HON 3.0 bring MatchMaking to the Next Level !
Semi Transcript by Drijfhout :
Did anything catch your attention at the E3?
I almost only play HoN, but what caught my attention the most was Tera Online.
Are you happy with the state of HoN as a whole game?
Very pleased with where things are. Last couple weeks have been terrible, obviously. It was hard to remain positive. Reception of F2P was fenomenal. Play numbers are fantastic, constantly going up and amazing retention. Overall, very pleased.
Last couple weeks have lot of servers issues. What do you have to say to the fans?
Our system has operated for a year without problems. We knew we were nearing our peak capacity which made it difficult to mitigate the attacks. We were working on redesigning the architecture so the timing was really bad. The DDoS pointed out flaws we were working on anyways. New attacks are happening very often but we're mitigating them much faster resulting in only very short periods of down time. When we make the switch to what we've been working on over the last 6 months or so, we should be able to handle of those issues without any issues. HoN in the near future will be just as stable as it was.
What do you think about the competative scene, are you happy with it?
Yes, but we have the philosophy to want to improve everything. It's not in a bad place but it's not in the best of places. We want to take it to the next level with what we've been working on for the last months, with partners. It's going to make quite some ripples and maybe change the way other competative games are operated.
It's one of the reasons for being at the E3 and this party: we wanted to reveal it here. A little hint: we're going to start running a competative circuit that's going to be different from all other competative circuits with a massive price pool. We should be releasing details soon.
Competition from DotA2 and LoL. Are you worried?
It's really unhealthy to worry about things you can't control. Competition is a good thing. The more competition we face, it means the better we have to do. I'm sure DotA 2 is going to be a great game. They're gonna increase the number of players that play this genre. Worrying isn't the right word but is it a driving force for some of the things we do? Absolutely.
Are you happy with the 2.0 shop (to be clear: the one with Goblin coins, not the new in game one with the guides)?
Without a doubt. The future of gaming is probably heading to that direction. Matchmaking is absolutely awesome. Based on the growth since 2.0 I think the community agrees as well. All of this allows us to do things with the game that weren't possible with the traditional model. It will allow us to create more content that we can deliver free.
Anything you're willing to leak?
I like to use the word 'games as a service'. We provide additional content to people, for free. We've been very aggresive in the way we patch the game and that's not going to chance. We haven't really revolutionized things so far, something like matchmaking was in other games. We've been working on something though, maybe call it HoN 3.0, which will be a much bigger step. Similar to going from going to game list to matchmaking, that big a step.
Once we introduce it, we think that HoN is popular enough that maybe this will be the way that most games are played in the future. It has to do with how you find games, who you play with, the community of people that you play HoN with. HoN is very large community of player but it doesn't necessarily mean you need to play it with that entire community. I don't want to hint too much but it's something that we're very excited about and something all the HoN players are going to be excited about as well.
Anything you'd like to let the community know?
Yeah, thanks to all the player. We love to make games but it's really exciting to see how people enjoy games. I want to thank people for their patience with the recent down time. Some people have less patience than others but that's a sign of them loving the game, they can't stand not having it. I fall in this boat as well. Not being able to log in drives me nuts as well, on a personal level not just on a professional level. I look forward to continuing to operate HoN as a service. Bring better and new content to players and bringing it to more players.
Who's your favourite hero?
Rampage!
So, are we going to see changes to him?
No, why would we change him!? I play HoN not competitively but just to have fun and that's how a lot of people play the game. I like playing the hero, I like his play style, I like being able to charge people from across the map. I like playing tankier heroes... I don't like to die. I think that's kind of a well-known thing around the community.
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