I don't know guys, I think Stukov is right around the corner.
In fact, here's a leak of his model from some data files:
+2
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
of all the 'reforms' you could propose to HotS to make it more like other mobas I can't even begin to imagine how single ultimates enters the conversation
is it because it's... too hard to balance? too much flexibility outside of the draft? (but then that directly goes against one of the other points munkus made)
genuinely curious what the rationale behind that is
The game was at its best during beta? Then sprays ruined it???
There were no individual plays that decided a match??? Casual viewers couldn't discern what was going on? Dear lord try getting a casual viewer to follow along with all the farm and teamfight minutiae of a DotA2 match, or the rune setups of LoL along with the 5 paragraph item descriptions.
It needed to have no mounts and a 2nd resource and single ultimates and no talents? Why not just play LoL or DotA?
I'm not sure what game you dudes were playing.
My only complaint was their push to make it an e-sport which went against the casual, approachable design. Plus HotS was sort of like Raquetball where it got boring to watch at top levels of play.
The most shocking part of the announcement is them not even releasing any new store items. Saying no to money?
Actually, wait. My biggest complaint is that - even though I liked them - the objectives exacerbated the typical MOBA problem of one bad player disproportionately dragging down your team. I also liked the team leveling and lack of hyper carries, but it also meant you couldn't pick up the slack of said bad player who wouldn't show up to fights.
I don't think I would have changed anything about the actual game, but definitely add a bit in the tutorial emphasizing "get your ass to objectives > laning". The games where I see someone hyper-pushing and ditching all objectives, it ends up paying off maybe 10% of the time.
Would it be too much to ask maintenance mode to flat out delete Warhead Junction? I would rather go back to Lost Mines than ever touch that terrible, awful, unfun map again.
The worst eff up was by far canceling HGC the way they did. That alone did the most damage to the game on multiple levels, lost a lot of karma and momentum.
The other eff up was hots 2.0 and gems and shards. That was just all... really dumb and obtuse. I literally never spent a single cent on hots after that. They also had non-existant marketing after this change.
The rest was fine. I mean, I've been enjoying the hell out of this game for years, and will continue playing.
There's no chance they'll turn on that whacky stuff on for shits since they don't care to make any more money, is there? Even at the risk of things breaking?
The worst thing they did was the... gems? I forget what they were called. The thing where your out-of-game purchases gave in-game stat buffs. They dropped that fast lol
The worst thing they did was the... gems? I forget what they were called. The thing where your out-of-game purchases gave in-game stat buffs. They dropped that fast lol
They could have announced that a year ago. As-is it seems like an afterthought.
“Oh shit we forgot about hots while the rest of our company was burning down around us. Someone get Nancy in PR to bang out a press release. Uhhhhhh and give players a mount to placate them or something. Whatever, I have to be court in tomorrow, I don’t have time for this.”
I've never spent a cent either. I almost kinda want to just go drop $5 or so on whatever for the past 8 years and well over 1000 hours of game provided.
Just as a purely "So long and thanks for all the fish" thing.
MrBody on
+2
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
It needed to have no mounts and a 2nd resource and single ultimates and no talents? Why not just play LoL or DotA?
Mounts, and the fact that heroes generally can be across the map in seconds, makes macro play less impactful. Who care about the siege giants pushing in if you can just mount up and get their before they do any damage? It makes mistakes matter less in positioning because you can't capitalize on it.
Ultimates require a HUGE amount of design space. Think about how many heroes are only useful because of their one good ult. It's worse when you have one with two amazing ults because you spent the design space for two heroes of ults on one, you have less room for shit.
XP as the only resource leads to a cascade of issues because it's the ONLY thing you're fighting over. I like talents but they are too rigid to adapt to shit post draft. I feel like HotS, way more than other MOBAs, is often won or lost in the draft screen.
edit:
There were no individual plays that decided a match??? Casual viewers couldn't discern what was going on? Dear lord try getting a casual viewer to follow along with all the farm and teamfight minutiae of a DotA2 match, or the rune setups of LoL along with the 5 paragraph item descriptions.
As to this, you're describing the things that the casual viewer doesn't pay attention to. Like, the point was that while Football is an ostensibly team sport moreso than others, people still fall into the fallacy of thinking it comes down to one or two players based on how much they overvalue QBs and playmakers compared to defense and the O-line. Hots it's hard to the casual viewer to notice whether a particular player is playing exceptionally well, though the action of hots is a LOT easier to follow, parse, and understand the flow of combat. But you can't really tell who is popping off and how.
League it's VERY easy to see who is popping off even if you cannot parse what just happened without a shoutcaster going over a slo-mo replay.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
No mounts I 100% agree with. I prefer 2 ults though. I like the flexibility.
Two ults would be fine in an idealized world but the fact that it heavily detracts from the pool of heroes they could have made made it a hindrance in game design.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
It needed to have no mounts and a 2nd resource and single ultimates and no talents? Why not just play LoL or DotA?
Mounts, and the fact that heroes generally can be across the map in seconds, makes macro play less impactful. Who care about the siege giants pushing in if you can just mount up and get their before they do any damage? It makes mistakes matter less in positioning because you can't capitalize on it.
Ultimates require a HUGE amount of design space. Think about how many heroes are only useful because of their one good ult. It's worse when you have one with two amazing ults because you spent the design space for two heroes of ults on one, you have less room for shit.
XP as the only resource leads to a cascade of issues because it's the ONLY thing you're fighting over. I like talents but they are too rigid to adapt to shit post draft. I feel like HotS, way more than other MOBAs, is often won or lost in the draft screen.
edit:
There were no individual plays that decided a match??? Casual viewers couldn't discern what was going on? Dear lord try getting a casual viewer to follow along with all the farm and teamfight minutiae of a DotA2 match, or the rune setups of LoL along with the 5 paragraph item descriptions.
As to this, you're describing the things that the casual viewer doesn't pay attention to. Like, the point was that while Football is an ostensibly team sport moreso than others, people still fall into the fallacy of thinking it comes down to one or two players based on how much they overvalue QBs and playmakers compared to defense and the O-line. Hots it's hard to the casual viewer to notice whether a particular player is playing exceptionally well, though the action of hots is a LOT easier to follow, parse, and understand the flow of combat. But you can't really tell who is popping off and how.
League it's VERY easy to see who is popping off even if you cannot parse what just happened without a shoutcaster going over a slo-mo replay.
I literally cannot follow League basically at all. I've tried to watch it a few times, and maybe HotS just hasn't prepped me to follow it in the relevant way?
Invictus on
Generalísimo de Fuerzas Armadas de la República Argentina
I think the worst thing they did was lootboxes but that's Blizzard for you. HOTS didn't know what it wanted to be. It made interesting heroes at first and then when people gawked at them and they tried to go esports their hero builds got less interesting and flat metas started to develop. Then it became a shitty version of the games it was trying to divulge from. They wanted it both ways and they ended up with neither.
I mean, the proliferation of guide sites, talent pick and item choice pick % tracking sites, youtube videos, pro player streams, etc. make the "optimal" builds all the more obvious.
That's the world we live in with games where they are. The best way to avoid that is to either make more choices appealing, make the content more random, have less variables, or something.
Yes, all games will have a meta. But hots of yesteryear was lets try things out and adapt and some pro tourneys later after watching a team win suddenly you start seeing 4 one lane 1 another lane and more than that its expected and picks are expected to follow that design space.
Make heroes that throw it on its head. Make maps where it doesn't work. When the game became another moba but a casual one with no gold and shared xp it was just a quaint aram with cosmetics.
Not directly aimed at the above but a lot of hots criticism on here has always been a flavor of; how dare they (the player base) leave the fun experimental / learning phase of being a new game and start caring about winning; and that's just all games and just more rng doesn't really change that or I can't think of a game that pulls that of.
Related this is why I haven't bought a fighter in a decade, because they get too sweaty for me to keep up
There was a wacky moba set in the days of custom wc3 maps that was very distinct from dota that had builder heroes and long range heroes and no attack heroes and buck wild stuff and wacky items and just real low stress crazy moments kind of gameplay. They were short games and didn't have a 6 minute long pick phase with rankings and brackets.
And HOTS just kinda ... started at a point where that was in the distance and moved away from that its entire life towards easy league of legends.
I too hate when they changed the game from me only having vanilla skins and plain mounts to being able to get hundreds of different skins, amazing mounts, and other fun cosmetics for free. Damn them to hell.
If it wasn’t for HOTS I’d have never played a MOBA. My experience with MOBA players at that point was mainly negative.
I’ll still play it, I had put money in pre-loot box (of all things, buying the mecha-Tassadar skin), but for me it’d always been something I play as a side game to whatever else (WoW, Overwatch, etc)
That's exactly what I like about HotS though. That's why I played it
"It should've had this, it should've done that" that wouldn't be HotS then. That'd be unrecognizable and not a game I would want to play.
If I wanted to play That, I'd just go and play League or Dota. But I don't want That. I don't like League or Dota. Hell, I don't like mobas, that's why I fell in love with HotS
Yeah, I mean I love hots now, so... I don't know if those proposed changes would have been good or bad.
What is true though, Blizzard's focus and commitment to their game has strayed far, far from what they used to be.
Blizz has a history of being 2nd or 3rd to market with their games, they just made theirs better and eventually won market share.
With hots they never cultivated it the right way. We all know it's a great game, we all probably think it's better than other mobas. I sure as hell do...
Heck, maybe, if we keep it 'alive' enough the new management will realize what a gem they've got.
I still hope so.
MMMig on
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
+2
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
That's exactly what I like about HotS though. That's why I played it
"It should've had this, it should've done that" that wouldn't be HotS then. That'd be unrecognizable and not a game I would want to play.
If I wanted to play That, I'd just go and play League or Dota. But I don't want That. I don't like League or Dota. Hell, I don't like mobas, that's why I fell in love with HotS
It doesn't actually change the core of what made hots good: the immediate gameplay, the constant fighting, the importance of CC and setups, and the short games. You get rid of mounts and have a single ultimate and the designers have more room to experiment with heroes and good macro-play is more rewarded on the map. This are both fairly important elements that the base game needed to keep its competitive scene vibrant and would not have detracted from the core elements at all.
The issue with talents is how many of them are just "spec your Q, W, or E" and that's it.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
That's exactly what I like about HotS though. That's why I played it
"It should've had this, it should've done that" that wouldn't be HotS then. That'd be unrecognizable and not a game I would want to play.
If I wanted to play That, I'd just go and play League or Dota. But I don't want That. I don't like League or Dota. Hell, I don't like mobas, that's why I fell in love with HotS
It doesn't actually change the core of what made hots good: the immediate gameplay, the constant fighting, the importance of CC and setups, and the short games. You get rid of mounts and have a single ultimate and the designers have more room to experiment with heroes and good macro-play is more rewarded on the map. This are both fairly important elements that the base game needed to keep its competitive scene vibrant and would not have detracted from the core elements at all.
The issue with talents is how many of them are just "spec your Q, W, or E" and that's it.
Removing 1 ult is kinda a weird hypothetical argument - surely given only 1 ult to balance the designers would have done more and made a more balanced game? a more fun game? not sure - but it just assumes where the design stop gap is and that they would have done something with it and just kinda looking at the balance of the game - lol.
These are the guys that made every new hero and rework overpowered on purpose just to make ppl play them more and get more data - and I dont think them having to sort that data by two different ults is what made the difference in how they tuned the numbers
Mounts are awesome because I am lazy and hate having to spend time walking places; but also this is a game where they continually observed that the players were bad at macro - we need to make xp stick around and make it bright and shiny so they actually get it and you think they needed to have to spend more time walking to go get it. Did they learn bad macro because they got to mount up and run around the map? (the correct answer is they learned bad macro from qm)
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0
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
They do not, which makes them feel INCREDIBLY slow by comparison at first, then as you play them more you realize just how much it changes things for the better. Like, there are guides out there telling you down to the second how much time it takes for you to get from point A to point B and talks about the opportunity costs associated with that.
The closest league gets to mounts is giving people a massive speed boost when they are leaving the base at the start of the game and post-20 minutes after they respawn/hearth
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
I feel like spending more time waiting for your character to get places would reduce the "constant fighting."
+3
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
These are the guys that made every new hero and rework overpowered on purpose just to make ppl play them more and get more data - and I dont think them having to sort that data by two different ults is what made the difference in how they tuned the numbers
tbf everyone does this thing in particular. also helps with the hype cycle and pushing early sales
re: the mount thing, yeah no the opportunity costs are still there. it's not instant. you just have much tighter windows to take advantage if the enemy team is paying attention. it's not worse, it's just different.
a difference that makes offlane in HotS DRAMATICALLY more fun than toplane in league. You're allowed to actually play the game! You're not in an island for 30 minutes bc nobody can be assed to spend all the time walking up there, or instantly losing two towers bc you decided to take the time to walk anywhere else!
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is it because it's... too hard to balance? too much flexibility outside of the draft? (but then that directly goes against one of the other points munkus made)
genuinely curious what the rationale behind that is
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
The game was at its best during beta? Then sprays ruined it???
There were no individual plays that decided a match??? Casual viewers couldn't discern what was going on? Dear lord try getting a casual viewer to follow along with all the farm and teamfight minutiae of a DotA2 match, or the rune setups of LoL along with the 5 paragraph item descriptions.
It needed to have no mounts and a 2nd resource and single ultimates and no talents? Why not just play LoL or DotA?
I'm not sure what game you dudes were playing.
My only complaint was their push to make it an e-sport which went against the casual, approachable design. Plus HotS was sort of like Raquetball where it got boring to watch at top levels of play.
The most shocking part of the announcement is them not even releasing any new store items. Saying no to money?
I don't think I would have changed anything about the actual game, but definitely add a bit in the tutorial emphasizing "get your ass to objectives > laning". The games where I see someone hyper-pushing and ditching all objectives, it ends up paying off maybe 10% of the time.
Would it be too much to ask maintenance mode to flat out delete Warhead Junction? I would rather go back to Lost Mines than ever touch that terrible, awful, unfun map again.
The other eff up was hots 2.0 and gems and shards. That was just all... really dumb and obtuse. I literally never spent a single cent on hots after that. They also had non-existant marketing after this change.
The rest was fine. I mean, I've been enjoying the hell out of this game for years, and will continue playing.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
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“Oh shit we forgot about hots while the rest of our company was burning down around us. Someone get Nancy in PR to bang out a press release. Uhhhhhh and give players a mount to placate them or something. Whatever, I have to be court in tomorrow, I don’t have time for this.”
Just as a purely "So long and thanks for all the fish" thing.
Mounts, and the fact that heroes generally can be across the map in seconds, makes macro play less impactful. Who care about the siege giants pushing in if you can just mount up and get their before they do any damage? It makes mistakes matter less in positioning because you can't capitalize on it.
Ultimates require a HUGE amount of design space. Think about how many heroes are only useful because of their one good ult. It's worse when you have one with two amazing ults because you spent the design space for two heroes of ults on one, you have less room for shit.
XP as the only resource leads to a cascade of issues because it's the ONLY thing you're fighting over. I like talents but they are too rigid to adapt to shit post draft. I feel like HotS, way more than other MOBAs, is often won or lost in the draft screen.
edit: As to this, you're describing the things that the casual viewer doesn't pay attention to. Like, the point was that while Football is an ostensibly team sport moreso than others, people still fall into the fallacy of thinking it comes down to one or two players based on how much they overvalue QBs and playmakers compared to defense and the O-line. Hots it's hard to the casual viewer to notice whether a particular player is playing exceptionally well, though the action of hots is a LOT easier to follow, parse, and understand the flow of combat. But you can't really tell who is popping off and how.
League it's VERY easy to see who is popping off even if you cannot parse what just happened without a shoutcaster going over a slo-mo replay.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Two ults would be fine in an idealized world but the fact that it heavily detracts from the pool of heroes they could have made made it a hindrance in game design.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
I literally cannot follow League basically at all. I've tried to watch it a few times, and maybe HotS just hasn't prepped me to follow it in the relevant way?
That's the world we live in with games where they are. The best way to avoid that is to either make more choices appealing, make the content more random, have less variables, or something.
Yes, all games will have a meta. But hots of yesteryear was lets try things out and adapt and some pro tourneys later after watching a team win suddenly you start seeing 4 one lane 1 another lane and more than that its expected and picks are expected to follow that design space.
Make heroes that throw it on its head. Make maps where it doesn't work. When the game became another moba but a casual one with no gold and shared xp it was just a quaint aram with cosmetics.
Related this is why I haven't bought a fighter in a decade, because they get too sweaty for me to keep up
And HOTS just kinda ... started at a point where that was in the distance and moved away from that its entire life towards easy league of legends.
I’ll still play it, I had put money in pre-loot box (of all things, buying the mecha-Tassadar skin), but for me it’d always been something I play as a side game to whatever else (WoW, Overwatch, etc)
That's exactly what I like about HotS though. That's why I played it
"It should've had this, it should've done that" that wouldn't be HotS then. That'd be unrecognizable and not a game I would want to play.
If I wanted to play That, I'd just go and play League or Dota. But I don't want That. I don't like League or Dota. Hell, I don't like mobas, that's why I fell in love with HotS
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
What is true though, Blizzard's focus and commitment to their game has strayed far, far from what they used to be.
Blizz has a history of being 2nd or 3rd to market with their games, they just made theirs better and eventually won market share.
With hots they never cultivated it the right way. We all know it's a great game, we all probably think it's better than other mobas. I sure as hell do...
Heck, maybe, if we keep it 'alive' enough the new management will realize what a gem they've got.
I still hope so.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
It doesn't actually change the core of what made hots good: the immediate gameplay, the constant fighting, the importance of CC and setups, and the short games. You get rid of mounts and have a single ultimate and the designers have more room to experiment with heroes and good macro-play is more rewarded on the map. This are both fairly important elements that the base game needed to keep its competitive scene vibrant and would not have detracted from the core elements at all.
The issue with talents is how many of them are just "spec your Q, W, or E" and that's it.
That literally changes everything about HotS
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
These are the guys that made every new hero and rework overpowered on purpose just to make ppl play them more and get more data - and I dont think them having to sort that data by two different ults is what made the difference in how they tuned the numbers
Mounts are awesome because I am lazy and hate having to spend time walking places; but also this is a game where they continually observed that the players were bad at macro - we need to make xp stick around and make it bright and shiny so they actually get it and you think they needed to have to spend more time walking to go get it. Did they learn bad macro because they got to mount up and run around the map? (the correct answer is they learned bad macro from qm)
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They do not, which makes them feel INCREDIBLY slow by comparison at first, then as you play them more you realize just how much it changes things for the better. Like, there are guides out there telling you down to the second how much time it takes for you to get from point A to point B and talks about the opportunity costs associated with that.
The closest league gets to mounts is giving people a massive speed boost when they are leaving the base at the start of the game and post-20 minutes after they respawn/hearth
It really wouldn’t, hots maps are designed to have you fighting over an OBJ by five minutes.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
tbf everyone does this thing in particular. also helps with the hype cycle and pushing early sales
re: the mount thing, yeah no the opportunity costs are still there. it's not instant. you just have much tighter windows to take advantage if the enemy team is paying attention. it's not worse, it's just different.
a difference that makes offlane in HotS DRAMATICALLY more fun than toplane in league. You're allowed to actually play the game! You're not in an island for 30 minutes bc nobody can be assed to spend all the time walking up there, or instantly losing two towers bc you decided to take the time to walk anywhere else!