- Matchmade lobbies will no longer share the account information of any members until the lobby is accepted by all players.
- Fixed certain cases where Revenant's Brooch would still allow critical hits.
Dota 2
Dota 2 Update 3/28/2024
Gameplay Patch 7.35d And Matchmaking Features
We've just released Gameplay Patch 7.35d (Chen had it coming), and with it a new set of features.
Matchmaking Hero Ban Rework
Over the last year or so, we've taken a number of visible actions against users of third-party cheats. As we investigate each cheat, we're primarily focused on understanding what they're doing and how we can track and stop it. But while we're doing that, we also ask ourselves why some cheaters feel compelled to use these tools in the first place. The most common explanation is "to get an unfair advantage", which obviously runs counter to the desires of the Dota community and the sense of competitiveness and fairness at its heart. Even so, sometimes there are still things we can learn, and use to improve the Dota experience for everyone (or at least everyone who hasn't been banned for cheating).
Pre-game hero bans are an example of this. Many cheats last year focused on gaining an advantage during the ten-second hero ban phase at the start of each game. We stepped back to look at the original goals of this phase — letting players express a preference for what heroes they didn't want to play against, but without creating scenarios where players with small hero pools get permanently locked out — looked at some data, and asked if there was a way we could better serve these goals while solving other problems at the same time.
With today's update, we've removed the start-of-match ban phase and replaced it with ban preferences stored with your account. If you load the heroes tab, you can select the four heroes you don't want to see in your games. You're guaranteed when you join a matchmaking game that at least one of them will be banned. You can change your list of banned heroes whenever you want. (If you leave some ban slots empty, it's possible the empty slot will be selected as your "banned hero". In other words, there's no advantage to leaving slots empty.)
This new system addresses a number of problems the previous system had: you can't forget to ban; you don't have to learn that sometimes suggested bans are ignored by the game; you're not on a tight clock to make a stressful decision that, in the end, most players make the same way almost all the time. As an added bonus, it also makes targeted bans impossible, whether those bans are against known personalities or random players in a pub match for which you've looked up data.
Some game modes (ie., Captains Mode, Captains Draft, Ability Draft, Turbo) either didn't have a pre-game ban phase, or already had non-standard ban rules. These modes are unchanged.
Dota Plus Pre-Match Matchmaker Analytics
Millions of Dota players interact with the matchmaker every day and every single one has different priorities when looking for a game. Some prefer to get into a match as quickly as possible, and are willing to accept a higher skill variance in the game to save some time. Others want every match to be perfectly balanced, and are willing to wait longer for the best chance at the closest game. Other players care less about the skill level of the other players, and much more about their personality and behavior in-game.
We've long wanted to build features to let players find matches that better align with their individual preferences. Early attempts ran into two main problems:
- First, while players are good at describing their preferences to other people, they aren't necessarily good at describing their preferences as inputs to a complex, global matchmaking algorithm ("I value skill variance 13% higher than the average Dota player!"). How can we create tools that let players express their preferences naturally and directly?
- Second, changes to the matchmaker affect all Dota players, so we tend toward caution. The matchmaker is always trying to strike a balance between individual player preferences and the health of Dota as a whole. (If matches of Dota are bad, whether because of wild skill gaps or poor player behavior, that's bad for Dota as a community. If every match is perfect, but takes three hours to form, that's bad, too.) New matchmaker features available to everyone at once risk breaking the matchmaker, and if we break the matchmaker, we break Dota. How can we ship new matchmaking features and learn how they work in practice while keeping risk to Dota as a whole low?
Within the new experimental umbrella of Dota Labs, and initially limited to Dota Plus, we're shipping a first pass of a feature that Dota players have been asking us for forever: When you find a match in Dota, Dota Plus will present some information about how the matchmaker evaluated the match, like an estimate of skill range and player behavior scores. You'll have a chance to accept that match or requeue to wait for a match that's better for you and your current preferences.
We were careful when building this feature to make sure that any information we included would enable players to express individual preferences about what kinds of matches they prefer, but not grant a competitive advantage of any kind. The new dialog can tell you that the skill variance of players in a match is high or low, but not whether you and your team are on the high end or the low end.
Why is this a Dota Labs feature? The only way to know for sure how millions of Dota players are going to interact with a feature is to ship it, so that's what we're doing. We've done extensive modeling, but there's still real risk here: We may be wrong about how players will use this feature or how it will affect the overall matchmaking experience in Dota. We don't want to let those fears that we might be wrong stop us from doing something that may benefit millions of Dota players, so we're shipping this as an experiment. Shipping it inside Dota Plus limits access, and accordingly limits the risk to Dota as we learn about how everyone interacts with it. As with the other Dota Labs features, time and your feedback will tell whether it grows, or changes, or gets retired.
Onward
We know many of you are looking forward to Crownfall, and we're looking forward to getting it into your hands. We're wrapping things up and expect to release in mid-April. We'll see you then.
The International 2024
War banners are being washed clean of blood stains and scorch marks. Trumpets are being tested for their ability to sound the imminent approach of battle. Lanes are getting swept clean of body parts, and the Ancients are getting a good crack replastering and surface buffing. The forest air itself crackles with anticipation, because we had new forest air shipped in at considerable cost that crackles on command.
The stage is being set, is the point we’re trying to get across here. And why? For The International, returning this September to Europe, where the best Dota teams from around the world will clash for the Aegis in Copenhagen's Royal Arena.
The sixteen participating teams will be a mix of open qualifiers, regional qualifiers, and direct invitations, similar to how invitations worked for the first few years of The International. The invited teams will be announced leading up to the event, and chosen based on team performance during the year.
And there's a lot of performance to consider. This year's calendar is packed, with half a dozen major tournaments already announced and more on the way, including studio and arena tournaments in Europe, Asia, South America, and the Middle East. We even hear rumors Midas Mode might be making a grand return. (The more teams that are eligible to participate in a tournament, the higher our consideration: Cross-regional tournaments generate more useful data than intra-regional tournaments, tournaments with qualifiers generate more useful information than invitation-only tournaments, etc.)
We'll be announcing ticketing and scheduling information for The International 2024 in the next few months. Until then, why not go watch a game of pro Dota to get back in the competitive spirit?
7.35c Gameplay Patch
Additionally, a few updates were made to the Ancient Dragon King cosmetic.
- You can now High Five the Ancient Dragon King, featuring a custom high five effect.
- Ancient Dragon King now performs a global celebratory roar every time your team makes a rampage.
- Ancient Dragon King will now be usable permanently and not only during the Year of the Dragon.
The Dragon's Gift
We're hard at work on an upcoming update we're calling "Crownfall", and we're excited to get it finished so you can see what we've been working on. We looked at a calendar and noticed it had been more than a few weeks since the Frostivus update, and we didn't want to make you wait until Crownfall before you got any new content. Luckily, the calendar gods came through with another holiday just in time: Happy Lunar New Year!
People who are born in the Year of the Dragon are known for their generosity, prosperity and good luck. Must be nice. For those of us who don't have a magical dragon granting us gift-giving super powers, we've introduced red enveloped-themed Dragon's Gift, available from now through March 7th. These work exactly how they’re named: treasures that can only be given, and opened by whoever you choose as the recipient.
And for those of you who would rather not wait around on the generosity of others, we've got traditional Dragon's Hoard treasures as well. Each treasure or gift contains one of 17 new Lunar New Year-themed cosmetic sets, and a bonus chance for a Dragon's Gift or new unusual effect.
Lastly, every treasure (and gift) has a chance to contain The Ancient Dragon King, the first ever cosmetic for your Ancient, with unique Dire and Radiant styles. Now you'll finally have a chance to adorn your ancient with a mythical dragon, just like, presumably, you've always wanted. Plus, if anyone in your match has one, everyone can see it.
In keeping with this "spirit of giving" theme, we have another gift for (almost) everyone: We've rolled out some new cheat detection code. Well, actually, we rolled it out a few weeks back, and we've spent the time since accumulating quite the set of cheaters. You'll probably notice fewer of them in your games as the automated ban waves roll out.
As is tradition, this update also includes a number of other fixes and improvements:
General Fixes:
- Fixed a number of issues that would prevent guides from loading in-game (If you manually enabled Steam background downloads to try to work around this problem, you can safely disable it again)
- Fixed another case where Roshan could go walkabout: Night Stalker casting Dark Ascension while Roshan was channeling a Twin Gate
- Fixed an issue where already-captured Outposts could be channeled
- Fixed an issue where the neutral item picker would hide on key release under some Quick Cast modes
- Fixed Doubloon having only +2 instead of +2.5 mana regen
- Fixed Eternal Shroud's magic resistance applying to illusions
- Fixed Eternal Shroud's interactions with Medusa Mana Shield
- Fixed Safety Bubble's tooltip not mentioning that the barrier bypasses self-inflicted damage
- Fixed an issue with the effects on Shiva's Guard
- Fixed Chen's Holy Persuasion not taking Turbo's creep bounty multiplier into account when giving gold on cast
- Fixed Legion Commander's Aghanim's Shard still giving bonus armor and duration for Overwhelming Odds
- Fixed Marci's Unleash proccing upon Bloodstone pickup and drop
- Fixed Muerta's Gunslinger being purgeable
- Fixed keybind not working to upgrade Ogre Magi's Multicast
- Fixed a bug that allowed inactive Phantom Lancer's illusions to block Neutral Camps
- Fixed a rare server crash with Primal Beast's Uproar
- Fixed column shop layout not displaying Khanda and Harpoon
- Added magic resistance from Intelligence and increased damage for Universal heroes to expanded tooltips
- In Turbo, show the "[Hero] was chosen by both teams!" message to everyone, not just the player who tried to pick the already-picked hero
- Added spell icons for Windranger's Gale Force when using Compass of the Rising Gale
- Increased performance when displaying many chat messages from global channels
- Fixed various tooltip issues
- Updated tips shown during pause for the 7.35b Gameplay Patch
Ability Draft Fixes:
- A number of previously unavailable Scepter/Shard abilities are now granted, some abilities are accessed by toggling auto-cast on the base spell:
- Glacier granted with Marksmanship
- Crystal Clone granted with Frostbite
- Parting Shot granted with Pierce the Veil
- Work Horse granted with Stampede
- Burning Barrage granted with Skeleton Walk
- Friendly Shadow granted with Shadow Walk
- Counterspell Ally granted with Counterspell
- Lightning Hands granted with Arc Lightning
- Burning Army granted with Death Pact
- Unrefined Fireblast granted with Fireblast
- Poison Nova granted with Noxious Plague (Poison Nova passive ability is hidden)
- Glacier granted with Marksmanship
- Chemical Rage now grants Greevil's Greed. It will appear as a buff instead of on the ability bar.
- Fixed Spirit Bear not having any abilities.
- Fixed Blinding Light not appearing as a draftable ability.
- Fixed Alchemist have 4 basic abilities at draft, which would push other abilities off by one.
- Cloak and Dagger Shard no longer grants Sleeping Dart.
- Ravage Shard now grants Dead in the Water instead of Tendrils of the Deep.
- Invoker Ability Draft Shard updated to the new EMP Shard instead of the old Meteor Shard.
- Proximity Mines now grants Minefield Sign as an additional ability.
- Fixed Shadow Wave and Dream Coil's Scepter attacks not working on melee heroes.
- Fixed Spirits working on illusions when you have a Scepter.
- Fixed Ogre Magi getting Multicast instead of Dumb Luck as an innate.
- Fixed Primal Spring, Pulse Nova, Rot, Infernal Blade, and a number of other abilities not granting stacks of Fiery Soul.
- Fixed Talents not appearing for Starbreaker, Cinder Brew, Phantom Rush, and Power Cogs when the ability is drafted on their original hero.
- Fixed Death Seeker not being togglable with hotkey.
- Fixed not being able to toggle Call of the Wild Hawk to switch between Hawk and Boar.
- Fixed Hairball appearing without a hotkey until it is toggled.
- Fixed Chemical Rage Scepter not giving bonus damage and spell amplification.
- Fixed Horn Toss being given by Shard instead of Scepter.
- Fixed Rain of Destiny being given by Scepter instead of Shard.
- Fixed Hunter's Boomerang and Decoy being given with either Shard or Scepter.
- Fixed Timbersaw getting Second Chakram with Scepter. It now is only granted with the talent if Timbersaw drafts Chakram.
Dota 2 Update - 1/8/2024
In addition, over the last few days we've addressed several gameplay issues:
- Fixed Frostivus wards not being selectable/attackable
- Fixed an issue where pinging certain items in quickbuy could cause the game to lag for teammates
- Fixed an issue where Arc Warden Tempest Doubles could gain gold by selling Midas
- Fixed Doom Devour Neutral abilities not leveling up automatically at the time when neutral abilities would scale
- Fixed Lina permanently gaining Fiery Soul stacks until she casts another spells if she was broken when supercharging with Laguna Blade
- Fixed Tiny Tree particle showing at the wrong time
- Fixed a rare server crash with motion controlled abilities (e.g. Spirit Breaker Charge of Darkness)
- Fixed an issue with Profile Showcase where items could appear floating before the rest of the hero loaded and fixed an issue with anchor points on ultrawide monitors
- Added missing descriptions for various recipes
- Fixed some bugs in the tutorials in the Learn tab caused by the 7.35 Gameplay Patch
7.35b Gameplay Patch
Over the last few days we've also addressed several gameplay issues:
- Fixed tabbing through selections being in creation order, rather than reverse creation order
- Fixed the combat log not displaying instances of damage that occurred on the same frame from the same source to the same target
- Fixed Block of Cheese not entering cooldown when receiving damage
- Fixed Parasma going on cooldown when denying
- Fixed Granite Golem's Granite Aura not correctly adjusting health when removed
- Fixed Batrider's Sticky Napalm applying damage from Mage Slayer
- Fixed Centaur Warrunner keeping the Work Horse ability after selling Aghanim's Scepter
- Fixed Centaur Warrunner's Hitch A Ride ability being in the wrong slot if applying Aghanim's Blessing
- Fixed Medusa having any damage shield making Dagger items unmuteable
- Fixed Meepo's Earthbind talent not giving the intended 2.5s cooldown reduction
- Fixed Meepo levelling Divided We Stand on a clone not giving Meepo the correct stats
- Fixed Muerta's Dead Shot interrupting some movement abilities on units that are debuff immune
- Fixed enemies being able to see Slardar's Bash of the Deep modifier stack count changing when he's hidden in the Fog of War
- Fixed Storm Spirit's Attack Range when Overloaded talent not working correctly with Aghanim's Shard
- Fixed Vengeful Spirit's Nether Swap barrier not being refreshable
- Fixed Viper's break particles being shown incorrectly
- Fixed Wraith King's Skeletons following invisible units
- Fixed inconsistencies in Spell Amplification/Damage tooltips
Dota 2 Update - 12/18/2023
- Fixed Bloodstone Area of Effect bonus still active on passive abilities if it was dropped or sold
- Fixed Bloodthorn mana regen being 3.0 instead of 3.5 from the sum of its components
- Fixed Butterfly not counting hero's base attack speed for its bonuses
- Fixed Cleave not working on magical attacks (i.e. Revenant's Brooch)
- Fixed a rare server crash when toggling Doubloon
- Fixed Khanda not doing lethal damage correctly
- Fixed Khanda and Phylactery not sharing cooldowns
- Fixed Tree Throw, Toss, Snowball, Soul Assumption and Sticky Bomb not triggering Phylactery/Khanda
- Fixed incorrect interaction between Phylactery/Khanda and and Spectre's Spectral Dagger
- Fixed Phylactery/Khanda working on illusions
- Fixed Meteor Hammer incorrectly giving more Agility than Intelligence
- Fixed Parasma not granting 1.5 mana regen from its components
- Fixed Revenant's Brooch incorrectly giving true strike
- Fixed a server crash caused by interaction between Abaddon's Aphotic Shield expiring, Safety Bubble, and Blade Mail
- Fixed Arc Warden's Tempest Double not cloning Royal Jelly
- Fixed Dawnbreaker's Starbreaker sometimes not going in the targeted direction
- Fixed non-ranged units getting true strike benefits of Drow Ranger's Glacier
- Fixed some cases where Drow Ranger could get stuck trying to leave her Glacier
- Fixed Chen's Penitence granting bonus attack range to Chen's melee creeps
- Fixed Chen's Divine Favor regeneration not applying to Chen's creeps
- Fixed Chen's level 10 talent Divine Favor Teleport Delay not applying correctly
- Fixed Invoker not being able to pick up Lotuses from the Lotus Pools
- Fixed Juggernaut's Blade Fury attack rate not updating if Juggernaut's attack speed changes.
- Fixed Juggernaut's Omnislash/Swiftslash not damaging ethereal units even with Revenant's Brooch
- Fixed Juggernaut's Blade Fury incorrect interaction with Harpoon
- Fixed Lich's Chain Frost not being affected by AoE increase
- Fixed items in the Bear's stash becoming lost when Lone Druid upgrades the Bear
- Fixed Omniknight's Guardian Angel charges not updating properly upon acquiring and dropping Aghanim's Scepter
- Fixed Pangolier's Shield Crash damage type not being correctly changed to Physical damage
- Fixed a rare serve crash with Pudge's Dismember
- Fixed Silencer's Last Word dealing less damage to creeps than intended
- Fixed Black Dragon's Splash Attack not working correctly
- Fixed a few server crashes
- Fixed various tooltip issues
- Re-added Hero Names as an option for heroes on the minimap
- Fixed minimap settings preview not scaling the arrow when scaling the icon
- Fixed a bug where previewing Persona items would sometimes show them on the base model (or vice versa) in Armory / Loadout
Dota 2 Update - 12/14/2023
- Fixed an issue with client-side display of Royal Jelly's buff stats
- Fixed Safety Bubble having its shield reset to full when dropped and re-equipped
- Fixed Unwavering Condition not working properly
- Fixed some testing items being purchasable ingame
- Added Roshan's Banner to the Glossary
- Fixed King Kringle's Skeletons not having the correct hats!
- Fixed King Kringle's Skeletons' hoods and portraits
- Fixed King Kringle's Skeletons not showing as Frostivus-appropriate in some locales
- Fixed the particles for Roshan's Banner sometimes not being properly removed
- Improved the look of the Tower Range indicator based on player use and made the danger threshold vary based on player hero level
- Fixed various small issues with the 7.35 patchnotes
- Fixed an issue with the Vampiric Spirit spell icon for King Kringle
- Fixed Jingle Fist Immortal display on the treasure screen
- Fixed an issue with movie previews while the Frostivus carousel was cycling during the treasure opening animation
For clarity, Frostivus Gift contents vary per account:
- For accounts shared with other users or services: a game ban
- For alt accounts used for smurfing: a game ban
- For main accounts associated with a banned smurf account: a piece of coal
- For all other accounts: free cosmetic items, with higher behavior score accounts receiving higher-tier items
The Frostivus 2023 Update is Here!
Another Frostivus is upon us, and that means King Kringle has awakened from his hibernation under the wine-dark Blood Seas surrounding Frostivus Castle; sent his legions of abducted goblin-child toy miners to dig in his toy mines; hooked up his twin glowing red-eyed direwolves Lumpo and Rupertus to his bone sleigh; and is likely either on top of your house or inside of it right now.
So if you’re on his Nice List, prepare to have your frosty halls decked with new and returning Frostivus cosmetics, a ton of quality-of-life client features, new Dota Plus premium sets, and gameplay patch 7.35, all of which you can read all about right here.
On the other hand, if you’re on the Naughty List, we’ve got great news for everybody else and bad news for you, because this year is gonna be a bloodbath. You might remember back in September, we got out the ban hammer and permanently banned 90,000 smurf accounts. Since then, we've continued to invest in player behavior monitoring, on both the manual and automatic analysis fronts. Over the last few weeks, we've engaged in an even more aggressive ban wave, including many tens of thousands of smurf account bans today alone.
At The International, some pro players reached out to us to talk about their smurf accounts. Those conversations have continued, and there’s broad agreement amongst pros that banning pro smurf accounts is a win for Dota as a community: The rules should apply to everybody, and from now on they will. And smurfing isn’t even the only naughty thing players are getting up to. Amongst other questionable choices, some bad actors are playing like jerks, ruining games and losing behavior score because of it, then hiring behavior score farmers to drive it back up.
Regardless of how you’ve been naughty, we've been watching you (not while you're sleeping, calm down) and we’re cracking down on all of it. Punishments will be handed out for all of the above, including behavior score penalties — and in serious cases, main account bannings.
As we’ve said before, smurfing (and other negative behavior) makes matches worse, and we want to make sure your matches are as good as possible as we head into the new year. So we’d like to wish everyone a Happy Frostivus Update! Except smurf accounts, who we assume will not enjoy the update as they choke on their richly-deserved coal-flavored just desserts.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an issue where if a hero killed in Chronosphere dropped Gem of True Sight, the Gem's cooldown would remain frozen
- Fixed a rare crash with item combines
- Fixed an issue where if an ability with a frozen cooldown had its cooldown frozen again, it would unfreeze too early
- Fixed an issue where abilities with intrinsic buffs could fail to have them applied when purchasing Aghanim's Shard
- Fixed an issue where switching abilities (or gaining Aether Lens etc.) wouldn't update the cast range circle if it was already being displayed
- Fixed Chaos Knight's Chaos Bolt particles sometimes losing their location
- Fixed Dawnbreaker's Starbreaker providing pure damage immunity without Aghanim's Shard
- Fixed Earthshaker's Bindings of Deep Magma set to show the correct (new) particles for the new (10th Anniversary) style and to properly delete particles on expiration
- Fixed Hoodwink's Bushwhack cast reticule sometimes highlighting trees outside the area of effect
- Fixed some animation issues with Tusk's Walrus PUNCH!
- Fixed a bug where Vengeful Spirit's Magic Missile with Aghanim's Shard could bounce to invisible enemies immune to True Sight
- Fixed an issue with the Voodoo Restoration particles on Witch Doctor's Awaleb's Trundleweed Immortal weapon
- Fixed highlighting on the Neutral Item Slot to only highlight when there is at least one free token in the stash, rather than any item from any teammate
- Fixed an issue where casting an ability with Alt held down would also ping
- Fixed lifetime timers for wards and summoned units being clipped in the HUD
- Fixed talent descriptions sometimes being blocked by hotkey names
- Fixed Tower denies appearing as chat messages rather than as combat events
- Fixed stickers showing as available in Armory even though the capsule containing the stickers might not be available
- Fixed showing sticker capsules from ended events as purchasable
- Fixed Item Received popup not showing global items properly
- Fixed an issue with Play Unranked where ticking Show All Modes could make the section unusable
- Fixed sometimes showing pro players' Steam persona names instead of the correct names
- Fixed long names overflowing in History and Battle Stats pages
- Added an additional notification for Workshop custom game authors that have not yet updated their custom models away from the deprecated pre-ModelDoc format, as described in the 2022 Spring Cleaning update and the Dead Reckoning Update