I've been playing the beta and so far, well, I quickly got tired of getting killed every 3 minutes.  This is a very competitive, pro game.  I think only experienced warcraft 3-based DotA players can really get into it at this point. The graphics are go for a classic/old blizzard games look, and that is what competitive gamers go for.  As it's been said before, this is not a game to be compared with Demigod.  They are in completely different leagues.  Demigod is more for the casual, make-your-own-computer, computer enthusiast who wants to max out the visuals in their games.  Heroes of Newerth is for the competitive LAN matches we all love and hate.

Yeah, I agree with you on that, but you know, back in those days, the game industry was much tinier than it is now.  Yeah, Quake, Unreal, Warcraft, and such were difficult to get into, and that common because there was less at stake than now. Nowadays, with a multi-million dollar industry, it's in gaming companies best financial motives to keep their games available to the biggest amount of the gaming population as possible.  Not just competitive gamers, but casuals too, the casual market just can't be ignored anymore, a side-effect of the rise in popularity of consoles too. Lack of zoom-out seems to be intentional to keep the old warcraft 3 style too.

This highlights just the importance of easiness to play is for a game to be a success or failure.  It's as important if not more than the game itself, specially with a mostly online game.  Heroes of Newerth's match-making lobby system is just amazing.  That's the way to go, easiness to jump into, arranging a match and playing.  I'm glad this game is as populated as you say it is.  Might give it another try, hopefully more noobies like me are playing now.

I agree. Being hard to master and having a steep learning curve are not the same thing.

I don't really thing online shooters are comparable. They require only one thing: practice. Practice your aim and the map. On pubs (important addition) the people that played the longest usually were the best, there was no real skill required (only if you went pro). In games like Demigod however you need to learn the game; how do you counter each demigod the best? What do spell animations look like? What items will help me best in this situation, etc. It has a learning curve. Yes, practice still is important, but also knowledge and insight into the game. And this is where the learning curve comes in. There's a difference between knowing the game 1 month and sucking, knowing it 3 months and fair pretty well, and knowing it 6 months and being skilled, as opposed to knowing it 1 month and sucking, knowing it 3 months and sucking, knowing it 6 months and sucking and then finally fair well enough to play the pros.

Perhaps I'm just playing with semantics, but learning and practice ARE two different things.

You can learn a game's rules quickly, but require practice to master. A good game is often easy to learn, and requres lots of fun practice to master.

Learning is picking up the knowledge required to play, practice will allow the player to apply said knowledge with better judgement.

So the only difference between you and a pro football player is that they practice a lot more often? Avid players of such onlie shooters like quake or unreal do claim that it takes skill to master those games.  Yes, you get better with practice, but they say that there's too a skill component that you have to develop in order to be a good player.  Similar situation with fighting games.  It's easy to dismiss most of them as button-mashing competitions, but there is a level of skill needed which is not determined by the amount of hours put into the day on a daily basis.

Oh great. So now how are we going to define skill?

In a few years we might have all the definitions we need to collectively make a sentence.

You obviously failed to read one of my sentenses. I'll quote it again for you.

Notice the words in ()? Yes, if you go pro you need skill, and also some talent. I'm not downtalking on pros here, I'm downtalking on the people in pubs here. They don't win because they have the skill, they win because they had more practice. Note that pros rarely play on pubs. They play tournaments and on their own private server, for clan matches.

But that wasn't my point, my point is that those games need very little to learn, and very much to practice..

And my second point is that HoN/DOTA needs a lot to learn and you can only be good if you've learned it all, which is no fun for new players.

/rejoin above discussion

I wonder if the improvements of HoN over DotA are worth it in the minds of the beta testers. As far as I heard, the bulk of the improvements and changes are in the lobby - the matchmaking system. 

This sounds ... underwhelming.

I think there was a poll on it and the most favourable choice was a one time payment deal, I believe.

HoN has one of the most advanced multiplayer systems I have ever seen.  The thing is that they host ALL games on their servers and the clients gets data only on a need to know basis (not fully implemented yet, but they say soon).  This makes bandwith use a lot lower and it makes hacking (even simple maphacks) absolutely impossibile as the client actually does not have the data of what is in the fog.  Add to that game reconnect on drop - which I already had opportunity to use and it fcking rocks, unbelivably stable and fast, Win, Linux and Mac OS X clients, advanced filtering of games by options... and those are just the improvements on the so to say backend. 

HoN also has a very very nicely implemented single draft and or random draft systems, full stats tracking, automatching (not yet implemented), ban lists and rock solid community features just to mention some improvements, so I think there are plenty of feautures that making it worth it.

They also just made a preorder available, 30$, can purchase from anywhere, lifetime server access.  IMO its a good value at that price - I already purchased just to support S2 cause they sure as hell deserve it.

whoot ??????

30$ for Dota Reloaded  ????

ive thought the main game is for free and players can buy some goodies for real money ??

i have started to play the beta just recently thanks to mr. haze who kindly sent me a key, and i must say, i have never played dota before, but the thing is, i dont need to play dota to see that HoN is a complete replica,  the interface is so wc3 alike, and often times in places where it actually not suited to this kind of game. now, it maybe was acceptable in dota, but if the devs wanted to go out of the wc3 engine constrains, why havent they done so?

just the smallest little example - your hero is not defaulted to hold ground upon reaching its place, i mean, in an rts its totally acceptable while you are managing several units, but in a game like this? why would i want my hero to chase creeps out of the safe zone and into the enemy hands while i take my eyes off my hero for a second? there are many more small unlogical things like this that makes you wonder what the hell they were thinking, or to be precise, why the hell havent they actually took the time think and just straight forward copied dota.

the graphics: well, its obvious that a game can be good even if the gfx sucks, see dwarf fortress for example, but hmm, its not about the quality of the gfx as a beauty factor that bother me here, but more like the gfx as a game enhancer, for example, in demigod, you can instantly distinguish the demigods from creeps and other demigods, thats beacause the true greatness in demigod gfx is not in the little pretty textures the demigods and creeps has, but in the smart concept art that created a unique silohete for each creep and demigod.

but the thing is, HoN is light years ahead from Demigod in terms of multiplayer options, and options that, i feel, are totally neccesary to this kind of game.

HoN has a lot more content, even tho the demigods themself has more freedom to mold your way, and there are citadel upgrades that add strategy, the actual thing is that there are only few ways to build a demigod that are the best builds and therefore takes the demigods complexity advantage from HoN with its many heros and items.

my conclusion is that in terms of potential, demigod has so much more potential to live up too, and if the modding community and the devs would add more content, along multiplayer enhancment, there will be no reason to play HoN.

and about that "no need to choose a game, and we could all just play along debate" - sorry, its Bs, only few has time to play these two similar games, and if i wanna jump between games i'd jump between demigod/HoN to a diff game like an Fps or an actuall Rts/Tbs.

it is a comptetion between demigod and HoN which only one can win, the two cant live peacfully side to side along each other.

and with StarCraft2 coming soon, which will probably spawn a new Dota based on that, i cant see any reason as of this moment to pay 30$ to a dota clone, but i can see a reason to pay 40 to a dota inspired game.