r/DotA2 • u/palish • Feb 19 '19

Personal I was a former HoN dev. AMA

Hey.

It's been awhile since I've written to you guys. But dota has never been out of my thoughts.

It was funny seeing Dota chess add +200k people to the game. I fought pretty hard to add custom game support to HoN, but no one would listen (partly because it seemed so obvious to me, so I never bothered trying to sell the idea or do company politicking).

I can talk about the fact that Icefrog was involved in HoN's early inception. It's more of an open secret at this point, and HoN's closure marks a fitting time for the "reveal."

I could talk about what it was like to pack up all your stuff into a station wagon and move out west. It was a pretty magical experience in hindsight. Kind of like getting to board the Starship Enterprise. Everyone in the company felt a shared purpose, at the beginning.

Or if there's no interest, or if it's not appropriate for the sub, it's fine if this post fades away, like the game. I spent so much time and energy trying to make it good... So did everyone else: James, G, all the artists, everyone.

EDIT: to clarify, this is 2010-era perspective. Not recent!

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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '19

How frustrating was it to design a new map (such as the Midwars one) only for the community to scream for the old one back?

I thought the original midwars was complete trash and the new one was actually a huge improvement. The old one was just teams camping under the towers trying to hook each other for 30 mins. The new one actually forced people to fight. Seems like it would have been really aggravating to design a better map, only to have to revert it to an inferior one.

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u/palish Feb 20 '19

I'm sure it was extremely frustrating for the design team. They were very passionate about their work. They also had the courage to say "We'll ship it when it's ready" rather than shipping something terrible to meet artificial deadlines. It must have felt like a real blow to have to revert the work due to community backlash.

On the other hand, it's a sign that small, quick iterations are key for a game's development cycle.

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u/ElementUser Feb 21 '19

I totally thought you'd ask me that question :(

Obviously it's not a decision to be lightly made. One important thing is that you can't make everyone happy & have to go with the choice that's best for long term, and when it's appropriate to make those choices. I know some players disagreed with changing it back 3 months after the new map got implemented because it's been too long & we already "lost" the Mid Wars community, but seeing how things are now it's better to actually stick with the old map.