Heroes of Newerth

[etismyname]

Originally Posted by lolimgondar

dotas free and doesn't yell at me when i leave because i dont feel like fighting vengeful/lion/es/enigma 15 timess in a row.

yet another one who thinks Dota is free..
this is bad...real bad....

[paolo5566rico]

i played it already,, nc graphics,,but still the original is the best and its dota!

[Archbound]

Originally Posted by ArcheKleine

Alright well I'll be looking forward to whatever this match making system is. If it turns out to be something like they use for WC3 ladder system I will be very disappointed. =/

Oh wait that is it. Why not go above and beyond that and tell them to make a clan war matchmaking system?

The match making will support up to 5v5 teams, So I would guess that would be what you are looking for. They also have in depth league support which I am sure they plan on tying in the with the AMM so that random or bracketed matchups can be designated in the system. They already stated that the League system will be extensive in how much power it has to set up things.

[Archbound]

Originally Posted by ArcheKleine

You dont understand do you? That means you can play dota for free without buying a cd key. Meaning you have spent 0 of any currency for DotA

I am sorry Arche, but Dota costs money no matter how you look at it.
Now if you dont pay that cost its stealing, you dont say this model of car is free because it has the ability to be stolen.

[ArcheKleine]

Originally Posted by Archbound

I am sorry Arche, but Dota costs money no matter how you look at it.
Now if you dont pay that cost its stealing, you dont say this model of car is free because it has the ability to be stolen.

To an extent yes. However, the facts, are that a large majority of players do not play on battle.net and hence do not need a CDkey. Yea that may be stealing, but the fact is that there are many players that do not pay for DotA and stick almost solely to DotA and reap the benefits of a freeware game with updates.

[Valorian]

...We do not need 2 threads about HoN.

Threads merged.

[ArcheKleine]

So where are we archbound? Are there any other points that should be addressed? So far I've conceded to about one thing so far and that is the reconnect feature, despite hating how a leaver's hero is removed.

[VenomKing666]

Originally Posted by Riot1

OK. That clears me. HoN is a rip-off from DotA then.

BTW, excuse my cluelessness. Who's IceFrog?
[EDIT] I've actually heard of that name but I'm not sure what he does behind DotA.

It's been inspired by DotA, it's not a ripoff at all.

People wanted dota as it's own game for years, it's here now. Even if it's not made by the guy that developped it for a while.

Hell, S2 even asked Icefrog if they could (even if they didn't have to), and Ice said it was okay.

[VenomKing666]

Originally Posted by paolo5566rico

i played it already,, nc graphics,,but still the original is the best and its dota!

Why is the original the best? Because if you don,t provide any reasons and just spout out random bullshit it only makes you a goddamn fanboy.

[LulzYeah]

Originally Posted by VenomKing666

Why is the original the best? Because if you don,t provide any reasons and just spout out random bullshit it only makes you a goddamn fanboy.

Because you are well used to DotA? In fact, most people played DotA first (obviously) because HoN comes out later.

Is it like saying how you are used to old Tom and Jerry than the new one.

[etismyname]

Originally Posted by ArcheKleine

You dont understand do you? That means you can play dota for free without buying a cd key. Meaning you have spent 0 of any currency for DotA

huh?
you still have to get the game to play dota?
if you are talking about dl copies, well, then according to your theory, most PC games are free.
and if you are looking at the opportunity cost (the word free is just a trick word for a guy who is doing economic like me)
the cost of playing dota or hon is time that is used up to play
(leave out the rest)
and surely, we want the time we used to be as enjoyable as possible.
you could have a better time in dota in theory because it is more balanced.
but
in reality, leavers and totally unbalanced team spoils games.
how much time hav you wasted when there are leaver leaving at the count down?
and in hon, this problem is solved mostly (except unbalanced team which at least happen much less often)

and so, hon just saves so much more time than dota while the quality isn't half bad due to a higher chance to get a balanced team.

TL;DR: Hon is just like dota except it solved all the problems that I really hated, namely the leavers and unbalanced team.

[VenomKing666]

Originally Posted by LulzYeah

Because you are well used to DotA? In fact, most people played DotA first (obviously) because HoN comes out later.

Is it like saying how you are used to old Tom and Jerry than the new one.

That's not what he said, but yeah This I can agree with.

HE said: "Dota is better because it's dota"

Wich is only raw fanboyism. There is no argument.

[alienufo]

Dota is free or not depending on how you define free. If you already had WC3 and Frozen Throne before Dota was made, its like a free add on. If you want to play dota today but dont have WC3 or FT, obviously its not free because you have to buy them in order to play (unless you pirate and play on garena, which is a totally different issue).

If you bought WC3 and FT after dota was made, but didn't know about dota when you bought it or just got it for the campaigns (like I did), you might consider dota to be free.

[Archbound]

Originally Posted by alienufo

Dota is free or not depending on how you define free. If you already had WC3 and Frozen Throne before Dota was made, its like a free add on. If you want to play dota today but dont have WC3 or FT, obviously its not free because you have to buy them in order to play (unless you pirate and play on garena, which is a totally different issue).

If you bought WC3 and FT after dota was made, but didn't know about dota when you bought it or just got it for the campaigns (like I did), you might consider dota to be free.

Unless you are stealing the game Dota is NOT free you had to buy Wc3 at one point, which is required for dota. So you did pay money.
Again unless you stole it, but stealing something does not mean its free. It just means you dident pay for it

[alienufo]

Lets do a comparison for a second. When Half-Life came out, a ton of people bought it for its single player without the expectation that it would one day have an awesome online mod called Counterstrike. If you were one of the millions of people who bought Half Life at the time, CS was essentially a free game to you when it came out.

Dota is the same way. Warcraft was already a huge franchise when WC3 came out, so it sold millions of copies at release, as did TFT. To the people who originally bought WC3 and TFT for its single and online modes, Dota was essentially a free game to those people because they did not buy WC3 just to play Dota.

Its not a perfect analogy, but thats how I view it at least.

[UTDC.Justin]

Coincidentally I purchased RoC-TFT for DotA, but I traded a double Quarter-Pounder for it so it felt like a great deal at the time as they were legitimate copies.

[Chairraider]

Originally Posted by Wolfsong

Let me give you some examples of the balacing work that S2 has done to some of the Dota ports:

1. Mage Bane - Anti mage: useless "carry" in dota, was directly ported to HoN at an early stage but S2 later turned their mind to the fact that he's underpowered, and made him a useful and balanced hero in HoN after two patches of changes:

Blink gives an aoe increase in magic resistence to all ally heroes near the blink destination.

The third skill is changed to an aura which causes all enemy heroes who cast spells to get damaged for a % of the mana cost of the spell. These two changes have made Mage Bane a viable pick in serious games and a better balanced hero than anti mage in Dota.

"Before anyone says that anti mage in Dota is not inferior to his counterpart in HoN in terms of balance, he actually is. It's pretty basic knowledge to understand my example and how anti mage works in HoN and DotA."

2. Warbeast - Lycan: another useless "carry" in dota, was directly ported to HoN at the early stage; after S2 turned their mind to Lycan's balance, they buff Lycan in two ways:

2a) Lycan in HoN (warbeast) in his ultimate form stays at maximum movement speed with the phase ability, irrespective of whether he is slowed or hexed; this not only improves his killing power, but also his survivability;

2b) a more important change is that units under Lycan's control gain maximum speed and the phase ability whenever lycan is in beast form, this not only solves the problem that lycan gets blocked by his own wolves all the time, but also allows lycan to be played like ophelia and gain significant mid game power: imagine a centuar creep with maximum speed and phase ability or imagine seeking a horde of beasts runing to you at maximum speed, net-stun-slow-hit -hit -dead?

"Before anyone says that Lycan in Dota is not inferior to his counterpart in HoN in terms of balance, he actually is. It's pretty basic knowledge to understand my example and how Lycan works in HoN and DotA."

3. Wretched Hag - qop: an old school hero which was once used in competitive games, now never seen in competitive games because Dota over nerfed her. She was directly ported to HoN initially; after S2 turned their mind to her balance, they buffed her in this way:

The ultimate of QoP in HoN apply the poison effect of her first skill to all enemy hit by the ultimate. The higher level of the first skill, the higher level of poison that accompanies her ultimate. This means that different skill builds for QoP are now possible (other than scream-blink build) or even following the conventional build her effectiveness after level 9 are greatly improved. Her ultimate is now an aoe damage, slow and poisons spell. This has made her a viable pick in competitive games in HoN.

"Now before anyone says that QoP in Dota is not inferior to her counterpart in HoN in terms of balance, she actually is. It's pretty basic knowledge to understand my example and how QoP works in HoN and DotA."

I am sure you would object to the above paragraph, so would I object to your comment that taking 1 hero as an example can show "their incompetency of balancing".

Been more of a reader than a poster, but don't want this to go out unadressed. What you posted here only further increases my doubts about S2's balance understanding and I am going to use your phrase to demonstrate it.

"Before anyone says that [xxx] in Dota is not inferior to his counterpart in HoN in terms of balance, he actually is. It's pretty basic knowledge to understand my example and how Lycan works in HoN and DotA."

Lycan:
You begin your argument with the statement that Lycan is a useless carry hero when in fact he just showed up at SMM tournament and did pretty well in some games and that it is hasn't been too long that Lycan was considered to be so powerful that he was banned at leagues, but that isn't really important anyway atm. But his is important:
So what did S2 do to him? Collision size was blindly removed thus removing skill factors. Proper and skilled use of Lycan's potential has thus been punished, there is less potential to perform well with Lycan. While this "phase" is a buff for all bad players of lycan, it is also a noteable nerf for skilled players, the skill-level has been reduced. It is no conicidence that Lycan has a collision size of 8 unlike most other heros in the game, it is intention.
The HoN Lycan was buffed for bad players in HoN and has actually taken a step backwards in terms of balance.

QoP:
She is a pretty decent hero atm and shows up regularly. But this is not important once again to our discussion.
The buff to Sonic Wave is completely out of proportion, this is a sickeningly powerful buff. You don't create balance by buffing something into oblivion, you destroy balance and every single experienced DotA player will tell you how retardedly imba Sonic Wave with Shadowstrike attached to its huge AoE is. QoP may be "weaker" to its counterpart in HoN, but it is far more balanced.

Anti-Mage:
Due to the natura power of a melee agi hero you have to be extremely cautious when dealing with em and he is aready incredibly powerful at what he does and definitely not a useless carry, he appeared at SMM aswell sometimes and excelled as a counter for the very popular Medusa.
Randomly attaching Pugna Ward aura to anti-mage as a passive might work in killing casters in general, but it creates an unhealthy dualism of punishing to cast spells + punishing not to cast because else your mana gets drained and you get killed. And on top of that casting your spell which is supposed to stop the anti-mage then only makes you even more vulnerabel to the ultimate. This ultimately takes away room for the enemy to make good and proper dicisions and turns Anti-Mage into a mindless and riskless, zero-skill rewarding hero because you simply can not do something wrong because one way or the other the enemy loses.

Again, is this HoN AM stronger? Probably yes, but is it more balanced, no it isn't. Your 3 examples only support the doubts dota players have about HoN, you ignoring the examples that have been given a few pages ago do so to.

The above three examples clearly show "the incompetence of Ice Frog to balance" and "the high competence of S2 to balance".

Rofl, IceFrog has proofen his stunning and amazing balance competence for years now and it is S2 that hasn't done anything like that so far (boots, heroes, new content).
This statement is complete and utter perversion, it is not IceFrog that has to proof his competence, he has beeing doing that for years on a mindblowing level. It is S2 that has to proof their competences and quite frankly, so far they really only increase my doubts when they try to do changes of their own regarding balance.

[iishy]

Originally Posted by Chairraider

Been more of a reader than a poster, but don't want this to go out unadressed. What you posted here only further increases my doubts about S2's balance understanding and I am going to use your phrase to demonstrate it.

"Before anyone says that [xxx] in Dota is not inferior to his counterpart in HoN in terms of balance, he actually is. It's pretty basic knowledge to understand my example and how Lycan works in HoN and DotA."

Lycan:
You begin your argument with the statement that Lycan is a useless carry hero when in fact he just showed up at SMM tournament and did pretty well in some games and that it is hasn't been too long that Lycan was considered to be so powerful that he was banned at leagues, but that isn't really important anyway atm. But his is important:
So what did S2 do to him? Collision size was blindly removed thus removing skill factors. Proper and skilled use of Lycan's potential has thus been punished, there is less potential to perform well with Lycan. While this "phase" is a buff for all bad players of lycan, it is also a noteable nerf for skilled players, the skill-level has been reduced. It is no conicidence that Lycan has a collision size of 8 unlike most other heros in the game, it is intention.
The HoN Lycan was buffed for bad players in HoN and has actually taken a step backwards in terms of balance.

QoP:
She is a pretty decent hero atm and shows up regularly. But this is not important once again to our discussion.
The buff to Sonic Wave is completely out of proportion, this is a sickeningly powerful buff. You don't create balance by buffing something into oblivion, you destroy balance and every single experienced DotA player will tell you how retardedly imba Sonic Wave with Shadowstrike attached to its huge AoE is. QoP may be "weaker" to its counterpart in HoN, but it is far more balanced.

Anti-Mage:
Due to the natura power of a melee agi hero you have to be extremely cautious when dealing with em and he is aready incredibly powerful at what he does and definitely not a useless carry, he appeared at SMM aswell sometimes and excelled as a counter for the very popular Medusa.
Randomly attaching Pugna Ward aura to anti-mage as a passive might work in killing casters in general, but it creates an unhealthy dualism of punishing to cast spells + punishing not to cast because else your mana gets drained and you get killed. And on top of that casting your spell which is supposed to stop the anti-mage then only makes you even more vulnerabel to the ultimate. This ultimately takes away room for the enemy to make good and proper dicisions and turns Anti-Mage into a mindless and riskless, zero-skill rewarding hero because you simply can not do something wrong because one way or the other the enemy loses.

Again, is this HoN AM stronger? Probably yes, but is it more balanced, no it isn't. Your 3 examples only support the doubts dota players have about HoN, you ignoring the examples that have been given a few pages ago do so to.



Rofl, IceFrog has proofen his stunning and amazing balance competence for years now and it is S2 that hasn't done anything like that so far (boots, heroes, new content).
This statement is complete and utter perversion, it is not IceFrog that has to proof his competence, he has beeing doing that for years on a mindblowing level. It is S2 that has to proof their competences and quite frankly, so far they really only increase my doubts when they try to do changes of their own regarding balance.

Totally agree with everything. I also like to add one more thing. Due to how the engine of HoN works ranged heroes have a HUGE advantage over melee. Yes, they already do in DotA, but it's no where near as bad. Aggro-ing creeps in HoN is a joke. You right click a hero and they automatically target you making ranged hero dominate like no tomorrow. Also, whats up with super fast animations? The majority of HoN heroes have very fast animation + you can just hold position and right click a red hp creep for a kill. This is a problem because better range + animation = free creep kills. There is no way to counter it. At least, in DotA it still required quite a bit of micro even when playing warlock or sniper. Hold position in DotA does what it is suppose to do, stay in one spot and but still continue to auto attack. HoN only has small little features over DotA which pretty much equates to, the only reason they get people to play is graphics.

[Ranik]

Originally Posted by iishy

Totally agree with everything. I also like to add one more thing. Due to how the engine of HoN works ranged heroes have a HUGE advantage over melee. Yes, they already do in DotA, but it's no where near as bad. Aggro-ing creeps in HoN is a joke. You right click a hero and they automatically target you making ranged hero dominate like no tomorrow. Also, whats up with super fast animations? The majority of HoN heroes have very fast animation + you can just hold position and right click a red hp creep for a kill. This is a problem because better range + animation = free creep kills. There is no way to counter it. At least, in DotA it still required quite a bit of micro even when playing warlock or sniper. Hold position in DotA does what it is suppose to do, stay in one spot and but still continue to auto attack. HoN only has small little features over DotA which pretty much equates to, the only reason they get people to play is graphics.

The animations aren't super fast, they're the exact same as DotA's, in fact you could go through any of the ports files and find that they have the exact same attack stats as their DotA counterparts except for Glacius/Crystal Maiden is slightly faster (but tbh, since they updated the stats on his mana aura, he kinds of needs it, he's an average hero otherwise), you're just used to a slower more delay filled engine while the K2 Engine runs at a proper speed and has no delay. In order to make it exactly like DotA they'd have to actually attach a built in delay on everything and slow down the engine which I hope we can agree would be quite stupid. :/

EDIT: Although this is an issue they can't win on either. If they made it exactly like DotA's down to adding the delay and slowing the engine, people would complain that they're just copying DotA, and if they were completely different and not similar at all people would complain that they weren't copying DotA enough. As is almost every port has the same attack animation times and speeds as their counterparts just in a simply better engine. Your eyes deceive you.

[Minotaar]

I am Minotaar, a long time contributor to Dota concepts. My contributions include Elune's Arrow, Leap, Moonlight Shadow, Haunt/Reality, shackleshot, Wild Axes, and many other concepts. I have been involved in dota development since version 6.00, and played dota since early in verison 5.xx, and my roles have included moderation of the suggestions forums, administration, and executive in the old forums. You don't know me because I keep a low profile. As you might expect, my activity is not primarily in these forums.

Why I hate HoN:

Most people do not understand, or understand only vaguely, that DotA is not a one man production. Most people have not been inside the inner circle, as I have, so they do not understand how large, intricate, and sophisticated an organization dota is. Icefrog is as much a representative as he is a leader.

The reason why I hate HoN is because people think that stealing "from DotA" is only small thing. That only icefrog gets hurt by it. This is not true. HoN is not simply stealing from one man, HoN is stealing the collected efforts of HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED SELFLESSLY TO DOTA.

I am angry about HoN not because it stole from my close friend Icefrog, but because they stole FROM ME. Valkyrie is a blatant rip off of the ideas that I CONTRIBUTED to dota, and the connection is impossible to deny. PotM was my gift to dota, and if I knew S2 games was going to steal it, I would not have donated it.

I dont care if you happen to like HoN, as a game, more than DotA. You are welcome to make up your own mind. Liking HoN as a game is totally independent of liking the people who made it, and HOW they made it. Know this: HoN got where it is (which is still not very far) because its developers STOLE the CHARITABLE IDEAS of PEOPLE WHO WERE CONTRIBUTING TO DOTA. And the people involved with HoN do not even know who they stole the ideas from. This theft is morally bankrupt, and HoN as software is impossible to respect on any professional level.

Get your own ideas, HoN. I dont care if the game is good, the people who made it are subhuman dogs. The more HoN steals from us, the more it shows how weak and uncreative they are.