This week, Valve has decided not to add any new groundbreaking content. Instead, there are some minor improvements for gameplay and DotaTV.
The Aegis reclaim timer now shows up correctly, and the item pop-up messages are now more selective, preventing the appearance of too many notifications throughout the game.
Guilds are now introduced in DotA 2, and players will be able to create their own guilds, with their own logo and guild channel, and they will also be able to form free-to-join guild parties for members. The guilds will not be added to the main client until next week, but players can get a taste of what is coming through the test client.
Some other significant changes is the alteration of the Captain's Mode penalty timers from 20/50/90 to 30/70/110, the addition of VAC protection to DotA. Private Lobbies can now specify the DotA TV delay, the time it takes for DotaTV to show an event of the game to spectators.
GAMEPLAY- CM Time Penalty change from 20/50/90 to 30/70/110.- Fixed it being possible to find out where enemy player cameras were looking.- Prepared Dota 2 for VAC support.UI- Added support for forming and managing Guilds. You can invite, kick, promote, and demote members. They have a guild message that can be edited, a logo, and a chat channel. We'll be continuing with development of additional Guild functionality!- Added the ability to open a party to a guild, which allows members of a specified guild to freely join the party. Players can browse open guild parties that are available to them.- NOTE: Guilds will remain disabled on the main client this week. They should be fully live next week.- Quick Cast moved to separate keybindings, instead of sharing autocast's bindings.- Quick Cast can now be used on the minimap.- Private lobbies can now specify the Dota TV delay between 10 seconds and two minutes. Six minute delay is available for league lobbies.- The list of matchmaking regions is now sorted by distance from the user. Closer regions will be at the top of the list.- The matchmaking system will now notify players if a region they wish to play in has gone offline for maintenance.- Removed spectator item popups for wards, couriers, and dust.- Fixed Aegis reclaim message popping up erroneously.AUDIO- Updates and minor revisions to some Zeus, Alch, and Pugna ability SFX.- Added -nomicsettings launch option for users of external voice chat software.PERFORMANCE- Fixed a crash that could occur on multi-core CPUs.- Fixed a crash when returning from alt-tab.- Fixed an audio problem that could occur when disabling the active audio device.COMPENDIUM- Added 7 pages of Main Event predictions.- Added Team Cup results page.WORKSHOP- Fixed limited hero selection in Workshop In-Game test.- Added particle import step to some weapon importers that have gameplay-required particles attached to them (in-game particle preview not finished yet).
