To everyone who reads this and loves this game as much as I do, warm greetings and I hope it will be interesting for you to read everything that I want to offer you here for discussion.
Yes, I understand that most likely this is unlikely to be noticed by the developers and will remain just my fantasies, but still I decided to share it with you. Since Blizzard recently unexpectedly released a patch for the game to someone, it probably even gave hope that they decided to remember about our favorite game again and perhaps in the near future even we will be surprised by some even more global changes. But personally, I have been thinking a lot on my own for a long time, and what could really be added or changed in the game so that it would immediately become interesting again for everyone as before, attracted not only new players, brought back old ones, and of course would interest developers in being able to bring them income while remaining like this is it accessible to everyone?
And that’s what friends I came to. To solve problems, they must first be accepted, and the main ones I can emphasize are the following:
The first problem is the main individual feature that makes our game original, but at the same time is its main disadvantage - the overall experience!
The second problem will probably surprise you no less than the first, but in my opinion it is also the main painful vulnerability of the game - monetization! More precisely, its almost complete absence, since everything in the game can literally be obtained for free and you don’t really want to pay for much because there is no need in principle.
Personally, I think that both of these problems need to be solved for the game and then it will be able to attract even more new interest with renewed vigor, as it once was, and here are the solutions I want to offer you.
GENERAL EXPERIENCE what’s wrong with him? I think none of you will argue that this is what makes our game the most unique in its genre and we can not refuse it in any case, but we often suffer from this feature of ours as much as no less. When in all other team games where each player plays for his own personal score and development - one can win a match for the whole team and for a good, strong player, four weak allies will not be a big problem in most games. But unfortunately we have the opposite, and only one bad player can spoil the game for the whole team, and okay if it’s just a bad, weak player, but if he specifically spoils the game, then it rather pushes away from the game and completely discourages the desire to play on. As a result, it turns out that hots does not so much reward players for their own good game, as it punishes you for your ally’s bad game, and the reason for this is the general experience.
So how do we preserve our main feature - the OVERALL EXPERIENCE, but at the same time eliminate its shortcomings?
I propose to introduce a personal credit for each player, which, in principle, is already in the game, reflected in the statistics of who brought how much individually gained experience to the overall experience of the team, but so that each player could use his personal collected experience more actively for his own development. That is, we still have a common experience that we earn as a team, which opens up talents for players to choose from after reaching 4, 7, 13, 16, 20 levels, but now we buy these talents depending on the individually earned experience points, as for coins, while at each of these levels we can already choose more than one talent starting from the first one if we have enough accumulated points for this, which I think even a team lagging behind in general experience can lose less advantages against their rivals who have broken out several levels ahead.
Thus, if in the opposing team all players go by experience in approximately the same ratio and have the same number of talents, then in the opposing team if one player plays very well and the rest of his allies play poorly, then he alone accumulates a lot more experience and even lagging behind the opponents by a level or two, one player can have the same number of talents, or maybe even one more, even if they are weaker, but giving him the opportunity to somehow influence the course of the game more and actively try to pull his team out of a losing position, and not to encourage him to give up, and at the end of the game session, just turn off or even delete the game.
It can also solve the problem of accidental mistakes when you quickly choose a talent and suddenly realize that you have chosen the wrong one that you need or the wrong one that you wanted, and nothing can be fixed, and with what you have taken, you simply do not know how to play now in this particular case.
Yes, I understand that such mechanics can also be associated with a number of problems that I understand, such as for example:
DIFFERENT CHARACTERS IN DIFFERENT ROLES CANNOT COLLECT EXPERIENCE EQUALLY ACTIVELY - this is natural. For example, Nova or Medivh have always collected less experience than other heroes because they are very specific, and his great honor is going to the lines at the expense of push, and if they leave to beat creeps instead of actively helping the team, you will definitely lose and the appearance of such players in your team is probably one of the saddest pictures… Therefore, I propose to introduce additional points for the characters, depending on their roles, for the fact that they perform the tasks assigned to their roles! That is, the tank will get more experience for the damage it receives from other players in battles, the killers get more experience naturally for killing other players - a little more than the rest for participating in the murder, much more for the murder itself. Healers and support gain additional experience for healing points of allies and preventing damage from opponents. Thus, the game does not just direct the player, depending on his role, in the direction of the game that is necessary for the team, but completely stimulates him in this. In principle, brusers should be given more experience for a variety of active actions - the more active a player behaves in this role, the more additional individual points he will receive, and if he is engaged in a single task all game, his points are awarded only in the form of the usual experience received, depending on where he gains it.
Another problem I think will be that all the characters have a different number of talents in general and at each individual level, but for this problem I have a proposal to solve it, which will also help solve the other, the main of the two voiced problems at the beginning.
MONETIZATION - I think hardly anyone will argue that to support any game today, this is its main criterion, which gives basic support for keeping it afloat and encourages developers to develop it. But if your game is completely free, you can’t suddenly make it paid or suddenly take away some part of the content from the players by trying to make them pay for it, which most likely will just scare most of the players away from the game. But everyone wants to eat and every job should be paid, which means to bring some visible income for which there will be a desire to do even more! So in a game in which there is nothing to sell, you need to come up with something new that can be sold and that everyone will need, despite the fact that it should be free at the same time, but that the players would have the desire to pay for it!
Personally, I think the main mistake of HOTS 2.0 was that all the skins were made free. Since by the presence of different paid skins from allies in your team or the opposing team, you had an idea how much this player is invested in the game and maybe he can be dangerous or useful in a brawl. When everything became available for free, the availability of skins simply devalued, turning into candy wrappers that everyone now had and did not particularly distinguish you anymore. But now it’s impossible to roll back in this regard, so what should I do?
With the next sentence, I want to present for you a possible solution to two problems at once that will probably bring not only variety to the game, but will also be able to attract income in it by stimulating players to contribute personal funds to it.
So, since all the heroes have a different number of talent sets, they need to be balanced, but how to do it? I think you can add to the game a set of talents common to all characters that you can add already at your discretion to each individual hero before the game and make your strategies more diverse on them, such as remember there was an experiment with a medallion giving each hero unstoppability? Why not return these medallions to the game in the form of such additional talents that would change their effectiveness depending on what level you place them at, while making them not only more efficient, but also more expensive, from which it would be just as important to position them correctly. For example, the higher in level you would have such a talent, the less his cooldown would become. It can also be done in the form of a similar talent, for example, wards or activated debuffs on opponents or buffs for you, such as a slight acceleration or the ability to get invisibility for a short time, some additional passive abilities, such as getting a little more treatment, abilities that can be developed with additional stacks.
But the main feature of these talents may be the following - they can be improved, for example, by getting three identical talents, you could combine them into one more improved, and from the already improved ones, collect three more of the same to improve it as much as possible! Of course, for the balance of the game and more expensive to activate for personal points received in the game, but it would be worth it. And it would make sense for players to get a duplicate of it, or even some duplicates, even if they got a talent. Or you can come up with sets of talents that can be collected, added to the heroes and with the full activation of each of them in the game, the hero would receive some additional unique ability. Do you think the players will want to pay for this? At the same time, they, like everything else, can fall out of the chests, but now there is an interest in paying for these chests.
You can make these talents available for purchase in the store for crystals or for gold, or for example, as the free rotation of heroes in the game changes three times a month, separate general talents for different currencies could also appear in the store. Although I would still think that if they fall out in chests, then let the players buy them for gold, and in the store they will still be for crystals, because both that and the other currency one way or another can continue to be received in the game, but now it will make more sense to earn and spend it! Or if you wish, now you have the sense to actually pay for it in the game.
Yes, I immediately foresee outraged exclamations - it also affects the gameplay! Now you can just buy a victory?!
I will hasten to reassure you right away - because what I am offering you is not a guaranteed victory for someone for money. Yes, additional talents will make the game on your characters more diverse, but as I said, as these talents improve, the price of their activation in the game will also increase, and if you are a weak and bad player and cannot properly extract individual experience points in addition to the general experience, you will hardly be able to use these additional talents even if you buy them. That is, by paying for it, you will not get a guarantee that you will now win everyone, but you get a guarantee that now your game will become even more interesting and possibly unprovable for rivals, which of course will give you some advantage, but only if you are a really good player.
Well, I think probably there are enough such ideas so far and who will be able to read it all, maybe you will even be interested in discussing something from this or offering something from yourself, something to supplement? I hope I did not try in vain inventing and painting it all and am not the only such dreamer who still still loves this game, which despite the lack of almost complete interest from the developers, still the love from the players does not fade and we continue to play and even invent competitions, assemble teams, receive enjoy the gameplay, the most unusual and unique, which you will not find anywhere else!