Dota 2 Is Getting A Huge Makeover

Valve has a massive bit of news to share with the Dota 2 community. They made an initial post about some new content arriving for the free-to-play MOBA, but in addition to the initial post there's a massive page full of details and gameplay features for Dota 2 Reborn.

You can check out the basic announcement on the Dota 2 website, where the developers have a very basic post up about the game getting a new interface, a new engine, custom games, an overhauled dashboard, a new UI framework and all new ways to play-test and get acquainted with heroes in Dota 2. The new beta for the Reborn rendition of the game is set to launch next week.

The new dashboard for Dota 2 is like the Rolls Royce of UI and looks a lot like an upgraded version of the Steam dashboard. It's sleek, clean and fast moving. It's also been redesigned to easily allow for new tabs and menus to be added in future updates.

They've also overhauled the party features and functions in Valve's popular MOBA title, including new party tools such as “Invite Your Friends”, which allows you to easily invite your friends to the party from the friends menu. Party voice chat now works a lot like the party chat from the Xbox 360 where you can chat with your party members in or out of a match and even during loading screens. Party management allows players to also merge and reassign party leaders in Dota 2 at any time.

They also seemed to have taken a lot of tips from the Xbox Live profiles because now players can skim through the feeds of their friends or check out an activity feed showing chat, achievements and match data from the friends on their list. Additionally, they also added Hero MMR to help players measure and test their friend's performance data against their own play-styles and setups. There's also an extremely detailed play-style graph that examines the averages across five different axes and examines just about every measurable aspect of a player's style. That feature seems to dive deep into some serious numerical obsessions.

All new chat features are also being implemented in Dota 2, such as chatting with friends and being able to whisper things privately, as well as hosting multiple conversations from all new chat windows designed to emulate a certain visual theme from Steam. They've also ensured that chat tabs are available so you can host multiple chatting sessions with multiple players, whether they're friends or foes.

The new hero browser has also been revamped, this time with a design that seems to mimic – yes, if you guessed your Steam library when it's set on icon mode, you guessed correctly. The icons are designed to make it easy to pick and choose your heroes in Dota 2 along with new characters such as most played, least played and favorites.

Again, if you're into stats you can see even more of the stats on the heroes with the new browser. In addition to this, players can also take the heroes out for a test spin with the new “Demo Hero” feature. You can test loadouts, equipment and play-styles without having to risk going into a full match and feeling the mighty wrath of “pro” players yelling and screaming at you.

Dota 2's new features will begin to roll out in the open beta. You can check out the full details of the new patch over on the official website.