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GeekNights Tuesday - Heroes of the Storm: Initial Thoughts
Tonight on GeekNights, we bring to you our initial thoughts on Blizzard's not-a-MOBA-we-swear-to-god Heroes of the Storm. It is to MOBAs what Team Fortress 2 is to... well... Team Fortress games (TF, MegaTF, Weapons Factors, TFC, etc...). In other news, Rym tried out an Escape the Room for some real-life Layton, and the Star Wars pod can be yours for a token $100,000.
After a brief outage, the main GeekNights Feed is now back up on iTunes for your listening pleasure. And in case you didn't know, we have many other options for subscription, including a feed of random old episodes from our ten year 100+ episode run!
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A MOBA with a commander (natural selection stylee). Commander handles; gold, upgrades, creeps, buildings and orders.
Shitty player? Commander can request a sub from matchmaking.
If just one person makes the strategic decisions, the other players become laborers. They are only good for their skill at clicking and following instructions.
I don't know about you, but I've seen people in MOBAs - everybody knows what the rest of the team should be doing in response to how they play. Outside of professional play this inevitably results in exactly twenty different ideas of what the other people should be doing, and a complete fucking mess as everybody plays as if the other people on the team are mind-readers, and then get very shouty when they're not. Fuck that. If I wanted to be screamed at and insulted for no reason by random idiots, I'd go to the local nightclub district after closing time and try to line up for a taxi, at least that way I can have a pint beforehand.
Not even touching the whole "clicking and following instructions" thing which is so absurd of a statement I can only assume you're taking the piss. Though I can tell you that from now on, I'm referring to NS and NS2 as being nothing more than just clicking skill and following instructions just to annoy you.
"Hey dude I'm thinking of building bork to deal with this mundo."
"naw dude aatrox got it, grab freezyhammer we need the cc."
"okay i'm going to snare... now. go in go in!"
Social League feels a lot like CS:Go does, once you add the voicechat. Same kind of weirdass meta on what to buy and who goes where, same people yelling at you for being a scrub which is why you don't play pubs. Cept CS is dominated entirely by clickspeed and if you weren't born with the reflexes then you are just helpless no matter what you do, whereas a person can actually learn a moba and do smart things.
The people who yell endlessly about the meta in mobas are idiots looking for an excuse to spread blame around, because you can get away with a lot of weird shit if you have a clever plan. Our group has this whole thing we do of doing insane metabreaking comps in League and consistently getting away with it. "I'm taking X and I'm going to build whatever." is a something of a motto for us.
(One of our favourite lanes is taking two tanky bruiser assholes, Garen and Darius, to the bot lane, traditionally populated with squishy ranged guys and their equally squishy supports, and both taking the starting item that shares gold and a heal when you execute minions with it. Outside of a few wildcards lanes, we basically turn into a steamroller of regenerating health and murder that pushes the other guys under their tower and freely takes all the last hits forever. It's p great playing a duo lane where we both outfarm the solo carry we're facing.)
BTW, just got back from watching Mad Max.
It was good. (⊙ω⊙) In the paraphrased words of Rym "best action film since the Matrix".
Not exactly the best complement though. It's like finally, something done well. However I can understand why some people, even myself, weren't completely satisfied or didn't like it. Was mostly monotonal. It's one long car chase sequence from start to end. It's strength and weakness.
The action was full of adrenaline and lots of subtleties, if you blink you'd probably miss why that guy now isn't inside the vehicle. Was like watching a kung fu fight with cars (awesome).
With the action being so long and not wanting to blink, it's almost draining to watch. When the action calms down, it's like... aww.. I can rest my poor eyes for a minute before we start again.
Kind of why the ending wasn't too satisfying. Was more of a relief than anything else. Wanted more from it, but I can't say what. The aesthetics and all was great. I have few complaints here and there, but I definitely recommend to all, to watch.
Really makes me wish it was Fist of the North Star, then we could get some omae wa mo shindeiru too.
You can rebuild be sacrificing coin, but you need coin for upgrades. Make the game flip flop more, which may give incentive for winning faster/ surviving/ sharing coin with teammates.
She also has this great special move for running away. Thanks to that I can escape all those situations where you have a speck of health left and the enemy is hunting you down for that last shot. I'm dying maybe once or twice a game whereas otherwise I would be dying at least 5-10 times. It's also great for the opposite situation. the enemy runs with a speck of health left. I just catch right up and one shot puts them away.
Also, since the basic attack stacks up she's also useful for defense, getting objectives, getting mercs, destroying structures, just about everything else.
These games get a lot more fun when you find a hero you feel like you can play well, even if you still suck.
EDIT: Fucking appended newlines for no good reason every time.
Also this type of game where you're "told what to do" with timed team objectives exist as mini / sub games / side maps in League of Legends.
All the experiences I heard on the podcast just sounded like "I played a MOBA and didn't throw my computer out the window after the first game". Nothing really new other than streamlining it to the point where the only thing that needs to be improved is individual clicking skill and team communication (just like every MOBA I guess).
Anyway I'll see how it goes, I'm in the weird position of being able to see the target audience try it out and accept or reject it.
1. MRAs were mad about it for some reason.
2. It was a Mad Max movie
3. "The entire movie is one giant car chase"
4. George Miller spent years trying to build custom cameras to film it in 3D
That was enough. I didn't even see the trailer.