I know you're peeking your head around, so I have a few things I'd like to say to you directly.
I'll preface this post by saying that you and I know each other pretty well. I was a poster of heavy repute in the beta days of Heroes of Newerth, and although I'm not going to say who I was publically, I will say that you and I have exchanged some words (And I've seen plenty of pictures of your abs) in the past in regards to some of your hero/item ideas that used to get posted in the User Submission forums back on the HoN forums. Despite that, I plan on both congratulating you and at the same time challenging you to participate in a semi-formal AMA with me. I feel as though this isn't too unreasonable, and I know that you're a reasonable guy. Lots of people here have lots of questions, but many of them aren't so great at asking them in ways that leave you with a lot of room to respond without being attacked.
First and foremost, congratulations. I understand that this is probably one of your largest projects to date. It's a pretty big one, too, remaking an entire map, one that has been laying around mostly unnoticed for quite some time now. The notion was noble in the sense that you wanted to breathe life into something that you enjoyed and felt had been neglected. I'd even go as far as to say that you did a great job at doing just that. People are playing the map, and for better or for worse, they're playing it en masse. It's been a popular topic for most of the afternoon, so you can certainly say that you did something that people noticed.
However, I have a few concerns, as I'm sure the rest of the community does as well. I don't want you to take these as personal attacks, but instead think of them as constructive criticisms, or at the very least a chance to outlet your frustrations with the design process. (I went to school for a design degree, I understand the process sucks sometimes.)
I'll bullet point them to make them a little easier for everyone to read and for you to respond to.
Whose decision was it to completely replace the old Twisted Treeline? Do you believe this to have been the correct course of action?
Many in the community feel that your map and the old map should be able to coexist. What are your thoughts on this, and if you agree, what stopped that from being the case?
In the design process for the new items, what was your goal? It feels as though most of them are rushed, and when they're as vastly underwhelming as they are, there is very little incentive to buy them over the old items. Is this why the old items were disabled?
Again, many players didn't like the fact that their old items were cut off in lieu of newer, less powerful items. I personally understand some of the changes, but then there are others that baffle me.
At what point in the design process were altars decided upon?
It seems as though they were not very well thought out, and may have been tossed at you late in development as a sort of "rune" (for those of you who have played HoN) for your map. As we've seen in Summoner's Rift, objective based gameplay can be important, but only if it doesn't become a central focus of the map.
There are more questions that I have, but I'm going to leave these open for you for now and we can move from there if you do decide to respond. I look forward to hearing from you.
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Senior Member
