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On July 06 2014 13:47 Valiver wrote:
My average game time is probably just above 20 mins, but still can be anywhere from 12-30mins, so even at the high end it's lower than lol/dota games by a good bit. As for what makes each game fun/interesting, I think it depends on the person.
If you want to commit playing a moba the majority of your free time, I seriously doubt anyone would pick hots over dota or lol. Unless you are at the top of the ladder and doing tournaments, it just doesn't have the depth that the others have, and relies on teamwork and awareness to succeed while game knowledge is reaches a point where there's not much else to learn or improve on. In dota and lol, if you commit your time to one of them you will probably be improving for hundreds of games, and constantly learning and seeing new things.
Overall it seems to me that if you want to play a few games a week with friends, hots is simple and fun, and rewards your teamwork. Dota and lol, however, are more for the people who want to concentrate on playing every day and getting better without the game being the same every time. The vast amount of heroes and items alone make sure that if you get bored of something, you can change everything up and try new things. Honestly if hots did not have so many maps, I think it would be a dead game already because it would be too simple even for casual players.
Thanks for your insights! Guess I'm gonna play Heroes.
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On July 06 2014 12:59 EchelonTee wrote:
Preface: I'm not trying to flame, genuinely trying to hear opinions.
To people who enjoy this game and have a background in LoL or Dota; what does this game offer that makes it interesting/fun compared to those games? I've played ~6 games, not much, always with friends but I simply am not having fun with the game. I have been a pretty big blizzard fan in the past but simply the allure of playing as Blizzard chars isn't enough to hold my attention. Am I missing something that becomes more apparent 100+ games in?
I did read the header; if this is inappropriate I'll delete and move on.
Same feeling here. I was a huge fan of Blizzard's team oriented approach, with shorter, casual games when this was announced.
Of course, some level of depth had to be sacrificed, but after playing around 30 games in the Alpha, it seems the left turn Blizzard took was a bit too radical. By removing pretty much completely the laning aspect and the hero building aspect from the game, it destroyed much of the tension you would expect from the genre.
HotS feels like an action movie shortened to 60 minutes, but with 60 minutes of non-stop action. For those who think it's great, really, it's not. Just like an action sequence in a movie needs a proper tension build up for a good delivery, a video game needs a similar build up between battles. 20 minutes of spamming spells and attacking stuff with no preparation phase feels like riding a car in straight line at 100 mph, while DotA/LoL feel more like roller coasters.
But at least, HotS doesnt have the level of frustration involved in the 40-60 mins games in HoN, DotA and LoL when often the outcome is decided way before, so at the end of the day, HotS is still the best game in the genre so far, even with it's flaws.
I just wish they would add the level of depth you would expect from any Blizzard game released so far, because I just can't imagine a competitive scene in HotS in it's current state. Character and ability customization needs a little more interesting options for the players. Maybe choosing 3 basic abilities out of 5-6 options would be a good start.
(Also, just a nitpick, while the maps are really fun and well made, it feels strange that none of them involves the Blizzard lore, in a game that was once called ''Blizzard All-Star''. I guess they really want to focus on some new Nexus lore and cut the production cost of making new NPCs for every themed map. But I mean, there's SO MANY cool things that could be done. A Molten Core map in which players may summon Ragnaros to attack random enemy heroes? Fuck yeah. A Korhal map in which the players may use propaganda to gain the favour of the population and then unlock some crazy shortcuts? Sure. A Tristam map in which the players complete quests to gain cool buff items which grants them attack power/movement speed? Absolutely. Imagine playing Super Smash Bros in generic maps that don't have anything to do with Nintendo games, that's pretty much what HotS is right now. For a game that's promoted almost entirely based on it's theme, that aspect feels a little underwhelming.)
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In 2012, I was invited to the Dota 2 beta. My feedback was that Dota 2's core game mechanics were fundamentally flawed because games quickly snowball out of control and last too long, while the winning team stomps all over the losing team.
If I were to design the game mechanics for a MOBA, it would be virtually identical to HotS, which has fixed the major game design flaws that exist in Dota 2.
However, in copying LoL's business model, having only 6 heroes in the rotation causes boredom. The grind to unlock heroes is unrewarding and as bad as the worse reputation grinds in classic WoW.
1. Game Mechanics
Fixing the snowball effect: by removing items, having shared XP and 20 minute games, HotS provides, by far, the best MOBA gameplay experience.
In Dota 2, games are usually decided 20 minutes in, but pointlessly and needlessly drag out to 50 minutes, where the winning team completely destroys the losing team for the last 30 minutes, exacerbated by giving more XP, gold and items to the winning team, so they can stomp the losing team even more. This is the most serious game design choice that Dota 2 and LoL got wrong. HotS fixes this by removing items, having shared team experience, and allocates XP so that the losing team is usually no more than 1 to 2 levels behind. It also reduces the average game length to 20 minutes. These are the most important design choices in HotS and Blizzard is absolutely right and should be commended for fixing this critical design flaw that has plagued all other MOBAs to date.
Making the early game exciting: removing last hitting and laning, and replacing it with constant, objective-based action.
In Dota 2, the early game is boring. Players usually hide behind towers and level up by laning, during which a gimmick known as last hitting is supposedly used to differentiate skill. All of this is rightfully gone in HotS. There are 3 lanes, but there's no laning. Instead there's constant action. In fact, the distance between the middle towers of both sides is 1 screen length. From the very start, the focus isn't the quaint and needless gimmick of last hitting creeps, it's to engage the enemy in team fights, and to complete map objectives. Dota 2's early game can usually be described as a elderly person walking down a street, but HotS's early game is a barfight.
No carries.
In Dota 2, snowballing is so bad because a carry can, by itself, kill most heroes in 1 second, especially with items. So not only is the losing team losing badly (and hence losing even more badly as a result), they are getting effectively 1 shotted, whenever they engage. Carries are overpowered heroes justified by having their role tagged as an overpowered hero... I mean, "carry". There are no carries in HotS. Even in the late game, no hero can, by itself, kill most other heroes in 1 second.
Map variety is refreshing.
Unlike most MOBAs, HotS has 4 interesting and unique maps with different objectives. This is a very refreshing change, that makes the gameplay more interesting and diverse.
2. Hero Design
Hero design is not as interesting as Dota 2 and spells lack synergy.
Heroes in HotS aren't as well designed as heroes in Dota 2. Fights in HotS are more active as spells generally have lower mana costs, so they can be used more often, rather than usually saved for the right time. However, heroes generally do not have a strong theme and synergistic spells. Dota 2 heroes such as Earth Spirit, Kunkka, Lina, Tusk have spells that synergize very well with other spells from that hero. For Tusk, ice shard blocks the enemy hero, then snowball rolls Tusk up to the enemy hero in melee range and stuns it, finally walrus punch is used as a massive damage melee nuke. Each of these heroes also have spells that share a theme. This synergy, which makes heroes feel like a cohesive package and spells feel like they specifically belong to that hero, generally does not exist in HotS.
Overuse of skillshots.
In HotS, almost everything is a skillshot, and most spells cannot be targeted on a hero. As a result gameplay is not as smooth as Dota 2. Consider Raynor's penetrating round and Tauren Chieftain's shockwave in WC3 (or Lina's dragon slave in Dota 2). These are all the same spells, they do line damage. But the latter can be targeted on enemies, so if targeted on an out of range hero, the hero will automatically move in range, then cast the spell in the direction of the enemy hero. However, when doing the same with Raynor, penetrating round will just cast without Raynor moving up to range. So the controls aren't intuitive. There are also spells, like the Witch Doctor's corpse spider that are instant and requires no timing, so there's no reason at all for it to be a skillshot. There should be less skillshots in general. Having less skillshots, like adding multiple building selection in SC2, does not necessarily remove skill. Since players can only do a finite number of things, it would mostly redirect their skill elsewhere.
All talent options should be unlocked from the start, not walled off until level 8.
Walling off the last 2 to 3 talent options from new players until they are level 8, which are usually stronger, is doubly gimping them. Not only are new players at a disadvantage for being new at the game, but there is a further disadvantage that the hero they play is gimped by not being able to choose the talents that are locked.
3. Business Model
No counterpicking is necessary.
While counterpicking exists in LoL and Dota 2, it's necessary that it not be included in HotS because of the business model. Including counterpicking would give people who spend real money an unfair advantage because they can pick a counter hero, while people who don't spend money generally can't, especially given how hard it is to grind for even one hero with gold. So not adding counterpicking is the necessary and correct choice. Valve even has a few words:
Q: Will I have to pay to get access to heroes? A: All of the heroes will be available free of charge. We believe restricting player access to heroes could be destructive to game design, so it's something we plan to avoid. Source: http://www.dota2.com/spoilsofwar/faq
Business model is unrewarding, too grindy, and grinding with 6 heroes for like 20 hours leads to boredom.
The average hero costs 6148.1 gold. After hitting level 10, which takes like 20 hours, I have earned 6300 gold, including the once-off 2000 gold for hitting level 5. More than half of the heroes cost 7000 gold or more, and this is insufficient to even buy one of such heroes. There is only 2 recurring sources of gold:
1. 600 gold for leveling, but it gets harder and harder to level up.
2. 250 gold for a daily quest that's completed in 1 game or 500 gold if the daily takes 2 games to complete.
Note that at higher levels, dailies will be the only reliable source of gold. This sort of grind is as bad as the worse reputation grinds in classic WoW such as Bloodsail Buccaneer.
So at this rate, it will take 8 levels (from 10 to 18) plus 9 daily quests to grind another 7000 gold hero, that's probably 40 hours for merely 1 standard hero. Meanwhile, I'm already bored because there's only 6 heroes in the rotation, 3 of which I don't like, to grind with.
The number of easily accessible heroes in order that people don't quit due to boredom, which should be 15 at least, depends on the absolute number of heroes accessible, rather than the proportion of accessible heroes out of all heroes. This number is reasonable from a business perspective if the game launches with around 40 heroes.
It should be possible to quickly get several heroes, using a bonus for new players, while returning to a more normal rate of hero unlocks later on.
Moreover, both teams are mostly full of the free rotation heroes, which also increases sameness, boredom and lack of variety. Heroes that are out of rotation almost never appear. This also hurts new players leaving them unprepared to face other heroes when the rotation changes.
Ideally, Blizzard should use the Dota 2 model, which has proven to be successful. If that isn't going to happen, I suggest doing all of the following:
1. Sell all heroes for $60 (price of a standard game).
2. Increase rotation size from 6 to 8.
3. Increase level 5 gold from 2000 (buys 0.32 heroes on average) to 25000 (buys 4 heroes on average).
4. Increase gold gain and directly add gold rewards for playing games.
5. Each player should have their own hero rotation which could depend on location.
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On July 06 2014 18:28 paralleluniverse wrote:In 2012, I was invited to the Dota 2 beta. My feedback was that Dota 2's core game mechanics were fundamentally flawed because games quickly snowball out of control and last too long, while the winning team stomps all over the losing team.
You should have pointed out you wrote that with a month's playtime behind you (i.e. not having gotten out of the kiddie pool yet), and were universally ridiculed in that particular thread. It kind of matters if you're using it as a reference to attempt to give yourself some legitimacy.
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Not to mention it's mostly incorrect. Comebacks happen all the time, especially in public games and teamcomps have a lot to do with it as well. Unless you are basing that around the worst scrub games where people pick 5 hard carries on one team and get stomped because of that...
By the way, a reason for the small initial hero pool is so that the beginning players don't need to learn how to play / play against a ton of different heroes but instead can concentrate on getting used to the same heroes for the week, with one new hero scattered around here and there.
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^ No they don't, please don't say something that's based on your personal experience. Comebacks firstly happen when the enemy team gets stupid or cocky and starts making dumb mistakes in increments which even an incompetent team can mostly capitalize on (e.g. a near god-like opponent carry suddenly feeding solo). Secondly, it is less likely in pub games (especially solo queue) to make a comeback as a team, compared to a 5 man stack team that know what they're doing... evidenced by watching pro games... and even then pro games lately have been mostly 1 sided and decided by a certain point in the game... rarely do I even see the gold and exp graphs in those games go back and forth for a constant 50+ minutes
On July 06 2014 18:28 paralleluniverse wrote:In 2012, I was invited to the Dota 2 beta. My feedback was that Dota 2's core game mechanics were fundamentally flawed because games quickly snowball out of control and last too long, while the winning team stomps all over the losing team.
I agree with practically all your points in 1., which is why I've practically quit mm'ing games in DOTA 2 because it's just not enjoyable for most of those reasons. Your points in 2., I cannot comment on because I don't have HotS, but the hero grinding thing is a really big turn off for me and if they want to bring people into this game I hope they have an alternative, otherwise those who really don't want to spend $ (like myself) will either quit early or find some way to abuse getting gold, which is exactly what is happening in Hearthstone right now with rank 20 farmers in ladder
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Also, this whole "average hero" thing is silly. Several heroes are available for 2000 gold. They include a variety of types and roles. By level 5 (which is basically right out the gate), the cash boost lets you buy one of your choosing. Subsequently, ignoring level gold, you get an average of 375 gold per day, which means a new basic hero per 6 days. With leveling gold, it's a bit more than that. Your average is totally thrown off by including Nova/Kerrigan/Abathur/W.D. Yes, those heroes are expensive to get and reward grinding or real money purchase.
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I think not having snowballing kills the fun of the game. You don't ever feel satisfied getting kills...it seems so pointless. The most addicting thing about games is immediate reward / satisfaction for any achievement / quest completed and HotS seems to be missing this.
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On July 06 2014 18:28 paralleluniverse wrote: bunch of text
What does hots have to do with Dota? They aren't even similar games. It's like saying Dota fixed the major flaws in Tetris because there are more things to do in Dota.
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On July 06 2014 22:00 Yoav wrote:
Also, this whole "average hero" thing is silly. Several heroes are available for 2000 gold. They include a variety of types and roles. By level 5 (which is basically right out the gate), the cash boost lets you buy one of your choosing. Subsequently, ignoring level gold, you get an average of 375 gold per day, which means a new basic hero per 6 days. With leveling gold, it's a bit more than that. Your average is totally thrown off by including Nova/Kerrigan/Abathur/W.D. Yes, those heroes are expensive to get and reward grinding or real money purchase.
4 heroes out of 27 are available for 2000 gold.
The cost of an average hero is exactly that: it's the average cost of a hero, which is 6148.1 gold. It is not "thrown off" by Nova, Kerrigan, Abathur, or whatever. Those heroes cost 7000 or 10000 gold. But that's no outlier, because more than half of the heroes costs 7000 or 10000 gold.
375 gold a day gives 1 hero every 16.4 days on average.
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On July 06 2014 20:20 sumsaR wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2014 18:28 paralleluniverse wrote:In 2012, I was invited to the Dota 2 beta. My feedback was that Dota 2's core game mechanics were fundamentally flawed because games quickly snowball out of control and last too long, while the winning team stomps all over the losing team. You should have pointed out you wrote that with a month's playtime behind you (i.e. not having gotten out of the kiddie pool yet), and were universally ridiculed in that particular thread. It kind of matters if you're using it as a reference to attempt to give yourself some legitimacy.
As I said, I could have given that feedback with 0 hours played in Dota 2, because I've played enough of Dota 1 and Dota 2 is the same as Dota 1, but with better graphics. I have 450 hours in Dota 2 now.
On July 06 2014 20:39 Shikyo wrote:
Not to mention it's mostly incorrect. Comebacks happen all the time, especially in public games and teamcomps have a lot to do with it as well. Unless you are basing that around the worst scrub games where people pick 5 hard carries on one team and get stomped because of that...
By the way, a reason for the small initial hero pool is so that the beginning players don't need to learn how to play / play against a ton of different heroes but instead can concentrate on getting used to the same heroes for the week, with one new hero scattered around here and there.
Comebacks are virtually impossible in Dota 2, unless the other team is consciously throwing the game away. On the other hand, comebacks are quite common in HotS. I would estimate 30% of my games in HotS were comeback games, and 40% were close to a comeback. For Dota 2, it's probably around 2%.
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On July 06 2014 21:35 sacrilegious wrote:^ No they don't, please don't say something that's based on your personal experience. Comebacks firstly happen when the enemy team gets stupid or cocky and starts making dumb mistakes in increments which even an incompetent team can mostly capitalize on (e.g. a near god-like opponent carry suddenly feeding solo). Secondly, it is less likely in pub games (especially solo queue) to make a comeback as a team, compared to a 5 man stack team that know what they're doing... evidenced by watching pro games... and even then pro games lately have been mostly 1 sided and decided by a certain point in the game... rarely do I even see the gold and exp graphs in those games go back and forth for a constant 50+ minutes Show nested quote +On July 06 2014 18:28 paralleluniverse wrote:In 2012, I was invited to the Dota 2 beta. My feedback was that Dota 2's core game mechanics were fundamentally flawed because games quickly snowball out of control and last too long, while the winning team stomps all over the losing team. I agree with practically all your points in 1., which is why I've practically quit mm'ing games in DOTA 2 because it's just not enjoyable for most of those reasons. Your points in 2., I cannot comment on because I don't have HotS, but the hero grinding thing is a really big turn off for me and if they want to bring people into this game I hope they have an alternative, otherwise those who really don't want to spend $ (like myself) will either quit early or find some way to abuse getting gold, which is exactly what is happening in Hearthstone right now with rank 20 farmers in ladder
Yeah, if they made a MOBA with HotS's game mechanics and Dota's 2 business model, it would be virtually the perfect MOBA.
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On July 06 2014 20:39 Shikyo wrote:
Not to mention it's mostly incorrect. Comebacks happen all the time, especially in public games and teamcomps have a lot to do with it as well. Unless you are basing that around the worst scrub games where people pick 5 hard carries on one team and get stomped because of that...
By the way, a reason for the small initial hero pool is so that the beginning players don't need to learn how to play / play against a ton of different heroes but instead can concentrate on getting used to the same heroes for the week, with one new hero scattered around here and there.
The mere fact that they are referred to as comebacks so readily shows how prevalent and destructive they are. In basketball, if one team is 4 points ahead at the first quarter, you don't call it a comeback if the team 4 points down wins in the end. In DotA, if you are behind in both gold and kills at the 10 minute mark (~equally skilled/comp teams), you've lost and the rest is a formality and a test of patience of the winning team.
On July 06 2014 22:06 ReketSomething wrote:
I think not having snowballing kills the fun of the game. You don't ever feel satisfied getting kills...it seems so pointless. The most addicting thing about games is immediate reward / satisfaction for any achievement / quest completed and HotS seems to be missing this.
It kills the fun in the same way a hard opponent kills the fun. For some people (like you apparently), playing with/trolling your opponent is most of the fun in winning. That's not good game design, that's enabling people with a minor psychosis to fulfill their odd desire of dominance.
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Statements like "comebacks are virtually impossible in Dota 2" are meaningless without talking about team composition and timings.
On July 06 2014 21:35 sacrilegious wrote:rarely do I even see the gold and exp graphs in those games go back and forth for a constant 50+ minutes
Well no, that's not how the game works and gold and experience isn't a scoreboard (and neither are kills). A team with a strong late-game composition that comes out of the laning phase behind to a gank heavy comp isn't going to suddenly bounce back on gold and experience. However, a lot of people would still look at the game and tell you that right now it's basically even. One comp has map control and better farm but no guaranteed way of cracking the base, and they're on a clock to the other comp's better carries and better team fight. They could keep their gold and experience lead for the next 20 minutes but the Ursa and QoP that won them the laning phase will become less and less useful.
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Question to people who play LoL: How does the grind to unlock heroes compared with HotS (given the HotS details above)? How many heroes are in the free rotation? How long does it take to unlock, say, an extra 5 average-cost heroes?
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On July 06 2014 23:12 paralleluniverse wrote:
Question to people who play LoL: How does the grind to unlock heroes compared with HotS (given the HotS details above)? How many heroes are in the free rotation? How long does it take to unlock, say, an extra 5 average-cost heroes?
10 free champions a week split over roles.
Depends, the newest ~40 or so champions (of ~120) are all 6300 IP and you earn ~300 for first win of the day and ~150 for every win and ~100 for every loss after that. They do reduce the price of older ones when newer ones come out and the tiers are 450/1350/3150/4800/6300. You're locked out of playing any mode that matters until level 30, and by then, you'll have enough for 2-3 6300 champions or all of the 450s and most of the 1350s. Tournament playable champions are spread pretty evenly across the price tiers, though as new ones come out (and are almost always overtuned and played heavily) that average goes up a bit.
As far as mid tier heroes, 3-4 games a night will get you about one a week.
Back to HotS, a few disconnected thoughts based on ~20 hours of play:
I'm enjoying it, but the hero unlocking model is insane and takes way too long. Spent pretty much the entire weekend playing to unlock 1 hero (Falstad) and start learning him. Again, fun so far, but some glaring issues I'm seeing.
Abathur should never be a free hero and his ult needs a duration nerf.
Murky is the least fun hero to deal with in the game, he just straight up needs to be removed. There's absolutely no counterplay to him and he just right clicks your base all day.
Summoned minions in general and Zagara in particular are way too good at pushing/creeping. Her creeps and Tychus's laser need major health nerfs so that killing them is an actual option for heroes that don't have huge burst.
Illidan has way too many dashes.
Tank champions in general are a bit too powerful given the relatively low damage of dps heroes in this game. Combine it with DPS heroes being insanely squishy, and you have a recipe for a hard tank meta.
Matchmaking really needs to avoid double and triple specialist teams.
There needs to be a lot less healing in this game for damage to actually matter.
Not displaying stats of enemies, allies, or even yourself leads to a lot of hidden information that can make things very frustrating when you're trying to figure out how you died or how much damage that ability does and how much health/mana your enemies have remaining.
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So I skipped the tutorial, and I seem to have missed out on starting quests?
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Sanya12364 Posts
HotS feels like the perfect experience to satisfy those with ADHD and Casual leanings.
Although since it's done this way, I feel like Blizzard really should have gone FP-shooter type console MOBA path with view-arcs, fixed-aiming, line of sight and all those FPS features.
The only thing that's different is spectator mode might be top down.
And XP and leveling will require menus.
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Caldeum1976 Posts
On July 06 2014 23:57 cascades wrote:
So I skipped the tutorial, and I seem to have missed out on starting quests?
Daily and hero quests get rewarded at like level 7 or something. I forget the exact time but it's a few levels in.
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A minor note to the hero power discussion. It is a team game, if both teams can insta kill a person then it is balanced.
In Dota there are items and hero abilities to stop this from happening if played well. Which makes for very tense fights, which I think is good, but can be seen as a negative.
As for one sided. Most games are one sided, on pro/high level there is a timing when the game turns around due to lineups though. Pugna is one of the best examples of this, best pusher and a great team fighter. Useless past min 60.
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EPT
