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Opinion: Heroes of Newerth Vs. League of Legends: The Communities
by Michael Walbridge [PC, Console/PC]
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October 27, 2009
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[In an opinion piece, Michael Walbridge examines the rise of the MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) genre and the intense rivalry between two of its titles, Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends -- and how the communities behind each differ.]
It is not the first time it has happened with a new game and its community, but perhaps it has never been so obvious: the player-base for Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends is clearly composed of transplants, particularly fans of the Warcraft 3 mod, Defense of the Ancients.
While both games’ developers have made it no secret that they have strong links to DoTA, the question still remains as to what difference that makes to the actual players.
But first, a review: Defense of the Ancients and the games it has inspired (including this years’
Demigod) combines RPG battling with an RTS interface in a tower-defense world.
Basically, you are playing an RTS where you control only one character that levels up, earns money and purchases consumable and equippable items. Teams consist of five player-controlled heroes on each side, with computer-controlled towers and creeps assisting, usually in controlled paths called “lanes” by players.
At the beginning of the game, the creeps and towers are much more powerful than the heroes, but by the end it is the heroes that will make the difference for victory, ending the game by destroying the main building in their opponents’ base.
The term Multiplayer Online Battle Arena has been coined for the genre, but isn’t widely used (yet), perhaps partially because it doesn’t recognize any of the genres it came out of and partially because it doesn’t sound cool enough to most gamers (really).
Heroes of Newerth more strictly follows the conventions and strategy of the old DoTA, whereas League of Legends is different enough to consider it an attempt to progress MOBAs, making it much more friendly to newcomers while at the same time expanding the possibilities, giving even more complexity and depth to strategy-making than DoTA ever did.
(This is not the point of the article, but in case of contention, one argument: consider that in DoTA, the team with the better kill-death ratio wins over 95% of the time, whereas in LoL that percentage is much lower. Pushing and base-hammering is much more important there. And in LoL, I onced played a game where my team got 12 kills but were killed 44 times, yet still won - impossible in DoTA or HoN.)
Heroes of Newerth has solidified the commitment of DoTA players, while League of Legends seems the best chance for the genre to come out of niche and into mainstream.
The Communities
As for player communities, there is a stark difference, despite the fact that most DoTA players have been eager to try both. Some matches go with little communication amongst teammates or between teams, but the majority has some communication of sorts. The features make a difference, as at this date HoN has in-game VOIP while LoL does not, but most of the communication, even in HoN, is done through text.
In League of Legends, I asked a question at the beginning of the match.
Me: Why are people here not as rude as they are in DoTA?
Me: Always wondered that
Teammate: Really? I’ve seen some pretty rude people here :/
Me: I’ve met my share, sure
Me: Still, on the whole it seems a lot better here
Teammate: Now that you mention it….
Me: Lot less trash-talking, etc.
Teammate: Yeah, good question
LoL isn’t devoid of trash-talking or the blame-game; this is still an online video game. Still, the banter tends to be cleverer and makes more out-of-world references. Everyone is trying hard here, but fun seems to be a bit of the higher order, with less seriousness and more comraderie than is seen in HoN.
With Heroes of Newerth, “noob” (or nub) is the word of the day. In fact, it is so much part of the order that the names for lobbies have the option for “pros only,” “noobs allowed,” and “Noobs only,” the first sign that HoN caters to every part of old DoTA norms.
Regarding the differences in player bases, the what is easier than the why: in my opinion, the players are much more respectful and mellow in LoL, with much less cursing, badmouthing, or any other form of disrespect than is found in DoTA or HoN.
If Not Stats, Then What?
Curiously, Blizzard’s Battle.net doesn’t keep track of any stats, yet both LoL and HoN do, especially to keep track of “leaves”, as vs. Tower Defense games are usually over half an hour each and the disconnection of a hero upsets the game.
If both games have stats, why are LoL players apparently preferable?
Though the basics are the same and many of the improvements over DoTA are similar, the differences in game design and features between HoN and LoL are what account for the difference in player bases; this is especially salient considering the fact that many players are trying both games and that the games share much in common. And on either side, it is a team game.
To be fair, both games are in beta and not fully developed -- although League Of Legends launches today -- and there is especially much to be seen with what the title will do. In HoN’s defense, consider one possible factor: HoN uses a lobby system where the players host and start their own games, whereas LoL has rank-based randomized team-arranging and a 'practice' mode that has lobby-like facets.
You can team with a friend or friends, but your opponents and, if applicable, other teammates, are not chosen or even seen before the game starts. HoN game usually feature drafting, where all ten heroes are chosen in sight of both teams. In LoL, you don’t see the other team’s choices. This could mean LoL is only friendlier because players bear less responsibility and stats are not yet visible. Once LoL incorporates some of the features HoN and DoTA have, the players could become just as anal, booting any player with a losing record, all the time.
Your stats are invisible in LoL: it’s much more okay to lose. Stats can only be seen by friends. In HoN, your stats are a mark of shame everywhere you go. Public channels, private channels, and in the game lobby before it starts, your kills, deaths, wins and losses are all tracked.
The Team Factor
Yet, it is a team game where your stats are highly influenced by the competence of your teammates. This is why teammates are more snarky with each other. People want to be accepted and able to have the opportunity to improve. But if your stats suck, you are shunned. It’s unfortunate that this part of DoTA was preserved. LoL may yet preserve it.
Still there are other possible reasons, some of which have been covered in this column. The difference in cultures created by the community managers and forums. The different art styles. The difference in rules and tower power (again, LoL is more about pushing, and HoN is more about the kills, though kills certainly help in LoL).
There isn’t enough room here to show how the game design choices influence the community. But the development of these two MOBAs will hold plenty of lessons in game design and community management/creation.
The only ones that are currently verifiable are already known: gamers don’t know what they want and there are drawbacks to giving them exactly what they ask for, and team-based games that are more about showboating and less about teamwork produces more insults.
Even more fun to watch are various beta forum threads about the opposing games; this is one extremely narrow genre with exactly two titles generating console-war like arguments. In other words, we may just have a couple of hit games. And the MOBA genre, or whatever its name ends up being, is on the rise.
If you don’t believe that, consider a brief industry snippet.
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I think the pacing and match lenght is what I like most about it, whenever I've played DoTA (or similar) the time it takes to finish a game has always put me off.
A huge, huge factor is that point Michael made in parentheses towards the very beginning- you can be down 12-44 in LoL, and still win. Having a bad player on your team isn't nearly as crippling as it is in DotA or HoN. In the latter games, one person can bring down the whole team in pretty short order if they don't know what they are doing from the very start of a match. It is much more difficult in LoL to throw the game for your whole team.
Then there is the fact that the matchmaking in LoL is ranked. You don't get people playing their first games mixed in with people playing since day one. Games tend to be much more even as far as team balance goes. This even balance of skill and knowledge obfuscates the point of being derisive to your fellow players, as they are just as good as you are or they wouldn't be in the game with you.
I mean the sample pool can't be that wide or comprehensive and I doubt even spread over a variety of time zones or regions. This is an opinion piece to the core and nothing more. Sure Dota is acidic in the same way competitive Quake or TF2 can be acidic but that's all relative to what time of day and what kind of company you keep. If you log in after 3pm on a school day and wonder why the trash talking suddenly goes up or why people suddenly become more aggressive after 10pm or are a lot more casual at 10am perhaps that may have something to do with it? Or you can just get a chain of the same close minded people or the same care-bear-hippies - I don't think you can really compare broad swathes of 'community' based on a selective handful of random interactions without actually committing, embedding into such realities and then filtering your reactions, possibly multiple peoples reactions through a third party. I am in no way denying that RBMMO's are highly acidic in content but I don't think the article sufficiently answers its own premise. Understanding a community is bloody difficult and absorbing work and I don't think you can gloss over 3 of the most vicious games around and just slap down labels. Sorry don't want to come across as harsh but standards people!
Nathan - it is indeed an opinion piece to the core, which is why we've labeled it 'Opinion:'.
Bloodline Champions is mentioned here as an "all skill-based" game. This is a claim made often, seemingly to differentiate a game as "better" than other games in a similar genre because it is a better test of player ability. I'd be careful about making such a claim. Granted, I'm not as familiar with Bloodline, but that kind of claim can only be made if it's precluded by in-depth knowledge of all the games you wish to compare it to and is the kind of claim this opinion piece is chastising, rightfully so in my opinion.
Experienced DotA players are notorious in this fashion, as they assume anyone bad at their game is stupid or has no skill, as their game is "all skill-based". In fact , the situation may be that the "bad" player may simply be new to the game, and the experienced player doesn't recognize that the game requires a *lot* of esoteric knowledge IN ADDITION TO the vast amount of skill required.
@Nathan:
Yes, this is an opinion piece, but it isn't entirely unfounded either. This is an overarching consensus of players that have participated in both betas, myself included. HoN made the unfortunate mistake of not explicitly stating to its Beta pool that it wanted to change one of the biggest problems with DotA: The Player Community's Attitude. LoL, on the other hand, has been consistently encouraging beta participants to invite new players and teach them how to play, as well as tailored their play mechanics to be less punishing. Like this article, these are observations and not hard "facts", but I too anticipate that a majority of the competitive community and "pro" public players in DotA will eventually migrate to HoN, as they enjoy their feelings of superiority and trash talking, but the majority of new players will get a gentle (not to mention free of cost) introduction to the genre via LoL, growing the player pool larger on the whole.
DoTA is indeed highly based on skill once you become a bit more advanced player. What does differentiate Bloodline in the aspect of skill however is that nothing is left to chance. There are no random factors, everything is aimed manually as well as player movement. No pathfinding that is. It is in this way that I believe Bloodline to be, not "better", but more suited for competition.
Because of the same reasons though the game becomes more mechanical and mathematical. When an attack always does the same amount of damage to a player with an exact amount of HP calculation becomes part of the strategies. HoN and LoL are more organic. Again, not "better" but different.
I'm sure you were just using that percentage as a way to illustrate your point and I'm not intending to "call you out" on it, but it did pique my curiosity, so being a programmer for S2 and having access to game logs, I decided to investigate it. I happen to have good chunk of game logs on my computer right now from some other analysis I was doing recently, the following information is based on 27,107 full matches, "full" meaning they were regular 5v5 matches played to completion. Of those matches, 1,962 ended with the winning team having more deaths than the losing team. That works out to about 93%, so you weren't too far off there. I don't think that tells the whole story though, so I dug a little deeper.
HoN has the option for a team to concede a match by unanimous vote. It's a nice feature for getting out of a match where the winning team is just stalling and toying with you, but I've always felt people have a tendency to throw in the towel too early. Having looked into this, I think the statistics agree:
14,969 (55%) matches ended with a concession.
Of the remaining 12,138 matches, 1,566 (13%) ended with the winning having more deaths than the losers, a pretty significant change.
Because the game typically ends with one team in the very dominant position of overrunning their opponents base, the winners tend to rack up some easy kills while the losers make their last stand. I'd be willing to bet that weeding out these insignificant kills would push that percentage even higher. I'd also wager that the percentage climbs in games with higher rated players as well. Knowing how to effectively press the advantage of one or more enemy heroes being out of the game while they wait to respawn is an absolutely key skill that is less obvious than "kill the other players to get more powerful" and only comes to players over time.
I think chess is a great analogy here. To the average person, the game probably appears to be about trying to take out as many of the other players' pieces as possible, which is probably even a very effective strategy when playing against an unskilled player. In a match between strong players, however, there is far more going on and simply looking at how many pieces each player has captured will not tell much about the actual state of the match.
I'd be very curious to see if this in an actual difference or just a perceived difference between HoN and LoL.
While LoL is much more friendlier and set a more civil tone while they actually ban and moderate people.
It is a shame I still play HoN thou sometimes It is so damn annoying, because the action is somewhat unique. But make no mistake as soon as a new/better alternative for that game play comes out I'm gone.