Valve's hugely popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) entry Dota 2 just received another one of its iconic, gameplay altering colossal updates. Aptly dubbed New Frontiers, the update has a new map, sweeping gameplay changes, a new hero type, an extra home for Roshan, and even the Elo matchmaking algorithm is getting swapped out.
The new map boasts a 40% increase in size over the original, with new structures that can teleport, heal, spawn tougher but rewarding neutral creeps, and more. There are also back doors in the spawns for flanking attackers, two Roshan caves that he swaps spawns between, various new types of runes spread across the map, more creep camps, and Outposts, to name some of the changes.
The traditional three lanes themselves are still the same size and don't require more traveling, it's the map's edges that have been expanded so heavily to offer more gameplay opportunities.
Meanwhile, Universal heroes is the brand-new fourth stat group that some older heroes are being transferred into like Broodmother, Enigma, Batrider, Io, Techies, and many others. The difference is that they do not have a primary attribute anymore, instead gaining damage scaling boosts from all attributes.
Players will also find reworks to the BKB, neutral item drops, UI overhauls to make health bars display much more information, and reduced stun times across the board to lessen the downtimes in battles. Major ability reworks have also hit multiple heroes, with Muerta, Clinkz, Arc Warden, Ogre Magi, Medusa, and Alchemist being the most affected.
As for the matchmaking, Valve has dropped the industry-wide standard Elo algorithm to adopt Glicko. Valve says the new algorithm lets it "better factor a player's Rank Confidence into our calculations, resulting in more accurate decisions about Rank gains and losses." This should help move the pileup of players in the 0-1000 MMR range and assist returning players get back into the game more easily, per the studio.
While it isn't getting the same rebranding as treatment as Counter-Strike 2 is, New Frontier's changes are transforming DOTA 2 to something fresh. If you have a few hours free, the obsoletely massive patch notes for update 7.33 can be poured over here. As the update is already live for the free-to-play game, it's also possible to simply take a leap and see what's new.
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