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On December 16 2011 00:39 SupLilSon wrote:
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Not to mention the only decent elements of HoN are the things they ripped straight from DOTA.
I wanted to reply to this post in the "Dota 2 slower gameplay than HoN ?" thread, but it seemed off-topic there. And I wanted to rant a bit, maybe, so blogs it is. It's my first, so don't be gentle at all, please. (Plus, isn't this already better than another naniwa thread?)
I think the UI elements in HoN turned out quite good, personally. The use of screen economy — yes, including the unit selection frame, — customizable hotkeys, courier management, and moddability (some of us are colorblind) are all things I'd consider rather superior to the original Dota. The minimap (which I hear is somewhat important) is also improved in HoN. There's also matchmaking, of course, and it's just a generally more accessible experience overall. Hence the reason I'm learning to play the game with HoN rather than Dota. Note that this part is comparing, strictly, HoN to Dota, not Dota2, although some of the same things apply to Dota2 in its present state as well. SupLilSon's post partially-quoted above is extremely dismissive of modern-game conveniences that Dota2 couldn't justify launching without, even if HoN actually added them to the original Dota experience, as was to be expected of a newer game.
And, unfortunately, he (or she) isn't the only one saying things like this.
The thing that frustrates me the most, from what I can tell about Dota2's present state, is that it's possible to take a screenshot — in a game where you only control one unit, give or take a few others temporarily — and be unable to tell whether the player's one unit is alive or dead. A cursory glance at the screen doesn't always reveal information about whether or not you're able to actually play the game. To the people parroting the sentiment that Dota2 is strictly superior to Heroes of Newerth...do you realize how absurd that is, at least? I can understand the point to not showing another player's mana overhead on the game screen. Or their items on hover, I don't mind looking past that, even though it was a nice touch. That's fine. But not even level? Not even their name? I have to hover to see their freaking name?
Now, maybe I'm wrong about some of that. Maybe there are options, and different people streaming have different preferences. If you hadn't guessed by now, I haven't managed to pick up a Dota2 beta key just yet. The thing is, though, I'm not actually in too big of a hurry to do so; I don't feel entitled to a beta key, and I don't scheme or plot new ways to acquire one. It's not a problem, to me, to wait and watch others play the game as it develops. If I don't find myself with a key, I'll see what happens when the game launches. It's not a big deal.
So, I find myself in a weird spot, actually, as far as interest in Dota2 goes; really, without a doubt, I want Dota2 to be Dota1 with HoN's interface, as I find the Dota characters to be considerably more interesting, for whatever reason. The speed isn't that big of a concern for me either way — although I understand how it makes the games noticeably different, — and balance isn't that big of a deal because I'm awful at the game, anyway.
The hard thing is, that doesn't seem to be what they're going for at all with Dota2. And yeah, the interface is a deal-breaker for me. In anticipation of the people who would dismiss my concerns with "It's just a beta, give it time," and for the sake of giving the other parts of this post some perspective: I'm a newcomer to the genre. The game has enough barriers to entry already (sup terrible community); if the interface is frustratingly bad — especially in comparison to the game I'm already playing before Dota2, which D2 is supposed to be "killing" — it isn't going to be as fun. Probably to the point that I'll dismiss it as a good or great game with a UI that ruins it (sup Skyrim). Even less so if the reasons for having a crappy & dated interface are as stupid and arbitrary as being "true" to the original.* My friends showed me Dota at a LAN in [maybe] 2006, and I waved it away as a lame distraction of a game because you only controlled one unit. Forgive me, I was playing WC3 at the time. That's that pro game where you control up to 10 units. A year ago I discovered LoL, recognized the core Dota gameplay, and played a fair amount with my friends. Recently (since August) I started to study HoN, and then Dota, and then HoN again, with greater understanding. I'm still a McTerrible with less than a hundred games of either Dota or HoN, but I'm trying. And, to me at least, the interface is very, very important.
From what I've seen, it seems to me like Dota2 is clinging to WC3 Dota's interface too much, despite it being (noticeably) improved in other games of the genre. You know what would be a useful addition, as an example? Instead of drawing on the minimap — which is bound to be reserved exclusively for drawing dicks and impeding your minimap awareness at inconvenient times — why not take a cool idea from League of Legends and add a retreat ping with a different sound, to complement the regular one? That was a great idea, and served to improve communication in pubs a ton. But oh wait, LoL is a terrible game intended exclusively for homosexuals and never did anything right, I forgot. (standard Dota/HoN community response)
Anyway. I'd love to have a considerably shinier first blog post complete with pictures and charts and maybe even something original, but I won't. This is going to be it. It's difficult, to say the least, to make a strong case about a game's UI flaws when you can't actually put the game into action yourself. It should be obvious that I don't think the beta looks all-bad; but it'd be even more pointless than it already is to make a blog post with "concerns" in the title and then point out all the good things in a game I haven't played yet. That actually sounds more stupid than pointless, even. So, I'm not a "hater", nor am I a "fanboy" for whatever game you view as the opposition.
In fact, I'm just curious. Are there others who feel concerned that the inferior (not used lightly) UI will stifle an otherwise great game? I'm very sure that — while watching MaNia-'s Dota2 stream, no less, — if the game came out with its full Dota cast tomorrow and the same UI, I'd keep on playing HoN for a while longer, at least.
*As an aside, I'm not the biggest fan of SC2, for instance, but I'm don't attribute its flaws to stupid things like MBS or unlimited unit selection. That's ridiculous.
  
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That's a long rant about a game that's in beta yo.
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Long rants are my style. Of course I'm not furiously F5ing this page. That would be ridiculous.
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A retreat ping? That sounds extremely one-dimensional and is therefore a terrible idea.
Sounds like something from LoL. Not to mention that improving pubs is like improving ladder play, useless.
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Throwing a ton of extra information on the screen does not equal better gameplay. Why would screenshots need to indicate whether you're dead or alive? If you're playing Dota, you should bloody well know.
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How about this. FUCK THAT BAR ACROSS THE TOP!
That is my ONE major complaint with the game. Oh... My... God. I can't stand trying to click near the top and it not registering because there's that fucking bar and the game doesn't register clicks through it.
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I am confused though what actual interface changes would you recommend? You can already customize the shop recommended items for each hero with config file editing, presumably by release that will be graphical. Retreat ping sounds like a good idea(I have encountered ambiguous pings in pubs before and it is indeed frustrating), but it doesn't seem like a huge game defining UI feature. There is a counter on the top of the screen that indicates who is alive and who is dead. I am not sure what other info regarding that you could consider meaningful, unless you mean some kind of indicator about which hero is yours on it, which might be OK but is completely useless.
As far as revealing info, there is an option called "show player names" that does what you want as far as names (it doesnt show hero names, but again recognizing heroes is part of basic game-play learning process). I guess its an ok idea for noobs who dont know what the heroes look like, but noone with experience would use it as it is just clutter. The point of hiding other info is that it is a significant part of game-play to know what your opponent has, you have to spend the time to click on them to know and that is by design.
I'm also not sure what you mean by courier control. You can already tell the courier to pick up your items and automatically bring them to you, or you can manually control the courier to do whatever. What else could you want it to do?
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A retreat ping has been talked about in the dev forums and the majority of people who responded would implement it. I don't mind the Dota 2 interface right now, but HoN did have a lot good things in its UI.
I feel like its BW vs SC2 again. I would rather have Valve create the best possible game they can, skilled gameplay will follow no matter what anyway. I'm hoping Valve creates a very functional, convenient, and seamless UI but doesn't take too much attention away from the actual game visually.
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Lol what? If you control one unit than why would there need to be indication that you're dead. This should be fairly obvious for anyone who's not a child. And I'm pretty sure there is an indication of some sort anyways though I haven't played the game for quite a long time.
I'm not going to disagree that the interface is terrible because it is. It's worse than LoL, DotA in WC3, and HoN.
Shop interface is beyond terrible. The tab icons looks pretty much identical with no labels so unless you've played the game for a very long time and remember everything or you just have an amazing memory, you aren't going to know where most of the items are located.
There's so much white space, it's absurd. Why can't you design a interface for the current era where most people aren't using 800x600?
The scoreboard is clustered with useless shit. Why does the scoreboard need ultimate ready indicators when this is already displayed in the top bar? Why is Lvl repeated 10 times? Why do I need to know hero names in the scoreboard? I would just select the hero if I really wanted to know the name of it or you could simply just implement hover over tooltips to display names.
net_graph 3 takes up an absurd amount of space because it's not in the bottom right corner like it's suppose to be.
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Dota 2 interface is not good but it's not that bad to make it a gamebreaker. Right now I'd rather have Dota 2 in it's current with finished content and bug free than have the current content with good interface. Many of the visuals and audio are annoying, but at least the gameplay is really a 1:1 perfect port.
Btw I think you can see it in a screenshot if the hero is dead or not - if the taker didn't deselect than the portrait is grayed out and the top bar always has a respawn timer on dead heroes.
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Australia7069 Posts
Drawing on the minimap is actually really great. i've seen it used heaps of times to coordinate attacks especially when poeple dont have mics. A quick line on the minimap and you know which way to go, easy.
as for not knowing if you're dead or alive, in a game with1 unit to control i dont see why that is a problem. Things like retreat pings just sound like fluff to me when i hear you talk about it. Idont want to see the names of everyone on peoples heads the minimap, it clutters the screen.
Less is more sometimes
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On December 16 2011 04:00 Severedevil wrote:
Throwing a ton of extra information on the screen does not equal better gameplay. Why would screenshots need to indicate whether you're dead or alive? If you're playing Dota, you should bloody well know.
On December 16 2011 04:50 Muki wrote:
Dota 2 interface is not good but it's not that bad to make it a gamebreaker. Right now I'd rather have Dota 2 in it's current with finished content and bug free than have the current content with good interface. Many of the visuals and audio are annoying, but at least the gameplay is really a 1:1 perfect port.
Btw I think you can see it in a screenshot if the hero is dead or not - if the taker didn't deselect than the portrait is grayed out and the top bar always has a respawn timer on dead heroes.
On December 16 2011 04:32 skyR wrote:
Lol what? If you control one unit than why would there need to be indication that you're dead. This should be fairly obvious for anyone who's not a child. And I'm pretty sure there is an indication of some sort anyways though I haven't played the game for quite a long time.
In shooters, there's generally some kind of hit effect when you're dying, and ghost effect when you're dead. I mean, why should you need either of these? It should be obvious that your numbers (or red meters, or whatever) are going down.
There should be an indication of whether or not you're alive because your ability to meaningfully interact with the game hinges on whether or not your hero is alive. Make a convincing argument for not showing that information all the time. It doesn't need to be obtrusive, it doesn't need to be flashy, but being alive is such a vital piece of information that, unless you can provide otherwise, I can't think of a single reason not to always show something letting you know if the game is playable or not. It sounds like basic game design, doesn't it? Throwing a ton of information on the screen doesn't necessarily equate to better gameplay, but hiding it is an easy way to make the gameplay worse, and the decision to do so shouldn't be taken lightly. Basically the same response to all three posts, I think, so I put these together.
On December 16 2011 04:09 InvalidID wrote:
I am confused though what actual interface changes would you recommend? You can already customize the shop recommended items for each hero with config file editing, presumably by release that will be graphical. Retreat ping sounds like a good idea(I have encountered ambiguous pings in pubs before and it is indeed frustrating), but it doesn't seem like a huge game defining UI feature. There is a counter on the top of the screen that indicates who is alive and who is dead. I am not sure what other info regarding that you could consider meaningful, unless you mean some kind of indicator about which hero is yours on it, which might be OK but is completely useless.
As far as revealing info, there is an option called "show player names" that does what you want as far as names (it doesnt show hero names, but again recognizing heroes is part of basic game-play learning process). I guess its an ok idea for noobs who dont know what the heroes look like, but noone with experience would use it as it is just clutter. The point of hiding other info is that it is a significant part of game-play to know what your opponent has, you have to spend the time to click on them to know and that is by design.
I'm also not sure what you mean by courier control. You can already tell the courier to pick up your items and automatically bring them to you, or you can manually control the courier to do whatever. What else could you want it to do?
A unit selection frame would be a significant change to me, although I didn't focus on it in the OP. One thing I really like about HoN and LoL is that when you click on someone else, you still see your own skills, items, health/mana, and stats. If you select something else you can control (in HoN, not doable in LoL when I last played), your hero's health and mana are still visible on the screen. The courier comes to mind here. Just to be clear, though: no, I don't struggle with controlling the courier anymore. And no, I also don't keep it selected for very long. But, there are times when it's beneficial to keep something else selected — checking creeps' health numbers, watching an enemy's or an ally's item cooldowns, or their armor values, or their active buffs — and I've yet to hear even one strong argument for only showing one or the other à la Dota2. I'm becoming more and more sure that there isn't one.
Please don't bring the "it's a skill" counter, because with ez-mode Dota2 you don't even have to box your hero again after you accidentally de-select yourself. You're basically always selected, except for when you're not and the game refuses to show you in an obvious-not-intrusive way.
Besides that, minor changes. I appreciate the info on the Show Player Names option — that's getting turned on right away. I don't believe it's necessary to show the names of the heroes floating overhead; ideally it'd show at least player name, health, and level. I mentioned that level isn't a huge deal in the OP. Teammates' health bars on the overlay, along with level, mana, maybe other things, that would be cool. Not a huge deal, and there are defensible reasons to hide this information. Ok, fine. Huge sections of white space, as skyR called them, could (should) be trimmed down. Do you really need a region of items taking up as much (or more) space as the minimap? Things like this; these are not-insignificant changes that I would recommend.
Other things I'm reluctant to comment on because I haven't seen how things look on my screen, and may be attributed to taste or may look better in person. Maybe there is or will be a "ghost effect on death". Maybe the colorblind mode will actually manage to alleviate the difficulty I have in telling Radiant/Dire creeps apart, without neutering the interesting color scheme of the game. That's all actually speculation, though, as far as I know, and won't affect a lot of people. A lot of people won't try colorblind mode because there won't be a need to. But for me, if the colorblind mode turns out to be bullshit (I found it to be unhelpful/unnecessary in WoW, for instance) and doesn't fix the issues I'm predicting now from streams, that's a gamebreaking thing. For me. I want concede, too, but implemented in an intelligent way; I definitely think HoN went about it the wrong way. The best suggestion I've seen suggested a silent vote to concede — you mark or unmark something on your interface that makes it very clear you would like to concede, and no one else knows. If your whole team (or more than x% of your team) checks the flag, your team is notified that a surrender is imminent in case the team wants to discuss. It's less grief than the 12 year old who sits in the fountain from 4 minutes who starts spamming concede votes at 15 because your team lost first blood, for sure.
And then there's the input latency thing, but...really, I can't comment on that, you know? Not at all, except to say that I can't comment on it for not having tried it first-hand. Nearly everything I know about this is from other people, and it's something you need to experience to understand, in my opinion. Can't comment on the top bar either for the same reasons, Risen.
Regarding the courier, and also going back to the 1-unit control thing, I really liked figuring out that HoN bound the ` key to cycling between units you were allowed to buy things on. In most cases, this means it switches between your hero and the courier. Isn't that a nice, small touch? This is one of the things that's strictly a preference gained by comparing HoN to Dota1, because it's nuanced enough to not be obvious. (Just like it isn't obvious when your hero is dead and you're watching a teamfight, perhaps suddenly) But, then again, what the hell is the point to reserving any of my number keys for unit control? Like we said, you only control one unit most of the time. And, again, this is a concern because I haven't had a chance to try it out. But, it's also the type of concern that the die-hards who post in the dev forums I don't have read access to may or may not care to mention. Considering how many arguments have been rebutted here and there by "How hard is it to press F1 to select your hero?" instead of "Is it necessary to de-select my hero in the first place?", though, I'm not extremely hopeful.
The people who put the most effort into getting access to play right now are reliably the people who want to see the game stay exactly the same.
On December 16 2011 05:22 Kiante wrote:
Drawing on the minimap is actually really great. i've seen it used heaps of times to coordinate attacks especially when poeple dont have mics. A quick line on the minimap and you know which way to go, easy.
as for not knowing if you're dead or alive, in a game with1 unit to control i dont see why that is a problem. Things like retreat pings just sound like fluff to me when i hear you talk about it. Idont want to see the names of everyone on peoples heads the minimap, it clutters the screen.
Less is more sometimes
Interestingly enough, things like drawing on the minimap just sound like fluff to me, too. My first response to finding out about it (coming from LoL): it's fluff that people will use to draw dicks, rather than to sharply alert people to direct their attention to the minimap or die right now. Even better, why not have both? They're complementary, not mutually exclusive. A regular ping to direct attention, a quick line to indicate an intended attack path; a retreat ping to call attention, a quick line to indicate the attacker's intended path.
Speaking of:
On December 16 2011 04:19 English wrote:
A retreat ping has been talked about in the dev forums and the majority of people who responded would implement it. I don't mind the Dota 2 interface right now, but HoN did have a lot good things in its UI.
I feel like its BW vs SC2 again. I would rather have Valve create the best possible game they can, skilled gameplay will follow no matter what anyway. I'm hoping Valve creates a very functional, convenient, and seamless UI but doesn't take too much attention away from the actual game visually.
Thanks for letting me know about the retreat ping talks, English. I can see the ways Valve should tread carefully, but I honestly don't believe that improving the UI is going to kill competition in the game. It didn't kill competition in SC2, anyway...
On December 16 2011 03:25 Hnnngg wrote:
A retreat ping? That sounds extremely one-dimensional and is therefore a terrible idea.
Sounds like something from LoL. Not to mention that improving pubs is like improving ladder play, useless.
I disagree, but thanks for reading.
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Australia7069 Posts
drawing on the minimap allows for extra information to be conveyed beyond that of a ping. a retreat ping does the same thing as a "b" or a ping back at base. seems pointless
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It's more insistent and you can target specific points, for example indicating you should retreat from a particular area, instead of a generic b. I've used it in lol, it's good.
Dota 2's interface is the make-or-break for me in choosing between dota and hon, there's no way I'm going to pick it up if the interface is as bad as it is currently.
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1. B has worked all this time
2. F1 if you need to know if you are alive. You can look at the scoreboard too.
3. you can set control groups for units like couriers and minions and heroes.
4. There are nameplates in D1, you can hold alt if you need to as well.
5. Dota interface is built on the wc3 engine. There are obviously going to be limitations. Comparing the graphics of sc2 and bw is stupid. This is exactly the same. There are mods in hon, why cant there be mods in dota?
6. This is just my opinion but after playing lol i kinda hated how you only have control of your character. It felt really clunky.
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a few things.
lets do the creep thing first. im colorblind too and i have no problems telling the creeps apart.
i just started a practice game to get you a screenshot and here it is:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/M5nLp.jpg)
also notice the nameplates of the players. (if you hold alt you can also see the heroes name on the minimap)
in the top middle there is a scoreboard with a timer blow your picture which tells you that youre dead.
also in the bottom middle it says it again.
showing opponents items/mana/buffs will never be done because it wasnt in dota1.
and yes, the community sees it as a skill thing. you have to click on your opponent to know what items they have and how much mana they have left.
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A unit selection frame would be a significant change to me, although I didn't focus on it in the OP. One thing I really like about HoN and LoL is that when you click on someone else, you still see your own skills, items, health/mana, and stats. If you select something else you can control (in HoN, not doable in LoL when I last played), your hero's health and mana are still visible on the screen. The courier comes to mind here. Just to be clear, though: no, I don't struggle with controlling the courier anymore. And no, I also don't keep it selected for very long. But, there are times when it's beneficial to keep something else selected — checking creeps' health numbers, watching an enemy's or an ally's item cooldowns, or their armor values, or their active buffs — and I've yet to hear even one strong argument for only showing one or the other à la Dota2. I'm becoming more and more sure that there isn't one.
Please don't bring the "it's a skill" counter, because with ez-mode Dota2 you don't even have to box your hero again after you accidentally de-select yourself. You're basically always selected, except for when you're not and the game refuses to show you in an obvious-not-intrusive way.
Besides that, minor changes. I appreciate the info on the Show Player Names option — that's getting turned on right away. I don't believe it's necessary to show the names of the heroes floating overhead; ideally it'd show at least player name, health, and level. I mentioned that level isn't a huge deal in the OP. Teammates' health bars on the overlay, along with level, mana, maybe other things, that would be cool. Not a huge deal, and there are defensible reasons to hide this information. Ok, fine. Huge sections of white space, as skyR called them, could (should) be trimmed down. Do you really need a region of items taking up as much (or more) space as the minimap? Things like this; these are not-insignificant changes that I would recommend.
Other things I'm reluctant to comment on because I haven't seen how things look on my screen, and may be attributed to taste or may look better in person. Maybe there is or will be a "ghost effect on death". Maybe the colorblind mode will actually manage to alleviate the difficulty I have in telling Radiant/Dire creeps apart, without neutering the interesting color scheme of the game. That's all actually speculation, though, as far as I know, and won't affect a lot of people. A lot of people won't try colorblind mode because there won't be a need to. But for me, if the colorblind mode turns out to be bullshit (I found it to be unhelpful/unnecessary in WoW, for instance) and doesn't fix the issues I'm predicting now from streams, that's a gamebreaking thing. For me. I want concede, too, but implemented in an intelligent way; I definitely think HoN went about it the wrong way. The best suggestion I've seen suggested a silent vote to concede — you mark or unmark something on your interface that makes it very clear you would like to concede, and no one else knows. If your whole team (or more than x% of your team) checks the flag, your team is notified that a surrender is imminent in case the team wants to discuss. It's less grief than the 12 year old who sits in the fountain from 4 minutes who starts spamming concede votes at 15 because your team lost first blood, for sure.
And then there's the input latency thing, but...really, I can't comment on that, you know? Not at all, except to say that I can't comment on it for not having tried it first-hand. Nearly everything I know about this is from other people, and it's something you need to experience to understand, in my opinion. Can't comment on the top bar either for the same reasons, Risen.
Regarding the courier, and also going back to the 1-unit control thing, I really liked figuring out that HoN bound the ` key to cycling between units you were allowed to buy things on. In most cases, this means it switches between your hero and the courier. Isn't that a nice, small touch? This is one of the things that's strictly a preference gained by comparing HoN to Dota1, because it's nuanced enough to not be obvious. (Just like it isn't obvious when your hero is dead and you're watching a teamfight, perhaps suddenly) But, then again, what the hell is the point to reserving any of my number keys for unit control? Like we said, you only control one unit most of the time. And, again, this is a concern because I haven't had a chance to try it out. But, it's also the type of concern that the die-hards who post in the dev forums I don't have read access to may or may not care to mention. Considering how many arguments have been rebutted here and there by "How hard is it to press F1 to select your hero?" instead of "Is it necessary to de-select my hero in the first place?", though, I'm not extremely hopeful.
The people who put the most effort into getting access to play right now are reliably the people who want to see the game stay exactly the same.
I guess the unit frame thing is because it always was that way. I am used to the old way and am fine with it, it doesn't seem like a big deal but some people might complain if they change it I guess, they are catering to their large existing audience.
As far as the hotkeys go, you can rebind all of those. There is a courier select key in dota 2 also. As far as the number keys go, some heroes like Chen, beastmaster, warlock and visage all control multiple units. If you dont play those heroes often enough to justify a ton of control groups you can rebind.
The input latency thing is required for balance, and was changed slightly in DOTA2. A lot of the complains about latency that I saw were more about animations(turn, cast, attack, etc) then the very small latency itself, and they are important because a huge portion of the balance is based around some heroes having bad animations. Lina, for example, would be absurd if her spells and autoattack didn't have a long animation.
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