Hero Wars 2.5.scx

Review by dokebi 11

Hero Wars 2.5, once the main realm of sc hacker culture

I used to be obsessed with Hero Wars like everybody else a couple of years ago. It was first made by a guy named Yobbo, and it's been changed since by various people, including Saradomin who edited version 2.5. What made Hero Wars eventually lose ground to Custom Hero Wars by it-over- was that it had cheats and "pro" strategies that made the game pointless. The hackers embraced it (some still do, like sandbaggin, who nostalgically remember the good old days and want to "keep the map alive"), while other people attempted to make alternatives like CHW & my HW Greece.

The basic issues with hero wars, present from 2.0 to 2.7 and some of the 3.x versions are theses:

1) Unbalanced heroes
2) Rigged shop units (i.e. defiler with swarm)
3) Duel arena that makes dueling a contest determining who's more gay than the other
4) Money cheats with observer and shield batteries
5) Messed up betting system (usually says "it works now, its been fixed," but it rlly doesn't.)
6) Hero repick cheat with observer
7) Armor upgrade is pointless, and protoss shield upgrade even more so.
8) Spawn can be blocked with pylons built by a probe and a reaver wave, denying kill cash for the enemy team.

These are the aspects of the map that allow hackers to do their things by noob bashing (by the fact that you're losing the game you also don't have a say in critiquing the map's flaws), setting up opponents for humiliation by daring, and drophacking if all else fails.

The game ends in draw if the game starts with only 1 player, but it doesn't end if all other players leave - clearly a design favoring drophacking since there is a good chance that the target player who's been subjected to a stressful or demanding game will continue playing the game alone without realizing everyone else had left.

Heroes are unbalanced period; units like templar (tassadar), dark templar, and lurker are definitely bad choices, and goliath, marine, and zergling are the must-have favorites. Because hero hp is so small (850~1000) there is a point later in the game when heroes have too many upgrades and certain units become obsolete. But what makes this really dumb is the cheat that allows you to repick your hero by moving an observer to the hero picking area. Let's just say there was a zergling and tank. The tank switches to a vulture. In response zergling switches to an ultralisk. Then vulture switches back to a tank. So what's the point?

Certain shop units like the probe and battlecruiser also ruin the game. BC's use can yamato cannons to destroy the enemy base within the first several minutes of the game. Probe can mass shield batteries that give more income. Some "pros" don't even try to play the game. They just sit back and wait until they can build 5 shield batteries at once. You might as well call this map "Income Wars. The probe can also block the spawn location for the computer with pylons and a reaver wave. It means no spawn kills and therefore no cash for the enemy team. The observer can go to a certain spot in the game (different for different vers, but it's usually top right corner) and get free money ranging from $2000 to $5000.

Duel arena is also stupid as hell. The missile turrets are placed so ranged units can hit and run more effectively against melee units. The spawn location for the heroes in duel are higher ground than the middle ground. Some gay "pros" just sit out a picnic on the spawn location, waiting for the enemy to come to them, miss their attacks, and lose the duel.

The main counter argument for all these pointless aspects of the game is "but you can do it too, so it's not cheap/cheat" But the fact that both sides can cheat doesn't make cheating less cheap. And these secrets in the game are not explained in the mission briefing anyways.

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Author:

dokebi 11

Posted On:

March 27, 2010

Rating

Overall:

• Terrible

Terrible

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