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A common complaint among DOTA 2 players over the years has been the lack of communication between the community and Valve in general. The publisher's long silences have given rise to the furore, jokes, the myth of the janitor, and at times a dejected acceptance. Jeff Hill has been a beacon of bright light amidst this usual gloom.
Hill, a Valve employee, has continuously provided deep insights into various concerns surrounding DOTA 2, recently talking about performance issues, and dealing with comments and posts on Reddit that detail bugs and other such persisting issues.
To facilitate the process of finding and dealing with these, Hill recently announced that they were putting up a public Github issue tracker.
DOTA 2 bug tracker provides players with a platform to voice the issues that bug their gameplay
In a post on the game's subreddit, Hill mentioned that he had been "chasing down bugs posted here recently" and that he was having trouble keeping track of all the issues and following up on them. As a solution, a public issue tracker has been created on his personal Github account, here.
Speaking about their goals, the post states:
"Our goals here are to be transparent about what our response is to any issue, and to let the community vote on what's important to resolve. The voting is hugely important - Reddit is amazing because if something matters to many players it gets a lot of upvotes so we have clear signal on what's important to you. Even if you don't submit any new bugs on the tracker, upvoting the bugs you think are important is very valuable and will help us know what to prioritize."
Players' reactions to the post have been overwhelmingly positive. The discussions underneath the post have focussed on various topics, including the kinds of issues that can be pointed out, like gameplay and cosmetics. As of writing this article, there have #567 issues opened on the tracker.
Hill has been communicating and replying to people's qualms regarding the game for some time now on Reddit. Anybody who is acquainted with the DOTA 2 subreddit is more than likely to know about the man, more so in the recent past.
The subreddit even had an appreciation post, made less than two weeks ago, by u/NotTika giving a shoutout to Hill "for actively checking reddit and fixing bugs."
Comments on the post showcased how tenaciously Hill had combed through their complaints and tried engaging and rectifying them in patches and fixes. One comment stated that they had mentioned a glitch with a cosmetic that probably impacted around "50 people," who owned the cosmetic, and that it was then addressed quickly.
Jeff Hill's actions have made him a sort of hero among the DOTA 2's community, more so because of the lack of communication and dialogue from Valve itself. Hill's decision to install a public GitHub tracker may have its drawbacks, as has already been seen with people trolling there.
But even then, it is a step towards something concrete where players of DOTA 2 feel that they are being heard and their concerns addressed. One can only hope that this is only the first of many steps that Valve and its employees will take to further initiate a dialogue between them and the game's ardent community.
In other news, the hype around The International 2022 is slowly rising, with Valve recently sharing an official statement on the matter. Check out Sportskeeda's coverage of the same to learn about where, when, the schedule of the tournament and when the next patch is coming.
