New Year Wishlist

For the last two years Dota has been getting massive, fundamental updates in the early Spring and this got us spoiled. After a drastic map size increase two years ago and the Facet update last year, we are hoping for something similar in scope this year as well, and today, instead of concentrating on minor balance issues still present in the game we would like to dream big and start a conversation on what this year’s updates could bring to Dota.

The great confluence

The Great Confluence was teased for almost six years at this point and the general consensus across the community at the time was that it alluded to the introduction of heroes from the Heroes of Newerth universe into Dota. This idea is very… optimistic, but we are dreaming big today, right?

There are good reasons to believe that it could realistically happen, though. IceFrog did work on HoN back in the day and it is filled with interesting designs that could work in Dota with minor adjustments.

There is of course the problem of turn-rates and cast-points, which were much faster in HoN in the early 2010s, however it is something that can be tweaked during the transition. Moreover, Dota itself got significantly faster over the years and turn-rates have been steadily rising since 2015, culminating in a full hero pool turn rate buff back in 2021.

It’s not like Dota players are starved for new heroes, at least not in the last year, but when there are dozens of Dota-fitting designs already playtested in conditions similar to Dota, one has to wonder why at least some of the fan-favorites, like Puppet Master, didn’t make it into our favorite game already.

Finally, the reason we even remembered about the Great Confluence and how it could be, theoretically, related to Heroes of Newerth is this very recent tweet. Something is happening with HoN universe and as a fan of it back in the day and a massive fan of Dota today, I do hope these two universes are going to get even more closely related.

The spirit brothers

The general talks about the Great Confluence started with the introduction of Void Spirit into the game, as it is his voice lines that started teasing the concept. Dota has many different, interesting storylines and since we got a very lore-focused Crownfall this year, it is perhaps reasonable to assume that we are going to get something similar this year.

Maybe “assume” is the wrong word, “hope” is probably more apt, as Crownfall was brilliant and we can’t get enough of lore-dumps, though we realise it was probably a lot of work to do, between all the writing and all the mini-games (no more sand-fishing, though, please).

A Crownfall-style epic adventure revolving around the Spirit Brothers is probably the one we want the most. All four heroes are consistently played regardless of the patch, as they are just too fun to play in pubs, while having strong design identities to always find themselves situationally viable in the professional scene.

Arcanas for at least some of the Spirit Brothers are also long-overdue, with my personal hope that we will see the return of the chubbier Storm Spirit from before his cosmetic rework. Somehow he feels considerably more relatable to me personally.

Gameplay additions and improvements

We’ve talked about potential new cosmetic content and potential new hero content, but these are just the spice on top of what makes Dota great. The reason most of us love Dota is because it is an infinitely-replayable, deep and engaging game. That isn’t going anywhere and the meta keeps evolving despite there being no big patches for a long while.

However, we wouldn’t mind another big shake-up. Naturally there is still a lot of work to be done with the Facet system. It is great, but the higher the level of play gets, the more cracks start showing: in most cases there is a “good” and a “unreliable” facet, as opposed to them being situational and allowing for adaptation. Still, getting something that will fundamentally change the approach to the game, as opposed to balance tweaks, is something we are hoping for this year.

Here lies the problem, though: Dota is already an incredibly complex and deep game and changing its fundamentals is always going to be hard. There are probably hundreds of various variables to tweak and systems to rework, so guessing what Valve could be cooking is unlikely to yield accurate results.

So we are going to ask you, the community, what ideas and changes you would like to see in Dota. Personally, some map changes and some additional points of interest could be nice, and, perhaps, something could be done about Neutral Camp blocking, since as a support player I am just tired of constantly paying the Sentry tax during the laning stage.