Let me tell you a little story from the inner-workings of Ready-Up. Last week, I was approached by Ready Up’s editor Dan and asked to cover a game I’d heard little about – Heroes of Newerth, a stand-alone spiritual successor to popular Warcraft III mod, Defence of the Ancients. “Sure thing, Dan!”, I say. I mean, it can’t hurt, can it? Now, I’ll be the first to admit that RTS isn’t my strongest area of gaming ability, but my initial research revealed that Heroes of Newerth is practically a genre unto itself, and I’m always up for trying something new.
I've got to admire any game which allows you to play as Kraken at least a little bit
At any rate, my first impressions from client-install through to the completion of the tutorial were positive. Building on coding experience with their previous games Savage 1 and 2, Developers S2 Games have put together a lovely little engine for their newest title. It’s smooth and scalable, running on most systems with an entry-level graphics card, yet it also performs without a hitch in 1080p on my modest PC setup, boasting some shiny shader effects which really add to the character art. Best of all, it’s compatible with the holy platform trinity of PC, Max and Linux, so card-carrying Apple and Tux followers won’t feel left out. The tutorial, which took me no more than ten minutes, was strong throughout; with clear voiced instructions on how to play and some in-game examples of character progression, by the end I felt ready to tackle some fellow newcomers online and earn my stripes.
Boy, was I in for a shock. Setting my experience level to “beginner” at the request of the built-in matchmaker, I was quickly paired up with several other players. Ten matches later, my enthusiasm dampened – I had been asked to leave every single encounter, even when joining “N00b friendly”, un-ranked servers. “You suck at laning”, “Learn 2 play” and “OMG You ruin everything!” were among the most common complaints directed at me, besides general expletives. I hate feeling like I’m letting the team down, so I sought to improve my ability by playing some practice matches… but beyond an empty map, there’s no way to do so. No campaign mode. No bot matches. Being a team game, I can understand why this is the case, except it’s a mite difficult to improve when everyone you can play with hates you.
This is fairly analogous to my experience
Frustrated by my failures, and finding the official forums for the game near-incomprehensible, I decided to make a plea for some assistance from Dan, who got in touch with a gentleman from public relations at S2 Games. The problem, as I determined from his reply, was that the tutorial for Heroes of Newerth doesn’t tell you what the hell the game really is. No, it’s not a hero-driven RTS where you attempt to battle it out with colourful enemies in an attempt to destroy their base, all the while leveling-up your character and earning cool new abilities. It is, instead, an extremely complex game of cat and mouse split into several discrete phases, where the pre-game choices of heroes can end the match before it’s even begun and where one accidental mouse click can end it after it’s started.
Yeesh. Okay, so it has a steep learning curve. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with some challenge! I’d be willing to work past that. To persist. To learn. Alas, I don’t want to. To be absolutely frank, the biggest problem with Heroes of Newerth is its community. I’ve seen posts from members who claim it’s the best multiplayer experience they’ve ever had, and hey, maybe after six years of Defence of the Ancients, it is. New initiates to Newerth, however, beware – you are the enemy. Although I respect how passionate the player base is about the game, there’s just no excuse for some of the behaviour I’ve encountered. Check out the coverage for the game elsewhere: even the mighty Giant Bomb has been mocked for their performance in a video preview, yet it painted the game in quite a positive light.
Without care, this is the kind of reaction you can expect from other players
And yet, despite the hostility, despite the assertions that I can’t play games at all and should go back to Imagine Babies, I feel like there’s something here. I want to give Heroes of Newerth a chance. But without hours of trial-and-error, without meticulously studying character guides and YouTube strategy videos, it simply won’t let me. The guys at S2 Games are making a fantastic commitment to improve the current game by adding new features periodically, but without an effective way to ease players into the experience, I don’t think anyone other than existing Defence of the Ancients devotees are going to see them.
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May 31st, 2010 at 8:36 pm
You pretty much had the same experience I did with this game, but at least you seem to be a bit more eager to persevere with it all. I played it ocne and gave up. :3