Icefrog is often seen experimenting with new stuff in Dota. Today, he released the patch 7.25c which introduced an interesting concept during the picking phase of the game – If the same hero is simultaneously picked by both parties, the round restarts and the selected hero is banned instead.
On paper, this new change seems like a nice addition to the game for banning out overpowered heroes which are generally first phase picks. However, a loophole was soon brought to light by Dota 2 fans within only 2 hours of the patch’s release.
The trick is unrealistic yet simple. If two players from the opposing teams keep picking the same heroes one by one, the game will keep on banning them and eventually there won’t be a hero left to pick. The game then starts deducting gold from both the players and continues indefinitely even after the gold count reaches zero, thus breaking the game. The scenario is massively hypothetical but still possible, especially if players from both teams are in on it. While the odds of this situation happening are extremely low, one player from each side can easily communicate this strategy among themselves with an intent to ruin the game for the other players.
The process was also demonstrated by a Reddit user in this post, where he creates a custom lobby of three players and keeps on banning heroes till they run out of heroes to pick. Another user joked in the comments that, “As usual even April Fools is on valve time.”
It’s surprising to think that Valve couldn’t anticipate this kind of behavior happening in the game, and we do hope they decide to fix things out before new sorts of abuses start surfacing. A potential solution would be to make the players pick random heroes after a certain number of (or all) heroes are banned. This won’t leave any room for game ruiners to get their satisfaction.
