[HoN/DotA] Let's Play~!! - Page 1223

On March 31 2011 05:33 Ack1027 wrote:
I don't want to start up a debacle of a discussion here but lets be honest...
If dota2 comes out without any glaring holes, which is unlikely since its Valve, and gets patched and supported as it should...Won't competitive dota/hon/lol be diminished greatly? Did anyone here honestly play HoN and go, wow the balance and meta-game management of S2 sure beats Icefrog!

The main 3 reasons I can't play HoN are:
1. It is created, managed, and played by a retard like Maliken and his co. This includes all business decisions, hero creation, dumb customizable shit like coins and a huge emphasis on psr matchmaking.

2. At the highest level, many HoN players have competitive dota experience yet none of them succeeded consistently at the highest level. Players like Chu were one...maybe two time wonders and correct me if I'm wrong but isn't he one of the best in the history of HoN? The competition in HoN is not anywhere near, nor will be near in the foreseeable future to what DotA has achieved. Of course HoN hasn't had much time or player base interest [ speaks for itself ] but HoN will not have anything like IHCS level players/replays in the consistency they had and the ABSOLUTELY LONG list of ridiculous players who impacted and changed the game. coL era, Virtus Pro era, Ukrainians, Croatians, Chinese, Malay, Singaporeans, the annual SMM showdowns. HoN will not have something like Pride nations, a huge tourney followed by all and have multiple nations field ridiculous teams each with the ability to outplay others on a given day.

It doesn't have players like: LightOfHeaven, Fear, Maelk, Travka, FocusIRE, Admir, Puppey, Kuroky, Babyknight, NS, Say_what, Pusher, Mania, Slahser, Lacoste, all the Q players, Merlini, Hitomi really the list goes on and on and onnnn....and these are players of the highest quality who have consistently played well. I realize some switched over to HoN, but the success that they had in dota first is what translates to HoN not the other way around. And I'm not too sure the majority of those who switched over would agree that the competition in HoN is harder or more fun to play against. My point is, there is no motivation for me to watch/play/follow competitive HoN when the top players got trashed on regularly in dota. This is not to take away from top HoN players in HoN, more power to you if you can topple these giants but you almost never see a top HoN player who comes to DotA and demolishes it. Even our resident HoN hero Testie was never at the very top of NA, let alone the international scene yet he is widely regarded as a top HoN player no?

3. People will deny this all they want, and they will say it does not impact the game but HoN and Dota are very similar games and because of that the little details that HoN decided to add or remove are really irritating. The tower and creep AI are different, and less logical than what happens in the old ass war3 engine. For some reason, creeps give off fireworks when they die? and there are tons of other useless animations for no reason. And why is it that most, if not all the ideas that get created in HoN are just copies from DotA skills and then tweaked in the absolute worst way?

The speed of the game is too fast. Normally faster = better, but I believe HoN's speed has passed the threshold where a great player can separate himself from a good player. I mean just watch all the top10 WE ARE ELECTRIC videos and can you imagine that stuff being done in HoN? Those top 10 videos are WEEKLY, please let me stress that...WEEKLY and its mostly randoms doing these moves. This says 2 things: 1. Dota average skill of comp players has reached a point where they can do ridiculous shit like that and 2. The highest level of players are even more impressive if random Chinese inhousers can do shit like that.

I also watched some HoN casts after I quit playing cuz I have friends who play and/or are interested so I am always down to try out things they enjoy. As I watched, my impressions were that team strategy is not developed enough. HoN is still going through the stages where there is basic to mid level ganking strategies supported by wards. Ultimately, many games are decided by carry role players who specialize in that role well and tri-lanes were still non-existent at that point. Nobody seemed to understand timings of when to put down towers or how to zone an area for farming or even moderate evolution of team fight tactics. Everyone just went into team fights dropped all their shit and hoped for the best. 2-1-2 was all I saw in these honcasts and there was hardly deviation or on the fly adaptation that really influenced the outcome of the game. <---- This may all be outdated but it is my observations from that experience. I am 100% confident strategy has evolved since this point. It is just boring to someone like me who saw all this evolution in dota to watch it all over again in HoN. The fact that Heen's monster post really opened up people's eyes is kinda like a ' oh btw we've been to the moon ' kind of moment.

The speed in HoN lets better players succeed because they can process more information and make more decisions that matter....but the speed also restricts better players from making the very best decision in the split second scenarios that are some of the most famous moments in DotA. Can anyone show me a video comparable to Drow ranger denying herself with an enemy ranged creep [ mid-air ] after buying a helm of dom in the side shop? I'm not saying this shit happens all the time...just that things like that are not allowed because HoN is slightly too fast [ imho ] The nature of DotA/HoN/LoL already relies on quick reaction in less than a second timings...but HoN made that window even smaller, or I'd argue impossible sometimes to hit.

These are all my opinion and I have not played HoN seriously since 2 months after release. I am not looking into starting an argument in which game is better or why, but the overall point is that I hope you can see why dota2 will most likely motivate everyone to try it and unite the communities. I hit 1800 psr and had a bad experience overall in the short time I played so I never touched it again. Some of the things I may have written about are outdated, but it is simply my experience. I am open to HoN being a good game that would even crush DotA but as you can tell by playerbase, and competitive playerbase that is not the case. Dota2 will give us a unique chance like starcraft 2 to see if dota players or hon players [ sorry LoL players ] come in with an advantage.