ElementUser

Unfortunately, we didn't have much say for what our programmers should work on, because around that time, the power to direct developers was basically shifted over to Garena. Now, we have a lack of resources issue, so we can only tackle on the critical elements of HoN one step at a time whenever we can humanly do so. But at least I have a lot more say as I'm the director for the NAEU/International Client right now. The actual limits/bottlenecks are the physical resources, time, the age of the tech stack & how much access we actually have (and of course, legal constraints & what-not). If I was a director maybe 5 years ago, things would have been so much better.

This bug can't really be fixed. I would say it's a feature to avoid auto-generating cyclones by dropping + picking up SotM, etc. It also makes sense since each Cyclone has their own individual timer.

I've finally had time to quickly read through each one & decide. All of them are actually good & in line with some pre-existing abilities (for path-blockers, Empath's wall already doesn't block). Thanks for going through these, I should be able to fix all of these in the next patch

You completely missed the point. Once again, have you played against it in the past?

Would it help if the Vault projectile speeds were faster? Monkey King's abilities already have a ton of modifiers on them. I'm not going to make R a toggle to permute even more modifiers on Vault, as it becomes a technical management nightmare.

I don't think you remember the days of old Deadlift E that costed only Health to cast. You're pretty much bringing back infinite harass if you do that, because HP regen is way easier to obtain than Mana regen.

Hi all, Many of you are probably wondering on our progress & what happened with the donations, so I will elaborate on that here: Stripe actually has a processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 of the donated amount (https://stripe.com/en-ca/pricing), so we never actually get 100% of the donations (unfortunately). $1 donations usually result in a net of $0.66 - so donating one time with something like $5 would actually be more helpful than donating $1 five times. Just wanted to state that somewhere so you guys know! Most of the currently unused funds are kept on hold until our small development team finishes up x64 for its initial release & moves onto working on other tasks & features (in other words, the funds will be useful for them in the future). Some funds were used on x64 development as well. A small amount of funds were used for map-related touchups in 4.8.6. HoN x64 has Chromium implemented, and we are just working with Garena to get a proper CDN (Content Delivery Network for those who aren't tech savvy: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cdn/what-is-a-cdn/) to allow proper distribution of the x64 client without overloading the servers in an official manner (for an official release). We are close to a public beta release though & are looking into a temporary (unofficial) CDN-based solution - more details to come in the (very) near future! Most of the funds used for 4.8.6 were used to replace the USE servers ourselves with OVH servers, since their regular server provider (Tencent Cloud) does not have any data centers in the USE region. Some funds were used for developing a DoS attack proection mechanism. All servers (at least to our knowledge) now have proper DoS attack protection and DDoS attack protection. Part of the reason why the USE servers had to be replaced (& not the others) was because the original server provider for USE servers had no DDoS protection, and DDoS protection is handled by the provider. Contrary to what everybody has been saying, most of the attacks on HoN aren't DDoS attacks, but DoS attacks that could be initiated by a single machine using a malicious script to spam fake packets to the HoN game servers. You can read more about the technicals in this article if you wish: https://www.comparitech.com/net-admin/dos-vs-ddos-attacks-differences-prevention/ DoS/DDoS attacks can never be 100% mitigated due to how the internet protocols work. Recent attacks on properly protected servers have been limited to 2 seconds of disruption/lag spikes or less with the defenses enabled, which is efficient when considering the level of resources we have to mitigate attacks & to develop any kind of solution for this. In the past, the attacker can take down the game server instance any time they want to. As DoS/DDoS attackers are persistent & have nothing better to do with their lives than attacking a small indie game, they will continue to attempt attacks and evolve their mechanisms to do so. If there are servers you suspect are getting DoS/DDoS attacked (server lag for longer than a few seconds), please report them in this thread & following the thread rules + provide the requested info mentioned in the thread (we can collaborate with Garena to look at the protection mechanism for existing servers if they have that service available): ============= For 4.8.7: We are aiming to release x64 via public beta, likely before Patch 4.8.7 is released. 600 USD is reserved for the 4.8.7 winter Forests of Caldavar ("New") map touchup - at the moment, it's not confirmed that other maps will get the same treatment, but I will talk to Strider (the professional map editor for HoN) about that & if he's generous, he may do it for more than 1 map. We are also aiming to get some account value features implemented, as that is quite critical for HoN's sustained success (since it is too easy to create a smurf and join CoN games). The team (including myself) will be really busy with life until 2021, so these features may not come in full as much as we want to in 4.8.7. Once again, thank you for your understanding & continued support for HoN! - ElementUser

If you think a server has been DoS/DDoS attacked, please report here with the following info: Match ID Server Name (this can be found by watching the replay and then typing in /gi) Start time of the game and your local timezone (this can be found at the bottom of the UI in the new UI & is displayed somewhere in the Match Stats window in the old UI) Actual in-game time of attack (and replay time if possible to disambiguate) Even better would be the real/actual time of attack if you provide your local timezone when reporting the issue Please make sure that you only report if you experience these in-game conditions: The game server actually freezes for an extended period of time (10+ seconds) and eventually ends up crashing (i.e. you get disconnected) And/or, the game server experiences constant lag experienced by every single player in the game (not just by you) for an extended period of time (10+ seconds) Only report games on the NAEU/International Client. No SEA reports here, because we cannot access those servers Actually investigating these attacks take up a lot of our time, so it is critical that you only report servers that meet these conditions with all of the requested info. If there are issues with the servers, we can communication with Garena and ask their security engineering team to adjust the parameters to better protect the servers from DDoS attacks. All erroneous reports will be deleted - processed reports may be deleted after some time. Thank you for your cooperation!

Which ones do you want to see? I can do a band-aid, but I'm not doing anything more than number tweaking/minor adjustment tweaking if you want it this patch (this means I'm not bringing back old abilities as a regular skill). I saw 5 possible solutions you listed, but a preferred set would at least tell me the direction you want to go in with the hero without doing reworks for the moment.

It's super minor & your unitwalking wore off right after you finished the charge projectile impact. I'll adjust the projectile impact distance very slightly so that it happens a little earlier & it should mitigate the (already super rare occurrence) of this bug. This is literally the first time it's been reported.

I have been told this & will try my best to make adjustments in collaboration with our map editor. Long story short, it's going to be micro adjustments, or it will be a full revert. This spot is way too sensitive to change without the risk of changing many other things (as shown in this patch). There are many other spots that were not included in your report that this change has negatively affected as well.

I can, but my point is that even if I do all these changes, his design is the issue here. No matter how much I number tweak, he'll either lose his feel & long-range design, or the problem won't be solved. He's a pretty binary hero right now in the sense that he's feast-or-famine.

That sounds like a meta factor & not too relevant to balancing the hero

I mean that he's not going to be looked at this patch. You can post suggestions here since you put some thought into your thread on the exact changes you want, but I'm not going to consider implementation until 4.8.8 at the earliest. It's likely going to be 4.8.9 or later. Artillery simply isn't a priority right now.

Skrap is low priority right now. The hero isn't particularly memorable, but I can still manage to give minor changes to him soon. I would not expect any kind of reworking to him for a very long time (if at all).

Went through this thread, thanks for the feedback

Artillery's backburner material because he's just too hard to balance & design/rework on a base level & ultimately he's not really that important of a hero in HoN. The main reason why he's so hard to balance is specifically because of the long range aspect of the hero being a prime frustration factor, in the sense that it promotes not interacting as much as possible.

Warding is fine.

Valkyrie options are more suitable for the farther future, not the near future. The hero is generally in a good spot at the moment.

Counter-intuitive, it's never going to happen. It would also feel really awkward. Predator's Restrain being tied to his ultimate is kind of pointless. If the enemy has any regular human reflexes, they would be long gone before his Terror procs.

I've went through the thread & decided what I'll change for Moraxus next patch, thanks

I'm putting this thread to rest as it's clear Pharaoh is still a staple in today's meta.

Won't be buffing anything in the future except for what MerryHoNMas said (in a future patch).

Went through this thread again, thanks for all the feedback!

They do have their own servers.