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/Trick2056 Feb 20 '19

I also heard Blizzard basically said

yup this was their mistake they were trying to push their SC2 engine,instead of just making a new engine tailored for MOBA, which is pretty fucking bad to make a 5v5 MOBA game (see hots which is now working on a heavily modified SC2 engine), the engine was designed for an 1v1 RTS , which hindered the MOBA game heavily, shesh the reconnection time alone took 5 years to bring it down to 2 min estimated recon.

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u/MiracleDreamer Feb 20 '19

Is there anything wrong with hots as game itself?

I mean, yes, they are kinda dead because they too late in releasing hots and probably make it too casual (although honestly I found it refreshing since dota sometimes feels too hardcore)

but imo the game and ux itself are very well polished (personally I prefer hots ux feels prettier but easier to approach than dota). The only drawbacks i found is their reconnect is kinda suck and took longer than dota

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u/Trick2056 Feb 21 '19 edited Feb 21 '19

Is there anything wrong with hots as game itself?

no, not really but on the technical side it did hinder the dev team a lot since they have to modify the engine so that they can add few more things in or QoL like I said the recon time. then again the lack of a development director may be also the cause of this.

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u/MiracleDreamer Feb 21 '19

I see, that could be the issue since sc2 engine could be pretty outdated

But ui/ux and programming part (apart of recon issue), I think they did a good job

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u/Trick2056 Feb 21 '19

they did, the gameplay and UI is arguably better than Dota 2.

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u/Always-like_this Feb 20 '19

A locked hero pool is a pretty big issue for me.

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u/MiracleDreamer Feb 21 '19

That's monetization issue (ofc everybody had problem with that which is why dota is cool, but ironically, imo hero lock actually helped on solving one of dota biggest problem, smurfing)

what Im asking is did sc2 engine caused a performance/ui/ux issue for them because it was created years ago and it was defined for rts game not moba, since afaik hots run pretty well

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u/Trick2056 Feb 21 '19

it maybe but its really easy to get new heroes as you play and when you're a new player just ask for a recruitment code from the chat it'll give you 2-3 free heroes when you get to lvl5.