Apparently there is a flat 10 gold you get for participating in the game. So it may look like you're getting 10 for a loss and 30 for a win, it's actually 20 and 40 so this is a very teeny tiny buff to gold gains.
Also, this patch just shits all over casuals. Their whole shtick now seems to be rewarding people who poopsock the game. Seriously, EIGHT games for a daily? That 3-4 hours of playtime.
My three dailies right now are three games each. One is win three games and the other two are play 3 as x type of hero, so I could technically complete two quests in 3 games.
Hey Blizzard, I am going to drop some goddamn TRUTH BOMBS on you. Ready? Here goes. If you want people to spend real money on your game, MAKE IT AFFORDABLE. Make people want to spend real money on your game because they like you game and they want to, NOT because they feel there is no other alternative. And most importantly, AFFORDABLE. The prices are way too goddamn high to even consider it at the moment.
Yknow, for everything that this game has done right, they go 1 step forward and 2 steps back with bullshit like this and Artifacts and who even knows what else in the future. I love you and your games, Blizzard. Please don't go this direction, because it's extremely unhealthy for everyone.
Blizzard's gotten away with high price points for mounts and vanity pets in WoW and likely influenced by those. But there's a huge difference on how often you buy a new vanity pet or mount and how often you unlock a new character in this kind of game.
Also, some of their data is likely skewed by people being willing to spend money they know will be refunded. A lot of people went in for that $15-$20 Murkey bundle when it was new.
Blizzard is just following the wildly successful pricing model from LoL which has always been a complete ripoff. There's little hope of them changing it when they know it works.
So the garden terror is super super skullfucky now and the best part is people haven't figured this out yet. He already had pretty significant melee damage vs heroes to begin with, but now that his transform activates faster and has the 3 second sprint, once you start on an an enemy hero there's a good chance you're going to kill them.
With any luck it will just be a targetting key at best. My hope is that they don't allow them to be fully controlled, or it could end up as a prelude to micromanagement heroes like Naga Siren and Phantom Lancer. This game doesn't need that sort of tedium.
PSA to people thinking about buying Chen, he is currently perma-talent locked. It's a bug, obviously, but no word on when it'll be fixed yet.
Well, doesn't matter much for level 2 since his second ult apparently uses the game's terrible AI.
I've been watching some people streaming Chen, and I can't see why anyone wouldn't pick Wandering Keg. It's too goddamn good. It has peeling, you can set up ganks by knocking people towards your team/towers, it's an emergency escape... It has so much utility and I really don't see how Storm, Earth, and Fire is going to compete.
The new Murky changes are pretty interesting. I like that Bigger Slime isn't on Tier 1 now. Block increases survivability SO MUCH but it's necessary with the new slime changes doing additional damage on subsequent slimes. And instant slimes also makes it harder for people to heal/shield out of the poison. And of course the pufferfish buffs are cool too. +damage on slimed targets + bigger area makes it pretty effective area control I think, though I'm not entirely sure yet.
I've been taking whatever for tier 1(doesn't matter), gathering power(still really good), slimy pufferfish, octo-grab for ult usually, continuous slime, and rejuvenating bubble.
Compressed air and wrath of cod sound like they'd be fun but to be perfectly honest they're pretty hit-or-miss. It's a lot of burst, but you have to actually land it. Whereas that talent setup above allows me to handily solo merc camps again, which I haven't been able to do since before the initial siege Murky nerf patch.
Oh also Murky is pretty damn good at sieging again.
Someone said it here (I think), but the communication needs to improve. That may be my biggest complaint about the alpha since I would have thought going in there would be back and forth, ot as much as you can have given the testing base size. It is baffling how some of the changes go down, and in mu head I chalk it up to Blizzard just trying things out it is sometimes just...astounding.
I think if dailies had 7 slots instead of 3 so you had a week to complete them it may not be so bad. I can likely play a couple of games each night, and maybe one binge day a week. I can only assume the pricing and the dailies are a push the limits test (already mentioned by someone else) and skewed by the testing base who may have enough people playing for hours on end skewing the numbers.
other than that i am not a huge fan of the new UI, especially the hero select screen but it isn't the end of the world.
Yeah the game/hero selection is a big step back in my opinion.
I am totally fine with the heaping help of Murky buffs. I've played him up to level 9 and thought he was great before. Now he's even better! My only complaint is that they seemed to have subtitled him "why are you not always going gathering power + march of murlocs?". Before you had a choice between single target damage (envenom+blood4blood+octo) and larger scaling area (gathering power+slime advantage+march). With the changes - especially to slime - I feel like you're left little choice but the gathering+march route.
The change to garden terror was needed. Before, it was the only map objective where one bad player would totally screw over your team by using it at the wrong time. It's still my least favorite map though.
I like the changes to the mines. Going through them felt too much like an RTS campaign tutorial slog. Now it...still does, but less so.
Is the mute function acting up for anyone else? I can only mute 2 people max now, and if I try to mute the top player it unmutes the entire team.
The unfortunate fact is this: The only way to let Blizzard know that their price points - both gold and real money - are awful is to not purchase things at those prices.
Yes, Chen just came out, and I understand that people are excited to play him. But come on people, don't buy him for 15k. If nobody buys him, because the price is absurd and ridiculous, they will lower it.
More importantly, DON'T SPEND REAL MONEY AT THESE PRICES.
It's that simple. They are gathering data for people's spending habits. If suckers continue to spend gold/money at those awful prices, Blizzard will interpret that data as meaning people are willing to spend those prices. Right now while we are in testing, we have the voice and the power to tell them that their entire pricing model sucks. And the way we do this is by not spending money at their inflated prices.
Blizzard is just following the wildly successful pricing model from LoL which has always been a complete ripoff. There's little hope of them changing it when they know it works.
Haven't played LoL in a long time but I've never seen it as a ripoff. In fact it's one of the better executed free to play model.
You're playing a free game where you always have access to at least 10 characters. And it's not that long to get some gold for permanently unlocking a favored character. No you don,t have access to the 50+ roster all the time. But it's free.
You seem to think that a Free game should let you access all it's gameplay for free, and I disagree. There has to be some incentive to pay real cash. And I'm prefectly fine with the model where you can slowly unlock more characters for free over time by playing, with the option of paying to get something right away.
And I have no qualms in giving a free game anywhere between 20-40$ when I've spent several hours on it, considering all the 60$ retail games that don't even offer 20 hours of gameplay.
Yeah but I mean. technically you have access to all the heroes for free. Just not all the time. If there's a hero you really want to play all the time, getting enough in-game gold for 1 character is not too hard and a decent objective to aim for. If you want variety you got a 10 character roster different every week to pick from.
Although I must admit that in HotS's case the 5 or 6 roster rotation feels a bit small. But the overall character selection is still pretty small for this kind of game for now. Something around 30 now?
The problem is that $8-10 dollars a hero is outside of the impulsive buy range for most people - especially considering that yea, that character might be free to you for a week in another week or two if you wait. But if heroes were in the $4-5 range - I'd at least be a lot more likely to by them on a whim, not wait and make sure there my favorite that I plan on playing for eternity.
I'm sure they have someone that actually runs these kind of numbers but I know I'll buy a game on a steam sale for 5 and I may never even play it, but at 10, I'll pause and decide if I'll actually play it or if I already have too many other games (heroes) that I could already be playing.
Dota has the whole roster for free. Blizzard is wealthy enough to be able to pull off a similar system, but they feel the customer-unfriendly system will get them more money.
Just...don't buy into the belief that capitalism does consumers any favors.
My issue with the 'f2p games need to make money' argument is that it comes up every time people criticize a f2p system, as though they exist in a vacuum and cannot be measured against anything, just accepted. But that just feels like a hella lazy way to think.
Dota 2 has all heroes available for free, and is not a loss leader for Steam like many people think it is. Dota 2 is Valve's most profitable game.
League of Legends offers a bundle of 20 heroes for $20. If you can find the boxed copy of League it has a different set of 20 champions as well. They were $15 at my local London Drugs. Blizzard's best money:content bundle has been 10 heroes for $30.
Smite allows you to purchase all heroes that have been released and will ever be released for $30 (during beta this pack was $20). This currently gets you access to 57 heroes.
Infinite Crisis has 3 Batmans. Heroes of the Storm has no Batmans.
Across every other competing product, Heroes of the Storm is either inferior or at best on par. And the games it's on par with are not exactly setting the world on fire. Its monetization is shitty and inferior, and many of the changes Blizzard makes are very clearly trying to railroad you into using it. Despite wanting to be one of the easiest to get into MOBAs, HotS is one of the most difficult to actually buy into. I can't help but notice that they haven't brought back their largest bundle. Every time Blizzard does something like slow down dailies, or release a 15k hero, or increase a hero's gold price, it doesn't make me want to play the game.
And it probably won't matter, because people will eat it up because it has the appearance of a fun casual game from Blizzard, and they'll pay those awful, unfriendly prices.
My issue with the 'f2p games need to make money' argument is that it comes up every time people criticize a f2p system, as though they exist in a vacuum and cannot be measured against anything, just accepted. But that just feels like a hella lazy way to think.
Dota 2 has all heroes available for free, and is not a loss leader for Steam like many people think it is. Dota 2 is Valve's most profitable game.
League of Legends offers a bundle of 20 heroes for $20. If you can find the boxed copy of League it has a different set of 20 champions as well. They were $15 at my local London Drugs. Blizzard's best money:content bundle has been 10 heroes for $30.
Smite allows you to purchase all heroes that have been released and will ever be released for $30 (during beta this pack was $20). This currently gets you access to 57 heroes.
Infinite Crisis has 3 Batmans. Heroes of the Storm has no Batmans.
Across every other competing product, Heroes of the Storm is either inferior or at best on par. And the games it's on par with are not exactly setting the world on fire. Its monetization is shitty and inferior, and many of the changes Blizzard makes are very clearly trying to railroad you into using it. Despite wanting to be one of the easiest to get into MOBAs, HotS is one of the most difficult to actually buy into. I can't help but notice that they haven't brought back their largest bundle. Every time Blizzard does something like slow down dailies, or release a 15k hero, or increase a hero's gold price, it doesn't make me want to play the game.
And it probably won't matter, because people will eat it up because it has the appearance of a fun casual game from Blizzard, and they'll pay those awful, unfriendly prices.
This post, so much. Especially the LOL boxed set. It was $20 for 20 heroes, plus $10 in-game credit. And honestly, LOL has its own issues, though I imagine HOTS will end up similar: Once you own every hero, you effectively get every future hero for free if you continue to play regularly.
The problem is that I really want HOTS to be good so I can play it with people who already play LOL and have invested hundreds of hours and/or dollars in it, or who are generally wary of MOBA games, but I can make the argument, "Dude, you can play a Siege Tank. You love Starcraft. Play it." The thing is, that will be a tough sell if Blizzard fucks up the game or monetization.
I actually don't mind dropping a ton of cash on games if they are offering a fair shake, but I'd rather pay a premium price for something like Final Boss Veigar, which is a very cool skin with all new voice acting, lines, modeling, particle effects, etc. than get fucked on the bread and butter. Ditto for DOTA2 and hats, albeit I only begrudgingly play DOTA2, because I prefer LOL.
Even LoL's prices are too high. Heroes are $9-$20 and like fellow ghoster Segatai said, they should really be $5. Then there's the insane $17 legendary skins, but at least those make MAJOR changes to the character. Totally different appearance, different animations, different voice, different spell effects.
HotS offers $20 skins that put you in a new outfit and that's it. The $20 unicorn mount is by far their most radically different skin.
I like DotA2's the best. Everything free, all the cosmetic stuff is easily ignorable (I find it a headache to even bother with), and my entire free experience is subsidized by the fanatics who pay $500 for Team Fortress 2 hats.
I thought Heroes of Newerth had a pretty decent pricing system. Everything you could buy with real money you could buy with fun money, and there was a lot of cosmetic stuff beyond skins you could buy. New announcers, new death animations, player icons. Fun stuff.
It amazes me how it seems none of these guys have heard of a price consumption curve. I'd be much more likely to buy ten $1 heroes than I would one $10 hero.
Of course dota 2 style have access to all characters all the time for free is the best for the consumer. But I don't care for skins or any superficial stuff that doesn't impact gameplay so Dota 2 has never seen a dime from me and never will, because it already gives everything that matters for free.
But from the buisness side you invest money in a game to make a profit. So you either charge people for the game, or you let everyone play for free and charge from some stuff. Cosmetic stuff is enough incentive for some people, but probably not for most players.
I'll admit the prices for hots could be better but it doesn't affect me much. If I play enough I'll throw in a 20$ and I'll be perfectly fine with unlocking a new hero with in-game gold once in a while + whatever heroes are on rotation. I don't see the need to have something like 20 heroes unlocked all the time.
I hate to be the guy that skews the data in favor of Blizzard's current price model, but I purchase each new hero as they are released (with the skin bundle). I don't buy very many games and only play a handful - the ones I do play, I play A LOT, and HotS is turning out to be one of those games for me - so $12+ once every four weeks for a game I play more than any other is not that big of a deal for me. Hell, I can (and do) spend more than that in one night on good beer.
Granted, I think only the last two heroes have had the skin bundle purchase, but I see myself buying them for each upcoming hero, too.
Yeah... you need to cut that out. This is alpha. Tell them now that their pricing sucks (by not spending money at their ludicrous prices), and spend real money when the game goes live (with a hopefully better pricing model). They have real money expenditures capped right now anyway. It's 300-something and then they cut you off.
Since they're wiping eventually anyway, the skin bundles that you previously bought will be lost. Rehgar with his Iron Horde skin for 10 bucks or watever... gone. Chen with that kick ass Warpanda skin... gone.
Those of us who have spent real money are going to inevitably get screwed anyway when the wipe happens, because the bundles and deals we got when we made those purchases will not be available in the future.
Yeah... you need to cut that out. This is alpha. Tell them now that their pricing sucks (by not spending money at their ludicrous prices), and spend real money when the game goes live (with a hopefully better pricing model). They have real money expenditures capped right now anyway. It's 300-something and then they cut you off.
Since they're wiping eventually anyway, the skin bundles that you previously bought will be lost. Rehgar with his Iron Horde skin for 10 bucks or watever... gone. Chen with that kick ass Warpanda skin... gone.
Those of us who have spent real money are going to inevitably get screwed anyway when the wipe happens, because the bundles and deals we got when we made those purchases will not be available in the future.
p sure they said all those bundles will be back for one last hurrah post-alpha wipe? i thought i remember that being a thing.
personally it doesn't matter to me since worst comes to worst i can just spend it on wow.
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Also, this patch just shits all over casuals. Their whole shtick now seems to be rewarding people who poopsock the game. Seriously, EIGHT games for a daily? That 3-4 hours of playtime.
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Bnet: Pudgestomp#11153
Blizzard's gotten away with high price points for mounts and vanity pets in WoW and likely influenced by those. But there's a huge difference on how often you buy a new vanity pet or mount and how often you unlock a new character in this kind of game.
Also, some of their data is likely skewed by people being willing to spend money they know will be refunded. A lot of people went in for that $15-$20 Murkey bundle when it was new.
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oh those are another 15000 gold, sorry we didn't tell you
They NERFED Gazlowe? Bwaaaaaaaah?
Oh wait, they buffed trueshot aura. Yes indeed those two changes make total sense.
I've been watching some people streaming Chen, and I can't see why anyone wouldn't pick Wandering Keg. It's too goddamn good. It has peeling, you can set up ganks by knocking people towards your team/towers, it's an emergency escape... It has so much utility and I really don't see how Storm, Earth, and Fire is going to compete.
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The damage from the keg is shit, but it's so disruptive in general that it doesn't even matter.
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Compressed air and wrath of cod sound like they'd be fun but to be perfectly honest they're pretty hit-or-miss. It's a lot of burst, but you have to actually land it. Whereas that talent setup above allows me to handily solo merc camps again, which I haven't been able to do since before the initial siege Murky nerf patch.
Oh also Murky is pretty damn good at sieging again.
I think if dailies had 7 slots instead of 3 so you had a week to complete them it may not be so bad. I can likely play a couple of games each night, and maybe one binge day a week. I can only assume the pricing and the dailies are a push the limits test (already mentioned by someone else) and skewed by the testing base who may have enough people playing for hours on end skewing the numbers.
other than that i am not a huge fan of the new UI, especially the hero select screen but it isn't the end of the world.
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I am totally fine with the heaping help of Murky buffs. I've played him up to level 9 and thought he was great before. Now he's even better! My only complaint is that they seemed to have subtitled him "why are you not always going gathering power + march of murlocs?". Before you had a choice between single target damage (envenom+blood4blood+octo) and larger scaling area (gathering power+slime advantage+march). With the changes - especially to slime - I feel like you're left little choice but the gathering+march route.
The change to garden terror was needed. Before, it was the only map objective where one bad player would totally screw over your team by using it at the wrong time. It's still my least favorite map though.
I like the changes to the mines. Going through them felt too much like an RTS campaign tutorial slog. Now it...still does, but less so.
Is the mute function acting up for anyone else? I can only mute 2 people max now, and if I try to mute the top player it unmutes the entire team.
Yes, Chen just came out, and I understand that people are excited to play him. But come on people, don't buy him for 15k. If nobody buys him, because the price is absurd and ridiculous, they will lower it.
More importantly, DON'T SPEND REAL MONEY AT THESE PRICES.
It's that simple. They are gathering data for people's spending habits. If suckers continue to spend gold/money at those awful prices, Blizzard will interpret that data as meaning people are willing to spend those prices. Right now while we are in testing, we have the voice and the power to tell them that their entire pricing model sucks. And the way we do this is by not spending money at their inflated prices.
Sucks, but again, it's technical alpha still, technically.
(you're welcome)
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Haven't played LoL in a long time but I've never seen it as a ripoff. In fact it's one of the better executed free to play model.
You're playing a free game where you always have access to at least 10 characters. And it's not that long to get some gold for permanently unlocking a favored character. No you don,t have access to the 50+ roster all the time. But it's free.
You seem to think that a Free game should let you access all it's gameplay for free, and I disagree. There has to be some incentive to pay real cash. And I'm prefectly fine with the model where you can slowly unlock more characters for free over time by playing, with the option of paying to get something right away.
And I have no qualms in giving a free game anywhere between 20-40$ when I've spent several hours on it, considering all the 60$ retail games that don't even offer 20 hours of gameplay.
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but at $8 per hero, yeah no
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wra
Although I must admit that in HotS's case the 5 or 6 roster rotation feels a bit small. But the overall character selection is still pretty small for this kind of game for now. Something around 30 now?
Battle.net: Fireflash#1425
Steam Friend code: 45386507
I'm sure they have someone that actually runs these kind of numbers but I know I'll buy a game on a steam sale for 5 and I may never even play it, but at 10, I'll pause and decide if I'll actually play it or if I already have too many other games (heroes) that I could already be playing.
(the shaaaaaame)
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wra
Just...don't buy into the belief that capitalism does consumers any favors.
Dota 2 has all heroes available for free, and is not a loss leader for Steam like many people think it is. Dota 2 is Valve's most profitable game.
League of Legends offers a bundle of 20 heroes for $20. If you can find the boxed copy of League it has a different set of 20 champions as well. They were $15 at my local London Drugs. Blizzard's best money:content bundle has been 10 heroes for $30.
Smite allows you to purchase all heroes that have been released and will ever be released for $30 (during beta this pack was $20). This currently gets you access to 57 heroes.
Infinite Crisis has 3 Batmans. Heroes of the Storm has no Batmans.
Across every other competing product, Heroes of the Storm is either inferior or at best on par. And the games it's on par with are not exactly setting the world on fire. Its monetization is shitty and inferior, and many of the changes Blizzard makes are very clearly trying to railroad you into using it. Despite wanting to be one of the easiest to get into MOBAs, HotS is one of the most difficult to actually buy into. I can't help but notice that they haven't brought back their largest bundle. Every time Blizzard does something like slow down dailies, or release a 15k hero, or increase a hero's gold price, it doesn't make me want to play the game.
And it probably won't matter, because people will eat it up because it has the appearance of a fun casual game from Blizzard, and they'll pay those awful, unfriendly prices.
This post, so much. Especially the LOL boxed set. It was $20 for 20 heroes, plus $10 in-game credit. And honestly, LOL has its own issues, though I imagine HOTS will end up similar: Once you own every hero, you effectively get every future hero for free if you continue to play regularly.
The problem is that I really want HOTS to be good so I can play it with people who already play LOL and have invested hundreds of hours and/or dollars in it, or who are generally wary of MOBA games, but I can make the argument, "Dude, you can play a Siege Tank. You love Starcraft. Play it." The thing is, that will be a tough sell if Blizzard fucks up the game or monetization.
I actually don't mind dropping a ton of cash on games if they are offering a fair shake, but I'd rather pay a premium price for something like Final Boss Veigar, which is a very cool skin with all new voice acting, lines, modeling, particle effects, etc. than get fucked on the bread and butter. Ditto for DOTA2 and hats, albeit I only begrudgingly play DOTA2, because I prefer LOL.
HotS offers $20 skins that put you in a new outfit and that's it. The $20 unicorn mount is by far their most radically different skin.
I like DotA2's the best. Everything free, all the cosmetic stuff is easily ignorable (I find it a headache to even bother with), and my entire free experience is subsidized by the fanatics who pay $500 for Team Fortress 2 hats.
I thought Heroes of Newerth had a pretty decent pricing system. Everything you could buy with real money you could buy with fun money, and there was a lot of cosmetic stuff beyond skins you could buy. New announcers, new death animations, player icons. Fun stuff.
It amazes me how it seems none of these guys have heard of a price consumption curve. I'd be much more likely to buy ten $1 heroes than I would one $10 hero.
But from the buisness side you invest money in a game to make a profit. So you either charge people for the game, or you let everyone play for free and charge from some stuff. Cosmetic stuff is enough incentive for some people, but probably not for most players.
I'll admit the prices for hots could be better but it doesn't affect me much. If I play enough I'll throw in a 20$ and I'll be perfectly fine with unlocking a new hero with in-game gold once in a while + whatever heroes are on rotation. I don't see the need to have something like 20 heroes unlocked all the time.
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Steam Friend code: 45386507
blizzard's monetization is still super broken though, yea.
Granted, I think only the last two heroes have had the skin bundle purchase, but I see myself buying them for each upcoming hero, too.
XBL: InvaderJims
Bnet: Pudgestomp#11153
Since they're wiping eventually anyway, the skin bundles that you previously bought will be lost. Rehgar with his Iron Horde skin for 10 bucks or watever... gone. Chen with that kick ass Warpanda skin... gone.
Those of us who have spent real money are going to inevitably get screwed anyway when the wipe happens, because the bundles and deals we got when we made those purchases will not be available in the future.
p sure they said all those bundles will be back for one last hurrah post-alpha wipe? i thought i remember that being a thing.
personally it doesn't matter to me since worst comes to worst i can just spend it on wow.