Dota 2's Beast Year event faces criticism from the game's player base

Many are upset with the Beast Modes ‘pay-to-win’ module

The Dota 2 Chinese New Year event has been a pretty huge letdown for players after Valve failed to deliver a decent game mode. Valve decided to bring back the ‘Year Beast’ Mode to commemorate the Year of the Ram, which seems decent enough, except for the fact that players cannot play any other mode when this mode is live. This coupled with server crashes and a pay-to-win nature has turned this Chinese New year sour for many players.

The issue with the event’s Year Beast mode is its design which, unlike previous event modes, happens in a specific 10-20 minute time window. This resulted in the servers being flooded with players trying to log in at the same time which inevitably led to multiple server crashes. It is hard to understand why Valve thought randomly spaced event times would be a good idea.

But it isn’t just the server issues that players are upset about. Many are complaining that the Year Beast mode event has a pay-to-win feel, which is disappointing for one of the world’s largest free-to-play games. How the game mode works is, every few minutes, a special Year Beast character will appear that charges down lanes and attacks the opposite team. The only way to control the Beast is through spending ‘Ability Points’ which enhances its combat acumen, speed or support abilities. These Ability Points can either be earned throughout the mode, or purchased, which is where the main problem lies. Players who spend money on these points will have a clear advantage over those who do not, changing the tides of battle in their favour. What’s worse is that players cannot choose to opt out of these Year Beast matches, as the game decides if you connect during the right window.

Many upset fans have now taken to the game’s official forums as well as the Dota 2 subreddit to voice their discontent with the event. Hopefully Valve takes all this negative feedback into account and goes back to their old event game mode formula for future events. For starters, making the event mode available at all times, along with regular modes would appease players and also reduce the chance of a server crashes as well.

Dota 2 is a free-to-lay MOBA title that released in 2013 for the PC. Nvidia recently held a Dota 2 Championship “GTX960 Cup” in major cities across India. You can check out our review of Dota 2 here.