Heroes of Newerth, a new game released by S2Games (founded by Marc DeForest) which comprises the same elements as of DoTA AllStars (by Icefrog). The game is very much the same as of DoTA but the heroes have gone from creep-looking to cyborg-mech-like bodies. I personally have tried playing the game and noticed some of the changes S2Games has applied to HoN. Some changes are as follows :
Cleave
Cleave is very powerful in HoN. The amount of ground it covers easily doubles that of DotA. Not forget to mention that you can cleave units off of buildings. This will sometimes result funny situations such as Sven killing players who are behind the tower (kind of like Luna's bounces). Also, if you have cleave, your images will cleave as well, a feature that is not available in DotA.
Cussing will cost you gold!!
It's true!! In HoN, there is a hero selection phase. Think of it as like a character selection screen for any fighting games, it's very close. Anyway, you can still chat during this phase, and if you cuss, the game will deduct one gold from ya. It's cuss per line, so you can swear as much as you like in the first line for 1g, and the next line of cuss will cost you another 1g hahahah. I guess HoN wants to grab the younger audience as well since profanity filters can't even be turned off.
Attack Animation
All character animation is really good. Little to no delay in wind up time. This is generally a good thing I suppose, it kind of changes the metagame a little. For example, CM in HoN is much more abusive in harassing than DotA CM could ever accomplish.
Pulling ******* sucks in HoN. It's hard to let it fully latch on. I'm not sure why this is so, but so far I suspect that the allied creeps must attack at least 3-4 times in order for them to be "sticky". Any less than that, they will hit a couple times, and then simply walk away to their own business like nothing ever happened. In DotA, creeps protect you if you are under fire. So you can pull via being attacked near a creep wave. In HoN, they flat ignore you and go on about their way (heartless mother*******..).
Not only that, the creeps use magic even against one unit. So you will see the damn owlkin using tornado, and centaurs stomping. Centaur's stomping isn't all that bad though... since after he stomps, he does not retreat to his camp like DotA. It is ironic that the centaurs are one of harder mobs to pull in DotA, whereas in HoN, it is the easiest to pull. Also, there are multiple pull spots in DotA that's not very possible in HoN (I can't test this fully because there are no single player modes for practicing).
There's also something about those siege units loving to attack heroes. I don't know why, but they prioritize on attacking heroes once their target is killed. It's kind of annoying since to shake them off, you have to run out of their range and then come back.
AI
I am not impressed at all of AI in HoN. It's supposed to be a very advanced engine, and it really does some questionable stuff. In fact, I'll go as far as saying AI sucks in HoN and it's worse than wc3.
If you direct a unit to move from point A to point B, it should take the shortest path possible, right? No, not in HoN. This happens the most when there's an obvious path through a forest, and the hero chooses to go around unless you manually micro it.
Here's another, when jungling, I often orb walk back for obvious advantages. While doing so, I launch an attack by attacking the ground. In DotA, hero instantly picks up who to attack (the closest unit) and attacks it. Same scenario for HoN would go like this: The hero takes few steps to where attack ground was targeted at, then looks for the targets to attack. What the hell? This can be obviously fixed by attacking the unit directly, but it does certainly show some holes in AI. Attack ground is a command for "attack everything on the way", and not "well, go there first, and start searching for things to attack".
Lastly, it still has those annoying problems as wc3 engine does. You know how there's this tree, and you want to eat it? And sometimes a hero goes all the way around to eat this tree while it's right in front of him (this happens so much at bottom sentinel)? It does that in HoN too.
Creeps
Creeps(jungle mobs as well) seem to travel faster than DotA, and the map seems tighter (smaller) than DotA. The creep aggro in HoN is not properly done. In DotA, once you gain aggro of the opponent creeps, you can lose it by attacking your own creep even if the attack does not launch. But in HoN, you must run out of their range of fire.
Leshrac (Torturer in HoN)
Leshrac had always been one of my favourite heroes. And in HoN, he's just as, if not sexier. As far as character design and overall "look" goes, HoN is just damn sexy. Anyway, moving on..
In HoN, Leshrac's lightning damages everyone instantly within the radius of the target. In DotA, lightning is not instant, it has a travel time. Lightning also travels further in DotA as long as there is vision and enough range for jumping. Whereas in HoN, it has a fixed range. What's cool about HoN lightning is that Lesh's lightning hits people out of vision as long as they're in range of the target you selected to cast on.
Lesh and Lina's stun in HoN are much faster than that of DotA. I think this is mostly true for any hero though, it looks like the casting animation is fast in HoN. Oh, and edict does not hit buildings in HoN.
Luna (or Moon Queen in HoN)
DotA Luna is arguably better than HoN Luna since there are no multi-bounce* in HoN. However, it does seem like the bounces have further reach in HoN by 25-40 and they do seem to travel little faster. It is questionable that multi-leech is possible via Satanic as I've yet to test this fully.
Faceless Void
....sucks in HoN as it has 2sec cd on the proc of
The bash 2sec cooldown is also the same for Slardar in HoN as well. I don't know why they made it like this. And I'll be blunt; it's stupid. It really caps the potential of what these heroes could become and I don't appreciate that.
Pudge (Devourer in HoN)
There's something about Pudge's hook that's very different from DotA's. I can't quite put my finger on it. But I rather not feed you guys with faulty information, so I'll just shut up.
I did notice that you can animation cancel hook unlike DotA. In DotA, once you launch a hook, it's gone. There's no canceling. But in HoN, you can cancel before it launches and save you the grief if you believe it'd be a miss. It's pretty cool because whenever Pudge hooks in HoN, he shouts, "YOU ARE MINE!!1" and because you can cancel it, you can pretty much spam that message. It kind of makes other players nervous a bit when they hear that sound as well, hahahaha.
Oh, I am pretty sure about this one. If you bite and then rot, it'll cancel the bite. Kind of like the old Pudge in DotA. So, that's poorly done. Hopefully they will address this soon (friend told me they're apparently working on it? I don't know).
Shading, and General Visibility of the Game
The game is too dark. I actually don't mind the "darkness", I think the game has great look. But I guess, it's not shaded well? For one, it's difficult to tell where the ramp begins and ends. The woods look too bulky and look like they take up a lot more space than they actually do. The halo(or aura) of the hero that glows in its colour is too weak and should be brighter. It would also help if their armor colour is "bolder". For example, it's really hard to tell if that green-ish glow hero is teal or dark green. This is same for orange and brown. They just need to be way more distinguishable. The colour scheme and overall shading is not well done as everything blends in with the environment. This problem is most visible when placing wards because you can only barely see the circle of vision in minimap.
Latency is beyond awesome, it's ******* fantastic. The way HoN operates is that they have dedicated servers for hosting. So it's not player-base hosting (although, I think you can, but why would you). I can play with players from Europe and whatnot with virtually no lag. You do get some spikes and frame lags from time to time, but it's nowhere as bad DotA can get. Let's just say that the worst case in HoN for lag is still a playable condition. The little spikes you get, it seems like a server stability than anything which I'm sure they can address. It's truly astonishing how great the lag is..which was and is my biggest gripe with competitive DotA scene. This can really bring the players together beyond seas and lands.
Furthermore, there are reconnecting feature in HoN where you disconnect (or leave..) you can reconnect within 5min without penalty. You have to admit, this is pretty damn cool.
The "Look"
I don't care as much, but I'll admit that the game looks incredible. There are really a lot of details that you are going to love and appreciate. From thrones busting, the corpses blowing up, spell effects and little particles like insects that follows Slardar around... all very interesting and you can see the amount of work they put in. However, I never really had problem with DotA graphics, so it's really not too much of a big deal for me.
The game is insanely smooth and high quality though. After playing many rounds of HoN, then playing DotA with friends I felt like the game was "choppy". I seriously tabbed out multiple times to check if I had anything running. I then realized that the game wasn't choppy, it's just that HoN was so smooth that it makes DotA feel choppy.
In fact, as great as it looks, I think HoN has too much "flash". There's so much **** going on that seems unnecessary. For example, do I really need to see the whole screen shake whenever Sven w/ godstrength swings his hammer? Yeah, I get it. He hits so hard that, oh my gawd, the earth shakes. But ****, is that really necessary? Maybe you can turn these off, I don't know, so far I have not been able to.
Lot of the times in team fights, it's just a whole lot of bangs and bams and then it's over. I suppose kind of like that in DotA too, but it's not nearly as fancy. I mean, fancy is cool and all, but I like simplicity. I want to grasp of what's going as soon as I see'em.
New Heroes
Are alright the most part. They did some interesting mix-up of skills in HoN. For example, Witch Doctor in HoN has Warlock's heal instead of his HP regen aura. Stuff like that are everywhere in HoN. Do I mind? Not really. Even though they did copy DotA, HoN is rightfully their own game and they've put a lot of hard work. I think they are definitely allowed to have some fun creating and mixing heroes up like making a bastard child of Gondar and Sniper (= Scout).
Metagame is completely different from DotA. It uses the core concepts of DotA, but the number of hero the game offers, the new heroes, mix-up heroes and how the mechanics function differently in HoN all affects the metagame. It's quite different. Do I like it? I suppose I don't mind. One thing I would really like is to update to the newest version of DotA for items. Pipe and ghost scepter would be great.
So, the verdict?!
Can't really give it a strict good or bad since it's in beta phase. But I will say the game is shaping up nicely and it can only get better. They already did a lot of things "right".
I'm a gamer just like you who hate games that release before they're even remotely ready. I still remember how everything was bugged in AoC and WAR. Now they were MMO and this is RTS, so one can argue if he truly wishes...but **** it. When I order pizza, they don't deliver pizza dough and raw toppings. It comes to my doorstep fully cooked.
So far, HoN has not crashed for me mid-game, and it's damn smooth. All the animation frames connect well (not clunky) and again, you will be enjoying these little details if you are into it. The only thing I hope is that they don't release this rashly. Because it really needs more heroes, and tuning in my humble opinion.
Thanks for reading this very loooong information xD
