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Heroes of the Storm - A New MOBA for Haters of the MOBA Genre?
Blizzard is developing a new MOBA called "Heroes of the Storm", and it seems they've made a few changes to the formula that fixes most of the problems I had with the genre. I've listed a few points below. What do you guys think?
- Shared Team Level: No single player can fall so far behind, so you don't have to worry about dedicating time to "farming" just to catch up. This seems to allow for the development of characters that don't need to kill a single thing (like Abathur, Brightwing, etc).
- No gold/items: Last Hitting/Denying is nonexistent in the game, instead utilizing a build customization tree system specific to each character (gained each level)
- All abilities available immediately: Lets you use all abilities as soon as the game starts, with ability upgrades gained during the leveling process to customize how your character works
- Multiple Objective-based Maps: Various maps with diverse objectives, instead of a single map with set objectives
- 20 Minute games: Quicker games, which means you're not forced into playing through a long game if you're losing.
http://www.destructoid.com/heroes-of-the-storm-is-a-moba-for-people-who-hate-mobas-271910.phtml
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-13-heroes-of-the-storm-preview
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/blizzard-explains-why-it-doesn-t-call-heroes-of-the-storm-a-moba/1100-6416084/
- Shared Team Level: No single player can fall so far behind, so you don't have to worry about dedicating time to "farming" just to catch up. This seems to allow for the development of characters that don't need to kill a single thing (like Abathur, Brightwing, etc).
- No gold/items: Last Hitting/Denying is nonexistent in the game, instead utilizing a build customization tree system specific to each character (gained each level)
- All abilities available immediately: Lets you use all abilities as soon as the game starts, with ability upgrades gained during the leveling process to customize how your character works
- Multiple Objective-based Maps: Various maps with diverse objectives, instead of a single map with set objectives
- 20 Minute games: Quicker games, which means you're not forced into playing through a long game if you're losing.
http://www.destructoid.com/heroes-of-the-storm-is-a-moba-for-people-who-hate-mobas-271910.phtml
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-13-heroes-of-the-storm-preview
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/blizzard-explains-why-it-doesn-t-call-heroes-of-the-storm-a-moba/1100-6416084/
Post edited by VentureJ on
Comments
If the shitty RTS control scheme is a problem there are options already available.
I didn't read the details, so I don't know the specifics, but I'm still afraid. Blizzard games haven't been the perfect record they once-were.
There's a Pirate-themed map that has you fighting around for Dubloons, which you then deposit to a pirate ship. Once you get enough Dubloons, the pirate ship catapults a bunch of stuff to the opponent's forts (which is the replacement of a turret in this game).
There's also a map where you fight to control 2 Dragon Shrines, and if your team controls both shrines for a certain amount of time, a player on your team transforms into the massive Dragon Knight, which lets you wreck a ton of shit.
The characters seem cool, too. For example, Abathur is a character that doesn't have any direct offensive capabilities whatsoever, but you can "infect" another teammate and cast abilities from their head.
There's also Gazlowe, who is also not very good at directly killing the opponents, but can spawn turrets, lasers, bombs, etc that are REALLY good at sieging the opponent's forts or disrupting offensive pushes against your own forts.
The game itself doesn't seem as "stat grindy", and the diverse characters/maps seem like it could be fun. You have a good point, though, Matt, and I wonder what would constitute as Blizzard's hook.
I'm not so pessimistic on RTS. I was actually a rather good Starcraft player back in the day! I could not get into Warcraft III for the life of me though, because I really didn't like the hero-based system, which of course was the root of the entire MOBA genre. Therefore, I fear MOBAs may just never be my jam.
The blizz heroes are fun to play as, if you like their franchises.
Why can't your performance be the factor determining whether you stand out or not? Why does someone need to be a higher level than their teammates in order to feel like the game is worthwhile? Shouldn't the incentive to improve be the welfare of your team, as a whole?
I don't really see this issue in other team games like TF2, Natural Selection, etc. In TF2, I may be kicking a bunch of ass on my own, but that just contributes to completing the map objective, and ultimately winning the game for my team.
I suspect that this need to stand out above your own teammates partly contributes to the toxic communities that MOBAs are known for.
Perhaps you're right, though. Maybe higher levels of play will garner less ill-will, since everyone is adequately competent to "not feed" the opponent.
Then again, a lot of my friends who play on higher Ranked games say that the "toxicity" levels increase, since there's more at stake, and dying even once can give a significant-enough advantage to a specific opponent.
And I feel that there are lots of interesting decisions in that process. "Should I starve myself to allow carry to get maxium exp or should I focus on getting my level 6 as fast as possible", "Should I put myself in risky position to try to prevent opponent from getting exp and gold, or should I apply live and let live?"
By removing basically the whole traditional laning phase from the game HotS also removes all those potential decisions. Or course it then adds decision making around the objectives which probably does have it's own interesting game around it/them.
In other mobas, you have a range of levels across your team such that your team average might be lower, but you have some still that are higher than the other team. Further more, gold is independent from the xp you've gotten, so a person with a lower level could still be stronger through items. This lets a team that is behind catch up because it is possible for someone on a losing team to still get some kills and come back. A good player can "carry" their team back.
However, in HotS, it is much harder to come back as your entire team does strictly less damage and has less health. This results in a snowball effect and there isn't much you can do about it, assuming both teams are equally skilled players.
At the moment, if you're behind, you can always coordinate a heavier push towards the objectives/mercenaries, which give you a significant-enough advantage to make a comeback. People who are so ingrained in the LoL/DotA mindset seem to prioritize kills so heavily, since those games really have no other significant objective.
This game is also in Alpha, so a level scaling implementation can resolve this issue with relative ease (if your team is lower level, then you get more XP overall).
Plus, since the games are much shorter, you're not stuck slogging through a 40-50 minute game that's on the verge of hopelessness. Games in HotS last around 20 minutes or so, which means you're not suffering for very long if you are losing.
They essentially replaced buying items with doing those ability differentiations which pop up on the left of the screen.
Also the game didn't show you properly but the healing well is the well just on the inner periphery of your base it's lifted from how healing wells work for Night Elves in Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne.
It has the same problems of a MOBA and then compounds it due to XP sharing (you're personally punished if your team doesn't understand what to do).
This is all in addition to it being baby's first MOBA it became frustrating for me to play.