Something I have been thinking about is how the heroes fighting in a game of Dota are all canonically powerful entities or beings of great accomplishment in their own rights, but are so weak at the start of the game.
We have had it confirmed that every game of Dota 2 is canon and my assumption being that the losing ancient rewinds time and they start fighting another battle with different heroes from different backgrounds and timelines.
However when they turn up to battle, the abilities and skills that presumably made them worthy for the battle are unknown to them. I appreciate this is coming purely from a lore perspective and not a gameplay one, but what if heroes started the game with all abilities learnt but all at level 0? As a blanket suggestion, all values for the abilities could be half or quarter values until a skill point is put into them. Moreover, all level 0 skills share the same cooldown of the last ability used to prevent combos early on. Finally, heroes can have access to their ultimate's from level 0 but casting it at level 0 comes with a cost like it would apply a hefty undispellable exhaustion debuff on the hero.
I feel like this will fit in more with the concept of the battle of the ancients and it isn't until the heroes start fighting for an ancient and levelling up that they get the ability to perform their skills better and with less drawbacks.
Appreciate this could totally break the game but was just a thought I had while playing the other day. Anyone think this concept might work?
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/srn6jz/level_1_hero_power_level/