A Healthy Dose of Pro Scene
Stay in the action with the DPC schedule and live pro matches
Fresh off the heels of the release of your new page headers last week, we’ve got another string of updates that are really sleek! This time, we’re introducing a new Highlights Bar, with various customizations and features. But before we jump into that, I’d first like to announce a huge performance update to the website on mobile!
Our work on mobile often goes unsung, but we actually devote a fair bit of energy to ensuring that all of the data and functionality that are available on desktop is also on mobile. We noted last week that some last minute issues arose on mobile, which also received a significant upgrade to its page navigation. Those issues were related to performance, and forced us to step back and analyze what the root of the problem might be.
Today we’re pleased to announce that Blukai [and Fantôme…and Blukai] were able to wrestle out a major hidden issue, and as a result, mobile performance is exponentially improved! For the first time [possibly ever], the STRATZ mobile navigation experience is silky smooth, with dramatically improved responsiveness for inputs, and fantastic page render speeds! If you’ve been turned off of the STRATZ mobile experience in the past, there’s no better time to give it another go!
Now, onto the new goodies.
Your new Highlights Bar sits proudly atop your new Page Header, saving the best for first. By default, you will now be greeted with a spread of the upcoming DPC Series when it’s in season, or with Live Pro Matches when it’s not. We call this default display mode “Auto Select”, though you can control which display mode you prefer in your personal settings via the cog near the top right of the site.
Active DPC series can be clicked to watch them on your Match Live page, which shows tons of live stats, custom analytics, and includes links to streams in multiple languages, where supported. We’ll also be adding support for upcoming series’ stats in a future release.
Live Pro Matches also include live matches from many of the most popular leagues, with league matches sorted to the left of the pro pub matches. Pub matches are then sorted by popularity from left to right, listing the professional players on each team, and showing a portrait [if available] of the top ranked pro in the match. The highlighted player is always the player who’s name appears first on the top row of the card.
Each Live Pro Match card can also be clicked to open its Live Match page. If you haven’t seen one yet, now’s a great time to check it out!
As part of our continued commitment to a highly personalize STRATZ experience, it’s important to us that you have a reasonable amount of control over your content. With that in mind, we’re pleased to introduce both the [default] Expanded View and the Collapsed View of the new Highlights Bar.
The collapsed view reduces the use of vertical screen real estate while retaining the most critical pieces of information. It can easily be toggled with the expanded view via the innie-outie (err…expand-collapse) button on the far right side of the row.
And of course, you can hide the Highlights Bar entirely from within your settings menu…
…But why would you want to, when it gives you instant access to your own personal Server Queue! That’s right — another STRATZ exclusive — giving you real-time updates on both the number of players currently in the matchmaking queue for your region(s), and what percentage of the daily peak this activity represents.
It’s never been easier to determine the best times to queue up for a match, and of course, this can be personalized as well! If you’re logged out, we automatically combine queues worldwide to show you the complete ebb and flow of the daily Dota queue cycle. For logged in users, we look at the regions you played in your last 25 matches, and combine them in your own custom chart. If you want to change your defaults, you can do so to your hearts content, also from inside your personal settings.
If you really want to evaluate how different server queues change over time, jump over to your Players’ Queue page for a detailed look at the last 8 days from around the world.
Enjoy keeping up with what’s happening at STRATZ? Follow us on Medium, Twitter, or Facebook to get notifications of our latest Supdates! If you want to get more involved, join us on Discord!
Did you miss our last Supdate? Then take a look at the massive update we’ve made to the page header and site navigation!
See you soon!
