Dota 2, one of the most popular esports titles in the world serving over 500,000 players on Steam, just released a massive update called New Frontiers that will likely change the free-to-play game forever. The biggest difference is by far the “real estate”: the entire game map is now 40 percent larger, allowing you to explore around the edges.
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"The core purpose of the game remains the same," Valve - "your lanes are no further apart and everything you need to win is still in the center of the map."
But Valve goes on to describe new "meta-defining" features, new locations, new mini bosses/towers called Tormentors, neutral vision-granting units called Watchers, Lotus Pools that spawn fruit, new items, matchmaking changes, health bar UI improvements, and a series of hero adjustments that will touch every character in the game.
In more detail, both jungles have been redesigned, meaning vision placement and farming strategies need some rethinking. Roshan, who is even more tanky, now has two new pits in the northwest and southeast corners of the map.
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Additionally, two portals connect the corners of the map near the safe lane towers, which allow players to teleport from one end of the map to the other.
This update adds a fourth type of hero attribute called Universal. It's a new main stat group where some existing players gain 0.6 to the damage they deal from each element of any attribute. There are also big changes to hero balance and new items to get involved with.
There's a new matchmaking algorithm called Glicko, which, according to Valve, should allow you to get into a game "quickly and accurately" with other players at a similar skill level.
For the full patch notes see here.
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source of information: theverge.com
