DotA 2: "We'd be pretty hard-pressed to improve" on the core gameplay of DotA, says Valve

Valve has said Defense of the Ancients 2 will maintain the core gameplay of DotA along with the "actual game rules" as the firm would be "hard-pressed" to improve upon the main mechanics.

Speaking with IGN, Valve's senior project manager Erik Johnson said that both the number of spawns and the way items and equipment are handled will stay the same or work in a similar fashion to the original DotA, and a lot of the heroes players are familiar with will be making a return as well.

"It's going to be most of the heroes that you're familiar with from Dota," said Johnson. "Over time there'll be new heroes that are added to it just like IceFrog's adding to Dota all the time. [Dota] is the game that people are used to, that all 20 million of those people are used to playing. There's this big investment in your skill in Dota…and we don't want to throw that away.

"We want them to be able to do all the fun things they could do before. It just doesn't make any sense to us to start from somewhere new right now."

Johnson added that the "peak" experience for players will be a five on five game, but if players wish to play three versus three, they can as well. There will also be rewards handed out for players who decide to coach those who are newbies to the series.

"We want to have a system where a very experienced player can choose to adopt a less experienced player and teach him the ropes, and that's built right into the experience," he said. "And then that coach gets rewarded in some way. There's some obvious work we have to do in terms of malicious coaches and things like that and we think we have a pretty good plan for that. But we want a new player to come in and say 'Hey, I need a coach' and probably have a list of coaches and some data about those coaches and have them say 'I'd like this person to coach me.'

"If they accept, they're your wing man. We don't want it to be a competitive advantage to be coached. We're not going to build something where every player wants to have a coach in every game because it's another set of eyes while playing."

DotA is slated for release in late 2011 for PC and Mac, and you can get familiarized with the game through its official website.