By Phill Cameron on September 1st, 2009 at 3:02 pm.
Heroes of Newerth has been in Open Beta for a while now and the opinion-blocking NDA has now been dropped at last. As such, a perfect time for Beta-Boy Phill Cameron to SHARE BRAIN THOUGHTS via WORDS.
Man, I’m really impressively bad at Heroes of Newerth.
Outside of evil influences of sinister powers beyond our ken, I can’t really explain it. Sure, I was never great at strategy games, but I’m normally quite good at RPGs; figuring out the min-max, getting some pretty buffed out heroes and empathising with the problems of a half-elf sorceress in a society that just doesn’t understand her. So, in theory, a deathmatch type situation where I’ve got to be a towering dude with some sort of special attack, slowly leveling up and becoming more and more powerful, should appeal. Admittedly, not much use for my finely honed Half-Elf-empathising skills, but you can’t have everything. It’s just far enough away from RTS to appeal, while still remaining comfortably familiar. It should work fine.
Should being the operative word. It all goes to hell, and I go to hell, getting killed over, and over, and over, and over.
It’s essentially the spiritual successor to the enormously popular Defence of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III, as S2 recruited the current-”caretaker” of the mod – the mysterious Icefrog – to the team. [IceFrog says not, actually Phill - RPS.] It allows you select from a frankly astonishingly large selection of heroes, each with their own set of 3 different skills, and one ultimate attack. Some of these are passive, and just make your hero better, and others have a range from being Area-of-Effect damage attacks, heals, stuns – everything you’ve come to expect from a post-World-of-Warcraft online RPG of late. Once selected, you take your hero onto the battlefield, and attempt to fight your way to the opponent’s base, to decimate, pillage, and claim victory. A simple concept.
Before I go further, it’s worth pointing out the really impressive job S2 Games have done with the lobby system, giving everyone a public rating that dwindles with every defeat, and grows with each victory. Not only that, but you can see the breakdown of exactly why they have that rating, which lead to the embarrassing analysis of my perfomance from one of my teammates: ’17 deaths in one match? How is that even possible?” Needless to say, we lost that game too.
Not only this, but there’s an autobalance built into the lobby, so you can create the theoretically most even match up, with the game placing better players with the weaker ones, and then giving you a percentage of victory. Connectivity, famously an issue with Demigod in its earlier days, seems to have nary a worry, with even the option to reconnect to a match in progress if you disconnect unexpectedly, preserving your precious status of having never quit a match before it’s through – because if you’re recorded as having done so, you can be blocked from joining some servers.
The problems arise just before you get into the game. With no obvious breakdown, there’s little indication of which heroes are easier for new players, and which have a slightly more specific play style in mind. And with such a huge number of choices (it seems to number well over 30), it’s hard not to get the impression that balance suffers, and that some guys are better than others. Over the games I played, I definitely saw a definite lean towards certain characters.
Things simplify when you’re actually in game; there are three main alleys of attack, and down each run your side’s troops, desperate to reach the opponent’s towers and hammer their tiny fists against them, and eventually reach the enemy base. Problem is, the other side has just as many little men, and, left to their own devices, they’ll wipe each other out. So you step in, dispensing your godly power to push your troops forward, and earning experience to grow ever stronger. The desperate thirst for experience is the main reason the game lost its charm for me. Because it’s so pivotal to victory, leveling up takes precedence over all other things, to the extent where deviating from any of the alleys, or running back to base to heal, can place you on the back foot, losing the edge you need for victory. Dying, on the other hand, is not an option, as both the monetary bonus and experience rewarded from them killing you is far too great to ever be considered.
So you end up in a sort of pansy game of slaps, tentatively taking out their troops, all the while desperately looking for an opening to exploit – but, even if you do find one, the instant you start hurting them they run away as fast as they can. You do the same, and so the game becomes all about seeing who can run away fastest, until one of them sneaks around behind you and you get killed. As, indeed, I got killed. Over and over.
The real frustration sets in when you realise that they’ve got a few levels on you all of a sudden, and from then on it’s an uphill battle that you can’t possibly win. While it’s nice to have a concede vote so easily accessible, at the same time it’s treating a symptom, rather than the cause. It’s obvious that the game suddenly becomes unwinnable, and it’s easier to just throw up your hands and surrender, but really, it shouldn’t come to that. The moment I feel like I can’t win a game is the moment I stop playing it.
While I find it hard to say that I enjoyed Heroes of Newerth, at the same time it’s not a bad game. There’s obviously a genuine level of depth and interest there that, once mastered, can create a really intense and interesting type of tactical play. I mock the running away that runs rife in the battles, but at the same time it’s indicative of the way fencers feel each other out before going in for the kill. You’re testing your opponents, not actually trying to kill them. It’s just that, in my experience, I ended up getting killed by that test. Like I said, I’m really quite bad at the game.
After playing Demigod, in all its streamlined glory, it’s hard to play Heroes of Newerth without comparing the two. Even with only 8 Demigods, there was a balance issue present, with some characters ignored almost wholesale. With 40, things get that much more complicated, and overwhelming for the newcomer. It seems that it’s a real improvement from Defence of the Ancients, and all those I played with seemed to have played both. The problem being, for all its success, not everyone has played Defence of the Ancients. I came to Heroes fresh, interested in the concept behind it, and it just deteriorated into an unfathomable mess of dos and don’ts that I was never told about. I ended up feeling bad for whoever played with me, because it quickly seemed like I was dooming them to failure, merely by being experience fodder for the other team. It simply doesn’t introduce itself well to newcomers. It’s not a team based game like World in Conflict where a player can sit towards the edge while learning how to contribute, effectively just not helping much – it’s a game where an inferior player contributes negatively. You don’t just not help the team win. You actively help your team to lose. That’s tricky.
The balance issues present in the wide array of characters are only going to get ironed out, and the fact there was only one map present in the game in this state obviously limits the options on how to play it, as everyone gets used to its paths and secrets. All the same, I can’t find the will to actually spend the time learning the intricacies.
That said, it does have a splendid Kraken, that oft-neglected by gaming mythological creature. So there’s always that.
I tried the beta, and the game did seem interesting (In particular, I liked the ranking system), but I don’t think I’ll be buying it. Demigod and DotA will keep me entertained quite well.
… Could be because I was rather bad at Heroes of Newerth as well.
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Well said, I agree completely.
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Seems like this guy is only worried about new comers.
I bet if S2 gave him an extensive tutorial, he’d be fine.
Anyone else notice that S2 are the same ones who brought you Savage 2?
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Also, the community is full of horrible, bitter twats, even in the “noob only” games I joined I was berated from the get-go for not going to the correct lane or some other atrocity I committed, dooming my team. Although this is most likely a result of the “playing bad makes the other team better” nature of the game, it really makes me sad that my beloved RTS games have devolved to this. I’ll be happy when this genre has run its course.
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“Even with only 8 Demigods, there was a balance issue present, with some characters ignored almost wholesale.”
That may have been the case at the start, with QoT and Sedna, for instance, but now that people have woken up to their survivability, that’s changed. I wouldn’t say any character is ignored now, although clearly there are a lot of Oak/Reg/UB players.
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I pretty much feel this way about most online games in any genre. The many years of my life spent playing and replaying lucasarts and sierra style adventures among other strictly single player games has resulted in a pathetically underdeveloped competitive skillset. Clearly I missed some foundational training that everybody else in the entire online world went through. Is there a remedial course somewhere that I can enrol into?
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This pretty much exactly describes my issues with DOTA. Intense and stat centric, its horribly unfriendly to newcomers, and you feel bad for being so bad. Theres no fun to be had at being a bit poor, as you will just die and die and die and rarely ever get kills, and spend most of the game getting told off for what you do.
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“Noob, stop feeding” *Gets Kicked*
That’s my experience with HoN.
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If you think with the current number of heroes it’s overwhelming and imbalanced, please bear in mind that Dota has about 70 to get ported over with/without reworks, rebalances or replacements with new heroes.
The reason that some heroes tend to get picked a lot right now is either because they have minor issues making them better than they should be, or because the main counters to them have yet to be ported over (the silencer hero is a great example of this, as right now heavy magic based aoe teams will dominate mid to late game whereas a single silencer pick in the general area nullifies that strategy with a passive silence whenever any opponent casts a spell nearby)
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I got into the closed beta and have played about 10 matches but somehow I had the same problems as you did. It takes quite a while to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing, and once you do know what to do it’s actually not that much fun. Having to run away that often is just not something I want to do in a game. I’d preferably go in “guns-blazing” and take as many suckers with me as I can. Guess that’s why I’m still a sucker for TF2 ;)
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No one talking about League of Legends yet? Really?
So I only know DotA and League of Legends. I’d like to hear from someone who’s played all three. From what I can tell so far, though, League of Legends has a few key attributes that might make it superior to HoN:
1) Attribute power. A new stat that increases damage output for spells. Get an ability power item build and your damage dealing mage-type no longer has to become obsolete half-way through the match.
2) The attribute system generally. Instead of War3′s Str/Int/Agi system (Str representing max health + health regen, agi attack speed + armor, and int max mana + mana regen, with the additional bit that depending on your hero type, one of the three also directly influences your damage output) Riot have decoupled these concepts from each other. For instance there is max health and health regen and you can have a lot of one without having much of the other. This makes for much more dynamic hero builds, less expectable same-ness, and some really weird and interesting strategies (high ability power melee dps character? Sure, if his name is Jax)
3) Graphics. If anything, LoL is MORE cartoon like than War3. I find this greatly helps me parse what’s going on. Strong outlines, simple shapes, strong and simple colours. Not to mention I also happen to prefer stylized graphics over realistic ones.
4) The summoner skills and that whole meta system around the game. LoL introduces the idea of a “summoner”, a meta character you play who gains experience between matches. Your summoner brings two spells into battle and has mastery trees and rune pages he can fiddle with. For instance I’ve been working on a rune page for maximum dodge in game. It’s nothing major, but it does introduce a new strategic axis.
So, anyone here who’s played LoL, DotA, AND HoN?
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A small correction, Im fairly certain Icefrog has not been recruited to the team, its more that they asked him if he would have anything against them making a complete remake of DotA; and he answered “whatever”.
That said, yes, DotA and HoN are not very friendly to newcomers, which is not neccessarily a bad thing. All I can say is that when it all clicks, your on a good team, you play a hero you like and understand and you are racking up kills, then it is amazingly gratifying.
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News just in, DoTA clone like DoTA. More at 11…
Seriously though, DoTA and as such HoN, are hardcore titles with steep learning curves. That’s the way they work. Demigod was a prissy, shallow piece of shit in comparison and it’s community is already dead in the water after a few months. Yes, you are going to get trashed and yes, this kind of game will attract elitist twats, that is the way of things. This is not a black mark against the game, it is simply something that comes with the territory, human nature in a highly competitive environment if you will.
To be honest, being proactive yourself can solve most of these problems. Why play with pubbies when pubbies are universally awful in competitive games? Play with friends, get involved in a clan, or make your own. Play with those people as you learn who are going to be far more forgiving of your lack of expertise. If anything, Battle.net should have taught you that pubbies are awful and should be avoided at all costs.
At the end of the day, if you didn’t like DoTA, you will not like HoN. Even after the tutorials have been put in (yes, it’s a beta, tutorials are very low on the list of priorities when you have a massive group of people who are already familiar with DoTA to beta-test it for you and as such, don’t need the tutorials) you’re still going to hate it. It punishes you for mistakes, you can totally screw up with no chance of recovery, you can be trampled on the entire game and be a genuine albatross around the neck of your team.
And some of us, like it that way.
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@sparvy – “A small correction, Im fairly certain Icefrog has not been recruited to the team, its more that they asked him if he would have anything against them making a complete remake of DotA; and he answered “whatever”.” –
You’re both wrong. He consulted for them freelance, he was never officially part of the team, but he didn’t just smile and nod either.
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Hmmm, well, you can’t like every game. Did you read the forums? What the game lacks in documentation or hints the forum guides pretty much make up for imo. This is definitely not a game to pick up if you don’t like getting pwned over and over until you learn how to actually play, though. Don’t buy Demon’s Souls, either.
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The game itself is pretty good. A nice, new Dota with some useful additions to the game. There are a couple of things that I find, for lack of a better word, strange…
This particular game and genre have a very steep learning curve. Not as bad as, say, Eve Online but significantly more than almost every other game that comes out these days. I know that accessibility is sometimes treated as a dirty word by PC gaming elitists (who associate it with the ‘dumbing down’ of their hobby). However, I really do think that it takes a lot of courage on the part of a developer to release a game where, I imagine, a lot of people will simply not buy it due to this being unable to scale this threshold.
The second thing I find strange is how it is this particular sub genre of RTS gaming that seems to have (and probably with good reason) the most widely lambasted communities. What is it about this type of gameplay that attracts the people who behave so mean towards others?
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Nice game, shame about the players!
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@abhishek – The reason players act this way in games like that is that being a terrible player in HoN/DoTA doesn’t just drag the overall effectiveness of your team down, it actively makes the opposing team stronger. The term ‘feeder’ describes it well, a bad player ‘feeds’ the enemy team with experience and gold. He’s not just hurting his team by omission, he’s actively hurting them. It’s like a convoluted form of team-killing, you are causing your team-mates to die through your own lack of skill and knowledge.
If you have any sense, you don’t play with pubbies. Pubbie DoTA is terrible, pubbie HoN is terrible. Either with a group of friends online or at a LAN party, is amazing fun that gives you literally hundreds of hours or more of enjoyment.
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The funny thing about this (and dota) is that the “skill” in the game is 1/10th being able to click your hero backward and forward and learning to stare at the minimap for at least a third of your time and 9/10ths just sheer knowledge of the classes and what to do any given situation.
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@abishek
Its pretty simple really, in most shooters even if you team is bad you can still do pretty good yourself, pulling of headshot like normal. In DotA/HoN/LoL if your team is bad you enemies will become stronger, making you weaker in comparison, so therefor everytime a teammate screws up (or, god forbid, leave) you chances of doing good diminishes, that coupled with 40min games that in the worst case scenarion is just you getting slaughtered and stomped on the entire time, tends to make people abit tough on new people.
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It should be pointed out that along with the rating system, you have the option to play “noob only” or “pro only” games. As a new player, you can prohibit players above a certain rating from joining your game while you learn to play. That seems like a fair addition in my mind.
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I don’t think DotA (and by association HoN) can really be defined by an existing game genre and this creates lots of little problems for people. My friend who introduced me to the game likened it to “chess mixed with football” which isn’t too far off the mark. It has been one of the most gratifying and interesting games i’ve ever played but also one of the most frustrating.
What makes HoN so special in my mind is that it does away with a vast majority of the frustrations of DotA. Most notably the bronze-age match making of blizzards craptacular warIII (which still costs $40?!) and many GUI tweaks. Of course if you never played DotA then these changes are meaningless because the game is still brutally hard and played world wide.
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@Butley` Similarly, the skill in chess is 1/10ths being able to move the pieces backward and forward and learning to stare at the board for most of your time and 9/10ths just sheer knowledge of the strategies and what to do in any given situation.
Not a perfect analogy, but gaming ‘skill’ does not begin and end at twitch and accuracy.
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@Butler
Not quite true, there is alot more to it than that, to synergise skill comboes between different heroes, setting up ambushes, controlling the map with wards and roaming heroes and not to mention the art of last hitting/denying or animation canceling, requires you to do a little more than you described.
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@Sparvy @TotalBiscuit
Both of you are totally right, just add to that the ability to read the game into the mix and the skill cap gets even higher. It’s extremely satisfying to be able to predict what’s coming and avoid it, and just as frustrating to issue a warning and it go wasted, just as the guy you warned gets ganked.
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I couldn’t agree more, I do believe there is a very good game hidden in there but for a newcomer to this kind of game to just be dropped into it and left to fend for themselves with a frankly twattish community as the only resource to your learning what the hell to do I don’t think it will endear itself to many.
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Yea i’ve played all 3 Hon Dota and LOL, dota is one of my favs, but hon is so polished up graphically that it’s alot of fun, LoL is by far the worst of the three, allthough it does have some nice features to it such as your summoner lvls after a game, then you can pick a skill, allmost xactly like the talent trees in wow. Both Hon and dota are about equal, I love HoN lobby/game control/friend lists it’s really a great game once you get the hang of it.
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TotalBiscuit : I understand your point of course, and I agree that the game is best played with Friends (which game isn’t).
I played Dota for a couple of years but it was on my college LAN. 10 friends used to get in, play random heroes on long games and no matter what the outcome was, we had fun playing it. If someone was weaker, we tried to balance the teams accordingly. If someone was just new, there were always 2-3 other friends sitting on his bed right next to him guiding him every step of the way. Over the course of that time, we came across all kinds of situations… Good players having bad games, weaker ones dominating and everything in between. Sometimes games were decided on pure skill, other times it seemed like dumb luck. And of course, a lot of hours wasted if the game got one sided or a computer crashed or whatever. But overall, we never stopped enjoying the game, and we never took out our frustrations on each other. I realize that we played in a closed ecosystem that was not subject to the the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
But I still really don’t understand how making someone else feel bad over not playing well in a game is justified. I know it happens in all games, but Dota and it’s clones seem to have it more than the others. Wasn’t there some thread a few weeks ago in which Brad Wardell (CEO of Stardock) literally washed his hands off the Demigod community for being so toxic? I can imagine what levels of frustration would have precipitated such drastic words/actions.
I honestly can’t imagine how anyone new puts up with both the steep learning curve and a hostile community long enough to become good at it.
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@abhishek – Well like you said, the greater internet fuckwad theory applies. Combine that with the aforementioned explanation of aggressive behaviour due to the way the game works and you have a recipe for a community of absolute dicks.
Now as for how anyone new puts up with it, it’s very simple, they don’t enter the community. I learned DoTA with friends from my vent server. Those are the only people I will actively play with and I’m not losing anything by doing so since I have no interest in the tournament/league scene so why even venture onto Battle.net at all? I would strongly recommend doing so, indeed, we have a very active community of players of our own at WoW Radio and blacklist unpleasant people.
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In regards to the community of HoN, I have to say that whenever I stated that I was new, and didn’t really know how the play the game, at least one person on the team at least tried to give me a few pointers. That was far more the case than then being spiteful or malicious towards me just because I didn’t know what I was doing.
At the same time, it did seem like they were far more concerned with doing well themselves than making sure I didn’t mess up too often, so I guess it could work both ways. Then again, I didn’t find the Demigod community particularly malicious either. I guess I just got the best of the bunch, from what you guys are saying.
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@Sp4rkR4t DoTA has millions of players and there is no tutorial to speak of. The full version of HoN will have extensive tutorials and tips. Again, it’s a beta, you are not going to get your hand held.
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I play the beta and share many of these feelings. It’s just another game where there is a RIGHT way to play and all the other DOOMED ways. It’s rote memorization more then anything else. About 30 heroes to play with and I see the same seven heroes dominating the field. So many options and yet creative play will just get you killed. As said, no win situation crop up very early in the game. And you find your self playing a pointless charade of a match, looking for a turn-around that never comes. Once you started to lose, you will keep losing. And I find the similarity to Warcraft 3 disturbing. The art-style, the heroes themselves, even their powers seem to echo with it. It’s a shame because Savage’s setting (Newerth) was unique, and here it seems almost to meld with Blizzard’s.
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So I played alot of Dota and obviously I have none of the newbie problems that the author of this article has. So I’m a little sad that this article might potentially scare away new players.
I think if you keep to the newbie games and actively try to ask for advice you’ll be fine most of the time. Also the game will be alot more fun if you play it with friends and maybe even use ventrilo or teamspeak for fast communication.
There should be some tutorials on the forum for new players aswell.
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I have the same problem with Demigod – I enjoyed the demo and bought the game, but suddenly with experienced players I can do NOTHING right. If I play too aggressively I get slaughtered, if I run away too much I get berated. I just wind up feeling guilty for ruining everyone else’s game. It feels like if you didn’t start playing the game religiously at launch there’s no place for you in the community. The fact that it has NO tutorial at all doesn’t help. Even after researching my character’s builds and gameplay styles I really struggled. Now I’m just not really playing anymore. Being jerks about noobs is just a good way for the community to kill off its own game.
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Having now played all four of these games – DotA, HoN, Demigod, and LoL – I can say that LoL is my favourite precisely because it addresses some of the issues that I most agreed with in this post: it is extremely welcoming to new-comers. Now, it still has a steep learning curve, and is a very difficult game, like all of them, to master, but it tries harder than all of them – you’re always presented with ideas for builds, recommended items, and so forth. Very kind.
LoL also has a nicely presented metagame, with a few minor issues. That being said, I like HoN’s and Demigod’s assortment of options and gametypes – that was pretty refreshing.
The thing that most disappointed about HoN, actually, was exactly how much it was such a DotA clone. It’s only barely hidden; the characters are the same, only the names have changed. Even the “useless” buildings in the base, a hold-over from building out of the W3 engine, are there. It’s all a little bit ridiculous, and targetted towards people who don’t know any better (and by “Better” I mean LoL)
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As been previously said the community is horrid.
Joined for the first time in a “NOOBS ONLY GAME” in caps and all, din’t really know how to play the game died in the first time time i found a enemy player, it resulted in insults and a vote to kick me. I mean, is a game with caps saying NOOBS ONLY and peopels tart to kick after one death. That was my first game, the others were a little better but there was the general awfull community.
On the game itself, there is explanation of anyting of how the game works, what peopel should do, or even a way to check your the various characters before you join a game, so you have the limited time to choose a hero of the enourmous selection there withotu havving no clue what they do.
For me the biggest detractor of the game (besides having absolutly no explanation of how anything works and you cant even see the characters before you are in a game to know what they do) is the DO NOT DIE priority over everything else, not fighting anyone is better than fighting, if you see a enemy, you run away, if you get hurt you run away, never risk dying or you are gimping your team. Really a bad desing decission imo, focus should be to get there in the middle of stuff and beat each other, not stay at the ack and run away the moment someone sees you.
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The only reason I have continued playing this game is that I have a mate who played dota, and is teaching me the ropes. But word for the wise, be prepared for a pretty toxic community.
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I played one full game of Newerth where we (no thanks to me) built up a wider and wider lead on kills (mostly by one or two players) until they could annihilate anything on the field and the other team largely quit and then conceded.
The trouble was it was unwinnable for them for probably 20 minutes at the end, after another 20 minutes of, as you describe it, slaps.
It wasn’t exactly an exciting battle, more like a slow tug of war where you drag the other team along the ground for 20 minutes after they fall over.
Not a patch on the excitement of a CoH or DoW2 battle.
I died a few times early on and ended up way below their best players so spent my time running away from the action to try and kills creeps in peace.
It’s interesting to compare it to something like TF2 because with the death and respawn it has a multiplayer fps like feel.
In an fps it’s clear to see that a system where for every kill you get your player gets more and more health and your weapon does more and more damage you would quickly have the situation where one person would dominate a map and everyone else might as well quit.
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@Scylla: They are adding a feature into the game where you will be able to putz around with the heroes and try out their skills/item builds. Also the DO NOT DIE priority is what makes the game so strategic, Dieing isnt just a setback for you its a boon to the enemy. THere will be times when you are at half health and you have to make a decision wether its safe enough to run after the enemy or if its safe to try and bait them till an ally can come help you gank.
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this game is so backwards. I never played DOTA, and I won’t play this any more.. you avoid attacking creeps? killing your own creeps to deny the enemy? Memorizing all 40 heroes to become a mildy competent player? Huh.
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I also have to chime in with the crowd saying that LoL is a better game than HoN, though I first expected it to be the other way round.
There are so many little tweaks in LoL that I’ve come to love, like the fact that you can buy stuff while you’re dead, you’re presented with recommendations if you don’t know what to buy, the “ability”-power concept, the graphics style with its sharp edges, the very helpful mini-map and and and..
When I joined HoN I couldn’t make out where the creeps ended and the heroes started, everything was one big mash-up. Furthermore I had no idea what to buy for my hero and ultimately started feeding the enemy team that just killed me over and over again while I was trying to get the hang of the game. HoN is very unfriendly to beginners in that regard and I don’t know if I really want to make the effort, when LoL was fun from the first second..
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I’d take issue with some of the comments in the article, but I’d be guilty of picking nits the size of my own tackle. I agree with the sentiments though. It isn’t friendly to new players and frankly, it never will be. I don’t think you could design tutorials for a lot of the lessons you need to learn. The best way to learn is by reading and playing with someone you know. I am another in the ‘was taught to play by friends on vent’ camp and it made things a lot, lot easier.
Having said that, games amongst friends can be inredible. I have seen late-game turn arounds, some of which have been extraordinary. Dying late game sees you out of action for over a minute, which can be plenty of time for the opposition to get well into your base. Again, some heroes (especially strength heroes) just get better as they level, whilst those who excel at lower levels tend to get ‘worse’ (e.g. the Pyromancers and Thunderbringers) at higher levels comparitively.
I’d say that people who are interested should not be put off by this, but step into it with the knowledge that it will take a lot effort to get something out and is a whole lot easier with a friend to hold your hand along the way.
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I personally hate LOL because it has that whole grinding aspect. You have to play dozens of matches before you have unlocked everything and gained all stat boosts.
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I’m saying that vs. a normal RTS like SC/WC3 or an FPS or whatever the ‘doing’ is very much less than the ‘knowing’.
A comparison to chess isn’t terribly helpful… degrees of complexity etc…
[...]just add to that the ability to read the game into the mix and the skill cap gets even higher
That’s all still knowledge based.
My point being it’s really not hard to get ‘good’ at HoN by simply learning the game from a single character’s point of view, learning it’s skill order, item order etc.
And yeah, Sparvy, denying/last hitting and attack animations is about as good as it gets (and is again something that is easier to do if you practice with one hero).
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As mentioned, “noob-only” games do nothing to solve a problem like this. All you end up with is “pro-noobs” that don’t consider themselves good enough to be “pro” and will still berate out the real newcomers. If you look at most of the comments around the web about newcomer experiences with these games, their tales of hostility have been in “noob-only” games anyway.
This happens in all games with anonymous players, but it’s amplified in this case because of what is effectively a poor game design. A team is basically penalised twice for a weak team-mate. Once by weakening the team, and once by strengthening the opposing team. What’s worse, the gap widens and accelerates as the game progresses, so the designers shouldn’t really be surprised at the rage it induces.
As always, but especially here, the best way to play is with friends. Be it LAN party or private internet games, differing skill levels don’t end up mattering as much as having a good time.
That’s the whole reason I created GameRanger.
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One of the few non simulators I’ve played which has a learning cliff instead of curve which it happily throws you off. It feels like counterstrike level competitiveness and player skill formed into an RTS, no bad thing but an ordeal on even a newbie server when you have no idea what the dozens of units, abilities and shop items do.
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I find it strange that everyone is kind of missing out on the fact that this entire genre has already been done before (Long before) and better by games such as Dynasty Warriors :P I’ve always had a LOT more fun playing Dynasty Warriors than DotA. I think a game that combines that two (maybe a 3d person over the shoulder game where the soliders respawn and your character gains levels and gets skills and abilities unlocked ect durning the game play and allows for weapons and armour being aquired durning the game but in the end always comes down to personal skill not so much the stats ect)
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Woah, very infrequently do I read a piece on a game that sums up my feeling to the letter. Well put mate and spot on.
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The truest line in the review:
“There’s obviously a genuine level of depth and interest there that, once mastered, can create a really intense and interesting type of tactical play.”
He should have continued, “that only previously existed in one precious gem of a game anywhere in the world, and now will exist in two.” :)
Also, balance issues: Since they are taking DOTA’s numbers verbatim for almost all the heroes, they have a 5 year head start on balancing, unlike their competition League of Legends which will struggle through those first several years with major balance problems in the meta game.
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I’m giving this game time almost solely because of how good the lobby and connectivity are. I liked Demigod’s actual gameplay a lot more, but the connectivity is a night and day difference for me. As far as I can tell, HoN uses dedicated servers while Demigod uses peer to peer, and it makes a huge difference when playing 5vs5′s.
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My advice to Phill would be to play LoL, not only is it a much more newbie friendly experience but the skills learned there can transfer very easily between any of the new Dota style games.
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I’ve been a longtime fan of S2, the original Savage being my most played game of all time, but when I heard that their design philosophy on this game was “Exactly like DOTA, but with stats!” I just gave up completely. Savage 2 was enough of a mess.
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Yes this game is difficult for beginners, but it makes the game that much more rewarding when you do figure out how to play. Myself and two other friends have been playing the game for about a week now, never playing dota in our lives. At first our attempts were dismal and we did encounter jackasses, but we also played with people who were very helpful at the same time. 20 games later and we can compete with some decent players and are enjoying the game immensely. I agree that the game could be more beginner friendly, but it is still in beta so give them some time.
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Looks very cool. Any idea when it comes out? Amazon UK has nothing on it and their official website has a mysql error :)
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Be it LAN party or private internet games, differing skill levels don’t end up mattering as much as having a good time.
Indeed. Even with a relatively newb and pub team friendly game like TF2, I find myself playing on the same server over and over again because players do awesome things like run 2+ medics and willingly switch teams for the sake of fairness. Having a good group of people to play with makes all the difference.
At this point, though, I simply don’t expect to have much fun playing pub RTS games. (None of my friends PC game these days, so online features are wasted on me, but at least I’m in good company: supposedly over 50% of players never go online with RTS games.)
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“and the fact there was only one map present in the game in this state obviously limits the options on how to play it”
The game today actually has three maps. Just that one is a direct port of the Defense of the Ancients map and it’s most commonly used. You can create your own server and test the other two maps, one has a rather interesting two lane concept which tends to be funny to play in a 5v5 map.
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Not about HoN, but Demigod…
I’ve been playing DG since the demo was released and I became quickly entranced. It sounds like all these games suffer from the same issue, pointed out by Phill:
Bad play stands out, so noobs will be targeted with ridicule by immature/rude players.
However, this is no reason to avoid a game that appeals to you, and in the end, is actually excellent (I can only speak for DG, but I’ve heard many good things about these other games as well and I like the concept of them deeply). The two keys are:
1. Develop a thick skin and ignore people who berate you. Try and ask for constructive advice.
2. As others above have mentioned, try and gather a group of friends with similar play-styles (casual, competitive, etc.) and primarily play with them. After a couple weeks of joining PUG’s and having a few great experiences and several bad experiences, I decided to get on the DG forums and advertise for some other players interested in forming a “casual” practice squad. I got a strong response, primarily from older gentlemen like myself (>25). Things are much better now.
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I wish these DoTa style games played more like a head-to-head high fantasy Dynasty Warriors. I really do.
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And don’t forget, there is a Linux client of the beta that runs perfectly.
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The game isn’t all that noob friendly, but it’s really not hard at all to find help on the forums. You could even probably google “dota tutorial” or search youtube and find something to help you out. Is it really all that different than if you hop into a game of Starcraft, or Warcraft 3, or Street Fighter, or… etc? If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s going to be hard. I think really the only difference here is that one complete noob going 0-15 costs an entire team the game. Regardless, the latest patch added a practice mode, but if someone won’t read the forums, I doubt they’d play practice mode, either.
Regardless, it’s nice to see that someone still makes games that require actual skill and fast thinking, and it’s nice to see that there’s a good amount of people still wanting to play that kind of game. (20k+ people logged in to HoN beta last I checked!)
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Well said, couldn’t agree more.
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And guys it is possible to have a big come back, during one of my early games we had a final stand after being punished all game and the 4 of us stayed at base protecting the 5 man onslaught while our hound made his way to their spawn and we won the game! Obviously this wont happen often but occasionally you can outsmart the team that is outplaying you.
On another note, I am getting better at this game. Things are starting to fall into place and I have a few heroes that I am getting good at (jez pest and pred). Having a plan and seeing it come to fruition in this game is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had, so hang in there guys.
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If you played dota, you’ll feel right at home with HoN. Pretty much 90% of the heroes in Dota is completely recycled, only the heroes have different names and look. Which complicates the matter, as dota players are so used to the dota textures and even we have hard time identifying which HoN hero corresponds to which dota hero.
And for those that complains about the steep learning curve, that is of course true. But everyone started off as a noob, and you will get swore at for that. It’s just how the learning process for these intensive-teamwork-based deathmatch works. You don’t care how good or noob the other team is, you’ll get frustrated if your own team is full of crap.
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Heroes of Newerth is DOTA in its own engine with its own interface and overlay. Pretty much any DOTA fan could have ever asked for. There is simply no going back to battle.net’s clumsy custom map selection process.
The hierarchy of DOTA-clones is like this, from hardest to easiest (and, correspondingly, most hostile to least hostile and most popular to least popular):
1.) DOTA itself. As a newb, you will be attempting to learn all the moves (4 each) of over 100 heroes as well as at least one “standard” item build (over 50 items to choose from) for each hero plus the core mechanics, situational awareness, and ideal map locations, all the while being called nearly every homophobic and racist epithet you can imagine, and many you can’t. It’s by far the most popular, being free (with purchase of Warcraft 3 Battle Chest) and amazingly well-established.
2.) Heroes of Newerth. As a newb, you will have some shielding from DOTA vets via checks and auto-balances. All stats are tracked, so if you’re learning you’ll eventually trickle down to the learning tier. The interface and engine are built for the DOTA game itself and thus are unspeakably better than DOTA’s noble attempt at shoehorning one of the most ambitious games in history into the Warcraft 3 engine. The (beta) community is mostly comprised of DOTA fans, but turn out to be less hostile.
3.) League of Legends. Promised DOTA in a new engine, delivered something vaguely close. Red-hot popular and anticipated until HoN rose out of the mist, stole the entire audience, and the dev team decided to go Free-to-Play with microtransactions. Now mostly forgotten, newsletters are sent out to beta testers asking them to come back or to fill out surveys as to why they don’t play anymore. No last-hit mechanics, very few heroes to learn, and a life support community make this relatively newb friendly.
4.) Demigod. Tripping and breaking both of its legs right out the gate, Demigod never really had a chance. A huge chunk of the community left in the initial weeks of zero connectivity; those who stayed splinted off again after getting bored of the small choice of items and heroes to play. This also makes it the easiest to learn, and the flatline community is very friendly for the most part, because anyone in search of a challenge has moved on up the list.
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Ive been playing dota on and off for 3+years and i can say that HoN beats it in every aspect. Bought the game allready, and uninstalled warcraft3+dota. If you are a fan of dota you must try this out.
HoN is a much needed step forward, dota has reached as far as you can go with a game mod.
It is also slightly faster (or am i tripping?) and has a better feel to controls ( i cant really argument this it just feels smoother then in dota)
I recommend visiting http://www.dotaportal.com and reading their guides on heroes (its compatible with HoN since lot of them are ports from dota), especially premium ones it might help you improve your gameplay. Much better guides than from official forums. (List of HoN heroes: http://honwiki.net/wiki/Heroes, you can read here what is dota pair of selected HoN hero).
As for LoL lot of dota players that have tried it actually dont like the game, i havent tried it out yet, and to be honest i dont have desire to do so. I think that dota community will mostly transfer to HoN.
Also S2 games are gona implement training mode where you can practise by yourself, and probably some kind of tutorial too, probably in next couple of patches.
PS One of the things that really impressed me was great overall design and feel of the game. It looks much more serious, and allmost every hero looks 100x better than dota counterpart not because of newer gfx engine. Its one of those rare gems that manages to surpass blizzard design, i found myself just casting spells and being very impressed with how they look. And the game can also run smooth even on a lowend laptop (with standalone gpu).
PPS sorry for bad english
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Ive been playing dota on and off for 3+years and i can say that HoN beats it in every aspect. Bought the game allready, and uninstalled warcraft3+dota. If you are a fan of dota you must try this out.
HoN is a much needed step forward, dota has reached as far as you can go with a game mod.
It is also slightly faster (or am i tripping?) and has a better feel to controls ( i cant really argument this it just feels smoother then in dota)
Also i must state that even though this game is in beta its really really polished. Personaly i havent had more than a couple of crashes (none of them ingame). And it feels almost like a finished product.
I recommend visiting http://www.dotaportal.com and reading their guides on heroes (its compatible with HoN since lot of them are ports from dota), especially premium ones it might help you improve your gameplay. Much better guides than from official forums. (List of HoN heroes: http://honwiki.net/wiki/Heroes, you can read here what is dota pair of selected HoN hero).
As for LoL lot of dota players that have tried it actually dont like the game, i havent tried it out yet, and to be honest i dont have desire to do so. I think that dota community will mostly transfer to HoN.
Also S2 games are gona implement training mode where you can practise by yourself, and probably some kind of tutorial too, probably in next couple of patches.
PS One of the things that really impressed me was great overall design and feel of the game. It looks much more serious, and allmost every hero looks 100x better than dota counterpart not because of newer gfx engine. Its one of those rare gems that manages to surpass blizzard design, i found myself just casting spells and being very impressed with how they look. And the game can also run smooth even on a lowend laptop (with standalone gpu).
PPS Did I already mention that im absolutely impressed with the game? :)
PPPS sorry for bad english
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“this game is so backwards. I never played DOTA, and I won’t play this any more.. you avoid attacking creeps? killing your own creeps to deny the enemy? Memorizing all 40 heroes to become a mildy competent player? Huh.”
It’s you, you are backwards.
Let’s face it, the vast majority of people bashing the game here never liked DoTA and will not like HoN. The game is not aimed at you, it does not cater to your whims. Big deal, the DoTA playerbase is enormous, sorry that you can’t be a part of it.
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@Bossman: Concerning “grind” in LoL, you may overestimate just how much grind there will be in the long run. It will take you between 30 (if you win all of them) and 60 (if you lose all of them) games to reach max level. Don’t think of it as artificially game-prolonging grind, think of it as an extended tutorial. Yes, DotA-likes have a very steep learning curve, and this is one of the answers Riot have found: don’t throw everything at the players at once. You will unlock summoner skills and new heroes one after the other. This will force you to play with a smaller subset of the game at first, learning those parts before you move on to the rest.
At 2 games a day (and remember LoL is faster than DotA, average games last about 30 minutes) you’re max level in two to three weeks. And that’s playing very casually. A DotA pro can reach max level in three or four days, depending on how much time he has to play.
@undead dolphin hacker: not quite sure where you get these impressions. If anything, the LoL community is growing pretty strongly these days (going by new posts per day, average queue wait time (which has gone down from 1:20 to 0:40 in the last two-three weeks for me). Currently Riot can’t hand out keys fast enough from what I can tell (the 50 keys they handed out on IRC last Friday were gone in less than 2 minutes, whenever they post one of their “first 50 comments get a key” posts on facebook they’re also gone in no time, people are asking for keys everywhere, etc). So the community is growing about as fast as Riot are letting it grow.
Also, there is no denying in LoL, but of course there is last hitting. Have you played the game at all?
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TotalBiscuit, you’re not quite correct. The majority of people never tried DOTA and will never like HON precisely because the community is so poisonous.
Yes yes I know, pubbie tears and all that, but if a game is made purely to cater for an existing community by being a direct clone of the previous one, then I don’t see that as being a good thing.
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JM, They should perhaps accept that they are not the intended market.
DoTA and as such HoN are both hardcore games with limited appeal. Funny how I often see the same folks decrying the lack of hardcore titles these days and yet simultaneously bashing the ones that already exist. I know it’s hard for some people to accept that a game may not in fact be aimed at you, personally and cater to your every whim but that does not make it an objectively bad game.
As to claiming that the community drives potential players away, you cannot possibly have been involved in any game-related communities over the past few years and not have noticed that they are all like this, filled to the brim with insufferable jackasses. DoTA’s happen to be especially vicious due reasons stated in my previous comments, but anyone with any sense plays multiplayer games with friends or larger, multi-game communities such as RPS or WoW Radio where quality control in terms of the community is exercised.
While usually a direct clone would not be such a good idea, DoTA is limited, some would say crippled in places by a terribly old engine. It makes sense from both the commercial perspective and that of the playerbase to create an evolved version of the game that is not constrained by the limits of said engine.
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@TotalBiscuit : Your answer to CJohnson03 definitely would push me away.
I’m sorry to say, but his was a legitimate concern. How can you find someone to learn all the gritty details if anyone complaining about the learning curve gets welcomed with a “this game isn’t for you” rant?
Every damn game of HoN I played started with “Who here know DoTA?” and then seeing the DoTA player band together, liek if DoTA was the tutorial for HoN.
Fine, keep your “hardcore” game to yourself, but don’t come ranting when someone say that it’s hardcore…
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TB, how do you know if the game is for them or not? Regardless of it being “hardcore” (and what a terrible term that is), the community will drive away plenty of new players.
Not playing a game because someone will call you a faggot jew thief for clicking the wrong spot in a NOOBS ONLY game has little to do with “hardcore” or even the game itself.
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I really like HoN but I can understand the feelings of the noobs here. :/ The community is really not welcoming them, and that’s the main problem for those games.
Concerning LoL, the name says it all. Adobe Air interface ? Slow ass UI pre game, ulgy 3D engine, UI in game designed by Stevie Wonder (come on, bars on top AND bottom of screen ? :x). I heard that heroes (HEROES !) will be sold, only few of them will be “free” with the game. True ?
I agree that LoL have some good ideas stat wise, but I just cant stand that game atm.
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I’ve never played DoTA before I got into HoN. Started off pretty much on the same footing as Cameron. First few games were just terribad. I don’t know what my kill/death stats were in those games because I didn’t know where my kill/death stats were being displayed on the screen. Then I started watching what players around me were doing, and started concentrating on playing specific heroes over and over, and I got a little better. Then I started reading up on stuff like last hit/deny/item builds and now I have a rough idea of what’s going on in the game.
What newer players coming into the game don’t necessarily know, is that HoN is not the “spritual successor” of DoTA. It’s a DoTA clone. It can’t even be called DoTA 2. It’s just DoTA on a different engine, but one that is vastly superior to the original. This is a game brought you guy by the guys who did Savage 2, which means full persistent stat tracking, automatic downloadable replays of EVERY match ever played. Full player and clan ladders, clan features, both in-game and web-based. S2 is headed by one of the most fanatical, hardcore, no-holds-barred competitive freaks I’ve ever seen. Their game is going to reflect that, which means wonders for the hardcore competitive DoTA community. They had all this in place for Savage 2, and it’s a real shame that Savage 2 never really got off the ground because of it’s similarly cliff-faced difficulty curve. DoTA and S2 really are a perfect match.
Keep in mind that to this day, DoTA sits 2 rungs below Counterstrike and 2 rungs above Team Fortress 2 in terms of minutes played per week. When people say that HoN is addressed at the existing community, realize that this is an absolutely massive community.
At the same time, S2′s learned alot from their fiasco with Savage 2. Thinks like the auto-balance, PSR, disconnects, etc are evidence of that. They are trying to make the game easier on newer players, and I’m sure there will be tutorials forthcoming. Also the community for this game will spew out a ton of guides that will ease you into the game should you be willing to dig a little.
The thing to keep in mind is that the content is worth the digging. There really is alot of depth here, and the highs in this game can be very high. Of all the gaming moments that I remember, the ones that stand out are Tie Fighter, a couple Starcraft matches, my first time in DAOC, first time downing Ragnaros in WoW, and a couple Savage 2 matches. I have no doubt that HoN will be generating similar memories.
That being said, I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea to set up some in-house HoN matches for the RPS peeps, so see if we can’t all learn the game together and maybe get some tutorials from some of the more experienced DoTA players. I’ll bring it up on the boards.
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“It’s you, you are backwards.”
No he’s really not. DotA is chock full of horrible design decisions, not the least of which is the last-hitting gold steal and the xp split for the number of heroes in range of receiving xp.
There’s dozens of mechanics that cause players on their own team to play AGAINST their own team. That’s not how you build a team game – it’s a recipe for a community of assholes. A damn good recipe as the community it has proves.
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I really want to play this.
But the thing is that i don’t have the key you need to lpay the Beta.. Can somebody give me a key or help me to get one?
Greetz MrPinda
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The HoN community is just like any other, it has jerks, and nice guys. Unfortunately, the jerk-to-niceguy ratio is horribly skewed to jerks. Find some people you like playing with, work to stick with that group, and you’ll enjoy it. Just like a lot of other MP games, oddly enough…
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hey guys can you give me some beta key plssssss………..
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My experience with the community has been the opposite. Yes, there are always a few jerks, but the expectations for Noobs Only games are low and the vast majority of people have been very friendly with advice on how to pay particular heroes. I’ve had only 3 or 4 games where someone was rude, out of 75-80 games played.
The game itself is at first overwhelming, particularly in regard to items, but you quickly grow accustomed to what needs to be done. It’s deep, the learning curve high, and the game has no training mode like Starcraft’s single-player campaigns or WoW’s leveling process. That said, I’ve enjoyed losing at this game more than playing any other game I’ve played in the last couple of years. No two games are the same because of the variety of heroes and items and the interactions that variety spawns. It’s definitely worth it, and I’ve bought it already (you can pre-order if you’re in the beta).
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Can somebody plz give me a key/invite ? =)
My email is:
thomas_ikke_5@hotmail.com
I really want to lpay this, i’m a dota player for 4 years..
Please if you have one left and you don’t use it.
Ur kindness
thomas
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plssss give a beta key
imk beeeging someone psssss nid it badly
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here’s my email
maxyel_09@yahoo.com
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you can get key faster as in 30 minutes))
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here http://heroesofnewerth.at.ua/
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