New Year Wishlist – DOTABUFF

For the past couple of years, Dota has gotten huge core updates in the early spring, and that’s what spoiled us. After the big increase in map size two years ago and the Facet update last year, we’re hoping for something similar in scope this year as well, and today, instead of focusing on the minor balance issues that still exist in the game, we’d like to dream big and start a conversation about what could be possible. This year’s updates bring it to Dota.

The Great Confluence has been teased for about six years at this point and the general consensus across the community at the time was that it hinted at bringing heroes from the Heroes of Newerth universe into Dota. This idea is very optimistic, but today we are dreaming big, aren’t we?

However, there are good reasons to believe that this could realistically happen. IceFrog has worked on HoN in the past and is full of interesting builds that could work in Dota with minor modifications.

There is of course the issue of spin rates and casting points, which were much faster in HoN in early 2010, however it is something that can be adjusted during the transition period. Furthermore, Dota itself has become significantly faster over the years and turnover rates have been steadily rising since 2015, culminating in increased turnover of the entire champion pool. Again in 2021.

It’s not like Dota players are hungry for new heroes, at least not in the past year, but when there are dozens of Dota-friendly builds already tested in Dota-like conditions, one has to wonder why at least some fan-favorites, Like Puppet Master, it hasn’t really become our favorite game.

Finally, the reason we’re reminded of the Great Confluence and how it could theoretically be connected to Neuwirth’s Heroes is this very recent tweet. There’s something going on with the HoN universe, and as a fan of HoN back in the day and a huge Dota fan today, I’m hoping that these two universes will become more closely connected.

Public conversations about Great Convergence began with the introduction of the Void Spirit into the game, as it was his voice lines that began to spark the concept. Dota has many different and interesting storylines and since we’ve gotten a huge focus on lore Fall of the crown This year, it’s probably reasonable to assume that we’ll get something similar this year.

Perhaps “assume” is the wrong word, and perhaps “hope” would be more appropriate, as is the case Fall of the crown It was great and we can’t get enough of the lore dumps, although we realize there was probably a lot of work to do, between all the writing and all the mini-games (no more fishing in the sand, please).

A Fall of the crownThe epic adventure centered around the Spirit Brothers is probably the one we want most. All four heroes are consistently played regardless of patch, as they are great fun to play in pubs, while having strong design identities to always find themselves viable in the pro scene.

The Arcanas of at least some of the Spirit Brothers are long overdue, with my personal hope being that we’ll see the return of the Storm Spirit that was full before his cosmetic rework. In a way, he feels more connected to me personally.

We’ve talked about potential new cosmetic content and potential new hero content, but that’s just an added flavor to what makes Dota great. The reason most of us love Dota is because it’s a deep, engaging game that’s endlessly replayable. This is not going anywhere and the meta continues to evolve despite the lack of major corrections for a long time.

However, we wouldn’t mind another big change. Of course, there is still a lot of work to be done with the Facet system. It’s great, but the higher the level of play, the more cracks start to appear: in most cases, there’s a “good” side and a “unreliable” side, as opposed to being situational and allowing for adaptation. However, getting something that will radically change the approach to the game, rather than balance tweaks, is something we are hoping for this year.

Here’s the problem: Dota is already an incredibly complex and deep game and changing its fundamentals will always be difficult. There are likely hundreds of different variables to tweak and systems to rework, so guessing what Valve might be cooking up is unlikely to yield accurate results.

So we’re going to ask you, the community, what ideas and changes you’d like to see in Dota. Personally, some map changes and some additional points of interest would be nice, and maybe something could be done about the neutral camp ban, as I, as a support player, am tired of constantly paying the guard tax during the lane phase.