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The
rumors and speculation can cease. Valve is making Dota 2, we've played
it, and it's already amazing even though it's not coming out until next
year. And we haven't yet laid eyes on Dota 2's biggest innovation: a
radical approach to integrating the game's community back into the
gameplay itself.
What's a Dota?
Dota
2 takes its name from the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients, a
drastic change to that stock real-time strategy title, which pits two
teams of five players against each other in highly competitive,
40-minute or longer matches. Unlike most RTSes, DotA has each player
controlling a single hero who levels up and stockpiles gold to purchase
powerful equipment and consumables. As computer-controlled armies
continually spawn and rush the enemy's base, players are responsible for
using their powerful heroes to turn the tide of the battle in their
favor.
DotA quickly gained massive popularity on Blizzard's
Battle.net service, with the growing community utilizing user-created
channels and the rudimentary custom game browser to connect players. As
mods tend to do, it branched into several variations as time passed.
Eventually, one rose to the top: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], originally created by Steve "Guinsoo" Feak (now employed with Riot Games designing [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]). Allstars is currently maintained and updated by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (who declined to give his real name), who was hired by Valve in 2009 and is now working on Dota 2.
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DotA
enjoys such unprecedented popularity for a number of interconnected
reasons. The game has a skill curve as long and as wide as
Counter-Strike or StarCraft; expert players dominate matches with
lesser-skilled individuals solely through manual dexterity and hard-won
knowledge. Extensive upgrade paths allow players to combine items into
more powerful versions, gaining thousands of hit points or powerful
life-stealing attacks. Team play is hugely rewarded; though the map is
large enough for all ten players to spread out and fight creeps on their
own without anyone engaging anyone else directly, late-game play is
almost invariably centered around giant 3v3 or even 5v5 team fights.
The
mod has benefited from excellent, long-running support in the form of
constant updates that add new content or address balance issues. Said
balance is good enough that no dominant team composition or strategy has
ever taken hold for long. The heroes are varied enough that a match
featuring different team rosters can take on an entirely different
character from the last.
The enormous following generated by
DotA's deep gameplay is unprecedented. Today, years after its release, a
third-party site hosting an update can get hammered by more than six
million downloads in a day. The mod spawned a new subgenre, commonly
referred to as "action-RTS," that contains two successful commercial
games in League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth (and the unfortunate
flop Demigod) as well as DotA-Allstars itself. Valve Corporation, the
company beloved for its Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and
Left 4 Dead series as well as its outstanding Steam digital distribution
and matchmaking platform, is making its entry into this still-growing
genre next year with Dota 2.
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What Does Valve Bring?
Valve's
approach to Dota 2 is unusual in that the gameplay itself is remaining
almost entirely untouched. "Our first reaction is to assume that [design
elements are] there for a reason," project lead Erik Johnson explains.
"IceFrog is one of the smartest designers we've ever met. He's made so
many good decisions over the years in building the product. He virtually
never makes a decision that doesn't have some reasoning behind it and a
way to pick apart the logic behind it." This approach means that Dota 2
basically is DotA-Allstars with new technology.
DotA-Allstars'
roster of 100+ heroes is being brought over in its entirety. The single
map games take place on is functionally identical to the one that you
can download for free today in the Warcraft III mod. Items, skills, and
upgrade paths are unchanged. Some hero skills work slightly better due
to being freed from the now-ancient Warcraft III engine, but Dota 2 will
be instantly familiar to any DotA player.
A few things will make
significant differences to players making the transition. Dota 2 uses
Valve's Source engine, so the game is much prettier. Source itself is
getting a few upgrades, including improved global lighting and true
cloth simulation. Dota 2's integrated voice chat is a huge step up from
having to set up your own Ventrilo server, and the speed of voice
communication is very nearly a requirement for a game as team-focused as
DotA.
AI bots will take over for disconnected players, and will
be available to play against in unranked training matches as well.
However, don't get your hopes up for a full-fledged single-player game,
though. Johnson says, "Our goal with the AI is just that their
experience isn't destroyed just because one person couldn't finish the
game."
The visual style is remarkable for retaining the somewhat
cartoony feel that the Warcraft III version of DotA-Allstars is built
around, while going in a few different directions. "I think there are
functional aspects to the art that are pretty significant to the
players," Johnson muses. The environment, particularly in the forests
that fill in the map between the three lanes that the NPC armies follow,
uses a desaturated color scheme to give the colorful heroes and
abilities some visual pop. The sizable art team is putting a lot of work
into making the shapes and animations of each hero distinct to the
point that players will be able to instantly identify any hero they see
and quickly gauge the threat level of any situation.
The game
will also feature a ton of custom voice work. You'll get amusing lines
from heroes as they deny the enemy team last hits on creeps, and
champions who have backstory connections will trade quips when nearby.
The
bulk of innovation in Dota 2, however, is ancillary to the gameplay
itself. Valve is upgrading Steamworks (the company's backend
technologies for matchmaking and other gameplay and community-related
things) to allow them to create in-game rewards for participating in the
Dota 2 community. The idea is to have everything a player does in or
out of game tie back into their online identity. Like the improvements
to Source, the Steamworks upgrades will be available to third-party
developers who choose to use Valve's tools when Dota 2 launches in 2011.
At
a basic level, posting useful feedback or participating in constructive
discussions on the forums will contribute to your standing in the
community in a visible way. Valve doesn't have the specifics on how this
will work nailed down yet. Will you get points that contribute to a
visible ranking, like a Gamerscore? Will your posts need to be
recommended by other community members to count for anything? What
counts as a constructive discussion? These questions are all being
actively explored at the moment. Valve assures us that the designers
have a slew of awesome ideas for how to implement rewards in a way
that’s visible to the rest of the community, but there are no details to
announce yet. "When we talk about this identity that exists inside and
outside the game, we don't think we're anywhere near it with what exists
on Steam right now," Johnson admits.
If this was just about
getting points for posting comments, though, we wouldn't waste your time
by telling you about it. Dota 2 goes much farther than that. Everything
from unlocking new skins for your favorite hero to getting a unique
title for writing a strategy guide is on the table. Valve has ambitious
plans (for which, again, there are no specifics to share) to host
everything themselves and provide the best framework for the community
to interact with each other. The idea is to reduce the social friction
inherent in having to dig around a bunch of different fansites and wikis
to find what you're looking for.
Ultimately, two things will make Dota 2 stand out: the coaching system and interactive guides. Read on to find out more.
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Riding the Skill Curve
Getting
owned sucks. It doesn't matter if you're the victim of a headshot in
Counter-Strike, corner trapped in Street Fighter, or swarmed under by
Zerglings in StarCraft. Holding the short end of the skill stick in
competitive games like these is rough. This problem is compounded in
DotA and its clones by two factors. First, matches last around 40
minutes – that's a long time to spend getting your face kicked in.
Second, dying not only takes you out of the game while your respawn
timer counts down but also directly benefits the other team by giving a
big cash bounty to your killer.
At intermediate and higher
levels of play, having a poor player on your team who dies frequently is
worse than fighting with a man down, as the opposite team gets gobs of
gold for picking off the newbie. This has fostered a legendarily
newbie-hostile attitude within large swaths of the DotA community. As
fun and rewarding as the game is when you're in a match of appropriate
skill level – and it can be one of the very best experiences in gaming,
without exaggeration – finding those matches has always been a
nightmare. It doesn't help that the game is so intense that Valve had to
institute a "no talking about the match for an hour afterwards" rule
for its internal playtests. The recent commercial titles that more or
less cloned DotA have ameliorated this to some extent, but it is still
often a huge problem.
Valve believes that the solution to the
huge barrier to entry is threefold. The first, obvious solution is to
have excellent skill-based matchmaking for both individuals and teams.
Valve believes that the work going into Steamworks for Dota 2's release
meets that requirement. Second, interactive guides will allow players to
do more than just read a guide for their favorite hero that has been
deemed helpful by the community at large. Valve plans to allow
guide-makers to tie their work back into the game by doing things like
highlighting suggested item purchases or displaying useful information
during a match.
Finally, a coaching system is being deeply
integrated into the game. By logging in as a coach, veteran players can
do their part to help out newer folks. Valve hasn't entirely decided on
the specifics of how newbies and coaches will be matched up, but once
they're together a few things happen. The coach sees the pupil's screen,
and gets private voice and chat channels to communicate with them. The
coach probably won't be able to take control of anything directly (once
again, the details are currently under discussion), but information is
power in Dota 2 and having a mentor whispering in your ear can make all
the difference in the world.
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Of
course, the pupil will be able to rate the coach's helpfulness. Being a
well-regarded coach will have explicit in-game rewards, just like
writing useful guides, posting constructive feedback, or engaging in
interesting strategy discussions. If the overwhelming response to
Battle.net achievements is any indication, vanity rewards like these
will be extremely effective in channeling the community's energies
toward positive contributions.
Valve founder and boss Gabe Newell
thinks that ongoing service and value creation over a game's lifespan
is the new reality of game development. "IceFrog was one of the smartest
people we've ever met about doing that, and he was doing it with both
hands tied behind his back, so to speak," Newell says. The company plans
on approaching Dota 2 with the same dedication that won it the
fanatical devotion of the Team Fortress 2 community, pushing out dozens
of updates that do everything from adding new hats to fixing balance
issues to introducing entire new match types for free.
"I think
the interesting thing is us adding a second layer where the community is
a service to each other. That's the real shift that we're trying to
build here. Valve is going to keep building software around Dota and
around the community and around Steamworks for Dota, but we're also
going to build this system where the community can bring service to each
other and be recognized for it," Johnson proclaims. With a solid
backbone of community-enabling systems and Valve's legendary support and
technology behind it, Dota 2 has a chance to turn one of the most
popular mods of all time into a full game on PC and Mac that compares
favorably to any eight-figure-budget console blockbuster.
Trailer Dota 2 :
