how u know its top bracket if dota2 has no stats or mmr or ranking system?

also i still want u to make a small list of things you do not like in hon and i will elaborate on what you say

it doesn't really matter what little nuances there are; hon is going nowhere while LoL & dota2 are going nowhere but up.
During winterhack or whatever, HoN viewers on twitch have peaked at what - 10k? League has that every other day, and peaks at 80-100k during major competitions. Dota2 is relatively the same.
It simply makes no sense to go down with the sinking ship if you're interested in a thriving game & community.
Plus I think the main point smack will bring up is the heroes. s2 heroes are still just retarded, even though they're now not getting release every week

Because I frequently get matched with top world competitive players who have like 65%+ winrates, and are obviously in the very top bracket

I'll make a list later

Ok list of things I don't like about HoN

S2 invests hardly any money into the game - They have like a tiny team for each part of the game: coding, balance, etc. They also put hardly anything into the competitive side. Valve put MILLIONS into the International alone. That doesn't even account for the deals they give streamers, casters, staff, etc. The competitive scene in Dota2 is absolutely epic, and the game is kept really high quality so the competitive players can play in a balanced, exciting environment. If you see how well advertised and marketed the International is, you'll truly have some admiration for Valve.

S2 focuses almost exclusively on prying money away from its customers while giving very little back - The whole "new hero every 2 weeks" thing is when I really decided I was going to quit HoN for good. They just wanted to do that for EA to squeeze money out of the nerds that want to play the newly released heroes that are also conveniently overpowered as fuck when they first come out.

S2 doesn't make enough of an effort to balance - Don't tell me things like MK and EW are balanced. Also, for a while S2 tried to release a new hero every 2 weeks. Icefrog has been working on Dota2 for so many years and is pretty much the world's expert on balancing MOBAs. Even Icefrog requires MONTHS of planning and testing before implementing a new hero or making a small balance change. The result is a really fucking well balanced game. There are still issues, but they get addressed. They may not get addressed urgently, but they are addressed CAREFULLY so they don't fuck up balance even more by rebalancing because the community was crying.

Community is garbage, and it IS S2's fault - Public MMR, stats like KD ratio, GPM, XPM, win % in profile just encourage people to only play carries or mid and think they are better than anyone else if they have .01 more kill death ratio. On top of that, the report system is a joke and the GMs are corrupt as fuck. Valve, on the other hand, has done SO many things to make the community better. For instance: muting players in-game if they talk shit on chat too much for some period of time (like 24h). They can still communicate through a basic chat wheel and ping, but can't type their own shit into chat so they can't flame. Not making MMR public or any stats public at all. Using PAID, professional moderators who are ANONYMOUS to make decisions about people's accounts. Having a SECRET MMR matching algorithm. Implementing a SOLO only queue feature so you don't end up solo queuers vs 5 man stack. All of this shit helps the community alot.

Making the game f2p AFTER stealing a ton of money from people who paid after beta - This is self explanatory. That's a disgusting move. You either choose f2p or p2p at the start of your release. You don't fucking change half way through when the game is still in its prime.

Not allowing any sort of item / coin trading - In Dota2, you are free to trade any item to anyone. You can even trade for real steam $ which can be used to buy games. S2 clearly just want people to only buy shit from their shop so they can squeeze more money.

Fucking up a bunch of the Dota fundamentals - Free courier at start? Can ward inside Roshan? If Icefrog thought these changes would better the game overall, he would have made them. S2's way of implementing balance on general game concepts is flawed, not properly thought out, and actually hurts the game more than it helps it.

Clearly corrupt GMs / Mediators - These guys delete posts / ban people if they don't like them. They give their friends free gold coins and stats resets. They even offered to pay me in coins to boost their accounts. These guys are NOT professionals, they are dumb basement dwelling kids with 0 IRL prospects and alot of free time on their hands so they choose to spend it in the only place they have any power or their opinion is valued - moderating a shitty game.



This post was edited by sMACKTRiCKz on May 22 2013 02:22pm

1-they might not invest as much money but as a casual player that doesn't affect me in any way, i mostly solo queue as others do and i don't really care about competitive scene (i watch honcast once in a blue moon)
2-this is mostly the goal of designing a game to get something out of it and I do not like new heroes simply because I cannot be bothered to learn them. I haven't bought a single hero or any gold coins in my whole time playing hon. after people learn new heroes and how to counter them it's no longer a problem
3-again i have to come down to casual players for which it doesnt really make much difference. if u really are good u can probably pub stomp on most heros somebody who plays an 'op' or new hero as u say
4-this is the only thing that puts me off hon, community every random noob flaming, passing blame etc... I don't care for gms either and if u really want u can abuse the system without getting banned easily
5-bad move, yes however there are basic accounts and u need a big chunk of games as a starting player to get verified so it does not ruin the experience for people who do not wish to play with beginners
6-coin trading hmm i wouldn't mind this idea but if u want u can gift coins to friends tho
7-this helps out the big chunk of the community because it makes the game easier. also dont tell me that it creates advantages for people as in high tier games there would have been a courier and wards at start regardless
secret shop removed also helps out the casual player and makes it easier to buy items. just think of the many times u cannot go to the secret shop because u got no map control or u r being pushed into base
8-gms and mods are probably virgins who got abused and bullied in school and they need some power behind a keyboard, sad but as i said i have no interaction with them and u can troll without getting a ban with ease if u r smart

bottom line for me the only turn of is the community and i don't know if s2 is to blame. if they banned people for calling others noobs, retards idiots or inbreds or any names then pretty much every game would result in 2-3 bans. do i agree with this level of flame in an online game that is supposed to be fun and team based? definitely not but sadly nothing can be really done about it. even if u do start banning most people got more than 1 account and can still play so they do not care

All the points you make sound like you're just trying to come up with any way in which HoN is still viable game.

1) People being dicks naturally is not S2's fault. S2 doing nothing to encourage people not to be dicks is. Their ban system is ineffective, as is having public, detailed stats. Dota2 has done alot of things to make the community better. Now there's hardly any flaming in allchat, pretty moderate team flaming if any, and at the end of pretty much every game everyone says "ggwp" and is pretty friendly. How often do you see that in HoN? In HoN that's the exception, whereas in Dota it's pretty much the rule that people aren't BM douchebags (I'm talking about higher games mostly, brackets where people have played <200 games on average really don't count)

2) Having courier at the start is a bad idea. Icefrog takes into account casual players, even moreso than S2, and he hasn't implemented this in Dota. I'm sure he has many good reasons, some of which I am clueless about. I will say the main reason I think it's bad though: it puts even less emphasis on support. Public stats as well as default courier and being able to buy only 1 ward at a time basically makes support role seem like a joke. People are never taught about what support is or how to play it. 99% of people in HoN get it wrong, even in the higher brackets (at least from my experience). It's not about "dying for your team" or "buying so many wards you only have boots 40 minutes in". I've been playing the role alot more in high level Dota games ,and it took me a while to learn that support is actually about NOT dying, buying supportive items while still being able to farm some useful utility items/hp so you don't just instantly die in teamfights, and having good positioning / initiative so you can get your spells of at the right time. People in HoN will pretty much never learn this because the game doesn't encourage any sort of decent support. Courier is already there for you, you can only spend 100g on a ward which is like buying a salve, and smoke of deceit doesn't exist so the support role to the casual player seems like nothing.

3) You not keeping up with heroes that they add as a "casual player" is a big problem. How is that casual player friendly? You don't even know what some heroes do or how to truly play against them, yet you think this isn't a negative thing? I personally can't play a game properly unless I know every hero on the enemy team inside out so I can play as well as possible against them.

4) Secret shop not being in base is a good thing. Icefrog would probably have put it in base after all these years if he thought it was good for the game. If you lose map control completely, you DESERVE to have trouble buying items. That's part of the game. It's not like you can just lose all your outer towers and be stuck in your base and expect there to be no consequences. Heaven forbid you have to micro a flying courier over a treeline out of enemy vision to buy an item. Oh wait, you probably don't even have a flying courier anyway because nobody understands support given the inherent nature of HoN.

5) Getting a basic account verified is easy as fuck. If I had to play like 50 games to get a verified account instead of spending the $30 I did originally, I'd do it in an instant. It's not even a close decision. S2 definitely screwed over their originally paying customers by a) making the GAME itself free to play, and not giving the shit they promised like custom maps.

6) You say you don't care about the competitive scene, and I certainly don't blame you. There is no competitive scene. It's a joke. There's like 1-2 casting studios (if you can even call them that), some half-assed players, and some shitty commentating. You can tell the difference between Dota2 and HoN casts by just watching any major Dota2 stream network/caster (beyond the summit, tobi, ayesee, GD studio, etc.). They have a ton of nice overlays, stats, great commentators, analysis, etc. The real difference is Valve and the studios and other sponsors invest a fuckton of money into the scene. It's exciting to watch, the play is great, the commentators are great, and overall its just enjoyable to watch a game or two even as a casual player. I can't say I've ever felt the same about HoN casting.

7) I never suggested banning people for flaming. Just mute them and only allow them to say a few basic things like "miss", "get back", "help", etc. Limit the amount of pings they can send per minute. Take away voice chat. Remove all these privileges for like 24 hours but still let them play. Eventually they learn flaming is just not worth it. Trust me, trying play this game without communicating freely is a nightmare. Put these rules in place instead of the really harsh bans which just spark resentment for the GMs, and it works wonders.

This post was edited by sMACKTRiCKz on May 22 2013 04:36pm

1-what is ban system in dota? placement in some sort of low bracket where u play with others such as yourself? i had a guy feed mid on cooldown each time he spawned was his punishment the same?
2-i can tell u that having a courier is good for hon because most dont buy one in 1500-1700 and since i go mid 90% of games it would be a big turn off for me not to have one (let alone rune wards)
3-i agree with and i said i do not like new heroes and there are way too many that keep coming
4-secret shop is same as courier, makes the game easier
5-u cant really be bitter about investing 30$ in a game that u played alot even before it was made free
6- i do like to watch some competitive games every once in a while not even maybe once per 1 or 2 months and it has nothing to do with anything you mentioned. competitive scene in top tier games tends to be a borefest of playing safe and farming and trying to capitalize on mistakes other team makes
7- they actually do have a system like that, friend of mine was muted so he could not type or talk (not sure about talking)

i wish i could understand where these flames come from because i played hon beta and it wasnt like that. seems now people just like to thrash talk and they see others do it so they do it too in response

I really can't understand how you, Pitbul, can talk about why so many people flame and rage when you are one of the bigger reason why this community is so hateful and harsh. Every time you troll/grief a game, you make up to 9 other persons mad and take their fun which will resuls in them being in bad mood over several games and that's when the vicious circle begins. If you would really care about the community and would want it to be better you would stop trolling games. Easy as that.

i wont initiate the trolling or throw games unless i want to make a smurf lose or if my team does the same
should i bother to try and play good when others aren't? and trust me even if i quit hon ppl won't ever change now

One of the best posts i've read in a while.