@mr_skeleton: It also says "Item find chance" in addition to the point bonus, so I think the rate that you're earning points also increases the chance that you'll get a random drop (these are on a separate timer from the chests, so if you get a chest it doesn't count as an item drop).
But yeah, the fact that it stacks gets ridiculous. I'm basically leveling every 3 games as long as a decent number of people in there have a boost. Plenty of times where I've found two hats and a chest in a single drop.
3 months is a ridiculous amount of time to have such a huge boost given that boosts usually cost like 6 bucks for a week.
@mr_skeleton: Actually I think they start tomorrow. But the sooner you buy it the better, if only for getting the most out of the battle point booster.
So Valve has put out a 10 dollar interactive pamphlet called "The Compendium" that allows you to make predictions/follow the teams throughout the big Dota tournament, the International. Basically it's fantasy football for Dota, with prizes for people who make the most accurate prognostications (crazy additions for the courier that comes with the book). 1/4th of the cost of the compendium goes back into the main prize pool for the international itself.
I wasn't planning on getting one since, while I enjoyed watching the championship rounds last year, I wasn't super into the international. However, Valve added a 'battle point boost' that more than doubles the item find bonus until the end of the tournament, which is in three months. I can't say no to hats. I CAN'T SAY NO TO HATS. So there's my 10 bucks down.
But basically I was actually really impressed with how slick the compendium itself was. It's still obviously early and not fleshed out, but I'm actually planning on keeping up with the qualifiers to see how my predictions turn out. The fact that it's not just winners (I really don't have a preferred team since I haven't been keeping up), but also general stuff like most picked hero/fastest match etc. is really compelling to me.
I'm curious to what the general Duder consensus is. Is this cool? Is it exploitative? Is it overpriced?
It's worth mentioning that Valve just made the penalties for justified reports way harsher. Low Priority match making is now only for leavers/abandoners, reported players just get straight out banned for a certain amount of time, depending on how many prior offenses they have. The downside to this is that you'll likely have way more smurf accounts at the bottom placement bracket filled with ridiculous assholes. As soon as you get 20ish games deep, it starts to drop off big time.
@pyromagnestir: If you go into the 'watch' tab you can usually see some higher bracket match made games (people with like 600+ wins) playing live. Alternatively, the 'notable streams' thread should have some stuff that'll help out, especially if you're looking for someone to commentate.
Once you've got a basic grasp on the different items and rolls, I recommend you check out the "Dota 2 Fails of the Week" and the Top 10 of the Week on Youtube. Fails of the Week usually show some really entertaining mistakes that beginners often make but don't even realize. A lot of it is hero specific, so you should at least have a basic idea of all the roles different heroes have, but if you have a tab on the dota wiki open you shouldn't have any problems keeping up after that. Top 10 is just the opposite of the fails of the week and just shows some really entertaining strategies/lucky bastards.
I feel like it's worth mentioning that my friends and I that play pretty much nightly have been having really sporadic but nasty issues with the servers. Frequently that's 200+ pings and 30-50% packet loss, along with the occasional disconnect. Probably due to the increasing popularity of the game, Valve needs to get on it with scaling their infrastructure up.
Also worth mentioning for new players, type "-ping" in the game chat (minus the quotes) for a latency check. It'll be in the upper right hand corner.
@mariachimacabre: Assuming Ron Moore has creative control I don't think we'll see much if any of that. He's very much about complex characters and plot lines. See the Dominion War in DS9 and the entirety of BSG.
@ravelle: It's worth mentioning that once someone is D/C'd for five minutes, you can leave without penalty. Sometimes if the people are still cool with it it's worth playing it out.
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