I continue to love Battlegrounds. I think as the game nears an end of the beta, I would really enjoy a bump to the lower tier. I won’t post any specific ideas here, as I’ve done that before, but I’d like to justify why this focus matters.
In terms of enjoyment, the worst feeling is seeing four of the lower tier heroes. You end up going through the motions, but that’s literally 10-20 minutes of that. I realize you can possibly win with no ability, but there’s a real good chance you are a punching bag for 8-12 rounds, and leave with an 8th. I don’t care about MMR points. It’s just that it’s not fun to play and see no real strategy materialize because the upper tier heroes are much more powerful than the lower their.
If the idea is to have a lower tier to drive sales of the perk feature, you could just as easily drive sales by having many intriguing heroes that are balanced enough that players want a choice between them to get their favorites. I’m so close to feeling like that now, as I like many heroes, but if the lower tier were more viable I would definitely enjoy choosing between 4 fun (and viable) heroes. There’s a lot of variety to leverage there.
I feel like the normal model of balancing through mostly nerfs may not be as applicable in battlegrounds as in normal play. This is because in normal play, people can pick the overpowered cards every time, but in battlegrounds, you still have to get lucky. Even if you do, there are other forms of luck that can spoil it. In this way, things that are OP don’t feel as OP as they do in the normal game. However, when you have a really crappy set of choices in battlegrounds, you are powerless. There isn’t really anything like this in constructed play. I’m happy to accept a few bad card picks, but having an all-crappy set of hero choices is devastating because it lasts all game.
Ok, that will be my last “lower tier hero” post, other than possible replies to this thread. My thanks to the dev’s for continuing to grow the battleground format.
When basically half the pool is T4 and many T3 are statistically not much different than T4, the pool sucks. If the mode is going to continue to exist they need better hero balance, I agree.
My beef is just the free to play folks not really having access to heroes from the last few patches. The choice chance is extremely low. We help provide players for the pay to play whales so I would hope the hero choice becomes more random.
I have the pass, paid for with ingame gold, and I frequently get four crap heroes. Frequently.
I know there is early access to new heroes, but you should have access to all but the most recent at this point.
The f2p/pass disagreements wouldn’t be as big a thing if more heroes were viable. When 50% of the heroes are unplayable bad, it really makes the four chances for a good one better than it should be. Idk if that’s working as intended, but that’s what we have.
I did an experiment and went from 6000 mmr to 3000 conceding each game where I did not see a hero from the last three patches. As expected I saw none of the new ones. I did play one round with Sir Finley.
I might make my own topic on this, I think that the whole hero design needs a rework.
If only half the hero’s are viable then something’s off.
For me the best way to look at hero’s and how to design their hero powers is too look at 3 things
For me these 3 pillars should be the basis on how they design all the hero’s
Early game power, like Yogg, Lichking etc
Hero’s that do well in the early rounds but their hero powers drop off in the late game
Late game power, like Reno Alex Bigglesworth etc they do nothing early game but spike late game
Economy, Raff, any of the new hero’s etc
They can use their extra money to keep up with the powerspiking going on with the above hero types
If the hero’s design don’t follow these pillars they need to be changed because they cannot complete with hero’s that use these pillars
Half of the hero’s follow a random idea that just isn’t competitive or fun honestly
So all the hero’s that depend on minion types like Jarax Patches etc
Then hero’s that give random buffs or whatever just cannot compete with hero’s with a focused design like toggwaggle Mukla etc
The only expectation I can find was Brann because of pogos but with Janice in the game now even he’s pretty useless
So for me I would look at completely redesigning what half of the hero’s are meant to do. And focus them on either early game, late game or economic power.
The problem mostly comes from the damage you take on each loss.
Any hero who doesn’t have an early ability is complete trash, because, most of the time, you will be too far behind on turn 6-8 while the top heroes can push to level 4 and 5 and do MASSIVE damages.
I did games where, apart from 1st round, I only lost 2 rounds (8 and 10) and was dead. That’s it, just took 18 and 20 from highrollers …
Why ? Because some heroes can push and highroll high tier minions and do 15+ for each win. This is ridiculous.
They absolutely need to tune down the damages, so lower tier heroes have the possibility to develop and actually benefit from their HP.
-patches:1 free tavern refresh on tier 1,only before buying your first minion
-jaraxus:1 free tavern refresh on tier 1,only before buying your first minion
-flurgle (he is actually pretty good):1 free tavern refresh on tier 1,only before buying your first minion
-mech millhouse:1 free tavern refresh on tier 1,only before buying your first minion
(i think the above are all pretty much within the spirit of the hero,to help focus on 1 tribe).
-akazamzarak:hero power costs 1
-afk:discover a 3 and a 4
-bartendoderen: Not sure how to improve this within the spirit of the hero power,a free refresh would help but thats not really within the spirit of his hero power. Maybe something like:your odd tavern tiers cost 2 less and your even tavern tiers cost the same?
-togwaggle (this one seems difficult to improve without risking beeing op):give 1 random minion of each type +1+1
Another general remark:i think the powerlevel of the game is very high in general.
The game is in a great spot right now but further powercreep of (new) heroes should be avoided.
This was her original hero power, lol. It was nerfed because it was flat OP at the time and she was T1.
The nerf to two T3 didn’t kill her, though. Nerfing T3 did.
When there were multiple game changing minions on T3 to make several competitive builds (she could go mechs, demons, etc) the chance that you could get a floating watcher or a cobalt made her instantly strong, but even several of the lower roll options were still very workable.
Now the T3 pool doesn’t like up like that and she’s pretty much trash.
I am wondering if the way to fix these is to ban two tribes per lobby instead of one. I’m wondering if five tribes per game is diluting the pool too much to consistently find tribe cards.
Edit: I just played patches because he was the best hero offered to me and saw exactly two pirates in 9 turns. That should never happen.
Early game hero’s tend to be the most consistent purely because they can get through the early game without too much damage
So being able to survive long enough to make a build is why they are so powerful
In saying that hero’s like Raf are my favorite because of the variance in gameplay and possible power spikes with random triples
So economic hero’s would be my favorite
In saying all of that I want to see more late game hero’s
Stuff that evens out the early game but has that strong late game push
Ps like in the comment above how you mentioned you picked Patches and saw no Pirates
That’s a poor gameplay experience caused by the hero design
No hero should be forced into a tribe for this exact reason.
I think the lower tier needs either early game abilities or at least an ability that does not need a lot of luck to get it started, like patches or AFK do.
Some of the heroes definitely require a lot of luck in the early turns to get going, but I do not like the reroll idea. I think it just puts a band-aid on a poor hero’s design and opens up the possibility of everyone seeking the tidehunter. I’d rather see those heroes reworked to not rely on “must have” early game minions. For example, Patches basically requires pirates early to have a chance. If not, his bonus late game is so nominal, it can’t make up for a slow start. Perhaps instead, he could just say, “Pay 2: get a random pirate.” Sounds broken? Consider Yogg pays 2, gets a random unit also (albeit not of a specific tribe) and gives it a bonus. There’s no way this would end up in the AAA tier of heroes, but it would definitely be playable and good.
I just want to see a lot more power in the weaker heroes, not small incremental improvement. For example, the Lich got a huge boost and I’m glad. Glakrond got half a boost and it didnt even matter. The Devs need to get aggressive with improving the lower tier.
There are two frustrating things in battlegrounds, that determine by a very large amount how fun or awful will be your game:
The hero choices (Jandice is the only hero that’s completely broken, but the bad ones need some buffing).
First turn token or no token
You know from the first seconds if your game will be frustrating or not, you can get lucky or not with your rolls but the simple hero choice and the first turn token have the largest impact by far on the games.
The fact that you get the play all the heroes equally over a long period of time is not relevant, the aim should be to give all games a chance to be enjoyable, not successful obviously, but at least enjoyable instead of a chore not to lose too much rating.
I find it unacceptable that things are left in this state, for so long, every time there’s something obviously broken.