Welcome to Heroes of Newerth
If you are new to the game then hopefully this “guide” will help you out. I have decided to write this in response to the new Free-To-Play business model that S2 has recently implemented. In this guide I will show ways to improve as a player, find your niche playstyle and possibly reduce rage.
Heroes of Newerth is a real time strategy game set in an online multiplayer battle arena. This game is designed to be played with a team and that is why good communication and teamwork are crucial.
Practice.
There are currently 86 heroes in this game with new heroes being added every two weeks or so. Learning each hero and knowing their abilities will drastically improve your usefulness ingame as you will not only know what your teammates are capable of, but your enemies as well.
Practice mode is your friend. You can make unlimited practice games and learn hero abilities in a personal setting without the pressure of impatient teammates. In practice mode you can experiment with heroes as well as items since you are able to give gold/levels to yourself with the push of a button. Practice mode is also another great way to practice “last-hitting” creeps. (last hitting an ally creep will deny it giving the enemy no gold and less experience for the creep kill, last hitting enemy creeps will give you experience as well as gold)
Joining Public Games.
Once you feel confident enough after taking the tutorial and practicing in practice mode a few times, you should be ready to join a game and play against other people. When looking for public games you will want to first play a few games that are “Unofficial” this means that the stats from that game are not counted against anyone and you are more free learn and experiment without your teammates raging at you for ruining their precious stats. The Unofficial games are marked with this symbol (
). Once you have played through at least 20 FULL games (i say full so that you can learn all stages of a game, early/mid/end) then you should try your hand an Official statted game, take note that the players in these games are going to rage at you if you don’t listen and play your role (more on hero roles later). This is the symbol for an Official Statted game (
).
The HoN Community.
I have thought and thought about it and the best word I can think of to describe the core of the HoN community would be, Passionate. I myself have been gaming for about 10 years and have played many many games, none of of which have had the amount of rage or dedication that HoN does. Because of this love/hate relationship, the community comes across as very immature and VERY quick to rage at a player who does not perform optimally. My personal theory on this is not that people rage over a “game” or because they “lost a couple stat points” it is because they put alot of time and hard work into achieving their accomplishments and become very annoyed when someone gives no regard to this, so to help yourself and everyone else, DO NOT BE THAT PERSON.
There is a difference between a “noob” and an “idiot”, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being new as long as you try and most importantly LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN to your teammates advice. A player who goes 0/15/2 is an idiot, a player who goes 0/15/34 is someone that I would always want to have on my team. An idiot is someone that may be new but is not willing to listen or take the advice of their more experienced teammates, these people are the reason that all of you new players will undoubtedly be flamed for, the only thing you can do about it is prove them wrong.
Another thing that I want to show you is how to reduce your own personal rage and incoming grief from other players. Trying hard and listening will definitely reduce the amount of rage you receive from others, however there will still be a few people whos only goal in this game is to upset other players. Here are a couple of ingame commands you can use to block these people from either communication with you, or playing in future public games with you.
/ignore add playernamehere
/banlist add playernamehere
I have saved myself alot of frustration with these two commands alone. These commands can be used on teammates as well as enemy players. Another thing I would suggest is try to refrain from posting any sort of rage threads or threads saying that you think so and so is overpowered just because you got stomped by a better player, as these actions will only be met with flame and ridicule from the community, not to mention the mods will probably remove the thread anyways.
Hero Roles.
Earlier I mentioned finding your niche playstyle, this is because there are many different hero roles in the game, for a very very detailed explanation on hero roles as well as the heroes who fulfill these roles, please visit this GUIDE written by Kitad1.
Anyways, I hope this short little guide will help you become a better player faster. GLHF.
-Nymity
Hey there~
You can call me Discord.
I haven’t played this game in months.
Months.
Shortcut deleted from desktop. Uninstalled. I visit the forums— maybe— once every couple of months, when something in the HoN email catches my eye.
I have very little interest in coming back.
For those interested, feel free to read my rationale for abandoning this game (be warned— it’s a lot of boring, dry, reconstituted text about problems that aren’t new or exciting or … whatever. In fact, you probably won’t care when you read this, Also, I expect a healthy amount of flaming, “good riddance”, “you suck”, etc. That’s fine.)
I’m just giving a factual—if Heavily subjective— account of reasons I’m no longer interested in playing this game. If any of the (perceived) problems I mention have been rectified— then power to S2 and the players that remain.
A.) I do not like micro transactions. At all. I’ve never liked them; I believe they are less a method of paying less/getting what you pay for in increments, and more a method of extorting money from people by way of desirable content that should have been in the game in the first place. This, obviously, is largely a matter of personal opinion— I understand that. In fact, $10-20 every month or couple of months is less than an MMO account (which, if that is the bulk of your entertainment expenditure a month, you’re probably doing pretty well!)
But please do not misunderstand— I’m not a cheapskate; I work full-time, purchased HoN after my gf and I decided it would be an entertaining, competitive pastime for us to play together (shortly after it’s release). I don’t mind (and, in fact, relish) paying a company for a solid product— money is the prolific leveler and speaks louder than accolades. So, for a time, I didn’t mind spending money on the first account, a sub-account, and some coins… but…
B.) (Gold) Coins are much too expensive. Prices should be about halved. In fact, by sheer volume of increased sales alone, I’m quite confident S2 would (have made) make up what they lost in their pricing scheme.
Context: These is no reason I shouldn’t be able to purchase an alternate skin of an avatar for somewhere between $2-5. Example: Pyromancer, when first released, made me incredibly excited (as did Glacius). But at approximately $10 a skin, it left me with a very bitter taste in my mouth (particularly, since they swapped the gender to male over from DoTa in the the first place). But it’s alright! S2 is a good company with a solid product— paying an extra $10 isn’t a big deal for… a skin. I’m supporting the company.
The coin-gain from Matchmaking was a HUGE step in the right direction, and I was very pleased when they did so. Right up until…. the implementation of the “Premium” items (or whatever they’re called). Compound this with the “available for a limited time” skins/avatars/whatever, and it’s essentially being press-ganged into regularly spending (too much for a single item) money.
C.) The community is horrible.
Yeah, I know. “Welcome to the internet”, right? It comes with the DoTa scene. And that’s fine; I can deal. In fact, typical routine is try a little amiable pre-game chatter, get greeted with douchebag replies, immediately put someone on mute, and keep my mouth shut the rest of the game, grim-faced, and trying to control the game with a solid mid-into-ganking phase.
There are exceptions, of course.
Sometimes, you get some awesome guy from like, the UK who is only mediocre, but has a sense of humor, communicates well, and just makes you enjoy the game (win or lose). Or some Brazilian who ends up playing a solid Ophelia and ganks the trash out of the sidelanes, pushes towers like a madman, and communicates will despite the language discrepancy.
More often, my girlfriend opens her mic to call missing, and is immediately bombarded with “There’s a (expletive) playing?! Sh*t, we lose”, or “Get back in the kitchen and cook my dinner!”, or the incredibly creative “Hey sexy, you have a nice voice.”
Jesus H. you guys. Really?
Anyway.
So. RAP got implemented. We utilized as need be— we aren’t super-uptight peoples. Only when someone crosses from being a kind-of douchebag into full-blown uber-d’baggery did we pull up the RAP.
We literally reported more games (read: people) than we can count.
And that’s also (sort of) fine. What’s silly is that we never get to see the fruits of our sportsmanlike suffering. If I patiently sit through 30-70+ minutes of some jerkoff trying to troll the crap out of the game, Id like to know there is some justice waiting at the end.
For a while, there would be weekly updates “% of RAP punished— 37%”, or something. But this number could just be arbitrarily made up, and I never saw a lasting effect.
The sad part here is that S2 should have been putting the fear of God into the playerbase who made the game an unenjoyable (NotActualWord) experience— instead, they turned a (mostly) blind eye to the composition of their community, as though poor sportsmanship was integral to the game archtype. Instead of aggressively trying to re-condition or incentivise their playerbase, they did the same as every other company, and walked the fine line between profit and comfort.
Just sad.
But really not surprising considering…
D.) That Which Shall Not Be Named. There was a thread I read about a certain higher-up in S2 (let’s call him “Juicekiller”) and a rampant amount of abuse he enacted. In fact, let me just leave this link here (provided this whole thread doesn’t get deleted), and those interested can read at their leisure. (Slightly NSFW, language). http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/ar…/t-231893.html
This act was really the coffin nail— my last game with HoN was shortly after all this, and I’ve not been back. This behavior is not acceptable in any business, ever (and there is no exaggeration about the deletion of threads— I distinctly remembering trying to find the original complaint thread later, to no avail. As well as every other thread that might have mentioned said individual perpetuating acts such as this.)
The most wryly amusing part about this, is that just WEEKS before, Nome (someone whom I respected as a voice of reason and an overall excellent human-being) had posted thus:
”Compare HoN to any other game in it’s category objectively and you will see we’re leading with distance”
Are we talking lateral?
E.) Everything Else. I had stopped playing before it happened, but how about the DDos attacks? Continued server lag? Poor character balancing/rebalancing? Infuriating interface change?
~~~~~
Anyway. That’s all I got. There’s no TL;DR— just a DR, if you aren’t interested (valid!)
It’s a mountain of text, sure, but pretty much the reason(s) I stopped playing. It wasn’t a savage ragequit. It wasn’t some bad connection. It wasn’t because I came from LoL and couldn’t get my feet under me.
Before we all resort to strawman attacks:
I’m 29. I was a pretty average HoN player: 1700 give or take, depending on the day/week. I played gankers and often took mid (and accountability). I average 200+ApM, 2.1KdR and 20+ denies (not relevant, I know). I never talked trash, was patient with new players who wanted to learn, had <%1 leaves (server disconnects, both. I’ve STILL never left a game). I encouraged several of my friends to play with me (prior to the Gold Coin reward for friended accounts), and thus, buy the game.
I am the model backbone of this game.
And you’ve lost my business.
For those of you who will remain and continue to play— enjoy yourself! In sincerity; I’m glad the games still gives you enjoyment.
I don’t have some crazy grudge or vendetta against S2 or anyone else; I just refuse to support the company— or the community— any longer.
But I guess S2 got my money anyway, eh? Heh.
Regardless, glhf, take care, and thanks for reading~~
<3 
(Source/s http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=295380)
Very well said Discord, I hope to see you around in Dota2.
It was my understanding that the word “noob” or “newb”, short for newbie, was a slang term for a person who is NEW to a game or activity, someone who is not a very good player due to the sheer fact that he/she does not yet have a full understanding of the game.
People toss around the word noob like it is some sort insult, when id say in most cases it is being used towards someone who is not infact new to the game, but is just either an unskilled player, or a complete idiot.
In Hon, a “noob” is someone who doesn’t yet know what all of the heroes do and their skills, he/she does not yet know what items to buy to counter certain heroes/skills, not someone who dives a tower 5v1, thats not noob, that just means he is retarded.
I offer no solution, only an observation.
World Champ and all-around debatable best HoN player of all time, [SK]Angrytestie, frequently streams his stomps on his JTV. He uses accounts in the 1650-1750 range and proceeds to shit on kids like it was their first time playing.
So what Ive been doing (cuz im bored) is whispering to the players on the opposing teams and informing them of his true identity and suggesting more pressure be put on him, honestly it makes for a pretty fun game to watch, I wanna see one of these random scrub teams kick his ass, not that I dislike him or anything, but its nice to see the champ fall sometime ya know?
