I know you all are under a lot of fire for the new character, but you all are doing fine. I agree the monetization is neccessary, at some point later on I think because of the games nature she should become free, but if it can generate you money to continue the game then by all means. Also the malg reworks have been fire. I hope you guys keep at it. Good work guys
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Only people that have worked in software developing might understand how hard it really is. I’ve watched and read some of the interviews they have had. I still enjoy HotS despite all the imbalances.
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I know it’s unpopular but I think all new hero’s being cash only for 2 months before going for gold is good. It’s only a couple of months and this is a pretty minimal cost as well. A month of Netflix is more than the cost of the Xal.
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They’re not sure they’ll do this for all heroes though. Xal is a test.
I didn’t know that. I assumed it was going to be the “new way” of release. That being said I think I am okay with this method of character introduction as cash only for a brief period before being purchasable by gold.
Just to get back to OP’s point the devs are doing great work! Don’t let the haters get you down most of us know salaries and servers aren’t free.
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Have they spoken at all about patch cadence? Are we still on once-a-month patches or are they looking to increase the cadence?
I seem to remember they mentionned somwehre it would stay as it is for the short term. I’m fine with that as the old cadence was way too fast. But we now know why they did that. I don’t think they still have the goal of catching up to LoL.
They could though. I know LOL is out big right now and it gets sponsored a lot more, but this game has that potential. If they want fans though, optimally a new map would be cool and a new healer or tank. We have enough dps right now and its gonna take a while for xal to settle before people quit perma banning her
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I don’t think a new map or tank would help. This would only interest people who already play the game. If they want more players, what they need is advertisement.
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A new map and tank would help. The map will break headlines because this is the first map they’ve released in awhile not counting rereleased haunted mines and the new tank mixes up the meta allowing a fresher game flow. If they follow this up shortly after with another esports tournament smaller scale with the GMs that still play they could use this as an open marketing advertisement and then double down with a crossover event with OW.
I could even spit ball a few map designs. I’m sure maps are a bit harder to make than champs, but that level of work shouldn’t take too long. I’m sure they have some kind of sandbox asset mode.
Oh one other point I could also make is that the biggest distinction this game has between itself and other mobas is its map system.
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People who don’t know the game won’t care.
I play the game and I don’t care for a new map. People don’t even know how to play the ones we have. And having one more map doesn’t do anything even if I do like it, since you don’t pick which map you play on.
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I have to agree on the map. I think there are plenty of maps. I think more balance updates in a consistent cadence as the population grows will be key and then the odd hero maybe every 4 months.
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I’m not so sure. Even the return of the old haunted mines stirred up a lot of hype. We’ve got 2 maps from every universe except from warcraft. It feels right that we get at least 1 more map from warcraft. If only to fill that hole.
Plus, I’m positive the whole smash brothers speculation of how the new thing could play has drawn people in before. Its what drew me in at first.
Mines drew in people who already knew about the game. That’s my whole point. They need to attract new players, not just people who stopped playing or WoW players who see a known character or map in the launcher.
I’m sure you’ve had the same experience I did. When you talk about HotS, no one knows what you’re talking about because they’ve never heard of it.
Also WoW players have half the roster for themselves, including our newest character. I think we’ve given them enough.
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I think a new map could be great just right now @phaseshifter is right. It won’t bring in “new players” just hype up current ones. I think a wow Hero has more hype to a wow player than a map which is what they did.
I will say if they wanted to do a big map “rework” of a few maps I don’t think that would be bad as it could shift the meta a little. Right now the dual soak thing is a little to easy on several maps IMO. At least in casual play and I know I abuse the hell out of it.
The reason I suggested the map wasn’t just to bring in new players exclusively. Most of the people who could play HOTS already are and the rest either prefer another blizzard game or moba. By doing what I suggested and implementing the new map and then doing a crossover event they can pull more players from OW to get more attention to this game. That will get headlines which is free advertisement. Then if they follow up with another esports match between the pros it brings hype back that we might be getting a competitive league and at that point its on us the players to try and bring in new faces. If player count spikes after the new map/ and cross over event then by the time they get ready to set the match up we could have 5-10% more players. Haunted mines wasn’t new. Its was just back. Thats the difference.
By having the new map it increases the pool of champs and changes their values. It actually shakes the whole thing up even if its random. Plus its a lot easier to convince new people to game if its still getting new content updates outside pTR
I completely disagree with the ‘bootlicking’ atmosphere of this entire thread.
Blizzard has a responsibility, because this is an online esports game, to continue maintaining and developing HotS properly, until the very end. Else, you’re just a fraudster developer, and just out to make any dollar you can on cheap crap. It’s as simple as that.
Wow, someone else in this community has a brain and understands that it’s Blizzard’s job to make their esport an esport?
Darx is 100% right. If you advertise your game as a competitive esport, and the balance is so utterly garbage that some heroes have 98% ban rates and 80% win rates, you have failed. Releasing more unfair, untested, poorly conceived characters should not be the big priority. Fixing the game’s many fundamental problems and balance issues should be the top priority.
Sports ad revenue isn’t hard to understand. If you make a good game, it will attract more players. If you make a good competitive game, it will attract good competitive players. More competitive players = more events = more ad revenue. Better gameplay = better players = more viewership = more ad revenue. This is why NFL players make 1000x what LoL players make. Nobody wants to watch two teams of bad players pick the same overpowered heroes and get rewarded for their misplays every game.
The last balance patch for Starcraft 1 was in 2001, Between that and when SC2 killed the competitive scene, Brood War sold about 10 million copies, solely because it was so good and competitive that everyone wanted to play it. They didn’t need to add broken untested units to make money. They didn’t need to sell low-quality textures as skins to make money. They didn’t need to cycle which things are OP in and out to make money. A static, fair game is all you need, and making that is way less work than making the game worse 16 times per year.
It turns out, if you just make a really solid strategy game that people both want to play and want to watch, you don’t need to do that much work. If Activision wanted to, they could bankrupt Riot. They’re just too incompetent to know that.
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Whilst you might be right in some regard a lot of people have notions that champs are more broken than they actually are because they don’t know how to deal with them. Because the thing is as soon as I saw xal in launch I knew genji was going to be her counter. So even if she gets locked I don’t care cause I can just kill her. A lot of people think johannas broken, but in reality she’s not really. Don’t get me wrong she gets a very generous kit, but johs weakness is her allies. When I play against her as tank I’ll just ignore her and kill her backline. Yet earlier this year she was still one of the top bans and she still is.
Ok, but bringing brand new players is better than catering only to existing Blizzard players. Trying to convince JUST OW players is a bad idea. Long term it’s a losing proposition for the company. You need new blood to keep a game going.
And btw, they already did cross promotion as you suggested. And every OW player I know who came into the game for their skin just grabbed it and never touched the game again.
When you say most people who could play HotS already are, that’s absolutely not true, people who don’t know the game exists aren’t playing it, but a lot of them would if they knew about it. That’s why they need to advertize.
Um no, it’s not my job to advertize their game for them, it’s their responsability to make their game known. I mean, if they don’t there’s no one to provide word of mouth. (Plus, when I talk to people about HotS, they have no idea what I’m talking about because no one’s ever heard of it)
They dropped E sports for the game, so it’s not an Esports game. You can create E sports for any game, so saying" this is an online esports game" doesn’t really mean anything.
But I’m not sure what your point is about responsibility. Several companies kept servers running without updating a game before. I mean, if they hadn’t done that the game would be gone already.
They don’t advertize the game at all…
Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. There’s probably a thousand games that are amazing that you don’t play, because you don’t know they exist.
Brood war had no monetization at all. No game did back then, so there was no pissibility of adding units to make money. It sold well because SC 1 was popular and Brood War was advertized. (And honestly, it would have sold tons of copies even if it had been bad)
SC was a RTS with only three factions. You don’t really have a lot of options to make things OP. And there would be nothing to gain by doing so anyway.
Maybe when they have their own band and Netflix show lol.