Dec 10, 2013

Frostivus For The Rest Of Us: Dota 2 Holiday Event Returns

Dota 2 - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Graham Smith)

The Airing of Grief-ances?

Valve have learnt their lesson from Diretide: don’t deny the Dota 2 community their holiday celebrations. That means that Frostivus is back. The holiday event is traditionally quite lovely. Last year’s Frostivus started normally before being taken over by The Greeviling, an update and game mode in which players can use their Greevil a secondary hero. At this point, I’d normally make a crack about how I don’t understand any of this and don’t care, but truthfully, I do> understand it. It’s just easier to be flippant than explain all the context. Instead, this time, I’ll take door number three and link to the Dota 2 wiki page about the Greeviling event.

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Dec 10, 2013

Dota 2′s upcoming update will add ranked matchmaking for experienced players

Dota 2

One of the stupider things about humanity is that we keep engineering the future tools of our own demise. For instance, computers are now constantly ranking us based on a variety of factors that measure our performance against each other for fun and entertainment. Naturally, come the awakening of sentient machines, the AI Prime will look at these rankings and think, "hmm, xXx_n00bst0mper_xXx has a higher K/D ratio then any other meatsack in quadrant four. Let's shackle his consciousness with nano-orbs and harvest his muscles into slavedroid neurostims."

Ah well, while we wait for the inevitable to happen, we might as well enjoy ourselves. Valve's Dota 2 ranking system will soon be getting an upgrade that's designed to better support more experienced players. Ranked Matchmaking aims to enable the move towards more competitive play by making the game's usually hidden MMR (matchmaking rating) visible to players.

A post on the Dota 2 blog outlines the conditions needed to unlock Ranked Matchmaking:

Ranked matchmaking is unlocked after approximately 150 games.
All players in the party must have unlocked the mode.
Currently, only All Pick, Captains Mode, and Captains Draft are available.
You may not participate in ranked matchmaking while in the low priority pool.
Coaches are not allowed in ranked matchmaking.
Matches played in normal matchmaking do not impact your ranked matchmaking MMR, and vice versa.
Your ranked MMR is visible only to you and your friends. The MMR used for normal matchmaking is not visible.
When you first start using ranked matchmaking, you will enter a calibration phase of 10 games. During this time, your ranked MMR will not be visible.

Head through to that post for a more technical breakdown of how MMR is calculated, and the aims of Dota 2's ranking system. Dota 2's next update will also kick off the Frostivus event, details of which can be found here.

Thanks, Strategy Informer.

Dec 9, 2013

Dota 2′s Frostivus holiday event is back

Dota 2

Today, Valve announced that Dota 2's Frostivus holiday event is making a comeback this year. Judging by the official website, we should expect something similar to the last celebration, with special holiday maps and items.

"The longest night of the year is a time for weaving by the hearth!" The teaser site reads. "Collect bright winter berries and sprigs of fir, and twist them together into mementos for family and friends." It sounds like Frostivus will include drops that take advantage of the new crafting and socketing system introduced in the Three Spirits update.

"The traditional Frostivus truce is in effect," the site continues. "Radiant and Dire may gather to play games and exchange gifts. Find the Frostivus Wish-List of some worthy friend or prickly foe, and play the role of Furtive Frostus, gifting them with something they didn't know they wanted." This implies that some kind of Secret Santa gifting will play a big role in the event, and that it may even introduce a new mode.

Last year's Frostivus was quite eventful. In addition to the regular celebration, Valve used the event update to add in-game items created by winners of the Polycount Contest. Last year's Frostivus was also cut short by pesky Greevils, who did the Dota 2 equivalent of canceling Christmas.

With the inevitable Steam holiday sale on top of it all, it's sure to be a very merry time, with you glued to your PC while your extended family sips eggnog and wonders where you are.

Dec 9, 2013

Riot Changes Mind On Pro LoL Streams, But Issues Persist

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

The witch is dead, League of Legends pros can once again stream whatever they want, and eSports is saved! OK, maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit, but I really> didn’t like the potential implications of Riot’s decision to contractually forbid its pros from streaming Dota 2, Hearthstone, World of Tanks, and tens of other extremely popular games. Fortunately, after copious uproarious outcry, Riot decided to rethink its portentously controlling decision. Now pros are able to stream whatever strikes their fancy or tickles their murder bones, though certain sponsorships/promotional angles are still off-limits. This is admittedly much> better, but I’m still concerned about Riot’s position near the top of the eSports food chain. Allow me to explain why.

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Dec 5, 2013

Dota 2 Update - December 5th, 2013

Dota 2 - Valve

• Fixed a bug that caused some gem names and stat values to get truncated in the tooltip.
• Recipe costs have been reduced. This change will affect newly dropped recipes.
• Items with gems that convey the Inscribed, Autographed, and Ascendant qualities will now appear consistently. If the gemmed item already had a special quality (like Genuine) then that special quality will take precedence over the gem quality.
• Several issues with crafting have been fixed:
o A bug that made it appear that items were 'eaten' by crafting has been fixed. No items were actually eaten (they are still in your inventory). For example, a recipe that took 5 inputs would sometimes only consume 4 of the inputs and remain incomplete. The 5th item was never consumed even though it appeared to be by the UI. Recipes will now consume the correct number of items.
o A bug has been fixed that made the display of some recipes show the wrong type of items already fulfilled (i.e.: 4 of the same thing when actually 4 different items were fulfilled).
o The server is notified of a crafting attempt earlier in the crafting process so that crafting results will appear earlier.
o The crafting completed animation now also plays for partial crafts. A dialog will appear during a partial craft indicating the recipe is not complete and needs more components to be finalized.
• The tradability policy for socketed gems and crafted items has changed:
o Gems extracted from an item that is "tradable after date" now become tradable after the same date.
o Gems extracted from an item that can never be traded no longer inherit that restriction. You can safely add gems to a permanently untradable item without the gems becoming permanently untradable.
o Gems that are not tradable (like Ascendant gems) will make the item they are added to untradable, but only while those gems are socketed. Extracting the gems will remove the trade restriction from the item they are added to.
o If one or more crafted inputs are "tradable after date" then the recipe and output will become "tradable after date" with the latest date of the inputs.
o If one or more crafted inputs are permanently untradable then the recipe and output will become permanently untradable.
o All previously crafted items have been grandfathered into these new rules and have been made tradable.

Dec 5, 2013

Why Riot Really Needs To Rethink Pro Stream Restrictions

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

When I wrote my Homeric epic about attending League of Legends’ Championship Series, one of my biggest fears was that Riot’s stranglehold on its own game’s eSports scene could eventually suffocate pros and the scene itself. A game creator, after all, will inevitably have different priorities than a dyed-in-the-wool sports organization – especially compared to the way eSports leagues currently operate. And yet, here we are. LCS season 4 contracts are now in the hands of pros, and they contain some sticky stipulations. The most worrisome among them? The one that forbids all contracted pros from streaming DOTA 2, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Heroes of Newerth, World of Tanks, and many more for the duration of the season.

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