DotaTV, Valve’s in-client match spectator experience, provides first-person access into the live action of many of the highest skill Dota matches happening around the world. For viewers that demand the highest level of immersion into the game available, this is the place to find it. However, DotaTV does lack some key features, and even the most ardent Dota pub-stompers don’t always have access to the client or DotaTV, and must rely on alternative viewing experiences.
Despite several efforts to provide offerings for live match stats outside of the client, the available experiences leave a lot to be desired. Today, we’re looking to change that with the introduction of STRATZ Live Matches!
The new STRATZ Live Match experience is a bold new take on the live match experience. Combining first-ever features like the ability to scrub through live match data, draft-specific live stats like hero ratings, positions, and match outcome projections, hero item timings, live and dynamic heat maps for any portion of the match, a new playback technique we call Hero Trails, live charts broken down by both team and player, and more, the new live match experience adds layers of detail that even the client hasn’t matched.
The STRATZ Live Match experience begins in the draft, where match outcome predictions, hero pick ratings, and hero position projections update live alongside the real-time picks and bans. Once the draft has completed, the interface shifts to focus on the live minimap and a wide assortment of match stats. These stats mimic the ordering and hotkey controls found in DotaTV, using the top QWERTY keys to allow easy navigation between stat tables.
STRATZ Live Matches are in sync with the client, sharing the same short delay. The Valve Live Match API is excellent, though it doesn’t attempt to supply subsecond updates and you would see in game. Instead, updates are received on average every 6–9 seconds, which allows for a highly responsive update experience. A match log containing time-stamped kill and death events, significant item purchases, and objective completions ensure that you don’t miss any critical details happening across either team.
Several teams have spent years working to develop live match products for Dota 2. In part by studying their successes and failures, we’ve managed to complete the heavy lifting required to bring STRATZ Live Matches online in less than 2 months. We take great pride in maintaining an active release cycle, and we’re very pleased to have been able to bring such a large update to you in record time!
Over the coming weeks, our release cycle will be returning to a more frequent tempo. As ever, we have a lot of exciting content in the works, and there are even some large, long-standing projects that we’re hoping to bring out of the woodworks and into the light. Even the Live Matches section has quite a few more tricks up its sleeves, which you’ll be introduced to as they arrive each Friday.
No really, we have a lot of projects going on behind the scenes. Can’t wait to share each of them with you!
If you’ve never heard of Perfect World, then you’ve probably never played Dota in China. That’s because they’re Valve’s publisher, tournament organizer, data curator, and more, for Dota 2 and CS:GO in China. Dota even has its own special website built to serve Chinese players, which is developed by Perfect World in association with Valve.
This past June, a member of Perfect World’s team who is working on their Chinese Dota Esport app 完美世界电竞 reached out to our team to discuss using the STRATZ API to power their app. KB was quick to deliver, and the Perfect World team was able to launch without delay!
STRATZ.com has been available in China for years now, as we confirmed when our team was in Shanghai for The International 9, but our new relationship as the data provider for Perfect World is possibly the single biggest step forward we’ve made to support gamers inside of China, and we’re hopeful that we can now begin to learn more about the needs of this highly dedicated playerbase! We’re very happy to add Perfect World to the long list of Dota companies who are powering their services with the STRATZ API.
STRATZ has a fantastic community of supporters and users alike. We’ve partnered with several solo developers and other Dota projects, supplying data, expertise, and more over the years. One group of users that has been consistently tremendous to work with has been our translators. Thanks to their dedication, we’re very pleased to announce that the largest update to our localization packages this year has now been fully translated into Russian, Simplified Chinese, Thai, and Brazilian Portuguese!
Bringing the site up to speed with Russian localization we have the ever-reliable Spectral Leamare! Leamare has contributed the vast majority of all Russian language support over the years, enabling hundreds of thousands of Russian players to find their way on STRATZ.
We have two contributors to thank this time around for the updates to Simplified Chinese: Shizuya and Terry! Shizuya is becoming a veteran contributor to the STRATZ Chinese localization, having contributed the majority of Chinese translations. While we’ve had some difficulty accurately tracking how many Chinese users enter STRATZ each day, its clear that the number has been increasing, and Shizuya has been amazing in helping to introduce those players to STRATZ!
Terry is a newcomer to our localization team, coming in clutch to help split the load this time around while managing his busy schedule. We’ve worked with Terry behind the scenes this year, and he’s already proving himself to be a tremendous asset to Chinese players that would like to make use of STRATZ, both through our services directly, and through the use of our API! Terry is one of many less-known heroes of Dota development outside of Valve.
Next up we have Radius (previously known as Ascensio), who has been our sole Thai contributor from the beginning! They’ve continued to [quietly and quickly] demonstrate outstanding proficiently in the localization game, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with them to bring an awesome Dota analytics platform to Thai players around the world!
Finally we have Toreen who joined our small group of Brazilian Portuguese translators in March. Toreen jumped straight into the new batch of updates as soon as they got the chance, taking care of the entire job with no assistance! Hundreds of daily STRATZ users rely on Portuguese localization to make their experience the best possible, and they [and we] now have Toreen to thank for a major increase of coverage for their language!
Last but not least, KB has been making tremendous strides with STRATZ AI. We’ve just released updates to all 7 STRATZ neural networks, including fixes and improvements to IMP, match predictions, the latest meta, and more! These updates are live across the site and STRATZ+, so be sure to check it out!
Think you’ve got what it takes to join the STRATZ team? We’re looking for a new Frontend React Developer!
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? Check out our latest updates to Leagues and the Hero pages!
See you soon!
