It is actually very easy to gain a level advantage. You win first objective, pull down a fort (or severally damage it and finish off latter) then defend for 90 seconds till the passive XP advantage kicks in. By the 2nd objective you will start gaining xp for simply not dying. This is why the win rates of people with level advantage increased: the team who gets the first fort down and doesn’t lose one if the next 90 seconds usually wins unless some major screw up occurs. This is very easy to do on almost every map. It is no wonder the most balanced map is ToD which doesn’t suffer from this insane change.
Imo, this change was for the worse. It rewards meta gaming more than actual decision making.
Anyway, I’m sure you will reach the same conclusion around November. Like you do every year. The passive XP long term needs to go, whichever way you put it.
The critical period is 90 seconds, in which both teams will clean up after objectives and take camps in preparation for the next. If you don’t die in these 90 seconds, or trade better than the enemies, then you will get the solidify your XP tickle into the mid game and usually get 10 before they do, and that power spike will let you snowball faster. Due to how passive XP gains work, the enemy either needs to outfort you or out kill you with level disadvantage, which rarely happens. Even if they take next obj and take your fort, they won’t be able to catch out due to the passive xp gain.
The correct change was to not buff xp gain forever, but still distribute the keep/fort xp over time. Or do it the way other mobas do: buildings grant insignificat xp compared to kills and soaking. Or make buildings harder to take down.
You don’t have 5 minutes to get even. Fort tickle isn’t the only way to get xp. Camps now give significant xp too, and your catapults will help take down at least one round of towers. When you look at it in isolation, yeah, it is cool. But even blizzard admitted it is harder to win after a level advantage than before, which was technically the reason why they did this in the first place.
That’s a very double edged sword. Emphasis on the “feel”.
When you get stomped, it’s fairly easy to relax. 3.0 vs 4.5? Okay, this is a loss, let’s practice some moves and observe them, think about what to play next. Oops dead, whatever, no difference. By the time the match is over, you’re over it.
When you put lots of effort and still lose, well, almost as if a 10 minute break would be mandatory (queue buttons literally disabled). After 30 minutes of a tryhard loss, it’s very likely to be tilted, but at least exhausted.
Of course that’s a difference between better and worse players, the better one knows how to react, does he need a break etc.
Not sure I’m fully a fan of the changes.
Would be nice to know what’s the effect of the delayed experience and that of the creep changes, independently.
There are many awkward situations when the creep push is problematic for both ends. For example, if we have our team half wiped, I can literally just stare at the core. To engage anywhere, I have to walk the entire map, risking a gank. Of course, they are the rules, so whatever. Just saying.
Also, define “feel close”. A level down is still a level down. I still can only tickle the enemies and they can still oneshot Pyro me from 100%. Or stunlock-kill, for that matter. They are at least 25% stronger (3 levels of health * 3 levels of damage * talent effect). Sure, the 3 levels down to 2.7 gives slightly longer periods when I’m only 2 levels down. Hooray, I guess.
Heres the Problem and the reason the XP changes are hated upon by the majority of players who loved this game, myself included. Early game victories not resulting in an advantage that leads to victory makes them early game victories a risk not worth taking. Making the game play itself so players never have to learn how to play it isn’t an improvement, its cancerous to the overall gameplay experience.
It’s the Tortoise vs the Hare situation. Whats the point in getting a lead if you can’t win the race before running out of steam? There is none, thats why “AFK Meta” became in the Pro scene in the week or two it existed prior to being cancelled. Early game victories increasing a teams chance to win overall makes them clashes competitive, something worth fighting for. What the XP changes have accomplished is made it so all PvP conflict is not worth the risk unless it’s the final fight of the game.
Games are closer and more drawn out and less interesting for it as now a players skill becomes almost meaningless, everyone is equally skilled at not fighting. Teams that should win decisively don’t, teams that are vastly inferior can. This shouldn’t happen and your goal for the game should be to prevent this situation, not encourage it.
This has been always the case. The infamous “win 5, lose 5”-topics including “I’m playing with people below my level” don’t just came out of nowhere in the past. You can be the best player in your team but it won’t help you anything when you get an absolute awful player in your team because the system thinks it must average you out so there is a 50:50 chance.
The problem with the current “exp thing” is that I don’t feel like i’m doing something strategically useful or not and i don’t feel that i can do something different than win fights at obj.
I feel like both team will reach lv20 without earning it and fight.
Usually it’s just whichever team win a teamfight in late game and forget everything that happens during early/mid game.
Too bad it still doesn’t. This has done nothing but hide the continued matchmaker issues that have plagued this game since inception. Maybe 1 of 20 games even feels like a contest. This has never changed, no matter how much you have changed everything else. The problem still exists. All you have done is make games that should be over, last even longer.
Thank you very much. Finally, after 3 years I can say that I agree with you. Finally, I see that you understand what is wrong. The problem is not game mechanics, or the balance of heroes, the problem in most cases are players. Mainly lacking knowledge theoretically, what and when to do on the map. However, sometimes the decision to win the match is made by the team itself, sometimes the randomly selected players of one team just think similarly, while in the second team everyone has their own idea and starts to argue.
Blizzard, I am very happy with what you wrote here.
At the same time I have a request for all forum cries. Instead of posting topics and lamenting that some composition is an OP, or something else does not work, that matches are one-sided, etc. It will be better if you put a topic where you upload a link to your replay, maybe some screenshots and ask a simple question: What could I do better to win this match?
Who asks not stray.
Thank you again for this article and for being published on the official forum.
EDIT 1:
I would like to pay attention to the fact that you mixed strongly in the ranking mode in 2017 and 2018, additionally in 2019 a lot of players left, mainly good players or those with aspirations for a perfect one. It should be taken into account that the data may not be authoritative, not every master deserves to be a master. Unfortunately, there are many players at the master level who do not deserve a gold rank
EDIT: 2 Blizzard, please make a reset now, as you wrote on Reddit: the maximal rank to achieve it will be D5. Thanks to this master and GM level will be cleared of players who have won this rank in the past. It is possible that it would be worthwhile to move this border even lower, maybe to P3. Consider this, it’s possible that you will fix the mistakes you’ve made before: Master 1000 points
EDIT: 3
Blizzard, remove the catapult for destroying the fort. This is very important.
That’s interesting and all, is there a post of stun time, blink distance or how many times it was used, silence time and invisible influence within these matches? I would really like to see the details regarding those mechanics, as I am sure the “better” team has a line up using these things vs not using them.
The opposite thing can be said.
“even when winning, the game should feel close. You can still compete, fight the enemy team, and not be at too great of a statistical advantage”
the statistical advantage we’re talking about here is …
A. earning a kill. (you get less EXP when earning a kill against lower level opponent)
B. talent advantage.
The current state of HotS recommends me a certain play-style, to be timid when you have a level advantage, because feeding from a higher level advantage is very punishing, and forcing fights when your team has a lower level, because even if the fights end up 1-for-1, the level-gap bonus will gradually equalize.
I don’t understand the logic behind …
+rewarding the disadvantageous.
+punishing the advantageous.
I’m a diamond player according to hotslogs, but I’ve been sludging around at gold tier within the 200-300 of games I’ve played in ranked.
If the goal is to make games as close to 50% win-rate on avg. among a mixture of different skill levels, I think you’ve done a great job. But is this what HotS aiming for?
edit* I believe that with the current design of EXP within HotS, murky abuses the rules. ￣l_(ツ)_l￣
![:man_facepalming:](https://d3rakab8gpdsa3.cloudfront.net/en/heroes/images/emoji/twitter/man_facepalming.png?v=6" ":man_facepalming:")
