On October 16 2014 21:38 ahswtini wrote: I wonder how performance can be as bad as people say it is, when it's basically the SC2 engine only with far fewer units?
Everything has a higher model quality in HotS, the sc2 engine wasn't really build for it and since you don't care for optimization at the alpha stage of the game the requirements jumped a good portion. The changes in HotS to the engine also affected the minimum requirements of Starcraft2. And well graphic cards are the other point, they get alot of extra power from their software, but the software might mess up things if it doesn't know how to react to a game engine. Really glad my card is really stable in that regard, didn't notice a performance change.
For those of you saying you run sc2 well, or hold 60fps in practice games etc - it really depends, a lot.
sc2 is CPU limited and performance widely varies depending on what is happening. At the start of a 1v1 game i've screenshotted over 800fps - yet on another 1v1 game, in a max v max tvz on a HUGE map with a ton of missile turrets, seeker missiles, PDD's etc - i've seen about 20 fps - in a 1v1 - when physics was enabled. That's on a Haswell CPU at overclock, so it destroys everything short of a recent overclocked intel CPU in terms of sc2 performance. So.. it's kinda hard to estimate performance, it's so variable. I'l have to play the game a bit and see how it looks compared to sc2 games, how stuff runs etc. I doubt it will be GPU limited at all, as sc2 on max settings in a big fight, when dropping to 40fps, was only at like 10-20% GPU load.. before my last upgrade
Also for anyone starting out, do yourself a favor and never try to play before noon. People are fucking TERRIBLE in the mornings and you'll always get at least one afker as well.
On October 16 2014 23:24 Serejai wrote: Also for anyone starting out, do yourself a favor and never try to play before noon. People are fucking TERRIBLE in the mornings and you'll always get at least one afker as well.
Note: This rule only applies if your name is Serejai.
On October 16 2014 15:59 KeksX wrote: For those of you who are playing, what are the pros/cons in comparison to other AoS-type games? Another question: How does it compare to SC2 in terms of "ladder feel"?
The more I'm reading, the more I'm actually interested in playing. Let's see if I can be lucky and get an invite!
In comparison to LoL and DOTA, this would be my list of pros and cons:
Pros: More team oriented Less snowball effect Quick matches Everything is a skillshot
Cons: More team oriented Everything is gated content (talents, heroes) Low overall player skill (possibly just an alpha thing) Heroes feel bland and uninteresting Autoattacking can feel clunky and sluggish on a lot of heroes
I'm sure these lists could be a lot longer but these were the first things that came to mind for me.
The pros that you listed are exactly what make this game more appealing to me than DoTA and LoL. The shorter match length is a HUGE plus. There's nothing worse than making a 1 hour commitment to a shitty team in LoL. I also really like the variety of map design. I think that hero design and player skill will even out over time. My only gripe with the game right now is the economic model. Holy shit is everything ridiculously expensive outside of the starter pack. This game is basically F2P on a technicality, and I usually am not one to bitch about these things.
I played an overall 2 games in technical alpha and found the game terrible(huge dota fan and player btw).
Is there something I missed in the game? I feel like the game is a very simplified combined version of Lol and Dota with some additional simple mechanics. Overall game play, models, skills; nothing put me in the game currently. I wonder how many players having fun with either Lol or Dota will switch to that game because it provides a better experience(fun)?
I'll give a few more shots to the game but I doubt I can find more what already offered by others.
disable auto attack. just rightlick if you need to
@laser no you did not miss a thing. its the most simplified dota clone. and it tries to hide that fact behind objective play. because the target audiance...aside from old sc2 pros ...is to young to know it better or way to old to perform good enough. or unwilling to learn "complicated" mechanics. it sucks hard that there are games that demand learning and testing.
its just a typcal blizzard game. make it as casual friendly as possible. true in rts, true in mmo, true in arpg, true in card games. its their successmodell.
ps: oh for sure someone will come and blablba sc was so hard....compared to other titles on the market it was way more casual to control things. so please dont compare it to games of today. compare it to titles of his time.
pps: not hating on this game. dont get me wrong, its not mine and thats it. if you are a fanboy and get offended, please try to understand its just my opinion. and blizzard give me the last fucking DLC for sc2!
People talking about pinnacle of skill at MOBAs, certainly entertain me, specially when they are comparing it with other MOBAs and throwing words like "casual" at it.
as long as casual means that the skill ceiling can't be reached bye mere humans its fine for me. But some special people use the word casual in funny ways indeed.
I find Blizzards obsession about game duration quiet funny. I often enjoy hour long games, so I hope they won't aim at 15-30 minutes durations in every game the produce from now on. But it really seems to hit the mark for alot of people and helps the success of the games in a big way. And I like Hearthstone and D3 because they can be in between games.
Hope the Heroes editor will be Sc2 like. Want to make a map where the AI rebuilds the bases again, even if it doubles game duration haha.
OK, so I got into beta yesterday and this is my assessment so far (I'm lvl 6)
This game has big big server problems as well as problems with net-code, the slightest internet activity outside of hots = insta-lag. I would just like to say I love the detail and look of the hero models and that part of the game is by far the best, that said however controlling the heroes is horrible and very unnatural/unintuitive. At least for anyone used to RTS or DOTA like games. Why is mouse scroll locked? Its so silly I have to click on the minimap if I want to see something outside my heroes screen. Not being able to click on enemy heroes is also weird, I know that they don't have items ect. but clicking on creeps and units should not interfere with game-play...
I played a bit of LoL before I got into Dota2 beta and its just... the way everything is set up, its just like lol. How you ping, how spells/skillshots work, invisible grass thingies, animations... the list goes on... You would think they would make it work more like warcraft 3 (dota) but meh.
All this objective based gameplay makes it feel like those minigames in lol. I've played around 10 games and maybe only the last game made sense, you can teamwipe them 2 times and it can mean jack squat. Team composition? Don't even get me started on team composition. How the hell is their going to be any kind of meta variance if you chose your hero before a match and it pigeon holes you into a position on the team? I don't understand the reasoning behind this at all. Every single game is the same, no matter what you do it doesn't feel like you are doing anything, all the fights are the same, all the phases are the same. And no matter what you do you can't make a difference so you kinda just sit there and go through the hoops.
Oh, and the business model and character lvls are really poor. I need to play a hero 5 times to unlock an ability I can use ingame? Really? All it does is make you play the same hero doing the same thing over and over and over, because switching to another one that is lvl 1 is a waste of time. The actuall hero skills themselves are a mixed bag, half the skills your hero can unlock are a waste of time that you will never use because you have far better ones.
I hope they do a 180 with everything. Especially the UI, its horrible. That needs to take precedent, broken gameplay decisions can only be fix if you can actually play the game properly.
edit: I guess I need a verdict: The game in its current state is just plain bad apart for the artwork. It needs extensive, really extensive work at all levels for it to be playable at a casual level, let alone competitive. Its in alpha, so lets hope beta brings the massive amount of changes this game needs. Its not as bad as it could have been, which I guess can be taken as a plus.
Personally, I don't have any problems running a Twitch stream in the background as I play unless it's between 8 and midnight and my apartment complex internet is stressed to the max.
What you're experiencing with team comps right now is somewhat infuriating, but comes down to how the solo queue system works. Playing a custom game or queuing up with a team fixes that, but if you don't you can often end up with the 1 assassin, 2 support, 2 specialist, or 4 tanks and a specialist or just really bad individual hero balance.
The problem that people don't realize is that farming doesn't matter, objectives matter. DotA players want to sit in lane for the first 10+ minutes of the game and you will lose if you do that. Realize that taking a merc camp not only gets you an XP advantage, but also guarantees one lane will be pushing, allowing you to either leverage the 4v5 somewhere else on the map, or to push with it and take objectives. It's a bizzare way of playing and takes some time to get used to.
On October 17 2014 22:05 deth2munkies wrote: Personally, I don't have any problems running a Twitch stream in the background as I play unless it's between 8 and midnight and my apartment complex internet is stressed to the max.
What you're experiencing with team comps right now is somewhat infuriating, but comes down to how the solo queue system works. Playing a custom game or queuing up with a team fixes that, but if you don't you can often end up with the 1 assassin, 2 support, 2 specialist, or 4 tanks and a specialist or just really bad individual hero balance.
The problem that people don't realize is that farming doesn't matter, objectives matter. DotA players want to sit in lane for the first 10+ minutes of the game and you will lose if you do that. Realize that taking a merc camp not only gets you an XP advantage, but also guarantees one lane will be pushing, allowing you to either leverage the 4v5 somewhere else on the map, or to push with it and take objectives. It's a bizzare way of playing and takes some time to get used to.
That last part is not entirely true. On certain maps the best strategy is to hit level 10 as fast as possible. Of course, you can't just tunnel vision and ONLY lane... but sometimes hitting level 10 first is more important than completing an objective, so there are times where sitting in a lane is beneficial. Saying "farming doesn't matter" is a pretty broad generalization, although you're correct in that it's usually not the best use of time.
You're only level six. Gotta give it more of a try, buddy.
Sadly, HotS' design almost entirely relies on playing as a team. More so than Dota or LoL, where you can sometimes win by yourself. Forget that in HotS. You can't. In order to truly appreciate and play the game, you need friends or teammates. Playing as two already adds a lot to the balance, three is good, four is excellent and five is obviously optimal.
Some of your gripes I don't understand though. I feel like the UI is just fine. Simple, yet efficient and instinctive. I haven't had a single problem with it. Same thing for "pigeon-holing". I don't see that. You choose your hero before the game, so you pretty much get to play whatever you want. Honestly, unless your team composition is absolutely horrid, it's unlikely you'll lose straight up due to that. "Pick wins" don't happen that often, at least in my experience.
Team fights are not irrelevant. Their consequences are simply different than that of Dota and LoL. In those games, a won team fight often results in a push, a tower, or Roshan or whatever they have on LoL. In HotS, it more often results in mercenary camps and objectives, which are then followed by a push. It's not universal mind you, but I feel like it should be the order of things. Objectives and mercenary camps rank high in terms of priority, so it is better for a team to capitalize on a won fight by focusing on those.
Some of your other points are valid, albeit a bit harshly put. The business model isn't terrible per se, it's just greedy. Terribly greedy. I'm afraid you're wrong about the competitive scene though. It's already sprouting.
In any case, we'll see how things develop. I do expect that, if Blizzard doesn't tone down the greed, they'll see an impact on the game's popularity though.
and more recently the $10 price increase of the latest World of Warcraft expansion (even though the expansion itself has less content than previous ones).
I have not bought MOP, but the price for MOP+WOD together - after multiple free 10 day trial handouts - is £39.99 - i paid at least £30 for TBC and WOTLK (i believe £30 exactly, each), so it looks like that price increase is only in the US.
Strongly considering the jump over after skipping MOP, but i'm invested in Wildstar ATM and the raiding scene there looks surprisingly good, at least for a while longer.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/zmH2wTg.jpg)
...is to young to know it better or way to old to perform good enough. or unwilling to learn "complicated" mechanics. it sucks hard that there are games that demand learning and testing. 
