KSlidz
09-22-2010, 11:26 PM
An Overview of the Metagame Evolution and Balance in Heroes of Newerth
A Strategy Overview written
by: KSlidz
In this section I will edit in several definitions and answer many questions as I will in reserved posts.
Ok so let me start off defining metagame and what I mean by evolution. (These two are closely related.)
The metagame is the part of the game (almost all competitive video games) that is separate of the player’s skill and mostly has to do with the play styles the game mechanics favor. This (In Heroes of Newerth) is the strategies the players perform and create before the game begins to win the match.
The evolution of the metagame is defined as adding different components of the game to shift the balance to favor one particular style of strategy to another. This includes adding heroes, items, and mechanics that directly favor a strategy or a counter strategy, or by adding heroes, items, and mechanics to directly counter strategies.
The evolution of the metagame and its balance is all based upon the choices the players are given to modify a strategy.
The Four Strategies and Where They Come From
Quick Side note: this section is about the basic
strategies not about all possible hybrid versions.
I believe in this section it is best to start off with the point of Heroes of Newerth to best explain the strategies involved.
As anyone who has played HoN knows the way to win a match in HoN is to destroy the enemy’s base or to convince the enemy that they have no plausible way to defend their base by creating a large experience and gold gap. As another article recently has noted HoN is a game about attrition. To do these things there are four major actions in a game of HoN: (which is where the four strategies comes from)
1: Pushing towers and ultimately to the world tree
2: Ganking the enemy team
3: Defeating the enemy in team fights
4: Letting the carry farm so that s/he may eventually be able to outlast and outperform the enemy team consistently
From these four basic actions come four basic strategies, The Push Strat, The Gank Strat, The Teamfight Strat , and The Turtle Strat. Each of these strategies has different strong points in the game and each one is counters, is countered, and is neutral, with at least one strategy.
Push Strat: (Early Game) This strategy capitalizes on a dominance early game and is all about pushing the enemy’s territory towards their main structure and well. This strategy, when successful, leaves little room for the enemy to farm creeps and can even destroy a main structure (thus winning the game) before most heroes finish their core items. This strategy is all about preventing the enemy team from getting items and experience. (Sidenote: unlike strategies listed later Push Strat is not necessarily about getting a large experience/gold lead but is about Stopping the enemy from doing so (may be redundant but this is a very important point that must not be missed))
Push Strat COUNTERS Turtle Strat
Push Strat IS COUNTERED BY Gank Strat
Push Strat IS NEUTRAL WITH Teamfight Strat
Turtle Strat: (Late Game) This strategy is about letting one ally hero that has unusually high potential reach a higher level of power than that of the heroes on the other team. When this strategy is successful a hero is produced that is a champion for one team that cannot be paralleled in team fights or otherwise. This is done through obtaining powerful items that have a high amount of synergy with the champion. The goal of this strategy is to maintain as many towers and as much map control as possible until the champion is produced.
Turtle Strat COUNTERS Teamfight Strat
Turtle Strat IS COUNTERED BY Push Strat
Turtle Strat IS NEUTRAL WITH Gank Strat
Teamfight Strat: (Mid-Mid/Late Game) This strategy is about having great synergy in spells and is mostly comprised of powerful aoe nukers/disablers. This strategy is centered on great map control and being able to overpower the enemy team and get a genocide. A successful team fight strat is dependent on little to no farm and mostly on experience. The goal of a teamfight strat is to create ultimatums type situations for the enemy team and to eliminate them either enough times to create an insurmountable gold and experience gap or to eliminate the entire enemy team in a short time so that the respawn timer is too long for the enemy to mount a defense.
Teamfight Strat COUNTERS Gank Strat
Teamfight Strat IS COUNTERED BY Turtle Strat
Teamfight Strat IS NEUTRAL WITH Push Strat
Gank Strat: (Early-Mid/Mid Game) This strategy is all about constantly dividing and conquering enemy players. This strategy is achieved by having great map awareness and being extremely mobile. A successful Gank Strat creates a large gold and experience gap early and will consistently degrade enemy morale. A Gank Strat lineup mostly will not require much early farm and is based mostly off of hero abilities. This strategy ultimately wins when heroes have several luxury items when the enemy heroes have often times not finished their core. This strategy creates heroes with carry type items earlier in the game than is normally possible. This strategy is only possible if it is possible to achieve many hero kills quickly and continuously.
Gank Strat COUNTERS Push Strat
Gank Strat IS COUNTERED BY Teamfight Strat
Gank Strat IS NEUTRAL WITH Turtle Strat
How these strategies interact and why certain strategies counter others.
Each of these strategies is successful when the particular strategy’s strength is in the same place as the opposing strategies weaknesses. This is determined by the time in which the particular strat is strongest and how good a strategy is at accomplishing the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy main structure.
So I am going to list the ultimate strength of each strategy and the weakness of the opposing strategy.
Push Strat is the best strategy at preventing the other team from obtaining farm and keeping map control. The reason this strategy works so well against Turtle Strat is because the weakness of Turtle Strat is that it requires prolonged tower life and larger amounts of farm.
Gank Strat is the best strategy at having great mobility and getting hero kills to create farm. The reason Gank Strat works so well against Push Strat is because the weakness of Push Strat is that the pushing team is spread thin across the map so they are easily isolated and killed. When a Push type team is killed they fail their main goal of preventing farm because their deaths become a source of farm.
Teamfight Strat is the best strategy at having an undividable unit that works as a unit. This strategy works so well against Gank Strat because the weakness of the gank type strategy is that the hero specialization is in one versus one circumstance. Teamfight Strat elimantes those situations and creates a situation in which several enemy hero can be eliminated at once.
Turtle Strat is the best strategy to create an unstoppable force that only gets better as the game progresses and is the best at limiting the amount of hero kills the enemy can get. This strategy works so well against Teamfight Strat because they cannot have a very strong force at very many places on the map at once. When a Teamfight Strat fails to create situations in which several enemy heroes die they do fall behind in gold and experience farm because they stay together splitting the resources they gain equally, creating very small bit of gold and experience.
The classification of roles and where those roles land in the four strategies.(upcoming section)
Comments? Questions? If someone is willing to help edit this s/he can pm me any time in-game or out.
I will trying to be adding more constantly please do not flame me if I fail.
A Strategy Overview written
by: KSlidz
In this section I will edit in several definitions and answer many questions as I will in reserved posts.
Ok so let me start off defining metagame and what I mean by evolution. (These two are closely related.)
The metagame is the part of the game (almost all competitive video games) that is separate of the player’s skill and mostly has to do with the play styles the game mechanics favor. This (In Heroes of Newerth) is the strategies the players perform and create before the game begins to win the match.
The evolution of the metagame is defined as adding different components of the game to shift the balance to favor one particular style of strategy to another. This includes adding heroes, items, and mechanics that directly favor a strategy or a counter strategy, or by adding heroes, items, and mechanics to directly counter strategies.
The evolution of the metagame and its balance is all based upon the choices the players are given to modify a strategy.
The Four Strategies and Where They Come From
Quick Side note: this section is about the basic
strategies not about all possible hybrid versions.
I believe in this section it is best to start off with the point of Heroes of Newerth to best explain the strategies involved.
As anyone who has played HoN knows the way to win a match in HoN is to destroy the enemy’s base or to convince the enemy that they have no plausible way to defend their base by creating a large experience and gold gap. As another article recently has noted HoN is a game about attrition. To do these things there are four major actions in a game of HoN: (which is where the four strategies comes from)
1: Pushing towers and ultimately to the world tree
2: Ganking the enemy team
3: Defeating the enemy in team fights
4: Letting the carry farm so that s/he may eventually be able to outlast and outperform the enemy team consistently
From these four basic actions come four basic strategies, The Push Strat, The Gank Strat, The Teamfight Strat , and The Turtle Strat. Each of these strategies has different strong points in the game and each one is counters, is countered, and is neutral, with at least one strategy.
Push Strat: (Early Game) This strategy capitalizes on a dominance early game and is all about pushing the enemy’s territory towards their main structure and well. This strategy, when successful, leaves little room for the enemy to farm creeps and can even destroy a main structure (thus winning the game) before most heroes finish their core items. This strategy is all about preventing the enemy team from getting items and experience. (Sidenote: unlike strategies listed later Push Strat is not necessarily about getting a large experience/gold lead but is about Stopping the enemy from doing so (may be redundant but this is a very important point that must not be missed))
Push Strat COUNTERS Turtle Strat
Push Strat IS COUNTERED BY Gank Strat
Push Strat IS NEUTRAL WITH Teamfight Strat
Turtle Strat: (Late Game) This strategy is about letting one ally hero that has unusually high potential reach a higher level of power than that of the heroes on the other team. When this strategy is successful a hero is produced that is a champion for one team that cannot be paralleled in team fights or otherwise. This is done through obtaining powerful items that have a high amount of synergy with the champion. The goal of this strategy is to maintain as many towers and as much map control as possible until the champion is produced.
Turtle Strat COUNTERS Teamfight Strat
Turtle Strat IS COUNTERED BY Push Strat
Turtle Strat IS NEUTRAL WITH Gank Strat
Teamfight Strat: (Mid-Mid/Late Game) This strategy is about having great synergy in spells and is mostly comprised of powerful aoe nukers/disablers. This strategy is centered on great map control and being able to overpower the enemy team and get a genocide. A successful team fight strat is dependent on little to no farm and mostly on experience. The goal of a teamfight strat is to create ultimatums type situations for the enemy team and to eliminate them either enough times to create an insurmountable gold and experience gap or to eliminate the entire enemy team in a short time so that the respawn timer is too long for the enemy to mount a defense.
Teamfight Strat COUNTERS Gank Strat
Teamfight Strat IS COUNTERED BY Turtle Strat
Teamfight Strat IS NEUTRAL WITH Push Strat
Gank Strat: (Early-Mid/Mid Game) This strategy is all about constantly dividing and conquering enemy players. This strategy is achieved by having great map awareness and being extremely mobile. A successful Gank Strat creates a large gold and experience gap early and will consistently degrade enemy morale. A Gank Strat lineup mostly will not require much early farm and is based mostly off of hero abilities. This strategy ultimately wins when heroes have several luxury items when the enemy heroes have often times not finished their core. This strategy creates heroes with carry type items earlier in the game than is normally possible. This strategy is only possible if it is possible to achieve many hero kills quickly and continuously.
Gank Strat COUNTERS Push Strat
Gank Strat IS COUNTERED BY Teamfight Strat
Gank Strat IS NEUTRAL WITH Turtle Strat
How these strategies interact and why certain strategies counter others.
Each of these strategies is successful when the particular strategy’s strength is in the same place as the opposing strategies weaknesses. This is determined by the time in which the particular strat is strongest and how good a strategy is at accomplishing the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy main structure.
So I am going to list the ultimate strength of each strategy and the weakness of the opposing strategy.
Push Strat is the best strategy at preventing the other team from obtaining farm and keeping map control. The reason this strategy works so well against Turtle Strat is because the weakness of Turtle Strat is that it requires prolonged tower life and larger amounts of farm.
Gank Strat is the best strategy at having great mobility and getting hero kills to create farm. The reason Gank Strat works so well against Push Strat is because the weakness of Push Strat is that the pushing team is spread thin across the map so they are easily isolated and killed. When a Push type team is killed they fail their main goal of preventing farm because their deaths become a source of farm.
Teamfight Strat is the best strategy at having an undividable unit that works as a unit. This strategy works so well against Gank Strat because the weakness of the gank type strategy is that the hero specialization is in one versus one circumstance. Teamfight Strat elimantes those situations and creates a situation in which several enemy hero can be eliminated at once.
Turtle Strat is the best strategy to create an unstoppable force that only gets better as the game progresses and is the best at limiting the amount of hero kills the enemy can get. This strategy works so well against Teamfight Strat because they cannot have a very strong force at very many places on the map at once. When a Teamfight Strat fails to create situations in which several enemy heroes die they do fall behind in gold and experience farm because they stay together splitting the resources they gain equally, creating very small bit of gold and experience.
The classification of roles and where those roles land in the four strategies.(upcoming section)
Comments? Questions? If someone is willing to help edit this s/he can pm me any time in-game or out.
I will trying to be adding more constantly please do not flame me if I fail.