Just shy of five years ago, the first version of STRATZ was conceived. Two years later, we began showing off the first complete version of STRATZ.com. Since then, STRATZ has added 7 new members to our team, and seen 3 members leave to focus on different pursuits. The STRATZ portfolio has grown from a single API to span almost a dozen different products, some of which have yet to be announced to the public.
In late 2017, we began providing product release updates in our Discord with a 2–4 week cadence. In April 2018, this evolved into more detailed release notes. Then, at the end of last year, many of you stopped getting regular updates from us, but we’ve been as active as ever releasing updates and focusing on what’s next.
As devout tournament-goers know, our team has been active at several large league events around the world, including the last 4 TIs. We gave out free swag, wrote about our experiences, and engaged with the greater DOTA 2 community.
At TI8, we tested a set of neural networks to see if we could predict the outcome of professional matches using only data from the draft stage. We had great success with that experiment, giving us the confidence to begin active development of a new standalone drafting assistant to be powered by those new networks. At that point, our update channels slowed down until February of this year, when we announced the first private beta of this application, called STRATZ Plus.
From then on, we continued providing updates in Discord, however these updates are only available to our beta testers. One month ago, we released STRATZ Plus 0.5.0, marking a major milestone in the development of this application.
Over the past year, STRATZ.com has been getting updates on a monthly basis, though we’ve been mostly silent about what we’ve been working on. Behind the scenes, overlapping with STRATZ Plus development, we’ve had a secret project in the works. While we won’t be announcing it specifically today, we do want to share one huge detail: it’s enabling us to completely rebuild the foundation of STRATZ.com.
This unannounced project began as the brainchild of STRATZ’s lead developer, Blukai, who’s put meticulous care in ensuring that this foundation will be able to power not only a refreshed STRATZ.com, but also every STRATZ product moving forward.
To celebrate nearing the completion of this restructuring, we are thrilled to announce that starting today, our team will be providing “Supdates” via our Discord, Facebook and Twitter every Friday! These Supdates will vary in content, and will include sneak peeks, beta release notes, or even full production releases. Regardless of what we’re doing, we want to keep our community in the loop!
Speaking of beta releases, we’re also excited to announce that for the first time, we’re inviting everyone to join us in the public testing of our pre-release content via beta.STRATZ.com. Through this process, we’re looking to give dedicated DOTA 2 players the opportunity to influence the development of their analytic tools through an open dialogue regarding what we have in active development.
So much has changed, and there’s a lot more just around the corner.
To get started with our first Supdate, we’ll talk about where we’re at with STRATZ Plus.
STRATZ Plus — Winning the draft game
STRATZ Plus is a standalone application that uses screen reading (OCR) technology to detect and simulate your real-time DOTA 2 draft, providing key insights on the players, team compositions, and lanes in your match. It can also be used without the OCR to experiment with custom draft scenarios.
Since STRATZ Plus has been one of our main priorities for 8 months now, it’s in fairly stable condition. Development remains active, specifically with regards to overcoming some complexities with screen detection and support for additional game modes. Furthermore, the neural networks that power every stage of the draft analysis will continue to be iterated on to ensure optimal accuracy, as well as to accommodate the perpetually changing meta.
Changes to the interface will largely be on standby until we’ve released the pending big updates to STRATZ.com. You’ll know as soon as we know when that process is about to take priority once again. For now, you can enjoy unlimited access to the beta by making a public request in our Discord.
Beta.STRATZ.com — A glimpse into the future
STRATZ.com offers exclusive access into every DOTA 2 match played in the world. Beta.STRATZ.com is an extension of this experience, giving our users a chance to check out our pre-release content while we prepare it for our stable channel.
Following the release of a platform-wide revamp to our light and dark themes, we’re introducing a major update to our UX — the replacement of sidebar navigation!
The removal of sidebar navigation is the first step in a complete redesign of our page headers. Navigating between and within an area of STRATZ.com will begin to feel much more natural, with more explicit access points to the content you’re looking for.
You’ll also notice that we’ve begun to roll out an entirely new search experience. This is where a big chunk of our focus is this week, so you can look forward to more details on that very soon.
Smurf Detection — Leveling the playing field
Simply put, Smurfs are non-primary accounts created by DOTA 2 players. Sometimes, less skilled players pay to have an account boosted by higher skill players, which can lead to low quality high rank matchmaking. This has been going on for a long time, and it hurts the game.
Recently, Valve has been working hard to address this issue. To support their efforts, and to give greater awareness to the community at large, we’ve employed a Smurf detection algorithm to help identify possible Smurf accounts. It’s impossible to be certain that any one account is a Smurf, but here’s some insight into our detection methodology:
Boosted Accounts: These accounts maintained a 75%+ ranked win rate for at least 2 weeks straight within the past year. At least 60 total ranked matches must have been played during this time, with at least 10 matches each week.
New Accounts: These accounts were created within the past year. We understand that this means that all new DOTA 2 players will have a Smurf flag connected to their account, which we’ll have a solution for very soon.
Rapid High Rank: These accounts have achieved a high rank with fewer than the following lifetime ranked matches — Legend: 100 / Ancient: 250 / Divine: 500 / Immortal: 1000.
With this new detection, you can be alerted of Smurf presence in your lobbies using STRATZ Plus, and in your matches on STRATZ.com.
The changes you see today are just the beginning — we can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on, and you can count on learning a little more from our Supdates every Friday!
Before we say goodbye, we’d like to leave you with just a little taste of something else you’ll be seeing more of in the near future…
See you next Friday!
Find me on Discord at STRATZ
