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Fielding Speaks about the Heroes of Newerth State of the Game - Design Update
General Direction of Heroes of Newerth
To start, I want to give you guys a very basic outline of the core goals we want to achieve with HoN's direction.
* Faster game pace, shorter games
We want to maximize your fun-per-minute! This goal originated with the intent of increasing HoN's competitive viability (HoN tournaments take a LONG time to complete), but we also believe that more casuals games will benefit greatly from less time being wasted. Long, epic games will still be possible, we just want to make sure that if a game is long, it's due to intense battles the whole way through from evenly matched teams, not because each team decided to play it safe and turtle/farm for 60 minutes.
(By "faster game pace" we're referring to the pace at which action occurs, not changing how quickly you die or increasing lethality)
* More action oriented play
We want to encourage player vs player engagements over an excess of farming/PvE engagements. You've likely already seen some of the first steps toward this goal with the introduction of Striders and Blood Chalice. Ultimately, farming will always have its place in HoN, however we want to encourage a healthy amount of team fights, ganks, and pushes.
* Deep, strategic options in the gameplay
This is a constant goal that is being worked on every time we balance patch. There's always improvements to make and as the meta game shifts with player decision making, so do our focuses and goals with the game's balance. Ultimately, this goal simply means we want to see multiple different strategies remain viable, not only in terms of the line up of heroes on each team, but the roles those heroes play. Whether you enjoy roaming and ganking, playing a carry, or playing support, all of those roles should be rewarding and fun to play.
* More content!
Heroes! Lots of heroes! Heroes and items and maps and other content will be coming soon, in future patches. We've especially ramped up our hero creation process to produce more balanced, well designed heroes at a faster rate.
Issues On The S2 Games' Radar
This section is intended to make you guys aware of some of the issues our design team is looking into - some of these issues are ones we are addressing in the interest of achieving the above goals. Note that we're constantly working on a LOT of stuff - so just because something isn't listed here, doesn't mean we're not aware of it. These are just some of the more note-worthy items.
* Prohibitive Gold Mechanics
For the most part we're happy with how the gold mechanics work in HoN, however there are a few issues that directly damage the pace and enjoyment of the game, regardless of if you are winning or losing.
For example, in an evenly matched game, if a team fight occurs and 4 people from each team die, more gold is lost in player deaths than is gained in player kills (assuming no players were on a kill streak and therefore worth bonus gold). The net result is that team fights are, quite often, taking more gold out of the game than they introduce. This is the type of thing that does nothing other than slow the game pace down and indirectly discourages team fights and engagements.
Another issue we're observing relates to how gold distribution is handled. There is currently not much of a distinction between a player who is actively engaged in helping get kills, resulting in a lot of assists, and a player who does not aim to help by assisting. In the interest of encouraging more team vs team engagements, this is something we're looking into. There's a big difference between a 1-8-20 Demented Shaman, for example, and a 1-8-5. We want to take steps to make sure that the player who is actively attempting to help out the team and participate in fights is being rewarded above players that play too passively.
* Lack of Caster & Support hero options for progression
Another issue we have relates to how support-oriented heroes currently progress in the game. They naturally should be supporting their team - but often this support comes at high personal sacrifice, and the result is that there are very few options left to support players in terms of how to progress their character and stay relative past the early-mid game. This concern isn't one of balance - it's clear from competitive games that support heroes are both necessary and effective, it's a question of how rewarding the role is and what we can do to keep the skill ceiling high and allow other progression options for support players. As a carry scales in his ability to deal damage to the enemy team, so should a support player scale in their ability to support their team. This issue relates closely to the last point in the prohibitive gold mechanics section above.
We also are very sensitive to the subject of how early-game caster-oriented heroes fit into the game. There is a point in every game in which these heroes start to lose relevance, and the physical DPS heroes (carries) gain relevance. As we increase the pace of the game and induce more team fights, a side effect of increased gold, experience, and level gain will result. This may mean that caster oriented heroes lose relevance even more quickly, perhaps before they can make a meaningful contribution to the outcome of the game. Currently casters usually remain viable in the late game due to disables (or buying items like Sheep Stick if they don't have any built in disables), and while that will likely always be true to a degree, we do want to make sure there's a bit more depth to playing these characters, by providing other options for them. These heroes are very important to the feel, fun, and pace of HoN - they bring a lot of the excitement and we want want to make sure they remain viable and interesting to play.
* Viability of early-game pushing & tower mechanics
A trend we commonly see in the early-mid game is, after winning a team fight or ganking a few heroes, players will retreat to farm rather than push. This can especially be observed in many competitive matches. It's the safe route, due to the risk-reward ratio of continuing a push simply being too risky. We also find that the tower AI is somewhat punishing to push attempts and could behave a little more consistently.
As we push HoN in a direction that encourages more aggression, ganking, and team fights, we want to make sure we don't over-do it. We could easily make ganking worth it by having hero kill gold be a very high value, but that undermines other mechanics in the game and makes the progression very one-dimensional. We prefer to allow for successful ganks and team fights to yield opportunity for the winning team to press the advantage, rather than directly giving them too big of an advantage in terms of gold reward. With that in mind, we're taking a close look at the viability of pushing towers after winning an early game fight or gank.
* Legion vs Hellbourne Map Balance & Map Layout
Yes, we are aware of issues with the map! The issues we plan on addressing with the map extend beyond Kongor's placement - that's probably the most identifiable issue with the map that players notice, but there are a number of inconsistencies that lead to some rather specific advantages/disadvantages. Our changes are focused on not only game balance between Legion & Hellbourne, but also ways to make the map more enjoyable and more rewarding for skilled and coordinated teams to use it. We'll reveal more on this as we get closer to releasing our changes.
Final Notes from Fielding:
The bottom line with any changes we make, our mission statement so-to-speak, is that we always aim to reward and encourage player skill and decision making. The above observations and declared direction for HoN come as the result of observing you guys, the community, and taking what you want out of HoN and working our vision into it. We want to take the best, most fun parts of HoN and promote that type of play.
Even though we're pushing hard in a certain direction for the game, we do want a variety of strategies to remain viable. HoN's gameplay should be deep and rich, full of variety and possibility, such that the game never grows stale. We aim to constantly improve HoN - nothing is ever perfect - so as always, we'll continue to monitor the issues, deliver our changes, and observe what you guys like and don't like and keep improving the game the way you guys want it.
Read about: Fielding's Notes on Heroes of Newerth EM.
Weiterlesen...
From S2 Fielding:
This is a comprehensive update aimed to fill you guys, our awesome player base, in on the current state of the game as we see it, and possibly clue you in on some of the types of changes you could expect our design team to produce in the near future. This post is somewhat intentionally vague, I'm avoiding giving the specifics until our design team is ready to unveil them, but I do want to open communication with you guys and make you aware of what our design staff are currently focusing on.
Keep in mind this is a design update - not a general development update, so there is no update on Match Making and our various other projects in here.This is a comprehensive update aimed to fill you guys, our awesome player base, in on the current state of the game as we see it, and possibly clue you in on some of the types of changes you could expect our design team to produce in the near future. This post is somewhat intentionally vague, I'm avoiding giving the specifics until our design team is ready to unveil them, but I do want to open communication with you guys and make you aware of what our design staff are currently focusing on.
General Direction of Heroes of Newerth
To start, I want to give you guys a very basic outline of the core goals we want to achieve with HoN's direction.
* Faster game pace, shorter games
We want to maximize your fun-per-minute! This goal originated with the intent of increasing HoN's competitive viability (HoN tournaments take a LONG time to complete), but we also believe that more casuals games will benefit greatly from less time being wasted. Long, epic games will still be possible, we just want to make sure that if a game is long, it's due to intense battles the whole way through from evenly matched teams, not because each team decided to play it safe and turtle/farm for 60 minutes.
(By "faster game pace" we're referring to the pace at which action occurs, not changing how quickly you die or increasing lethality)
* More action oriented play
We want to encourage player vs player engagements over an excess of farming/PvE engagements. You've likely already seen some of the first steps toward this goal with the introduction of Striders and Blood Chalice. Ultimately, farming will always have its place in HoN, however we want to encourage a healthy amount of team fights, ganks, and pushes.
* Deep, strategic options in the gameplay
This is a constant goal that is being worked on every time we balance patch. There's always improvements to make and as the meta game shifts with player decision making, so do our focuses and goals with the game's balance. Ultimately, this goal simply means we want to see multiple different strategies remain viable, not only in terms of the line up of heroes on each team, but the roles those heroes play. Whether you enjoy roaming and ganking, playing a carry, or playing support, all of those roles should be rewarding and fun to play.
* More content!
Heroes! Lots of heroes! Heroes and items and maps and other content will be coming soon, in future patches. We've especially ramped up our hero creation process to produce more balanced, well designed heroes at a faster rate.
Issues On The S2 Games' Radar
This section is intended to make you guys aware of some of the issues our design team is looking into - some of these issues are ones we are addressing in the interest of achieving the above goals. Note that we're constantly working on a LOT of stuff - so just because something isn't listed here, doesn't mean we're not aware of it. These are just some of the more note-worthy items.
* Prohibitive Gold Mechanics
For the most part we're happy with how the gold mechanics work in HoN, however there are a few issues that directly damage the pace and enjoyment of the game, regardless of if you are winning or losing.
For example, in an evenly matched game, if a team fight occurs and 4 people from each team die, more gold is lost in player deaths than is gained in player kills (assuming no players were on a kill streak and therefore worth bonus gold). The net result is that team fights are, quite often, taking more gold out of the game than they introduce. This is the type of thing that does nothing other than slow the game pace down and indirectly discourages team fights and engagements.
Another issue we're observing relates to how gold distribution is handled. There is currently not much of a distinction between a player who is actively engaged in helping get kills, resulting in a lot of assists, and a player who does not aim to help by assisting. In the interest of encouraging more team vs team engagements, this is something we're looking into. There's a big difference between a 1-8-20 Demented Shaman, for example, and a 1-8-5. We want to take steps to make sure that the player who is actively attempting to help out the team and participate in fights is being rewarded above players that play too passively.
* Lack of Caster & Support hero options for progression
Another issue we have relates to how support-oriented heroes currently progress in the game. They naturally should be supporting their team - but often this support comes at high personal sacrifice, and the result is that there are very few options left to support players in terms of how to progress their character and stay relative past the early-mid game. This concern isn't one of balance - it's clear from competitive games that support heroes are both necessary and effective, it's a question of how rewarding the role is and what we can do to keep the skill ceiling high and allow other progression options for support players. As a carry scales in his ability to deal damage to the enemy team, so should a support player scale in their ability to support their team. This issue relates closely to the last point in the prohibitive gold mechanics section above.
We also are very sensitive to the subject of how early-game caster-oriented heroes fit into the game. There is a point in every game in which these heroes start to lose relevance, and the physical DPS heroes (carries) gain relevance. As we increase the pace of the game and induce more team fights, a side effect of increased gold, experience, and level gain will result. This may mean that caster oriented heroes lose relevance even more quickly, perhaps before they can make a meaningful contribution to the outcome of the game. Currently casters usually remain viable in the late game due to disables (or buying items like Sheep Stick if they don't have any built in disables), and while that will likely always be true to a degree, we do want to make sure there's a bit more depth to playing these characters, by providing other options for them. These heroes are very important to the feel, fun, and pace of HoN - they bring a lot of the excitement and we want want to make sure they remain viable and interesting to play.
* Viability of early-game pushing & tower mechanics
A trend we commonly see in the early-mid game is, after winning a team fight or ganking a few heroes, players will retreat to farm rather than push. This can especially be observed in many competitive matches. It's the safe route, due to the risk-reward ratio of continuing a push simply being too risky. We also find that the tower AI is somewhat punishing to push attempts and could behave a little more consistently.
As we push HoN in a direction that encourages more aggression, ganking, and team fights, we want to make sure we don't over-do it. We could easily make ganking worth it by having hero kill gold be a very high value, but that undermines other mechanics in the game and makes the progression very one-dimensional. We prefer to allow for successful ganks and team fights to yield opportunity for the winning team to press the advantage, rather than directly giving them too big of an advantage in terms of gold reward. With that in mind, we're taking a close look at the viability of pushing towers after winning an early game fight or gank.
* Legion vs Hellbourne Map Balance & Map Layout
Yes, we are aware of issues with the map! The issues we plan on addressing with the map extend beyond Kongor's placement - that's probably the most identifiable issue with the map that players notice, but there are a number of inconsistencies that lead to some rather specific advantages/disadvantages. Our changes are focused on not only game balance between Legion & Hellbourne, but also ways to make the map more enjoyable and more rewarding for skilled and coordinated teams to use it. We'll reveal more on this as we get closer to releasing our changes.
Final Notes from Fielding:
The bottom line with any changes we make, our mission statement so-to-speak, is that we always aim to reward and encourage player skill and decision making. The above observations and declared direction for HoN come as the result of observing you guys, the community, and taking what you want out of HoN and working our vision into it. We want to take the best, most fun parts of HoN and promote that type of play.
Even though we're pushing hard in a certain direction for the game, we do want a variety of strategies to remain viable. HoN's gameplay should be deep and rich, full of variety and possibility, such that the game never grows stale. We aim to constantly improve HoN - nothing is ever perfect - so as always, we'll continue to monitor the issues, deliver our changes, and observe what you guys like and don't like and keep improving the game the way you guys want it.
Read about: Fielding's Notes on Heroes of Newerth EM.
Weiterlesen...
