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Heroes of the Storm |OT| Ded Gaem Outlives Forum
- Thread starter Mayordolo
- Start date
Garrosh is so not fun to play against. With his current kit, he can displace you, displace you again, then taunt you for two seconds without you having a chance to react. If you're playing a mid range hero against him, you either have to be:
a) too far back to be useful
b) too close to the front line and melt to any melee
c) stay in mid range and be tossed twice then taunted to death
Those are your three options. He's so damn frustrating to play against. It's to the point where every time he is picked in hero league on the opposite team, I consider timing out my selection. Does that make me a bad person? Probably, but I'd rather not deal with the design choice of "Oh, you're playing this mid-range character as intended? Well, you are dead then."
I lost 4 games in a row last night to that bullshit, so I may be a bit salty.
a) too far back to be useful
b) too close to the front line and melt to any melee
c) stay in mid range and be tossed twice then taunted to death
Those are your three options. He's so damn frustrating to play against. It's to the point where every time he is picked in hero league on the opposite team, I consider timing out my selection. Does that make me a bad person? Probably, but I'd rather not deal with the design choice of "Oh, you're playing this mid-range character as intended? Well, you are dead then."
I lost 4 games in a row last night to that bullshit, so I may be a bit salty.
Idk how they are going to fix the garrosh problem. Picks are too valuable, and at any point he can instantly kill anyone on your team that falls the slighest bit out of position. If they nerf anything, he's going to fall into obscurity, i don't envy their balance team sometimes.
He'll just toss you if you walk towards him. So, whether or not his Q actually pulls you, the result is the same. You end up closer to him and often in range to be tossed. It sucks.
He's not in range to toss you unless you walk up to his body
https://youtu.be/s-_qEVW9I_A
I dunno how to generate timestamps on mobile but check out where mura is standing during the q demonstration, a little past 1:10. Chromie should be ok too in that spot assuming she walked in and starts walking out while garrosh raises his arms
Not trying to downplay his oppressiveness (sp?), just noting that i dont see ppl trying to dodge it often
https://youtu.be/s-_qEVW9I_A
I dunno how to generate timestamps on mobile but check out where mura is standing during the q demonstration, a little past 1:10. Chromie should be ok too in that spot assuming she walked in and starts walking out while garrosh raises his arms
Not trying to downplay his oppressiveness (sp?), just noting that i dont see ppl trying to dodge it often
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Sounds nice in theory, but its borderline impossible to get away with walking towards garrosh. He'll throw you 90% of the time.
Ironically, the League engine is the oldest of all major MOBAs, and Riot has spent the past several years trying to improve it piece-by-piece.
I wouldn't consider the engine to be HOTS' biggest impediment though. I'd say it's their design team and their lack of understanding for what makes MOBAs interesting, leading to some of the highest churn in the genre.
Churn refers to players quitting the game, and it's a metric that developers look at to determine player retention.
By design, HOTS is a flatter experience than other MOBAs, meaning there's lower highs and higher lows. The overall skill ceiling is also considerably lower. This leads to HotS players hitting their personal skill ceiling much faster than in other MOBAs, as there aren't enough auxiliary systems in place for them to grow.
This is why HOTS 2.0 was focused entirely on retention mechanisms--it was a desperate attempt to improve their retention and reduce churn. It did not work as well as they'd hoped, because their designers don't understand that retention mechanisms don't make up for a low skill ceiling.
The social features are the biggest churn problem. Not having Voice Chat for so long, no clans, etc.
If by "don't make up for a low skill ceiling" you mean "don't make up for having to grind out micro-advantages out of game".
The problem with HOTS is that it came out 3 years late, and was like.. 20% of what it should be. Turned everyone off and they never came back, first impressions are everything. Also MOBA players stick with their MOBAs, so idk who Blizz was hoping to pull into this game but it failed miserably.
League of Legends doesn't have voice chat or clans, has less onboarding, less retention features, and a more aggressive monetization, yet it has much less churn and much higher retention.
HOTS' in-match UI is quite good and actually removes the necessity of voice chat. When HOTS was released, I considered it to have the best-in-class UI, and I actually used it as inspiration while working on UX for LOL.
And no, I'm not equating grinding with low skill ceiling. Being skillful in HOTS is a very different, less involved affair compared to other MOBAs. It focuses primarily on mechanical execution, much less on macro-decision making.
Pretty much this. Blizzard reacted way too slow to the WC3 DOTA mod. Instead of doing what they did, they should've done what Valve did and bought out Icefrog.
Yes and no. HOTS is probably a wash as far as a profit-making venture goes, especially compared to the Hearthstone/Overwatch cash cows. I'm saying this based on how large their development team is, compared to my (limited) understanding of their metrics. The development overhead required to sustain a content pipeline like theirs is huge, and while I'm sure it's still pulling in respectable revenue, it's unquestionable that their resources would be better spent elsewhere. I personally think any other company would've pulled the plug years ago.
In HOTS's case, the loot box formula wasn't about making money, but about utilizing the gambling formula to improve retention and excitement.
Also, I don't have access to their metrics, and Blizzard isn't sharing them publicly, but I do have a few friends who are/were on the HOTS team and it's been pretty grim there.
EDIT: Made a few edits for clarity.
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If Jason Schreier ever did an exposé on the MOBA genre, there'd be a lot juice in the politics of why Blizzard didn't make a MOBA earlier.
I'd say more but frankly I don't remember if I was under NDA when I was told about it.
Was this the era when Vivendi wouldn't let them actually invest anything? Because that fucked them for a long time until they finally got the leech off their body.
thanks for sharing Nome, blizzard has been really tight on anything hots business related which can only lead you to assume it's doing bad or mediocre.
Sorry, it's really all I can say. I don't doubt that Blizzard could've put out something amazing, but the cards seemed stacked against the HOTS team from the beginning. I'll just say that it's very much an old boys' club and politics rules everything.
Yep. Just want to caveat this by saying I'm not a Blizzard employee, just a guy who worked on some MOBAs previously and hears things from friends currently/formerly at Blizzard working on HOTS.
I also want to say that I didn't mean to just come in here and crap on the game, I ended up playing it for a year and genuinely enjoyed it, but I'm not optimistic on the talents of their design team.
Nome, as an ex-lol player i def agree with you w/r/t retention. I came from league probably a low diamond player but got to top 100 in alpha really quickly. In 3 years i dont think the skill level or knowledge in this game has improved meaningfully. I've always chalked it up to blizz being unable to reconcile their attempts at dumbing the genre down w/ the innate conplexities of the genre, and then advertising it as a dumbed down moba. This allows veterans of the genre to do very well just based off of stuff like effective use of time or a desire to optimally game the system vs. many who will pick the game up just to brawl.
Leaguegaf in general took advantage of how the social aspects of the client was laid out, the chat channel was popping and playing games felt like more of an event.
Ugh i just remembered who you were too lol
Leaguegaf in general took advantage of how the social aspects of the client was laid out, the chat channel was popping and playing games felt like more of an event.
Ugh i just remembered who you were too lol
Are you saying that hots is not making money, or it's not making hearthstone/overwatch money?
It must be profitable. Otherwise why would they keep up the developement like they have been? Unless their plan is to keep working on it waiting for it to turn some corner and become huge. But that seems like a really bad plan. From the outside it looks like it's getting more and more popular, not less and less.
Unless there's some actual data on their churn, or unless they start to slow down/stop development, I have a hard time seeing hots as something that's losing them money. Sure it's not bringing it in like hearthstone...but what is?
Is the argument it's not as popular as HS or OW therefore it's a failure, or just plainly the game is a failure?
And then the bottom line actual question I care about is, what does where it falls on the failure spectrum mean for the future of the game? Bus right now it seems like it's moving forward just fine. Are you saying thats going to stop sometime in the near future?
It must be profitable. Otherwise why would they keep up the developement like they have been? Unless their plan is to keep working on it waiting for it to turn some corner and become huge. But that seems like a really bad plan. From the outside it looks like it's getting more and more popular, not less and less.
Unless there's some actual data on their churn, or unless they start to slow down/stop development, I have a hard time seeing hots as something that's losing them money. Sure it's not bringing it in like hearthstone...but what is?
Is the argument it's not as popular as HS or OW therefore it's a failure, or just plainly the game is a failure?
And then the bottom line actual question I care about is, what does where it falls on the failure spectrum mean for the future of the game? Bus right now it seems like it's moving forward just fine. Are you saying thats going to stop sometime in the near future?
Also to piggyback off of kirblars point on social functions, i agree heavily that the way the social functions were laid out in this game hurt retention. League client was never perfect but it more organically allowed for communities to come together. A big plus to me was that the client itself was this background app that you could keep on; idling in league chats was very normal (leaguegaf always afk). If hots had something that felt as natural i think the game would have progressed differently
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Yep, I remember LeagueGAF :) Fun times.
But yes, that's a pretty good analysis of the skill breakdown in HOTS. MOBA fundamentals will take you very far, and the rest of it is basically mechanical optimization. I think this makes for a much lower skill ceiling, because the game is missing a lot of the macro decisionmaking you'd find in LOL or Dota. For example, positioning is still important, but trivialized by mounts and smaller maps.
Sorry, I don't want to dwell too much on the financial aspect because (1) I can't bring up any data to show you, and (2) everything I'm saying is surmised from their development trajectory and hearsay from Blizz employees that I know.
However, I do think we should consider how Blizzard would handle a failure. Would they close up shop, or try to turn it around? My expectation from a branding perspective is that they're more likely to attempt a repair than to call it quits, and that's what I think is happening. The same thing is happening with Starcraft 2, where they're taking a flagging game and basically trying to reinvent it. You have to understand that from a business perspective, you don't just dramatically change your business model (SC2 going F2P, HOTS going to loot boxes) if everything is swell. The potential for disaster is huge, which is why I think they were already prepared for disaster, and hoping for a turnaround.
I can't remember if I was told this particular piece of information during a job interview (which would be NDA'd) or during a conversation with a friend (which wouldn't). So, staying on the safe side :)
When you say design do you mean overall game design or do you not like the heroes they've made?
I thought the devs this year in particular have knocked it out of the park with the heroes they've added to the game.
I'm curious how that would have played out. Valve got IceFrog to literally remake Dota in a new engine. I doubt Blizzard would have tried to replicate it to that same degree, vs basically have him doing something like HOTS anyway (ie, not DOTA exactly)
And one more point to add: this was the first moba i played where i would see patch notes and just be like what the fuck??? Every moba can give you that feeling to a certain extent, particularly if you dont understand the change, but even recently blizz did a random nerf to stukov and reverted it. My first hots patch had an arthas that was pretty broken. He had access to envenom and his ganks were pretty much guaranteed. It was an open secret that he was op, but when patch notes came he received a 2 mana cost increase on his e. ?????????? He then later got envenom removed. Dreadnaught had a name for this kind of change, and he'd say that it wouldnt be a blizzard patch without something like this included. So i get the low confidence in design that nome has for this game
Honestly I think our definition for failure is just different.
Like if it's just not making any money then I'd say it's a failure. And if it was failing like that I would expect them to handle it like they currently handle diablo. Not that diablo is a failure just that it's really not making them money. I would expect a much smaller presence at blizzcon, and certainly not nearly the investment into future development and esports.
I feel like the loot box change is more easily explained by saying they'd have to be stupid to not add them after the original game was designed without having them in mind.
It all seems more like a game still in development not a game they're on the verge killing off. Although I'm sure those conversations take place at the business meetings.
Like if it's just not making any money then I'd say it's a failure. And if it was failing like that I would expect them to handle it like they currently handle diablo. Not that diablo is a failure just that it's really not making them money. I would expect a much smaller presence at blizzcon, and certainly not nearly the investment into future development and esports.
I feel like the loot box change is more easily explained by saying they'd have to be stupid to not add them after the original game was designed without having them in mind.
It all seems more like a game still in development not a game they're on the verge killing off. Although I'm sure those conversations take place at the business meetings.
Overall design, with gameplay systems being the biggest culprit, and UX being their biggest strength.
So, things like mounts, talents, objectives, leveling, comeback mechanisms, etc. Everything is basically funneled towards a goal of compressing and flattening the experience.
Case-in-point: what's the biggest difference between gameplay at level 10 vs level 20? The death timer is dramatically longer. To increase the stakes, they depend on removing you from the experience.
While death timer is a big deal for other games, it scales much harder in HOTS because things like territory control, map positioning, and vision are trivialized.
How the trivialization was received was the key thing imo, rather than the trivialization itself, which id point to as one of the strengths of this game (but ofc not executes perfectly and i wouldnt expect them to be) Hots, imo, relies heavily on condensing the moba experience into a tight quick package; i find it very hard to play any other moba now because ive skipped the early game experience so much. But the odd thing about hots to me is that while stuff like split pushing, vision, pressuring parts of the map, and early game were trivialized they were still incredibly core to playing the game correctly; the population however has never adjusted to these things. How rare is it to see giving up an objective and grouping to trade for a keep? Without items to supply counterplay the draft is even more important but why do ppl still draft primarily based off roles? Why do ppl simply not engage with a map's mechanics, at all levels of play? Things like not nuking mid on warhead or prioritizing boss, why is this not standard? Win conditions? There are a lot of reasons a person can come up with for sure, and a bunch of it points back to decisions from blizz imo. But mainly im trying to say that the reduction in skill and complexity is not something id look at because the game is quite complex; it's just never been in a place where the population at large has played the game as if it were, for various reasons
Lack of voice chat is why i stopped trying to play the game outside of team league.
Yeh but im not even talking about in-game comms, just the ease and fluidity of stuff like a friends list or a chatroom. I was blown away by the press tab to go into different rooms stuff in hots, but for me the biggest thing that hurts gathering up in this game was the cpu intensive client, like i have no good reason to leave it on and chill in a chat room.
I do think lack of all-chat is a detriment to skill level, but i have no proof. In dota and league tho you def have ppl heckling you in all chat for doing dumb shit.
I do think lack of all-chat is a detriment to skill level, but i have no proof. In dota and league tho you def have ppl heckling you in all chat for doing dumb shit.
Like nome noted, he believes that hots is very set up for communication, and id agree. League didnt have voice chat when i played and we only had special pings for a couple of months before i stopped. I wouldnt say hots is more or less reliant on team communication or voice chat to do well than league, and i also wouldnt posit it as a thing that has hurt player retention. But i do think there is a sense of frustration w/r/t teamwork that's hots specific. In league it wasn't rare to have ppl doing correct things, communicating with pings, just lots of unspoken organic play that took advantage of mmr being semi-accurate. Hots is the first moba that ive seen clamour for voice chat, and i think a lot of it stems from ppls distrust in the dissemination of information within their mmr range. I can see someone in the same mmr range as me and be completely unsure of what the person knows about the game.