Heroes of Newerth

[1v0ry_k1ng]

when I tried to get into DoTA I spent 3 hours getting kicked from every game in the first few minutes because I was a noob and decided it wasnt for me

[Otherside]

LoL is a dumbed down, but evolved version of DotA.

I never really played DotA much, what is dumbed down in LoL?

No penalty (gold loss) on hero death's which means you cant gank the game carrying heroes to keep them down

no way to deny enemy xp and gold (no creep deny)

Lane control is not as important.

Powerful towers making ganking near impossible when hugging tower.

Also the fact its not geared towards competitive gamign as you can buy extra heroes and powerups and ur at a disadvantage unless you grind.

The game overall feels very dumbed down even though LoL players can try to claim that the the rune and mastery tree's add more depth to the game O_o.

[Otherside]

Also

http://hon.esportmedia.com/live/

Live atm Honcast tourney for any1 intrested in watching.

[SwiftSpear]

LoL is a dumbed down, but evolved version of DotA.

I never really played DotA much, what is dumbed down in LoL?

DotA has things like structures in the enemy base you kill only for XP and gold, there is no on map shop in LoL, there is in DotA. There seems to be more champions and items in DotA. The interface is ALOT more difficult in DotA.

LoL is very contained, nothing that doesn't need to be there for gameplay is in the game, every item and object in the game is well thought over, it's well documented and about as intuitive as you can make a DotA style game.

The thing I REALLY hate about LoL that I like about HoN. LoL has no match spectation, and no demo recording, which makes competitive play a bit of a mess, and because the competitive scene is so

[SwiftSpear]

LoL is a dumbed down, but evolved version of DotA.

I never really played DotA much, what is dumbed down in LoL?

No penalty (gold loss) on hero death's which means you cant gank the game carrying heroes to keep them down

no way to deny enemy xp and gold (no creep deny)

Lane control is not as important.

Powerful towers making ganking near impossible when hugging tower.

Also the fact its not geared towards competitive gamign as you can buy extra heroes and powerups and ur at a disadvantage unless you grind.

The game overall feels very dumbed down even though LoL players can try to claim that the the rune and mastery tree's add more depth to the game O_o.

I think lane control is equally if not more important. You get a HUGE bonus for tower kills in LoL, and certain champions can carry to the point of ridiculousness if they are left in a lane to farm unchecked. You can deny both XP and gold, but you have to be much more agressive to do so than in DotA. You have to push the enemy hero away from the creeps they are trying to farm.

Personally, I think some extra depth is added by ruin and mastery. It does cap out at level 30, which is pretty easy to get if you're a decent player with a bit of time. The 30 levels give the newbies a nicer ride to better skill levels, and add some added challenge for good players, play against weaker skilled summoners with higher levels than you have.

[Otherside]

I did play some LoL. I found it ridiculously Easy

I played around 50 games i got a record of like 47-3 with no prior experience. I think i left at summoner level 10 or 12 or something.

True harassing sum1 out of lane to deny them creeps to lane control works. And the masteries are a nice touch ( I do also like the abilitiy power to add scaling to cast heroes).

But not having all heroes available and every1 not being on the same playing field in terms of unlocks etc really throws the whole game off for me. I think LoL could be very decent with no unlocks but I do understand the developers buisness model is based around buyable content. I just think that its ruined its competitive aspect.

HoN is a way more competitive game and is starting to develop a decent esport scene.

Also winning/carrying a game of HoN feels way more rewarding and the game feels way more responsive than LoL. Juking in HoN is nice were as in LoL you have tall grass which can make things very obvious.

I dunno i just dont like LoL much.

And i can't play dota anymore cos the sluggishness of the wc3 engine makes me rage im to accustomed to the HoN engine now.

[SwiftSpear]

I won't argue that HoN has a much better competitive platform... I think they will have a hard time breaking 100,000 sales, where as LoL already has several more than 1,000,000 downloads. I think that most players who try HoN at a friends house or something will be immediately put off by how difficult it is to learn, and I think ultimately it's doomed to the fate of becoming one of the thousands of moderately unsuccessful games already out there.

LoL's business model and developmental priorities will make it the dominant game, and it will grow to meet the needs of the high end competitive community. Even though to an established DotA player HoN is far superior right now, and even looking back at both games 5 years from now HoN will probably still be better.

I really hate that this is the way gaming is. That a better game sells worse because it doesn't cater to the idiot market enough... but such is life. There are SOOOOOO many games that fit that mold.

[Otherside]

HoN has sold 200000+ copies already

and average user base is around 22k-32k.

1500+ accounts being purchased a day.

Recently a big media company has picked up HoN and is setting up a full live stream website for competitive gaming which even has camera's on each individual lane.

And already nearly 50000K of tourneys being anounced. + alot of wealthy sponsors.

Logged in atm 21:40 CET (3-4 hours before peak time) 29879 People online.

you also need to take into account the 1000's of Southeast Asian players playing on the Garena sponsored servers seperated from the main servers (as its FTP through garena in southeast asia only) so thats another couple of thousand players.

[SwiftSpear]

Awesome! I'm actually glad to hear I'm mostly wrong... although 200,000 is still not a groundbreaking number...

[Sausage]

maybe coz it only just came out of beta a few dayz ago

[DavetheBrave]

I've played very little dota and only started playing LoL a few days ago, but killing your own creeps to deny the enemy just seems like a bad game mechanic to me.

[Gota]

It's a shame These competitive games fail to provide the tools for newbie players to learn from.
Sure balance changes are dependent on the players and what they make up or find but there are still many things that can be generalized to create a tutorial that teaches what general things one must think of at curtain situation.
Except clicking one wins or loses cause of a state of mind,a certain way of thinking of the game.
Without tutorials players get to the right way of thinking by trial and error and take a long time to do it.


An example from spring:
Make fast units when there is a lot of ground to cover and make slower ones when the map is small/a lot of chokepoints.

[Sausage]

Unlike spring, HoN has good descriptive guides for just about everything. I'm a newb and I'm finding the learning part really easy I just need to play more and work on my reactionz etc.

The killing your own creeps bit works really well actually, when your creeps are low you have to deny the enemy the kill. It adds more skill to the game, without denies it would be so much more boring...

[Otherside]

denies is a thing which seperates a good player from a bad player. A good player will deny his own creeps to deny enemy full exp from killing a creep hence gimping there leveling as well as denying them gold. Also denying and holding your lane back is a key part of certain strats. You want to hold off pushing the lane so you can farm closer to your base so you are less prone to ganking and farm safely. These are all pretty nice quirky things that add depth to the game.

Lane control is a key part of the early game of HoN/Dota

[Raghna]

denies is a thing which seperates a good player from a bad player. A good player will deny his own creeps to deny enemy full exp from killing a creep hence gimping there leveling as well as denying them gold. Also denying and holding your lane back is a key part of certain strats. You want to hold off pushing the lane so you can farm closer to your base so you are less prone to ganking and farm safely. These are all pretty nice quirky things that add depth to the game.

Lane control is a key part of the early game of HoN/Dota

Last time I played HoN creep deny was EZ, doesn't take you more than a few days to learn to do it properly.

How long did it take you to beat a decent player on 1v1 Comet?

[Pxtl]

Never having played either of these games (but being familiar with the basic mechanics) how do you deny the enemy creeps? DOn't your creeps just keep attacking no matter what? Do you kill your own creeps? Block their access?

[Otherside]

Creep denying vs noobs is easy. Know when to creep deny/harass or lane controlling vs a good player is not easy.

Thats like playing 1v1 Comet vs a noob or a pro the dififculty of something depends on your oponent.

[Raghna]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf2mvIxW ... 1&index=24

[Pxtl]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf2mvIxW ... 1&index=24

Thanks,

Ah, so the idea is that you force the first conflict to be on your own turf by physically slowing down friendly creeps... doesn't actually prevent them from progressing, simply slows them up. So what does this get you? Better support from your towers and teammates?

Why not just massacre your own creeps outright? Simply because it's a waste of a player's time?

Sorry for all the questions - I'm just curious how this DOTA stuff actually works in real play.

[Raghna]

Well, the closer you are to your towers, the safer you are from ganks, elec+swiftblade firstbloods (a very powerful early game combination) etc...

You can't attack your creeps unless they're down to about 40% HP (I'm not sure about the % tho)
Creeps are also quite strong early on, so last hitting is about waiting for the very last moment to hit the last bit of HP the creep has.
Because it's only the last hit, the hit that kills the creep that gives gold/denies XP.

You can also lure jungle creeps (neutral creeps) into you lane, so your creeps fight them. This results in you getting free jungle kills, slowing your lane down if it's too far away and you're afraid of being ganked, and denying the enemy any XP if any of your creeps die from the neutrals.

Also, sometimes someone will jungle, level up from nothing but the jungle, which gives 1 lane of your team only 1 player. Which is quite dangerous as it's 2v1. So this player would really want to be as close to his tower as possible at all times. This actually benefits your team because both the solo laneing hero and the jungler get double as much experience.