The Capitalist's HoN Blog

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!