The much-beloved head of Valve touched on the subject during an as-yet unreleased podcast of Seven Day Cooldown. Having already spilled headlines on Half-Life 3 (er, Ricochet 2), it’s not surprising he’s in the mood to continue giving fans some solid and exciting news. Quoth the man himself on the nature of Dota 2:
The aforementioned twists seem to be focused on player contribution to the community. Though we don’t know how such a system would be calculated, it’s clear that players who spend time tutoring and guiding others would certainly benefit in value from their deeds:
Of course, everyone wants to be on a team where they actually help one another out and organize strategies, and steer clear of glitch-seeking or griefers. If there’s an automated way to do this, all the better! Newell went on to state that this kind of system could be implemented in many kinds of games, and has previously spoken about the unique pricing schemes scaled to player behavior made possible through digital sales.
Newell disregarded the idea that matching players on these values comes fairly close to social networking, seeming to believe that their strategy is far more meaningful:
It’s very interesting to see a gaming company attempt to ‘personalize’ experiences by placing you with similarly-valued players. It’s one of those announcements which may not seem like a game changer - like when Google silently rolled out their Personalized Searches - but after that, the search engine was different for everyone who used it. The same may now be true for online gaming in Valve’s DOTA 2, for better or worse.
What do you think about Gabe’s interview? Do you think this ’twist’ will add depth to the gameplay, like purchasing items did in Team Fortress 2? Do you like the idea of placing value on players?
Dota 2 is forecasted for a 2012 release on the PC and Mac.
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Feel free to follow me on Twitter @Makelevi, where if Gabe had a twitter account I would constantly retweet everything.
Source: Seven Day Cooldown (via TheVerge)
