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[Drkirby]

It was only a few months ago when there were talks about Dota 2 hemorrhaging players, and some people saying Valve should switch back to Source 1 engine:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1118596

But since then, the game has been on a steady rise again in playerbase again. It has been nearly a year since the last time the game went over a million, and that was also during a giant holiday event that encouraged people to log in at the same time. The interesting thing is that it hit 1 million concurrent on what is just a pretty average Saturday.

http://steamcharts.com/app/570

The game has nearly gotten back to its previous peaks of max monthly players. It was at 12 Million at the end of August, just before the Reborn update hit.

 

[FlangoNotGood]

Incredible, what an amazing fact.

 

[chaobreaker]

Not a surprise. The new engine has got most of its issues straightened out.

 

[bounchfx]

Incredible, what an amazing fact.

Incredible, what an amazing contribution to this thread.

- - -

good to see it's on the rise again, albiet really.. really slow, when compared to CS especially, but at least it's holding steady. Valve is going to need to find a way to bring more numbers unless they're content with just retention. It's still impressive overall, but lots of room for growth.

 

[Good Job Bob]

I just started playing it last month myself, it's my first MOBA and I am really enjoying it. Kicking myself for waiting this long to check it out.

 

[Gentle Rodriguez]

dead game

 

[JawesomeJaw]

Pit Lord any year now.

 

[Strider]

Game will start growing again and eventually have more active players than Source 1 ever had...

I stopped playing for a few months once Reborn hit. It was a really buggy client that launched too soon. On top of that when 6.85 hit it was a smaller and uninteresting patch that didn't really motivate me to jump back in and deal with any lingering issues. 6.86 brought enough changes for me to jump back in and I'm happy Source 2 is much more stable now.

Game will be way better off in the end but Reborn launch was depressing tbh

 

[Hylian7]

Good to hear the population recovered after the Reborn slump. I imagine a new hero (first since Winter Wyvern) and all the crazy changes in the most recent balance patch helped bring a lot of folks baxk.

Incredible, what an amazing fact.

I don't really understand what you are getting at with this post.

 

[Archie]

It took 4 months to repair the damage done by Reborn.

 

[Hellsing321]

It took 4 months to repair the damage done by Reborn.

Pretty good when you factor in Valve time.

 

[Dodecagon]

I just started playing it last month myself, it's my first MOBA and I am really enjoying it. Kicking myself for waiting this long to check it out.

Get out while you can!

 

[Cormano]

Crazy. Is this even close to LoL?

 

[Drkirby]

Crazy. Is this even close to LoL?

LoL is a lot bigger. While Riot hasn't released new numbers for years, and likely never will, in a recent interview with their CIS Director, the director stated they had 7 Million concurrent players. Here is the interview in Russian:
https://vc.ru/p/riot-interview

 

[Grief.exe]

CS:GO recently hit 10 million unique per month.

It took 4 months to repair the damage done by Reborn.

Historically, haven't DOTA 2 numbers always taken a dive during that same time period?

 

[Schweinehund]

New patch is nice, I just wish icefraud balanced more than two times a year. A lot of my favorite heroes feel left behind with all the massive gameplay changes they make every major patch. Also we're literally down to 2 (ported) heroes per year, with the rate decreasing every year.

 

[Gully State]

Only Pitlord's left right?

 

[NewGame]

why is my mmr still 3.7k aus then

 

[domlolz]

Only Pitlord's left right?

yes

 

[Firebrand]

and not one of them bought wards. cyka bljat

 

[domlolz]

New patch is nice, I just wish icefraud balanced more than two times a year. A lot of my favorite heroes feel left behind with all the massive gameplay changes they make every major patch. Also we're literally down to 2 (ported) heroes per year, with the rate decreasing every year.

we get significant balance patches like 4 times a year?

 

[Falk]

Only Pitlord's left right?

Remember when "when Techies is added" was a constant good joke?

Now Techies has been added for a long time and it's a constant bad joke.

 

[Abilidebob]

Wasn't this posted earlier?
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1168430

 

[sssstententen]

we get significant balance patches like 4 times a year?

For a game that has such a huge following and amount of money flow the update schedule for it is sad.

 

[Renekton]

Any way to get Koreans interested in Dota 2?

They are destroying the LoL competitive scene. Please help share the burden.

 

[Schweinehund]

we get significant balance patches like 4 times a year?

For 2015 it was really just 6.84 and 6.86. The rest were small tweaks (though 6.85 did a lot of tweaks). Icefrog's balance style doesn't really mesh well when he does these huge changes that mess with hero roles. Late game carries and pushing heroes were mostly dead for last year.

 

[Übermatik]

I'm one less of those players. Best thing I did recently was quit DOTA.

 

[Haly]

dead game

Alive game.

 

[Archie]

Any way to get Koreans interested in Dota 2?

They are destroying the LoL competitive scene. Please help share the burden.

Nexon abandoned Dota in Korea.

Have fun with an all KR worlds final until League's final days. :^)

 

[impact]

but archie told me it's dying

 

[orochi91]

This game is so damn hard, but satisfying.

I kinda wish they'd patch in controller support somehow.

 

[Archie]

but archie told me it's dying

CS:GO is gonna be bigger by the end of the year.

 

[Shuggananas]

but i thought valve didn't makes games and dota is hemorrhaging players

 

[Falk]

This game is so damn hard, but satisfying.

I kinda wish they'd patch in controller support somehow.

You know, in a post-The Force Awakens world, one cannot make a reference to Poe's Law without the layman associating it with Star Wars.

 

[Subpar Spatula]

Makes sense. Dota is improving at a rate faster than the competition so it's not surprising to see it grow. League, to me, has become stagnate and all they have is their hero count + popularity.

 

[Qvoth]

6.86 is a pretty big patch, of course it will bring people back

 

[Falk]

I'm curious to see how the Majors do after a rather lukewarm Frankfurt 2015.

That was more likely a combination of factors rather than just 'ded game lol', not the least significant of which was it was exam period in a lot of countries, along with new-game-release period (hi Fallout 4)

 

[Hard]

Nice. I wouldn't be surprised if League's number has plateau'd as well. They haven't updated that 7.5 M number in ages.

 

[viHuGi]

League at 7m concurrent is out of this world.

 

[sephi22]

Latest numbers.
I'll believe reddit when they say the game just hit its all time high of 625,058.7 average players . That's the statistic that matters because the 16% lost at the Reborn launch were the average monthly players going from 606,944.0 to 508,156.8. Since September, that's about a 23% increase and a 4% increase from August if my math isn't shit.
Reddit thread.

I'm curious to see how the Majors do after a rather lukewarm Frankfurt 2015.

Was Frankfurt really lukewarm? I mean compared to TI anything would pale but during the tournament I was lost in hype. I guess in retrospect the lack of arena crowd made it seem small time, but Europe was in a dark period (Paris) plus they held it on weekdays. The crowd did eventually show up to the finals though. The conversation on Twitch, /d2g, reddit and gaf was hot too, especially when OG won.

 

[MattPeters]

I dont play DOTA, so what happened with the 'Reborn' update that caused players to leave?

 

[Blooddimond]

I dont play DOTA, so what happened with the 'Reborn' update that caused players to leave?

Was buggy for a decent amount of time. Most issues are sorted out tho. Also Russian school year started that month which just caused a decline around that time every year, just amplified by Reborn stuff

 

[sephi22]

I dont play DOTA, so what happened with the 'Reborn' update that caused players to leave?

People loved the old UI. The game's had that UI for many years and Valve perfected it over many patches. The new UI was in beta for many months, and had various bug fixes. Yet, it launched with quite a few bugs. On top of that, many features that were added to the old client like live replay during spectating, replay takeover, a sorted way to see comments, proper store/armory interface (reborn increased number of clicks needed to see the armory, heroes, etc.) were all gone and have been added since.

The worst were the often occuring visual bugs, as well as game changing bugs in the middle of competitive games or high level pubs. I don't have an example in mind so don't quote me on this. Also, in the old client, unless a friend's profile was set to private, anyone could see any of their friend's matchmaking rating. Dick-measuring is a common draw in competitive games and the ability to hide your mmr from even your friends made a lot of people I know lose their drive to tryhard.

It also killed a niche but often loved game mode called Ability draft. I believe its been fixed since. What people didn't like was Valve enforcing REBORN on every player when it was clearly not ready. When it was an optional addition to the old client in beta, people liked playing the custom games as a distraction, but still used the old client to play 'serious' dota.

This is anecdotal, but I've been away from the game since Destiny TTK and dabbled with Reborn's custom games. The games had great activity in the first weeks. Then I took a break till last week. The custom games seem to have way less players than before, but the game overall has more players playing it. I've also been getting matches quicker but then again I'm in the 70% trench. Serious Dot[A] is back Kappa

Spoiler

Pick Abbadon you filthy animals

 

[Bluth54]

I dont play DOTA, so what happened with the 'Reborn' update that caused players to leave?

Reborn was porting DOTA2 from Source 1 engine to the Source 2 engine. It was pretty buggy for awhile.

 

[Crono27]

great game [= glad to see it getting more popular

 

[Falk]

Was Frankfurt really lukewarm? I mean compared to TI anything would pale but during the tournament I was lost in hype. I guess in retrospect the lack of arena crowd made it seem small time, but Europe was in a dark period (Paris) plus they held it on weekdays. The crowd did eventually show up to the finals though. The conversation on Twitch, /d2g, reddit and gaf was hot too, especially when OG won.

Nah, I really don't care about on-location shenanigans since I think most of the best tournaments weren't at any arena of any sort. (TI3 finals were legendary though, don't get me wrong) It just felt like there'd have been a lot more excitement than what it turned out to be, especially considering people have been asking for such a long time for the format for professional play to 'break out' of one gigantic event a year.

Like I said, and like you said, many factors, and we'll see how next month's Shanghai major turns out. I suspect there's going to be more activity than Frankfurt.

 

[sephi22]

Shanghai's going to be great. China and CIS show up to their tournaments.

 

[ashecitism]

Shanghai's going to be great. China and CIS show up to their tournaments.

Like last year's DAC?

edit: oh you meant audience?

 

[Archie]

Like last year's DAC?

edit: oh you meant audience?

That's even worse then.

DAC was empty as fuck.

 

[neurosisxeno]

That's even worse then.

DAC was empty as fuck.

DAC was hit or miss in a lot of aspects. If I recall they planned on more people and had this massive arena that was half empty the first like 3 days because it was during the week or something. On top of that the hotels were great, but their internet setup was terrible, and the "sound-proof boxes" they used were apparently really easy to hear outside of. On top of all that they had some really crappy sponsor-provided equipment that famously lead to EG's manager Charlie leaving the event after the first day to go hunting for some--I kid you not--chairs that didn't break his players spines.

I maintain those chairs won them DAC.