No, dota has a paid subscription ($5 p/m) which gates gameplay features, many of which would be really useful for newer players - ingame coaching, item suggestions, hero pick suggestions, death summary, live gameplay tips, avoid player list, ranked mmr double downs that can be used after drafting phase, exclusive modes, and live spectating (free users have to use discord streaming or spectate with 2 minutes delay).
You're talking about features that were all developed extra (aka they weren't gated), all of them using some kind of AI.
And none of which are even close to necessary.
The problem with selling convenience in F2P games is that the developers themselves created the issue they are selling the solution to. For example, having little inventory space. This isn't something that requires development resources to fix, so it's very clearly just there as a problem you can pay to solve. None of this applies to Dotas stuff.
> many of which would be really useful for newer players
Some of it is outright bad if you blindly rely on it because it goes by global statistics. How was that old story about the air force trying to create a perfect seat for the "average" pilot again? They measured everyone and averaged the results and then they couldn't find a single pilot that fit. The static list of suggested items is interesting, but the "dynamic" suggestions for the next item to build are something I mostly ignore.
I meant more like gameplay power boosts, but that's fair, those things are sorta gameplay.
But in any case, while you could argue that that's kinda pushy, that's Valve the game dev, not Valve the platform owner. I don't play Dota so that stuff doesn't affect me at all.
As a dota player who played dota 1 and dota 2, i dont have to spend a single penny to enjoy dota 2. And i get to play it for free on linux. Good lord, im grateful for that.
