One goal we have for Dota 2 is to have as many people playing and enjoying the game as possible. To do so, we suspected we’d need to encourage behaviors that have positive effects on the game and community and discourage behaviors that have the opposite effect- like causing other players to play less or not at all or to discourage them from trying out the game in the first place. One of the things we also suspected was that we wouldn’t be able to tackle that kind of problem without releasing the game – it’s the sort of thing where you need a lot of data to know whether or not your changes are having any effect.

Now that Dota 2 has been out for a while, and gathering a nice mix of new and original Dota 1 players, we’re able to gather data to find answers. One of the first things we dug into were the factors that contributed to a player quitting. While it might seem obvious that someone is more likely to quit if they have a negative experience in a game, we’ve learned in the past that we really need to test our assumptions to make sure we’re not fixing the wrong thing. Interestingly, some of the factors we assumed would affect leaving didn’t – for instance, the outcome of matches doesn’t correlate at all to the likelihood of quitting. Losing a bunch of Dota 2 games doesn’t seem to cause people to quit. But one thing that did stand out in the data was the amount of negative communication between players. Put simply, you are more likely to quit if there is abusive chat going on in your games.

So, further investment in discouraging negative communications seemed like it would be valuable. But where to draw the line? Should we allow all (potentially) abusive behavior in-game, or should we work to diminish it and push players more towards the positive and collaborative side of things? We don’t want to restrict anyone’s speech nor prevent anyone from speaking their mind, but for everyone who feels slighted by their inability to say exactly what they want to their teammates or opponents in-game, there is someone on the receiving end of that criticism who is having just as bad an experience (or worse).

After some discussion internally, we reached the decision that it seemed in the best interest of the Dota community to not push away players who actually enjoyed the game. As a consequence, this meant restricting the ability for some members of the community to say whatever they want. To put it another way, we only want people to quit playing if they actually just don’t like the game. That thinking led us to the current communication ban system. Its goal is to reduce the toxicity that occurs verbally or via text chat, and as a result, to avoid causing players to quit the game solely due to negative communication experiences.

Now that it’s been live for over a month, we’re able to see some of the effects it’s having, and the conversation the community is having around it, and we felt we should answer some of the questions we’re seeing out there and pass on some of the data we have.

First, a couple of notes on the implementation:

• Multiple people ganging up on you to report you in the same game has no effect on whether or not you are banned. We are looking at patterns of behavior over time only.
• If you are currently communication banned, any communication reports you receive in that time period do not contribute towards, nor result in additional bans.

The system is not yet ideal, but we felt it was better to gather data on this first step before trying to complicate it with extra nuance. We’ve changed the algorithm several times already, and we’ll continue to update it in response to the community’s feedback, and the data we’re gathering.

The most common question we get is why we added the communication ban system when we already have an in-game muting system. Shouldn’t players who don’t like what they’re hearing just mute the speaker? Ignoring the side problems around some players not knowing about muting, and that the damage is often done before you know you should mute someone else, the real problem with the muting approach is that it doesn’t provide strong feedback to the speaker. Some of our earlier data showed us that offensive players can be rehabilitated and that they manage to modify their communication so that they don’t cause negative interactions. To be able to do that though, they need to know when they’re producing negative interactions, and the communication ban system lets them know this. Our data shows this is working exactly as we hoped – many players banned eventually reach a ban free communication style, and the percentage of players being reported for communication bans is dropping over time.

We also hear from users reporting false reports and unwarranted bans, and when we investigate them we typically see that they’re unaware of how they are coming across to other players in-game. The perspective one has over what is or isn’t warranted or abusive varies by player, and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve tried to build a system where the community gets to own the definition of abuse, and the community’s overall decision finds its way back to the people who cross over the line. We’ll continue investigating these claims to make sure the system is working as intended, but ultimately, this system is not designed to please everyone, and our data makes us believe that even those banned by it are better served by the positive effect their lack of speech has on the community’s health.

A few statistics:

• Since the ban system has been implemented, there’s been a 35% drop in negative communication interactions.
• Less than the 1% of the active player base (players who have played Dota 2 in the last month) are currently banned.
• 60% of players who receive bans go on to modify their behavior and don’t receive further bans.
• Total reports are down more than 30%, even after accounting for the reduction in the number permitted per week.

Overall, we’re happy with how the system is proceeding. The communication ban system was an attempt to remove a specific set of behaviors in the community, and given its harshness and the change in expectations it engendered, it was always going to be something that was met with criticism. As is often the case, there’s still a lot of work to do, but the early results are promising.

After some thoughtful games of Dota, we came up with four new stretch goals that we’ll be updating the Compendium with tomorrow. The initial stretch goals for the Compendium were at $1,700,000, $1,850,000 and $2,600,000 granting a new Battle Booster, improved Courier upgrades, and an Immortal item.

The new goals are:

$2,000,000 – A custom HUD skin for all Compendium owners

$2,200,000 – A Taunt item with a brand new animation for all Compendium owners

$2,400,000 – Vote on participants in an 8 player Solo Championship (1 vs 1) at The International

$3,200,000 – Choose the next hero we release

Don’t miss Day 3 of Western Qualifiers starting tomorrow at 14:30 CEST. Tomorrow’s games will feature Evil Geniuses, mousesports, ICCup and Qpad Red Pandas. You can watch the game in the client or at The GDStudio.

The community has once again surprised and caught us off guard by reaching the second Stretch Goal in The International Interactive Compendium already, adding over $250,000USD to the International Prize Pool. Our original plan was for the International 2013 Courier to be able to ride a small set of mounts, and now the art team knows the community demands more. Here some concepts for some of the new mounts they now have on the to-do list:

Given how much faster the community is reaching the stretch goals we set up, we’ve decided to add some more, based on the many conversations we’ve seen the community having around the compendium. In particular, the big gap between the 2nd and 3rd is something we’re addressing. More on that tomorrow.

Don’t forget that the Western Qualifiers for the International 2013 started this morning over at TheGDStudio. Good luck to all the teams involved!

The first Stretch Goal in The International Interactive Compendium has been reached, with a cool $100,000 being added to the International Prize Pool. Everyone who picks up a Compendium before The International ends will now receive the most powerful Battle Bonus we’ve ever created.

Don’t forget that Battle Bonuses improve the Battle Point earning rate of every player in the game with you, so if you’ve got one, make sure you drag some friends in to share in that sweet, sweet bonus.

The next Compendium Stretch Goal is additional mounts for the International 2013 Smeevil courier. Good luck!

Each year we spend some of the planning time for The International trying to figure out ways to improve the connection between fans and the players in the tournament. We know that the majority of our viewers will be watching the tournament unfold over the internet, so we’d like to make it easier for an online fan to dig deeper into the event, the teams, and the players. In addition to wanting more detail, we know fans also love to compete with each other at predicting tournament results. This year we’re taking our first shot at addressing all of the these concepts, with an additional step that we hope will result in the tournament itself getting bigger and better as a direct result of fan enthusiasm.

Today we’re announcing The International Interactive Compendium, a virtual book that will keep you fully up to date with the state of The International, and allow you to play games with other fans for fun and bragging rights. In addition to making you eligible for special virtual item drops throughout the tournament, it’ll also allow you to vote on tournament-related community polls, such as the selection of which player should receive awards based on their play in the tournament. After the tournament is over, you’ll be able to browse your friends’ Compendiums to see how successful they were in their predictions.

Finally, to directly tie fan interest in Compendiums to the players themselves, we’re going to redirect 25% of the revenue directly into the prize pool. That means the total $1.6 million prize pool for The International is now just the starting point. The Compendium will be available in the Dota Store tomorrow morning at 10:00am PDT. For those of you planning to attend The International in person, your ticket purchase will include a Compendium.

The Elder Titan returns to the world he shattered!

The International tickets will go on sale on Tuesday, May 7th, at 10:00am PDT. They will be sold directly through the Dota 2 Store. This year we’ll be putting all tickets up for sale at once, so set your alarm clocks.

We’ve also updated the The International Qualifiers with the 16 competing teams. Divided into East and West, these teams will compete for the 3 remaining slots in The International. The West Qualifier will be hosted by GDStudio from May 13th through the 19th, and the East Qualifier by BeyondTheSummit from May 20th through the 26th. All qualifier matches will also be available for free through DotaTV, right inside your Dota client.

Updates notes go here.

The International returns once again this summer to Seattle with a five day Main Event, starting on August 7th.

The first team invited to The International are the returning champions, Invictus Gaming. Twelve more teams will be announced over the coming days. Just like in last year’s event, the winners of the East and West Qualifiers will each receive an invite. As you’ve probably noticed, that only adds to 15 teams. Right before The International begins, the Wild Card event will determine the final spot in a match between the runner-ups of each qualifier.

The West Qualifier will be hosted by GDStudio from May 13th through the 19th and the East Qualifier by BeyondTheSummit from May 20th through the 26th. All matches will also be available for free through DotaTV.

For those interested in attending in person, we will be providing more info soon.

Introducing Skywrath Mage!

Today we’ve shipped some changes to the report system as part of our ongoing initiatives in the community space. We’d like to do what we can to discourage some of the negativity that can go on during games as well as encourage folks to exhibit more cooperative behavior with other members of the community.

To that end, we’ve implemented the following changes:

– We’re restricting the number of report fields per report to a single field in the hopes of increasing some of the clarity for the specific behavior being reported.

– In concert with the above change, we’ve combined the ‘text’ and ‘voice’ abuse fields in the report dialog into a single ‘communication’ field.

– We’re implementing a stricter system of communication (both text and voice) bans for abusive players. The system takes into account reports, in-game behavior, and other factors to determine whether or not a ban is warranted. These bans will be for voice and text communication channels only; they will not affect matchmaking, and they will not place players in the low-priority pool. The bans escalate according to the following scale:

• 1st ban: 1 day
• 2nd ban: 2 days
• 3rd (and subsequent) bans: 1 week

– We’re changing the number of report submissions per week to 4 to act as an initial baseline, as we fine-tune the system.

– We’ve removed a couple of lesser-used features (like spectators being able to report) that our data has shown not to correlate with accurate reports of bad behavior.

These changes are the beginning of a series of ongoing efforts to make the gameplay experience for all members of the DOTA community as enjoyable as possible. We’re going to be constantly monitoring and improving the system (and running many more experiments) as we go along, and we’re hopeful you’ll find these changes result in an improved experience in-game.

Patch notes are available here.

Better watch your back, because Bristleback is back! (kill me).

Something we’re very excited about this week is Anuxi’s Treasure of the Shaper Divine Chest. Look at all that stuff! This marks the first Chest entirely composed of items created by a single Workshop Contributor. We cannot wait to see what else comes out of the Dota 2 Workshop community.

In Tournament news, The Defense 3 Grand Finals are this weekend and if you happen to be one of the Immortal Highlanders that are still around since the start of the tournament then you are in for a treat! Virtus Pro faces Fnatic in a Best of Five that is sure to produce many memorable moments that should last until the next Defense ends or the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first.

Good news to you G-1 League fans! The fine fellows over 17173 have added Inky the Hexapus courier to their tournament pass. Early adopters should find Inky awaiting in their inventories when they log in — make sure to bring a treat.

Finally, are you in Serbia? Do you like Dota 2? Do you have what it takes?! *insert guitar riff here* KGB-HQ is running a 32 team tournament at their cafe in Belgrade, Serbia. Interested? You can find more info here.

This changelog fell off the back of Axe’s van.

After a two month break, the G-League Grand Finals is set to take stage at the Mercedez-Benz Arena in Shanghai. The Best of 5 match will have International Champions iG face off against LGD.Int, a team composed of US, Canadian, Russian and European players that recently moved to China. The show’s production will be available at GameFy’s website as well as a ticket for ingame viewing. The game is scheduled to start at around 5 AM EST (11 CET) this Saturday, March 9.

And your usual crew of broadcasters will be there to keep you company in-game and on their websites, with Chinese commentary by  820, Miss, Danche, BBC and Haitao, English by LD, Tobi and Godz and Russian by your Russian God V1lat.

In this week’s update you will also find Leshrac’s first item set and Lina’s hot new hair style.

The Machinima guys just posted the first part of their Dota 2 Pro series, this episode focuses on Dendi.

Make sure you have a lot of bandwidth available before you click on this massive changelog.