Dota 2 adds 'Least Played' mode
Now that Dota 2 is up to a whopping 96 characters, it's a fair bet that a good proportion of them are something of a mystery to most of its 3 million players. To help introduce you to a few more, without the fear of being stomped by people playing their best heroes, Valve added a new mode in yesterday's weekly patch that forces everyone to choose one of their least-played Doters.
Now that Dota 2 is up to a whopping 96 characters, it's a fair bet that a good proportion of them are something of a mystery to most of its 3 million players. To help introduce you to a few more, without the fear of being stomped by people playing their best heroes, Valve added a new mode in yesterday's weekly patch that forces everyone to choose one of their least-played Doters.
'Least Played Mode' disables each player's top 20 heroes with the most wins so they have to pick a character they don't play very often, or at least are not very good at. "Having an even playing field for everyone in the match will hopefully encourage players to break out of their comfort zone and try new heroes," Valve said in a blog post.
The patch also brought goodies including bug fixes and bots for Warlock and Drow Ranger. It adds a lot to the Dota 2 Steam Workshop tools too. Industrious community creators can now make couriers and wards, and items for Centaur Warrunner, Batrider, Mirana, Keeper of the Light, Shadow Demon, and Slark, with a shot at getting them into the game.
Dota 2 is still technically in closed beta, though it's a pretty large-scale one as Valve also revealed yesterday that it sees "over 3 million unique players every month." If you know someone in the beta, they probably have a spare invite or two, or you can buy an early access package which includes loads of cosmetic items for the free-to-play game.
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Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Dota 2 adds 'Least Played' mode.
Now that Dota 2 is up to a whopping 96 characters, it's a fair bet that a good proportion of them are something of a mystery to most of its 3 million players. To help introduce you to a few more, without the fear of being stomped by people playing their best heroes, Valve added a new mode in yesterday's weekly patch that forces everyone to choose one of their least-played Doters.-
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Single draft mode seems to be a better solution since it forces you to choose between 3 characters. Since I'm an early player I haven't played most of the characters so it forced me to get out of my comfort zone.
I ended up playing Luna and Broodmother for the first time and really liked both of them compared to me playing Jakiro and Venomancer for so long as support.-
I've mostly played Single Draft this past week, but it seems even fewer people play support in SD than in AP. Which is problematic. Players also seem far less concerned with issues like having four melee heroes. They tend to go straight for a role they recognise and know and feel comfortable with (hitting things until they fall over) rather than trying unconventional heroes. Or playing support, you total arses.
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I've been going straight for characters I am afraid of or haven't played before, to the determent of my team. You get shitty team makeups in SD because a) limited pool of characters to choose from but b) it's tough to communicate what is available to everyone at the picking stage. I wish they'd add something to the interface that shows you the options everyone else on your team has and lets you hover over their choices to get details (like HoN).
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Single draft has another problem: It's really hard to get the communication going in any team to see what is the 15 heroes available, and who should pick what to have the best team.
Theoretically, it could work.
Everyone should say what their 3 heroes are, then should decide what to pick based on everyone else's selection, but it's a nightmare, even when you have 3-4 friends in the game.
The outcome is almost always an awful team. -
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