Our China Region specialist, Wei, has been working hard securing interviews with prominent players and casters in China. Recently, Wei got a chance to sit down with Nostalie, who is a caster for Gold League.
Here's what Nostalie had to say about the current state of Heroes in China.
Nostalie (left) and his fellow Gold League casters
Popular streamer at Douyu, a Chinese streaming site like Twitch.
(Nostalie back in his sc2 days)
On Streaming
Nostalie has a contract with Douyu, but he doesn’t have to be streaming Heroes of the Storm. He is emotionally attached to the game and wants it to do well. He could be making more money streaming something else.
Most other popular streamers have already left for other games. There has been a mass exodus for Overwatch.
Living in Shanghai is expensive, and he has to take care of his baby. If streaming Heroes of the Storm is no longer economically viable, he will have no choice but to switch games.
He is hoping for the upcoming patch brings some people back.
State of the Chinese Pro Scene
Collapse of the Esports scene is directly related to the shrinking of the player base, which is related to the slow development rate of the game.
There have been a massive exodus of pro players to Overwatch. YL, Braveheart, OMG, and EDG have released their existing Heroes team. (Note: Some of these teams might return with completely different rosters or have players return from Overwatch for the next Gold League)
Big organizations use viewership numbers as the number one determinant of whether the game should be invested in.
Teams that remain:
eStar is the only team left with stability
ZeroPanda will continue to field a team for Heroes
X-team will stay together for Summer Championships
TSD is still intact
X-team is not looking great. On same level as a top tier NA/EU team, but don’t expect them to do well in Summer Championships.
eStar is in middle of a transition. Some players might be suffering from “low morale", so their Summer performance is hard to predict.
eStar lost eStarNccCc to Overwatch. They are currently trying out EDGm, EDGsr, and ZeroPandaTop.
eStarXiaOt has officially retired due to his chronic back issues. He will be overseeing the entire eStar organization, and will not be active in coaching the Heroes of the Storm team.
Small tournaments are completely gone. Leifeng Cup is on the verge of being discontinued, but should at least run for 2-3 more months.
Gold League will continue, but they are considering moving the tournament to a closed environment. The venue they were playing at seated around 100 people, but they were getting only 5 to 6 people in the audience during non-MVP Black games.
While EDG and eStar offered competitive salaries for their players, many other teams were offering 1000-2000RMB per month (conversion rate is around 6.6rmb to 1 USD). A big reason why no talent was coming into the game.
Pro scene in China won’t die, but will become a niche at this point. Bad players from other games will form teams to compete in Gold League. This game also provides start-up organizations (like eStar) a chance to win some prize money and branch out to other games.
Chances of premier sponsors returning to the game is virtually nonexistent. Tournament organizers also sees no point as there is no viewership.
Common Complaints Surrounding the Game
Pro-Gamers/Casters alike tend to put the blame on Baldy (common nickname given to Dustin Browder). They feel he could be doing more for the game.
The gaming industry in China is extremely cutthroat in terms of vying for players. A lot of local competition, plus DOTA2 and LOL were already huge.
Game was initially released with a lot of hype, but delays killed off its popularity. A lot of Chinese gamers played it because it was a Blizzard game. but the product felt unfinished and there were too many other options out there.
Game actually became a gateway game to Chinese gamers who didn’t play MOBAs before. A lot of new players tried the game, liked the concept but was discouraged by the lack of “completeness” of the game. They ended up switching to DOTA 2 or LOL.
Chinese gamers are “followers,” and are less likely to play a game that is perceived "dead". Gamers want to show off their skills in a game that other people care about. They are less like Western gamers who make independent choices on what is fun.
Nostalie agrees with MVP Black that hero release rate is too slow. Again, he stresses how competitive the market is.
Common complaints against the game itself include (many of these things have already been heard 10000 times):
The game took way too long to get to bans, season 1, and unranked draft.
The social interface is also too bare boned. At least make it like Warcraft III, have clans, portraits more visible, automated tournaments, etc. Since the game is so team oriented, not having a decent interface is absolutely killing the game. Nostalie specifically says: “Why does the background change every hero release? If they had the time, just give us a stable interface.”
Engine and server stability is also an issue. The online tournaments in China have required constant pausing. Gaming computers struggle running game at max setting, and reconnect system is poor.
Solo Q feels like a chore, and worst player often determines outcome.
Thank you for reading, and be sure to follow our twitter at @LiquidHeroes for the latest articles!!
I agree with all the complaints. HotS has been slowly dying for some time now and MVP Black's potential disband will likely cement the end of its golden era.
Very depressing read I agree on most of the complaints which makes me sad. Imo the game has great potential to be awesome and everything they add seems good. Just too slow... L Like stated in the article (and in 10000 articles before) the start of season 1 and bans for ranked and unranked came way too late. Imagine there were double the players with all this new stuff now. I bet most of them would stay with Hots.
On the other hand I think Hots may have potential to be a game for the "non-asians" where they can perform well. At least there are still games to watch and to build a meta for casuals to adept :p The game is still fun for me
I'm just wondering: on what rate were LoL/DotA 2 heroes released? I mean, Blizzard releases one hero every 3-4 weeks, which, in my opinion, isn't too slow. ; And I even think that's quite fair: if you do the daily quests, you're able to buy any new hero without investing any real money. If they just threw out heroes left and right, they would probably make more profit, tbh.
The game is dying. The biggest complaint for me are the performance and connectivity issues. The game has become increasingly unplayable for me with huge drops in framerate every teamfight, especially on the newer maps. And sometimes just randomly dropping with the terrible reconnect system generally meaning you are just out.
For the rest too many other poor things: - Why did ladder take ages.. How stupid was it to make a system with 50 equally sized ranks.. Proper rating systems are a big thing. - Lack of social features in game, no proper clans/channels. Finding a team if you don't want to soloQ is rough, why can wc3 have automated tournaments but is this not in HotS?? - Slow rate of patching. This has picked up lately but why does it take so goddamn long to fix heroes with zero play (like Gazlowe, Cho'gall, Butcher, Artanis) for ages. Balance on talents is too much a joke too. New hero release is also a bit slow although I wouldn't even mind that if the current roster was more properly adjusted quicker. - Terrible tournament support. The connection issues can't be fixed perhaps as they are related to the sc2 engine but how hard is it to implement ingame drafting??
Most of these complains are "The game had a friggin' 2 years beta". And that doesn't make them any less true or frustrating. ^^ I'm just glad pretty much all of this is going to be fixed or is being fixed right now (patch rate is good since the LiMing/Rehgar fiasco).
TBH I have faster queues since 1 month, my only concern is the ladder system (rank 5 players playing/drafting like noobs) and it's going to be fixed. Oh, and the muted guys who piss people in HL. Right now, I can get 2 or 3 good teammates or the same amount of noobs who are clueless. So, I guess in 10 days I'll be pretty happy with the game.
I've always been wondering, why Blizzard does not attempt to introduce some kind of Crowd Funding for the Blizzcon tournament. On the one hand, it would improve the the professional environment (-> more money = more interesting for teams) and give the game the publicity it needs (-> The International is covered in ordinary newspaper here, mainly to report "OH MY GOD, LOOK HOW MUCH MONEY THEY MAKE!!!).
For the rest of the arguments: Season 1 starts way too late, but I hope quite a few problems will be fixed with the start of S1.
On June 05 2016 04:18 Ej_ wrote: I agree with all the complaints. HotS has been slowly dying for some time now and MVP Black's potential disband will likely cement the end of its golden era.
On June 06 2016 19:33 Markwerf wrote: The game is dying. The biggest complaint for me ...
"A lot of Chinese gamers played it because it was a Blizzard game. but the product felt unfinished and there were too many other options out there."
"Most other popular streamers have already left for other games. There has been a mass exodus for Overwatch." , NOSTALIE
Overwatch is cannibalizing other Blizzard games. HotS might be remembered as Blizzard's only commercial failure.. the game itself is really good. I had concerns about HotS's commercial viability right from the start.
ATVI yaps on and on about the stellar financial performance of every Blizzard franchise except HotS. ATVI stopped talking about WoW subscriber numbers once they started dropping. The more ATVI yaps the better the game is doing. ATVI's silence about HotS is deafening.
The number one thing they need to do professionally for viewers is make sure their games go with as little delay between matches as possible. Too many tournaments have delays between games that are longer than the games. That has to be fixed before larger viewership can be realistic. One of the big draws of HOTS is that it only takes ~20-30 minutes to play or watch a match, but that benefit is quickly turned into a negative if you have a 20-30 minute delay between matches and nothing to fill the air. Sometimes there will be delays, but plan something for the down time. Even if it is rebroadcasting a great match from a different region that people might have missed. Or playing the latest episode of something like TownHall Heroes in the down time.
I don't really think they need significantly faster hero releases. I do think that they need faster updates for the heroes that are completely out of the meta. With a limited hero pool compared to other moba's you can't afford for ~ 30 of your 52 heroes to be tier 3 or lower.
All the stuff that is coming that might be too late, well not much they can do about that now.
and it did sell 1.5 million copies. so lots of revenue was generated.
No one announced what a failure it was until years later when Warner Communications stock price was not an issue. While it was failing the bad sales data was hidden and millions of ET cartridges were buried in the desert in Alamogordo, New Mexico. ATVI's silence says it all and ATVI's behaviour is congruent with the behaviour surrounding many of the failures listed in that link including the ET debacle. Is HotS as big a failure as ET? I doubt it is that big.
However, don't wait for the big Press Conference for ATVI executives to all stand up together and say : "Hey guys Heroes of the Storm has been a complete waste of time, money, and resources; we are a bunch of losers; stop buying ATVI stock right now."
and it did sell 1.5 million copies. so lots of revenue was generated.
No one announced what a failure it was until years later when Warner Communications stock price was not an issue. While it was failing the bad sales data was hidden and millions of ET cartridges were buried in the desert in Alamogordo, New Mexico. ATVI's silence says it all and ATVI's behaviour is congruent with the behaviour surrounding many of the failures listed in that link including the ET debacle. Is HotS as big a failure as ET? I doubt it is that big.
However, don't wait for the big Press Conference for ATVI executives to all stand up together and say : "Hey guys Heroes of the Storm has been a complete waste of time, money, and resources; we are a bunch of losers; stop buying ATVI stock right now."
Do you know the difference between revenue and profit? The article also says many of the ET copies were returned, and then there is the famous story of back-logged product needing to be dumped in a site. All that aside, the fact that ET was a physical product means the millions of copies likely had a much lower profit margin.
My argument is not that Heroes has been a huge financial success. It's that information disclosed by people who are actually in the know has been that the game is making money. That's a long shot away from commercial failure.
and it did sell 1.5 million copies. so lots of revenue was generated.
No one announced what a failure it was until years later when Warner Communications stock price was not an issue. While it was failing the bad sales data was hidden and millions of ET cartridges were buried in the desert in Alamogordo, New Mexico. ATVI's silence says it all and ATVI's behaviour is congruent with the behaviour surrounding many of the failures listed in that link including the ET debacle. Is HotS as big a failure as ET? I doubt it is that big.
However, don't wait for the big Press Conference for ATVI executives to all stand up together and say : "Hey guys Heroes of the Storm has been a complete waste of time, money, and resources; we are a bunch of losers; stop buying ATVI stock right now."
Do you know the difference between revenue and profit? The article also says many of the ET copies were returned, and then there is the famous story of back-logged product needing to be dumped in a site. All that aside, the fact that ET was a physical product means the millions of copies likely had a much lower profit margin.
My argument is not that Heroes has been a huge financial success. It's that information disclosed by people who are actually in the know has been that the game is making money. That's a long shot away from commercial failure.
the "people in the know" are saying very little relative to everything else Blizzard makes. and almost nothing compared to CoD and WoW.
do i know the difference between revenue and profit? Revenue does not include costs. by 1982 standards ET generated a fucktonne of revenue.
do you know what opportunity cost and ROI are?
my friend's restaurant generated a million dollars in profit and is a failure due to the opportunity cost of the capital invested to generate that million dollars.
Browder answered the sustainability question.. with a question about how long WoW lasted. Let's see if HotS lasts 10+ years.
Please note that others are claiming the game is "dying"; i do not use this kind of emotionally-charged, subjective language. I would describe the game as slowly declining and possibly being cannibalized by Overwatch. The game itself is good. I like it. I can understand why it has a loyal fan base. That does not mean ATVI is guaranteed to be happy with its financial performance though. Their silence says it all.
Shame to hear this and obviously plenty needs sorting, far too much doomsaying around though. Fundamentally hots is a very fun, addictive game and it's the only one of the modern blizzard games that has had serious, established, direct competition waiting for it on release. I'd say there's another 1-2 years where they continue to pour resources at it and try to gain traction, but obviously more than just gameplay and new heroes is required, how they left the ranking system this long is utterly mind boggling.
The point about people wanting to play 'relevant' games is really important, many people will be swayed by viewing/player numbers rather than differences in underlying enjoyment so it will need commitment from blizzard to increase market share, here's hoping because it's a worthy game.
I doubt that HotS has been a financial failure. Despite all of Blizzard's comments to the contrary, I don't believe for one moment that Blizzard has dedicated a bunch of personnel and other resources to the game. If HotS did have that kind of backing, we'd have seen ranked seasons a year ago, fast hero releases, and a much faster evolution of the game. No, what we have here is an honest to goodness half-assed effort (and if this is not a half-assed effort, then Blizzard needs to fire some people immediately). I'm sure that there's been some return on the investment made, but I doubt that it has been very much. It's a shame that Blizzard has bungled HotS so badly, because the core game is really, really good.
On June 07 2016 05:17 xDaunt wrote: I doubt that HotS has been a financial failure. Despite all of Blizzard's comments to the contrary, I don't believe for one moment that Blizzard has dedicated a bunch of personnel and other resources to the game. If HotS did have that kind of backing, we'd have seen ranked seasons a year ago, fast hero releases, and a much faster evolution of the game. No, what we have here is an honest to goodness half-assed effort (and if this is not a half-assed effort, then Blizzard needs to fire some people immediately). I'm sure that there's been some return on the investment made, but I doubt that it has been very much. It's a shame that Blizzard has bungled HotS so badly, because the core game is really, really good.
I think at times it's been a big focus for them, but they've been fairly economical with the truth in that I'm sure many of the team are flexible and have been pulled to other projects for long periods of time. The optimist would say they can come back to HoTS and I think there is genuine scope for that, reasoning being:
Starcraft development is now minimal Hearthstone is probably a fairly different skillset Overwatch was a complete game out of the box and there is less to gain from hero additions
So it falls on HoTS or future stuff, and I'm hopeful HoTS will get its fair share of the attention.
On June 07 2016 05:17 xDaunt wrote: I doubt that HotS has been a financial failure. Despite all of Blizzard's comments to the contrary, I don't believe for one moment that Blizzard has dedicated a bunch of personnel and other resources to the game. If HotS did have that kind of backing, we'd have seen ranked seasons a year ago, fast hero releases, and a much faster evolution of the game. No, what we have here is an honest to goodness half-assed effort (and if this is not a half-assed effort, then Blizzard needs to fire some people immediately). I'm sure that there's been some return on the investment made, but I doubt that it has been very much. It's a shame that Blizzard has bungled HotS so badly, because the core game is really, really good.
I think at times it's been a big focus for them, but they've been fairly economical with the truth in that I'm sure many of the team are flexible and have been pulled to other projects for long periods of time. The optimist would say they can come back to HoTS and I think there is genuine scope for that, reasoning being:
Starcraft development is now minimal Hearthstone is probably a fairly different skillset Overwatch was a complete game out of the box and there is less to gain from hero additions
So it falls on HoTS or future stuff, and I'm hopeful HoTS will get its fair share of the attention.
The real question is whether the Starcraft team is working on HotS or a new, unannounced RTS (or something else entirely).
On June 06 2016 19:33 Markwerf wrote: - Slow rate of patching. This has picked up lately but why does it take so goddamn long to fix heroes with zero play (like Gazlowe, Cho'gall, Butcher, Artanis) for ages.
For what it's worth...
I know the case of Gazlowe was difficult. I remember when everyone was bitching at how terrible Gaz was, Gaz actually held the *highest* win-rate in Bronze, while having one of the *worst* win-rates in Masters.
This dynamic is particularly hard to balance properly (straight buffs for Masters would make Gaz miserable for Bronze players), and I appreciate taking those cases slow.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3ajUPbk.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img1.cache.netease.com/game/starcraft2/news/201409/49b.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hHRDpy6.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/226la8o.png)
