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Dota 2 free to play confirmed

L

la_briola

Member
Valve just confirmed on the Dota 2 blog, that it will be free to play.

Today we’re announcing that Dota 2 will be free to play, and contain an in-game store where you’ll be able to buy fancy gear to customize your heroes. From the forum threads we’ve read over the months since The International, it’s pretty clear that this won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone out there. There are a variety of smaller details that we’ve decided to put together a FAQ to help with, but we wanted to address the two most common concerns right away [...]
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More here: http://blog.dota2.com/2012/06/introducing-the-dota-store/
 
Yoshichan

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
More esports!
 
A

Archie

Second-rate Anihawk
You forgot the best part.

Dota 2 will not be a pay-to-win game. We think Dota’s competitive metagame is crucial, and something we won’t damage with economy items. We think cosmetic character customization is a great angle, and one we’ll be focusing on.

No, you won’t have to buy access to heroes. They’ll all be available for free. It’s really important for Dota’s competitive metagame that all players have access to all the heroes. We want everyone to be able to customize and have access to their favorite heroes.
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E

epmode

Member
Q: Will I be able to customize my character without buying anything?
A: Yes, players who don't want to buy things from the Dota 2 Store will be able to earn them in a variety of ways, such as by simply playing the game, increasing their Battle Level, or by trading with other players.

Q: Will I have to pay to get access to heroes?
A: All of the heroes will be available free of charge. We believe restricting player access to heroes could be destructive to game design, so it's something we plan to avoid.
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Nice nice nice.
 
J

jambo

Member
W28Up.jpg


God tier
 
H

Holy Wars

Banned
Really looking forward to playing this. I wouldn't have paid because of the things I've heard about the community so it'll be nice to be able to play it risk free.
 
J

Jtrizzy

Member
Have they added tutorials yet? I wouldn't have paid for this though, the learning curve is ridiculous. Getting into this game is way too difficult.
 
T

TeegsD

Member
Really want to get into MOBA type games but just can't motivate myself to play LoL and SMNC can be really frustrating at times. Really cool of Valve to make all the heroes free. Now this means I'll have even more guides to read so that my future teammates won't hate me.
 
N

Nemo

Will Eat Your Children
Man, this is going to be very interesting. No doubt it'll make it's investment back but to see how much money they will make purely on cosmetic stuff could change some stuff in this industry!
 
B

Brawndo Addict

Banned
I wonder how successful of a lasting revenue stream this will be versus the TF2 model. Sure it has plenty of purely cosmetic weapons/hats/accessories, but a lot of items in TF2 affect the actual gameplay through custom stats/modifiers. The visual design of the game also makes it much easier to notice the different kinds of things people are wearing (size of character in relation to the screen, killcams, etc).

You don't really see characters in Dota 2 with any kind of detail like TF2, and since they're refusing to limit hero availability in any way or have custom items (all good decisions), I wonder how popular hard to notice cosmetic changes will be. Visual items on character models might as well not exist given their size and the pace of the game, no one's going to have the time or desire to zoom in to look. And I worry that changing hero skins too drastically will reduce the ability of players to instantly recognize heroes at a distance.

I look forward to seeing how Valve creatively addresses these kind of issues.
 
N

Nelo Ice

Banned
Awesome knew Valve would do the right thing for F2P DOTA 2. I absolutely loathe how HON and LoL are set up.

Brawndo Addict said:
I wonder how successful of a lasting revenue stream this will be versus the TF2 model. Sure it has plenty of purely cosmetic weapons/hats/accessories, but a lot of items in TF2 affect the actual gameplay through custom stats/modifiers. The visual design of the game also makes it much easier to notice the different kinds of things people are wearing (size of character in relation to the screen, killcams, etc).

You don't really see characters in Dota 2 with any kind of detail like TF2, and since they're refusing to limit hero availability in any way or have custom items (all good decisions), I wonder how popular hard to notice cosmetic changes will be. Visual items on character models might as well not exist given their size and the pace of the game, no one's going to zoom in or notice. And I worry that changing hero skins too drastically will reduce the ability of players to instantly recognize heroes at a distance.

I look forward to seeing how Valve creatively addresses these kind of issues.
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Selling skins and such has made Riot and S2 a fortune. It's not going to be a problem at all.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
BLSwagger10 said:
Really want to get into MOBA type games but just can't motivate myself to play LoL and SMNC can be really frustrating at times. Really cool of Valve to make all the heroes free. Now this means I'll have even more guides to read so that my future teammates won't hate me.
Click to expand...
The biggest hurdle for me was learning the subtle indications that its time to retreat and learning the overall game flow and how long the farming period lasts for and when the true fights start. Once I started internalizing those I started to really feel myself improve.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Brawndo Addict said:
I wonder how successful of a lasting revenue stream this will be versus the TF2 model. Sure it has plenty of purely cosmetic weapons/hats/accessories, but a lot of items in TF2 affect the actual gameplay through custom stats/modifiers. The visual design of the game also makes it much easier to notice the different kinds of things people are wearing (size of character in relation to the screen, killcams, etc).
Click to expand...

I think that the vast vast majority of TF2 revenue comes from cosmetics.
 
L

LM4sure

Banned
Wow, this is really surprising!! seriously! I have no idea what this game is about but I will definitely check it out now.
 
S

speedpop

Has problems recognising girls
BLSwagger10 said:
Really want to get into MOBA type games but just can't motivate myself to play LoL and SMNC can be really frustrating at times. Really cool of Valve to make all the heroes free. Now this means I'll have even more guides to read so that my future teammates won't hate me.
Click to expand...

I'd say the fact that it is F2P is going to allow a community of people not giving too much of a serious shit to play the game. TF2 is still one of the very few games where people can get away with being a complete fool, myself included many times, and that atmosphere of hijinks went to extreme levels with F2P arriving thankfully.

If people started getting salty about the game or their co-players, they were bound to be hit by a barrage of "get over it" or "it's just a game man" so it'll be interesting to see its effect on Dota 2.

Brawndo Addict said:
I wonder how successful of a lasting revenue stream this will be versus the TF2 model. Sure it has plenty of purely cosmetic weapons/hats/accessories, but a lot of items in TF2 affect the actual gameplay through custom stats/modifiers. The visual design of the game also makes it much easier to notice the different kinds of things people are wearing (size of character in relation to the screen, killcams, etc).
Click to expand...

You would be surprised at the amount of players who enjoy the personification of the user and the levels they will strive toward to ensure a difference of identity despite them being nothing more than virtual items.
 
C

Costcosaurus

Banned
Interesting news, but I'll probably just stick to Super MNC. I was invited to test out the game but at the time when I tried it out, I had no idea how to play.
 
B

Brawndo Addict

Banned
The_Technomancer said:
I think that the vast vast majority of TF2 revenue comes from cosmetics.
Click to expand...

Ah, so they should have no problem assuming they can make them visually distinct enough for players to notice. That's a tough balancing act though, if you let items change the hero's appearance too much, you diminish player's ability to recognize and target heroes on sight, but if you make them too subtle there's little reason to purchase them.

I think I saw an Orca skin for Tidehunter somewhere, but his model is pretty unique regardless of the skin. I'll have to wait and see how it plays out with smaller, less unique heroes.
 
Z

Zia

Member
And still no Mac client for someone that has since Bootcamp'ed yet ran the hardware survey on her iMac. So. Angry.
 
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