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Partido entre Team Diva vs. Team Dogkaiser
http://www.twitch.tv/honcast/b/317236293
Welcome to the first ever Mid Wars developer blog, where we'll be taking an inside look at the newest piece of content coming to Heroes of Newerth! In this edition we will cover the history of Mid Wars (a.k.a. All-Mid) gameplay, what our design philosophy was behind standardizing this increasingly popular custom game mode, and provide you with some basic information on what's in store when we release this game mode to all of Newerth on May 11, 2012.
First and foremost, Mid Wars is a direct product of the HoN community's passion and input. The feedback received from people around the world who have been playing HoN since we went Free-to-Play and beyond is crucial to the way we develop HoN each and every day. This feedback comes directly from forum posts, social media comments, community created content such as blogs and videos, and trends we've seen through two years of Public Games played on the HoN servers. From basic subtleties in playstyle, to trends and metagame shifts, this feedback is pivotal to what makes the HoN community exemplary and why we're committed to fueling that passion even further.
What makes us most excited about Mid Wars? What started as a grassroots community movement in custom game modes has the potential to be one of the most popular gameplay shifts in HoN history. In scanning the Public Games list in HoN, we noticed that the "All Mid" tag was extremely popular and it consistently stayed that way. As a result, we took a closer look at how we could expand on the basic premise of "All-Mid" and create a standardized version of the game mode that would cater to the entire HoN community.
For those unfamiliar with this new game mode, allow us to explain. Historically speaking, the Mid Wars movement began with players hosting games of HoN on the Forests of Caldavar using only the middle lane (with the top and bottom lanes ignored) and all the action centralized at the middle of the map. What made Mid Wars such a compelling experience was that respawn times were turned off, meaning that once a player died, he or she was almost immediately thrust back into the action and lived to battle it out in teamfight, after teamfight. The result was high action, low stress gameplay that we aimed to capture and expand upon throughout the Mid Wars development process.
This excellent community-created idea was just dying to be made official with a standard rule-set, its very own Matchmaking system, and a change of pace from the normal HoN experience that people have enjoyed since HoN was released two years ago. Consider Mid Wars as a reprieve from the intensity that can arise from playing Forests of Caldavar time and time again or as a low pressure game mode designed to encourage you to try out new heroes you may be unfamiliar with. We have worked with the community to capture what made playing "All Mid" great and fun while taking it to the next level with creative and intelligent design decisions that improve on the current model.
Getting down to business, we set out very early in development to remedy one of the major flaws we saw in every "All Mid" public game-the near impossibility to end the game in a reasonable amount of time. Typically games just 'ended' at about 30 minutes from the start because people got bored and simply disconnected. Without a clear goal in sight, the action became stale. As a major point of the new map, we set out to speed up the game so it ends when it is supposed to while preserving compelling gameplay.
Speeding up gameplay to us meant rebuilding the battlefield from the ground up with Mid Wars in mind. With the Forests of Caldavar blueprint in hand, we sliced off the side lanes, threw them over the edge of the map using the cliff tool, and took a look at what was left. With defined edges to the experience, we shortened the middle lane ramp resulting in essentially a streamlined Forests of Caldavar, far better suited to Mid Wars. The paths and juking points on the side of the lanes (leading into the jungles) were cut off and the bounds of the map were decreased significantly to prevent wandering off by blinking or cliffwalking. We also removed Kongor and destroyed his lair to make room for a new ramp on the Hellbourne side that allows the Hellbourne team to move along the river similar to how the Legion has since beta.
Its little changes like these that make us so excited to bring the non-stop addicting action of Mid Wars to Heroes of Newerth. From the high intensity and low stress gameplay, to faster matches and brand new environments, we've been addicted to Mid Wars game mode at the S2 Games offices ever since we started development and we can't wait to share the rest of the Mid Wars goodness with HoN fans around the world. That concludes our first ever Mid Wars dev blog, but keep in mind that there is so much more for us to uncover as we prepare for when the war begins 5/11/2012!
Fuente: HoN Midwars Blog
