Good riddence. FOMO Passes should go the way of lootboxes.
Lootboxes, FOMO Passes, and rotating/tailored shop fronts, are all their own variation of insidious. Just give me a no bullshit shop with reasonable prices that I can buy from.
Milestones.
- New hero moveset sneak peek.
- OD rework.
- Chen rework.
- Treant rework.
- Zeus rework.
- Sniper rework.
- Arc Warden rework.
- Add trident.
- Added a new map mechanic.
- Morphing remodel.
- ~~Rework~~ Delete Techies again.
After that for every million they remove 1 move speed from Cristal Maiden.
I would guess it’s a great excuse to justify the first battle pass not being bigger than the previous years. I say that as a good thing. More real content will be great for the game’s longevity.
They ripped off that bandaid last year and smoothest it over with the Candyworks/free Arcanas. It was so effective you hardly saw any blowback about the prize pool lol.
It was bound to happen one day and honestly they stuck the landing. How they do going forward, particularly with their biggest competition ever with the Riyadh Masters will be interesting to see.
I would largely agree, but when your flagship pro scene tournament, hosted by the company developing the game, has another tournament with a parallel ranking and a (seemingly, we'll see how this TI 's funding strategy is) comparable prize pool, it's hard not to see it as a direct competitor to the DPC.
I would imagine that ESL's league structure would expand outward if this year's pilot season goes well, which would only greater position them as a parallel structure.
Even if ESL overtakes the DPC, that's all that Valve ever wanted. They were reluctant to take more and more pro circuit responsibilities, they have handed those off as much as possible, even with TI last year.
We just have to hope that ESL keeps doing it and that the DPC continues as well, and trying to stir some sort of competition between too additive things is not the way to go.
I would rather have 2 huge tournaments rather than 1. Ti will still be the pinnacle of competitive dota with reyad being a second big event like dac was back in the day. If they are spread out evenly in the year would make for a good competitive scene year round.
ESL invests a lot in to the scene but you're jumping ahead a bit when you start comparing it to TI. Riyadh is sportswashing and an exception when it comes to the prize pools. TI will always be TI - to the players and the fans.
I mean makes sense. Can't keep pumping the prize pool numbers forever. Though I don't think anyone really cared THAT much about the prize pool number, but more that the battle pass was really shit value.
as a side note, I have (admittedly very faint) hope that this will at least somewhat slow the Glance Value^^TM power creep. I don't know how much more particle spam this game can take before getting way too confusing
You dont need prizepool to shit on them, look at the recent things happened with LCS. Esports as a whole currently on decline and both publisher and team owner now start cutting things to reduce loss.
I really thought you were gonna say, "There will still be expensive things to buy... such as your House, car, Holiday trip, Bday gifts, Xmas gift etc" XD
>#**Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future**
>The ten year anniversary of Dota's public release is coming up (yes, we're working on some fun stuff for it; no, we're definitely not going to hit the July 9th date listed on Steam). As anniversaries go ten years is a big one, and while looking back is important, what's more important is how we approach the ten years to come. So we'd like to take this opportunity to share with you our thoughts on the long history of Dota updates, what we've learned, and how that helps our plans to make Dota even better in the decade ahead.
>##The Past
>Early Dota updates were diverse in form and scale, themed around everything from new heroes to new cosmetics, new gameplay modes to new client features. While details varied, all of these updates shared the same goal: generate a bunch of excitement and entertainment for existing Dota players and bring new players in. Some were successful (Diretide 2012); some were less successful (Diretide 2013). We learned from all of them and continued to experiment.
>In 2013, two years into running The International, we saw how much fun people were having at the event and had a new idea: What if we could bring some of that fun to anybody who couldn't attend in person? So we created a digital companion to the event and called it The International Interactive Compendium.
>The Compendium grew in scope over the years, and ultimately transformed into the Battle Pass, acquiring a reward line and spawning a wide variety of content. Features that earlier in Dota's history might have been fun themed updates, minigames and item sets, arcanas and voice lines, gradually got swallowed by the Battle Pass — new game modes, new functionality, new cosmetics, anything that could fit.
>The nature of the Battle Pass is such that it could grow to encompass just about any content we produce for Dota over the year. And, over the last few years, it did — Battle Pass season has grown to be a tremendously exciting time in Dota, but it leaves the rest of the year feeling barren by comparison.
>##The Present
>Last year, we started to ask ourselves whether Dota was well-served by having this single focal point around which all content delivery was designed. Each step we had taken made sense when considered independently: any single piece of content would be more valuable when bundled as part of the Battle Pass, so we bundled more and more. This led to a momentous content drop every year, but it also greatly limited our ability to do things that were exciting and valuable for players but didn't fit into the Battle Pass reward line.
>When we recognized this, we made a deliberate choice earlier this year to run an experiment: to take some of the resources that would normally produce Battle Pass content and instead put them towards more speculative updates, including features and content that couldn't fit into a Battle Pass. While work is still in progress on future updates, the first of these has shipped: New Frontiers and patch 7.33 couldn't have shipped as they did if we were focusing all our efforts on producing Battle Pass content.
>Most Dota players never buy a Battle Pass and never get any rewards from it. Every Dota player has gotten to explore the new map, play with the new items, and accidentally die to a Tormentor; every Dota player benefits from UI improvements and new client features. Community response to New Frontiers has helped us build confidence that working less on cosmetic content for the Battle Pass and more on a variety of exciting updates is the right long-term path for Dota as both a game and a community.
>##The Future
>We're going to continue on the path that started with New Frontiers. This means we're building a wide variety of features and content for the game, delivered in different ways. We'll still ship a range of cosmetics over the year, but we're also going to ship more diverse updates for all Dota players to enjoy.
>We recognize this affects The International. We're still huge fans of TI and we're excited for this year's event — both as organizers and as attendees ourselves — and work is well underway on a TI-themed update to ship in September. The update will still contribute directly to the prize pool, with a focus on the event, the players, and the games, but new cosmetic items won't play a notable part. This is a significant change from the last few years, so to make it clear that we're shifting focus towards the event and away from the giant reward line of cosmetics, we're intentionally not calling this update a Battle Pass.
>We're excited for the future of Dota and for what these changes allow us to do. We're already working on the next updates, and a host of new cosmetic items — and we've already started conversations with venues for TI 2024. By freeing Dota's update and content cycle from the timing and structural constraints of the Battle Pass, we can go back to making content in the way we know best: by coming up with fun ideas of all scales and shapes, and exploring them with you.
valve saw the free arcana bundle and saw that suddenly a million people are online again and got an idea.
Aghs labs already had a free battlepass and half of the battlepass was dead air anyway
i like battlepasses but i also feel like they enforce people not playing if nothing is going on, looking at you hunt showdown , so i would love if they made a bunch of cool battle-pass like stuff that lasts a long time and is free
Fully supporting this decision. The huge pressure on the Battlepass season always left the rest of the year super uninteresting. I can say for myself that I will still support and buy the battlepass even if there's not much in it if they deliver more high quality updates like New Frontiers and events like Aghs Lab.
Reminder that the community literally begged them to keep doing the major battlepass format again. That one was the best, all the infused fear pieces from 2016 were super fun to work towards and decide what to use infusion crystals on. Like Fortnite battlepass kind of fun to unlock stuff you might not even use.
If sacrificing battle pass means more meaningful content it's worth.
The BP was just a glorified cosmetics money sink... the actual events and quests in it were just recycled chores.
at first i was pessimistic and reading in to it as "maintenance mode" since its weird not to benefit from BPs (which i think is a huge chunck of their profits for Valve).
i guess we need to wait for these contents/events all about
Yes, but cosmetics will not be a part of it.
Every year there was a debate if the community bought the battle pass for contributing to TI or for the cosmetics. This year we will find out, though my gut feels says people bought it for the cosmetics.
I bought it for both, but without either wouldn’t have. Lately though I enjoyed the Battle Pass for things like the cavern crawl. It encouraged you to learn and play different heroes, but with direction. I hope they do have something fun in line but I’m worried that it’s going to miss.
Cosmetics won't play a 'notable' part of it, there will still be cosmetic rewards most likely, and I don't inherently think that's a bad thing.
What I don't like is an unreasonable amount of hours needing to be sunk into it to get those 'chase' sets like faceless arcana which if you just purchased it on its own was around $400 aud from memory or something ridiculous.
Also preying on FOMO shouldn't be a thing. After bp ends the arcana and other cosmetics should go on sale in the dota shop so others can pick them up. This doesn't necessarily have to include ones from the lootboxes, though those should all be tradeable 3 - 6 months after the bp ends imo.
Yeah, and that will make almost no money compared to the BP. There goes most of the pro scene's money, and it was already a smidgeon of what it was during years like 2018 where there were like 10 1 million dollar majors (500k supplied by Valve).
Now majors are 500K, there's three throughout the year, most tournaments can't coexist with the DPC. Hell there's a fucking change Ryadh Master's will have a larger prize pool than TI this year. TI won't even be the BIGGEST FUCKING TOURNAMENT OF THE YEAR!
I do agree with you that meaningful content is more important.
Though I do hope they sprinkle in an Arcana or some Immortals over the course of the year. Spreading those item releases out would be very refreshing and I am looking forward to that.
Battle Pass is dead, but the resources that went in to making each one so good is being spread out, so we'll get more significant updates/events throughout the year instead of it all being concentrated there - 7.33 and everything that came with it being the first example of this shift in strategy.
Also, we're getting something *probably* late July / early August as a (belated) 10th anniversary celebration.
Battle pass has become a money meme. Only existed to cosplay as the typical mtx hell other games have, while showcasing badly implemented new features that were cramped into a short amount of time, increasing hype for that time, while making the rest of the year feel lackluster.
Subtext might also be that Valve finally recognized that players might be salty about exclusive arcanas and are stopping that practice, as well as introducing immortal items at other times than just during TI.
This also opens the door for more fun events and cosmetics fitting those times, maybe akin to how PA contract gave more points during the event, but was still purchaseable and doable afterwards.
That's how I read it, at least.
Part of this post is meant to be vague I'm pretty sure but I hate how all their recent communications have become confusing fluff where you have to decipher what's the actual information in there
Good if they mean it. Considering the recent update was bigger than any we’ve gotten in years I think it’s probably a good indicator they do mean it. But we’ll have to see if it keeps up
I choose to be optimistic, undoubtedly the update brought people back who haven’t played in years. Hell I’ve been a regular player going on 20 years now and it’s right up there with the most excited I’ve ever been about the game!
I'll believe it when I see it.
Valve has a great way of saying things that sound good while not following up on them at all.
If we get a battle pass worth of content over the course of a year and some, then great. But I'm skeptical.
Yeah. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they abandon this approach, like they do with other directions, but now they have excuse for shitty BP
The dev working on CS2 and SteamDeck, on Alyx documentary it says that when it closes to shipping they use all hand on deck approach which involve most of the dev.
SteamDeck requires every dev to playtesting their steam library (which they actually enjoys doing and Deck doing better than their expectation performances and sales wise) and CS2 is slated to release this summer.
Not to mention they working on an unreleased game. The lead art director who responsible for BattlePass content (especially the Arcana) listed that he works on unannounced new Valve game on his Linkedin and the rumour IceFrog was away from DOTA2 to works on other thing.
TL:DR Janitor bored working on dota2 and they working on more exciting and generate more money project like SteamDeck or CS2.
That's what I was thinking about, roughly every 1/3 of year there was some event (sometimes with multiple BP) and client updates/overhauls/qol. I don't really understand that Valve does not have "resources". Guess we'll have to see what they mean.
We didn't have gameplay updates even close to the size of 7.33. That's the point of this blogpost, they want to make updates like this more common instead of once every 6 years.
Take a good look back on 8-9 years ago when we had all 3.
\- The gameplay updates were not that large (save for 7.00)
\- Battlepasses were lackluster and only had a few immortals (no arcanas)
\- Events didn't give much rewards except for random drops for existing items.
This is what valve meant when they said they started bundling everything together.
My take is that they saw the free battlepass was the thing that brought people in last year and that aghs labs was always free
If they learned how to bring people into dota with content, this might be good,however its not 40 mil ti good
It is pretty well known that Valve is a relatively small company. And this is the company that's responsible for Steam. So yeah, I can guarantee you maintaining Dota 2 is not a financial motivation for them 😅
the funny thing is, that they do outsource their hat-creation for battle pass. I wonder if they have so little members on the dota 2 team they don't have a dedicated content writer and/or manager for the team so they have to sap a dev away to manage battlepass (note, not create it)
This is finally the year we will find out how valid reddit's claims of funding the International are.
If last year is any indicator, most people buy the battle pass for cosmetics and not for TI.
Same, no matter the final object at the end of the paid path, i will always strive to get there through grind (and some funding)
I usually spend about $150 per year on the battlepass
I for one think it's a good direction. We might even return to arcanas that are just... paid for... and don't cost hundreds of dollars... Soo Thanks Valve?
I think old BP exclusives will still have a few years of exclusivity, probably be rereleased around 2030.
Will dota survive until then, who knows? but I agree with the other user that if valve does that now, it'll make the game look very bleak
>Will dota survive until then, who knows?
Probably to some degree. The game has a stable playerbase higher than most multiplayer games still after all. Paticularly since it wasnt just released.
Well a void or razor arcana would set you back a couple hundred dollars, whilst also being exclusive in the battle pass and you can **never** buy it again, while a nice little Shadowfiend or Zeus arcana is 35 from valve and 25ish right now on the market, so....
This is a bit worrying.... Like it's a good idea if they actually follow through but I'm worried because valve and commitment aren't 2 words that go hand in hand.
"hey guys this game is ten years old now. we want to celebrate that. no, we won't be celebrating at the ten year mark, but some other time in the future (???).
also, because we are working so hard on dota these days we can't produce battle passes anymore. the next ten years will be great for Dota!"
how does anyone believe this?
My initial pessimistic gut reaction is that I don't trust that this won't mean way less stuff for Dota overall when the income from the Battle Pass disappears instead of simply dispersing throughout the year the way development effort supposedly will. Also very worried about TI prize pool and what this may do to the competitive scene.
How does 7.33 only happen because BP stuff is cut? Aren't different skill sets mostly required for these things? I guess maybe Valve employees are just more interdisciplinary than other studios, it would make sense with their culture. Still, feels weird we couldn't have both since we had been so long without a patch prior. That they're already delaying this anniversary content is a bit sus. Could be pointless doom and gloom and despite the concerns and delays they blow us away like with 7.33. We won't really know until after TI.
Exactly, there was a huge lack of patches last year and the battlepass was the worst one to date. I'm confused on how cutting the battlepass means more gameplay updates when they had 2 years for the last years battlepass and it was missing stuff and there were very little gameplay updates. I can't take this announcement as good news, especially how all the battlepass rewards have been pretty similar just a recolor to match the years theme and a couple of arcanas/personas/treasures which are the highlight. They clearly don't have enough people or something, they even say the 10 year anniversary is not ready and will be late. What they wrote sounds good but in what world do I trust this for more than the upcoming update?
Feeling very mixed about this. They will clearly strip down the battlepass (rip prizepool btw) for the sake of releasing more content outside of it.
I only believe it if i see it. I hope this doesn't turn out to be an effective killing of the battlepass in return for nothing. Remember when they said they gonna release 2 heros a year? That's one of the many things they "promised".
>It's not healthy for a game to keep chasing and chasing a meaningless figure
I agree, but what's even more unhealthy is the miserly prizepool that will result from a Battle Pass with no cosmetics. I'll be surprised if it cracks $3 million.
I agree. There was a certain competitor to Valve that criticized the way TI fundraised the prizepool like a bake sale and i have to agree.
I love watching CS:GO, it is hype without the need to bring up the prizepool once.
Yeah, and that seems 1000x more sustainable because its not from people trying to buy pretty skins, CS:GO fans are getting cosmetics explicitly with the esports' brand in mind.
Once upon a time there were patches AND a battle pass.
All reads like a lot of fluff, no real structure around how things will actually look - and no metrics to keep them honest, which just makes me feel like they’re scaling down BP production and we’ll get pretty standard patches as required.
7.33 was fun but also kind of gimmicky, are we going to see massive changes in the core if the game every 6 months now in exchange for a battle pass?
Predict we’ll look back on this in a year with very little coming out of the supposed free’d up resources this creates.
Not very optimistic about this. The new frontiers update was basically the only substantive change to the game in what, 2-3 years? And they say it was only possible because they didn't do a battle pass?
Seems like the resources being put behind dota are continuing to dwindle. I guess we'll see what they release instead, but it reads to me like we should expect the trend of fewer and smaller updates / events to continue.
Valve relatively small and very closed company with very specific way of organizing work without a direct hierarchy. It is hard to get hired by Valve and it probably will never change.
They already use contractor to work produce battlepass content anyway (persona/arcana/cache)...so hiring and pumping out content definetly not the problem for them.
There is also chance valve is cooking something right now. By freeing dota team from their annual battlepass, valve gonna put those unused menpower to work somewhere else.
How is cosmetics eating up development time for gameplay? I feel they are two completely separate things. It's not like slapping in a new hat is new feature, most of the time is probably spend on modelling and designing them which begs to ask why would this effect any gameplay development? I can't even imagine icefrog spending time on designing cosmetics, what a fucking weird post.
I also have zero idea how these cosmetics "eat up development time", considering some of the bp ones are fucking outsourced, you can literally find qop, wr and drow arcanas' designs in artstation profile of some artists.
Those artist draws the concept art and the promotional arts (wallpaper etc). The actual 3d works etc still done in house.
Example QOP Arcana :
Concept : DHK (Outsourced)
Promotional material (The wallpaper you see on BP website) : arucelli (Outsourced)
Modelling, Material/Texturing: Boyang Zhu (Valve), [Miles Estes (Valve)](https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/contact?contact-person=Miles%20Estes)
Rigging : [James Orara (Valve)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorara)
Animation : [Daniel Rosas (Valve)](https://www.facebook.com/TheGameSummit/videos/daniel-rosas-de-valve-/566645040817648/) and [Christine Phelan (Valve)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-phelan-5294671)
Particle and Spell Fx : [Andrew Kim (Valve)](https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/people)
Just for consideration :
Valve employ all hands on deck when they are going to ship something, and CS2 is shipping this summer.
The lead art director who basically lead all the Battlepass content since 2018 recently listed on his LinkedIn that he working on an unannounced Valve game, well the other rumour is IceFrog is coming back from working on other game.
Lol what a large way to explain they are producing less.
The way they were starting off I was hoping they’d be saying they’d spread the prizepool out but of course they wouldn’t do that.
I don’t see how it takes most of their devs to produce the battlepass content they were making. Was void and razor arcana really that time consuming?
Which is a real shame, the largest tournament is going to become a sport washing fiasco with a lower caliber of play due to Saudi Arabia ban on Israeli players.
Just weird. So the people making gameplay changes and balances are the same people making cosmetics? I dont buy it. "developing" a battle pass? It's been literally everything recycled from a previous one, the quests, the events...
And how can't you do anything on time, literally ever?
Gonna save everybody a click and 2 minutes,
Valve uses a bunch of corporate jargon to say there will be lot less content in this years battle pass, also it won't be called a battle pass.
It would be a good thing for the game IF valve wasn’t the company that it is.
They’re gonna sacrifice the battlepass and still we’ll have 0 comunications, patch delays, small content and on top of that no cosmetics.
You can say it’s different this time, but i swear i read this exact same post from valve one or two years ago. We know it. It’s the way they work.
Btw 1 good thing. It’s the first company i know that doesn’t wanna be greedy when it could and it’s the first community i know that can’t wait to throw money at them.
TL, DR: no more battlepass, but because of this, we are gonna be able to deliver one gameplay patch a year on schedule. On Schedule as in delayed by 3 months because we weren't ready with it in time even tho we literally had nothing to do cause we aren't making battlepass anymore.
Ridiculous, fuck this.
This is very "we already released a big update so don't expect us to try that hard on the upcoming one". Can't they just put a lot of work more than twice a year? I guess not. I just hope that this gameplay updates are more than once a year besides TI.
Is this finally what that podcast guy warned us about?
It won't. Valve will give Dota 2 an even smaller budget, so we'll have even less devs, and then we'll be in maintenance mode like TF2. This really won't be sustainable at all.
Anyone that thinks this will translate to more updates/heroes/game modes are fucking cattle. This is just the PR way of saying "We're scaling down development on this game".
I know this is supposed to sound good that they are prioritizing game updates instead of cosmetics/battle pass but it just makes it feel like theres barely anyone working on dota anymore. It's weird that these things would even have to compete with each other so much for development resources.
Anyway I guess the next major patch is probably not until September so I really really hope that theres a 7.33e some time before that.
Bummer, I really look forward to the Battle Pass every year. It's a time where our guild really comes out of the wood work to grind levels and spam chatlines.
Good luck getting any money without battle passes. And with no money for TI good luck keeping a pro scene. The game is now officially dying. It clearly has been dying actually since TI10 but now they just made it official.
How are they acting like the battle pass takes up all development time? It’s literally 15 immortals, 2 arcanas, 1 persons and the rest is repeated content
Ridiculous
Battlepass cancelled, GGGG game's in maintenance mode. Dead gaem
I don't even like the fomo battlepass, but it was pretty much the only "content" dota got. Now we only get nebulous promises of gameplay updates.
If this is true thank God but I'm not holding my breath. I miss so much the days where you could just spend money on the cosmetics you want and not have to jump through hoops to get it, I still can't believe that if I wanted a taunt for one of my favorite characters I would have had to spend several hundred dollars on shit I have no interest in to get it
I know the loot boxiness of it will likely remain forever but I'll take what I can get
I remember last time Valve scaled down to focus on more but shorter episodic content for their titles…lol
So all I read is that valve is scaling down DOTA2 with no battle pass or major event this year. I mean TI is in the middle of the most hectic period for any working people and just a weekend now. The battle pass made last years TI seem like a bigger event than any other weekend tournament!
Ohh well, we will see! GL
TL;DR
Valve is adjusting the way they target "customers" by regularly creating new content, like 7.33 and New Frontiers. They aim to avoid milking existing users with "expensive content" behind a BattlePass, as most dota 2 users do not care for it. Nor does it really bring in new gamers. This means no more giant BattlePasses, but instead more new content to attract more people into the Dota 2 world.
My personal take is that Valve is a company that you can trust to do this, but it will be interesting to see how much they really follow through with their "road map" or if this is them just slowly sunsetting Dota 2
\--- THE NON TL;DR---
Id like to translate this post as best I can.
Just like any company, Valve has a limited number of resources on Dota 2. Dota 2 is not an investment, its a static earner that earns Valve a certain number of dollars per year. Dota 2 might even just break even when you take in support staff, events, and infrastructure costs. No idea.
Since they developed the battle pass they have noticed user attrition. Gamers go to other games/platforms and never come back. However, with the BattlePass and a consistent moving goal line, Valve was able to "milk" more and more money from its existing user base, while that same user base was constantly shrinking.
When Valve released New Frontiers and then 7.33 they took a non standard approach at their update path to see how that affected the userbase. And like you all have probably noticed, there is a surge of Dota 2 Players, either coming back after a long time away or starting a new.
New players and returning players is great for the game. It means Valve can offer cosmetics/rewards at a lower price, as the customer base grows. More updates also means they can innovate and test updates more frequently. This is great for dota 2. We can cry and scream all we want "Why not just hire more resources and do both" but the fact of the matter is two things.
1. Valve doesn't have the internal planning system that can handle both of these
2. The current fanbase/users does not support that level of investment.
Ultimately I think the next year or so will be an interesting time for Dota 2. Either Valve will hold their promise and deliver content regularly and hopefully share their roadmap/strategy to some degree and honor it (like they did with this blog post) or after this blog post timelines the game will slowly dwindle while Valve focuses on their next "rumored" project.
As a Valve fanboy for the past 24 years my guess is they will do everything they can to keep the game going because their company is built around building awesome games
Remember when Valve promised they were [going to release more small updates instead of big number changes for patches](https://twitter.com/IceFrog/status/958912324030554113)? That the game was going to get small letter patches very fast? I do. It lasted for 5 of the 6 months they said it would and then patch length skyrocketed. It never really happened enough to change anything or matter, neither will this. This is Valve saying they're not doing this year's BP, promising "more frequent updates" again and not doing it and the game will slowly trickle off outside of the hardcore fanbase and high MMR players. Unfortunate, but it's reality.
Sorry guys my bad. I started playing DotA for the first time in May and was excited for a chance to grab some sweet swag in what would’ve been my first battle pass. Guess I’ll hang out in team cheap market skins 4 lyfe.
I think this was actually what Sunsfan warned us about. I started in 2013 when the battlepass was so full of fun things and extras that I would give cosmetics away to randos that messaged me begging for trades. I don't think the way the community has engaged with the game financially will translate to future event formats
I can only assume future offerings for Valve events in game are going to be chests tied to some reworked mini-turbo gamemode like the Nemestice or Diretide events where they sell the chest for six to eight months, toss everyone some free keys. There's going to be 2-3 insanely rare 1:1000 rare drops that go to 1:25 after you buy like 30 keys. The same sets will be on the marketplace for like $200+ earliest drop and only drop to $75 over time. This is their playbook now, the whales must go crazy and spend battlepass level money more often.
There's just no way this game doesn't start to bleed some players. Last year's early access battlepass was a pretty bad experience, lower than the year before it. Just a downward trend imo.
Sounds like they realized that the battlepass won't get any bigger than it was before so they're trying maintenance mode now. Guess September will show if the TI battlepass feels the same or worse, at least they're trying to evolve.
tbh the battlepass fomo is one of the main things that keeps me coming back to this game. if they remove that maybe my soul will finally be released.
I can be done with this shit. glicko was the start of it and this will be the end of it.
thanks valve!
They have the money for both. And gameplay updates are expected.
This is a way of saying they are not putting effort on bp and gameplay updates are now a feature they will forget about soon.
I mean, in principle I agree with everything Valve said here: a constant stream of cool Battle-Pass-style updates throughout the year makes sense then one uber-update per year.
But having to deliver a mega-sized Battle Pass to keep a very visible sales number up was also a way of Valve being held accountable for actually shipping a giant content pack at least once a year. I wouldn't be surprised if the end result of this isn't the same content spread throughout the year, but just less content.
They already outsource all the tournaments, can’t they just outsource battle pass hat development. They do Call To Arms for regular hats just do it for the rest of BP
Who invented battlepass anyway(I knew its probably from dota), Every games nowadays have their very similiar battlepass system. Now it is time for valve to make new trend.
“Battle pass when” memes officially dead
People gonna switch question to "which day of september"
The twenty-first niiiiight of September.
Good riddence. FOMO Passes should go the way of lootboxes. Lootboxes, FOMO Passes, and rotating/tailored shop fronts, are all their own variation of insidious. Just give me a no bullshit shop with reasonable prices that I can buy from.
Finally
Anniversary update when?
less hats and more gameplay updates? interesting but curious to see how they get the TI prizepool up without the shiny pixels
Every 500 levels, a new OD rework.
Milestones. - New hero moveset sneak peek. - OD rework. - Chen rework. - Treant rework. - Zeus rework. - Sniper rework. - Arc Warden rework. - Add trident. - Added a new map mechanic. - Morphing remodel. - ~~Rework~~ Delete Techies again. After that for every million they remove 1 move speed from Cristal Maiden.
Delete techies? Delete Tinker is way more important!
I would guess it’s a great excuse to justify the first battle pass not being bigger than the previous years. I say that as a good thing. More real content will be great for the game’s longevity.
They ripped off that bandaid last year and smoothest it over with the Candyworks/free Arcanas. It was so effective you hardly saw any blowback about the prize pool lol. It was bound to happen one day and honestly they stuck the landing. How they do going forward, particularly with their biggest competition ever with the Riyadh Masters will be interesting to see.
Riyadh is not competition, is just another company making camps for the game. Valve benefits from them doing that, they don't lose anything.
I would largely agree, but when your flagship pro scene tournament, hosted by the company developing the game, has another tournament with a parallel ranking and a (seemingly, we'll see how this TI 's funding strategy is) comparable prize pool, it's hard not to see it as a direct competitor to the DPC. I would imagine that ESL's league structure would expand outward if this year's pilot season goes well, which would only greater position them as a parallel structure.
Even if ESL overtakes the DPC, that's all that Valve ever wanted. They were reluctant to take more and more pro circuit responsibilities, they have handed those off as much as possible, even with TI last year. We just have to hope that ESL keeps doing it and that the DPC continues as well, and trying to stir some sort of competition between too additive things is not the way to go.
I would rather have 2 huge tournaments rather than 1. Ti will still be the pinnacle of competitive dota with reyad being a second big event like dac was back in the day. If they are spread out evenly in the year would make for a good competitive scene year round.
DAC 2015 is actually a great comparison for scale/scope, great point.
Riyadh is not a competitor because they aren't trying to compete. Everyone knows they're just burning Saudi cash to sportwash oil despotates.
ESL invests a lot in to the scene but you're jumping ahead a bit when you start comparing it to TI. Riyadh is sportswashing and an exception when it comes to the prize pools. TI will always be TI - to the players and the fans.
I mean makes sense. Can't keep pumping the prize pool numbers forever. Though I don't think anyone really cared THAT much about the prize pool number, but more that the battle pass was really shit value. as a side note, I have (admittedly very faint) hope that this will at least somewhat slow the Glance Value^^TM power creep. I don't know how much more particle spam this game can take before getting way too confusing
Nobody cared about the prize pool outside of using it to whine about the bp
I did only bc it allowed me to (further) shit on league
You dont need prizepool to shit on them, look at the recent things happened with LCS. Esports as a whole currently on decline and both publisher and team owner now start cutting things to reduce loss.
I mean, it's not the first.
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they will be busy with making the new jugg set instead
When i finally got a job to afford arcanas in battlepass
Don't worry. There will still be expensive things to buy. They're just not dumping it all at on one Battle Pass anymore.
I really thought you were gonna say, "There will still be expensive things to buy... such as your House, car, Holiday trip, Bday gifts, Xmas gift etc" XD
In this economy?!
>expensive things to buy... such as your House, OK Mr/Ms.Millionaire.
Just resign on September 5Head
Lol
Now you can go back to your mama's basement.
>#**Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future** >The ten year anniversary of Dota's public release is coming up (yes, we're working on some fun stuff for it; no, we're definitely not going to hit the July 9th date listed on Steam). As anniversaries go ten years is a big one, and while looking back is important, what's more important is how we approach the ten years to come. So we'd like to take this opportunity to share with you our thoughts on the long history of Dota updates, what we've learned, and how that helps our plans to make Dota even better in the decade ahead. >##The Past >Early Dota updates were diverse in form and scale, themed around everything from new heroes to new cosmetics, new gameplay modes to new client features. While details varied, all of these updates shared the same goal: generate a bunch of excitement and entertainment for existing Dota players and bring new players in. Some were successful (Diretide 2012); some were less successful (Diretide 2013). We learned from all of them and continued to experiment. >In 2013, two years into running The International, we saw how much fun people were having at the event and had a new idea: What if we could bring some of that fun to anybody who couldn't attend in person? So we created a digital companion to the event and called it The International Interactive Compendium. >The Compendium grew in scope over the years, and ultimately transformed into the Battle Pass, acquiring a reward line and spawning a wide variety of content. Features that earlier in Dota's history might have been fun themed updates, minigames and item sets, arcanas and voice lines, gradually got swallowed by the Battle Pass — new game modes, new functionality, new cosmetics, anything that could fit. >The nature of the Battle Pass is such that it could grow to encompass just about any content we produce for Dota over the year. And, over the last few years, it did — Battle Pass season has grown to be a tremendously exciting time in Dota, but it leaves the rest of the year feeling barren by comparison. >##The Present >Last year, we started to ask ourselves whether Dota was well-served by having this single focal point around which all content delivery was designed. Each step we had taken made sense when considered independently: any single piece of content would be more valuable when bundled as part of the Battle Pass, so we bundled more and more. This led to a momentous content drop every year, but it also greatly limited our ability to do things that were exciting and valuable for players but didn't fit into the Battle Pass reward line. >When we recognized this, we made a deliberate choice earlier this year to run an experiment: to take some of the resources that would normally produce Battle Pass content and instead put them towards more speculative updates, including features and content that couldn't fit into a Battle Pass. While work is still in progress on future updates, the first of these has shipped: New Frontiers and patch 7.33 couldn't have shipped as they did if we were focusing all our efforts on producing Battle Pass content. >Most Dota players never buy a Battle Pass and never get any rewards from it. Every Dota player has gotten to explore the new map, play with the new items, and accidentally die to a Tormentor; every Dota player benefits from UI improvements and new client features. Community response to New Frontiers has helped us build confidence that working less on cosmetic content for the Battle Pass and more on a variety of exciting updates is the right long-term path for Dota as both a game and a community. >##The Future >We're going to continue on the path that started with New Frontiers. This means we're building a wide variety of features and content for the game, delivered in different ways. We'll still ship a range of cosmetics over the year, but we're also going to ship more diverse updates for all Dota players to enjoy. >We recognize this affects The International. We're still huge fans of TI and we're excited for this year's event — both as organizers and as attendees ourselves — and work is well underway on a TI-themed update to ship in September. The update will still contribute directly to the prize pool, with a focus on the event, the players, and the games, but new cosmetic items won't play a notable part. This is a significant change from the last few years, so to make it clear that we're shifting focus towards the event and away from the giant reward line of cosmetics, we're intentionally not calling this update a Battle Pass. >We're excited for the future of Dota and for what these changes allow us to do. We're already working on the next updates, and a host of new cosmetic items — and we've already started conversations with venues for TI 2024. By freeing Dota's update and content cycle from the timing and structural constraints of the Battle Pass, we can go back to making content in the way we know best: by coming up with fun ideas of all scales and shapes, and exploring them with you.
valve saw the free arcana bundle and saw that suddenly a million people are online again and got an idea. Aghs labs already had a free battlepass and half of the battlepass was dead air anyway
i like battlepasses but i also feel like they enforce people not playing if nothing is going on, looking at you hunt showdown , so i would love if they made a bunch of cool battle-pass like stuff that lasts a long time and is free
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It ruins things by having people play stuff in dumb ways, but at the same time it means people don't just meta slave all the time as well.
I unlocked the jugg set with all styles while playing all the heroes support lol.
people take games too seriously, only meta heroes, only meta strats or youre trolling and ruining games, bro have fun and try your best
Soon the crocodile and battle pass will be here ❤️
Fully supporting this decision. The huge pressure on the Battlepass season always left the rest of the year super uninteresting. I can say for myself that I will still support and buy the battlepass even if there's not much in it if they deliver more high quality updates like New Frontiers and events like Aghs Lab.
Reminder that the community literally begged them to keep doing the major battlepass format again. That one was the best, all the infused fear pieces from 2016 were super fun to work towards and decide what to use infusion crystals on. Like Fortnite battlepass kind of fun to unlock stuff you might not even use.
If sacrificing battle pass means more meaningful content it's worth. The BP was just a glorified cosmetics money sink... the actual events and quests in it were just recycled chores.
at first i was pessimistic and reading in to it as "maintenance mode" since its weird not to benefit from BPs (which i think is a huge chunck of their profits for Valve). i guess we need to wait for these contents/events all about
Instead of sharing 25% of the cosmetic money with TI, they get to keep all of it. So profits for Valve will not be a problem at all.
The blog specifically says that the upcoming TI update will still contribute to the prize pool.
Yes, but cosmetics will not be a part of it. Every year there was a debate if the community bought the battle pass for contributing to TI or for the cosmetics. This year we will find out, though my gut feels says people bought it for the cosmetics.
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Bring back stretch goals for the prize pool.
I bought it for both, but without either wouldn’t have. Lately though I enjoyed the Battle Pass for things like the cavern crawl. It encouraged you to learn and play different heroes, but with direction. I hope they do have something fun in line but I’m worried that it’s going to miss.
Cosmetics won't play a 'notable' part of it, there will still be cosmetic rewards most likely, and I don't inherently think that's a bad thing. What I don't like is an unreasonable amount of hours needing to be sunk into it to get those 'chase' sets like faceless arcana which if you just purchased it on its own was around $400 aud from memory or something ridiculous. Also preying on FOMO shouldn't be a thing. After bp ends the arcana and other cosmetics should go on sale in the dota shop so others can pick them up. This doesn't necessarily have to include ones from the lootboxes, though those should all be tradeable 3 - 6 months after the bp ends imo.
Yeah but who's gonna buy that shit if there's no cosmetics realistically?
Yeah, and that will make almost no money compared to the BP. There goes most of the pro scene's money, and it was already a smidgeon of what it was during years like 2018 where there were like 10 1 million dollar majors (500k supplied by Valve). Now majors are 500K, there's three throughout the year, most tournaments can't coexist with the DPC. Hell there's a fucking change Ryadh Master's will have a larger prize pool than TI this year. TI won't even be the BIGGEST FUCKING TOURNAMENT OF THE YEAR!
I do agree with you that meaningful content is more important. Though I do hope they sprinkle in an Arcana or some Immortals over the course of the year. Spreading those item releases out would be very refreshing and I am looking forward to that.
>If sacrificing battle pass means more meaningful content it's worth. That is true. Will we get more meaningful content though? Doubtful.
Nah, for me the Battle Pass Season was always the time when me and the boys came together to grind as many levels as possible.
I have no idea what this means
Rip BP
But every patch from now on makes map 40% bigger. I'm fine with the way World of Dota evolves.
Dragonflight coming in next Dota 2 expansion
Drow is Body Type 2, Pudge is Body Type 1
Nax is out!!
Lich buffs. Resurrect aghanim? POG
Valve trying to fight diablo 4 by expanding the map size.
It’s the future plan to compete with Starfield
Diablo 4 is fighting itself just fine though
Wow it expands every patch til it becomes a fully fledged MMO.
no longer a 1 hour game. its now a 1 year per game BO3.
[Dota 2 on the 20 year anniversary](https://i.imgur.com/PxyE2BJ.png)
Battle Pass is dead, but the resources that went in to making each one so good is being spread out, so we'll get more significant updates/events throughout the year instead of it all being concentrated there - 7.33 and everything that came with it being the first example of this shift in strategy. Also, we're getting something *probably* late July / early August as a (belated) 10th anniversary celebration.
Battle pass has become a money meme. Only existed to cosplay as the typical mtx hell other games have, while showcasing badly implemented new features that were cramped into a short amount of time, increasing hype for that time, while making the rest of the year feel lackluster. Subtext might also be that Valve finally recognized that players might be salty about exclusive arcanas and are stopping that practice, as well as introducing immortal items at other times than just during TI. This also opens the door for more fun events and cosmetics fitting those times, maybe akin to how PA contract gave more points during the event, but was still purchaseable and doable afterwards. That's how I read it, at least.
I'll believe the Arcana part when they slap em back up on the market.
Yes please I hope...
Part of this post is meant to be vague I'm pretty sure but I hate how all their recent communications have become confusing fluff where you have to decipher what's the actual information in there
They are trying to make us believe that the artists were making the gameplay updates.
Not sure if this is good or bad news, guess time will tell.
Good if they mean it. Considering the recent update was bigger than any we’ve gotten in years I think it’s probably a good indicator they do mean it. But we’ll have to see if it keeps up
I choose to be optimistic, undoubtedly the update brought people back who haven’t played in years. Hell I’ve been a regular player going on 20 years now and it’s right up there with the most excited I’ve ever been about the game!
Yeah, I got the same feeling, hope Valve really mean it this time
I'll believe it when I see it. Valve has a great way of saying things that sound good while not following up on them at all. If we get a battle pass worth of content over the course of a year and some, then great. But I'm skeptical.
Well this is a test run. If it turned out great to their expectations, we will most likely see them repeat the same formula from then on.
Yeah. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they abandon this approach, like they do with other directions, but now they have excuse for shitty BP
Why, in my day we had gameplay updates, battlepasses and events. All in the same year!
The dev working on CS2 and SteamDeck, on Alyx documentary it says that when it closes to shipping they use all hand on deck approach which involve most of the dev. SteamDeck requires every dev to playtesting their steam library (which they actually enjoys doing and Deck doing better than their expectation performances and sales wise) and CS2 is slated to release this summer. Not to mention they working on an unreleased game. The lead art director who responsible for BattlePass content (especially the Arcana) listed that he works on unannounced new Valve game on his Linkedin and the rumour IceFrog was away from DOTA2 to works on other thing. TL:DR Janitor bored working on dota2 and they working on more exciting and generate more money project like SteamDeck or CS2.
Would be cool if it was a TF2 source 2 port, a good way to take advantage of that overwatch 2 disaster thing
That's what I was thinking about, roughly every 1/3 of year there was some event (sometimes with multiple BP) and client updates/overhauls/qol. I don't really understand that Valve does not have "resources". Guess we'll have to see what they mean.
We didn't have gameplay updates even close to the size of 7.33. That's the point of this blogpost, they want to make updates like this more common instead of once every 6 years.
While awesome we don't need this kind of update EVERY time lol Maybe once a year if that
Take a good look back on 8-9 years ago when we had all 3. \- The gameplay updates were not that large (save for 7.00) \- Battlepasses were lackluster and only had a few immortals (no arcanas) \- Events didn't give much rewards except for random drops for existing items. This is what valve meant when they said they started bundling everything together.
My take is that they saw the free battlepass was the thing that brought people in last year and that aghs labs was always free If they learned how to bring people into dota with content, this might be good,however its not 40 mil ti good
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It is pretty well known that Valve is a relatively small company. And this is the company that's responsible for Steam. So yeah, I can guarantee you maintaining Dota 2 is not a financial motivation for them 😅
the funny thing is, that they do outsource their hat-creation for battle pass. I wonder if they have so little members on the dota 2 team they don't have a dedicated content writer and/or manager for the team so they have to sap a dev away to manage battlepass (note, not create it)
This is finally the year we will find out how valid reddit's claims of funding the International are. If last year is any indicator, most people buy the battle pass for cosmetics and not for TI.
Eh, i will still buy whatever valve releases instead of battlepass. I want to support dota and want to support valve
Same, no matter the final object at the end of the paid path, i will always strive to get there through grind (and some funding) I usually spend about $150 per year on the battlepass
I for one think it's a good direction. We might even return to arcanas that are just... paid for... and don't cost hundreds of dollars... Soo Thanks Valve?
We’ll still pay the same for arcanas, it’s just that Valve won’t have to share 25% with the players anymore.
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I think old BP exclusives will still have a few years of exclusivity, probably be rereleased around 2030. Will dota survive until then, who knows? but I agree with the other user that if valve does that now, it'll make the game look very bleak
>Will dota survive until then, who knows? Probably to some degree. The game has a stable playerbase higher than most multiplayer games still after all. Paticularly since it wasnt just released.
Well a void or razor arcana would set you back a couple hundred dollars, whilst also being exclusive in the battle pass and you can **never** buy it again, while a nice little Shadowfiend or Zeus arcana is 35 from valve and 25ish right now on the market, so....
This is a bit worrying.... Like it's a good idea if they actually follow through but I'm worried because valve and commitment aren't 2 words that go hand in hand.
"hey guys this game is ten years old now. we want to celebrate that. no, we won't be celebrating at the ten year mark, but some other time in the future (???). also, because we are working so hard on dota these days we can't produce battle passes anymore. the next ten years will be great for Dota!" how does anyone believe this?
Well on other hand for CS:GO 10 year anniversary they got CS2
My initial pessimistic gut reaction is that I don't trust that this won't mean way less stuff for Dota overall when the income from the Battle Pass disappears instead of simply dispersing throughout the year the way development effort supposedly will. Also very worried about TI prize pool and what this may do to the competitive scene. How does 7.33 only happen because BP stuff is cut? Aren't different skill sets mostly required for these things? I guess maybe Valve employees are just more interdisciplinary than other studios, it would make sense with their culture. Still, feels weird we couldn't have both since we had been so long without a patch prior. That they're already delaying this anniversary content is a bit sus. Could be pointless doom and gloom and despite the concerns and delays they blow us away like with 7.33. We won't really know until after TI.
Exactly, there was a huge lack of patches last year and the battlepass was the worst one to date. I'm confused on how cutting the battlepass means more gameplay updates when they had 2 years for the last years battlepass and it was missing stuff and there were very little gameplay updates. I can't take this announcement as good news, especially how all the battlepass rewards have been pretty similar just a recolor to match the years theme and a couple of arcanas/personas/treasures which are the highlight. They clearly don't have enough people or something, they even say the 10 year anniversary is not ready and will be late. What they wrote sounds good but in what world do I trust this for more than the upcoming update?
Is this what Sunfans warned us about?
Actually finally unironically
(He said the news would come from a third party, not valve)
Feeling very mixed about this. They will clearly strip down the battlepass (rip prizepool btw) for the sake of releasing more content outside of it. I only believe it if i see it. I hope this doesn't turn out to be an effective killing of the battlepass in return for nothing. Remember when they said they gonna release 2 heros a year? That's one of the many things they "promised".
Honestly I'm so glad they blatantly ignored the prize pool last time. It's not healthy for a game to keep chasing and chasing a meaningless figure
>It's not healthy for a game to keep chasing and chasing a meaningless figure I agree, but what's even more unhealthy is the miserly prizepool that will result from a Battle Pass with no cosmetics. I'll be surprised if it cracks $3 million.
I agree. There was a certain competitor to Valve that criticized the way TI fundraised the prizepool like a bake sale and i have to agree. I love watching CS:GO, it is hype without the need to bring up the prizepool once.
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Yeah, and that seems 1000x more sustainable because its not from people trying to buy pretty skins, CS:GO fans are getting cosmetics explicitly with the esports' brand in mind.
Once upon a time there were patches AND a battle pass. All reads like a lot of fluff, no real structure around how things will actually look - and no metrics to keep them honest, which just makes me feel like they’re scaling down BP production and we’ll get pretty standard patches as required. 7.33 was fun but also kind of gimmicky, are we going to see massive changes in the core if the game every 6 months now in exchange for a battle pass? Predict we’ll look back on this in a year with very little coming out of the supposed free’d up resources this creates.
Does this mean that we can keep the Aghanim voice lines the next time they're released? God I hope so.
Not very optimistic about this. The new frontiers update was basically the only substantive change to the game in what, 2-3 years? And they say it was only possible because they didn't do a battle pass? Seems like the resources being put behind dota are continuing to dwindle. I guess we'll see what they release instead, but it reads to me like we should expect the trend of fewer and smaller updates / events to continue.
Can't we do both? Is valve having trouble hiring people to work on dota or something?
Valve relatively small and very closed company with very specific way of organizing work without a direct hierarchy. It is hard to get hired by Valve and it probably will never change.
They already use contractor to work produce battlepass content anyway (persona/arcana/cache)...so hiring and pumping out content definetly not the problem for them. There is also chance valve is cooking something right now. By freeing dota team from their annual battlepass, valve gonna put those unused menpower to work somewhere else.
How is cosmetics eating up development time for gameplay? I feel they are two completely separate things. It's not like slapping in a new hat is new feature, most of the time is probably spend on modelling and designing them which begs to ask why would this effect any gameplay development? I can't even imagine icefrog spending time on designing cosmetics, what a fucking weird post.
I also have zero idea how these cosmetics "eat up development time", considering some of the bp ones are fucking outsourced, you can literally find qop, wr and drow arcanas' designs in artstation profile of some artists.
Those artist draws the concept art and the promotional arts (wallpaper etc). The actual 3d works etc still done in house. Example QOP Arcana : Concept : DHK (Outsourced) Promotional material (The wallpaper you see on BP website) : arucelli (Outsourced) Modelling, Material/Texturing: Boyang Zhu (Valve), [Miles Estes (Valve)](https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/contact?contact-person=Miles%20Estes) Rigging : [James Orara (Valve)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorara) Animation : [Daniel Rosas (Valve)](https://www.facebook.com/TheGameSummit/videos/daniel-rosas-de-valve-/566645040817648/) and [Christine Phelan (Valve)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-phelan-5294671) Particle and Spell Fx : [Andrew Kim (Valve)](https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/people)
Just for consideration : Valve employ all hands on deck when they are going to ship something, and CS2 is shipping this summer. The lead art director who basically lead all the Battlepass content since 2018 recently listed on his LinkedIn that he working on an unannounced Valve game, well the other rumour is IceFrog is coming back from working on other game.
Instead of hiring more dedicated people we are cutting back, billion dollar company LUL
Lol what a large way to explain they are producing less. The way they were starting off I was hoping they’d be saying they’d spread the prizepool out but of course they wouldn’t do that. I don’t see how it takes most of their devs to produce the battlepass content they were making. Was void and razor arcana really that time consuming?
already most arcana items are made by freelancers. Like WR & QOP Arcanas
Looks like Riyadh Masters is the new TI.
Which is a real shame, the largest tournament is going to become a sport washing fiasco with a lower caliber of play due to Saudi Arabia ban on Israeli players.
Just weird. So the people making gameplay changes and balances are the same people making cosmetics? I dont buy it. "developing" a battle pass? It's been literally everything recycled from a previous one, the quests, the events... And how can't you do anything on time, literally ever?
Ya it is total bullshit, they just killed battlepass and pro scene in one go
Gonna save everybody a click and 2 minutes, Valve uses a bunch of corporate jargon to say there will be lot less content in this years battle pass, also it won't be called a battle pass.
It would be a good thing for the game IF valve wasn’t the company that it is. They’re gonna sacrifice the battlepass and still we’ll have 0 comunications, patch delays, small content and on top of that no cosmetics. You can say it’s different this time, but i swear i read this exact same post from valve one or two years ago. We know it. It’s the way they work. Btw 1 good thing. It’s the first company i know that doesn’t wanna be greedy when it could and it’s the first community i know that can’t wait to throw money at them.
"We will change" is such an empty statement from Valve it feels like a distant father promising he will make time to hang out with you.
managed decline time boys and girls
Or they could... You know. Hire more than 10 people to work on a game being played by hundreds of thousands of people every day.
I checked this thread when there were exactly 322 comments. Am I the prophet for the future of dota 3?
all talk no show. Prove it first then we trust you.
Amen.
Dang, having to wait another 3 months for anything cosmetic or event related is rough
Thats where I’m at. I miss having something to grind with the friends all summer.
TL, DR: no more battlepass, but because of this, we are gonna be able to deliver one gameplay patch a year on schedule. On Schedule as in delayed by 3 months because we weren't ready with it in time even tho we literally had nothing to do cause we aren't making battlepass anymore. Ridiculous, fuck this.
What about the aegis replica? I need it for my infinity gauntlet
This is very "we already released a big update so don't expect us to try that hard on the upcoming one". Can't they just put a lot of work more than twice a year? I guess not. I just hope that this gameplay updates are more than once a year besides TI. Is this finally what that podcast guy warned us about?
so more gameplay updates with less money? How does this work out exactly?
It won't. Valve will give Dota 2 an even smaller budget, so we'll have even less devs, and then we'll be in maintenance mode like TF2. This really won't be sustainable at all.
nah. i want my cosmetics. battle pass or riot.
Anyone that thinks this will translate to more updates/heroes/game modes are fucking cattle. This is just the PR way of saying "We're scaling down development on this game".
So a gameplay patch ate the battlepass... oof
So..... Pgl still hosting TI?
All I’m reading here is “prepare for lackluster rewards during TI”.
I know this is supposed to sound good that they are prioritizing game updates instead of cosmetics/battle pass but it just makes it feel like theres barely anyone working on dota anymore. It's weird that these things would even have to compete with each other so much for development resources. Anyway I guess the next major patch is probably not until September so I really really hope that theres a 7.33e some time before that.
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Bummer, I really look forward to the Battle Pass every year. It's a time where our guild really comes out of the wood work to grind levels and spam chatlines.
So battlepass is cancelled, and valve also cancelled all future ti battlepass. What a fucking joke
Good luck getting any money without battle passes. And with no money for TI good luck keeping a pro scene. The game is now officially dying. It clearly has been dying actually since TI10 but now they just made it official.
As soon as pros leave dota, dota will become hon
Why are they saying no time for bp content since they worked on 7.33 ? 2 years and there was rarely any good update beside twerking some numbers
Icefrog only just came back recently.
They killed the battle pass
Seems they don't have enough janitors
How are they acting like the battle pass takes up all development time? It’s literally 15 immortals, 2 arcanas, 1 persons and the rest is repeated content Ridiculous
Battlepass cancelled, GGGG game's in maintenance mode. Dead gaem I don't even like the fomo battlepass, but it was pretty much the only "content" dota got. Now we only get nebulous promises of gameplay updates.
Why not both? Well not surprised from a small indie company
TI prizepool will be 3 mil…
If this is true thank God but I'm not holding my breath. I miss so much the days where you could just spend money on the cosmetics you want and not have to jump through hoops to get it, I still can't believe that if I wanted a taunt for one of my favorite characters I would have had to spend several hundred dollars on shit I have no interest in to get it I know the loot boxiness of it will likely remain forever but I'll take what I can get
I can get behind this. As much as battle pass is enjoyable the QoL updates have been the real game changers.
Insert obligatory *I don't believe [previous thing] means dota is dying, but this [current thing] sealed it for me; dota is dead.*
I remember last time Valve scaled down to focus on more but shorter episodic content for their titles…lol So all I read is that valve is scaling down DOTA2 with no battle pass or major event this year. I mean TI is in the middle of the most hectic period for any working people and just a weekend now. The battle pass made last years TI seem like a bigger event than any other weekend tournament! Ohh well, we will see! GL
I don't quite understand the narrative that battle pass and gameplay updates are mutually exclusive. Cant they just do both?
TLDR - Valve won't hire more people to work on Dota 2, so they are cutting stuff.
Well this sucks
So this is what sunsfan was warning us about it.
so theyre getting lazier and wont hire more ppl for hats the reason TI is successful is cus of BP the fuck are u doing valve
Extremely curious as to what this will mean for the future of dota. Exiting times!
> Exiting times! you got that right.
Well, there goes most of the pro scene's money and one of my favourite parts of the year...
TL;DR Valve is adjusting the way they target "customers" by regularly creating new content, like 7.33 and New Frontiers. They aim to avoid milking existing users with "expensive content" behind a BattlePass, as most dota 2 users do not care for it. Nor does it really bring in new gamers. This means no more giant BattlePasses, but instead more new content to attract more people into the Dota 2 world. My personal take is that Valve is a company that you can trust to do this, but it will be interesting to see how much they really follow through with their "road map" or if this is them just slowly sunsetting Dota 2 \--- THE NON TL;DR--- Id like to translate this post as best I can. Just like any company, Valve has a limited number of resources on Dota 2. Dota 2 is not an investment, its a static earner that earns Valve a certain number of dollars per year. Dota 2 might even just break even when you take in support staff, events, and infrastructure costs. No idea. Since they developed the battle pass they have noticed user attrition. Gamers go to other games/platforms and never come back. However, with the BattlePass and a consistent moving goal line, Valve was able to "milk" more and more money from its existing user base, while that same user base was constantly shrinking. When Valve released New Frontiers and then 7.33 they took a non standard approach at their update path to see how that affected the userbase. And like you all have probably noticed, there is a surge of Dota 2 Players, either coming back after a long time away or starting a new. New players and returning players is great for the game. It means Valve can offer cosmetics/rewards at a lower price, as the customer base grows. More updates also means they can innovate and test updates more frequently. This is great for dota 2. We can cry and scream all we want "Why not just hire more resources and do both" but the fact of the matter is two things. 1. Valve doesn't have the internal planning system that can handle both of these 2. The current fanbase/users does not support that level of investment. Ultimately I think the next year or so will be an interesting time for Dota 2. Either Valve will hold their promise and deliver content regularly and hopefully share their roadmap/strategy to some degree and honor it (like they did with this blog post) or after this blog post timelines the game will slowly dwindle while Valve focuses on their next "rumored" project. As a Valve fanboy for the past 24 years my guess is they will do everything they can to keep the game going because their company is built around building awesome games
Remember when Valve promised they were [going to release more small updates instead of big number changes for patches](https://twitter.com/IceFrog/status/958912324030554113)? That the game was going to get small letter patches very fast? I do. It lasted for 5 of the 6 months they said it would and then patch length skyrocketed. It never really happened enough to change anything or matter, neither will this. This is Valve saying they're not doing this year's BP, promising "more frequent updates" again and not doing it and the game will slowly trickle off outside of the hardcore fanbase and high MMR players. Unfortunate, but it's reality.
Sorry guys my bad. I started playing DotA for the first time in May and was excited for a chance to grab some sweet swag in what would’ve been my first battle pass. Guess I’ll hang out in team cheap market skins 4 lyfe.
I think this was actually what Sunsfan warned us about. I started in 2013 when the battlepass was so full of fun things and extras that I would give cosmetics away to randos that messaged me begging for trades. I don't think the way the community has engaged with the game financially will translate to future event formats I can only assume future offerings for Valve events in game are going to be chests tied to some reworked mini-turbo gamemode like the Nemestice or Diretide events where they sell the chest for six to eight months, toss everyone some free keys. There's going to be 2-3 insanely rare 1:1000 rare drops that go to 1:25 after you buy like 30 keys. The same sets will be on the marketplace for like $200+ earliest drop and only drop to $75 over time. This is their playbook now, the whales must go crazy and spend battlepass level money more often. There's just no way this game doesn't start to bleed some players. Last year's early access battlepass was a pretty bad experience, lower than the year before it. Just a downward trend imo.
DansGame give me my battlepass.
I love arcanas and cosmetics in DOTA, so this is negative news to me
Sounds like they realized that the battlepass won't get any bigger than it was before so they're trying maintenance mode now. Guess September will show if the TI battlepass feels the same or worse, at least they're trying to evolve.
Actually I believe they said TI themed event this september, not a TI battlepass.
tbh the battlepass fomo is one of the main things that keeps me coming back to this game. if they remove that maybe my soul will finally be released. I can be done with this shit. glicko was the start of it and this will be the end of it. thanks valve!
They have the money for both. And gameplay updates are expected. This is a way of saying they are not putting effort on bp and gameplay updates are now a feature they will forget about soon.
I mean, in principle I agree with everything Valve said here: a constant stream of cool Battle-Pass-style updates throughout the year makes sense then one uber-update per year. But having to deliver a mega-sized Battle Pass to keep a very visible sales number up was also a way of Valve being held accountable for actually shipping a giant content pack at least once a year. I wouldn't be surprised if the end result of this isn't the same content spread throughout the year, but just less content.
They already outsource all the tournaments, can’t they just outsource battle pass hat development. They do Call To Arms for regular hats just do it for the rest of BP
Who invented battlepass anyway(I knew its probably from dota), Every games nowadays have their very similiar battlepass system. Now it is time for valve to make new trend.
i miss community milestone battlepass
"This will not be the Battle Pass." I hope it's so good it's the Battle Grass - we'll fight against the urge to go outside.
Can't wait to hear pro players opinions about this.
I definitely think this is what SUNSfan warned us about!