Dota 2 pros affected by recent UI change

This article is brought to you by StatBanana, the best Dota 2 strategy tool.

Some Dota 2 pros aren’t happy with Valve’s decision to remove an alternative user interface option that forces players to adjust to a new setup less than two weeks before The International.

On Aug. 1, Valve released an update note on its blog, saying that the optional unit query panel has been removed. Samuel “Boxi” Svahn, a professional player for Alliance, tweeted his frustration with the change, saying that both his teammate and him were greatly affected.

Boxi’s professional career started with Heroes of Newerth and the unit query panel was more of a mainstay there. When Boxi switched over to Dota 2 relatively recently, it wasn’t surprising for him to hold onto something with more familiarity.

The option isn’t just exclusive to ex-HoN players. Royal Never Give Up’s captain Zhang “LaNm” Zhicheng talked about the issue on Weibo, helping his young mid player Du “Monet” Peng with his grievances.

The unit query panel is an alternate UI option since the default option means clicking any unit will cause it to override on the main control panel at the bottom of the screen. Having this option ticked will instead cause a popup to appear from the right side of the screen, keeping your own hero console untouched.

Although it sounds fantastic in theory, the option did have a lot of bugs. With Dota 2’s introduction of new inventory slots, like the backpack and the teleport scroll slot, the unit query panel didn’t update accordingly. Thus, users were stuck with an information panel that was lacking information. Valve said in the official post that “less than 1% of players have used it.”

Considering that the aforementioned one percent of players consists of those playing at TI for millions of dollars, it seems wise for Valve to revert the decision—at least until the Aegis of Champions has new names carved into it.

Update Aug. 3 2am CT: Valve has quickly reverted the change to the UI, making Boxi and other players happy TI attendees.

The International’s group stage starts on Aug. 15 while the finals will be played on Aug. 25.