Dota 2: Valve breaks silence with a new update

On October 15, Valve finally released an update for Dota 2. However, it was not a game patch. The update revolved more around Dota Plus(the paid in-game feature), Guilds and the rank reset structure.

Along with the update, also comes the new Dota 2 season, which as per Valve's announcement, is scheduled to run through the beginning of December 2020. Valve also announced new seasonal treasures for Dota Plus owners.

These seasonal treasures can be purchased from the Dota Plus Store, now revamped as the Shard Store, using Dota Shards. Previously, Dota Shards were a Dota Plus exclusive feature, however, with this new update, Valve has made Dota Shards earnable for non-Dota Plus players as well.

The seasonal treasures are supposed to be refreshed every 3 months with the addition of new seasonal cosmetics. Valve's statement regarding the same is,

"Our plan right now is to have a new seasonal treasure available for purchase with shards every 3 months. The next treasure will be available on Dec 1st, and then again every 3 months after that. This will also align with seasonal quests and seasonal terrains."

Changes to Dota 2's ranked season

Among other changes in this update, one major alteration that is the optional rank reset. Valve's statement regarding the same reads,

"In the past we’ve seen a bunch of negative aspects to forcing everyone to reset their MMR at the same time. That has been part of our reluctance to continue with resetting every 6 months. However after we’ve expressed this reluctance recently, we’ve gotten a lot of feedback about how valuable they felt this functionality was to them, along with various suggestions to handling this topic."

"For this season, we are going to try a new approach to MMR resets. We are making the MMR reset optional, and for those who want to participate, we instead spread it out so it doesn’t create too much volatility at the same time (ontop of the volatility that already exists when you enter calibration). We hope this will remove most of the downsides of MMR resets, and let the people that really want to do it be able to do so in a little bit more of a stable environment."

"Upon logging in, you can go to Settings, and under the Account tab there is a new MMR Recalibration section. To prevent everyone from recalibrating at once, start-times will be spaced out evenly between October 22, 2020 and November 22, 2020 and can be activated anytime until the Season is over. Feel free to press the button the moment it’s available to you, never press it, or warm back up to competitive play before activating it."

It is going to be extremely interesting to see how the players and the community react to this change regarding the rank reset.

Valve discusses their lack of communication

In a much awaited move, Valve finally got to talking about the lack of communication from their end. Even though not much was said in detail, it seems like the development team is hard at work, with new hero releases lined up soon.

"We know the community tends to expect new heroes in the fall each year (usually released around November sometime). We are currently aiming for end of November for a new hero release, followed by more that are spread throughout next ye,ar with the next one in the first quarter next year."

Apart from this, Valve also mentioned a few other changes that they are working on regarding Dota 2. However, there is still no update regarding the Dota Pro Circuit resuming, or even about the International 10 happening.