4Game

So, it seems that the DotA fanbase is being vocal and it's clear that they're NOT happy with the inclusion of arcana and implementation of the new PvP mode and are currently signing a petition per word-of-mouth on Reddit to have it changed. Which is exactly what Valve's doing again. They ship out a new, anticipated product with some long-awaited rewards like Anime Knight and Spectre Arcana, and mix in a rehash attempt of Invoker to test the waters about the reception of reintroduced BP rewards, which would allow them to make small modifications to already completed arcanas and personas. For example, we could see Morph arcana with a total remodel as the Diretide BP reward, with Pudge's persona returning with a dragonclaw/another hook cosmetic remodeled to fit both OG Pudge and the persona. You get the jist.

Let's get to the meat of this topic, in case you're still reading. Valve intentionally ships BPs with skewed values and missing, easily coded-in features. It's basic psychology, a fan community versus the giant organization "not knowing" their product or it's consumers. I don't really have all the data of changes done to past events, but even seeing how Nemestice is going, the trend is there. They flesh out a new game mode that gave no rewards except 1/20 of a 3-star objective every week. Since then, they have made a ton of fixes reward-wise from item balancing to timings and rewards itself(Losses now grant 50 xp too). The community "suggests" a fix, sometimes one that most of all would think is a given, for example, backdoor protection in a game consisting of destroying 4 towers. Valve is slowly adding these and other rewards to find the maximum line of profit.

Currently we have no consumables for the matches, because let's be frank – not a lot of the playerbase thought of them(excluding shovels/portals) as a real reward – and now there are a lot of empty levels. If only they could be filled with something that's been part of almost every battle pass up to this date… Oh wait! Rylai's wheel! Let's point out the absence of this long-forgotten feature to the devs, maybe we, the Redditors can get it back to the game! And while we're at it, let's get some falling cosmetic nemestice shards that have a chance to unearth battle points on impact, that fits the setting perfectly!

Think, r/Dota2, think(the original show only used one Think though)! What happened back when the treasure of the Emerald Renewal ended up being a few recolored immortals? And what about when seemingly no one was getting ultra rares out of a specific treasure from prior passes? What about the time that sideshop gold was not instant gratification and they hid the feature, allowing you to instead recycle for CM tokens? Literally everything unsatisfactory is Valve testing waters, and every time the community is upset, they pull out a feature/giveaway that frankly should have been there already. It's a literal game of balancing a bar of profits and a bar of satisfaction in their most efficient values. There's not even a Dota + inclusion to any of this yet.

I have rambled a lot and this isn't the most coherent of posts, but what I'm trying to say is that crying for more is sadly the only way to get the most out of these battle passes, because they're never shipped as the complete product because they want to gauge out the maximum profit for minimum effort. This was just the first time that I felt empty after shelling out the usual dose of lvl 100 starter pass and started to truly think on what exactly did I pay for, when there's no clear game plan to reach even Davion without a further investment. Really hoped for a new terrain too.