A New Approach to Helping Players Learn Dota

Tomorrow marks the launch of DOTA: Dragon’s Blood on Netflix. With the surrounding excitement, it’s a good time to introduce a comprehensive update to the new player experience to help guide any potential newcomers as they join up to play.

As the community knows, depth and discovery are hallmarks of Dota. They're why we play. However, that depth also brings a vast number of new things to process and absorb, and the first steps of Dota discovery sometimes feel overwhelming. It's true that the highs of Dota are surprising and joyous, but for new players it's often difficult to sift through all the information and find clear paths to positive results. Today's update aims to help with that.

Because the roads to victory in Dota are many, there are tons of different ways to learn and play. Some players benefit from learning the ropes with friends from the start, while others love to absorb as much information on their own before joining the multiplayer fray. Overall, different players have different needs, and we've found that linear tutorials alone aren't effective at helping people learn the game. Instead, we think a mixture of diverse tools and resources have the greatest potential at helping new players learn based on their specific needs.

With this approach, we can offer a system of steady engagement that provides gradual learning opportunities rather than relying on a single dump of complex information. This includes a variety of changes to help both new players and returning players alike. It's a lot to unpack, so let's dive in below.

STREAMLINED SHOP

No matter how long they spend in a tutorial, browsing all the choices in the shop is one of the most daunting aspects of Dota for a new player. So we decided to not make them do that. Instead, new players will now see a streamlined version of the shop that limits the complexity of choices presented and helps avoid information overload.

The shop will display a guided experience on exactly what to build, and once a player builds each item shown, it will unveil new choices, guiding them step-by-step along the way. With a curated shop telling new players exactly what to buy, they can focus on impacting the game with their hero instead of losing time shopping.

This update also includes new default guides for all heroes, with an eye specifically towards helping new players more easily execute an effective game plan for the hero they want to play.

Players can opt to use the normal shop whenever they feel comfortable with choosing items, but until then, they can trust that the items shown are the most appropriate for a new player to execute, and spend time focused on mastering other elements of play.

NEW PLAYER OBJECTIVES

Everyone learns at their own pace, and the tools at a new player’s disposal need to have the flexibility to match their individual needs. Players benefit from a variety of options and will learn the game more effectively in the long run if they can choose and focus on the areas they want to improve.

To provide a resource for them to lean on whenever they feel the need, we've implemented a new quest-like system of objectives that let players explore aspects of the game in a controlled, scripted environment. Featuring four tiers of progression, it contains a mixture of tutorial-like scenarios for specific elements of the game, how-tos on features of the client, and different tasks to help you learn the ins-and-outs.

Some objectives