Can a game be competitive if it's too team-based?

Crazy headline, but it’s an idea to think about. HOTS’ culture is: A team-based game where you need to work as a team to win the game, not one person winning the game with his team. No solo carrying (unless you’re a diamond+ smurf in bronze… you’re that much better than the enemies), no hard carries, and no showboating.

That vision/culture is acceptable in a friendlier casual game, but can it still be competitive for the solo queue player? For a 5 man team as seen in HGC that culture could work, but for solo players that don’t want to find a team, that definitely doesn’t work. Being too team focused leads to less individual power and less sway in carrying the game.

I’m fine with the shared team xp, but other mechanics such as a lack of laning (liked by HOTS players), lack of game length due to less turret lines/laning, and other factors leads to a less individual impact in favor of teamplay.

If you point towards team-games found in real life, even those games have individual “carries” and individual skill in them. Those players still need to rely on their team to not be too bad (think of basketball players and they’d switch teams if they get a better offer), so it’s still a team game. It’s just a teamgame based on individual players–> (trigger word incoming!) as seen in other MOBAs (I didn’t use the word but it’s pretty close!).

If your hero had only 20% of the impact among your teammates, you won’t be able to carry as hard as if the game culture accepted individual play mattered to where you can spoonfeed your team the win as long as they weren’t absolutely terrible. Example is in LoL you can trash someone in the lane, meaning their character doesn’t soak xp, doesn’t get gold to get items, and they’re further set behind. This translates to being weaker in the teamfight if a teamfight was hypothetically fought right after everyone is up. At the very least, they’d be weaker coming back to lane. When teamfights come, your teammates may end up feeding that character you trashed, but that’s their fault and they were too bad for you to carry. It’s still a team game, just with more individual power.

In LoL if you get a bad teammate, you can try to carry the game. In HOTS, the philosophy of HOTS means you’ll be likelier to lose and you’ll have to laugh it off and accept it because it’s a teamgame and you got the worse team that match. If you lost in LoL, you most likely would have had an even harder time carrying in HOTS given equivalent terrible teammates.

In the end your whole counter-argument to my thread can be “different game, different vision. No harm in that.” That is a true statement and we can agree to disagree. That’s basing your opinion off of if the game can work, but not basing it off of could a competitive scene and/or ladder if you go one step further to work.

TLDR: The whole point I wanted to bring up though is could a casual/very team-oriented game be liked enough to make a competitive game? Going one step further, could it really keep the attention of players on the ranked ladder and not in official competitive teams?

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Why are you trying so hard to change the game?

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Answer the question instead of attacking the player. The second to last paragraph says we can agree to disagree but the question is about can a casual and teamgame be competitive

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I am answering your question with another question. What are you trying to do/reach?


If you put anything with the label ranked it cant become casual

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Find out if the core game you’re trying to defend could even have been “big” by trying to make a competitive scene huge. And if yes to that, could you have kept the players on the ladder as most players solo queue

Hots would be a great casual game for team oriented players. I’m not denying that. But could it have done well even if we changed history to where hots arrived first. Other mobas would have been more individual oriented to fit on a team. If most players (important to have a high playerbase rather than the few veterans who stayed right now as you want to try to keep players while maintaining them) are individuals then you’d want to focus on making individuals have a power and the team is made with everyone bringing carrying power

Every class in other mobas have carrying power. Traditional marksmen will carry a teamfight, but that doesn’t mean other classes didn’t have power. Supports carried the carry to their late game. They decide who wins the duo lane assuming equal skill of both marksmen on each side. This could be due to laning though, which hots doesn’t have

When the hots culture by the few players (and devs who support that vision) focus on the team first over the individual, then it’s harder to carry. Does that lead to a competitive game and/or ladder to keep players in?

I’m not bashing hots for being one of the few games that favors team play over individuals on a team play, as every game, even small niche games should be able to exist. However, they tried to make a huge competitive scene when the whole premise of the game would go against that.

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I don’t understand what you’re trying to accomplish.

But if people can play Hearthstone competitively and that game is loaded with stupid random effects, then I don’t see why not.

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I wanted to isolate this section mainly because you essentially answer your own question.

Every single team in real life has a leader, coach, manager, “the guy that calls the shots”. In real life, a coach can put a single player in a position of success based on the skills. If the coach sees that the opponent is weak in a certain area, he will exploit that with a player that can be successful, with the teams help of course.

You do see players of team sports rise to fame because of their skills. They do have skills but are nothing without their team, and can be put into obscurity by their coach. A great player can fill a large amount of roles for higher success rates in different situations. HOTS is slightly different in that the heroes define the roles in which they fill, further removing the “carry”.

In HOTS, there is no carry, because everyone has the same exp level and specific role to fill, but not the same skill level. Even if a player is overly qualified, they can’t accomplished much on their own. They will need the team to help them succeed.

I feel HOTS may be a close approximation to real life team sports, without the coach telling every player to do xyz. Soccer, American football, baseball, basketball, hockey, etc… are all team sports that rely on a team to work together and are highly competitive.

The problem I see here with HOTS is that people are used to LOL and DOTA. Where there is a carry. The one. The player that can pretty much has the power to be unstoppable on their own. The team of the carry are either fodder or a distraction so the carry can win the game. It’s still a team game, but with the mentality that you raise a super star and the rest are back up singers that don’t get the singing contract. In this scenario, the player chooses a carry while the rest of the team has to support this one player. In my point of view this happens in real life, but why do I have to be the lowly grunt while the other guy gets all the fame and attention?

People want to feel good and know they make a difference. This is why everyone wants to be DPS, or the leader, or the super star.

Games like WoW and FFXIV rely on a team to accomplish something. HOTS emulates this by includes roles such as a tank, healer, and dps.

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WoW is big so not gonna argue about that. FFXIV I have no idea the playerbase size. LoL also has roles such as tank, healer, and dps.

Real life team sports is a team sport like HOTS, but also individualistic too like other MOBAs. For every famous team there are known players on that team, and less known players. Tom Brady is famous on his team if you asked other people. Those same people might not know many other players on the team. As long as your team isn’t completely garbage, individual players can be good enough to carry and make a name for themselves.

You basically answered yourself here. HotS isn’t designed to be a solo queue game. This is why I enjoy it so much more than other MOBAs. Now, if you are asking, “Would HotS have been more successful if it weren’t HotS?” Probably, but then I wouldn’t be playing it either. I mostly play tanks and bruisers, and like feeling like my contribution to the team is vital. I don’t like feeling that I am basically superfluous.

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What Blizzard failed to get… is that as humans, we’re naturally a very individualistic species. Well in the western hemisphere that’s for sure. We like to know that we did what we could to affect the outcome of the game. If our hands are tied, this makes the games far less fun. In HOTS, which is my very first MOBA and likely last (because the franchises merge appealed to me) mind you… you can’t carry your team, you can’t showcase your skills, you can’t make certain moves or aggression because you are tied to a role. This causes frustration, especially in ladder (pro scene not counted) when you see a player not doing their jobs or not carrying the role they’re supposed to, you’re stuck in your assigned role and unable to adapt to the situation (you can’t make a kill, you can’t heal your teammate, you can’t CC an enemy player into oblivion, you can’t poke and shoot from range to harass, and on it goes).

It’s not like StarCraft 2 or Overwatch where you can play in teams but you also can carry, if your individualistic skill is strong enough. It makes games fun as well (if you lost, but as long as you’ve racked up kills and made it a living hell for the other team, it’s all good). Being designed to have your hands tied while you watch your idiot player throw the game away… makes for unfun games and design. This is why I played HOTS a lot less (after making a second account) and don’t find the game fun at all.

Is Blizzard going to turn around with this? I highly doubt it. Just give the message by quitting or only playing QM.

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I have the same with the role of mages or supports. Hypercarries are a terrible idea for the general playability of the game, even if it makes the cash roll in on the e-sports scene.

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I’m asking that question despite players asking why I’m asking if I answered it, because how could HOTS be a huge competitive game if it’s overly team focused? If HOTS defenders (at least 75% of the forum) admitted it’s a niche game and that Blizzard shouldn’t have forced an overly big competitive scene, then that’s fine with me. You guys can enjoy your game, but others on the forum also list out why HOTS failed (came out too late, free skins with no real money, etc reasons) but not focusing on the core aspect of the game: very team-oriented

It should never have forced e-sports, absolutely.

But HotS is actually probably the least niche of all MOBAs due to being much more team oriented, and much more accessible. HotS is playable as a general player, whereas games like LoL and DotA are pretty much reserved for those who know the game really well and can exploit hypercarries.

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You can carry in HoTs if you play extremely well.

LoL is really hard for me, but it’s still doable in bringing in the general players too as low tiers (iron, bronze, silver) are present so all players can be included and have fun. DOTA I’ve never played, but just from looking visually at their games, it’s too complicated so I stay away.

If you’re basing your contribution off of late game teamfights, then yes that’s true every class takes a backseat to the damage carry. Until at least the mid-game and early late game in LoL, tanks and bruisers definitely make a huge difference. Even mages (mid lane) make a huge difference by being able to gank other lanes if they destroy their laner first. This would snowball the other lanes too. Hypercarry marksmen don’t even become a factor until 2 items, some needing 3 items. 3 items is when the games are nearly over at this point.

In fact, right now hypercarries are weak in LoL as games don’t go on that long anymore. Tbh LoL is heading into HOTS territory where it’s becoming more of a team-based team game over an individual-based team game. I don’t like that and I wonder in 3 years what LoL will look like. Not to mention damage from all classes are off the charts and I don’t like that either. It’s becoming a really fast paced game. That’s the one thing I like about HOTS is the slow teamfights over 8 seconds.

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This would require you to be bad enough to stay down there and you’d still need to encounter no smurfs that can abuse hypercarries.

Of course it can. You will sometimes get bad teammates, true, but on average over hundreds of games all other factors will cancel each other and only your personal skill will matter.

it can be competitive if it’s too team-based yes. hots used to be competitive but not anymore if that’s what you’re asking since they destroyed it completely and so many player’s left it now it’s all about RNG you either get potatoes or enemy team get potatoes that’s how it is now in this game.


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Sure, you can have some sports like basketball where you have all stars that can borderline carry games. However I counter with baseball: it’s significantly more team based and is still extremely competitive. If you created some sort of genetic monstrosity that combined the greatest talents of all physical sport athletes into one man… they would STILL not be able to hard carry games. It is physically impossible for someone to play all baseball positions at any given time (example, you can’t both be on third base and be the pitcher at the same time, you can’t be up to bat and also be safe on second base at the same time since you aren’t two people, etc).

HOTS is sorta like baseball in that regard and it can be just as competitive. HOTS has a ton of problems ranging from devs who balance around bad players to poor matchmaking to a horrific punishment system that spent years doing nothing but silencing players and ignoring afks/trolls/feeders/etc. None of those are directly related to being “too team based” however.

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In a vacuum that’s true you will eventually get to the rank you should be at, but the more individual power you have, the faster you can rank up comparing a team-based team game to an individual-based team game.

It’s already frustratingly long in LoL. HOTS would take longer since team skill is pushed more than individual skill. Climbing up would keep ranked players playing ranked if they can see the results paying off faster.