Honor of Kings
Honor of Kings is a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed by TiMi Studio Group and published by Tencent Games for iOS, HarmonyOS NEXT, and Android.
The game was first released in mainland China on 26 November 2015. In October 2016, an international adaptation, Arena of Valor, was released, utilizing the same game engine but altering the user interfaces and heroes to accommodate the Western market. As of November 2020, Honor of Kings had over 100 million daily active players, making it one of the most popular games in the world. It is the highest-grossing mobile game of all time and one of the most downloaded apps globally.
In June 2022, Level Infinite, the publisher of Arena of Valor, announced that Honor of Kings would be released globally through a separate version by the end of 2022. In May 2024, the worldwide launch of the global version was announced for 20 June 2024, following pre-releases in Brazil and Turkey as well as countries in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Honor of Kings was the highest-grossing mobile game in the world in 2024, with $2.6 billion gross.
Overview
Honor of Kings is a quick-match mobile multiplayer online battle arena game. Either a Tencent QQ account or a WeChat account is required to play the game. Following an update on 24 September 2020, a player can add friends and invite people from different platforms to guilds.Honor of Kings was the second-highest earning mobile game worldwide for February 2021, with $218.5 million in gross revenue, which represented 57.2% year-over-year growth from February 2020. About 95.6% of Honor of Kings
Gameplay
Honor of Kings is a multiplayer online battle arena game in which the player controls a character with unique abilities and competes to defeat non-player characters and opponents to gain experience points and gold. With experience points, players can unlock their characters' abilities or further augment the power of their existing abilities. The highest level that each hero can reach in the game is level 15. Each level up not only improves the attribute values of the character players control but also gives them a skill point to upgrade their skills. There is a character called "Jiang Ziya" in the game who can use his unique "Fengshen" skill to remove the level limit for himself and another character. However, after level 15, he can only improve the attribute values of the character. Gold can be used to purchase items at the shop that uniquely change specific attributes of the character.To win a game, players need to knock down the enemy's defensive structures, called turrets. Victory is achieved by destroying the opponent's base crystal, located within the enemy team's base. Specific gameplay mechanics vary depending on the game mode chosen.
Experience and gold are also earned across matches and applied to player accounts. Accounts start at level 1, with level 30 being the maximum level. Upon leveling up, users receive bonus in-game awards. Leveling up also unlocks certain summoners' abilities that can be applied to every hero the summoner uses. Gold can be used for a variety of purposes, such as purchasing new heroes.
Types of damage
Physical damage is the most common damage in the game and appears with damage numbers in red. Physical damage can be decreased by armor.Magical damage appears with damage numbers in purple. Magical damage can be decreased by magical resistance.
True damage is the most powerful damage. This damage cannot be reduced by armor; it can be only decreased by damage-decrease buffs or skills. One of the playable heroes, 'Nezha', has a shield that can block true damage, appearing as a small yellow section of his healthbar. Damage numbers appear in white.
Critical damage deals massive damage in crit chance ; it can be physical, magical or true damage.
Game modes
Honor of Kings has a variety of game modes, with a majority of them focused on competitive matchmaking. Without a network connection, players can play the stand-alone mode. With a network connection, players can choose a variety of battle modes, in which players can either face off against each other in player versus player matches or participate in various player versus environment adventure modes.In each of the player versus player modes, there are options to battle AI opponents. The AI can be set on easy, normal, or hard difficulty. Also, players can open 'rooms' where they can invite and battle a friend or recent battle teammate or opponent. There is also an option to open a 'draft room' for a 5v5 in which everybody is invited by someone else in the room.
Rift of Kings (5v5)
Rift of Kings is the most commonly played game mode. This mode is used in KPL competitions, the ranked game mode using the same game map. Ten players, each controlling a hero, are split into two opposing teams of five. The teams start on opposing ends of the map, with the victory conditions either being to destroy the enemy's defense turrets in order to reach and destroy the enemy nexus base. To destroy the enemy nexus base, teams must destroy defense turrets, which are situated on the three main lanes—the top "clash" lane, the middle lane, and the bottom "farm" lane —used to reach the enemy's nexus base. Nexus bases can restore health points slowly but defense turrets cannot.Heroes are protected by minions, which are periodically sent from the team's base. Without the protection of minions, heroes can be damaged by turrets. Turrets prioritize enemy minions within their vicinity, but will immediately target enemy heroes if they attack allied heroes within the turret's range. Each player can increase their hero's level and gain coins by killing enemy minions, heroes, or wild creatures situated between lanes, a wild area known as the 'jungle'.
Some creatures in the wild area also have certain status effects benefits which increase their hero's attributes. There are five kinds of buffs: blue, red, tyrant, overlord, and tempest dragon. For example, the blue buff is used to regenerate or improve mana, a resource which many mages and assassins use. The red buff is used to decrease the moving speed of the enemies, and it also deals a few 'real damage', which is useful for warriors and marksmen. Both types of buffs last for 80 seconds.
Ranked matchmaking (5v5)
Once a player's account reaches level 6 and owns at least 5 heroes, they are able to participate in ranked matchmaking.There are a total of 7 large matchmaking tiers, namely Tough Bronze, Order of Silver, Glory of Gold, Noble Platinum, Eternal Diamond, Master Star, Super King, Peerless King, King of Glory, and Legendary King in ascending order. Each large tier is further subdivided into several smaller tiers, denoted by their respective Roman numerals in descending order. In the Bronze and Silver tiers, there are three smaller sub-tiers each ; the Gold and Platinum tiers have four sub-tiers each ; the Diamond and Master tiers have five sub-tiers each. The King tier uses a star system to determine rankings. If King players reach to 25, 50, or 100 stars, they are automatically up to Peerless King, King of Glory, or Legendary King, respectively. The Legendary King is the highest tier for players to reach.
Players are able to join matchmaking either solo, or in groups of 1, 2, 3, or 5. Groups of 5 will only be matched with other groups of 5, and the same applies to groups of 3. The game's matchmaking system will match appropriate teammates and opponents according to the player's rank and win rate. However, there are segment requirements for teams to participate in qualifying. With the exception of five, the player of the highest rank cannot exceed the player of the lowest rank by more than two rank.
In each ranked game, stars can be gained or lost depending on the outcome of the match. Winning the match grants the player 1 star, while losing deducts 1 star. There are 3 stars in Bronze and Silver, 4 Stars in Gold and Platinum, and 5 stars in Diamond and Master in each smaller tier. If a player wins a match and max out their stars, they will be promoted to the next smaller/larger tier; losing with no stars in a small tier will deduct more stars.
Top Match
This mode is full of experts and highly technical players; participation requires a rank above Super King star one. Top Match players are not allowed to group with players of other ranks in the game. The nicknames of players are disabled and replaced by "Top Player" 1 to 10.The Match seasons, Honor-point system and Eagle-Eye Players
The Honor-point system introduces a secondary method to stars. For instance, points may be earned in every match by not disconnecting in the middle of matches. Once earned, points will automatically be used to prevent the deduction of a star once; the points will return zero after star protection. In other cases, the player could be promoted to an 'Eagle-Eye Player'—someone who checks other players' in-game performance and punishes bad behavior—by maxing out points in the Honor system and doing a few tasks.Matchmaking rankings are reset periodically, with every reset being known as a competitive 'season'. Each season lasts approximately 3–4 months, with season awards being given to players according to the highest tier achieved. Each season has two skins that need to pay for the VIP award. Season points in the season portal will grant players season tokens, free skin chest, diamonds, and other special effects. The rank achieved at the end of a season is also used to calculate the starting rank for the next season. The rank will drop depending on how many stars a player has.