The Capitalist's HoN Blog

I won't add anything to the flame/apology wars going back and forth. We all know what I'm talking about. Instead, this is just an open discussion for the community to talk about the way events/forums should be handled.

My view is that it's called commentating for reason- we provide commentary, colored or not. Obviously, there is always a balance between professionalism/color, but throwing blanket statements out on how a commentator should cast is missing the point of commentary completely. It is up to the caster to decide how much professionalism he wants in his casts, and it is up to the viewers to decide whether or not to watch it. You exercise your "vote" on a caster by choosing to not watch/watch a caster, not to flame him in forums.

ofc constructive criticism is always welcome, but constructive criticism works with a give and take. You state what a person has done well, and what he needs to work on. Not what he is doing BAD, or FAILING, or insulting them.

Also, just another note. Everybody- GR, Honcast, gamefire (?), puts a ton of effort into these sort of events. These VOLUNTEER hours add a lot to the community, and they provide both the community, both players and viewers, the events and the entertainment that goes along with them. So to state that the volunteers are hurting the community, being way too unprofessional, or are only doing it for a power trip is incredibly insulting, and only turns volunteers off to helping a community. Even IF the whole "power trip" thing is true (retarded- "I'm e-famous!@!", but true) it doesn't matter what the person's motivations are for volunteering, only that it is helping the community grow.

SO, if you REALLY don't like how things are going, there are only two well-mannered options- watch/don't watch a commentator, and participate in the community. If you think it is better for a caster/referee/site to run a certain way- then prove it to us. Get involved and demonstrate that you can do better. Competition is a good thing, and makes a community stronger. Flaming does not. We all flame occasionally- it happens. The important thing is to apologize afterwards and explain why you were "heated" (GET IT?! flame wars? HEATED?!? lululul)

Also, my advice is never to point out someone else' unprofessionalism, because you end up looking like a hypocrite. We all act unprofessionaly sometime. Not only is it the nature of being human, it is the nature of the internet- a place where your dreams of acting out with complete anonymity are fulfilled.

TL-DR short list

1) Commentators provide commentary- professional or colored. They are not reporters. If you want pure facts "pyro threw an ult, glacius got aura level 3" and nothing else, than find a caster who does that, or do it yourself. IMO that kind of casting adds nothing to a vod that just watching it yourself does.

2)Flame wars- Dont do it. If you have a problem with the community
organizers, don't support them, and/or get involved yourself. You want the community more professional? Volunteer your own time to one of the organizations, start your own casts, etc. As an example- Businesses (Organizations like GR) doing poorly in a certain field (HoN, or any game community) does not hurt the field itself. A field of business suffers from factors far beyond one business' control. Instead it provides opportunity to others to rise up.

3) Constructive criticism- not insulting or flaming. Say what they did well, and say what they need to work on.

4) The amount that these volunteers helps the community outweighs any amount of damage they do when these sort of things happen. If you feel they're doing it wrong, prove it yourself.

5) Don't point out other people's unprofesionalism. Because you end up being a hypocrite and its the internet. We can't all be professional all the time. Again, don't support an organization you feel is in the wrong, but don't flame them.

Side note: This post is not an indictment of anybody/team/organization in particular, nor is it a support for what happened in this game. Just something the community should keep in mind when flaming community organizers.

So what do you think? Community involvement is important. The only thing i ask, is that no one brings up specific examples of what people/organizations are doing wrong, only what they are doing right. I hope responses will be well-mannered and filled with constructive criticism. I hope that admins will keep a watch on that :P

Example- Casters shouldn't interact pre-game/in-game with players.
All interactions should go through referees ONLY. It prevents the he said/she said bs. Someone told me this, along with many others have posted in the forums- I think it's a great idea.

Quote:
Originally Posted by siknoz
I think this is what confused me the most about the OP. First off, we can't excercise our "vote" whether to watch or not, because there is no other option. So that is a **** statement. The replay system happened to be offline and no replays uploaded to the server, guess what? You were the only people able to LIVE stream the games. So the vote is to either 1) Watch someone we don't like, don't agree with, etc or 2) Don't watch the game at all. Are you serious? You actually think that #2 is a viable option for viewers? If you allowed HonCAST and other shoutcast organizations have equal opportunity to livecast the match rather than have 6+ GR reps in a game, then you can throw out a statement like that.

Second is that you say that commentators have a right to commentate, I don't think anyone has any problem with most of the commentating that goes on, even a little bit more of the "colorful" stuff. What most, if not all, people don't like is unnecessary flaming. You however seem to say that its ok because he's "commentating", but then turn around say that others(ie the forums) shouldn't flame the commentator for doing exactly that? That's what we call a double standard. If you don't want people flaming(commentating) your casters, then you should expect the same from your casters.

I think it was already said before, but ya, commentators should in no way get involved in the actual game. They should not speak in all chat, flame a team, get involved in a debate, or anything else UNLESS appointed as a ref before the game starts, which also should never be the case.

I could go on, but I'd like to hear what you think so far. Also hearing crap like "we dealt with it" and "thanks for the comments" is pretty useless, if you actually want to impress the community then tell us what you plan to do to fix it.
Well, in the case of this past weekend, there isn't much choice involved. You either watch or don't but it is still a choice you can make. There are plenty of other high-level replays that can be watched. It may be a **** choice in your opinion, but it's still a choice that can be made. And if you voice your opinion in a constructive way, than it encourages either the organization itself to change, or encourages competitors to rise up and take your business away from the "failing" one

Also, keep in mind that the game would never happen without the organization to set up a tournament. So whether or not I agree or disagree with not letting other organizations into the games (I'm really not sure) it is completely up to the people setting up the tournament who they will allow to record the games. If they set up a tournament like this, the benefit they get out of it is publicity and viewers to their site. It's a perfectly understandable business move (it would be a poor decision otherwise) to not allow others to take business away from a product you have made.

Also, I'm not sure if I said people should never criticize the organizers. Rather they shouldn't flame/insult/whine, because they should understand that they bring more to the table than they take away. I actually had a separate part on constructive criticism- which is COMPLETELY acceptable because it benefits both the organization and the community and every good organization should take heed of this. It's why after this last debacle, I know GR will be enforcing much stricter rules on everything.

Quote:
You however seem to say that its ok because he's "commentating", but then turn around say that others(ie the forums) shouldn't flame the commentator for doing exactly that? That's what we call a double standard. If you don't want people flaming(commentating) your casters, then you should expect the same from your casters.
Now, personally I wouldn't ever flame a team, but it is a "business decision" that a commentator can choose to make. The audience can choose whether or not they enjoy that kind of entertainment and if it's justified or not, and take their business elsewhere if they don't.

When I say a person "shouldn't" flame the caster for flaming this is what I mean. The commentator puts in the time and effort to try and put out a free product for the community for them to enjoy. They take a bite, and they find it isn't to their liking. Now IRL, what would a person do? Maybe spit it out, tell the volunteer they didn't like it, maybe even say what they did like and what would make it better. And they might even never try the product again, no matter how much change went on. Instead, flaming is the equivalent of spitting the product right back in the persons face and calling them **** for even attempting to give away free food. They accuse the volunteer of attempting to poison them and then loudly complain to everyone in the room that the volunteer is a shitbag cook and should be banned from cooking.

Now should this flamer be denied the right to flame to his heart's content? No, but it does hurt the community. Now if they don't care about hurting the community at all, and just want a right to complain to their heart's content, that's understandable, but unfortunate. I'm saying that if people WANT the community to get better, they shouldn't flame volunteers attempting to make the community better by putting in their time and effort.

Just a side note- it may not apply to your argument but it's just something i want to say. Part of the reason I brought up this point was because I've seen comments in the past where people state "you shouldn't criticize a players actions because you aren't as good as them" Even if that was true (Hon's competitive scene, in all honesty just isnt that good, I'm not claiming I'm better) I can still make criticism on a players actions on what he SHOULD do, but not be able to do it myself. Sports commentators might not have played past high school football and could never compete in professional play at any time, but can still criticize and major error that could have been avoided with a better play. Like I said, it doesn't really apply to your argument in anyway, but it's just something I think the community should hear.

Quote:
I could go on, but I'd like to hear what you think so far. Also hearing crap like "we dealt with it" and "thanks for the comments" is pretty useless, if you actually want to impress the community then tell us what you plan to do to fix it.
I just want to make a note here for everyone.

All this stuff I've been saying about volunteers working hard, organizations doing all this, etc, etc doesn't apply to me at all. Understand I don't do very much for GR. I come in, cast, post on some forums and thats it, so none of this is about me. I'm worthless :P

Instead, I'm making this post, because I'm friends with people- casters, referees, admins, organizers, not just from GR or Hon in general, but different kinds of competitive gaming and I know how much time they put into this kind of thing, and it's frustrating to see people flaming them for trying to help grow a community. Also, I may have the GR tag, and I do casts for GR, but I have little sway on GR decisions, because I don't do any of that. I don't spend my time organizing the tournaments.

So all this pro-organization stuff I've been saying isn't because I'm apart of the organization or that I benefit from it in anyway. Just thought I'd let you guys know :P

So as for decisions on what GR is going to do? I've heard stuff second-hand, but I'm not a GR admin. I'll let kustodian post if he feels like he wants the community to know if anything will change.

@ somoene who mentioned casters getting more out of the tournament than the players (I don't remember who :P)

I'm not sure how that works. If you mean the intrinsic pleasure of being a part of the tournament, even power trips, than sure, both players and organizers are possibly the same. But I'm pretty sure there is no $1000 prize for any of our volunteers, no matter how hard they work, or how much time they put in. Now the GR website might benefit as much, if not much more than the teams who won the money. However, understand that the money from advertisements and the like go back into the website to either A) pay for programming fees or B) to set up and support more tournaments, etc. 99.9% of the staff is volunteer, so all they get is the pleasure of volunteering. So really I'm not sure how the organizers get anywhere close to what the players get out of the tournaments.

TL DR LIST-

1) You can choose to watch/not watch the game

2) Organizers have the right to determine who participates in their tournaments- whether its players, teams or other organizations

3) Constructive criticism is good. Flaming is not.

4) Free food analogy. Organizers make food, good or bad. You can eat it or not. But please don't spit it back in their faces and insult them.

5) Flaming is doesn't help- players or organizers. However, it's a bit understandable if an organizer is getting flamed a lot over time for his free work and he eventually snaps.

6) I'm a bad GR "employee" I don't work hard like others. But please respect the ones that do work hard, even if you don't like the outcome. Again- constructive criticism is good.

7) talk to kustodian about changes

8)Players benefit more than organizers. One has a chance at $1000 prize, the other gets the pleasure of being a part of the community and being "e-famous" (unless your behind the scenes- shoutout to snoopy2gos the cameraman). The feeling you get from volunteering? Not priceless in my book :P

NEW VERSION! Sure there is a list of buffs and nerfs but which ones mean anything? And in turn, what does it mean for competitive play?

Patches are always the most exciting time for any e-sport, particularly MOBA games. Nerfs, buffs, new items/heroes, and redone old heroes all mean one thing- a new and exciting competitive play with a potentially different metagame. While S2 has yet to give us new heroes or items, they have done so many nerfs and buffs to various parts of the game that it could mean a huge difference in competitive play. While it’ll take a week or so to fully explore the effects of this patch on the metagame, here is my thoughts for now.

ITEMS-

Elder parasite is an item that is rarely seen in both HoN and DotA competitive play. The reason? When activated, the increase in movement and attack speed is hardly worth the extra 30% damage taken. A buff reducing the dmg multiplier to 20% has the potential to reintroduce elder into the metagame. It will still be rare, but will be a viable item on heroes that rely on massive amounts of physical burst dmg (i.e. HAMMERSTORM)

Nullstone was another item that was considered trash by many players, considering the huge advantage given by a shrunken head. While nullstone still lacks some viability due to the ease with which players can work around a nullstone block, the decrease in cost, and increase in mana regen and dmg are small incentives when facing high dmg nukers (Soul Reaper) or long disablers (polly, witch, electrician).

Wards giving 50 kill gold? Talk about a nice incentive to by counter wards. Should players really need incentive for limiting the other teams vision? Probably not, but still nice.

HEROES-

Small but inconsequential buffs/nerfs- Keeper, Plague, Puppet, Pyro, Slither, SR, Succubus, Valk, Vindicator, Warbeast, Witch Slayer, BH

Moderate Nerfs: Zephyr, Ophelia, HB, Dsham

Moderate Buffs: Pharoah, Thunderbringer, Andro, Nymphora, Glacius

Major Buffs: Voodoo, Maliken, Legionnaire

Major Nerfs: Blacksmith, Chronos

LEGIONNAIRE! Just enough buffs to make this hero competitively viable. Charge is a welcome early game buff that allows him to initiate fights without that blink dagger. Still want blink dagger (just like a pesti with flight still uses one) Hopefully this will increase legionnaires spin #, as many players have noted that he does not spin as much as his DotA counterpart.

Slither wards give 5-6 more gold? Worthless nerf when you fight a level 4 ward and lose a tango charge in exchange for 10 gold. Still incredibly versatile hero with amazing pushing power.

Expecting heavier Slither ward nerfs? TOO BAD ITS ME BLACKSMITH!
Everyones favorite gambler received a huge nerf, with some basic stat nerfs and a reduction to the effectiveness of flaming hammer. People who claim blacksmith is now shitsmith forget that multicast didn’t receive any nerfs. This means that comboing nukes with blacksmith will require more timing during the laning phase, but his raw nuking power still remains. Still competitively viable due to the massive amount of agi carries.

Deadwood nerfs! The dreaded blink/nuking of deadwood has been all-around rescaled, decreasing early game domination while increasing mid game viability (small late game buffs). Biggest buffs- no more cone str reduction.

Demented Shaman: Decrease in stats hurts this heroes early game harassment that was so deadly. Still hugely competitive, but just enough nerf to hurt his ultra-babysitter status.

Massive nerfs on Chronos! Small nerfs on time leap is welcome, but the largest nerfs come from his stun and chronofield. Chronos will not be able to steal quite as much agility, and won’t be able to stun as often. Chronofield reverted back to freezing everyone! The SoTM is an irrelevant option for potential Chronos’ as his position as hard carry means no time or gold for a SoTM.

Chronos: Early/Mid game viability greatly reduced. Still remains a hard carry and viable in competitive play, but no longer fp/ban status.

Glacius/Voodoo Buffs: These babysitters gained some stat buffs. Voodoo also getting faster spells from cask and cursed ground. On top of the DS nerfs, these heroes are now much more viable to babysit.

Hellbringer- the void’s armor reduction nerfed, just enough. Now for a blood boil nerf! Still fp/ban

CD: Base dmg reduced? Helpful for heroes looking to win the solo mid lane early on. Yes please!

Maliken: The one hero that bounces back and forth between God and shit. Some welcome stat buffs, with some minor rebalancing of sword throw. Removing the mana cost from the heal sword, while buffs to the hurt sword bring this heroes early game viability. Maliken can now farm properly in lane, bringing back his status as a viable carry. More viable but not huge.

Madman: Reverting the last nerf on madman, stalk now does not slow him after the invis is out. Ulti costing less can mean a lot early in the game on an agi carry where mana can be an issue. Like Maliken, competitively viable again, but not a whole lot.

It has been an on-going discussion in the DotA community on the nature of overpowered heroes in the game and how to balance them. DotA has many problems due to its large variety of heroes and items and thus has a large discussion on imbalances, however HoN has had it’s own hiccups with large imbalances prompted flaming from the forums.

The discussion has encouraged me to write on the same topic, only from a HoN perspective. However, this topic is too complex to cover all at once, and requires a base of mutual understanding and knowledge to cover everything, so instead I’ll handle it piece by piece. Hopefully this will prevent people getting confused and frustrated, allowing them to follow a linear track of thought. Since I’m still writing things out, I can’t promise anything, but these are the parts for now:

Part 1: What does overpowered mean? What does it mean for a hero to be overpowered in the context of a MOBA game? Examples?
Part 2: Examples of questionably overpowered heroes/items. Can items be overpowered?
Part 3: Should MOBA games allow OP-ness? The nature of imperfection in games and how imbalances make MOBA smarter games that are more diverse, competitive and enjoyable.

Part 1- In gaming, overpowered means a part of the game, whatever it may be, gives a clear and decisive advantage over the opposing player with little repercussions. Whether it is characters in SSBB, weapons or add-ons in FPS games, or the plethora of advantages a certain race can have in RTS games, players all say certain things are overpowered. They may not agree on what is OP, but they all see imbalances in their favorite games. In the context of MOBA games however, there are types and degrees of op-ness (oh penis?)

My own standards:
A) What this hero counters
B) # and ability of other heroes to counter said hero
C) # and ability of other heroes to combo with said hero
D) Strengths and Weaknesses and their validity in-game

Strengths and weaknesses is the trade-off every hero takes when being assigned his role. In other words, high dps agility heroes trade damage in exchange for low hp and lack of nuking power. They may have high burst dmg potential, and can genocide teams later on, but it is typically dependent on their farm.

This is category is the source of most imbalances, however, they are easy to fix and are a bit more glaring. These heroes are identified quickly in competitive play and banned/fp accordingly. It is obvious to most players when a hero has too good of base stats or their combination of skills is too powerful. Again, this is the most obvious and common source of imbalances, however, every patch typically changes the list of heroes whose stats do not scale out with the rest of the game. Since this category is pretty simple (boring) I will not expend more energy on the subject.

E) Input (Effort) vs Output - This is a stupid argument, because MOBA games are not as much effort-intensive as they are experience/strat-intensive, but still valid. This is really more of a % chance of success equation

2) There ARE overpowered heroes! The statement that HoN is a team game consisting of 5 heroes or that there are counters (heroes/strats) to every hero is completely true! Unfortunately those statements are misleading and irrelevant.

3) Because of #1, most continuously overpowered heroes (patches nerf or change them but they still are effective) are heroes consisting of uniquely powerful abilities that other heroes/items cannot achieve, at least not in the effectiveness and range that said abilities can. These abilities typically give them better strengths vs weaknesses (especially when their ability is INVALUABLE) and combo incredibly well with a multitude of heroes. They also have very noticeable affects on the metagame (but we’ll go over that later)

DotA example: Dark Seer is a DotA hero who has a very unique ability called vacuum. Essentially, this skill takes all enemies within a radius and instantly sucks them into the middle, doing damage. While the dmg, cd, and radius can be easily assessed and categorized, the ability to force enemies together on a single spot cannot be- it is “invaluable” While this hero is very good for other reasons, the most important and relevant imbalance of this hero is this one ability. This hero has good “strength vs weaknesses” and combos incredibly well with the plethora of AOE nukers making him overpowered.

Note: The main reason this skill is overpowered is both its unique capabilities and its place as a normal ability, NOT an ultimate. This means that the ability has a low cd, low mana cost, and the advantage that it poses can be spammed throughout the game.

HoN example: Accursed is an incredibly good support due to the combination of his abilities and his role. Accursed (should) play a heavy support hero who can give both heals and preventative dmg shield/nukes at a very low cd. This by itself is respectable but not necessarily OP. What DOES make him OP though, is his ultimate, which not only makes him invulnerable but heals him if he takes dmg. “So what? Just don’t hit him when he pops his ulti and kill him afterwards” This sounds like a great idea but when you work in his role as support into the equation, it doesn’t work out that way. First of all, due to massive amounts of AOE damage flying around, it isn’t realistic to NOT hit the accursed during teamfights, so he’s going to heal up whether you like it or not. Second, support heroes are traditionally squishy because they provide the carry with a huge advantage and typically have low cd abilities that make they carry stronger throughout teamfights. However, Accursed, with both his base stats and his ultimate, is a tank that lasts a long time (usually last or 2nd to last to die) in teamfights. Due to his low cd abilities, he is constantly healing/shielding other heroes in the fight, extending the battle much longer than it should. For this reason, he combos well with carries that benefit from long, drawn out team fights, and counters nukers/disablers very well making him overpowered.

These heroes/abilities hold a special challenge when developers try to balance them out. The only ways to attempt to balance these heroes is to change their stats or dmg/cds which have little effect on their unique abilties (nerf vacuums dmg or range, its still incredibly powerful skill) but nerf it too much and the hero becomes obviously useless, rendering the hero's unique play mute due to its lack of competitive viability.

4) HoN is an incredibly complex game consisting of millions of variables, the influential being the most obvious- hero, lanes, items etc. This means that there are different aspects on how a hero is overpowered or not.

It all started like this:

“If you completely ignore a hero, and it farms up and wins the game. I have understanding about that kinda dota. I appriciate it too. But if you have ganked someone alot of times, it should pay off more. It seems to be better to kill a tower then to kill a hero - which is nothing wierd. But when its better to kill 1 tower then to kill 5 heroes then im questioning it. Simply, is it really what we wanna play and what we wanna see?

So my pure suggestions, what would they be?

- Remove or completely rework magicstick.

- Make it pay more gold to be near and inside herokills - why not even more experience? And make the one not lasthitting also get gold for the actual kill. Even if they are 5.

There are possibly tousands of more ideas to make the game more actionpacked and less farmoriented. What ideas do you have?”

That was the last little bit from Drayich’s blog on what direction he would like to see DotA go and why magic stick should be removed/reworked out of the game. An interesting discussion on the future of DotA and MOBA games in general with some valid opinions. Thoughtful, interesting, but no big deal right? Wrong! Whether it was other professional players criticizing Drayich’s ideas, writing their own thoughts on changes to be made, or the huge backlash of criticisms, ideas, and commentary from randoms, the response from the community was as varied as it was thought-provoking (with the exception of the posts by flaming trolls)

DotA, being a worldwide e-sport, is limited to the huge changes that can be implemented. The game can be balanced, tweaked, and new items/heroes introduced, but a completely revolutionary overhaul of the game would make competitive players’ heads explode and make e-sports dump DotA faster than your cheating ex-girlfriend.

HoN, however, has the chance to be a little less rigid in their standards, as it is still in beta, and has a whole entire company and engine to support this change. A lot of people (including myself) often long for more and more ports directly from DotA and criticize HoN unfairly for its differences. However, you can’t copy a game that is so capriciously fluid due to its complex nature. Instead, you can figure out what the community wants from its gaming experience, and how to deliver the results that DotA can’t. Granted, it is not doubt too late to change the direction S2 wants to go now, but I still like to hear feedback from the community.

So my question to the community is this: Where should HoN’s metagame go? How do we move it there?

It’s simple to say it should be faster (gank-orientated) or slower (farm-orientated) but it’s something much more complex to discuss the finer points and what gaming mechanics/items/heroes/strategies should be implemented to create the changes you desire.

I hope this will be an active, on-going discussion on HoN’s metagame! Post your comments below!