Forum Rules and FAQ

[[S2]Chavo]

These forum rules have been replaced. Please find the current version here.

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Forum Rules
Rule-breaking posts should be reported [].
Moderators will be fiercely enforcing the rules, and handing out infractions if necessary.

1. While debating and discussion is fine, we will not tolerate rudeness, insulting posts or personal attacks.
2. Refrain from posting meaningless threads, one word (or short), non-sense, meme posts ("cool story bro"), or the such.
3. Advertising, spamming and trolling is not allowed.
4. Please wait a reasonable amount of time before bumping posts.
5. Discussion of illegal activities such as software and music piracy and other intellectual property violations are not allowed.
6. We reserve the right to remove any posts without notice.
7. This forum has signatures enabled - if you choose to use this feature, keep the signature relatively short. Offensive signatures will be removed at our discretion.
8. Do not call people out for spelling mistakes, actions they took in-game, their HoN account statistics, or other trivial matters. If you have an issue with someone, keep it to Private Messages. If you need to report a player for griefing, use the Report a Player feature.
9. Do not fake quote. Intentionally fake quoting staff will be heavily penalized.
10. Please bear in mind that this is primarily an English-speaking forum. The only exeption is the Translations-section.

While these rules cover most common situations, they cannot anticipate everything. Consequently we reserve the right to take any actions we deem appropriate to ensure these forums are not disrupted or abused in any way.

If you have a complaint, please PM the proper moderator or admin, when in doubt. Lodging complaints in public threads is never the appropriate course of action.

Disciplinary Measures

When these forum rules are not followed, a moderator or staff member may

• - ask you to change your behavior
• - delete your post/thread
• - give you a formal warning (a 0-point infraction)
• - give you one or more infractions

If you receive too many infractions in a short time, or accumulate 5 or more total, your posting habits will be restricted or removed. Serious abusers will be dealt with quickly and harshly. For your reference:

0-2 infraction points: you've been warned
3-4 infraction points: forum suspension, you will be able to read the forums but not post
5+ infraction points: if you're logged in with your account, you won't be able to read them or post.

The length of the ban or suspension will be determined (usually automatically) by all of your current infractions, when they occurred, and their severity.

Furthermore, an accumulation of infractions over time (even expired infractions) will result in harsher punishment penalties. Specifically, on reaching certain levels of infractions excluding warnings, the following suspensions will be automatically given:
5 Infractions: 2 Days
6 Infractions: 7 Days
7 Infractions: 7 Days
8 Infractions: 2 Weeks
9 Infractions: 1 Month
10 Infractions: 3 Months
11 Infractions: Permanent

I hope this clears up any confusion in regards to the disciplinary measures used on this forum. Please remember that this is a community with people of all ages, nationalities, races, etc and appropriate posting behavior is required.


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General Discussion Forum FAQ

In an attempt to clean up this forum, in particular the general discussion forum, I'm going to compose a little FAQ. There are countless repeat topics every day regarding some fairly well known/already-been-answered-a-thousand-times topics. So, lets get started.

Please help me add to this. I had a hard time thinking up of more topics.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I'm new, HALP!

What is DotA?
What Genre is HoN?
First steps
I'm getting my face pushed in and people are mean! What should I do?

Already Discussed - Check These Threads First

Concede
Backdoor
Public Skill Rating
Porting a DotA Hero
Easy Mode
Pre-Purchase

Stats / PSR

Why Are Stats Recorded?
What is Recorded Now?
Public Skill Rating

The Forum

Compilation of Good Discussion Threads
Compilation of Other Random Threads

Changelog
May 12th: Release Edit
June 22nd: #10 added

Thank you very much to Kros for the original compilation of these rules

[[S2]Chavo]

1. I'm new, HALP!.
Return to top | Return to FAQ

1A. What is DotA?
In order to understand much (read: most, all) of this game, you need to have a basic understanding of what DotA is. There are much more detailed posts about this elsewhere but, I can give a quick history from what I know.

DotA stands for Defense of the Ancients. It is a mod for Warcraft 3 that is still around to this day. It has been hugely popular for many years now and has had a strong fanbase and even popular competitive leagues.

HoN is based around DotA. And by that I mean, HoN is a fully stand alone game that takes most of the aspects of DotA's gameplay (including heroes and items used in DotA) and throws them into a better engine, with new graphics, new support, new servers, new lots of pretty stuff, as well as a true development studio dedicated to working on the game.

1B. What Genre is HoN?

See: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=7739

1C. First Steps

1. Read this: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=5465
2. Read it again.
3. Lurk around here: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/forumdisplay.php?f=9
4. Create your own game, make it private, and start it with no one in the game but yourself. Explore!
5. Filter your games by noob only tier, and join a game that appears to support people with low K:D ratios.
6. Let people know you're new; ignore the not-so-nice folk who insult anyone who happens to be new.
7. Have fun, and report any issues you encounter.


1D. I'm getting my face pushed in and people are mean! What should I do?

This is a very common issue. Its often remarked that the DotA community, which many of have moved to HoN, have very high expectations of the players that they play with. It is not a very noob friendly environment.

Please do not post on the forums about this. Its a well known and well documented problem. For more discussion on this, if you would like to post, can be found here: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=5312

Please, post in one of these threads already created. Flooding the forum with new threads is not helpful.

[[S2]Chavo]

2. Already Discussed - Check These Threads First.
Return to top | Return to FAQ

Okay, so, many many many topics are covered daily. 15 new threads can pop up on a daily basis for each of these topics. Please check out these threads and post your support or lack thereof rather than creating a new thread. You'll just get flamed.

To helpful posters: If you know of a thread that covers one of these topics very well, or if you think a new topic should be added, please let me know via this thread or even better, via PM.


Concede

Summary
Proponents say: Concede allows a team to stop playing once they've stopped having fun. There is no reason players should be forced to get knocked around by players who are clearly trending towards winning. It does require a full team vote, afterall.

Opponents say: Concede ruins the metagame and makes many matches too short. Why should I have my fun ruined because I happen to be doing better than the other team? Just tough it out and do your best to initiate a comeback!

Backdooring

Summary

Proponents say: Backdooring is a perfectly viable strategy. Its your own teams fault if you do not cover weak points in your defense.

Opponents say: Backdooring was always very much frowned upon in DotA. Don't do it.

Links to discussion on the issue:
Is Backdooring Acceptable in Competitive HoN?
S2 Staff Responds to Backdooring Issue

Public Skill Rating
PSR - Why it works.

Porting <DotA Hero>
AGI Hero
INT Hero
STR Hero

Easy Mode

Pre-Purchase
Maliken talks pre-purchase
Pre-purchase link
Pre Order: Stat rest on release?

[[S2]Chavo]

3. Stats.
Return to top | Return to FAQ

3A. Why Are Stats Recorded?

Stats are around because HoN is meant to be a competitive multiplayer game. People who play these types of games use various stats to track their progress as they improve. It's also used by clan leaders to gauge how good a prospective clanmate is. You could argue that stats are used for many other very solid reasons. You'd probably be right most of thet ime.

3B. What is Recorded Now?

A lot. What is shown is a bit different. Right now you see:

Wins
Losses
Disconnects (Leaves)
Win %
Hero Kills
Deaths
Assists
Hero Kill : Death Ratio
EXP/min

There are websites that allow you to see much more, and the official HoN website will also allow you to see fully detailed statistics.

3C. Public Skill RatingFor a very solid PSR explanation, please check out this post by uberdabing: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=8105

Public Skill Rating (PSR) is a recently added feature that attempts to gauge a players skill. It increases on a win and decreases on a loss. How much is gained/lost is dependent upon the average PSR of the opposing team vs. the average PSR of your team.

Example:

Team 1 PSR averages 1750-1800 (clan team, lets asy)
Team 2 (your team) PSR averages 1400-1500

In the event that you win: You gain a fairly substantial amount of PSR, because due to the skill ratings, it appears that Team 1 should've won. In contrast, Team 1's members will lose a fairly substantial amount as well.

And vice versa.

This is not the end all be all solution to stats and skill ratings. There is a planned matchmaking feature which ideally will function a bit better than this.

There has also been many, many, MANY other solutions suggested. Please search for ones similar to yours, or just hold your tongue for the time being. Stats aren't going away. And I promise that the system can only get better from here.

[[S2]Chavo]

4. The Forum.
Return to top | Return to FAQ

Real quickly I'm going to add this on here. This forum is not for *****ing constantly about balance issues, this forum is not about *****ing constantly about a broken feature. It IS here for you to have meaningful, thought out discussions. Please take the time to think about what you're writing before hitting the submit button. Read it back to yourself and see if you sound like an ass.

Discuss problems. Discuss balance issues. Discuss community problems. Talk things out like rational humans. Don't eat each other alive, these forums will be much more bearable.

Please.

4A. Compilation of Good Discussion Threads

I'd like to post a list of very solid, rational discussion threads here. If you feel your thread has managed to do this fairly well, and not incite too much flaming, then please PM me. Thanks!

Improving Stats With Rolling Averages

4B. Compilation of Other Random Threads
Female characters lacking in HoN?
From Hero to Zero (or vice versa)