Valve has announced a new monthly subscription service for their MOBA game Dota 2, called Dota Plus, which provides plenty of extra features for fans to make use of, including the fact that every game with a hero now earns you XP towards that hero's level progress, unlocking new tiers of hero level badges to grant Reward Shards and Hero Chat Wheel responses.
On top of that there are also tailored challenges for each hero too, allowing you to train your skills with said hero, and each challenge offers three tiers of difficulty, with more XP awarded depending on how many stars you get. For the monthly price of $3.99 USD you can also track in-game progress, select a challenge before the game (with these challenges refreshed every two weeks), and make use of the Hero Chat Wheel, allowing you to choose phrases for your hero to say.
That's far from everything though, as each hero has now "gained a reliquary with slots for 14 Relics—10 Common and 4 Rare—that track a variety of battleground achievements," Valve writes. "Once unlocked, Relics update and display your statistical milestones as you play, with a breakdown of progress in each match available on the post-game screen. You can unlock Relics for any hero by using Reward Shards, and when you unlock multiple Relics, they all track simultaneously."
Each week allows you to earn 1,000 extra shorts too, and you can use these shards to choose rewards from a list of items exclusive to Plus subscribers, not to mention select legacy item sets.
The Plus Assistant also comes with this new subscription, helping you to improve your game by suggesting items based on what lane you've selected and the roster of heroes, as well as ability suggestions, hero suggestions, lane strategy, and death summary, breaking down the reasons you met your end, which may also be helped by post-game analytics.
For more on Dota Plus, visit the official website. Do you think you'll be using this to help you with your game?