to download right now

Dota 2 - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (RPS)

Below you’ll find the list of the best PC games we recommend you play right now. These are games that are new, that are being freshly updated, or that are stone cold classics of their respective genres. This is a living list, which means we’ll be updating it throughout 2020 as we fall in love with new games.

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Jan 16, 2020

Dota 2 Update - January 16th, 2020

Dota 2 - Valve

- We’ve removed variability in the amount of MMR you gain or lose from a match. This means that there will no longer be matches that give results like +10/-40.

- Instead of matches giving 25 MMR, solo games will now give 30 MMR and party games will now give 20 MMR. We have more confidence in the impact of a player on the game when they are solo compared to in a party, and thus we are willing to move a player’s MMR faster/slower depending on that.

- We have removed the Fast/Slow queue and replaced it with Ranked Roles and Ranked Classic. To play in Ranked Roles you need to earn Role Queue games by playing matches while selecting all roles--this is unchanged from before. Ranked Classic has replaced the Slow Queue, and it does not let you select roles. We are making this change because the slow/fast queue concept has not been successful in producing good quality games. The end result was slow queue waiting a little bit longer, and then forcing very bad quality matches on the entire player pool. We think it’s a fair requirement to enforce that if you want to have the advantage of playing a specific role, you have to contribute to the matchmaking system by sometimes playing other roles, or just queue role-less as in previous years.

Jan 9, 2020

Spring 2020 Call to Arms

Dota 2 - Ward

As another year creeps up on the heroes of the Dota universe, and yesterday's wardrobe begins to look slightly more threadbare, we'd like to invite all Dota 2 Workshop creators to dream up some new fashions and assorted finery to help your favorite heroes look their best as they head into battle in the new year.

To that end, we are now officially accepting any and all submissions that you feel inspired to create -- without any seasonal or thematic restrictions.

Make sure to mark your submissions with the "Spring 2020" tag when tendering items to the Workshop. We request that all submissions be on the Dota 2 Workshop by Monday, March 2, 2020. As usual, we would like to ask artists to avoid the use of any concepts that involve human skulls, blood, and gore.

Additionally, all Dota fans should remember to regularly visit the Workshop and vote through the Queue to ensure your voices are heard in the selection process.

Jan 5, 2020

New Top Steam Game: CS:GO player counts have officially overtaken Dota 2

Dota 2

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has now reliably pushed past Dota 2’s peak and average player counts, making the shooter the more popular of Valve’s big online games and the top game on Steam. For December 2019, CS:GO posted peak users of 767,000 while Dota 2 reached nearly 628,000. Though CS:GO started to pull ahead of Dota 2 last year, CS:GO has now claimed the top spot for four months in a row—it’s not a fluke, but a trend, and we can officially pass the symbolic crown. Dota 2’s all-time player peak was 1.2 million in January 2015, with a return to that number in January and February 2016. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s all-time peak player count was 850,000 in March 2016. Both have been enduringly popular games with multiple famous eSports moments. CS:GO in particular has produced many amazing plays over the past decade.

Dota 2’s player counts for 2019 peaked at over one million in February, but have experienced general decline, with a drop in December after the huge Outlanders update. That’s not too surprising, as Outlanders thoroughly reworked many of Dota 2’s game systems. That drop is comparable to the drop in overall users social media platforms suffer every time they rework the user interface. Dot Esports reports that Dota 2’s average player counts are the lowest they’ve been since 2014, when it was still a relatively new and growing game. Many in the Dota 2 community attribute the slow drop in players to the game’s infamously bad new-player experience.

None of this analysis would be possible without the magic of Steam Charts. All of these numbers, of course, are small in comparison to the world’s most popular PC game: League of Legends’ peak player counts are well into the millions.

Jan 3, 2020

Dota 2 Update - January 3rd, 2020

Dota 2 - Valve

- Fixed a bug that caused Frostivus chat wheels and consumable items to not be usable.
- Fixed a bug where some neutral creeps would not correctly de-aggro.
- Fixed a bug where the armory UI would not scroll to a typed hero name.
- Mouse clicks are now lower priority on friendly wards than enemy wards.
- Labels for items on the ground now appear after a short delay when holding Alt.
- Add an alias “Inai” for Void Spirit so that you can search for that on the hero grid.
- Turbo: The neutral item drop schedule is now 7 minutes earlier in Turbo games.

Dec 23, 2019

The decade, as told in grappling hooks

Dota 2 - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Matt Cox)

The last ten years have brought us many joys. We’ve already celebrated the best games of the past decade, but with such scattergun nomination comes neglect. Only three of the fifty games we picked had grappling hooks, so clearly the entire endeavour was pointless and you will need an alternative resource.

Here’s my definitive guide to the swinging tenties. I haven’t mentioned Worms, because they get everywhere and I don’t want to spend my whole day talking about helminths.

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