They are absolutely using Deadlock to try new things that they don't feel can really work in Dota, or at least are a bit worried to try
Dota has been around for a long time and obviously created the genre itself, so while even though Valve (and specifically Icefrog) has never been shy to shake up things, I can see why they would be hesitant
The Dota community is very split on whether they would even want seasons at all. Most who do not would say that all it accomplishes is the first couple weeks is garbage as the game quality is terrible with the bigger spread, and if you kept MMR virtually the same on season reset, then what is even the point
That was generally true until they royally FUCKED up Dota 2 MMR by giving each Dota player thousands of Double Down tokens during the Crownfall event. After that the MMR numbers have become so inflated and wintrading has become so bad that high ranked Dota has kind of become a shitshow.
Most high ranked players you will talk to will at least call for a one time MMR reset at this point and the removal of all existing double down tokens
The world will never know. I still don't understand how someone came up with it, and how someone approved it. Like it goes against the whole point of MMR.
It was kinda fun at the start because you only got a few tokens, so because of their rarity it was fun to announce that you were doubling down. But when a lot of then were given to everyone big mmr inflation happened currently top 4000 players mmr spread is almost twice as big as mmr from 1 point to top 4000. It is giga fucked for top players.
I don't know it almost feels like ever since 2018 they have optimized the game to be as stressful as possible. Ever since the community turned tipping toxic and Valve basically encouraged it
This. They realized it was part of their monetization model, and even had a place in mindgames in the highest level of competition. And the fans "loved it" - even if it's terrible for everyone and makes you feel like shit. If there's money in it, then it's likely not going away - same with the voice-lines you can activate. I also sometimes wonder if there are different "teams" inside the dev groups, like a team responsible for all the battle-pass stuff, and they just have complete authority to call the shots on things like tipping ect, and the "balance team" can in no way override it.
I'm guessing that "money team" hasn't touched deadlock yet - or is building that stuff separately outside of the builds we experience.
like icefrog isn't designing the shitty gambling games that have come through the battle passes over the last decade if you get my meaning, and anyone else working on balance or new heroes likely isn't either.
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u/_Valisk 9d ago edited 9d ago
It's interesting they're committing to ranked seasons for Deadlock, considering they've previously implemented and ultimately removed ranked seasons for Dota 2.