These days, it seems like everyone's trying to get in on the multiplayer online battle arena (or MOBA) action. Originally popularized by the Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (and StarCraft's Aeon of Strife map before that), this team-versus-team real-time strategy subgenre is quite the hot item in PC gaming. In this regular column, GameSpy writer and MOBA junkie Ryan Scott offers up his insight into this ever-growing field of competitive (and largely free-to-play!) multiplayer PC gaming.
S2 Games' Heroes of Newerth is one of the two games -- the other being League of Legends -- that jumpstarted the whole MOBA craze in 2010. During its development, and into launch, Heroes of Newerth was positioned as the fiercer, more exacting clone of the Defense of the Ancients original, in an attempt to appeal toward fans who felt Riot's League of Legends played things a bit too casually. That's absolutely correct, but I don't know if it's necessarily a good thing.
I Need a Hero
Before I go any further, I want to preface this with my standard disclosure: I'm a League of Legends player first and foremost, but I keep an open mind. This column serves as both a LoL fan's introductory guide to other MOBAs, and as a window into the psyche of a LoL fan for those who prefer other MOBAs. In that spirit, this month I decided to take Heroes of Newerth for a spin.
To start us off, I've got one very positive comment: Heroes of Newerth features a fantastic tutorial for new players. This is a fairly intimidating subgenre of a really intimidating larger genre, and it's often overwhelming for a new player to take in all the rules and the basic factors for success and failure (to say nothing of the typical MOBA's dozens-strong champion roster). But Heroes of Newerth's tutorial does a fantastic job of clearly and succinctly conveying all of the basic parameters. If nothing else -- even if you plan on jumping into a different MOBA altogether -- you might want to sign up for a Heroes of Newerth account just to experience its tutorial.
That Next Step's a Doozie
Beyond that, Heroes of Newerth contains a pretty terrible new-user experience. I'll walk you through one of several matches I played to illustrate this.
HoN provides enough basic information to start a game...even if you're not completely sure what you're getting into.
For starters, let's examine the basic options when you hit the "Play Game" button, which I suspect is the first thing the average newbie will click. My MMR is 1500. What's MMR? Well, I can reasonably (and it turned out correctly) guess that it's Heroes of Newerth's skill-rating system, though the game doesn't even volunteer that basic fact in a tooltip. I see a couple of maps and a few grayed-out draft mode options that I need to level up in order to access; that's fine and self-explanatory. What's the difference between normal and casual mode? Who knows, unless you do some external digging? Well, at least it provides enough basic information to start a game... even if you're not completely sure what you're getting into. I stuck to the default casual mode, dropped myself into the solo matchmaking queue, and landed on a random team.That's a lot of heroes.
Because I played the tutorial (and, really, because I'm familiar with DotA conventions -- though that shouldn't be a baseline assumption for new players anymore), I know that Heroes of Newerth's character roles are split between Strength (big melee bruisers/tanks), Agility (damage-dealing paper tigers), and Intelligence (ranged mages and support types) heroes. I conducted a bit of research beforehand, so I go with Nymphora, an Intelligence-based support hero that matches up closely with my preferred MOBA role.
My teammates bickered and argued over mid lane, and some "STFU trash newbs" comments flew. Yup, it's definitely a MOBA.
Straight out of the gate, my teammates bickered and argued over mid lane, and some "STFU trash newbs" comments flew. Yep, it's definitely a MOBA. Fortunately, no one went so far as to hit the "vote to kick player" button (yes, S2 included an actual griefing tool in its game), so everyone split off to different lanes.I headed to the item shop. I don't know much about Heroes of Newerth's item builds, so I stuck with what I assumed are character-specific recommendations and picked up a stat-boosting starter amulet, some speed-enhancing boots, and a health potion, and headed to top lane with one of my teammates.
My Kind of Lady
Nymphora's abilities are pretty simple. She's got a time-delayed area-of-effect nuke/heal (depending on who's standing in the radius), a targeted mana-restoration spell that also gives a bit of extra movement speed, a line-targeted boomerang (akin to Sivir's in League of Legends), and a group teleport. Speaking of which, Heroes of Newerth has no convenient innate recall-to-base option; you have to buy Homecoming Stones at the shop. They're cheap, and it's true to DotA, but none of that is ever explained. I guess the tutorial could've been a little longer.
She's the kind of champion you don't take home to MOBA.
Anyway, I focused on Nymphora's two restorative spells throughout the match, intending to play a support role. Over the course of a character's 25 experience levels, you can also choose to slightly raise their basic combat stats (in lieu of an extra skill rank), but I saved this until everything else is exhausted, assuming I can close the gap more efficiently with items.
Creep Euthanasia
To battle! My lane partner and I proceeded to do the last-hit dance, burning down auto-spawned creeps and more or less controlled our lane. It's possible to deny creep kills in Heroes of Newerth (ie killing your own low-health units to withhold experience and gold from an enemy player who would have otherwise killed it). Whether or not this is a good idea is a major point of contention in MOBAs. I assume some denying was going on; the game doesn't really explain that to you very well, and if it had a significant impact, I sure didn't notice.
A lot of the important things -- notably, the units -- aren't very well differentiated.
That leads to one of my more general complaints: A lot of the important things -- notably, the units -- aren't very well differentiated. While it's usually simple enough to tell which units belong to which team based on what side of the map they're coming from, they all look basically the same once they've started massing in a giant melee. It's an even bigger problem with player-controlled hero units; a lot of the time it was hard for me to immediately tell whether a friend or foe was approaching. The health bars don't broadcast this information as clearly as League of Legends does, leaving you to deduce affiliation based on the thin outline around the unit's health bar. Imagine the potential confusion for someone playing their first MOBA game!A Who's Who of MOBA
And, of course, the standard remedy to this (as many of you are no doubt already thinking this very minute) is "pay attention to the minimap, you idiot." Yes, that helps -- but in a chaotic group fight, it sure doesn't make much of a difference. And, incidentally, pinging the minimap doesn't make an audible enough sound, thereby defeating the purpose of allowing you to call your team's attention to it. I see that as a fairly major usability issue.
WTF is going on here? Who knows!?
Anyway, back to the game: We kicked some ass. I dropped a few vision wards (as any good support player should) healed and otherwise sustained lots of teammates. I like Nymphora's support mechanics ("I wish she was in League of Legends" is the best compliment I can pay her), and I did reasonably OK (four kills, nine deaths, six assists) for a newbie who hasn't played much of this game at all. The other team conceded, and we won -- and to give credit where it's due, it was mostly thanks to the aforementioned trash-talker, who racked up a staggering 27 kills.
The victory screen shows me lots of cool stuff that I wish League of Legends had.
The victory screen showed me lots of cool stuff that I wish League of Legends had. You can immediately download a replay, and every game has its own unique ID that you can look up later to see match data. Experience is doled out with consideration of several factors; for example, you're incentivized to group with friends instead of strangers... and it looks like I even received bonus XP for buying wards.But while Heroes of Newerth is a decent MOBA, those usability issues probably cause serious damage to the "stickiness" of the potential user base. If I didn't already know generally what I was doing thanks to experience in a parallel game, I'd probably uninstall it without thinking twice. But hey, if S2's intention is to cater to the already-on-the-bandwagon DotA niche audience, great job so far.
Ryan Scott managed GameSpy's day-to-day editorial operations, until a bout of temporary insanity took him away. Nowadays -- when he's not yelling at someone for forgetting to call mid lane MIA, that is -- you can listen to his weekly ramblings on various podcasts over at Geekbox.net. And if you've never given these MOBA thingamajiggers a try, he thinks League of Legends is an excellent place to start.