[Heroes of the Storm] Coronavirus can't kill HotS if it's already dead #rollsafe

Zek · May 2019

MMMig wrote: »

At this point the biggest factor in how games go isn't the heroes or how strong or weak they are, or even your own skill level.

It's what level of players you get in your game.

I mean that's pretty much every multiplayer game. If the better team wins every time then it's working as designed. Sucks to be the worse team though.

milk ducks · May 2019

I'd say stick to ETC and Johanna for now. They're both fairly straight forward and strong in the current meta.

MNC Dover · May 2019

While not a true Tank, you can have tons of fun with the Shields for Days™ build.

The more you attack, the more Shields you get. It's that easy! At 20, your abilities cooldown your shields, which cooldown your abilities! Go 2v1, win, then go 1v1 (ignore that Jaina) and win again!

60% of the time, it works every time!

Dibby · May 2019

https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/bm90b5/heroes_of_the_storm_design_ama_may_9_2019/

Hero design AMA going on RIGHT NOW!!!

There's already some good answers, suuuuuch aaaaaaas:

Any thoughts on a D.va rework in the upcoming future? The recent change to where friendly abilities no longer affect her nuke has been a bummer.

Hey Smugjpeg,

We actually changed it so that Garrosh's Into the Fray doesn't affect Immune to Friendly flagged units. It ignoring that flag was actually a bug. When we fixed that though, it exposed another issue that D.Va was flagged as Immune to Friendly.

We've weighed what changes would happen if we removed that flag from D.Va's Self-Destructing Mech, and we've decided to remove it in an upcoming patch (the next major one with a PTR). So you'll be able to throw D.Va's Mech again (as well as a few other things like make give it Sanctification's Invulnerability).

aaaaand this one!

Are there any heroes currently being worked on that were not in development prior to December 14th 2018?

*literally every blizz poster saying "yes"*

edit: oh i like this one too:

Are there any heroes that you see getting asked for reworks, that you feel are fine?

Hello SotheBee!

The quick answer to this is no. As designers, we are constantly evolving our philosophies on abilities, talents, and the game as a whole. I honestly think we could take any Hero, even recently reworked ones, and find ways to make them better. I was the main designer behind Lucio's rework and there are already a handful of things that I would love to change or improve.

This said, there are Heroes that we feel are both very well received by the community, and in a good spot meta/balance wise. These are much lower priority on the rework list, but can still very well see design changes during balance patches.

MMMig · May 2019

Are there any heroes being designed that will bring the player base back?

Munkus Beaver · May 2019

MMMig wrote: »

Are there any heroes being designed that will bring the player base back?

Deathwing.

milk ducks · May 2019

Deathwing is probably the only hero that would truly, at least temporarily, revitalize the community, yeah.

SeGaTai · May 2019

Well the dream of them fixing fuckin KT is probably dead

Q: Any chance we may see a UI update to Living Bomb?

The HotS design philosophy seems to highly value transparency and clarity when it comes to big, high-impact abilities. Living Bomb seems not to align with that philosophy particularly well, with subtler, easier to miss design elements and no AoE indicator.

It feels like making the ability more transparent would do a lot to bring it and KT generally into better alignment with that overarching design direction. I imagine it would also flatten his power curve between leagues somewhat, making him easier to balance across the board (and hopefully a little less of a must-ban at lower leagues).

A: Thanks for the question. We strive to make all abilities visible regardless of their size or impact, however you're right that some abilities require a more robust solution than others. Gameplay clarity is essential, and like many aspects of Heroes of the Storm we are constantly evaluating and evolving our techniques and process.

We have played around adjustments to the visual indicators, adding an icon above a player’s head or a ring around them on the ground, but these solutions did not satisfy the design goals for the Hero. We are always open to exploring creative solutions and if you a suggestion I'd love to hear it!

Adding more comments

Comment: A ring around the living bomb target would be incredible

A: I got ya. The decision here comes down design balance. At the highest levels of play KT has a lower pick/win rate and it's the opposite at lower levels. So adding a ring might mitigate frustration for some players, but it would also add concerns for others. Thanks for the feedback, it's definitely on our radar and we'll continue to try to improve clarity where we can!

Blizzard response to KT - git gud noob

milk ducks · May 2019

I mean, they're not wrong

kime · May 2019

milk ducks wrote: »

I mean, they're not wrong

I mean, unless their follow up is "and so we're making Kael'thas even stronger," their logic doesn't hold super well?

Either you try to balance his pick rate by making him more soaking at higher levels, or you might as well just add the UI change to help him be more fun to play against at lower levels. As is, both levels of play are unsatisfied

Inquisitor77 · May 2019

milk ducks wrote: »

I mean, they're not wrong

The range is based on the radius of the bomb target and your unit radius. It's not at all intuitive to read, especially on things like structures and mobs. There are pros who can't consistently estimate whether a bomb will hit them or not. The default of "everyone spread out as far as possible" is a terrible position because it just exacerbates the worst part of KT's kit.

SeGaTai · May 2019

Clearly don't have access to the numbers they have - but KT still has a >50% WR just sorting by high level play on hotslogs. So there wording of "lower pick/win rate" might just mean in an acceptable range - not the busted range he is at in lower levels.

E: Also didn't realize it was as bad as antaeus is pointing out - which is why in it's current iteration it would be difficult to add a UI indiciator that didn't clutter up the whole fucking screen- and they clearly don't want to go in and recode how the whole ability works given how long it's been around

MMMig · May 2019

I mean, even higher level players are working on incomplete information when avoiding living bomb.

Sure they are more aware and thus put the space necessary between them, but really they are putting only an estimate amount of safe space, usually over-reacting to how much space they truly need. I mean, I can see an amazing play by MVP Rich running through his team dodging the bomb at just the right pixel to get that last core hit, etc. etc..

So, in short, it's taking away from both high and low level players to have such a potentially strong ability have such little information.

TL:DR: their reasoning is purely aesthetic. Balls.

SeGaTai · May 2019

I'm imagining the "your already screwed scenario" where you have one teammate who gets bombed, runs back to your team, and spreads that shit to 3 different people. Now imagine some indicator on all 3 of them - a bunch of overlapping circles where you have to parse where the safe place to stand actually is, plus all the other effects going on in the game - pretty quickly you get to the point of just going eh, it's been like this for 2 years? why bother

General_Armchair · May 2019

Imo the solution there would to use fully filled circles rather an outline. So instead of having to parse many different circles, you just see one big danger zone.

MMMig · May 2019

Very much like tracer's bomb circle, and other examples already mentioned earlier.

Inquisitor77 · May 2019

The solution is to delete Kael'thas from the game.

milk ducks · May 2019

Medivh and Abathur first

Saeris · May 2019

Gentlemen, please.

The Shimadas are at the front of that line and always have been.

Dibby · May 2019

sometimes you play chromie and finish stacking your Q quest like 5-6 mins in and think "this gun b a gud gaem"

but then your team falls apart and ya can't do shit

and you're like

"fuck this, i'm playing jimmy"

so you do

and ya just fuckin' give it to em

Munkus Beaver · May 2019

Yeah I didn’t contribute at all as maiev.

No siree.

Not one bit.

Dibby · May 2019

Munkus Beaver wrote: »

Yeah I didn’t contribute at all as maiev.

No siree.

Not one bit.

all jimmy all day sorry bud

Munkus Beaver · May 2019

I still can't believe we won with a seven death KT who fucking pouted the entire game, AFK'd in the middle for a good 3 minutes, and basically left us 4v5 by inting into the other team at the final objective point.

Dibby · May 2019

Munkus Beaver wrote: »

I still can't believe we won with a seven death KT who fucking pouted the entire game, AFK'd in the middle for a good 3 minutes, and basically left us 4v5 by inting into the other team at the final objective point.

i mean i fuckin beasted with jimmy what can i say

Inquisitor77 · May 2019

Interesting post from Blizz, don't think it was ever linked here?
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/heroes/t/2019-gameplay-update-retrospective/17056

kime · May 2019

Inquisitor77 wrote: »

Interesting post from Blizz, don't think it was ever linked here?
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/heroes/t/2019-gameplay-update-retrospective/17056

They included graphs and numbers! Fun to read

Inquisitor77 · May 2019

Summary of the Reddit AMA for those who don't visit reddit:
https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/8174/four-biggest-takeaways-from-the-heroes-of-the-storm-ama

Dibby · May 2019

SIIIIIIIIIIGH

MNC Dover · May 2019

Inquisitor77 wrote: »

Summary of the Reddit AMA for those who don't visit reddit:
https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/8174/four-biggest-takeaways-from-the-heroes-of-the-storm-ama

I’m sure it could easily turn into a train-wreck, but why not reach out to the fans to create new maps with an editor? It worked for StarCraft where the maps made by external sources were way better and more balanced than the Blizzard maps.

Munkus Beaver · May 2019

MNC Dover wrote: »

Inquisitor77 wrote: »

Summary of the Reddit AMA for those who don't visit reddit:
https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/8174/four-biggest-takeaways-from-the-heroes-of-the-storm-ama

I’m sure it could easily turn into a train-wreck, but why not reach out to the fans to create new maps with an editor? It worked for StarCraft where the maps made by external sources were way better and more balanced than the Blizzard maps.

Because of the map mechanics, probably? Like, each new map has had some new mechanic to it.

General_Armchair · May 2019

I don't see why that would be a stumbling block. The starcraft and Warcraft map editors were pretty robust in what you could rig up.

We would see a ton of recycled assets though, since the map makers obviously can't add new models and stuff.

Dibby · May 2019

MNC Dover wrote: »

Inquisitor77 wrote: »

Summary of the Reddit AMA for those who don't visit reddit:
https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/8174/four-biggest-takeaways-from-the-heroes-of-the-storm-ama

I’m sure it could easily turn into a train-wreck, but why not reach out to the fans to create new maps with an editor? It worked for StarCraft where the maps made by external sources were way better and more balanced than the Blizzard maps.

they talked about this in the AMA actually

the tl;dr is they can't commit resources towards building that out

kime · May 2019

It couldn't just be plug-and-play with the official game modes, either. Fan-made maps would have to go through a good amount of extra testing/polish/etc before Blizzard would want to put it in the actual "official" map rotation.

MNC Dover · May 2019

Yeah, I was thinking it would be a SC2 map editor deal with a set of assets everyone would use. Maps would look samey, but it wouldn't be about the look, but rather the unique traits or mechanics they squeeze out of them.

But it's totally understandable if they can't commit their already limited resources into supporting a map editor. Sucks though.

Dibby · May 2019

i got tired of losing so i jumped onto The Most Toxic Hero Ever Designed (according to Antaeus) and won three games with Kael'thas

:-))))

WE FULL TOXIC NOW BOYS