You're personally punished if your team doesn't understand what to do in other MOBAs as well. Sure, you might reach a very high level in DotA, but your team will still go down in flames if they are all low level. That aspect is basically unchanged.
The healing wells are a positive because you basically never have to go back to the home base, as I had to do often in other MOBA. More time on the front line, more time actually playing the game.
Just as with other Blizzard games what they did is make a game that is true to the genre while polishing and perfecting all the small details and annoyances. The healing wells, not having drafts in non-competitive games, no bullshit denying or last-hits. The map objectives keeping things interesting. Mercenaries and map objectives actually being really powerful. Not having to deal with a stupid item shop.
The thing is, all the things that are fundamentally wrong with the core of the genre are unchanged. Just like in WoW. They made the MMORPG experience as polished as can be, but in the end it's still a grind of clicking on bad guys until you have enough XP for the next level.
At lunch today in the computer club 5 people were playing League of Legends, 1 person playing Dota 2 and 4 people trying out Heroes of the Storm. Everyone else was programming or studying.
Only people bored out of their minds were those playing Heroes of the Storm. I found Heroes of the Strom to be incredibly shallow compared to the other two MOBAs and way more frustrating.
Individual decisions are minimised to the bare minimum however team decisions and activities have a far higher priority. The hardest part of this genre is organising people to do the group activities. You can see this most clearly on the pirate/collect-the-gold map. Once one team gets ahead, making a comeback is virtually impossible.
My prediction - Only die hard Blizzard fans will keep playing this as people who play MOBAs will continue playing the ones they already have the most knowledge in and non MOBA people will continue to not play this MOBA. That's my guess anyway.
Unlikely to be winnners like Hearthstone or Starcraft.
It's the most appealing to me just based on it have you play the MVPs of the Blizzard universe. But even my honest attempts to play a MOBA I can't get over the shitty Starcraft custom map impression I had of those games from the very start.
They removed a lot of the micro decisions you make in a MOBA and emphasised the macro/map control aspect with team objectives.
On the surface this is great for accessibility. But when you play it, there's not as much opportunity for skill based plays. MOBAs aren't meant to measure raw clicking ability. MOBAs measure your ability to make good decisions. With those decisions gone, you're engaging in low individual skill ceiling gameplay. The objective based maps don't make up for that lowered skill ceiling.
They removed a lot of the micro decisions you make in a MOBA and emphasised the macro/map control aspect with team objectives.
On the surface this is great for accessibility. But when you play it, there's not as much opportunity for skill based plays. MOBAs aren't meant to measure raw clicking ability. MOBAs measure your ability to make good decisions. With those decisions gone, you're engaging in low individual skill ceiling gameplay. The objective based maps don't make up for that lowered skill ceiling.
They did remove the micro decisions. That's actually a good thing. They removed the meaningless decisions that simply tested whether or not you could remember 1000 items and 1000 hero powers. You're basically making the same decisions in HotS, but with a bunch of bullshit removed.
Skill based plays are definitely down though, because raw clicking ability has been removed. You can't kill someone simply because you out-click them. There's no skill you can use. The only way to kill someone is to catch them in bad position, and usually just outnumber them.
In the end I think it successfully solved the problems with DotA and the problems of LoL. It hasn't solved the problems of MOBAs. It also has introduced some problems of its own.
For example, I've played a lot of games recently where my team kills the entire enemy team. Then we start pushing. Then the entire enemy team respawns. Well, we are still a little beat up from the last battle, but we didn't go home to heal so that we could capitalize on our victory. So now our entire team dies. Ok, a little bit of back and forth is expected. We're pretty evenly matched and both teams have all 5 players working together as well as 5 random Internet plays can be expected to.
But then as soon as we die, the objective begins. While we are waiting to respawn, now the other team is getting double the reward for doing the same thing we did. And it's not like it's a skill play where they timed it to go along with the objective. They came and killed us right after they respawned.
It's interesting because in organized competitive play this is an interesting thing. When an objective is about to begin, you really don't want to die. But you also really want to kill the other team so they are dead during the objective. But trying to kill means engaging and risking your own death.
In random Internet play, it's really bad. They made the objectives really strong to give you incentive to actually care about them. That's good. But by making them so strong, the game is much more swingy even when teams are closely matched.
Timing when to attack and when to fall back, when to push forward to capitalize on a breakthrough versus when to fall back and consolidate gains, is 90% of the skill in Advance Wars. ;^)
Been playing this for a few weeks now. I don't feel as if I'm educated enough to speak of its merit as a game. But I think I will continue playing it, as opposed to the other MOBAs I've played, for the same three reasons I've been playing Hearthstone, and not something like Magic Online.
-It didn't take very long for me to feel as if I had basic competence with the game. -When I die, or the team loses a match, I don't feel particularly frustrated. -No one has called me a faggot yet. This might have something to do with the other reasons.
I've been playing DOTA 2 for about a week now, it's been fun. however it heavily relies on teamwork, so people with bad connections, trolls, rage quitters, people who don't/ can't communicate can really ruin the game.
The tutorial is weak, so doesn't make it easy to understand when you're doing something wrong. Pretty much learning from failure, though some players can be good teachers.
There's enough variety to prevent the game from being too samey. New heroes, different play styles.
But ultimately comes down to over powering the other players, and getting more kills first.
Either by ganging up, sneaking behind, or having better upgrades. It's balanced enough to come back from losses, but it's hard to tell sometimes. More likely if you're losing, you've already lost.
They did remove the micro decisions. That's actually a good thing. They removed the meaningless decisions that simply tested whether or not you could remember 1000 items and 1000 hero powers. You're basically making the same decisions in HotS, but with a bunch of bullshit removed.
You don't need to know everything, it feels like that when you first start any MOBA, then you realise what items are good generic items and go from there, you get an idea for what needs to be got when. This is like saying you need to know the exact spray pattern of every gun in Counterstrike, how much each gun, grenade and item costs plus all the maps and where you can wall bang from at what time on each map. There's just a bunch of shit you learn as you play and make use of as you become accustomed to it.
Skill based plays are definitely down though, because raw clicking ability has been removed. You can't kill someone simply because you out-click them. There's no skill you can use. The only way to kill someone is to catch them in bad position, and usually just outnumber them.
The game has been degraded to spell rotations, if you can fit auto attacks between them kite and attack a hero and have excellent skill shot accuracy. By taking items away and leaving it more "simple" they have forced the importance of mechanical play, play as Jim Raynor (space marine) and use the "shots slow enemy movement" then kite melee people all day, if they jump on you just Q (penetrating shot) them away. If you can do this mechanically you are basically at Starcraft 2 level of mechanical clicking, mouse moves and keyboard presses.
For example, I've played a lot of games recently where my team kills the entire enemy team. Then we start pushing. Then the entire enemy team respawns. Well, we are still a little beat up from the last battle, but we didn't go home to heal so that we could capitalize on our victory. So now our entire team dies.
But then as soon as we die, the objective begins. While we are waiting to respawn, now the other team is getting double the reward for doing the same thing we did. And it's not like it's a skill play where they timed it to go along with the objective. They came and killed us right after they respawned.
This happens in every MOBA it's part of the genre. It's called overextending. They consulted with a LoL team owner / veteran player for game design this is a common occurrence in LoL which also has team objectives that swing the game wildly. A similar thing happens in Dota 2 but I only played that game 3 times.
But by making them so strong, the game is much more swingy even when teams are closely matched.
Which is what makes it hard to come back from unless there are people on your team who are mechanically just better at moving their character around.
A lot of your arguments about how this game is good is just what it has copied from LoL from what I can tell, including the level 30 rank up, money for skins and heroes. Mounts are extra from Dota 2. There is really no reason I can see for this game to succeed but then again I also thought TF2 was shit, so did everyone else it just took them a while to realise.
It looks like they've finally revealed all of Leoric's abilities, and they look awesome. I like is Drain Hope ability, and his passive ghost-form seems very strong.
My main problem with heroes is how weak team engagements are. Because of the design, comebacks are always a possibility and the enemy team, if they team up smartly, can always win. The drawback of this, at least I feel, is that a lot of game decisions, from ability choice to team-on-team engagements can feel very arbitrary at times. Events that should feel decisive can often feel like they had very little impact. Things like scoring objectives and camps, and killing the enemy team can definitely put you ahead, but it's incredibly hard to say whether or not you'll still be ahead 5 minutes down the road. This isn't always a bad thing, because it lets us experience a comeback if we're on the losing side of things, but it can also be pretty upsetting when it's 20 minutes in, your team is 3 or 4 levels ahead, and a teammate has a lapse of reasoning and gets himself killed, and before you know it the enemy team is right back up to speed with you and at an actual advantage, and you're losing a game you should be winning, but instead you lose because of a single bad decision late in the game. I've played dota 2 for 5 or 6 years, and it just feels like an artificial competition, though it might just be because the game violates some of my pre-determined MOBA gameplay habits, which is also why I dislike league. Another thing I both like and dislike is the experience sharing. Because experience is shared, and gain scales by experience level the team and player are incentivized against risky engagements, and it's in everyone's best interest to only fight enemy heroes when you know you can win. This ends up with a lot of teamfights where you know that you're going to lose but you have to fight anyway because if you don't you'll probably lose, and a lot of fights where you feel like you have huge superiority. Trading is also stupid, because all you've done is shorten the length by moving the experience pool up, but gained no advantage. So in the early game, unless you're sure you can win, you never engage in a fight, do some light harassment and try to score team objectives all the while avoiding the enemy team like the plague until you get the jump on them. While this forces a lot of team play in order to win, it also results in a very slow feeling, and gank-like engagements are necessary to get ahead. Heroes sits in this odd place where nothing really matters as long as you don't do too many dumb things, until about 17 to 20 minutes where everything matters and a silly mistake can make your entire team lose the game. So, as I feel, a lot of the early game play for these reasons doesn't really feel like it matters and even when you are winning you're on edge hoping no one on your team makes a mistake. The game certainly makes an effort to put you in that feast-or-famine state, but the games I play hardly ever feel like even matches. While there are certainly games that flip-flop between win and lose, there are very few matches I've been uncertain or where the game feels fresh and exciting and my skills as a player are what let me win
I do gotta agree with that assessment. In eliminating the things that make mobas frustrating, Heroes has also kind of eliminated a lot of the things that gave the gameplay experience teeth. Laning and threat zone feels a lot floatier, teamfights lack tension... I dunno, the game just feels like it lacks natural direction and makes up for it by directly telling everyone what to do. I can see how if you've never moba'd before it'd be way easier to get into, because you don't have to learn everything you need to be doing over the course of the game, but I have learned all those things and it just makes hots feel all muddled and artificial.
To put it simply, I feel less like I'm playing a moba, and more like I'm walking through a moba theme park. Somebody comes up with a microphone and yells "Hey everyone it's teamfight time, everyone into the ball pit!"
So hots is to mobas as super smash bros is to fighting games?
Super Smash Brothers requires quite a bit of knowledge and has its own frame data information for each attack. I know people who bring in CRTs to play Smash Brothers rather than on a led / lcd panel.
If that was the comparison it would be that HOTS is easy to get into but has an infinite ceiling on potential. SB isn't "limited" in any way. There is a lot of skill that is involved in higher level play. It's easy to get into, but a high level player will absolutely decimate a low level player.
Honestly I think a solid team who knows how to play the characters well will destroy a less skilled team. I feel like I've had that happen to me. Then again I don't really have a lot to go off of since I never really put any time into LoL or Dota. Like what is the missing factor? If the game didn't have objectives would it make it better or worse? Because that seems mostly like the difference to me.
So, Blizzard recently made very big sweeping changes to the level scaling and death timers within the game. I would check out the latest patch notes, more specifically the Design & Gameplay section, which seems to address a lot of people's complaints here in this thread:
Also, honestly, as someone who actually paid attention to eSports in League and DotA 2 (even going as far as to join a fantasy LoL draft), I can pretty definitively say that Heroes of the Storm is THE BEST spectator MOBA to watch.
HotS also has the advantage of team levels, so it's really easy for a viewer to quickly see who is "in the lead". The map objectives give viewers an easy-to-follow big event that they can look forward to mid-game, and the lack of a laning phase prevents that long dip in momentum that LoL and DotA 2 gets after drafts have been set. The average length of the games also make it so that they don't seem as much of a slog to watch, especially if the matchup isn't that great.
There's a lot of depth in how teams handle objectives, whether they want invest their entire team to take an objective, how they approach the objective(s) in the first place, whether they take the time to focus on a big boss while the enemy team is distracted by an objective, etc. Some maps have multiple objectives, so there's also the split-second determination of which compositions should go where, etc etc.
Honestly, a lot of people are so used to the standard LoL/DotA-style of MOBA, that any fundamental divergence from that skeleton can feel weird and empty, but you really have to go into this game with a very different mindset.
Too late for you, perhaps. Figured I'd bring it up for any potentially interested parties. It's cool that they're still up for making these huge changes post "launch".
Comments
The healing wells are a positive because you basically never have to go back to the home base, as I had to do often in other MOBA. More time on the front line, more time actually playing the game.
Just as with other Blizzard games what they did is make a game that is true to the genre while polishing and perfecting all the small details and annoyances. The healing wells, not having drafts in non-competitive games, no bullshit denying or last-hits. The map objectives keeping things interesting. Mercenaries and map objectives actually being really powerful. Not having to deal with a stupid item shop.
The thing is, all the things that are fundamentally wrong with the core of the genre are unchanged. Just like in WoW. They made the MMORPG experience as polished as can be, but in the end it's still a grind of clicking on bad guys until you have enough XP for the next level.
Only people bored out of their minds were those playing Heroes of the Storm.
I found Heroes of the Strom to be incredibly shallow compared to the other two MOBAs and way more frustrating.
Individual decisions are minimised to the bare minimum however team decisions and activities have a far higher priority. The hardest part of this genre is organising people to do the group activities. You can see this most clearly on the pirate/collect-the-gold map.
Once one team gets ahead, making a comeback is virtually impossible.
My prediction -
Only die hard Blizzard fans will keep playing this as people who play MOBAs will continue playing the ones they already have the most knowledge in and non MOBA people will continue to not play this MOBA. That's my guess anyway.
Unlikely to be winnners like Hearthstone or Starcraft.
On the surface this is great for accessibility. But when you play it, there's not as much opportunity for skill based plays. MOBAs aren't meant to measure raw clicking ability. MOBAs measure your ability to make good decisions. With those decisions gone, you're engaging in low individual skill ceiling gameplay. The objective based maps don't make up for that lowered skill ceiling.
Skill based plays are definitely down though, because raw clicking ability has been removed. You can't kill someone simply because you out-click them. There's no skill you can use. The only way to kill someone is to catch them in bad position, and usually just outnumber them.
In the end I think it successfully solved the problems with DotA and the problems of LoL. It hasn't solved the problems of MOBAs. It also has introduced some problems of its own.
For example, I've played a lot of games recently where my team kills the entire enemy team. Then we start pushing. Then the entire enemy team respawns. Well, we are still a little beat up from the last battle, but we didn't go home to heal so that we could capitalize on our victory. So now our entire team dies. Ok, a little bit of back and forth is expected. We're pretty evenly matched and both teams have all 5 players working together as well as 5 random Internet plays can be expected to.
But then as soon as we die, the objective begins. While we are waiting to respawn, now the other team is getting double the reward for doing the same thing we did. And it's not like it's a skill play where they timed it to go along with the objective. They came and killed us right after they respawned.
It's interesting because in organized competitive play this is an interesting thing. When an objective is about to begin, you really don't want to die. But you also really want to kill the other team so they are dead during the objective. But trying to kill means engaging and risking your own death.
In random Internet play, it's really bad. They made the objectives really strong to give you incentive to actually care about them. That's good. But by making them so strong, the game is much more swingy even when teams are closely matched.
-It didn't take very long for me to feel as if I had basic competence with the game.
-When I die, or the team loses a match, I don't feel particularly frustrated.
-No one has called me a faggot yet. This might have something to do with the other reasons.
The tutorial is weak, so doesn't make it easy to understand when you're doing something wrong. Pretty much learning from failure, though some players can be good teachers.
There's enough variety to prevent the game from being too samey. New heroes, different play styles.
But ultimately comes down to over powering the other players, and getting more kills first.
Either by ganging up, sneaking behind, or having better upgrades. It's balanced enough to come back from losses, but it's hard to tell sometimes. More likely if you're losing, you've already lost.
It's called overextending. They consulted with a LoL team owner / veteran player for game design this is a common occurrence in LoL which also has team objectives that swing the game wildly. A similar thing happens in Dota 2 but I only played that game 3 times. Which is what makes it hard to come back from unless there are people on your team who are mechanically just better at moving their character around.
A lot of your arguments about how this game is good is just what it has copied from LoL from what I can tell, including the level 30 rank up, money for skins and heroes. Mounts are extra from Dota 2.
There is really no reason I can see for this game to succeed but then again I also thought TF2 was shit, so did everyone else it just took them a while to realise.
Add me:
wyatt.w.wells@gmail.com
BONES + CROWNS
Another thing I both like and dislike is the experience sharing. Because experience is shared, and gain scales by experience level the team and player are incentivized against risky engagements, and it's in everyone's best interest to only fight enemy heroes when you know you can win. This ends up with a lot of teamfights where you know that you're going to lose but you have to fight anyway because if you don't you'll probably lose, and a lot of fights where you feel like you have huge superiority. Trading is also stupid, because all you've done is shorten the length by moving the experience pool up, but gained no advantage. So in the early game, unless you're sure you can win, you never engage in a fight, do some light harassment and try to score team objectives all the while avoiding the enemy team like the plague until you get the jump on them. While this forces a lot of team play in order to win, it also results in a very slow feeling, and gank-like engagements are necessary to get ahead.
Heroes sits in this odd place where nothing really matters as long as you don't do too many dumb things, until about 17 to 20 minutes where everything matters and a silly mistake can make your entire team lose the game. So, as I feel, a lot of the early game play for these reasons doesn't really feel like it matters and even when you are winning you're on edge hoping no one on your team makes a mistake. The game certainly makes an effort to put you in that feast-or-famine state, but the games I play hardly ever feel like even matches. While there are certainly games that flip-flop between win and lose, there are very few matches I've been uncertain or where the game feels fresh and exciting and my skills as a player are what let me win
To put it simply, I feel less like I'm playing a moba, and more like I'm walking through a moba theme park. Somebody comes up with a microphone and yells "Hey everyone it's teamfight time, everyone into the ball pit!"
Honestly I think a solid team who knows how to play the characters well will destroy a less skilled team. I feel like I've had that happen to me. Then again I don't really have a lot to go off of since I never really put any time into LoL or Dota. Like what is the missing factor? If the game didn't have objectives would it make it better or worse? Because that seems mostly like the difference to me.
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/19960704/heroes-of-the-storm-patch-notes-november-17-2015-11-17-2015
Also, honestly, as someone who actually paid attention to eSports in League and DotA 2 (even going as far as to join a fantasy LoL draft), I can pretty definitively say that Heroes of the Storm is THE BEST spectator MOBA to watch.
HotS also has the advantage of team levels, so it's really easy for a viewer to quickly see who is "in the lead". The map objectives give viewers an easy-to-follow big event that they can look forward to mid-game, and the lack of a laning phase prevents that long dip in momentum that LoL and DotA 2 gets after drafts have been set. The average length of the games also make it so that they don't seem as much of a slog to watch, especially if the matchup isn't that great.
There's a lot of depth in how teams handle objectives, whether they want invest their entire team to take an objective, how they approach the objective(s) in the first place, whether they take the time to focus on a big boss while the enemy team is distracted by an objective, etc. Some maps have multiple objectives, so there's also the split-second determination of which compositions should go where, etc etc.
Honestly, a lot of people are so used to the standard LoL/DotA-style of MOBA, that any fundamental divergence from that skeleton can feel weird and empty, but you really have to go into this game with a very different mindset.