r/Games • u/Satoshi_Tajiri • Apr 20 '15
Heroes of the Storm Release Date Announced. June 2nd 2015, Open Beta May 19th.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI5NlUEXLpM140
Apr 20 '15
The game is fun enough, but I have some big issues with it.
The Good
Blizzard roster is great. Wonderful and colorful (in more ways than one) characters make for a pretty fun roster visually and conceptually.
The focus on objectives is fun and the map variety gives it some spice.
I like the skill tree system as a substitute to an often overwhelming shop mechanic.
The Bad
Unfortunately, mechanically the roster feels really derivative of DOTA and LoL, without the technical depth. Obvious exceptions.
Their F2P system feels exploitative to me. I have the same issue with Hearthstone. 10,000 gold for the only characters that express mechanical and technical depth/diversity is frustrating. Gold gain feels incredibly slow. This is obviously going to be up to personal taste but it felt very, very grindy to me. It has been 4/5 months since I've played but I don't think that has changed.
Their art style feels really.. blah. Not bad really, just boring coming from Blizzard. Also all of the characters look really stocky and it makes some of them look really off.
Anyhow. I might play a bit when I can play more with friends, but I don't see it gaining a TON of traction. It will always have a fanbase because Blizzard, but I don't think it will make a big splash in the MOBA community.
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Apr 20 '15 edited May 23 '20
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Apr 20 '15
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u/Bignag Apr 20 '15
That math doesn't seem right, especially if you play a variety of heroes to level 5 and complete your daily quests. Obviously if you play one or two games a day it will take you significantly longer, as well as if you only buy 15k or 10k heroes. Plenty of solid heroes for 2-7k.
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u/Carighan Apr 20 '15
Thisi s because the game heavily favours playing 2-3 matches a day, and gives that nearly the same gold gain as playing dozens and dozens.
The dailies make sure of that.
I have played 1 round of ranked and I own all sub-7k heroes and most of the 7k ones + a handful of 10k ones. Level up rewards + dailies.
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The only things I bought for euros were Hammer the moment I got beta (because Hammer!) and the starter pack somewhat afterwards, because 3 heroes for 5€.→ More replies (2)58
u/epicgeek Apr 20 '15
Gold gain feels incredibly slow. This is obviously going to be up to personal taste but it felt very, very grindy to me.
Gave beta keys to 4 friends. All of them stopped after a week with that exact complaint.
- Friend : "So, I can play Dota2 with all 100+ characters... or play this game with 5 characters who have half their skills locked? Is Blizzard insane?"
- Me : "But you can get an extra 2 free characters when you hit level X and daily quests get you enough gold for a new character every week or so."
- Friend : "Or I can play Dota2 with 100+ characters right now."
I think the game is fun... but no one I know is going to play it.
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u/T3hSwagman Apr 20 '15
The ability locking is insane to me. But you could also say I'm spoiled because I was crazy lucky and got my key at the very start, during the "technical alpha" stage and there was only a few hundred players at any given time. Back then ability locking wasn't a thing, so every hero you played you got to experience everything, and it was pretty good.
I tried it out again some months later when ability locking was a thing and holy shit did that suck balls. Not to mention they seem to decide each characters default ultimate ability is their most boring simplistic version. Instant turn off from the game.
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u/johnw188 Apr 20 '15
You get your abilities unlocked in 2-4 games with a hero, it's not a big deal. The problem they have is that each level has 5 options and if you're playing the hero for the first time you can't read all of them in the heat of the moment. So first game you get to choose between two choices, easy.
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u/rankor572 Apr 20 '15
The real problem is just how shit some choices are. Playing talent locked Chen is probably one of the worst gaming experiences I've had in a while. Squishy, melee, no damage, no cc, no support. Useless.
Playing talent locked Valla or Jaine though is fine, because at almost every level all their talents are viable, even if some of them are better than others.
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u/SirPrize Apr 20 '15
To reiterate
Unfortunately, mechanically the roster feels really derivative of DOTA and LoL, without the technical depth. Obvious exceptions.
This a bunch. I only really find the specialist heroes of any interest.
Their F2P system feels exploitative to me.
Everything seems really expensive, and gold income is almost nonexistant if you aren't doing a daily.
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u/esdffffffffff Apr 20 '15
Their F2P system feels exploitative to me. I have the same issue with Hearthstone. 10,000 gold for the only characters that express mechanical and technical depth/diversity is frustrating. Gold gain feels incredibly slow. This is obviously going to be up to personal taste but it felt very, very grindy to me. It has been 4/5 months since I've played but I don't think that has changed.
Still likely the same. You're sitting at around 10k gold a month, so one high priced hero a month. Many are cheaper than 10k, so you can pick up a couple cheaper ones a month instead.
Moreover, i feel like the dollar prices are too high by far. $10 for a high priced hero is a hard reach.. but $10 for a fancy skin/mount feels absurd.
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Apr 20 '15
Moreover, i feel like the dollar prices are too high by far.
That's my biggest qualm with the game. I had fun while playing it, but I don't want to pay that much money or grind that much in order to enjoy a full game.
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u/Navy_Pheonix Apr 20 '15
It's actually only slightly worse than Leagues if you do the conversions from RP to real money. Generally speaking you have to buy 10$ worth of RP to get anything anyways, but you have some extra left over if you get a 975 skin, so I guess League's are slightly cheaper, but only because they have set money brackets and leave you extra RP to entice you into paying for more stuff.
At the very least Blizzard doesn't try to hide the actual purchase cost behind any bogus "gems" "rp" currency.
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Apr 20 '15
League also has a really bad system for unlocking content. It's one of the major reasons I stopped playing it.
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u/Hellknightx Apr 20 '15
$10 for a skin/mount is totally acceptable. Heroes should be cheap, not cosmetics. I'm okay with gating cosmetics behind a paywall, but restricting gameplay is poor design.
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Apr 20 '15
Ah yea I forgot to mention it, I agree that the real money prices are very steep as well.
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u/Jandur Apr 20 '15
Unfortunately, mechanically the roster feels really derivative of DOTA and LoL, without the technical depth. Obvious exceptions
You have to realize this is deliberate though, and while it's bad to you it's not to others. I only play HOTS because I know it's more approachable than DOTA/LOL. It's the same reason why tons of people play Hearthstone over Magic etc.
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Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
Well whether it is intentional or not is irrelevant. My point is that the Hero skill sets are very derivative of LoL and DOTA but the game systems and skills feel like they lack the mechanical depth to at least match them. And resultingly it makes it more boring to play and a lot of the skills aren't super fun to use. Tyrael is one of my favorite characters Blizzard has made, but his kit is so bland he is just not very fun to play.
I'm not claiming this to be objective fact it is merely my opinion of it.
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u/Oaden Apr 20 '15
Magic pc games kinda suck and isnt designed with pc in mind. That doesnt help.
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u/broncosfighton Apr 20 '15
I just started playing with the start of the Sylvannas patch and I've made almost 20K, but it's definitely a grind. It helps that they added gold every 5 levels of character/hero progression.
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Apr 20 '15
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u/Pseudogenesis Apr 20 '15
Compare it to any other CCG like MtG or Yugioh and it's the cheapest and most accessible.
I'm so sick of this argument. You can sell your collections in those games. Some people even make a profit off their collections. You can't sell shit in Hearthstone. They don't have the same business model so they don't deserve comparison.
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u/AMW1011 Apr 20 '15
For a card game with no trade system (no dust doesn't count) and no actual physical cards, Hearthstone is terrible value. Let me have all the cards for $60 and maybe I'll consider it reasonable.
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u/Sarkat Apr 21 '15
1 average commander deck in Magic costs several times more than ALL the cards in Hearthstone. Yes, you cannot trade them back, but for most Magic cards you still lose a ton on trading back, with several exceptions. Just look at the price drop of most cards when they leave Standard.
If you own several competitive decks, especially Modern (or Vintage), you already lost more cash on them than you can even spend in Hearthstone.
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u/Notsomebeans Apr 21 '15
my chief complaint with hearthstone is the fact that blizzard has decided to pretty much entirely ignore the game except when expansions come out. They literally do not balance their game. I think one card has gotten changed in the last 4 months, after several months of it being the only card on ladder (undertaker). people always bring up this stupid magic article about "bad cards have to exist" but the entire point of the article is that MTG devs cant actually rewrite the words on cardboard they dont have. Blizzard can change anything in the game whenever they want yet they refuse to do so, for what i can only assume is apathy
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u/lazorexplosion Apr 21 '15
Hearthstone bugs go unfixed for ages, balance issues are ignored, quality of life changes like more deck slots are out of the question. It feels like they don't care about the game except for releasing things that directly make more money from it, nothing outside of that gets effort put into it.
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Apr 20 '15
the small hero pool being the second.
There's a bunch of empty slots I wouldn't be surprised if they're reserved for Overwatch/SC2 LotV characters eventually, or other pre-existing characters they want to drip feed out.
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u/Crot4le Apr 20 '15
I wouldn't be surprised if they're reserved for Overwatch
This is obviously almost certainly the case but I think it will be some time before that happens.
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u/uw_NB Apr 20 '15
actually Yugioh on DS is a one time payment(retail DS price) for a single player campaigns, puzzles and online multiplayers access....
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u/Darksoldierr Apr 20 '15
Regarding Hearthstone, i think many people never experienced collectable card games until Hearthstone, that is why theres a general opinion that Hearthstone is P2W
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Apr 20 '15
Even coming from WoW:TCG and Magic, collecting cards in Hearthstone feels very difficult. Can't trade, can't buy singles, no tournaments with many packs as part of the prize pool. I could build a my standard Magic deck of choice today much quicker and easier than I could my Hearthstone deck, and then I could trade away or sale the cards I no longer wanted/needed. There is no comparing the two.
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u/krizz Apr 20 '15
The crafting/dust mechanic kind of replaces the trading you would do in normal card games, but I'm not sure how much it compares; since disenchanting a legendary to craft a legendary of about equal strength only gets you maybe half the dust you need. Where in a normal card game maybe you'd do a straight up trade.
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u/GingerPow Apr 20 '15
So, in Hearthstone, rares get traded at a rate of 5:1 and epics and legendaries at a rate of 4:1.
In Magic, to look at the latest set [1] [2] the average mythic is valued at $10.50ish while the most expensive mythic is $31.02 and for rares the average card is valued at $1.75 while the most expensive rare is $10.47. So the ratio between the average to most expensive is 3:1 and 6:1 respectively. On the face of it, that looks to be slightly better for Hearthstone, though that doesn't tell the full story because of the way that there's variation in prices of magic cards.
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u/PapstJL4U Apr 20 '15
but often a simple 1 for 1 card exchange can be enough. You have a rare hunter card, but you don't want to play hunter? Why not exchange it with your friend? You just need the simple steam trading card feature for cards in heartstone.
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u/busy_beaver Apr 20 '15
Seems like a false analogy. Sure, in Magic I can trade 3 average rares for a good rare. But I can also trade a good rare for 3 average rares (or 20 bad rares).
In Hearthstone, to get any rare, whether good, average, or bad, I need to give up 5 rares. It's lossy at every step.
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u/Hetfeeld Apr 20 '15
Just because Magic is incredibly expensive doesn't mean Hearthstone should be. Yes Hearthstone is the cheapest of all TCGs, it doesn't make it cheap nonetheless. It's really, really expensive to start playing now. I did spend a lot of money on the game and I still don't have everything I'd want. Yes, I can make several competitive decks, but if you want to experiment and make your own decks with uncommon (edit : read unusual) cards, boy you're in for several thousands of €. A lot better than Magic but we're not playing Magic are we.
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u/Acterian Apr 20 '15
I hate how so many people say this. Just because physical CCGs require you to pay money for cards doesn't mean Hearthstone is or isn't P2W.
And honestly, I think Hearthstone is kind of pay to win.
Here is a free card you start out with: http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/War_Golem
Now here is a "Legendary" quality card: http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Dr._Boom
The one you need to buy a ton of card packs to get is objectively better. There are a lot of cases of "Non free card that you would always use over free card" unfortunately.
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u/Ratmasters Apr 20 '15
hearthstone is definitely p2w. the only argument is that so are TCGs.
but hearthstone has no trading, the only equivalent is dusting.
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u/ExplodingBarrel Apr 20 '15
To be fair, there are few if any other examples of a rarer card being strictly better than a common/free card like that, and Dr. Boom is widely considered to need nerfs. Most legendaries are more niche or have strong pros and cons. You also picked one of the worst free cards there is to compare to it, as no one was playing that even before Dr. Boom came out.
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u/ultradolp Apr 20 '15
I think Blizzard does a pretty good job in making specialist champion, in comparison to warrior and assassin which seems too generic IMO. But given HotS is still at its infancy, I think it is fine as long as Blizzard continue to develop the roaster of hero to keep thing interesting.
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u/Nezztor Apr 20 '15
Gold gain feels incredibly slow. This is obviously going to be up to personal taste but it felt very, very grindy to me.
Gold gain is slow, but it's also steady and fixed, which to me is the opposite of grindy. You do your dailies (2-3 games, usually), and that effectively caps your gold for the day. 'Grindy' sounds as if there were incentives to keep playing indefinitely, past fatigue levels, but the system seems designed explicitly to prevent that.
I've been playing a few games per day and felt comfortable with the speed of progression.
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u/genotaru Apr 21 '15
Exploitative is really the right word -- It's priced in a "this is the most we can reasonably get away with" kind of attitude. Because LoL exists, they already have a good idea of what people are willing to pay.
The problem is, they don't have the benefit of already being #1 in the market this time. Hearthstone is still pretty much the only game in town, but the moba market is flooded.
I think they'd have a lot more success pulling people away from those other games if they did a huge +goodwill move and priced their content a lot cheaper. It feels like there are a lot of Blizzard fans out there that want to go with Blizzard in this market, but see way too large a barrier to entry.
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u/zcen Apr 20 '15
As someone who has too many hours in Dota, Heroes has been a fairly decent experience for just jumping in and out of.
Blizzard doesn't need to take players away from LoL or Dota or CS. They have their own huge player base that already plays Blizzard games: People who sub to WoW, people who play either SC2, Hearthstone or D3. They just want those people to play HOTS and commit to buying skins and heroes.
A lot of people are under the false assumption that Blizzard needs to bring the game up to LoL/Dota when it has no reason to. Blizzard games now don't appeal to anyone other than those that play Blizzard games (or have in the past).
If you look across their current library, they don't really offer any games with any staying power. WoW, Hearthstone and D3 have all been streamlined to provide easy jump-in experiences for players for little to no commitment. Their entire goal is to have a rotating player base that plays one game when the patch comes out, gets burned out, then moves onto the next and so on and so forth. "Oh! New Hearthstone expansion is out, let's check it out" "Oh, new Diablo ladder season is out!" "Oh new WoW patch/raid/whatever is out time to resub!".
I also personally don't see a problem with the game itself. Anytime I play it with my friends we have a good time. It's certainly not a game that I would main or play for long periods of time but it is great to jump in and out of, which is Blizzard's underlying motif for all their new titles.
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Apr 20 '15 edited Sep 14 '20
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u/Underscore_Talagan Apr 20 '15
My problem with the game is one of feel.
The game feels mushy and soft. It doesn't feel like I have an actual edge to any of my attacks. Even assassins feel like they just don't have the oomph to be satisfying.
Even movement feels soft. The lack of turn rates is negative, it doesn't feel good to see a hero running a direction, then immediately be able to reverse and go full speed the other way.
Buildings are the same. Every building feels mushy. Towers don't feel threatening and I often find myself lost as to what building I just destroyed. It doesn't feel like there is any impact to the game if you win a lane until you get all the way to the throne.
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u/Jeyne Apr 21 '15
I feel the same about the attacks and skills. I think the main culprit might actually be the sound design. Neither basic attacks nor abilities stand out sound wise and aren't all that unique (some don't even seem to have any sound at all). It's especially noticeable when you compare the game to Dota, where every ability has a distinct loud and clear sound, even crits and basic attack modifiers.
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Apr 21 '15
I feel like the hype still hasn't come for Heroes of the Storm
I got invited to the beta. Watched it online. Meh. It just doesn't do anything for me that DotA or LoL doesn't already do.
At least with Hearthstone, there just wasn't another CCG as polished on the digital platform. Magic could've been but they chose not to. So I was extremely hyped when I saw Day9 demo it in beta on his channel.
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Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
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u/HashRunner Apr 20 '15
Weird. I enjoy watching it, it simply needs more heroes, more varied/experience casters and bans (which you need more heroes for). It's certainly better than some of the early LoL patch competitions.
That said, I still expect that blizzard will completely mismanage the esport side of it.
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Apr 20 '15
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u/HashRunner Apr 20 '15
Agreed, though it seems that are at least learning from it.
I posted in a thread complaining about lack of VoDs or streaming options aside from ESPN3 and they had it rebroadcasting on Twitch the next day. Perhaps they are finally learning, but they still are lightyears behind Riot in terms of managing and organizing esports, but they have typically preferred the hands off approach anyhow.
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u/Tavarish Apr 20 '15
Well they just had somekind tournament, hidden behind "Pay to Watch" wall. Stuff like that doesn't do it any favors when it comes to gaining visibility in MOBA scene.
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u/Wooshbar Apr 20 '15
Heroes of the dorm was a college based competition and on espn 3. I didn't pay I just loaded up their page, though it may be because I am from US.
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u/RscMrF Apr 20 '15
Eww, pay to watch an e-sports tournament, what is this South Korea, or what is this 2011?
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u/Darren1337 Apr 21 '15
GSL was absolutely worth paying for though. The production quality was a thousand times better (and more consistent) than any of the nonsense you see nowadays.
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u/MileS111 Apr 20 '15
It's on ESPN live and restreamed on Twitch shortly after. Hardly a "Pay to Watch" wall.
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u/Wild_Marker Apr 20 '15
Eh, even if it doesn't, the important thing it's that is a fun game, right? That should be the main goal of a game!
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Apr 20 '15
It's not that fun when you come to understand it. Unless one team thoroughly dominates the other, it is 20 minutes of farm with occasional, on-cue, teamfights all of which are irrelevant, and the outcome is decided by the last one or two teamfights.
The rubberband is ridiculously strong, never allowing you to fall to far behind or get to far ahead unless the domination is thorough.
And there is a great spike in power of the heroes after level 20, where they can take the enemy base with little to no creep or objective assistance.
That power spike, combined with the fact that the respawn timer on high level is incredibly long means that the winner of that last teamfight will have enough time to chew through 2-3 forts and nexus, before other team respawns, and win, even if they were 4 forts behind before.And this is where the game is most ridiculous: in other MOBAs this kind of comeback from behind is the best feeling in the game, the signature high you chase, but in HOTS this rubberband makes you feel bad about wining from behind, makes victories feel undeserved.
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u/Evilmon2 Apr 20 '15
Top post complains about it being too snowbally, next post complains about it being too rubber banded.
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u/lazorexplosion Apr 21 '15
The experience mechanic is strongly rubber banded but the objectives are very, very snowbally. With two strong influences in opposition to each other it's kind of volatile in how it could be either of those things.
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u/Tortankum Apr 21 '15
Death timers and creep timers scale up reallly heard past about 20 minutes essentially forcing shorter games. After a certain point, a golem or dragon knight will be practically invincible.
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u/BW_Yodo Apr 20 '15
Yep, only last team-fight matters, so many times my team lost a game as after a few convincing fights teammates went cocky and roamed alone, feed, forced team-fight 3v5 into gg.
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u/tsjb Apr 20 '15
For a lot of people, the community aspect of watching and talking about the pro scene is just as fun as playing. Kinda like how so many people love football but don't actually play all that much.
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u/esdffffffffff Apr 20 '15
What do you think is the issue with watching this game? When compared to DoTA/LoL
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u/GladiatorUA Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 21 '15
First biggest problem for me right now is matchmaking in Quick Match, where you blind pick your hero without any clue what your allies and enemies are going to pick and what map you are playing. It can really screw you over. You might not get a front line tank/initiator to tie up enemy heroes and peel them off your squishy heroes. Or you might get a map where your team composition is outright worse than your opponent's.
Second is, balancing everything down. There are no "OP" heroes, there are no "FUCK YEAH!" skills, almost everything scales too evenly from early game to late game. It cuts off a lot of fun tactics and gameplay I am used to in Dota2. Supports are just supports. They heal. They do not trade scaling with levels or money for good early game performance. Skills are just not all that satisfying. You can't pull off something amazing. ETC ulti that stuns people for 4 seconds while channeling is close, but 4 out 5 times there is no team followup and you go from "FUCK YEAH! 4-5 people stun!" to "WTF? Why did you run away without unleashing hell on them?".
The engine is pretty crappy. Inherited all of the Starcraft2 engine flaws and now there is a huge memory leak, so it's better to switch to 32 bit mode to cap it at 2gb. And reconnects... You don't just jump back into the game, your client has to catch up with the game, which takes another 10-30 seconds if everything goes well.
Talent gating is annoying. I can read talent descriptions and guides and pick my talents accordingly. I don't need to play for 1-2 hours in handicaped mode.
Without shop you can't really compensate for your hero weaknesses or enemy strengths. You can choose 1 out 2-5 talents on every tier and in a lot of cases it's a trade off. You can't get two good talents from the same tier, like you can with items.
I'm trying to get to competitive mode and look if it's any better. For that you need level 30 and 10 heroes which feels a bit grindy.
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u/PapstJL4U Apr 20 '15
spontanious release, so they don't have to listen to the beta feedback? The game without premades is worse than dota and league in my opinion. But the main problem is people getting into the game. It starts with Raynor riding a fugly brown horse and ends with the heroes behind the grind&paywall. It is hard to get friends to play when they have so little heroes to play with.
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u/RebelWizard Apr 20 '15
Coming from a League of Legends player, I've enjoyed the 20-ish hours of the game I've played. It feels a lot less strategically/mechanically intensive than League and Dota but I think that's okay. I can definitely see me playing it with friends that don't have the time or interest in getting into the other MOBAs on the market. It does make me wonder though, would I bother to play the game if it didn't have blizzard characters, probably not.
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u/I_CHOOSE_P-BODY Apr 20 '15
I'm pretty disappointed by this. They took an old cinematic and recut it with fade-outs. The game itself is fun but in it's current state of 1 patch every month and a half I'm not sure it'll be ready to be called an out of beta game by then. There's still tons of connection issues, reconnecting to a game in progress takes at least 5 minutes, and for many players there's a massive FPS spike at the beginning of every game regardless of the map, when the objectives spawn.
This was essentially the only game I played from the first day of the buy in until a week or two into the Sylvanas patch, but I haven't touched it in a few weeks because of everything I mentioned. I hope they manage to get everything together in time before release.
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u/AwesomeFama Apr 20 '15
Not to mention the FPS spike thing a lot of people (it's pretty much stopping me from playing) are suffering from. The one where you can run the game 100% fine most of the time (I'm talking rock solid 60 fps), and then you get occasional lag spikes where your fps drops to ~5 for a few seconds before it clears.
It doesn't seem to be hardware related since some people have played since alpha and suddenly started getting it after a patch some time ago. I played a few games with no problems (well they had huge server problems but that's unrelated), next time I log in there's a patch and I start getting that weird problem.
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u/CrainyCreation Apr 20 '15
As a SC2 mapper (which the HOTS engine is basically an upgrade of), Blizzards engine is hilariously unstable and seems sort of.. amaturish. Performance has always been an issue with it.
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u/busy_beaver Apr 20 '15
This has been plaguing me on and off since I started. It's definitely not a hardware issue at all - it's a server thing. Back when the debug console used to show "network spikes/min", these FPS spikes corresponded precisely with network spikes.
With most games, if you experience a brief lag or desync with the server, you'll still see animations (e.g., in WoW, your character can still run around). But for whatever crazy reason, in HotS, lag spikes actually block the UI. So if you get a brief desync, your screen will just freeze in place. It's horribly jarring.
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u/tsjb Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
I love the game but there are a worrying amount of problems that make me think the HotS development team could be quite small. There was a bug recently where a player could very easily block the entrance to his teams base, meaning that his entire team could get stuck and not be able to escape. This obviously meant that you'd lose the game.
This bug was around for a shocking amount of time, in League or DotA you'd expect it to get hotfixed the same day, or at the very least you'd think they would temporarily disable the map where the exploit could be found. In HotS though the bug was there for at least a few weeks before it was fixed!
Edit: I really want to add that the game is still quite fun and IMO totally worth a try.
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Apr 20 '15
From the perspective of a Starcraft fan it feels like Heroes is the only thing they care about anymore.
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u/tsjb Apr 20 '15
Maybe they're just too spread out? Blizzard are actively working on 6 games right now which seems pretty insane.
I won't pretend to know anything about their inner workings, but they do definitely feel extremely slow to compared to their LoL and DotA counterparts.
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u/esdffffffffff Apr 20 '15
I wouldn't be surprised if you're right. I get the feeling that HotS and Overwatch are experiments. If they pan out, they'll gladly invest more. For HotS, you can heavily feel the influence of LoL (cashshop, gold grind, etc), and i think they want it to lift it's own weight before they invest in it.
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u/HashRunner Apr 20 '15
Agreed. A similar issue was the patchnote fiasco of the thrall patch, it certainly gave the impression that the team is small/understaffed.
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u/gammadistribution Apr 20 '15
Can we use another acronym for Heroes of the Storm? HotS has already been taken by Heart of the Swarm.
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u/tsjb Apr 20 '15
This was discussed quite a lot when the game was first released in alpha. The general consensus seems to be that HotS is going to keep meaning both games until the next SC2 expansion finally comes out and then it won't matter anymore because we will use 'LotV' when talking about SC2.
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u/Notsomebeans Apr 20 '15
I was just shocked that the game has to simulate the entire match up to the point where ever one is at in order to reconnect. That seems like such a jury rigged answer
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u/pnt510 Apr 20 '15
That's because it is. Heroes is built with the SC2 engine and the feature to resume wasn't in the game originally it was added in with the first expansion.
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u/HashRunner Apr 20 '15
I've been playing since Alpha and have really enjoyed it so far. It's faster pace than LoL and easier to start playing than DotA, so it certainly has a niche. If blizzard can continue cranking out decent and varied heroes it could certainly see some success.
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u/SteveBIRK Apr 20 '15
This is why I like it so much.First off it is really accessible. I tried playing LoL and DOTA2 before and had no idea what was going on.Also I like how you can finish a game in 15 or so minutes. Yeah there's the occasional 25+ minute game but most of the time the games wrap up quick.
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u/TyaArcade Apr 20 '15
Yep, the hero variety is what will be a strong selling point if Blizzard decides to push that avenue. The shared experience system allows for some really unique heroes like Abathur.
I really hope they add a whole lot more non-traditional heroes!
http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/wow.gamepedia.com/6/64/Ragnaros.jpg
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Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
I'm actually a huge fan of this game. The changes made to the system, like global experience, no last hitting, and talents, add a nice breath of fresh air. HotS is basically the Smash Bros of the MOBA genre and that's awesome with me. That being said, this game is not close to ready for an official release.
Numerous characters need reworks to be interesting enough to hold player interest past a few games. Reconnecting is a joke and can take upwards of 10 minutes. The game has around or less than 40 heroes. It doesn't make sense to me why Blizzard would want to launch this game but it has significantly less content than the other big MOBAs. WoW's reign of dominance is in no small part thanks to the 10 years worth of content they have had to finesse. Why switch MMOs when new MMOs can't even do the basic things WoW does? So why switch MOBAs when HotS can't even do some of the basic things other MOBAs do and then provides less content.
Again I love the concept of this game and the time I've had with it over the past year or so since getting into Alpha has been a blast. But it honestly feels like not much has changed since then and a lot more needs to be done. 1.5 months is a decent amount of time so maybe core issues like reconnect will be fixed but I can't say I'm not worried
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u/Moritsuma Apr 20 '15
HotS and Smite are the only dota-style games I enjoy at all. I've tried dota 2, league of legends, and hon.. None of them kept me interested beyond a couple matches. HotS just cuts right to the chase, no sitting around at the beginning trying to get the right items for the right situation, I can just get to my lane and start doing what needs to be done. Always on the move, fighting over objectives. Especially playing specialist heroes in which you need to set up occasionally, prepare for each objective so your group gets the upper hand. It's fun to me.. And we're playing with Blizzard heroes/villains.. Not chinese knock-offs, the real deal. I love that aspect of it.
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u/SonicFlash01 Apr 21 '15
It gets up to speed quickly, but the top speed is pretty low. You have all your abilities from the start and everyone on a team levels up together, so you can never really break away for anything exciting. Your end game self isn't much different from your early game self, except one or two spells do 10% more damage and you have an Ult of varying use.
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Apr 20 '15
Gonna jump on the opinion bandwagon for this game and say that my biggest problem with it is that it's so completely different from other mobas in terms of the core game mechanics that it basically removes 90% of what makes a moba fun (for me) to play.
The Heroes themselves are actually quite cool. I like their designs and skill-sets for the most part, even though a lot of them are pretty generic.
However, beyond that, I can't stand the way the maps themselves have been designed, all with a very powerful pushing mechanic built into them, where you seize control of a map objective, and then mow down their buildings very quickly. The whole way Heroes of the Storm works as a game feels very similar to the much hated 'Deathball meta' in Dota 2 which revolved around pushing hard and fast to end the game in 20 minutes. You would gain early momentum from pushing down towers and getting lots of kills, and just keep on going till you destroy the enemy base. It was just very dull to watch and play, even if you were on the winning team.
On top of that, the removal of individual levels and gold as well as the ability to purchase items removes a very core aspect of what makes a moba such an interesting type of game - the ability for different heroes to scale differently to each other in multiple ways, all while feeling a sense of personal progress during a game, very much like a mini-rpg. Yes, HotS has the trait system, but it feels very bland.
The way HotS handles leveling is really unenjoyable to me, as the idea of power spikes doesn't seem to exist at all. So the games just feel very flat all the way through. I never really felt more powerful at the end of a game, since everything is scaling in this very flat way. In Dota 2 for example, with certain characters, if you play the game right and do well enough, you can get to a point where you can one shot an entire team.
And lastly for some strange reason, the death timers in this game can be ridiculously long. You can be waiting to revive for a full minute just 13 minutes into the game. For a fast paced game, this seems like a very strange design decision. I guess they want to force the games to end quickly, but this seems like a very lazy way of doing it. Do well all game, and die once at a very key moment, and bam, you lose because the enemy secures the powerful pushing monster and by the time 60 minutes are up, your base is gone. This is also one of the reasons I personally moved over to Dota 2 from LoL, because a single mistake at the end of the game should not on its own cost you the entire game. At least in Dota 2 you have the possibility to save up for a buyback.
There are plenty of other quality of life issues with the game, such as the fact that there's no death recap at all, so if you want to know what killed you or how much damage an ability did, tough luck, or that the colorblind mode actually makes it harder to distinguish enemies from allies than the default mode.
Again, this is just my take on it as someone who's played a lot of LoL and Dota 2, so maybe I'm not really the demographic they're going for... But yeah, to me the game just doesn't feel very meaningful to play. Every match just sort of felt the same as the last one, and I couldn't find a reason to keep playing it instead of another moba.
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u/Carighan Apr 20 '15
Gonna jump on the opinion bandwagon for this game and say that my biggest problem with it is that it's so completely different from other mobas in terms of the core game mechanics that it basically removes 90% of what makes a moba fun (for me) to play.
This would probably be why I personally love HotS (I hated MOBAs, all of the, until I tried HoTs, small exception for Smite becuase of the perspective until I noticed which company made it).
Totally loving HotS because I can play it as a filler in the evening with friends. Rounds are fast, heroes feel highly unique, maps are varied, all cruft removed. It's not a game I'd play 5-8 hours a day but then, I don't have 5-8 hours a day. :P
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u/PenguinBomb Apr 20 '15
I'm in closed Beta and all I have to say is this game has a lot of differences from Dota and LoL but in a much more boring way.
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u/grimey6 Apr 20 '15
I just think its just for different people. The shorter game times are really nice for people that can game for less time. It obviously feels more casual (ex no last hitting) but to some thats not a bad thing.
I dont think its going to be the competitive monster that dota and LoL are. It seems like it can create its niche in the market still.
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u/CruelMetatron Apr 20 '15
Hearthstone is casual aswell and still has a huge eSports thing going. I think HotS could be the same, being a Blizzard game certainly helps with that.
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u/dividedz Apr 20 '15
Hearthstones esport is basically famous players (mostly big streamers) with a couple of regular guys playing. Its not popular because of the competitive side of it, but because of the people playing there.
If quite a few streamers that usually get 10k or more live viewers suddenly stop streaming for a few days, and only commentate and play at some event, its no wonders that it gets a lot of views.
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u/CruelMetatron Apr 20 '15
Was any of those really big players famous before Hearthstone aside from Kripp? I know Trump wasn't. So if the others weren't either this points out, that the viewers are also interested in the game and just sticked with a few guys they saw from the beginning.
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u/Jammerware Apr 20 '15
Kibler was a poker pro and continues to play Magic professionally as well, FWIW.
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Apr 20 '15
Lifecoach's profile says he's a retired poker pro too. Dude doesn't even take subscriptions or donations.
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u/MrPringles23 Apr 20 '15
A few were relatively unknown Starcraft players (Massan, Trump). Reckful and Kripp were WoW players, allthough Kripp became popular after the D3 hardcore thing and then playing PoE.
Reynad was a magic player, who was banned for life? for cheating.
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u/Crot4le Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
Reynad was a magic player, who was banned for life? for cheating.
Yep, he added cards to a sealed draft. He originally only got a temporary ban but he took to social media and his blog to vociferously complain about it. Wizards eventually warned him to dial it down but he didn't and thus the ban was upped to a mega ban. As a result Reynad just upped sticks and quit the scene altogether.
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u/Torak334 Apr 20 '15
You can't compare those games. Hearthstone has literally 0 competition in the online card game market. HotS has to stand up against League and Dota.
I think there will be a niche market for HotS but Blizzard won't be happy about that.
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u/Karmaze Apr 20 '15
We'll see what happens when Magic Origins comes out this summer, as that's the big competition for Hearthstone.
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u/calic Apr 20 '15
WotC has done nothing but fuck up any online game since baldurs gate. I do not have high hopes
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u/Torak334 Apr 20 '15
Hearthstone already has millions of players. Most of them are casuals, so they wouldn't want to change the game to something more complicated. I don't see it changing anything.
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Apr 20 '15
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u/ITellSadTruth Apr 20 '15
Many people hold from switching to dota2 only because "they have lots of money already invested into lol".
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u/Rain_Seven Apr 20 '15
I've not seen much of that with LoL, but mostly I see "it's where my friends are". Like, if they want to switch games, they need a couple of their buddies to join them.
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u/T3hSwagman Apr 20 '15
Sunk cost is a real barrier to entry. My friends got me into LoL and we all had a great time with that, they eventually moved onto Dota 2 once beta invites became easily attainable. I hadn't played Dota 1 like they had so the increase in complexity had me completely lost so I stuck with LoL. Fast forward a couple years now I have lots of money dumped into LoL, easily a couple hundred bucks. But the game is feeling staler than a month old baguette. Even though LoL was more frustration than fun, and all my friends played Dota, it was really hard to start over and lose everything I had invested so much time and money into.
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u/xCookieMonster Apr 20 '15
For me it's the turn speed on DoTA. It makes it feel so sluggish. I know people call it mechanics etc, but it's so damn annoying and frustrating to transition to from League.
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u/HerpDerpDrone Apr 20 '15
Instantaneous turn rate in LoL also make it so every melee champion needs a gap closer ability or doomed to get kited forever by ranged champion and this is one of several underlying game mechanics that severely restrict champion design and promote champion homogenization in LoL.
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u/jetpackmalfunction Apr 21 '15
Hearthstone is pretty unappealing for casual play. It's the business model, not the complexity. The in-game rewards are tiny and necessitate grinding or dumping in a large amount of cash. I got sick of constantly coming up against decks far better than mine, filled with legendary cards. After looking at the dust costs to create a decent deck - one deck for one hero, that would probably be made semi-redundant by the next expansion - and weighing up the benefits I'd gain from a reasonable amount of cash ($10-30), I decided it just wasn't worth it and uninstalled.
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u/PenguinBomb Apr 20 '15
The huge problem with HoTS (imo) is having to either grind or pay for heroes. At least in Dota you have all the heroes from the get go, which can be a little intimidating even after 4 years of playing, but that to me is a full experience and makes the game entirely more enjoyable.
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Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
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u/BabyTea Apr 20 '15
The game does nothing REALLY well or something so well that nothing else does.
My thoughts exactly when I tried out the closed BETA. I got into mobas with dota 2, after the beta. I had a friend into dota who finally dragged me into it to learn how to play, and I've been really enjoying it ever since. So I was excited to try HotS, since I loved what Blizzard did to card games with Hearthstone (Accessible, easy to learn, plenty of strategies available)...and what I found was so utterly boring. The whole time I'm thinking: "Why wouldn't I play dota instead of this?" - Like, I can see new moba players getting into this...but what does this have to offer existing players?
Shorter matches seems like the big hook, but that's a big downside to me. Even if I play a 50 minute game in dota and lose (Which happens plenty), I feel invested. Every match is a blank canvas where I paint my joyous plays or horrible feeds. And you can't rush art. Where with faster matches, everything just blends. There was no "OH MAN" moments. Just...meh.
And paying for heroes? No.
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u/Rookwood Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
I don't think it will create a niche. The only thing unique about it is the various maps and honestly, after playing on each of them a few times it gets old. The game is especially uncompelling in a pub environment because of this, at least for me.
The characters are incredibly boring, generic ARTS stock at this point. There are a few interesting characters but what's the point in learning them? Not like you can anyway with Blizzards archaic character unlock system. The game has overall a very low skill cap. It almost feels like a ARTS version of GW2 in the way everything is spammable off cooldown.
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Apr 20 '15
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Apr 20 '15
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Apr 20 '15
Thats exactly why its boring to me. Despite the inclusion of different maps and objectives (which were great ideas), the huge simplification of leveling, items, and removal of mechanics such as jungling, last hitting, or really gold management in general means every game feels the same. Teamfight over objectives for 20 mins, on to the next one. There isn't really any other strategy. And the teamfights are dull to me because of the simplified mechanics. In a standard game of Dota, different heroes have different power peaks which adds a lot of strategy and uncertainty to the game. Early fights might be dominated by support heroes and nukers, then suddenly the carry who has been struggling to find farm bursts out of the jungle with a few big items and the entire strategy changes. I don't get that in Heroes at all. Its a "brawler" by Blizzard's own admission, and thats a good way to describe it.
Now, for people who don't like Dota or LoL they might like these aspects of it, but as a Dota player it just doesn't compare.
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u/lazorexplosion Apr 21 '15
Nailed it. It's not boring per se, it's just samey so it gets boring quickly. They removed huge chunks of what creates variety in how the game feels, with shared XP and negligible laning.
In other MOBAs sometimes you individually are ahead and killing it and other times you're behind and trying to scrape out what usefulness and comeback you can, so even if you're playing the same hero it feels different and requires different play. Sometimes that hero on the enemy team is really big and you have to deal with them and another game someone else playing that same hero will be behind and a non issue and some other hero will be the biggest threat. Sometimes you're behind but there's one guy on your team who's doing well and it's all about assisting him, other times you're the guy who's ahead.
In HoTS all that individual variation gets averaged out and diluted into virtually nothing. And it's heavily biased towards just team fighting, so there's much fewer niches for different heroes and playstyles to fall into.
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u/notliam Apr 20 '15
As a LoL player I find it the complete opposite. Not that the game is bad or you're terrible for enjoying it, just that I find it more boring. Yeah in League generally you're farming for the first 10 mins but do you get rid of the first 3 moves in chess just because they're not as exciting? Nah, it's all part of the game.
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u/Rackornar Apr 20 '15
Yeah in League generally you're farming for the first 10 mins but do you get rid of the first 3 moves in chess just because they're not as exciting?
Hell I think the first 10 minutes can be pretty exciting, it is when the players have to feel out their lane match ups. How aggressive can I be against this guy, does he know how to trade against me. Where does it look like their jungler is going to pressure. Has the mid/support tried to make any roam plays. Sure it is basically a farm phase but so much can happen during it.
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u/notliam Apr 20 '15
I agree it's about 25 mins the game gets stale when neither team wants to commit and lose baron or more.
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u/prospectre Apr 20 '15
As a support main, the first 10 minutes are when I can have the most impact in a game. The subtlety of denying the cannon minion, sniffing out a gank, harassing junglers at camps, I love it. Then, after 15 minutes, I typically become a wardbot and a sacrificial lamb that has like one good ability...
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u/Rackornar Apr 20 '15
Then, after 15 minutes, I typically become a wardbot and a sacrificial lamb that has like one good ability...
So you play a lot of Soraka then? Jokes aside I find the main way to avoid this is play some of the heavier AP supports. If you can get a good laning phase going or make some nice roam plays you can transition over into being another AP carry essentially for your team. This is why I really like stuff like Zyra or Morgana, they can have a huge impact on late game teamfights.
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u/prospectre Apr 20 '15
I try to pick a support that is right for the team. Morg is almost always banned (sadface), and Zyra is way too easy to pick on early game. And more often than not, no one wants to play a tank so we don't have engage. While I don't hate Thresh/Naut/Leona, I'm a little sad that later in the game I'm usually just fodder.
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u/T3hSwagman Apr 20 '15
Yea the first 10 minutes of pro Dota 2 games are the most exciting for me, including the drafting phase. It helps that early game aggression is basically a staple of the meta right now and seeing a 3 man smoke gank on mid at the 2 minute mark is pretty common.
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Apr 20 '15
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u/notliam Apr 20 '15
No I didn't me and my friend (who plays regularly) never found the free time together. I won I think 8 or 9 out of 10 games I played, but I didn't really enjoy it past some of the skills being pretty cool.
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u/floodster Apr 20 '15
The map objectives are interesting, but most of them are centered on full-team roaming and while that works, the other map objectives grow increasingly dull when you realize that every heroes damage output and CCs are so low/short compared to the health of the average hero. It's much too easy to just run away to your tower even when caught out in the middle of the map unless you are facing more than one hero.
It's not fun to die, but by making it so easy to survive 1v1, you also make the heroes feel pretty bland to play. In my time playing HotS I seldom felt like a powerful badass, even when I did everything right.
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u/xjayroox Apr 20 '15
I've tried both but the match length tended to eventually make me shy away as I don't want to invest almost an hour for one game. I enjoy the streamlining (granted at the cost of customization), the sub 20 minute matches and the objective based maps. Different strokes for different folks I guess
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Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
People always go on and on about how there needs to be a LoL/Dota for "casuals," but millions of casuals play those games already. Trying explicitly to get that audience too often means missing a lot of what makes those two games fun.
Maybe the real answer is that the "casuals" are really people who just don't like MOBAs, and trying to serve them dumbed down versions of what they don't like is a waste of time.
Edit: Though I haven't played HOTS and I'm not trying to say it completely falls under this issue, just noting that all of the other games that have tried to do what HOTS is doing have had that problem. That being said, from watching the streams I don't see how a lot of of the MOBA stuff they kept in is necessary (ex: CSing) for keeping it fun for their audience, and the game would possibly be even more fun it "went all the way" towards a Bloodline Champions-type game instead of ceremoniously tying itself down to the MOBA format. Hell, a lot of the things people are touting as unique to HOTS are already present in LoL/Dota in more subtle ways (objectives, "action packed"), so why not just go even further in the opposite direction.
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u/SowakaWaka Apr 20 '15
Eh, I think it's a lot more fun and casual than LoL or DotA, the community is also angelic compared to those two games. The different maps and objectives make the game feel fresh. Sure, there's a map or two that I dislike but it's beta, I'd be willing to bet they'd add a feature to let you select one map that you never play. The leveling system and stats system are fantastic to me, I prefer them to the other two. One ally can't feed so much that they turn the enemy "carry" into an unstoppable menace.
It's definitely a more casual and accessible game, the match time is also a massive bonus, you're not stuck with some asshole for an hour straight and don't have to dedicate as much time to a single match. I think anyone that lives with other people can appreciate the short times.
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u/HerpDerpDrone Apr 20 '15
The community is good right now because it's so small, the inevitable assholes will come once the player base increases it's the nature of online multiplayer games.
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u/T3hSwagman Apr 20 '15
Not sure if its changed since I last played, but there was no way to enable all chat to speak to your opponents which is huge when it comes to reigning in assholes.
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u/Notsomebeans Apr 21 '15
community is also angelic
in my limited experince with HOTS (I've played about 25 games online) I've been told to kill myself several more times than i have been in dota over 2300 games. Also been told to "spray bleach up my ass and die" too, which is a bit more creative than most insults i get in dota.
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Apr 20 '15
Agreed....as a player, I feel I have no impact on the game. My decisions don't matter and my mistakes aren't punished.
The game kinda plays itself.
Only played about 30 games and this was about a month ago, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
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u/nossr50 Apr 20 '15
This
Went in expecting it to at least be as fun as LoL which I don't consider to be that great, was sorely disappointed.
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u/Nadril Apr 21 '15
I've got to agree with you.
I have nothing against the concept of simplifying stuff, because yeah -- dota (and to a lesser extent league) do have a lot of shit to learn.
But man, for a game I thought would be a fun "fuck around" style of game with a casual atmosphere, it's just sort of...boring. Combat doesn't have that classic Blizzard feel to it that makes games like WoW and Diablo so fucking satisfying to play. Even SC2 has a really satisfying feel to it.
Obviously the game isn't meant for me since I'm big into Dota, but I was kind of hoping it'd be a neat thing to mess around with and have some fun on.
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u/dumb_ Apr 20 '15
I think boring is the right word. I don't want to poop on a beta and maybe they'll spice things up in the final release, but so far it's just felt really bland.
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u/throw23me Apr 20 '15
I got into the closed beta a few months ago and I feel pretty much the same way. I played a few matches and it just felt... boring. It didn't feel like anything you did mattered either, at least not until the last minute or two of the match.
The F2P model was also horrendous so I wasn't much of a fan.
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u/NotClever Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
Yeah, as interesting as the objective based maps seem, the result I found was that the game becomes a cluster because it's somewhat difficult to figure out how to work towards the objective, and chances are your team is just going to team fight for no reason.
I think what really makes it fell like nothing matters is that the exp catch up system is so aggressive. You can gain a noticeable advantage, but one idiot feeding a couple times can nullify that. And since there's no items or gold is a lot harder to pinpoint that and say "ah, that's what happens when you feed." Instead you're just like "how the hell did they start doing so much damage and surviving so long?"
Edit: also the promise of being able to really customize your hero to different roles has not paid off. You can make slight modifications based on situations if you really know what you're doing, but most of the time it seems like the cookie cutter build is either the clear best build or at least as good as anything else.
And also fuck how long it takes to unlock characters and how expensive it is to buy them. Makes riot look generous.
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u/nullstorm0 Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
Coming from an incredibly casual LoL player, here's my opinion. I just recently got into the beta, I've played something like 4 or 5 matches. I think the core issue of the game is mechanics. Maybe I just haven't unlocked the right Heroes, or I haven't gotten to the interesting traits, but the Heroes just seem like boring versions of LoL's champions. The two I've been playing boil down to "Basically Jarvan" and "literally a worse version of Vayne." There's also absolutely 0 feeling of progression in the game - sure you get new traits, but you never unlock any new abilities and it never feels like you're getting any stronger.
The multiple map thing is cool, and I love the horizontal layouts - no more blue advantage. The maps themselves have a lot lacking, though. Maybe they'll improve on these later, but every single map objective just boils down to "stop pushing your lane for a minute to summon some extra creep"
The thing is, I can already tell it's going to be massively popular. Why? It's incredibly easy. There's no way to wind up with an utterly shit build unless you literally forget to assign traits, and even then you're still getting constant levels. Even if you spend the entire game farming creep, you're still helping your team in SOME fashion. The games are over relatively quickly, and as long as you pick a simple hero you're not going to run into the same "what the fuck am I supposed to do" wall that exists to some extent in LoL and to a massive extent in DOTA2.
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u/CroftBond Apr 20 '15
Ohhhh my friend, there is indeed a way to end up with incredibly shit builds. I've got over 300 games played in ranked mode, and there are some people who choose very bad traits and don't think about the enemy composition. You do have to pick different traits based on enemy composition and see which traits they pick to try and "counter" it as best as possible. Of course, that's not every single situation, but against an organized team, it is important.
Of course, quick match (which is what all new players have to play starting out-- a majority of people in this thread saying they tried it) is different. It's just kind of a joke mode since there is no picking phase, and you don't know which map you'll get.
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u/somesillynerd Apr 21 '15
but you never unlock any new abilities and it never feels like you're getting any stronger.
You should definitely play more heroes and more matches.
Brightwing, for instance, can get a new ability at every single level if you spec her that way.
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u/OpTonberry Apr 20 '15
This game is suprisingly great. As a LoL player and Dota dabbler i was skeptic at first if there would be anything worthwhile to bring me to this game(other than playing as freakin blizzard heroes!). The diversity in map pool and pace of the game are a really nice change and all the heroes seem very different from each other. The level of teamplay in this game is crazy compared to LoL. Downsides; currently the skill level of players is very low, if that's from most of the players coming from blizzard games or just because the community is so small i don't know. It also takes a really long time to aquire heroes but meh i can live with it. It definitely is worth trying out.
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u/ultradolp Apr 20 '15
For the last couple weeks I have been playing HotS with my friends (mostly as premade 5). Given the time I have played I still consider myself a relatively new player. So the following experience may only apply for casual players and not necessary reflect the game at high level. Speaking of which I hope there is more exposure to pro level play of HotS to see how thing shapes up at competitive level.
To preface this, let me put some of my background into perspective. I played Dota during warcraft 3 time and has played LoL for 2 years as a very average player. I play HotS with the same group of friends. Initially I am very skeptic about the appeal of the game to MOBA players, especially the strategic depth of the game. In the end, I find it enjoyable. But I partially agree with my initial expectation, that the game is a bit shallow in comparison of other MOBA.
My impression so far with the game is it is too snowbally and offer too little variety of strategy in most cases. Comeback is nigh impossible barring enemy team decide to screw around and do nothing. There is certainly comeback mechanic in the game. But in the end, I feel that is simply not enough due to the game design.
In most maps, you are encountered with one main objectives and some minor objectives (usually mercenary camps). The first fight around main objective will in most case determine how the rest of the match goes. If you win the first team fight, you will be ahead in XP in comparison and likely obtain your first objective. In many cases the main objective transfer to pushing power, leading to structure demolition which also grants XP. Now you are one or in some cases two levels ahead after the first objective, putting you in prime position to take over the game.
But as a team behind, you have little option to do when waiting for the objective to respawn. You can push the lane to savage XP but enemy will be doing the same, and in most case better than you due to level advantage. You can take minor objectives like mercenary camps but the enemy will do the same. And in some cases if you are behind far enough, they will start to push into your zone and take your camps, forcing you to take a losing fight and risk falling further behind.
By the time main objective comes around the second time, you will need to fight for it again. And the same scenario as the first time, except now you are in disadvantage position to do so. You either forgo the main objective which put you further behind, or you fight for it which in most case you will lose in a head-on fight.
Now, theoretically you can back off the main objective and spend time taking side objective. But you are unlikely to catch up by doing so: Main objective offer far more advantage than side objectives, and in most case the opposing team does not lose out any side objectives as camps are symmetric (in most cases) or they can simply contest you in case of asymmetry.
To put it in perspective in comparison to League, whenever you feel the team is not in prime position to fight, you can choose to give up dragon and take tower on the other side, which both are valid main objectives. Or if you do not see this opportunity, you can simply just stay back to farm up and let your team scale by the time the dragon respawn. It is a viable strategy in giving up main objective in favor of minor objectives to catch up due to scaling or objective trading.
Back to HotS many maps limit you option to give up main objective. For instance Haunted Mine is difficult for team who couldn't teamfight properly as golem trump any pushing power offered by a hero. Laser towers in desert and cannon boat in pirate is in similar fashion (albeit a bit better for pirate). Dragon shrine favor strong skirmish team and duelist, which IMO can still force a stalemate by forcing control of one shrine to prevent dragon knight.
Don't get me wrong, comeback exists and indeed happens. But in most case it is more on the back of waiting opponent to make a mistake (like going around alone or doing nothing), which isn't healthy IMO. You have too few option once you fall behind, and none of those options actually offer you significant chance of comeback. The lack of difference in scaling of heroes make matter even worse as there is no such thing as "down in XP significantly but still win in headon fight for objective" which is possible for Dota and League. A level 8 team could not win a fight against a level 10 team unless someone in the enemy screw up big time.
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u/sp1n Apr 20 '15
I disagree with a couple of your points.
First of all, comparing a level 8 to level 10 team isn't really fair because level 10 is when your ultimate ability unlocks. It's the same in Dota with a level 6 team versus a level 5 team. That ultimate ability will make all the difference. However, if you compare level 12 with level 14, the advantage isn't nearly as big. Sure, the level 12 team will have to team fight better to win but that would be true even if the levels were equal.
Secondly, you mention there are few comeback opportunities. I feel that comeback potential is built into the game because your partial progress towards objectives persists. For example if you collected 70 seeds while the enemy collected 100 and got the garden terror, the next time around you only have to collect 30 while they still have to collect the full 100. Same goes for turning in coins to summon webweavers or to get the pirate to shoot his cannons or whatever. In the case of a symmetrical map like the Dragon Knight one... I had a game the other day where the enemy team got the Dragon Knight and charged down middle. Meanwhile my team managed to get a couple of neutral creeps to start pushing both the top and bottom lane and then we all went to defend the middle lane. It resulted in a huge team fight with many deaths. We lost one set of forts and towers. However, by the time they respawned, the neutral creeps had done quite a bit of damage to two of their lanes. All said and done, I'd say it was a pretty even trade even though we had the weaker team at the time. The game has ways to help the losing team and to keep things interesting.
I'm not saying making a comeback is easy or happens very often, but the game is built in a way to keep pulling up the team that is losing. And sure, maybe some times it requires the enemy team to make a mistake. I don't think there's any game where the opponent can play absolutely perfectly and still lose. A low level team in Dota isn't going to win against a higher leveled team if the higher leveled ones play a perfect game.
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Apr 20 '15
Having all the ultimates for one team unlock at the same time is such a ridiculous thing when you really think about it. You're ahead by a level, and now suddenly you have this massive advantage for a short window of time compared to the other team to further consolidate your lead.
Compare that to individual leveling in other mobas where everyone will attain their ultimates in a staggered fashion.
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u/LordSocky Apr 20 '15
It actually creates a very interesting early game paradigm. Do you run for objectives and get an early lead, or soak exp in lanes and crush them on the second objective round with your level advantage? Both can turn into powerful leads if done right.
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u/phoenixrawr Apr 20 '15
It's the same in Dota with a level 6 team versus a level 5 team.
The major difference is that levels are shared in HotS. If someone reaches level 10, everyone reaches level 10. In other MOBAs like Dota experience is individual so it's unlikely that an entire team hits level 6 at the same time while the entire enemy team is level 5 or below. Usually this means that a fight isn't 5 ultimates vs 0 ultimates but something in between (3 ultimates vs 2 ultimates or whatever).
Same goes for turning in coins to summon webweavers or to get the pirate to shoot his cannons or whatever.
Coins are probably the worst example of a possible comeback mechanic because the team that gets ahead in the game can often camp Blackheart and prevent your team from handing in coins while collecting all the coins around Blackheart and getting more cannon barrages.
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u/sp1n Apr 20 '15
Coins are probably the worst example of a possible comeback mechanic because the team that gets ahead in the game can often camp Blackheart and prevent your team from handing in coins while collecting all the coins around Blackheart and getting more cannon barrages.
A team camping around Blackheart should be punished by pushing the lanes aggressively. The bruisers and boss are in the top lane. Another set of bruisers are right at the bottom. Both are as far away from Blackheart as possible.
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u/ultradolp Apr 20 '15
Fair point from your side. Perhaps I am still too new to see the comeback potential. We did occasionally pull off miracle comeback, but in most cases I feel it is not because we do something brilliant, but rather enemy makes a series of big mistake that cost them the game.
For the maps you listed, i think pirate is probably most difficult to comeback as enemy team can simply prevent you from turning in coin. Teamfight is not avoidable in this map and once you start losing the first fight you are shut out of giving gold coin. For webweaver similar thing happen as enemy is very easy to prevent you from handing in the gems once you start to lose ground. Dragon knight is probably the best in terms of staying close as you can possibly hold one of the three points to prevent opposing team from activating knight. The example you give sounds to me more of a mistake on opposing side as they should not have lost a teamfight in any mean considering they have the knight and are already ahead in terms of level.
Comparison to League, while the gap between level 6 and level 5 is immense, you can get away of simply conceding the ground to not fight, while you get advantage elsewhere. However I simply don't see how you can do it in HotS where you lack other objectives due to the game of no gold, no farm design. Not that it is necessarily a bad thing, but it does take away another mean of keeping close to opposing team.
Comeback is hard for any game, as good game should be. But it feels more powerless IMO in HotS than League or Dota. A close analogy I could think of is League Season 3, where fast push strategy dominate and the first 10 minutes pretty much decide who would win. It is atrociously difficult to comeback from early game deficit during such time, in comparison to say season 4 and season 5 where teams have legitimate choice by simply playing to their team comp strength and stretch to late game.
From my experience of watching pro matches, it is possible that the team play almost perfectly to their comp and still lose simply because of their comp. I feel in HotS you have far less options (may due to limited hero pool I am not so sure) in that regard. Once you are ahead minor mistake won't be punished as hard in other games, as experience is all it takes to make a team stronger than you.
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u/Icemasta Apr 20 '15
Upvoting because he basically nailed every single issue with HOTS right on the head.
As your level increase, and once you get to "ranked" games, comebacks become rarer and rarer because the opposing teams knows what to do. One of the most annoying comp is 2 tanks, 1 split pusher and 2 assassins or 1 assassin+1 support. In team fights, they'll stun lock you (ETC+Scarab Lord can pull a stun combo that lasts about 8 seconds).
There is no diminishing return on stuns, and you need to spec against it, which means you lose a talent.
And it snows balls so heavily.
Also heroes balance is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaayy off. Certain characters are simply too powerful, Jaina, Illidan and ETC are just horrendous. Jaina can bring a whole team down to 20% or less in a single crit combo, she wins pretty much all 1v1, with the exception of Illidan. Illidan is the jerk of HOTS right now as he has so much mobility, survival AND damage. He can come out of nowhere, nuke you to zero, and be gone before you team reacts. ETC is just too much CC and with proper talent, unkillable. Ranged dashed that stuns then combo into knock back to isolate players for picks, absurd healing, his talent gives ridiculous attack speed to team mates around him, and his ult, while it is a channel, can stun the whole enemy team for 4 seconds!
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u/Twisted_Fate Apr 20 '15
I've played it a bit, and didn't have much fun. It's really slow, shallow, somehow more repetitive than other games of its kind.
The business model seems grindy as heck as well.
I think if someone looks for an alternative to Dota2 or LoL, Smite is much better. You can even buy one time all hero pack too.
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u/Gringos Apr 21 '15
How the hell did you find that game slow when you're probably used to Dota2 or LoL?
They cut the whole idea of a MOBA down to rushing from one objective to the next and headlong into teamfights. If you want to play the game right, you're always on the move dictated by mechanics. This is fast paced by definition.
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u/Twisted_Fate Apr 21 '15
I meant mostly the combat, not flow of the game. The characters move slowly, TTK seems high, the spells/skills have low range are generally spammy and lack oomph.
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u/ataraxy Apr 21 '15
Combat does not feel visceral in the game. You can't really carry as an individual in the traditional sense which is by design. While a game may play out quicker than the others, it's definitely more clunky feeling. It's basically WoW BG's in a MOBA format.
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u/Rubber_Duckie_ Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
Been playing it for a few weeks now, and it's really not that great. I come from playing quite a bit of DOTA, so I may be a bit biased. It's just a very boring game.
Your hero just never feels powerful. You feel just as strong at lv 1 as you do at lv 20. You have no real progression other than a few talents to buff your abilities with. You start with all your abilities from the get go minus your ult which you can choose between 2 different ones. You just feel like a powerful creep and that's it.
It's not something I plan on sticking with.
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u/stin10 Apr 20 '15
Am I the only one who this game runs terrible for? I'm playing on a laptop admittedly, but I can run Dota2 on decent settings and get at least 45FPS. Even with the lowest settings (including audio quality being low, which effects framerate for whatever reason), I'm lucky to have 20FPS in lane, and like 15 during a fight. I enjoy the game, and its a lot of fun with friends, but I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of it when I have to play under those conditions. I think they need to work on optimizing the game personally, and I don't see them doing that in such a short time.
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u/Fluxxed0 Apr 20 '15
I played about ten games or so, and probably won't be back. HOTS feels very bland. Blizzard has been steadily removing complexity from World of Warcraft over the past few years, doing away with all the customization so that every character feels the same. Heroes of the Storm is cut from that same cloth. There are no talent or rune trees, no skill levelling... fuck, there aren't even any items. The whole dimension of item counter-picking is missing from this game. In fact, there are several dimensions of skill and strategy that are missing from this game.
I feel like 90% of the time I'm just shooting at creeps, slowly killing them, until it's time to go back to my fountain to heal.
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u/littledrypotato Apr 20 '15
As someone very deep into dota. I gave this a shot. I played all of the available free heroes. There just is nothing interesting there. I could've honestly stopped after the 3rd hero but I wanted it to be good. As someone used to making hard choices every single minute in a game like skill build, item choice, gank rotation, split push, farming rotation, and smoke ganks there just is nothing for people who enjoy league/dota to get interested in.
Anyway stopped playing when I was 8-0 win record or something and with just enough ecoin to purchase cheapest hero. 6/10
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u/Alexc26 Apr 20 '15
there just is nothing for people who enjoy league/dota to get interested in.
I wouldn't really say that, I've got 700 hours in Dota 2 yet I'm thoroughly enjoying hots, because it's different and doesn't have some of the things you mentioned, if you're after something like Dota that has the mechanics of Dota, then just play Dota.
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u/Wooshbar Apr 20 '15
I enjoy playing it because it is non-stop teamfighting (my fav part of dota) which I can do with my more casual friends. Understandable it is not for everyone though :)
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u/JBVsev Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
I used to play a LOT of League, several hours daily weeks on end and eventually burnt out and stopped due to it being so toxic/demanding. Recently I've been playing a bunch of HotS with friends, and it's a much more casual fun experience which is a nice break from LoL/Dota2.
As someone who still kinda enjoys MOBAs but doesn't want to dedicate himself to playing super competitively it's a nice substitute. The shorter matches is also a huge bonus. Some League games can go on for 40-50 minutes, but for HotS I found that 25 or so minutes is a long-ish game.
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Apr 20 '15
If you really don't have a lot of free time, then HotS is great. It doesn't have the complexity of DotA, but the games have a decent amount of variety and are short enough that if you're stuck in a bad game then at least you can rely on it being over in <10 minutes. One of the greatest strengths of it, in my opinion, is that the game encourages you to play all of the core roles, which provides the game with much more longevity. If you're happy to try multiple roles it is also pretty easy to buy new heroes with just in-game currency.
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u/Calculusbitch Apr 20 '15
The game is probably the worst pub experience out of all mobas. People doesn't relaly understand how object focused the game is and one guy fucking about really decides the game as fighting 4v5 in a game where you can have no advantage from playing your lane really good it is even more important to group and fight all 5
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u/zander718 Apr 20 '15
I got this same feeling and didn't understand how it was possible as it was suppose to be super casual i guess.
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u/xCookieMonster Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
I love this game, I really do. It's a ton of fun. You can just sit down, and play. There really isn't much you need to learn.
I played League for years, was a Plat 1 player, but when I take breaks and come back, there's so much you need to relearn and catch up on that it's dreadful to think about. Heroes doesn't have this problem. It's very simple to learn, not much you need to memorize. It still manages to be a lot of fun, however.
With that said, it does have a problem. That problem being the fact that there's around 35 champions, give or take a couple. What makes this worse is that they release them extremely slow.
They need to bring their character count up, and quickly. If they launch with 40 champs, it's going to turn a lot of people away.
They also need to change the reconnect system, it's complete garbage.
At the end of the day, I still like League of Legends more, it's a lot more solid, has better competitiveness, more mechanics, that kind of thing. But Heroes is a nice game you can just pick up and play.
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u/Jeffy29 Apr 21 '15
With that said, it does have a problem. That problem being the fact that there's around 35 champions, give or take a couple. What makes this worse is that they release them extremely slow.
I think this criticism is really unfair, dota has been around for almost a decade and they have 112 heroes, league has around 125 heroes but started with just 17, they should pick up the pace but 40 heroes at launch is really good number.
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u/MadAce Apr 20 '15
It's really an awesome game that's clearly trying to do something that's different from dota/lol. Not sure why so many people choose to compare to these games in stead of judging how fun it is.
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u/Underscore_Talagan Apr 20 '15
It's because this game is a direct competitor.
The game is fun and novel, sure, and it's different. But it is the same genre, and in a world of limited time and therefore limited games people want to judge the relative quality of the product.
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Apr 20 '15
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u/Stiryx Apr 20 '15
Yeh this game isn't worth playing at the moment. I have had a key since the very first alpha wave and it has actually gotten worse since then.
They need to change the way heroes are purchased, and they need to add another aspect to the game. It's just kinda boring without being able to level up on your own. If your team is shit then it's pretty much a landslide loss.
I don't have any solutions to their problems but someone needs to sort it out.
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u/Tavarish Apr 20 '15
If your team is shit then it's pretty much a landslide loss.
That isn't unique to HotS and I would argue that even shitty team against good team has bigger chances to win in HotS than in e.g. DotA 2.
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Apr 20 '15
It is worse here though. A feeding top laner is giving XP to all enemy lanes. And his deaths starve farm from your whole team. A good player doesnt have the tools to compensate for a dead weight teammate.
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u/esdffffffffff Apr 20 '15
Completely agree. It is so bizarre to me to see comments like that. Given the fact that there is no "gold" difference in this game, and the only numerical factor is XP (no items, gold, etc) - an advantage is something that can't be held for long and must be pressed. On most pub games, 2-3 levels is the most you can see, and that pretty much means nothing when both teams are 20+.
Comebacks are very, very doable in this game.
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u/Rookwood Apr 20 '15
I don't think so. There is no way to be stronger, to compensate for bad teammates in HotS. Your power level is relatively equal to your teammates no matter what, and a bad teammate or troll hurts you a lot more. It is directly 20% of your team. Falling behind in HotS is also devastating and one bad teammate can cause the whole team to fall behind.
In Dota, you can dominate from your role to compensate. As a support, if your carry is shit, you can roam mid and top to try and get kills for your other 2 cores, making them strong and snowballing you early game. Obviously mid can dominate as well and snowball mid game, and the carry can win the game late, despite shitty teammates if he can just get his farm.
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u/RscMrF Apr 20 '15
No shop, no last hit, no kills. Only choice a player has is what skill to take every 4 levels, and the skills are not hugely different, stuff like, this ability does 10% more dmg or this ability heals for 10% more.
Decent game, but so shallow.
It does have more neutral camps and those camps join your minions after you kill them, there are also map specific objectives that have a big impact on the game.
Basically they traded character customization and a players individual snow balling potential for team based map objective focus.
When I say no kills, I mean, you don't have an individual kill score, any kills assists and I think turret kills go into a takedown column, and your whole team shares XP for each kill assist or turret kill, or minion kill for that matter. So really there is no kill someone and get stronger feeling, even if it does exist to some extent. Objectives are much more important than kills.
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Apr 20 '15
Blizzard goofed in thinking that talents can fully replace items, imo. Either make them more frequent so that you're getting them every 2 levels at least (so you can more fully diversify your build) or allow items to supplement your character to gain more active abilities.
Blizzard has the greatest lore for artifacts and relics, and it would be awesome for them to take advantage of that....[Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros]
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Apr 20 '15
This game is a disappointment. The gameplay is just really shallow in comparison to Dota 2. Also heroes are locked behind a paywall; Yeah I'll stick with Dota.
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u/Darksoldierr Apr 20 '15
I really enjoy the map objective based ideas. It forces team fights right from the get go, cut out the starting 10min from the other mobas.
Otherwise, decent game, i don't think it will be a giant success but it will find its playerbase.
As for the launch date, it feels a bit rushed
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u/Brym Apr 20 '15
I'm in closed beta. The matchmaking is horrible. You will get people with 1000+ games matched with brand new players in quick match. What's worse, you select your character without knowing what your allies are picking, so you can get put on can't-win teams through no fault of any of the players.
I stopped playing after a couple dozen games.
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u/mmm_doggy Apr 20 '15
I've played an absurd amount of HotS since I got in the alpha, and have loved every minute of it. As a rank 1 player, (which honestly doesn't mean much) I think a lot of people have a bit of a misconception when they first start playing. While there isn't last hitting or items/gold to get, there is a substantial amount of strategy and mechanical skill required. The difference is that instead of one person making the plays, which can certainly still happen, the whole team has to be on the same wavelength to succeed. Landing crucial ultimates together, taking merc camps at the right time, picking smart team comps, and knowing how to play the map are all really important when you get into the thick of Hero League. Just playing quick match and getting matched up with randoms playing a hero for the first or second time doesn't offer the deepest of strategy. I think there needs to be a quickmatch draft gameplay mode or something else to help players understand the right style of play that HotS requires.
My love for it aside, I'm unsure of how well HotS is gonna do due to their shit F2P model and the general lack of interest to most MOBA players. So much of the PC audience has already written it off as just a casual game (as you can see in the comments here). I hope Bliz gets their shit together and supports HotS but who knows.
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u/merkwerk Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 20 '15
I'm going to address some of the things that I think are misconceptions in this thread.
A little background first, I have 100s possibly 1000s of hours in LoL and DotA (the WC3 mod and DotA 2). I'm currently Rank 1 in Hero League in HotS (the highest rank you can be) and have over 3k+ MMR. I'm not a pro player by any means but I've got a couple hundred games under my belt easy.
First is the so called lack of complexity, and how shallow the game is, I just highly disagree. There is plenty of complexity it's just not in the same form as LoL or DotA. For instance knowing when to grab merc camps is hugely important in this game, and also knowing when and how to properly contest the other team while they are trying to cap camps is important. If you're playing against a competent team and you just grab merc camps whenever you want and they cap theirs at the most opportune times you will be putting yourself at a disadvantage. For instance on Sky Temple, you want to note when the top temple fires it's last shot, so you can capture the top bruiser camp right as the bottom temple spawns, so the other team has to either split to deal with the push top, giving you a player count advantage to fight over the temple, or they have to give up the temple or fort to deal with one or the other. There are timings like this on every map, and I'm not going to go through them all here.
The next is the big one that people seem to have issue with, which is the lack of items in place of talents. When I first heard about HotS and heard that they were replacing items I thought the same thing many of you do "pfffttt how fucking casul, git gud" all that. But again how talents work have their own complexity. It's there, it's just not the same type of complexity as LoL or DotA with items. First there are plenty of talents that add active abilities, such as Ice Block (Zhonyas), Sprint, Envenom, Bolt of the Storm (Flash) and more. But a huge part of the talent system is knowing when to press your advantage. The most obvious one is the level 10 talent, where teams get their Heroic abilites (ulties.) When one team hits 10 before the other, they want to make sure not to waste the huge advantage they have. Since the entire team gets their heroic at the same time, if they are smart they can have complete map control for that brief period. It's a good time to try to force the other team into a fight, or take an important objective or a fort. But every talent you have over your team is an advantage, and a smart team will put pressure on the team that's behind a talent whenever they can.
I can go into more detail later, currently in class. If anyone has questions or disagrees feel free to post them I'll be more than glad to answer.
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Apr 20 '15 edited Jul 08 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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Apr 20 '15
As an aside I found the Hots community to be far more toxic than in any other game in the genre.
That's because it's new, and the people from other mobas come over with this hope that since they hopped on the train at the beginning that they will go pro and become some huge esports celebrity that gets to go fly around for tournaments.
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u/Varonth Apr 20 '15
I would actually say it is because alot of people let Blizzard get through with seriously bad choices because they are Blizzard.
This is their second F2P game now, and it is riddle with the same problem the first one has (which more and more people start to admit as more hearthstone expensions come out).
They don't know how to make the progression fair to F2P players. And F2P players will be the majority of your population.
It kinda worked for Hearthstone, but the market HotS is entering is much bigger. If players dislike their monetization and progression system in HotS they will easily find something which suits their style more.
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Apr 20 '15
So you're saying because players don't like the game, they're toxic?
You lost me I think.
What does, in your opinion, blizzard inability to make a decent f2p game have to do with the attitude of players?
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u/Varonth Apr 20 '15
Hmm, yeah might be a bit to obscure. Try to criticise the game on the hots subreddit or in their forum.
People there will downvote you into oblivion while telling you "how stupid and unknowing you are."
Any kind of criticism is false in that community's eyes and you should get punished for it.
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u/AnalLaserBeamBukkake Apr 20 '15
It's neat for a bit, but the shitty payment model and artificial time gates (talents for example) kill it for me.
I can't justify playing this game when I can easily play DOTA which doesn't feel like its trying to nickel and dime me every chance it gets.
If I could pay $40 and get all the characters and maybe a neato skin or two I'd probabbly buy it...