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I wanted to touch on that: one of the things you learn is that it’s better to be liked than right. We devs often fixate on whether we’re right and the other per

I wanted to touch on that: one of the things you learn is that it’s better to be liked than right. We devs often fixate on whether we’re right and the other person is wrong. One specific incident comes to mind. I was working on Heroes of Newerth, a DotA clone. We achieved a bit of popularity in those days, and we reached around 50k concurrent users. So our servers tended to melt. One day, the servers went south, and although games were being completed, none of the stats were being recorded. (Think of it like, the database was in read only mode.) I remember it feeling a little surreal how they decided to handle it. They kept cool, looked into the problem, and got the servers back up within a couple hours. Then they went back to their usual jobs and didn’t seem bothered by the ticking time bomb. I think in my usual 22yo fashion, I said that it was dumb that no one seemed to care that the servers were going down, and that we had to do better for the players. What I should have done was ask questions. Should we try to figure out the root cause, and make sure this doesn’t happen again? Or was it really not a big deal? A few hours’ downtime may or may not have been a big deal. We did end up suffering from some pretty serious server malfunctions which limited our ability to scale. But I certainly mishandled how to approach it, and won no friends. Every team is dysfunctional in their own way. It’s important to adapt to the dysfunction and push things in a positive direction, not merely to be right.

maest 4y ago
If it makes you feel any better, I don't think technical issues were the reason HoN failed. For context, I have played a lot of DotA2 and HoN (5.2k hours in DotA2, probably 1k hours in HoN). This is anecdotal, but I was never really bothered by outages and neither were the other people that I played with. Instead, I think HoN made some very bad decisions regarding cosmetics and fostered an extremely toxic playerbase. At least for me, those were the 2 main factors that drove me away to play DotA2 (even though I thought HoN's gameplay was superior).
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  Surprisingly, what killed the company was the lack of competitive scene. We sort of expected players to organize themselves. We also had a lot of the DotA pros at the time. The moment icefrog and valve dropped their $1M tournament prize pool, the company in hindsight was doomed. But it took a couple years to sink. Players follow pros, and if the pros are playing DotA, they’ll switch to DotA. Our only chance was to keep the pros. It would have been smart to make an exclusive contact with as many pros as possible. But of course, that’s with hindsight. The rise of twitch happened to coincide with the rise of pro DotA, which I think was a factor in shifting popularity.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  > extremely toxic playerbase > drove me away to play DotA2 How toxic is the HoN playerbase if DotA2 is an improvement? I don’t think I’ve ever not enjoyed my games as much as in DotA2.
  - maest 4y ago
    I think the difference comes down to a few things: * the existence of behaviour score together with a functional report system, which I don't think was a thing in HoN. I'm at 10k behaviour score (max) and there are generally no game ruining griefers. Some people do trash talk sometimes, but nothing too obscene. * HoN cosmetics actively encouraged players to BM one anther. e.g. the Dumpster Taunt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC4j4U7K6mc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC4j4U7K6mc If you die while taunted you have a dumpster thrown on you and the global announcer tells you to get "dumpstered". Taunting a player right when they die (which is a strongly negative emotional moment) is a great way to tilt them and, in turn, make them grief, com abuse or generally bm. That negatively affects the rest of the players and the cycle goes on. * A bunch of players in the HoN pro scene had really bad manners, e.g. Moonmeander was notorious for his trash talking, taunting and general BM. He actually significantly toned it down when he moved over to DotA - unclear if that was because he grew up or because the DotA pro scene is a different environment. Regardless, the behaviour of pro players sets the tone for how the community at large behaves, and the DotA pro scene is much nicer. (incidentally, this is why I believe pro players should be held at much higher standards of manners than the rest of the player base. Stuff like saying glhf, gg and generally not acting dickish should be mandatory)
    - Haga 4y ago
  - bernardonw 4y ago
whimsicalism 4y ago
You are conflating "ask questions before jumping to conclusions" with "ignore inconvenient truths that are politically/organizationally uncomfortable" and using the obvious merits of the former to defend what I would describe as a toxic culture.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
This comment just brought me back to the League of Legends <=> Heroes of Newerth arguments. Complete with both games having server stability problems. (But obviously one is worse than the other!) Thanks for the nostalgia hit!
tuckerpo 4y ago
HoN kicked ass back in the day. Thanks for the anecdote.
tonnydourado 4y ago
> it’s better to be liked than right. Broadly, maybe. At work, I don't care about being liked by people that can't admit they are wrong. That doesn't being a dick to anyone I think is wrong. The whole point of telling someone that they're wrong is to correct course and fix things, and bullheaded, righteous, approaches never accomplish that. But it does mean you don't keep quite. You don't give up. You ask questions, you try to learn. Because part of the process of saying that something is wrong is being willing to learn that maybe you are the wrong one. I understand being unwilling to bulge to people that come in thinking they know better about everything. But I do not accept not even listening to someone that disagrees, that's a red flag,and I am out asap.
- yucky 4y ago
  Because part of the process of saying that something is wrong is being willing to learn that maybe you are the wrong one. Ironically, you are wrong. Not only are there better ways to let people know they're wrong when you're 100% right, but in your example you aren't even sure you're 100% right, yet telling others they're wrong. Good luck with that :)
  - tonnydourado 4y ago
    What other way there is to tell someone that they are wrong then, well, telling them?
    - yucky 4y ago
      You said: "Because part of the process of saying that something is wrong is being willing to learn that maybe you are the wrong one." So which is it? Are they wrong for sure, or are you willing to learn that you may be the wrong one?
      - tonnydourado 4y ago
        Saying that something is wrong doesn't imply (at least for me) that you're 100% sure that it's wrong. I always consider colloquial affirmations to carry an implicit degree of confidence, which is rarely 100%, and I often try to make that explicit by phrasing it like "I think that ...", etc. So, yeah, I don't see a conflict on thinking something is wrong, pointing it out, and arguing for change, and at the same time be open to be convinced that it wasn't, in fact, wrong.

maest 4y ago

If it makes you feel any better, I don't think technical issues were the reason HoN failed. For context, I have played a lot of DotA2 and HoN (5.2k hours in DotA2, probably 1k hours in HoN). This is anecdotal, but I was never really bothered by outages and neither were the other people that I played with. Instead, I think HoN made some very bad decisions regarding cosmetics and fostered an extremely toxic playerbase. At least for me, those were the 2 main factors that drove me away to play DotA2 (even though I thought HoN's gameplay was superior).

sillysaurusx 4y ago
Surprisingly, what killed the company was the lack of competitive scene. We sort of expected players to organize themselves. We also had a lot of the DotA pros at the time. The moment icefrog and valve dropped their $1M tournament prize pool, the company in hindsight was doomed. But it took a couple years to sink. Players follow pros, and if the pros are playing DotA, they’ll switch to DotA. Our only chance was to keep the pros. It would have been smart to make an exclusive contact with as many pros as possible. But of course, that’s with hindsight. The rise of twitch happened to coincide with the rise of pro DotA, which I think was a factor in shifting popularity.
Aeolun 4y ago
> extremely toxic playerbase > drove me away to play DotA2 How toxic is the HoN playerbase if DotA2 is an improvement? I don’t think I’ve ever not enjoyed my games as much as in DotA2.
- maest 4y ago
  I think the difference comes down to a few things: * the existence of behaviour score together with a functional report system, which I don't think was a thing in HoN. I'm at 10k behaviour score (max) and there are generally no game ruining griefers. Some people do trash talk sometimes, but nothing too obscene. * HoN cosmetics actively encouraged players to BM one anther. e.g. the Dumpster Taunt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC4j4U7K6mc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC4j4U7K6mc If you die while taunted you have a dumpster thrown on you and the global announcer tells you to get "dumpstered". Taunting a player right when they die (which is a strongly negative emotional moment) is a great way to tilt them and, in turn, make them grief, com abuse or generally bm. That negatively affects the rest of the players and the cycle goes on. * A bunch of players in the HoN pro scene had really bad manners, e.g. Moonmeander was notorious for his trash talking, taunting and general BM. He actually significantly toned it down when he moved over to DotA - unclear if that was because he grew up or because the DotA pro scene is a different environment. Regardless, the behaviour of pro players sets the tone for how the community at large behaves, and the DotA pro scene is much nicer. (incidentally, this is why I believe pro players should be held at much higher standards of manners than the rest of the player base. Stuff like saying glhf, gg and generally not acting dickish should be mandatory)
  - Haga 4y ago
- bernardonw 4y ago

whimsicalism 4y ago

You are conflating "ask questions before jumping to conclusions" with "ignore inconvenient truths that are politically/organizationally uncomfortable" and using the obvious merits of the former to defend what I would describe as a toxic culture.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago

This comment just brought me back to the League of Legends <=> Heroes of Newerth arguments. Complete with both games having server stability problems. (But obviously one is worse than the other!) Thanks for the nostalgia hit!

tuckerpo 4y ago

HoN kicked ass back in the day. Thanks for the anecdote.

tonnydourado 4y ago

> it’s better to be liked than right. Broadly, maybe. At work, I don't care about being liked by people that can't admit they are wrong. That doesn't being a dick to anyone I think is wrong. The whole point of telling someone that they're wrong is to correct course and fix things, and bullheaded, righteous, approaches never accomplish that. But it does mean you don't keep quite. You don't give up. You ask questions, you try to learn. Because part of the process of saying that something is wrong is being willing to learn that maybe you are the wrong one. I understand being unwilling to bulge to people that come in thinking they know better about everything. But I do not accept not even listening to someone that disagrees, that's a red flag,and I am out asap.

yucky 4y ago
Because part of the process of saying that something is wrong is being willing to learn that maybe you are the wrong one. Ironically, you are wrong. Not only are there better ways to let people know they're wrong when you're 100% right, but in your example you aren't even sure you're 100% right, yet telling others they're wrong. Good luck with that :)
- tonnydourado 4y ago
  What other way there is to tell someone that they are wrong then, well, telling them?
  - yucky 4y ago
    You said: "Because part of the process of saying that something is wrong is being willing to learn that maybe you are the wrong one." So which is it? Are they wrong for sure, or are you willing to learn that you may be the wrong one?
    - tonnydourado 4y ago
      Saying that something is wrong doesn't imply (at least for me) that you're 100% sure that it's wrong. I always consider colloquial affirmations to carry an implicit degree of confidence, which is rarely 100%, and I often try to make that explicit by phrasing it like "I think that ...", etc. So, yeah, I don't see a conflict on thinking something is wrong, pointing it out, and arguing for change, and at the same time be open to be convinced that it wasn't, in fact, wrong.