Nov 15, 2013

Dota 2 - Valve

- Trading functionality has been restored.

- Earth Spirit: Fixed an issue with Refreshing Rolling Boulder while already rolling.
- Earth Spirit: Fixed refreshed Boulder Smash causing units to teleport.
- Earth Spirit: Fixed a smashed Stone Remnant that got gripped still applying damage and silence to units in its old path.
- Earth Spirit: Fixed Magnetize and Rolling Boulder not applying their debuffs to magic immune enemies.
- Ember Spirit: Fixed Flame Guard doing damage in too slow of intervals.
- Ember Spirit: Fixed some cases where Searing Chains could do less damage tickets
- Storm Spirit: Fixed Storm Spirit not showing the minimap while in Ball Lightning.
- Death Prophet: Fixed Exorcism ghosts attacking Attack Immune targets.
- Meepo: Fixed clones not gaining XP.
- Rubick: Can no longer steal Stone Caller.
- Fixed legacy_mode_quick_cast interaction with items to test.
- Fixed a crash when using Keeper of the Light in last-hit practice games.
- Fixed Wisp subtitles.
- Reduced Stone Remnant model size

- Fixed the lava trail effect not having a name and having the wrong color values at default.
- Fixed missing Tabard of the Crested Cannoneer from Sing's Artillery of the Crested Cannoneer Set. Users that have already purchased this set have been granted the missing item.
- Fixed health bar in HUD sometimes being invisible at match start.
- Fixed an issue with Quick Buy for Coaches and Spectators.
- The Inscribed, Autographed, and Ascendant qualities will only be applied to items that have no other quality and will be removed when the item is hammered.
- Qualities that got into a weird state from gems (like missing genuine tags) will be restored this afternoon.
- Heroic items will now display their tournament properties correctly.
- The lava trail unusual effect should now have its correct appearance as well as an effect name.

Diretide:

- Increased the drop rate of special rewards given for killing higher levels of Roshan to 33% per level.

When you start Sugar Rush (Phase 2):
- All heroes are upgraded to level 25.
- Your gold now counts up at 1000/sec.
- Pudge's Flesh Heap is reset to 1.
- The timer to fight Roshan doesn't start until he either takes damage or 5 minutes have elapsed.

Nov 14, 2013

Dota 2 update adds a trio of spirits and the return of Diretide

Dota 2

Image source: 'scainburger' on Reddit

つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Have DIRETIDE. That's Valve's message to the community today, as they announce the impending release of Three Spirits for Dota 2. For some, the return of the much requested seasonal event is far from the most exciting thing about this update. To quote Chris on learning that a redesigned Storm Spirit would be making an appearance: "AAAAAAAAAAAAH!" He is a very happy man. Find out why, below.

The titular spirits of the update are the Radiant trio of Storm Spirit, Ember Spirit, and original DotA newbie Earth Spirit, who focus on Intelligence, Agility and Strength respectively. But the update doesn't just expand (or re-skin) Dota 2's already overwhelming roster. A round-up of new features will expand customisation, provide official support for in-game coaching, and give a new purpose to unwanted items.

For newer players, a training has been added to help perfect those vital last hits. In addition, those playing Limited Hero mode will have bots step in to replace players who abandon. For players who want to coach, they can join a game separately from players and spectators, and will have the power to draw on the map, and ping points of interest for their team.

A new socketing system will let you customise your items and mounts with a variety of Gems, which can imbue that item with new animations, colours, and stat boasts. A crafting system has also been introduced, letting you melt down unwanted items for more desirable replacements.

Finally, of course, there's the return of Diretide, the game's 'Halloween' event. Previously, Valve said they'd made some changes to how Diretide would work. Those aren't revealed on the game's update page, but players will soon find out first hand. The event will run from November 14 - 28.

Pop over to the Three Spirits micro-site for the update's full patch notes. Three Spirits should now be available on the test server. The public release is due out later today.

(Image source: 'scainburger' on Reddit)

Nov 13, 2013

Three Spirits Update

Dota 2 - SZ

Here we go!

The latest Dota 2 update introduces the three amigos: Ember Spirit, Storm Spirit and Earth Spirit, and features like Crafting, Coaching and the givin' of the Diretide.

You can visit the Three Spirits Update page for more info by clicking the image below.

<a href="http://www.dota2.com/threespirits"><img class="alignnone" title="Storm! Earth! Ember! Heart (of Tarrasque)!" alt="" src="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/images/blogfiles/blog_image_threespirits.png" width="576" height="481" /></a>

 

The update should be hitting the Test client any second now and your regular Dota 2 client tomorrow.

Nov 10, 2013

Impressions: Heroes Of The Storm Steals BlizzCon

Dota 2 - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Nathan Grayson)

After Blizzard’s own community invented what is now considered the MOBA genre, the lumbering blue giant finally has one of its own. Again. Heroes of the Storm was originally conceived as a StarCraft II map editor showcase, then reinvented as a slightly more robust standalone, then renamed, then consigned to more than a year of worrisomely silent obscurity. But now, at last, it’s slowly but surely trundling down the danger-laden lane to completion. And it’s good. Really, really good. Heroes strips the MOBA genre – or “hero brawler” according to Blizzard’s sweaty, desperate attempts at renaming the genre – down to its basest essentials, and they just… make sense. Matches are quick, convolution is minimal, and there are even some fairly unique heroes mixed in with a handful of DOTA/LoL re-skins. Read all about it below.>

(more…)

Nov 9, 2013

Dota 2 Diretide event to launch “with the next update” at the community’s very determined request

Dota 2

Diretide was the title of last year's Halloween Dota 2 event. It added a new game mode in which players battled for candy while avoiding the clutches of the monstrous but relentlessly persecuted Rancor, Roshan. There was candy, and giggles, and there were Greevil eggs you could massage with magical essences in preparation for the wintry Greeviling event.

As with all of Valve's seasonal events, Dota 2 players assumed that Diretide would return this year, but October 31 rolled around and nothing happened. As Valve explain in a post on the Dota 2 blog, they decided to drop Diretide to finish work on the next big update, but then slightly forgot to tell anyone. Good news, though! It will roll out with that update, and they've "made a few changes to Diretide that we think makes it more fun than before."

Valve are responding to a bit of drama that broke out when the free update failed to appear. Some Dota 2 fans, frustrated by silence from Valve, started inundating the car manufacturer Volvo with Diretide requests. As Kotaku noted, the "GIVE DIRETIDE" requests even reached Barrack Obama's Facebook page.

Valve explained their silence in the blog post "telling you that you weren’t getting it at all wouldn’t have really helped much. Now we started thinking in terms not of “what should we say?”, but in terms of “what should we do?”

They haven't outlined their plans for tweaking Diretide yet, but the next big update "isn’t far away now." They add "while we always want the community to tell us exactly how we’re doing, this is probably a good time to stop cc’ing innocent car manufacturers with your messages."

Nov 8, 2013

Not My Best Work!

Dota 2 - SZ

<img src="http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/images/blogfiles/rosh_diretide.jpg" width="100%">

Whenever we make a significant mistake, we spend a bunch of time looking at what happened, why it happened, and how we can fix it. Most of the time we do this privately, but in our recent mistake around Diretide, we felt sharing our analysis with you made sense.

First, what happened - we didn't ship a Diretide event this year, and you were rightly upset about it. That was clearly a mistake, and then we compounded the problem by not telling you what was going on.

So, why didn't we ship Diretide?
<ul>

<li>We have a huge update in the works that looked like it would be finished in time for Halloween. Stopping that update to work on Diretide seemed like something you would actually be unhappy with us for, because the update is pretty significant. More on that later.</li>
<li>Turning on last year's Diretide event wasn't trivial. We'd done a year of work on the game which had changed our codebase, UI, and other systems enough that we would need to do some work to resurrect it.</li>
<li>We underestimated how much you wanted Diretide.</li>
<li>We made the decision a while ago, and failed to employ our usual process of regularly asking ourselves whether we were still on the right track. There were a bunch of people on the Dota 2 team who poked at the decision to not do it as Halloween approached, but due to how busy everyone was with our next major update, no-one really took the time to step back and objectively realise we were being collectively crazy.
</li>
</ul>

Due to our poor prediction of your reaction, and the team being focused on the next update, we didn't spend enough time thinking about talking to you about our decision. As a result, by the time we'd realized we'd made a bad decision, the pitchforks were out.

Then, why didn't we communicate with you what was going on?

<ul>
<li>You were already mad and disappointed in the lack of Diretide. Telling you that you weren't getting it at all wouldn't have really helped much. Now we started thinking in terms not of "what should we say?", but in terms of "what should we do?"</li>
<li>We were, and still are, confident that you'll be happy when you see what's in the next update (which isn't far away now).</li>
</ul>

Now, what is the fix?

First, we're going to ship Diretide with the next update. The rest of the update we've been working on is in final testing, and as each of us finish up our work on it, we've been jumping over to Diretide. Second, we're pretty sure the update that we've been working on for a couple of months is going to be pretty significant. In addition, we've made a few changes to Diretide that we think makes it more fun than before. And while we always want the community to tell us exactly how we're doing, this is probably a good time to stop cc'ing innocent car manufacturers with your messages.

Paying attention to what is happening in the community around Dota 2 is one of the most important aspects of what we do at Valve. And while we are clearly not mistake-proof, hopefully it is useful for us to walk everyone through our process for recognizing and then fixing our mistakes.

Nov 8, 2013

Not My Best Work!

Dota 2 - SZ

Whenever we make a significant mistake, we spend a bunch of time looking at what happened, why it happened, and how we can fix it. Most of the time we do this privately, but in our recent mistake around Diretide, we felt sharing our analysis with you made sense.

First, what happened - we didn't ship a Diretide event this year, and you were rightly upset about it. That was clearly a mistake, and then we compounded the problem by not telling you what was going on.

So, why didn't we ship Diretide?

We have a huge update in the works that looked like it would be finished in time for Halloween. Stopping that update to work on Diretide seemed like something you would actually be unhappy with us for, because the update is pretty significant. More on that later.
Turning on last year's Diretide event wasn't trivial. We'd done a year of work on the game which had changed our codebase, UI, and other systems enough that we would need to do some work to resurrect it.
We underestimated how much you wanted Diretide.
We made the decision a while ago, and failed to employ our usual process of regularly asking ourselves whether we were still on the right track. There were a bunch of people on the Dota 2 team who poked at the decision to not do it as Halloween approached, but due to how busy everyone was with our next major update, no-one really took the time to step back and objectively realise we were being collectively crazy.

Due to our poor prediction of your reaction, and the team being focused on the next update, we didn't spend enough time thinking about talking to you about our decision. As a result, by the time we'd realized we'd made a bad decision, the pitchforks were out.

Then, why didn't we communicate with you what was going on?

You were already mad and disappointed in the lack of Diretide. Telling you that you weren't getting it at all wouldn't have really helped much. Now we started thinking in terms not of "what should we say?", but in terms of "what should we do?"
We were, and still are, confident that you'll be happy when you see what's in the next update (which isn't far away now).

Now, what is the fix?

First, we're going to ship Diretide with the next update. The rest of the update we've been working on is in final testing, and as each of us finish up our work on it, we've been jumping over to Diretide. Second, we're pretty sure the update that we've been working on for a couple of months is going to be pretty significant. In addition, we've made a few changes to Diretide that we think makes it more fun than before. And while we always want the community to tell us exactly how we're doing, this is probably a good time to stop cc'ing innocent car manufacturers with your messages.

Paying attention to what is happening in the community around Dota 2 is one of the most important aspects of what we do at Valve. And while we are clearly not mistake-proof, hopefully it is useful for us to walk everyone through our process for recognizing and then fixing our mistakes.