Lowyat.net just scored 500 beta keys for the game. Should be hearing something about that soon. :V

As a direct comparison to DotA, it is practically better in every way other than the fact that DotA has been around for years and has a hero count and balance to reflect that.

Of course, the simple fact remains that whatever DotA has, HoN can eventually adapt and emulate, while the reverse isn't true just by virtue of being locked to the WC3 engine.

Definitely a game to be watching out for.

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Added on July 21, 2009, 4:02 amUpdate: Uh oh, due to a communication boo boo, those invites may have been sent to a regular poster instead of staff/administration. All 500 of them.

Hang on aaaaaa

Edit edit: Keys are safe, false alarm. Happy days ahead!

This post has been edited by Falk: Jul 21 2009, 09:25 AM

Scout seems fine other than the fact his vanish costs waa-aay too little mana meaning he can be perma-invis while whittling down opponent's HP (though opponent not having True Sight = his own fault). Also the extra damage from vanish affects buildings, which is dumb. The only reason he seems like a really strong ganker is the fact other mid-game gank heroes like Bounty Hunter (who is similar to Scout) and Nerubian Assassin aren't in the game. If those two were already ported you'd hear Scout b****ing a lot less exclusively.

Madman's recent rework made him ridiculous. Barrel Roll is completely stupid along with the fact that his ult is >50% uptime. At least he's easier to control early-game with his stat growth nerf, and a lot of the time if he gets fat the opposite team really only have themselves to blame.

Nymphoria seems fine. AOE stun takes careful positioning to utilize fully (You want the backswing to stun when they're coming out of the first stun), the AOE heal, which also damages any enemies in the radius btw, takes time to go off. Mass-teleport is anything but - it teleports only herself and 1/2 heroes (rank 2/3).

Some of the other heroes, however, are completely hilarious. Dark Lady with Battlefury, for example, can mow anything down (the charge-AOE deals melee attacks to everything it hits, complete facerape with Battle Fury. Puppet Master has more CC options than Rhasta/Pollywog, Electrician is harder to kill than 5.84c Medusa when he gets stuff like Bloodstone/Sac Stone.

Some of the tweaks to existing heroes are also over the top. Omniknight/Jereziah's degen aura replacement has to be the single most imbalanced non-ultimate ever - bonus damage on attack + 100% splash every once in a while, which slows.

Griping about balance aside, a lot of heroes, especially the melee ones, are easier to play. Treant Protector/Keeper of the Forest, for example, has a much less absurd melee attack animation, along with a replacement for armor/regen ability which now allows him to pick up a tree for bonus damage - much easier to LH/deny at the start of the game.

Considering this is still closed beta and the game really has been played only 2 months so far without much competitive level input, they've come a long way.

Edit: Removed obsolete info. Oops!

This post has been edited by Falk: Jul 21 2009, 02:47 PM

Which part of "cannot post" is hard to understand? :S

That's -exactly- like Luna.
Lucent Beam - 75/150/225/300
Eclipse - 4/7/10 hits

This post has been edited by Falk: Jul 21 2009, 03:57 PM

Just to clarify re: the currently implemented beta conditions



@Above: so the question now is... what were 3 heroes with 500hp each (at lv11?) doing away from creeps/towers if Luna is around? Heh. :V

This post has been edited by Falk: Jul 21 2009, 04:11 PM

You're slow like a fat man >:(

Not all fat men are slow.

i.e. Pudge

So "slow like a fat man" is a valid analogy.

@You guys in the beta giveaway thread hoping to 'get away from the dotards'

JFYI the community is/will be just 'as bad'. The best games are still the ones you play with a bunch of people you know. You have been forewarned.

With that said, the fact that this game has buddy lists/clan system/ranking/matchmaking all in-built will make for much easier time setting up games with people you know/against people of similar skill level.

Really depends if you feel the game is worth doling out cash for. Personally, considering DotA isn't 'free' per-se and HoN is an actual commercial game supported by a development company i.e. not something done as a hobby (no offense to Icefrog who does an amazing job throughout 6.xx) I'd say it's worth it.

The media assets alone are worth a tip of the hat. Appreciation of art forms, etc.

The beta server's been unstable today for some reason - that could be related. Try again later.

It seems to be a repeating cycle that every time they hand out beta invites servers (especially the chat servers) start dying under the increased load until they hook up additional infrastructure and hotfix the clients to make use of them.

Dunno about client crashes though. I've never experienced a single client crash that wasn't related to the chat servers, and the game runs surprisingly smooth connecting to USWest servers which is amazing considering everything Internet in Malaysia gets shitflung by Streamyx.

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Added on July 25, 2009, 7:32 pmlazyedit:

International online tourney to take place courtesy of Gamestah/S2. Any competitive DotA teams interested in this game should beg/borrow/steal beta invites ASAP to get used to the names/hero/picks/counters. Full shoutcasting and publicity of matches, etc.

http://www.gamestah.com/news/view/668

This post has been edited by Falk: Jul 25 2009, 07:32 PM

Guys here's a bunch of "information I heard somewhere" that I'll randomly spout in the hopes that everyone is as clueless as I am therefore making me look well informed. It's a great tactic guaranteed to work on Malaysian forums!

League of Legends is a breakaway from the DotA specific formula though. It's like TF2 vs CS - both team based FPS, but completely different games.

I'm hoping LoL does well because I want to play it as well. However the graphics are somewhat a turn-off at the moment. TF2 pulled off the comic look well. LoL just looks... way too fluorescent atm.

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Added on July 26, 2009, 5:40 pmlol

This post has been edited by Falk: Jul 26 2009, 05:40 PM

http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=2504

Just in case.

The fundamental of the anti-maphack protection is this:

WC3's architecture is peer-to-peer. This means that by definition at least one client will need to know where everything is on the map. (or in WC3's case, all clients) This means that Fog of War is generated client-side and the client actually does has information on where everything is on the map, underneath that fog.

K2 Engine as utilized in HoN is a client-server setup where all players connect to central servers (the 'host' in this case only decides game settings, etc). This allows the server to maintain unit positions on the map and send information to clients only that they are allowed to know, i.e. it's impossible to maphack unless you have access to the server itself and know what to make of the raw data there.

Undoubtedly, like all online games, there will be eventual cheats/hacks/griefs/exploits (which I have every confidence of S2 dealing with as they crop up). Map hacks will be 100% impossible, though.

This post has been edited by Falk: Jul 27 2009, 07:20 PM

@'Confusing' visuals: You really need to ask yourselves "How well could I tell what was going on in DotA on my first 20 games?". You've been playing DotA for years and this game for... 1 week?

The only real visual gripe is that it's hard to tell at a glance which heroes are on which team unless you are 100% familiar with the team/player colors. The 1-pixel border around HP bars is definitely not obvious enough.

Patch will be within a few hours from this post.

edit: delayed to AM hours, Wednesday Malaysian time.

This post has been edited by Falk: Jul 29 2009, 05:12 PM

You probably should be playing something less stressful/complicated.

Like Super Punch Out.

Nah, that was a veiled reference for people who know my background.

More to the point w.r.t HoN, doubtless someone in the ~10 bazillion people who exist in this world -will- find a way to crack it. It's not a matter of if, but when... of course, I'm betting that with the caliber of developer it'll be later rather than sooner. Even so, unfortunately it -will- be cracked, and the local community here can either have a large legitimate following by then, or the game can locally go the way of the hundreds of other shithole games in terms of community.

If there's enough support from the region that the devs and any local gaming competition entities see the merits of holding large events/tournaments/leagues* (with significant cash prizes) guess who wins?

Not all developers deserve return of investment. S2 is one of the few that do, and they've made a great IP which will definitely evolve into an amazing and continuously improving product on release and beyond. Is USD30 too steep though? Maybe. We'll see.

*edit: and local servers... who knows? One can wish. :V

This post has been edited by Falk: Sep 2 2009, 01:02 AM

^fixT

Granted, after WC3's engine-enforced 1/4sec input latency, HoN definitely plays a lot smoother.

Well, let's put it this way... there really are two completely seperate factors here:

Firstly, like I said, is the propensity of connections over the pacific to not be all that stable. When it's fine, HoN's net code is amazing. When it's not and good old TMNet is suffering circuit faults or earthquakes or whatever the current FotM reason is, there's absolutely nothing you can do.

The other is that latency does make a difference at the highest level of play. Tried the Japanese servers when they give 110ms? (Which isn't often - requires a few factors to line up) The difference may not be blitheringly obviously pronounced, but it's there. We're not talking about a single discrete event occuring ~0.1 sec later. We're talking about every single thing you do in the game being ~0.1sec later, and this makes for noticably different results across a significantly large sample of events.

Competitive play will benefit a lot from local servers. Hearsay has it that S2 will be releasing a server package for unofficial, community hosted servers (which you still need to log in to get access to) so maybe that'll work if nothing else.