7/26/2023 0 Comments Strife moba trailerIn fact, Strife has been developed over the last two years - all the while, we were growing the Heroes of Newerth support staff. HoN's development and maintenance has been completely unaffected by Strife. We just knew that we couldn't really apply the " Strife improvements" directly to Heroes of Newerth - not without reinventing the game and potentially alienating our existing userbase. It's grown our company from 20 guys in California to around 100 employees worldwide. Strife represents our chance at a clean sheet design - to take the lessons we've learned from making HoN (including immeasurable amounts of player feedback) and put it into a new product that really attempts to raise the bar.ĭon't misunderstand me - HoN is a great game, and massively successful by most measuring sticks. Heroes of Newerth was aimed at bringing a popular Warcraft III Mod - DOTA - to a bigger audience, but in doing so, we were putting things into the game that really didn't sit well with us. How have your experiences with Heroes of Newerth shaped Strife? What's going to happen to HoN with Strife in the picture?īeing the Lead Designer on Heroes of Newerth for its development phase (and for a while after release) gave me a lot of perspective on how I would want to approach a MOBA design if I were to "do it again." We strongly believe that a player should not be able to make poor choices with insufficient information - and quite often in MOBAs, you can make several poor choices before the game even starts! We eliminated many of those requirements and allow a level of customization and preference-based play that hasn't been seen before in the MOBA market. These systems also tie into one of Strife's fundamental goals, of playing the game "your way." Traditionally in MOBAs, hero roles are defined so strongly that, based on which heroes your teammates pick, you can be "forced" into playing a certain type of hero, only playing within a certain area on the map, and only buying certain types of items. In Strife we've brought them to the forefront and made them fun to interact with. You can't tell what an enemy player has selected, and it's generally hidden. Traditionally, these types of systems are a "talent tree" hidden somewhere in the UI. Crafting allows you to customize items in the item system to fit on your character, broadening the number of ways you can play a character. Pets provide both new abilities to your character and provide passive boosts. Pets are companions that follow you around in the game - you can unlock them by playing, and feed them to level them up and make them stronger. Two ways we're achieving this is with Pets and Crafting. We've applied fundamental game design techniques into how players both receive these rewards, and spend their rewards. Where we've taken this concept to the next level, is to really gamify these systems. This much is standard and can be found in many types of games, not just MOBAs. When you play a match, you receive rewards that can be used on external systems (traditionally, leveling up your account and gaining perks that affect both cosmetics and gameplay). We've got cool features like Krytos - a gigantic Gorilla who, when unlocked, will help your team neutralize enemy towers and destroy the enemy base.Īnother area in which we feel we've broken new ground is our account-level progression systems. Our game's pace is a little more action oriented, with a slightly smaller map and faster movement speeds. We hope to appeal to those players, as well as existing veterans.Īs we're fond of saying, we can't fix the human race - we can't stop jerks from being jerks, but we can remove a lot of the issues and mechanics that inflame situations and cause otherwise nice people to lash out at teammates.Īside from our attempts to fix toxicity, we believe we've created an overall more exciting experience. As popular as MOBAs are, we believe there are a lot more players who were scared away by the toxic environment and intimidating learning curve, than that stuck around. With Strife, we have the unique perspective of having already operated an extremely successful and popular MOBA, which has allowed us to truly create the next iteration on the MOBA formula. In the past, very few MOBAs have attempted to deviate from the norm, and those who have did so somewhat blindly - being different almost for the sake of being different, and they have ultimately failed for it. A lot of the crowding comes from titles that are trying to "cash in" on MOBA success without fully understanding it, resulting in a lot more of the same thing players are used to seeing. You're right - the MOBA market IS becoming very crowded. Why another MOBA/ARTS? Isn't the market incredibly crowded? What’s the plan here - Attempt to compete with market leaders or carve out a niche?
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