Also, let's take a look at what S2 has done to address the actually important issues. Nobody is saying "THERE AREN'T ENOUGH ALT AVATARS AND HEROES, MAKE MORE!". Most people complain about shitty community and balance. So what has S2 done about those?
- Implemented a ban system. This is actually counter-productive since it pisses people off, especially those who paid $30. A guy who gets banned for a long period of time (like 2 weeks) will just come back to the game even more angry and more a troll than before. After all, who are S2 to take away his right to play based on the reviews of some 15 year old GM kids who are so incompetent they aren't even paid for their time and are forced to volunteer to get the position? You don't just ban a guy and say "fuck you, I don't care about the money you paid or the time you spent on this game, you can't play for two weeks because some GM said so", that doesn't help improve their attitude at all.
In Dota2, you can't actually get banned. Playing is your right, and nobody can take that away. If you act like a dick, you get muted in-game. You can still ping (but not spam ping), and can still communicate using like 25 pre-set lines. These are lines like "Help!", "Get Back", "We need wards", "Stun now!", etc. These are all you really need to communicate at a basic level, plus they don't allow people with bad track records to say shit like "Fuck u noob i hate u all your mother sucks my dick bitch i throw game now", which is great. This fixes the problem while still letting people play, and encouraging them to behave in the future so they can stay unmuted. If people act like real dicks, they get put in low priority queue to play with all the other dicks. They can still play, but it's only with other retards like themselves, which isn't very enjoyable. This encourages people to act better in-game and not ruin games so they can play with the normal population.
- "Balanced" the game by taking the communities advice instead of doing their own comprehensive testing. Let's look at one example: people for the longest time cried "RANGE HEROES TOO STRONG, MAKE MELEE STRONGER". Now, this was never true. Melee heroes got less exp penalty from denies, and always had better attack animations and base damage, as well as benefits from items like stout shield or vanguard. But, what did S2 do anyway? Made melee heroes so fucking strong with the hatchet+shield combo that range heroes can't do what they're meant to do - zone out melee heroes in mid. Heroes like Hag, Bubbles, Soulstealer, etc. have such shitty attack animations and base damage that it becomes impossible to deny/harass a melee picker out of the lane. On top of that, the melee hero can fucking THROW THEIR HATCHET AT CREEPS for his full base damage PLUS the 32% bonus or whatever to ensure himself at least 1 cs / wave. On top of that, melee heroes like MK and DW have so much stronger combos to the point where a SS/Hag/Bubbles has to play PERFECT to win mid whereas a MK/DW just has to land 1 combo to win the lane. Melee heroes are so much easier to play already because they're more durable (most of the time), easier to last hit with, and have a way higher error threshold. S2 just made it to the point where I couldn't even play my favorite heroes mid anymore because I would have to play out of my mind just to win against an average opponent on a S2 melee hero.
Meanwhile, in Dota2 Icefrog has like 10 years of experience balancing Dota1, and is very careful with adding new heroes or changing anything in Dota2. He quickly fixes obviously OP stuff, like when Tree armor blocked 500 damage at rank 1 and let you towerdive all day with no consequence, but he doesn't make major changes without thinking them through carefully. He adds like 1-2 heroes a month at most, and sometimes he goes months without adding things because he's very careful about upsetting the equilibrium of the game. Fuck, Dota2 is just so well balanced it's a pleasure to play, whereas in HoN you always have to worry about some retard picking MK and just having a huge advantage over everyone in the game.
This post was edited by sMACKTRiCKz on Aug 18 2013 08:12am