Before you make a topic about HotS being dead

General Discussion
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Prove it.

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Just do what I do, buy indie games, they seem to know exactly what consumers really want for games, in this time of year and in this time of our lives.

Indie developers are the new AAA developers of the past.

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The metric I’ve seen here is “Well, as long as there are servers” so as long as Anthem’s technically playable then it’s still alive.

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I thought that their CEO said it rather clear that they had to stop supporting HoTS and shuffle their developers because they are focusing on new game or development?

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Yeah, other live services. Aren’t you excited to support something that lives or dies on it’s esports sucess?

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Yeah? You got a link to that?

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https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/22833558/heroes-of-the-storm-news

Over the past several years, the work of evaluating our development processes and making hard decisions has led to new games and other products that we’re proud of. We now have more live games and unannounced projects than at any point in the company’s history. We’re also at a point where we need to take some of our talented developers and bring their skills to other projects. As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to shift some developers from Heroes of the Storm to other teams, and we’re excited to see the passion, knowledge, and experience that they’ll bring to those projects. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to make tough choices like this. Games like Diablo II, World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Overwatch, and more would not exist had we not made similar decisions in the past.

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“Shift some developers from Heroes of the Storm to other teams” is nowhere near the same as “they had to stop supporting HoTS”.

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If you want to think like that, so be it.

But it was clear that everyone can see the development had been slowed down a lot compare to pre-HGC. Also, canceling HGC sounds like a sign that they had stopped supporting HoTS.

Current HoTS is probably stopped receiving an adequate budget for the future development and probably still surviving on what they sold at the HoTS in-game shop for now.

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homie they literally just released an enormous balance patch and a new hero 3 weeks prior

the AMA confirmed there are multiple new events and heroes in the works, several of the heroes having started development after the big scary team shift that you’re so convinced is the death knell when all it turned out to be was trimming the fat on an underdeveloped project with a bloated resource allocation

you’ll know they’ll have given up on hots when they stop updating it, talking about it, or featuring it at blizzcon

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31

Then I guess you don’t consider Diablo 3 and SC2 are dead then considering that it will get a content and update (in slow manner), and still being talk about or get featured in the Blizzcon.

We are getting lesser events, doesn’t have new brawl, and new maps. We even stop getting hero trailer for the new hero. Remember the time where we got a hero trailer and hero spotlight trailer?

And most of those released heroes that we got so far were already on development before the HGC was cancelled, so who knows how long will the new hero after post-HGC will come.

From what I have seen, the reason why HoTS still able to come out with a balance patch because it has the ability to sustain itself with microtransaction. Probably not making a lot of money but it is good enough or justifying enough to continue updating this game, but it is clear that the upper management is probably don’t care about it any longer.

Also, not to mention that the playerbase itself is slowly declining too. I really doubt that the game itself can survive long enough just by relying on the remaining hardcore fans.

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You’re right! I don’t! Because they’re still getting updates! That very clearly would not be happening if they were “dead” or “abandoned”.

I seriously do not understand how you’re able to recognize that they’re still getting updates but not recognize that they haven’t ended support and “killed” the game.

Call me back when HOTS gets treated like Warcraft II.

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33

People are still on this stupidity? Give it a rest already. The cancellation of eSports is the single best thing that has happened for this game. So many changes were done in an effort to please the fickle (spoiled) eSports crowd. Now that the eSports morons are gone, Blizzard hasn’t been afraid to just buff the hell out of everything and make adjustments just because they feel like it. Did none of you pay attention to the first balance patch after eSports died? They buffed the heck out of everything because now they could. Did you miss the huge warrior patch they just dropped? Instead of nerfing Anub into oblivion like what would have happened if eSports were still a thing, they adjusted some of his still over-performing talents and then buffed the crap out of other warriors in an effort to bring them up to Anub’s level.

I can say with 100% confidence that if eSports hadn’t been cancelled, there was no way the team would have buffed other warriors just to make them an appealing pick compared to the single warrior that’s been dominating the meta for a while now. New heroes isn’t nearly as entertaining as watching Blizzard finally have fun with their game now that Activision and its precious eSports got kicked to the curb.

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My point was sometime in 2013 or 2014, iirc, “Starcraft 2 is dead” became a big thing.

And viewership did drop and other negatives.

Yet, fast forward a few years and it not only recovered, but is actively growing.

I don’t think you understand the difference between:

  1. Cutting costs and reducing development team size
  2. Completely kill development team and offer no support.

Because it’s #1 that is happening, not #2.

Iirc there are people who literally cannot get into parties of 4 for higher level events or raids or whatever they call it.

Given there is no real MMR, but instead it is based on what difficulty you select as I understand it it’s pretty much dying.

It’s like how Hero League effectively died last season, with it’s 40 minute queues. Which turn into a downwards spiral.

That does not say what you claimed earlier.
Thank you for disproving yourself!

Which is not what you claimed. Lol.
I mean, QA is still 20-some people based on my observations. Down from 30-some. But my observations could be wrong, i can only confirm 1 person leaving QA team with 100% certainty. But I imagine it probably was more.

But idk how that reflects on the rest of HotS team doing actual development work.

Wow. You seriously think Starcraft 2 is dead?
It isn’t Heart of the Swarm SC2.

Starcraft 2 is more popular by playerbase since probably WoL launch, and it’s viewship is at an all time high.

Starcraft 1 is a dead game also, AmIRight?

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Yes, the game is not truly dead unless the server itself got shut down.

When people said the game is “dead”, it is obvious that people are referring that the game itself is losing players and popularity.

I wouldn’t call it growing either. Just good enough to keep relevant to the Blizzard. The twitch views (without tourney) are almost as same (sometimes even higher) as HoTS on normal day.

There is no deny that they will still receive a support from the Blizzard, but one thing for sure that their budget would be a lot smaller compare to those old days. To me and many people, it is pretty much same as “dead”. OK, if you don’t like the word “dead”, then “dying”.

Last time I heard that HoTS team has 100+ people, so if it got reduced to 20 or 30 people, it is really bad no matter how I see that.

Well, I do think SC2 has more “life” than HoTS though. Maybe because it is free and has a good PvE content, which I think HoTS is lacking of that. And oh yeah, SC2 still has a tourney.

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Dustin Bowder twitter post from February 2016. Right…
Game at this state doesnt need 100+ devs anymore, the code is here.
Google “managing resources”.

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To be more accurate though, while Blizzard has made decisions that haven’t gone over well, there’s the fact that they haven’t been making the larger mistakes that keep being made with Anthem.

Blizzard has re-directed SOME (not ALL) of the development team to other projects. This obviously causes concern because of a slowed-down schedule.

Blizzard has cancelled HGC, ending support for the Blizzard-sponsored esports events surrounding HotS (it’s important to note that there are still tournaments being held independent of this)… This causes concern about Blizzards level of investment.

However, it’s important to note that the developers still stay in touch with the community (through AMA’s) and are actively trying to communicate their intentions with changes being made (look at the comments on patch notes).

There may be more, but this is the core of it… and while both look bad, there’s hardly definitive proof that the game is dead. Slowed down, yes, in maintenance mode, heck no (got a new balance patch and a new character, that’s not maintenance mode).

HOWEVER, looking at Anthem.

There have been connection issues with the servers for a long time now. Connection issues can kill an online-only game.

From day one, there has been a forced grind built into the game to stretch out it’s length rather than providing a full game experience. This reinforces the emphasis on producing content for consumers to buy as soon as possible rather than a finish product.

Added content has been lacking, limited to a narrow array of textures and skins rather than material the community has been asking for (things that genuinely customize the character in an individual way), and content has even been shown in videos/streams that the players were excited for and not released. This shows the lack of concern regarding the wants of the community.

There’s also the fact that proper loot rewards have been disappointing at best. The rates at which higher-level loot has been dropping are poor, and the times when the loot rates have been improved have all been when there was a glitch in a patch and reverted back to the less-frequent-drop state. What’s even worse is that it’s been proven that there are no advantages to playing on higher difficulty levels in terms of loot rewards.

Every piece of news that comes out about Anthem has been just a step back, and for a game that’s been released roughly 3 months ago with massive hype behind it to be struggling like this… yeah, that’s slightly different from what’s happening with HotS.

Anthem has a clear pattern of mis-management in terms of every decision made since release… I think there is a valid logical argument to see that the changes with HotS have been made to reallocate resources from a game that already has a wide amount of variety, and put those same resources into other projects that are vital towards keeping the various IP’s relevant and new.

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Note I said QA is still 20+ people.

Does QA mean the whole HotS team? /yawn.

Well, people actually involved with SC2 at high levels seem to say it is growing, so i’ll Take their word over yours.
See: various episodes of the Pylon Show.

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If SC2 is dead/dying and so is HOTS, then it seems this game is in better spot I thought lol.

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Heart of the Swarm’s gameplay changes did actually cause a lot of harm to viewership/playerbase, combined with some other poor choices SC2 did experience a decline, but it was recovered, and is now expanding.

Funnily enough, it’s expanding with a reduced development team, and with less content coming out.
Balance changes in Multiplayer have expanded it.