Nomerology : Denying

Amun Ra by S2Ari

I see a lot of people who comment on HoN videos (mainly League of Legends players) who decry the deny mechanic. Not only that, but there are elements at S2 who feel similarly that it is unintuitive, and would likely not include such a mechanic if the designing the game from scratch. Let’s review the three major arguments provided on the LoL site:

• It exacerbates the differences between ranged and melee heroes.
• It’s unintuitive to attack your allies.
• Denying slows the pace of the game.

The first argument is absolutely true; DotA and HoN have attempted to mitigate the range difference by assigning more powerful abilities to many melee heroes, giving melee heroes higher statistics, giving melee heroes a smaller XP reduction on denies, and making items that directly suit melee heroes’ playstyle and address their weaknesses. The discrepancy and design difference between melee and ranged is huge, and all games both inside and outside of the genre have to account for differences in range. 

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