Thoughts on the Year Beast Mode. Has Valve struck the right balance?

Note that this article is based on the personal opinion of the writer and does not represent the full perspective of GosuGamers.

1. Release Time

One of the first complaints that popped up on reddit was the timing when The Year Beast mode was activated. For most players, this was not a major issue but for many players in the SEA region this was during Chinese New Year, when they were busy travelling home from work to celebrate the lunar year with their families and relatives, and in the process did not have adequate amount of free time to play the new game mode to their hearts content.

Whether this is something that Valve needs to work on to appease one of their important demographics is up to them. However, it does raise the question on how best to release future special events to ensure that all players can access the game mode without any major conflicts with traditional holidays, periods and events in a particular country.

2. Nerfs Galore

As soon as The Year Beast event opened up, many players quickly discovered early on that Ursa's fury swipes stacked on the beast, therefore, granting an insane amount of damage over the duration of the game. Combine this with multiple attack speed items such as Mjolnir and you have yourself one lean mean swiping machine.

Valve quickly nerfed this ability and turned Ursa into an unviable pick to try and prevent more people from easily acquiring mass amounts of jade tokens over and over and flooding the market with rare and mythical items. Heroes were not the only thing to be left out of the nerf radar. Items such as Mask of Madness were also excluded from the game mode and most recently the best damage item in the game, Divine Rapier was removed as well.

Soon enough, early tips and strategies posted on various reddit threads which worked previously suddenly became unviable. One of the common strategies after the subsequent nerf to Ursa to quickly acquire enough jade tokens to exchange for a Bloom Bounty was to deal 100,000 damage to the beast before encouraging all players to die. By dealing that much amount of damage, each player was guaranteed to be rewarded with 600 jade tokens. The average match time to achieve this was between 3-5 minutes (1 minute for some players). So in just over half an hour you would have enough jade tokens for one Bloom Bounty. Sure enough, Valve quickly put a spanner in the works and rendered this easy strategy mute.

So is it right for Valve to shutdown the loopholes and exploits from players who haven't tried out any methods to quickly acquire mass jade tokens, whilst allowing players who have taken advantage to keep their loot? Well yes and no. It is a rather sensitive matter. By closing the loophole and preventing players from easily buying bloom bounties, it would reduce the amount of clutter in the market. If it was to promote fairness to all players, then by taking back the jade tokens from players who have intentionally exploited a loophole, it would set an example and ensure that all players participating will be rewarded equally. However this could trap many innocent players who do play the game fairly and were curious to see if a loophole exists.

3. Visage Bug

One of the major bugs in the new mode, which was quickly adopted by players was the Visage trick. By sending the familiars to the top left side of the map at the beginning of the game, the beast would chase the familiars and then become trapped in the corner, unable to turn or attack. So for the whole duration of the game, you can hit the beast as many times as you can without any fear of retaliation or dying.

This was was no doubt a major bug and it deserved to be patched to make players work for their jades. Just like in real life, money simply does not come pouring out of your wallet. You need to work hard to earn it unless you happen to be already in money, in which case you should buy more hats from the store! The designers who make such awesome cosmetics will thank you!

4. Fixed Ingots

At the start of each game, you are granted a certain amount of gold based on the amount of Flamesalt Ingots in your inventory mutipled by 40. It was quickly discovered that players could quickly sell any items (apart from Divine Rapiers) just before the game mode ends and recover some of their gold which they can re-use later in another match. However this exploit was also nullified when Valve introduced entry tiers. The intention was to stop players who don't have much gold and/or buy items to help the team from getting easy jade tokens. By having a set amount of gold, it ensured that all players contributed equally to the team.

So was it right for Valve to introduce entry tiers? Yes and no. On the one hand, it stopped shady players who have barely any Flamesalt Ingots from using their fellow team mates who have worked hard to earn their Flamesalt Ingots to acquire easy jade tokens. At the same time it ensured that all players contribute equally to the team's effort and receive the same amount of jade tokens. On the other hand, this has not prevented the issue of players suddenly dropping out of a match, therefore creating a disadvantage to the team in the amount of jade tokens that could have been earned.

5. Overflow Market

As a consquence of the numerous bugs, loopholes and exploits, the steam community market is flooded with items from the New Bloom festival making it a nightmare for those players hoping to earn some money from that special or hard to acquire item. As a reward, players who dealt enough damage to the beast to be in the top 10% earned a genuine Redhoof courier while those lucky folks who managed to deal enough damage to land in the top 1% earned a Jadehoof courier. This turned the market upside down as more players began to receive these 'rare' and 'hard to acquire' couriers whether it was through using exploits or bugs. The value of these couriers dropped sharply over the coming days and weeks to the point where it's value is no greater than a hat.

Average selling price for the Redhoof courier on the steam community market

Average selling price for the Jadehoof courier on the steam community market

So should Valve take action and remove these couriers from players who have exploited a loophole or bug? This is again a divided answer. Removing these couriers could improve the sell value and provide a much needed buff to those folks who earned the courier fairly and want to sell. However, this step would be quite extreme for Valve to undertake and no doubt anger many players who wanted these couriers, regardless of how they acquired them through hard work and fair play or taking advantage of the exploits and loopholes within the game.

6. Its happened before: DireTide 2013



One of the first bugs to be patched during DireTide 2013

Last year's delayed halloween festive event also displayed some of the common issues found in the New Bloom Festival. From nerfing multiple perma stuns on Roshan and rendering numerous strategies such as the feeding Pudge trick useless, it seems that Valve was trying to balance the fairness of the game mode whilst ensuring that players can still have a fun time. Did they succeed and have they learnt anything from the issues from DireTide in this year's special event?

Judging by the number of loopholes and exploits as well as the quick response by Valve in addressing these issues, yes and no. There is always going to be a bug or loophole which will be missed no matter how many times it's beta tested. It's a general fact in any software application. While it seems unfair that players who have not taken advantage of any flaws will not be equally rewarded for those who did beat the nerf/bug police and obtained their rewards, I believe that Valve has taken the right path by sealing the leaks before it became even more of a issue and unbalance the flow between fairness and fun. At the same time they mostly avoided having a larger mob of angry players demanding their items back regardless if they 'cheated'. While in an ideal world where people who cheat their way for a reward should be punished, at the end of the day it is up to Valve to enforce the rules and promote fairness and equality and for players to work hard for that reward.

7. Final Thoughts

Valve certainly has some work to do when it comes to balancing fairness and equality in any future special events for all players. Players have the right to be able to play a game and have fun and be rewarded for participating. Valve has done some good work here with the gold entry tiers and players have discovered that there are other legitimate strategies for earning jade tokens without relying on bugs or exploits. Items which are given on certain tiers and rewarded to certain players should also have some protection from having their value and rarity affected by potential exploits or bugs which allow other players to cash in without putting in the same effort of work to earn the item.

When the next special event comes up, will Valve have learnt some lessons from the previous two events? Only time will tell.

Headline/rotator images from onGamers