Dota 2 continues to be one of the most important e-sports titles in the world. Not only are record sums paid out to the winning teams every year at “The International” world championship. The number of spectators can also match times before the Corona pandemic, as was the case most recently at the Arlington Major, reports “Esports Insider.” But the scene has a problem.

Dota is already one of the most complex e-sports titles by design. Right from the start, players have 123 heroes at their disposal, each with several abilities, which can quickly become overwhelming. On top of that, most of the heroes can also be used flexibly in different roles, which makes it hard to learn any general facts about the characters at all.

The game is at the same time in the tension of having to keep the community active. “If the game is continuously updated and the World Cup continues, I have a feeling that the current players can be kept,” says Kevin “Purge” Godec in an interview with the German Press Agency. However: according to “steamcharts”, the number of people playing simultaneously has been stagnating for years.

Dota 2: Always new updates

When Purge analyzes new game updates on its Youtube channel, the videos are sometimes over nine hours long – like about five months ago for patch 7.31. New mechanics are introduced or heroes radically rebuilt.

This renewal always brings more complexity, which can discourage newcomers. With a revised and expanded tutorial system, developer Valve is trying to counteract this.

“It’s never too late to get newcomers to play Dota. But it just depends on how far you’re willing to go to do it. Many of the existing players wouldn’t agree if the game mechanics were adapted to a broader target group and the game lost depth as a result,” says Shannon “SunsFan” Scotten in an interview with dpa. The commentator has developed a tool with a partner that makes it easier to learn Dota while watching.

Tool for newcomers to Dota 2

With the extension for the streaming platform Twitch, viewers can interact with control surfaces in the stream as if they were in the game themselves. This way, all information about heroes, spells and items is directly available for reference.

In addition to a variety of streamers, ESL, Dreamhack and Valve have signed usage agreements with SunsFan for their tournaments. The major host in Arlington, PGL, was accused of copying the tool itself.

“At the last Dota World Cup, we had 16 million users, 198 million and clicks, and 883 million touches on our controls,” SunsFan said. “We get a lot of positive tweets and messages about our tool. Even from people who used to play and don’t know everything new.”

Dota tournament stream set for newbies

Although there seems to be enough interest for such offerings, some initiatives are also being discontinued. The newcomer stream for the Dota World Championships, which Purge and SunsFan were involved in, was discontinued after attempts at the 2014 and 2015 World Championships.

“The problem was that the Newcomer stream was a separate experience from the main stream,” Purge says. However, he says, people weren’t equally supplied with content, which didn’t equally communicate the scope of the tournament. “There’s a lot of significance to that.” That’s why they tried to include more such content the following year, he says.

SunsFan isn’t worried about the game’s future, though: “Dota is late in its life cycle, but this one has been very long. So who knows how long the game has,” he says. “It’s only a slight drop and the numbers are still very solid, so there’s still a lot that can be done.”