Where to start.. Over the past year I haven’t been surprised while watching the steady exodus from HoN towards LoL. Even with this in mind though, I was genuinely shocked by this recent HoN Newsletter detailing their planned Casual Mode. For a game and audience that has for so long touted its “hardcore” image, this surprised me..

First off, I have little sympathy for the results of HoN’s core design choices. Someone somewhere made a decision to copy DOTA and not improve on it. It’s done now. No-one who played DOTA should be surprised by its struggling design. If you simply copy DOTA, you copy all the good AND the bad stuff.. I said this over 1 year ago now. I can’t help but see most of these planned changes as being directly lifted from LoL. That’s not to say that LoL necessarily came across all of its ideas first either (although I think it did for many). Mario didn’t sue Sonic for having “jumping” in his game. But Sonic never spent ages with his head in the sand pretending that jumping wasn’t needed for his game to be more fun. Anyway, let’s look at some of the changes HoN is trying.

Denies in Casual Mode do not deny experience.

Are fans gonna whinge now about it not being “hardcore” enough? Of course. To be honest, I think many DOTA players (who eventually translated to HoN) mistook the context of denying being “hardcore” in the first place. Forced micro at periodic intervals shouldn’t be a “game defining” necessity. What if we all played Tetris and everyone had to press the START button every 10 seconds otherwise you’d lose? I wouldn’t ever win by pressing START, someone would lose by not! That’s ridiculous. If everyone is going to need to deny, just make no-one need to deny.

Assists give significant gold rewards… …support heroes will be able to get items as we look to reward those who enable their allies to own.

Premade 5v5′s are another story, but in PUG solo queues, it is rare to find selfless players. A game like DOTA which attracts literal wannabe “heroes” was in long need of an incentive mechanic for the support and tank roles. This is good.

No gold loss on death.

Less snow-balling is a good thing. Again, encouragement for more selfless team-play is only a good thing.

The doc also makes a point of mentioning at every opportunity that the new mode is for the benefit of “lowering the barrier of entry to new players” and noobs.

Casual Mode should be a different mode, not a different game, and that it should be quick, easy to pick up for new players…

As though successfully recreating the environment of LoL wouldn’t make it a better game than their Normal Mode anyway for ALL players, not just the noobs.

And finally, to “teh h4rdc0re”. HoN and its player base have long reveled in flying the banner of being “hardcore”. That denying creeps and gold loss on death represented a game the true hardcore players wanted, and not that “casual” LoL crowd. I must have missed parts of the recent Season One Championship at Dreamhack 2011 where LoL featured with their $100,000 prize pool. Or the ESL Intel Extreme Masters earlier this year where I saw Starcraft II, Quake & Counter-Strike there alongside LoL. Those 4 games are a truly definitive list of representatives for online gaming. The boiled down essence of online PC gaming in their current incarnations.

So even before HoN was bringing their “casual mode” cake to the table, I saw LoL posting a better recipe for “teh h4rdc0re” to battle with on a world stage. Now HoN is folding to what it calls “the casual”. Can they still carry on calling themselves “hardcore” now?

It will serve to be something far more than just a platform on which new players learn the great game that is Heroes of Newerth…

You’re probably right. It will become better than the Normal “DOTA” Mode. This new Casual “LoL” Mode sounds much better.

Or I could just go and play LoL right now… ^^;

So I stopped playing long enough to write something..  No, that’s a lie really. Server is down for maintenance. The game is League of Legends. It’s free. Website here. Quick trailer below.

I’m going to assume that you, Dear Reader, are an experienced DOTA player, so you won’t find this to be a review. Just some of my thoughts on the deeper gameplay and how I see it as an evolution of DOTA, not just a homage (tsk tsk HoN).

- Spend less time doing boring stuff and more time doing fun stuff. Regen times on HP & Mana feel higher and items buff for more too. Means less time waiting to fight and more time fighting. Most fights are met with full bars as well, allowing for pretty intense action. Unlimited free teleports home. Cool, now I don’t spend half the game jogging home and spending money on TP scrolls.

-Less stun and bash. It’s no fun not being in control of your char at anytime. Being on the receiving end of stuns was frustrating and there seems to be much less of these skills and more emphasis on slows, dots, etc. No-one likes clicking to move your character and he won’t walk, gameplay or not, it just feels like you’re stuck.

-Ability power. This is a good new design choice. No longer are INT heroes helpless vs DPS heroes who scale better late game. We used to actually yell across the LAN cafe, “if we haven’t won by lv15-ish we’re screwed!”. That’s no fun. Now abilities can scale and grow in power with items, just as physical dmg classes could before. That makes INT or ability focuesed heroes just as lethal now late game.

-Cut the fat. Same as grenades in TF2, LoL has gotten rid of denying creeps and towers. Yeah those of us that were good at it reaped the benefits but, it stops your teammates who aren’t as good getting denied against too. It balances out. Also no gold loss on death and a simpler fog-of-war. Less time fighting the engine, more time fighting the opposition.

-Hero playstyles. Far beyond just replicating DOTA’s skills, LoL has a lot of new funtionality in many heros which encourage a variety of playstyles to suit your mood. In fact, I would go as far as saying some of them encourage a whole new mini-game inside the greater scope. EG: Nasus is rewarded by last-hitting as many creeps as possible, Heimerdiner can build sentry’s to create new choke points and many heros have skills which encourage them to soak as much damage as possible in 5v5 fights but still be rewarded without necessarily hero killing.

-Less in-fighting. While it still goes on, a much better assist system means a better distribution of wealth per kill and less whinging about KS’s. Towers are now a flat 100g to everyone no matter where you were. Less jostling for tower kills, more pushing. The new Roshan is the same with team wide XP and gold.

-Accessibility. DOTA lives and dies by how many people are playing it. You need opponents. If everyone bails, the game can’t survive. The easier entry to the game is the more players we’ll have in circulation. The new shop system is great. Very helpful when purchasing (previously a big barrier to entry was memorising all the items). The ‘Death Recount’ explains exactly who killed you with what skills and damage percentages so you can learn and progress (TF2 killcam aww yeah), rather than just being pwned and not understanding why. Reconnecting to running games you dropped from? Hella yes. Lower system specs than other games (HoN, Demigod) mean more people can play it on their puta. Equals larger potential player base. War3 ran on anything, so heaps of people could join. Lol has good visual cues, what I need to be looking at pops, and still looks pretty. Oh, and free game. Yeah.

-Beyond 5v5. There seems to be a genuine interest to progress beyond the 5v5 format from these guys. They’re already experimenting with map layouts, income rates, building/creep strength etc. The 3v3 currently implemented has a much different feel with a shorter playtime (20mins) and more intense action. Serious attention is being paid to these new map designs as well. EG: in Twisted Treeline 3v3, tanks were proving too dominant, so the map was heavily tweaked to remedy this. Check out this design article.

I know I haven’t spoken about any of the persistence of the ‘Summoner’ persona, the runes, mastery trees, orsum looking shop and skins, BUT.. you can find out about all that in a regular review anyway. I’m glad that Guinsoo is doing well with this coz i really feel his design is showing through. Someone who wanted to break out of the War3 engine mould and evolve the genre`, not just copy it again.

Yeah.. wow. The game is called Achron. It’s in Alpha. Website is here. Have a read. Here’s a small excerpt from their F.A.Q.

Q: Is it true that I can keep sending units back in time to have them fight along side themselves and duplicate an entire army?
A: Yes you can, but not without consequences. It costs chronoenergy to command units from the past to travel further into the past, and obviously you use more chronoenergy to control more units in the past. Also you are using up your playing time to manage this instead of building units or controlling your armies. And finally, if the original ‘parent’ units are damaged, the time traveled version will wind up being damaged and if the original units are destroyed and don’t travel back in time, you wind up undoing the entire cycle.

Niiice o.O

They have a whole page dedicated to paradoxes, and the resolving of them. If your mind hasn’t already exploded from glee at the implications this mechanic has to potentially all multiplayer, watch this video. Or watch it anyway. :D

These guys seem to have written their own in-house engine called the Resequence Engine. They even have a section regarding licensing the engine to other developers (essentially licensing the time-travel mechanic) so they can make their own genre/themed time-travelling games.

We have here, in Alpha (and working well from all appearances) ‘an RTS that will incorporate all of your expected layers of strategic complexity. Flanking, ambushes, stealth, range VS melee, upgrades, micro VS macro’… and time travel.

Imagine a full game of Starcraft, Rise of Nations or Warcraft 3..  and then, oh yeah *insert time travel*. If you’re still not yet a wet, mouse-clicking puddle in your chair, turn in your geek card. You’re not welcome here anymore. :P