Freakinchair said:Yeah sorryI wasn't on when you guys decided this and went ahead and worked on one of my own. It took me so long too because I've never used photoshop type software before.
I just wanna say that while I understand what you're trying to do - I feel it's kind of unfair to rally an entire community to your side via carrot on a stick method. In any case I'm probably just being a bitter old man - I'd be happy if any HoNGaffer won a key because we're the ones supporting the genre. Good luck!
I'll be damned if some of the other creators aren't calling in a few favors either ; some posters admited to that, and my own personal scepticism toward Johnny Gaf popularity too. (Sorry Goon Boon ; nothing against you, maybe I didn't quite seize GAF's spirit yet, who knows).
Either way, somebody on Mumble put it best ; the contest to win a key, this kind of contest, is silly. It's not about who will make a good balanced dota2-fitting hero. It's a popularity contest, t's'all it is. Put Christina Hendricks with 2 Neogaf icons as boobs and she'd probably win.
Dudebro should be 1st by default, there's no contest about it. As for the rest though, I may be biased, but if this was not a popularity contest, then Detective Gafstan should be higher. A (somewhat) good toolset that fit into DotA. A hero design that fit aesthetically (more than most) into DoTA. A hero design that reverberate with GAFs colors. A skill set and naming that is not EXPLICITELY "BAN POST " "FLAME SHIELD" "SUMMON MOD" and all that all-too-obvious-GAF-connection-that-totally-would-not-fit. All of Gafstan skills' flavor texts refers to a big moment in GAF history, old or recent.
1. Trace refers to a recent event where fellow poster Kato, arguing with moderator Amir0x, made excellent detective work to find out Amir0x was editing his own posts to a void being caught in a lie.
2. For or Against obviously refers to that infamous line by Denis Dyack here, and the end result.
3. Expertise refers to the meme that originated on GAF when FFXIII was announced on X360. ("Squaresoft just shot themselves in the foot...I know japanese culture (I'm an expert)" etc)
4. Long Arm of the Law, on top of being an actually awesome ultimate that I would totally give S2 permission to use, quite obviously refers to banhammers.
Also, Gafstan would love to go back to his home and be a family man. Not a GAF meme per se, but I've seen it tossed around.
All of those are subtle, perhaps. Perhaps too subtle for some people who didn't get all of those, but dammit, get a brain if so.
But people just skimmed over him because his picture didn't take 3 screens to scroll thru and that compared to other skills by other heroes, he's kind of tame (and also would actually be somewhat acceptable in DotA, while those other heroes wouldn't for the most part). I could work on them some more (as in Trace being castable on a Long Arm of the Law and that it would give you double movement speed bonus if so, essentially giving you more utility with Trace as well as a sure way to make one Long Arm of the Law hit from long distance), but people would still only see a smallish picture of a serious hero (so why bother with finetuning!), would skip over it, and then we'd all lose to joke heroes and Dudebro.
So in the end....what was a man, a community, to do?