Dota 2: Economic evolution in the game

Since the professional Dota arena has been on a long hiatus since The International, people are starting to think about patch 7.23 and what Dota will look like when this update arrives. According to the article, one thing that stands out is about support heroes in meta 7.22 and many previous patches: the importance of Talent plus GPM or XP for popular support heroes. Apparently, every hero that specializes in the support role has a talent that increases GPM or XP at level 10 or 15. The value of these talents is so high that they are chosen in 65-80% of the games these heroes appear. Shadow Shaman players choose XP over health in 68.1% of games. Ancient Apparition chooses GPM over spell amplification in 79.1% of games. Crystal Maiden chose GPM over mana cost reduction and loss of 81.5% of games, etc…

So what is the reason for this? Obviously, the benefit of these talents is to help the supports have a greater impact. Furthermore, gold and experience often outweigh specific stat values ​​like “200 health” or “10% spell amp” because if you want these stats, you can buy them through items in the shop. This article will focus on explaining why they exist in the game, and why gamers value them so much.

POWER CREEP

In game design, an important concept that developers should keep in mind initially is power creep. Power creeps is a term present in any card game that uses elements both old and new (Hearthstone for example). It throws the game off balance due to the presence of newly released content in the game.

In MMO, the game constantly updates new equipment too strong, causing game imbalance. Power creeps are hard to change, because adding new content can be a good way to balance the game, or refresh the meta. A 1% change can help keep the game fresh, attracting players to try new strategies.

So why are we talking about Power Creep? Dota 2 is the perfect example of a game that knows how to manage power creep well through hero design. An inexperienced game designer will find a way to balance the meta by adding new things to the game, and then adding new things, eventually leading to a frustrating situation for players. However, Vavlve and Icefrog know how to balance power in hero design. If you look through the changelogs, you’ll see that hero moves from 7-8 years ago are almost identical to today. In patch 6.72 in 2011, Queen of Pain received an increase in Sonic Wave damage to 350/475/600. Today, in 2019, it deals 340/430/520 damage. Patch 6.75 of 2012, Lion’s Finger of Death is buffed to 500/650/860 damage. Nowadays it causes 600/720/850. We could find many more examples, but the gist here is, the balanced meta in Dota hasn’t changed too much…except for two things. Map and item economy.

Over the years, Valve gradually inadvertently added more gold and experience to the game, and at the same time, removed the player’s limit on resource usage. Does the picture below remind you of anything?

ITEM SLOT

The Item slot was once a valuable resource. Back then, there were no backpacks, or TP scrolls still occupying positions in the main inventory, then observers and sentry wards could not be stacked together, each taking up one slot. In the past, a true support only had one empty slot, once it was booted and two types of wards took up two other slots (a TP slot and sometimes dust). Although it greatly affects support, this is also a pretty headache for the core. Limiting item slots means the core has to make definitive decisions about how to build items to optimize storage slots. Items that require a lot of accessories like Mjollnir usually load immediately, or an accessory like hyperstone may have to wait in the stash when you plow. This is even more true in the later stages of the game when a core hero has lost 3-4 item slots. This causes cores to often be stifled, allowing other heroes to catch up, even if their own net worth continues to increase. Gold is stagnant, and the hero’s strength also changes very suddenly (because you have to store money to buy a large item instead of combining many small items).

In addition to the management of the item box mentioned above, the power limit of the core hero has also been partially removed. The backpack allows you to store items like the Refresher Orb, Black King Bar, and activated Necronomicon, for you to replace with more stat-efficient items. Valve also added a few important mechanics to break the item slot barrier, namely the Town Portal Scroll, Moon Shard, and Aghanim’s Blessings. The value of Boots of Travel used to lie in freeing 1 cell, but when the cooldown was removed from the TP scroll, the number of Boots of Travel purchases decreased completely.

MAP ECONOMY

The map economy, similar to the limit on the number of items, has been “inflated”. Some of you may still remember patch 7.00. This patch changes almost everything, but one major point is the presence of new jungles, on the opposite side of each team’s regular jungle. At first, the spawn times of jungle creeps were balanced, but in the next few patches, some time intervals were reverted back. The map now includes 3 jungle camps in a safe “triangle” on each side of the map, and 6 camps in the big jungle.

Patch 7.00 also introduces an unprecedented mechanic: bounty runes. They also change many times, from spawn time, to changing experience and gold frequency, and location. In the game, bounty runes are considered extra gold for the team. They are considered goals that players will confront to get. In general, they affect the game economy a lot.

In addition to the above two points, a lot of changes affect farm speed such as the presence of shrines to heal / mana. Then buffed the movement speed for most of the melee heroes in patch 7.21, helping the hero move from camp to camp more efficiently, jungling faster.

CONCLUSION

All of the above points can be summed up as follows: Dota not only has more gold, but more ways to utilize it. To verify this, the article has statistics GPM (gold per minute), XPM (XP per minute) and Last hit in the last 5 International periods. The following results:

• TI5 – 371 average GPM, 382 average XPM, 153 average LH
• TI6 – 393 average GPM, 384 average XPM, 163 average LH
• TI7 – 383 average GPM, 432 average XPM, 182 average LH
• TI8 – 404 average GPM, 453 average XPM, 174 average LH
• TI9 – 435 average GPM, 503 average XPM, 207 average LH

Note that patch 7.00 mentioned above with a lot of mechanics added came shortly after The International 2016 (TI6). This is also the time when we start to see the average move up. In addition, we also have to take into account that players increasingly understand the game, know how to rotate to optimize the farm (this is just speculation, maybe they already know).

From here, the article realizes that Valve is slowly expanding the potential of cores in the game. A lot of balance updates appeared to make it easier for the game to end – before, in the late game, the two sides were almost evenly matched, no goals to compete, and just farmed back and forth. extremely boring. This makes the game dry and uninteresting.

Previously, supports had a huge impact in the game for the first 10-20 minutes, and then slowly, cores surpassed and were the most influential heroes. The moment when the two sides begin to swap positions gradually occurs earlier and earlier in the game. That’s why support often prioritizes talents that increase their personal economy. Cores can farm faster, and take advantage of the flexibility in item slots to keep stat-plus items cheap – something that wasn’t possible before. This causes support to sometimes be left out, having little impact in games, thereby driving the game experience to be less attractive. The 600 damage from Finger of Death feels much weaker when a hero has two bracers on him. When the queue role wasn’t available, we had no way to confirm how many or how many people support, but now, support is an interesting and rewarding role.

The article believes that Valve understands this well. In the last two patches, we saw the gold bounty and XP decrease, and in 7.22, the cost of death also decreased, with the bounty for killstreak increasing. While it slows down the game, it makes the game economy more balanced.

Balancing a game as complex as Dota is extremely difficult. Of course, there will be bug updates, but these changes can help the game become more competitive, providing a more enjoyable playing experience. The article wants to see cores with slower growth, but continues to expand the limit towards the end of the game, in order to finish the game faster. Maybe support will have more impact on the outcome of the game, and players will prefer playing this role when queuing – solving previous problems with split roles. And what are your thoughts?

According to Dotabuff