BlizzCon Preview - Page 3

On November 09 2015 08:11 Zambrah wrote:
Without talents wouldn't an arena be pretty imbalanced towards heroes that have plenty of early game power? That sucks. ;_;

On November 09 2015 09:30 MotherFox wrote:


Well technically without the greater game structure balance is out the window anyway.

On November 09 2015 09:58 SC2John wrote:


It's still hard when you have Heroes that are defined by their talents like Illidan (Immolation/First Aid), Artanis (Zealot Charge), or Valla (everything). A lot of other heroes are just lukewarm versions of themselves because basically everything is a powered up Level 1 fight; Heroes like Sonya, Thrall, and Nova will still be effective but less effective than their Level 10 talented counterparts. I'm worried that it actually won't be that fun because many Heroes that you may LOVE normally will lose a lot of their identity without talents or a power curve.

Ofc, it may just be that some Heroes emerge as being more fun than in standard play, and that could make up for deficiencies elsewhere. We'll have to see ^^.

On November 09 2015 13:41 MotherFox wrote:


My point is not that blizzard will balance this game mode, but that it's inherently imbalanced since core game mechanisms are gone. Will a character like Abathur really get his full potential without lanes to cross-soak? Probably not. So it's also not a concern that some characters that are severely underpowered if they can't take particular talents. (this is a baby-bathwater kind of thing in my mind)

Then again, there are some heroes--- like the lost vikings and the monk--- that actually get their basic abilities through talents. These heroes are basically boned.

Battlegrounds Panel

The Battlegrounds panel for Heroes of the Storm is happening right now, and we're going to recap it live. Check it out below!
Update: the panel has now concluded. A screenshot gallery has been added at the bottom of the post.

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Core Goals

Clean Design
Conflicts
Finality

Battleground Gameplay

Complete objectives
Get rewarded for those

Layout

They like to avoid specific Map Rules and layouts.
Determine the Map Mechanics first, and then do a design to support that.
Sky Temple: the objective already creates that "teamfight" scenario for the developers.
Tomb of the Spider Queen: objectives in lanes, split players. The map layout being really small incentivizes the teamfights.
Mercenaries: they cause small conflicts in specific places of the map - make them interesting. Cause big impact by pushing lanes.

Towers of Doom

Battleground where two Nexus Lords are fighting for control - tug of war and area control type of map.
They wanted to create something really unique - all previous maps still have 2/3 lanes, mercenaries and a core.
Devs asked themselves "do maps really need a core?"
First layout of Towers of Doom did not have a Core - there were 5 forts, sort of circular float to it. The towns themselves were the map's mechanics. Whoever owned more towns first would get more points.
It was a failed experiment - it was kinda anti-climatic. Intense at first, but with mostly non dramatic endings. Current maps have that epic feeling!
They went back to a more standard design - Towers of Doom has unique mercenaries however!
Grave Golem - replaced by the Headless Horseman from World of Warcraft. Completely different mechanic - when you cap this mercenary, it shoots volleys of spirit energy towards the enemy bases.
Altars - places on neutral positions along the battleground, a hybrid control territory on the map.

The Art of Towers of Doom

They feel it's kinda boring playing on the same battleground over and over again, so it's all about creating unique and varied gameplay experiences.
They wanted it to have the mood of a Dark City. Color is very important for that.
Inside the structures they want "warm" colors to make the outside feel cold.
Victorian like architecture, lots of dark iron and foreboding structures.
Lots of textures in this map (ancient stones, dilapidated wood, rusty stuff). Ancient town feeling.
Dark... but not depressing!
Bell Towers (of Doom) > Necromancer Tower. When destroyed it will explode but will rebuild belonging to the opposite team.
Town Structures - Armory Town / Farm Town / Blacksmith Town. Personality to each town.

Arena Design

Devs are always trying to find new ways of making the game mode challenging and fun for players.
Lots of them were super excited about a fighting arena mode for a while now.
Great for players who want something completely different from Quick Match and Hero League.
Random hero selection (from a pool of 3 - based on an archetype). Focus on fast-paced action around a single objective.
Quick and easy to jump into.
They wanted the mode to be even more action packed than the standard Heroes match, and even shorter.
They wanted players to be able to form new creative strategies.
They tried "all random" at first, but it didn't work. Players need some control and choice.
10x Hero Mode - randomly chosen by the matchmaker; gives everyone the same hero choice.
A game with 10 Johannas in internal playtesting took 30~ minutes. That's why they added some rules to their team compositions.
Heroes with very little damage cannot be chosen in this 10x mode (Medic, Johanna, Abathur).
In other Arena matches, cannot roll more than 2 warriors or more than 2 supports.
Players start at level 10 and do not level up. No talents as well, all they choose is the Heroics.
Benefits: low learning curve when playing new Heroes (since they are all available). Focus on moment-to-moment action. No falling behind in power.
Hero respawn timer is 15 seconds.
Behind the scenes they're already adding new Arena battlegrounds, and expanding mechanics. Breaking even more rules.

Art of Arena

Garden Arena (daylight version) > Tournament grounds, to make it feel like a renaissance fair. Jousting arena with knights fighting each other.
Spectators behave differently depending on how much action is happening. In a multi-kill they all cheer for you!
Garden Arena (night version) > population winding down, sitting around a campfire.
Garden Arena (underground) > glowing plants! Really claustrophobic, not man-made like the Haunted Mines.
Temple Arenas (bizarre, oasis, desert).

Q&A

They absolutely want a WoW based battleground. It's just a matter of time and they're aware of what players want.
Teleporter in Towers of Doom is meant to give players a quick-travel tool to contest points on the other side of the map. It's meant to fight snowballing.
They want to release maps for all franchises (like the Diablo one for Eternal Conflict), they just want to make sure they nail it.
They allow Lost Vikings in Arena mode, but are still trying to figure out how to allow Cho'Gall.
Is it possible to make completely destructible maps? The idea is awesome, but they don't know if that's feasible. The more feedback they receive on this end, the more likely it is to happen in the future.

State of the Game Panel

We are recapping the State of the Game Panel live! Check it out below.

Quote from Blizzard »

Who's considered Overpowered right now?

Lili and Murky have the highest win ratios.
Lili has seen increased win ratio due to heroes like Thrall and Raynor being picked more often.
Murky has had a high win ratio for a year now. So even though he isn't picked often in competitive, he isn't the highest priority right now.

Recap 2015

Technical Alpha > Beta > Launch on June
First year for E-Sports on Heroes - Heroes of the Dorm (nationally broadcast and vert big) and Road to Blizzcon Tournaments
11 new heroes added this year - 43 total heroes!
4 new battlegrounds - 9 total!

Balance Tools & Their Uses

The win ratio they strive for Heroes to have is 45-55%.
Heroes like Lost Vikings are at the top, while Abathur and Stitches are more towards the bottom.
Talent pick and win ratio are also an important indicator of hero balance.
Tournaments and E-Sports serve to identify the future meta beforehand - very important to determine necessary balance changes!
Player Feedback is another tool for game balance - Forums, Reddit, Twitter. So keep sending your feedback!

Big Issues

Kerrigan - melee assassin, initiator for her team, all-in aspect getting in the middle of enemies and bolstering her survivability.
She had an extremely low talent diversity - with even low win rates for less picked talents.
Improved Talent Diversity - by sharpening her role, giving her build options, and making her viable in competitive play.
Changed 8 talents, cut 4 previous ones, created 3 new ones - much improved talent diversity!
Uther - melee support, has lots of burst healing, very strong and complete kit. Very stable win rate (across most skill levels) at 50% win ratio.
BUT he's always picked or banned in competitive games.
They believe his strongest trait is to "disrupt coordination". Which is what competitive play is about.
Divine Shield - cooldown from 70 to 90 seconds.
Eternal Devotion - ghost duration decreased from 10 to 8 seconds.
They are meant to be minor changes, to bring him down a notch. They don't want to overdo it!
Cho'Gall
Two-headed hero, controlled by two players. One player is the warrior Cho, who controls the movement, and the other is the assassin Gall, who's responsible for the damage and combo'ing his abilities for maximum impact.
They cannot balance based on a previous template like with Greymane or Lunara. They don't have a "two heroes in one" template.
Playtesting games with Cho'Gall often ended in a snowball, either in favor and against him. Early game advantage / lead grows out of control.
Really hard to balance because he's 2-in-1. If he's ahead then he can wreck havok really easily, and if he's behind he can be picked off and the team immediately loses TWO heroes!
Scaling Changes
65% of the games are really close! (only decided towards the end) ... they wanted more of this.
Cho'Gall helped them realize that scaling was an issue, and what lead to snowballs - hence why they implemented the "Test Map" released on Morales patch.
Benefits
Players can still fight while behind!
Roles were sharpened. Your character feels like what they're supposed to be from the start.
Wins feel more meaningful. It doesn't feel like you're stomping other teams.
Consequences
Early game matters less - which lead to "increased death timers".
Takedowns should be a "power play", which gives you map control and allow you to take objectives more easily.
This is all coming with the Cho'Gall update in a couple weeks!

Future Balance Updates

Gazlowe Updates
Improve E-Sports viability.
Enhance his zone control.
Couple crazy ideas (not sure if they will make it): talent that makes your turrets shoot a laser while you're charging yours; another crazy idea is an active that he starts throwing scraps around and he has to run around and pick them up.
Nova Updates
Improve talent diversity.
She walks a thin line (balance) between casual vs competitive.
Increased skill cap on her skills/talents - one of the ideas being analyzed is "if you land a Snipe, it increases the dmg of your next Snipe by a %".
Tychus Updates
Increase his win rate - it's kinda low now.
If they're only going to make him stronger (flat buffs) he might simply push aside other assassins (Valla, Raynor).
They want him to be a Unique assassin on his own.
Might become a "tank buster" assassin.

Matchmaking & Online Updates

80% of their games are "even" on their matchmaker. That means the MMR numbers are at least well paired.
65% of the games are at least close on levels.
20%~ are launched with the matchmaker knowing that the match is not very well paired.
These are averages, but may vary from player to player. Some player might experience a 95-5% variation, while another experiences bad matches 50% of the time.
Improvements in 2015
Early on for New Users, MMR was inflated (slightly more than "bottom"). They didn't get matched by games played. Now both factors are fixed!
New User win ratio was 38%, which is bad. Now after changes, it's 48%.
Rank was a combination of skill and games played - now there are more placement matches, where rank reflects player skill.
Rebuilding the Matchmaker
The original matchmaker came from Starcraft 2 - but the two games are very different! It's much harder to put together a "fair" match in Heroes due to variation.
Old system builds games quickly, takes into account the thousands of players searching for a match, then starts swapping players to find a "good match". Complicated system that doesn't work when they add rules (similar matchups, parties, not having a support).
The new 10 minute limit (up from 6) does not help that scenario! That's why people are still experiencing bad matches.
New System
Builds games to be good. Relies less on player swapping around. Creates a queue!
On simulations the new system looks much better.
They WANT to release it over the next couple weeks. They cannot promise it, but that's the plan. It's their TOP PRIORITY right now!
2016 Goals / Fixes
Improve MMR accuracy.
Mirror team composition in quick match (not same heroes, but same categories).
They have months of data for calculating "Team MMR".
Use match performance to adjust MMR.
Per Hero MMR adjustment.
Ranked Play
Their original system was a mix of Starcraft + Hearthstone.
The current system is a little bit too harsh. If they want to be accurate (MMR), you're always prone to dropping in ranks.
Right now there's not enough transparency for players (why they ranked up or dropped in ranks).
Death Recap Screen - likely coming early next year! Will contain heals and shields too!

Bans were tested throughout this year on competitive, and the devs loved it. Also coming very soon!
Grandmaster League
Talent Gating (requiring hero or account level to unlock talents) = removed.
Free Hero Rotation from 7 to 10 heroes.

Q&A

They don't really manipulate players' perception on things. If the community tells them a hero is weak or strong, they might wait to either see if the community figures it out, or wait for the community to just PROVE the devs wrong. Both cases are a win-win scenario for them.
The decision to remove 3-4 parties from Hero League was based on the intention to improve the matchmaker - sort of a defensive stance from them. Ideally they want such a good matchmaker that they can re-add 3/4-player parties back to Hero League. Or maybe do an unranked draft.
On Twitch viewership and sheer game popularity - the devs are aware of that, and everything they do (new features, heroes, matchmaker changes) is with the intent of improving the game and making it better.

Hero Deep Dive - Panel Recap

We've put together a recap of the Hero Deep Dive panel. Check it out below!

Quote from Hero Deep Dive »

Hero Design Process

They have a list of heroes with 200+ characters that they would like to add as soon as possible.
They choose and then ask themselves "how excited are we about this hero?"
The answer to that question leads them to the hero production cycle:
Paper Design (2 weeks)
Tech Design (2 weeks)
AI Playtest (1 weeks)
Design Playtests (8 weeks)
Dev Team Playtests (2 weeks)
Vision Sync Meeting - when they "put the ring on it", and decide that a hero will make it to the game.
This is when they gather artists, engineers, sound designers, balance team - to make the hero happen!

Lunara

Warcraft 3 was a low polygon game, so Dryads did not have a lot of detail to draw from. Artists had to come up with a new look for her.
Fragile Ranged Assassin with very high mobility.
Dryad's Swiftness (Z) - she cannot mount but hops around the battlefield, with roughly 20% permanent bonus movespeed. Allows her to dodge aoe and skillshots much easier.
Nature's Toxin (Trait) - applies a DoT with her basic abilities and auto-attacks, that can stack to maximize damage.
Noxious Blossom (Q) - ground target aoe that applies Nature's Toxin.
Crippling Spores (W) only available when her trait is active on an enemy. Slows down all affected enemies.
Wisp (E) - can send a Wisp out to a specific location, and relocate it multiple times before it expires. Great for scouting/vision.
Thornwood Vine (R1) - long range, fast moving skillshot. 15 second cooldown with 3 charges. Good for a team that's built around long range poke or against enemies that can lock you down.
Leaping Strike (R2) - targets an enemy, leaps over them, dealing high damage to them. Unconventional but great for repositioning (2 charges).
Has two "anti-magic" thematic talents. One at level 13 (Greater Spell Shield) that reduces all magic damage by 75%! At level 20 she has a Storm talent that removes debuffs and damage over time effects from an allied hero and herself.

King Genn Greymane

When you think of shapeshifters, both Druids and Worgen come to mind.
Transforms into a Worgen. Visually they had to sync the two forms so that he's easy to identify. He also needed a unique design in Heroes of the Storm, that gave him a unique silhouette relative to his origin world/games.
They discussed a very unique mechanic for the character, that would define his entire playstyle and design!
He starts poking you off from afar (like Falstad) and then transforms to finish you off from melee range (like Zeratul).
Every single aspect of the hero has to ooze from that core idea.
Darkflight / Disengage (E) - Human Greymane leaps at his target while transforming into a Worgen. Meanwhile, Worgen Greymane disengages and leaps away from his enemy while shooting them.
Gilnean Cocktail (Q / Human) - hurls a cocktail that deals little damage to the first target but massive damage to an area behind them.
Razor Swipe (Q / Worgen) - dashes forward and sweeps at enemies in front of you.
Marked for the Kill (R1 / Human) - shoots a skillshot bullet that deals damage and makes the first enemy hit vulnerable, you can then activate it again to leap towards the enemy from very far while transforming into a Worgen.
Go For the Throat (R2 / Worgen) - leaps towards a target dealing massive damage. If it kills, can be used once again for free (10 seconds).
Level 20 Talent - Unleash: resets on kills (can chain indefinitely).

Cho'Gall

Design-wise ever since he was implemented he had a massive silhouette.
The art team had to choose which version of Cho'Gall would be represented in Heroes. They're going back to the roots for the basic visual, but will borrow some art from his other iterations (like the Twilight's Hammer and his Armor).
The dev team asked themselves when presented with the idea of 2 players and 1 hero - we can't do this, can we? ... "he will be a riding shotgun" ... "one team will have 4 heroes?"
Cho is the Ogre Brute playstyle of the duo, he controls both the movement and auto-attacks of the Hero.
Gall is the caster, constantly using low cooldown + high impact skills, so he can stay active throughout the game.
Rune Bomb and Rune Blast - very important skill that embraces the idea of two players cooperating for maximum efficiency. One casts the bouncing bomb, the other explodes it. They are constantly working together.

Q&A

Cho'Gall on competitive matches and drafts > he cannot be last or first picked, he has to be "double picked". If one is banned, so is the other.
Arena - things like 5 Warriors, or 5 Abathurs (and other weird comps) will be avoided by the hero randomizer. For gameplay and technical reasons.
Gnomes, trolls and other big/important races are coming soon!
They are working on Gul'dan... so, soon!
Cho'Gall skins and mounts - both players choose a skin and a mount, then the game makes a roll and each "head" wins one of those. So one player will choose the skin, and the other will choose the mount... randomly.