Why Heroes of Newerth Failed

     The debatably labeled MOBA genre has seen some growth in recent years with the release of League of Legends (LoL), Heroes of Newerth (HoN), and soon-ish Defence of the Ancients 2 (DotA 2).  Prior to the release of these games the genre's flagship was a user generated and maintained modification created for Warcraft III.

     Even with all of this growth the population of players that enjoy this type of competitive game is relatively small. If you compare this genre to First Person Shooters, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games... this population would be microscopic.  The fact that there is such a small population of players is signification because each of these companies competing for player traffic (resulting in revenue) has to appeal to a very specific and very small audience.  The wedge driving most players into an either/or dilemma is the steepness of the learning curve for these games. The balance between obtaining the approval of the players that have played the original DotA for years, and broadening the horizon of the genre to make it more palatable for new players is proving to yield some nice drama.

     The Free to Play (F2P) model seems almost inevitable at this point given how hard LoL is crushing HoN in popularity.  The cause for such a lopsided bashing can be reduced to how the two games were released.  LoL was designed and release from the very beginning as a free to play game.  HoN hit the market with a 30$ price tag.  Based on that alone as a new player who is merely curious about a genre on the rise its no contest which game will be chosen.  Similarly, as a DotA veteran who hasn't had to pay for Warcraft III save for once a long time ago why should he/she drop 30$ now when there are two free options on the table.  ...and so LoL crushes HoN.

     In July of 2011, S2 Games figured it out and adopted the Free to Play model.  Unfortunately as the numbers have shown over the past few months that it's too late for HoN.  Population in-game at prime time usually peaks at around 50,000 and its not rising (number of unique accounts means nothing).  This number is equivalent to the traffic HoN saw during open beta.  There is a stronger inertia that exists with the MOBA player base because they know that they enjoy the game 100% more once they've overcome the learning curve.  The steeper the learning curve, the stronger the inertia.  All of the players that have been playing League of Legends prior to Heroes of Newerth going F2P have become very comfortable with the game and see no reason to make the change because they gain nothing (except another hero pool to grind, and more micro-transactions to make).  When new players are recruited into the genre, even though HoN is now free to play, all of their friends are now playing LoL so naturally they're going to play with their friends.

     Whats more, there is very little chance of Dota 2 not adopting the free to play model.  Free to Play is going to be the future of PC gaming whether you like it or not (and I don't personally) because micro-transactions are much more profitable over time than selling a 30$ box.  What the HoN community was hoping is that the competitive scene in DotA would migrate eventually to HoN because its game engine is superior.  A lot of the players that played HoN from closed beta (including me!) wanted HoN to be the new DotA, and if HoN had started out as a F2P game that may have been possible.  If you're a DotA vet still playing DotA over LoL and you're looking to move en masse to another MOBA you're going to choose DotA 2 over HoN or LoL.

     If HoN had the exposure that LoL is getting right now (which it would have if it had been F2P all along) and some seriously dedicated developers working on balancing for a competitive scene (as opposed to releasing imbalanced do-it-all new heroes so frequently that they have no time to rebalance before more new heroes are injected into the pool) then it might stand a chance against DotA 2.  The saddest truth about all of this is that HoN is objectively the better game in terms of game engine, stats, replays, etc...  There are a lot of absolutely top notch features in HoN that are going essentially unnoticed by the majority of MOBA players (albeit not by MOBA developers at Valve). HoN is being reduced to a small niche group of players that once saw its potential, but who refuse to see the bigger picture.  That niche group will only strink when DotA 2 comes out.

     When DotA 2 does finally come out (likely sometime in 2012) the chips will fall where they may.  My prediction is that DotA players will make up their mind.  They will likely choose DotA 2 over any of the alternatives, and the bulk of the player base will follow them.  Some people believe that multiple games can succeed in this genre now, but the reality is that only one of them can be a blockbuster.

Review: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

Wikipedia

First Impression

     I didn't play any of the Assassin's Creed games prior to this.  I was hoping it would be a stealthy game like Hitman.  I haven't played all the way through A.C.B. yet (couldn't take it) but I can tell you know if you're looking for something like that you won't be getting that from Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.

Console Controls

     The PC version of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood began torturing me with its poorly adapted controller layout from the very beginning.  Lets be clear about this, the PC version of this game was an after-thought released to a market it was never intended for.  This control layout might be fine for the console kiddies that only have 4 buttons to press but when you make a game for the PC you don't have to automate every movement.  The game engine attempts to compensate you for your lack of control over the character by automating 80% of actions.  You initiate an action and it interprets what it thinks you want, and executes it for you.  I thought to myself, "No problem I'll just go into the options menu and change the keyboard layout to be something similar to what I've been playing in MMO's for years" but you're not even capable of doing that.

     For some reason Ubisoft decided to assign body parts to single keys, with minimal modifiers (right clicking, shift, etc...) so figuring out the sequences for button mashing reminds me of learning Brutalities back in my Mortal Kombat days.  All actions pertaining to the head (such as a head butt), are on your E key.  All actions pertaining to legs (jumping, and walking faster) are on the space bar (except when you want to run).  To begin an all-out sprint, you've got to right click (run), hold down the space bar (leg button), use your WASD keys to move, and guide your character by moving your mouse.  This must be the equivalent of someone just squeezing the hell out of a console controller, but that is a ridiculous amount of input to get Ezio to run.  My issues with the controls are the biggest, and that them will pop up continually throughout this review.

Combat

     Stealthing around and killing NPC's with your concealed blade is easy enough, and on par with what you would think a stealthy game would offer.  Figuring out basic combat with a sword (blocking and counter attacking) took a Google search for me because its not intuitive at all.  The little help bubbles that pop up hit you in the middle of battle and flash so quickly you've got to shift focus away from staying alive during a fight to read them.  What I learned after having to rely on a search engine (because the in-game how to information is so shit) is that combat is basically a whack-a-mole timing meta-game.

     You right click and move backward to block (which again confuses the hell out of me because right click is supposed to be the button for running) and then as an enemy NPC attacks you have to left click at just the right moment and the rest is automated for you.  You'll parry and counter attack.  Counter attacking could include a combination of moves.  From a single left click you can perform 3 actions automatically.  This is completely shitty because it takes the concept of "playing the game" and shits on it because you're not even involved in 75% of the gameplay.  25% is you doing stuff, the rest is scripted animations.

     Often you'll end up with 10+ npc's with terrible AI running at you and surrounding you, then you panic and mash buttons.  You think its going to be no problem to simply run up to a building and dive into a pile of straw, but when you're on the tops of the buildings everything looks so much alike that you get disoriented trying to figure out where you're at.  When you find that pile of straw sometimes you'll end up jumping off buildings in unintended directions only to fall to your death.

Environment

     The environment is incredibly monotonous.  Every building looks so much alike that you can easily become disoriented.  Bringing up a larger view of the map requires you to press Tab (as opposed to M, which is used for nothing).  When you press tab the game completely pauses and you've got to waste two seconds of your life watching the animations for pausing and unpausing.  This happens a lot because of how disorienting the sameness is all around you.  There is no way-point system for you to mark a location on your map to make your mini-map more informative.

     Every door is closed.  Exploring the insides of houses could have been interesting, but you're confined to the streets and the tops of buildings.  It's a shell of an environment, and I think mostly copied and pasted to generate the overall landscape.

General Game-play

    It's overly grindy for no reason.  Who honestly thinks its fun to run around a monotonous landscape for hours looking for chests of gold or completing mini-quests to become some kind of ancient venture capitalist investing in shops all over Rome (no story is given for why the shops were closed)?

Conclusion

     Don't buy this for the PC.  At 40$ its too pricey for a game that was never designed for the PC.  It feels like it was a last minute decision made by the company to see if they could milk some money out of the PC market.  It definitely doesn't feel like they spent any additional effort on development when they ported this for the PC.  I'll also not be buying the Revelations expansion because it's going to be more of the same.

Review: Portal 2

Wikipedia - Portal 2

tldr

     Portal 2 is a game with a great idea that has a lot of potential to provide a lot of entertainment in the future.  It took me a little over 19 hours to play through the campaign and cooperatively beat all of the multi player content with complete strangers online.

Single Player

     In the single player mode (which I refer to loosely as the "campaign") the story line gets redundant and beside the point very quickly.  The transitions between each test chamber are so recycled it becomes painful to sit through given the number of levels there are in the game.  The puzzles themselves are interesting and enjoyable however, so just remember that this is a Puzzle-Platform style of game and not an Adventure game.  You learn techniques for solving the puzzles cumulatively throughout in a very natural progression.

Overall

     Overall I think its a good buy simply because it's a unique experience, and it occupied 19 hours of time for only $30 on Steam.  Valve will be releasing some modding tools so users can create their own test-chambers and share them, so there will be some replay-ability down the road and maybe some kind of competitive community.  I think its going to be very important that with those modding tools Valve enables users to create their own game mechanics (such as designing the bridge itself, rather than dragging and dropping it onto the chamber).  User generated content is generally more creative and interesting anyway.  It will give the game a lot more vigor.  Valve plans on continuing to release additional test chambers through free downloadable content packs.  Personally, I scoffed when I saw the online shop gearing itself up to service a micro-transaction system because I absolutely hate micro-transactions, but I'm sure there will be some people out there that can't complete their experience of this game without a stupid pink head sock.

http://www.thinkwithportals.com/