Heroes of Newerth

Heroes of Newerth
File:HeroesOfNewerth.jpg
Developer(s)	S2 Games
Publisher(s)	S2 Games
Engine	K2 Engine
Platform(s)	Linux, Mac OS X, Windows
Release	May 12th, 2010
Genre(s)	Arena RTS
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

Heroes of Newerth, or "HoN", is an Action RTS game published and developed by S2 Games based on the Warcraft III scenario Defense of the Ancients.

Gameplay

Players in Heroes of Newerth control a single character from a top-down perspective, in the world of Newerth. HoN focuses on hero control and development, and removes many of the common features of classic real time strategy games, such as base management, resource collection and single-player missions. The goal of the game is to work together in teams of one to five people in order to take over the opposing team's base. Players gain experience over time through the elimination of enemy creeps and obtain gold over time in order to purchase new items for their heroes. Hero characters max out at level twenty-five and are only able to carry six pieces of equipment. Defense towers are set up in the top, middle, and bottom rows of each team on the map. Players must work their way through each tower and eventually take over the base. The team who destroys the opposing team's Tree of Life (Legion) or Sacrificial Shrine (Hellbourne) first wins the match. As of patch 1.0.5, there are currently thirty-four heroes on the Legion side, and thirty-three heroes on the Hellbourne for a total of sixty-seven heroes. S2 Games has stated that they will continue to make heroes beyond release.

Heroes

Heroes are primarily organized by their main attribute - strength, intelligence, or agility. A main attribute, along with the set of abilities that is provided for a hero, generally assigns the role that they will fill in the game. There are no official definitions, but the most generally accepted major roles are:

• The initiator - a hero that has the ability to either absorb a lot of damage or to deal out a lot of damage in a very short amount of time, but may become useless after having absorbed too much damage or having used the "cooldown" of all of its abilities. The purpose of the initiator is to tactically initiate the battle in a way that is favorable for the rest of his team.
• The carry - a hero that is able to constantly deal out a lot of damage. For the most part, you need a lot of items to deal out a lot of damage - this requires the hero to have a reasonably high gold income by killing creeps or heroes, which in return may make the carry weak in the early stages of a game, but extremely powerful in the late stages of a game. Semi-carries are also carries, with the exception that they are not as reliant on items as hard carries are. However, they are normally not able to output as much damage per second as "hard" carries are. Sometimes semi-carries may also have disabling or empowering abilities.
• The support - a hero that has the ability to scale the odds in the favour of ones teammates, this may include increasing damage per hit for allies, increasing attack speed for allies, reducing damage done by enemies either through reduced attack speed or reduced damage per hit, healing allies, mitigating damage done to allies.

Many heroes can fit into 2 major roles. Some argued for but also generally accepted sub-roles are the following:

• The tank - often this type of hero is also considered an initiator because of its high health pool, but normally heroes with high strength (either through gaining it per level or through items) can be played as a tank. A tank will normally have one or multiple abilities that allows him to temporarily or under certain circumstances reduce damage taken.
• The ganker - the ganker is often a type of hero that has abilities that deal out a lot of damage in a short amount of time, but may also have disabling or slowing abilities. Many gankers are considered both initiators and carries because of their ability to either slow or deal out a lot of damage in a short amount of time. The ganker very often also has the ability to be a roamer - a hero that runs around on the lanes in the early portion of the game to constantly gank enemy heroes.
• The disabler - this is a type of hero that has the ability to shut one or more heroes out of a portion of the fight. The disabler may prove challenging to play, as many disablers can easily be countered.

Many heroes can fit into multiple sub-roles, but requires the hero to have selected its abilities in a way that synergizes well with the desired role. Towards the late portion of the game, some roles may become less efficient, in which case a hero is almost forced into taking on another role.

While the three primary attributes (strength, agility and intelligence) help categorize heroes, what truly distinguishes each hero from others is their set of abilities. Each hero in the game has four unique abilities that can be learned and improved as the hero gains levels. These abilities accomplish vastly different things, such as dealing damage, healing, stunning, immobilizing or silencing, teleportation, summoning, and life and mana draining. While the skills themselves are unique, the skills of each hero usually have some sort of synergy with each other. For example, a hero might have one skill that reduces an enemy's defenses against magic, and another skill that deals magic damage. Using these skills in conjunction increases the hero's effectiveness and allows them to do more damage.

The 3 first abilities available to the heroes can be leveled up from the first level, but rank 2 of all spells are only available at level 3, rank 3 at level 5, rank 4 at level 7. The only exception to this is the ultimate and 4th skill - which can first be leveled up for 3 ranks at level 6, level 11 and level 16. Another last option to level up, but which is common to all heroes, is +2 to all attributes. This can be leveled up 10 times. The max level of a hero is level 25. The experience needed to gain level 25 from level 24 is vastly higher than the experience needed to gain level 2 from level 1. The experience is acquired from the deaths of enemy creeps, neutral creeps or enemy heroes, however, the hero must be within a certain range in order to acquire the experience. In addition, experience gained will be reduced if more heroes are nearby.

Each hero's skill-set defines their role in the game. These roles can vary according to the compositions of each team as well as the overall strategy that the team decides to follow. Heroes can belong to multiple categories. In addition, item selection is an important factor that determines a hero's role as it allows for additional offensive, defensive and buff spells to become available to a player. It is however possible to build some heroes in a different way that allows, for example, a carry hero to be supportive. Because of this, roles are not set in stone for each hero, but their abilities and stats may still hold them partially in their intended role.

Items

Heroes of Newerth features a wide variety of items to choose from. Items are the primary means by which heroes improve their attributes and therefore become stronger and more effective. Some items may also grant additional passive or active abilities in addition to the four that the hero has.

All items are purchased with gold, which is acquired through passive gaining (one gold per second under normal circumstances), selling items, last hitting creeps, killing enemy heroes and destroying towers. If a player claims the last hit on the hero or tower, that player acquires additional gold. However if a player is ever killed, then that player concedes gold instead.

Items are purchased from various shops that are scattered around the map. Most of the items can be found in the main shop in each faction's base. In addition, some lanes contain an Outpost shop which sell cheap, commonly sought items that are also available from the main shop and the secret shop, but may prove useful as to avoid having players go back to the base to pick up any eventual items so that they do not come behind in terms of character experience and (very likely) gold income compared to other players. A third kind of shop, called the Secret Shop, is located in the forest and sells very powerful and expensive items - in the map Forest of Caldavar (the most played map), there are two instances of the Secret Shop shop - one on the Hellbourne's side, and one one the Legion's side.

Items have a tier structure that determines their power. Higher tier items can be assembled by following their "recipe", which determines what lower tier items are necessary in order to build the higher tier item. Upgrading items in this manner consume the individual parts, but the resulting item is usually stronger than its parts separately and can grant powerful new abilities.

While most items are permanent, some upon activation summon controllable minions or offer support and damage, while some items are consumed upon use.

Game modes

The game offers a variety of game modes, each with differing rules that determine how players select their heroes. Normal Mode offers the entire selection of heroes, for example, while Random Draft forces players to alternate picks from a smaller pool of randomly selected heroes. In contrast, Single Draft mode assigns each player three heroes, from which the player must make their choice. Banning Draft provides a selection of 24 heroes but permits team captains to remove 4 of these before they can be picked, while Banning Pick does the same with the entire hero pool. Additional game modes, such as Deathmatch, are planned but not yet implemented.

If a player changes their minds after picking, they may pick a new hero in exchange for a penalty on their starting gold. Similarly, a player may select a random hero and receive a bonus to their starting gold. Typically, each hero may be selected by only one player - but modified modes exist that permit duplicate heroes. Other modified modes include the ability to limit available heroes by removing heroes of a particular type - melee or ranged, for example, or heroes with a specified core attribute such as strength.

Some game modes also impact the rate at which players receive gold during the game. During normal play, players receive 1 gold per second. Easy Mode doubles this amount, and also reduces the amount of damage dealt by towers. Hardcore Mode, on the other hand, disables this passive gold gain and removes the experience gained from denied units.

New features

Most heroes in Heroes of Newerth have a direct correlation from Defense of the Ancients, with similar abilities and statistics. The additions that differentiate Heroes of Newerth from DotA are non-gameplay features such as tracking of individual statistics, in-game VOIP, GUI-streamlined hero selection (draft mode, etc), match making, and chat features such as player banlists (with reason). Post-game MVP awards are upcoming but not currently implemented.

The game also uses S2 Games' proprietary K2 Engine, and a client-server model similar to that used in many modern multiplayer games.. This differs from the peer-to-peer networking model used for Warcraft 3 which can cause network connectivity issues for all players when one player has issues..

Several features added via updates include a Hero Compendium (a list of the heroes in the game with detail statistics about them), the ability to set a "following" trait on a friend which makes you join/leave the games that friend joins (similar to the "party" feature in other games), and an in-game ladder system.

Beta testing

Heroes of Newerth was in beta from April 24, 2009 until May 12, 2010. Throughout this time, over 3,000,000 unique accounts were registered. S2 Games used a Facebook fan page and word of mouth to attract players to the game. Many people who had bought one of S2 Games' previous games also received an invitation to the game through their registered email

On August 22, 2009 the pre-sale of Heroes of Newerth began for members of the closed beta. Players who purchased the game at this time received additional benefits, including name reservation, gold-colored nameplate, gold shield insignia, and an in-game taunt ability.

Open beta testing for Heroes of Newerth began on March 31, 2010, and ran until May 12, 2010, when the game was officially released.

Development

According to S2 staff member "Idejder," Heroes of Newerth has been in development for "34 months, but the first 13 were spent on engine development. The entirety of assets, including maps, items, heroes, and art were made in 21 months."

Heroes of Newerth is supported on multiple operating systems, including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

Reception

The game has received generally favorable reviews and currently holds a metascore of 76 out of 100 and user rating of 9.3 out of 10 on Metacritic.

As of June 2010, the number of concurrent users online peaks at about 35,000+ per day. S2 Games CTO Shawn Tooley notes that the game has "sold enough copies to crack the top 100 PC game sales of all time."

Awards and nominations

Date of ceremony	Award	Category	Recipients and nominees	Result
March 11, 2010	Independent Games Festival	Audience Award	S2 Games	Won

See also

• Defense of the Ancients
• Warcraft III
• Real-time Strategy

External links

• Official Heroes of Newerth website
• Official Heroes of Newerth Partner for the South East Asia region
• WeeGames - S2 Official Reseller in Brazil