Thank you for the continued update. I would just like to reiterate that there are many people of these forums that are really passionate about the game and have valuable feedback to share. Please continue to listen to and respond to this feedback.
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In game tournaments like there were before in wc3 !!!
Thanks Keio for the thoughtful update.
Here are my thoughts on improvements I think can be made to the game in 2019 and beyond.
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First thing’s first. Keep doing what’s working. Regular hero releases, balance changes, and periodic new maps keep the game fresh and interesting for the players who’ve been here for the long haul.
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A game grows by drawing new players, and this is something HotS has struggled with. Consider adding more PvE-type campaigns and events into the game. Some of the stuff they have been doing on the SC2 team with campaign co-op has been pretty cool. Similar campaign-style missions - even a mini-campaign - could draw in a lot of new players. Throw some loot chest rewards in there and you’ll probably draw a bunch of new players.
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Give the community the tools to grow the game. We’ve talked about a map editor for awhile. It kept Warcraft 3 alive and spawned a whole new genre of game. It reinvigorated Starcraft 2 and honestly probably kept that game from dying a premature death.
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New ways to generate revenue. While I’m all about free stuff, the game needs to make money to survive. Revisiting the in-game currency structure is one thing that probably needs to be done. I also think that offering season passes/rewards similar to what they are doing in Fortnite could be applied to HotS. Cosmetics that are earned through play but locked behind a purchasable season pass would be a big draw I think.
Thanks for reading and thanks for continuing to build a great game!
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hopefully the role overhaul will work out well. right now its still not quite there. as suspected it has some major flaws. lets talk about just Ranged Assassin to narrow it down. in this category it places 3 major sub roles (Stealth | AD [auto attackers] | AP [spell based] ). these heroes are vastly different. so when the matching system goes to look at it problems occur. think about filling the ranged slot now. is Nova the same as Raynor? is Valla the same as Kael’thas? all of these heroes are different and need to be matched differently.
i like that ranked is getting merged together again. tbh i have never liked many things about TL vs HL because it always seemed there was a double standard. where TL got all the loot and XP just for playing it even in the lowest levels. meanwhile HL got screwed over and unless you were in the highest ranks you got nothing. i really hope this changes moving forward and they take the best of both merging them.
| HL: | Ranked Restrictions |
| TL: | Rewards for all Ranks |
| TL: | All group formations Solo, Duo, Trio, Full |
| TL: | Free For All Draft |
More gold purchase content sounds like a great thing. There are many users that sit around with tons of gold and shards not really having anything interesting to spend it on because they already have everything or most everything. I would like to see more gold content that may not even be limited to only mounts.
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Thank you for updating us on the future of the game, and how the new team plans on getting HOTS where it needs to be.
Some suggestions going forward:
- Diminishing returns on hard CC. There is nothing less fun than systematically getting stunned until you’re dead. Just like in WoW PvP the strength of each new stun/sleep/etc. should decrease if chained together in a short amount of time.
- Tier Breaking Heroes: Hero kits need to be more thoroughly reviewed before going live. Tracer was the first to really break the game, and ever since her we’ve been getting more heroes with more mobility, burst, sustain, or some combination of them all. This is a problem because it leaves all previously released heroes in the dust. New heroes either need to stay in line with current in some form, or you need to plan for rolling reworks as heroes become more out of date/older. I’d imagine rolling reworks takes more time than thoroughly reviewing a new heroes’ kit.
- Murky needs a hardcore rework. It is not easy to kill his egg if he places it in Timbuktu/ right next to Fort/Keep. The egg should only allow Murky to choose where he respawns - not reduce his timer. There needs to be some sort of repercussion for him dying, and a 3 second respawn doesn’t make the cut.
- Make ARAM a permanent mode.
- Introduce to the game (for illustration/matchmaking purposes only) hero “stats” on the Hero Details pages like Mobility, Burst, Sustain, Control, etc. For players it will help them understand what that hero’s strengths/weaknesses are. For the Matchmaking team they could give values for each stat for each hero and base matchmaking based on that in part or in full.
- Matchmaking is still all over the place. People who have never played rank should never be placed with people who have. 9 times out of 10 anyone who hasn’t played rank sucks compared to those who have.
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See, the funny thing about those folks is that they have an entire bevy of new games out there in the world that they can go to next if they seriously are out of work right now. And a vast majority of the professions you just listed (coaches, casters, and organizers) are freelancers anyway, which means a vast majority of them already have another game lined up to ensure they can still pay the bills.
DR on hard CC is one of the things that killed Warcraft CC-- it probably shouldn’t apply here. There are still enough “remove/reduce this CC effect” abilities in the game that diminishing returns shouldn’t ever be considered.
I’m not entirely sure if I agree with you here. The only hero that has been truly a plague upon the game since Li Ming is easily Mal’Ganis, who has a kit that is even more obnoxiously toxic than Garrosh did. For the vast majority of hero releases, it all comes down to learning how to properly shut down new heroes-- which, sadly, a vast majority of the player base wont ever do and instead would rather just cry for nerfs.
Fun fact, if people actually bothered to soak lanes Murky isn’t nearly as big as an issue as you seem to be thinking. You don’t even need to kill him or even engage him. Simply stay close enough to the minions so that you can still get exp credit and you have effectively rendered Murky completely useless and a dead weight to his team. What makes the murloc so powerful is player’s severe aversion to soaking lanes, which is a community problem and not a hero design problem.
I agree on ARAM even though I really don’t play it.
This is what the Wiki and other such sites are for. The problem is that apparently I am the only gamer alive who will use Wiki/fansites to get an idea of how a game/hero/build operates before just jumping in feet first.
This point is generally a result of how easy it is to unlock Hero League. A handful of games is nowhere near enough for a player to have any understanding of the game, and yet that’s still the only real requirement before ranked is unlocked. I really wish that instead of having “X heroes at X level”, ranked is instead unlocked based upon how many games are on your account. If it was required that 500 games on the account was needed before ranked would unlocked, that would prevent new players with only 150-200 total games played on the free hero rotation could unlock ranked play.
@Sunrider
Did you just compare WoW PvP to a MOBA? Every other MOBA has DR - it makes sense to have in this MOBA.
I’m not saying there aren’t counterplay options for the Tier Breaking Heroes I talked about, and others I didn’t. That being said, you can’t tell me that Tracer/Hanzo didn’t break the game with their mobility (just using them as an early example). Again not saying they can’t be countered, but when they introduce heroes like that and wait as long as they did to rework the old ones it’s not fun to play against them.
The problem isn’t getting soak against Murky. It’s the fact that the opposing hero has to spend mana, hp, and time backing/using the well to kill a hero over and over and over that simply respawns in a few moments good as new! Murky’s damage potential is unreal too. He can literally 1v1 heroes - he’s a nearly unkillable hero who can dish out a lot of damage. Additionally, for example, he can spawn his egg bot, go top for objective, dish out deeps/use his ult, die, and then continue pushing bot. He’s broken - stop defending him otherwise.
League of Legends displays the stats I’m talking about, and given the shear amount of popularity of League over HOTS it can’t hurt to implement some of the things League has into HOTS. Wiki sites shouldn’t be necessary to play a game, and it can’t hurt by adding that information, so I fail to understand why you’re trolling about this.
I agree that your suggestion for ranked play could be a potential fix in whole, or part.
Just so you and anyone else who reads this are aware - I’ve ranked Master/Diamond in the past, and have played since Alpha. I’ve played League for years before HOTS came out. I’m not trying to compare “career” sizes, but what I’m trying to convey is that I’m not new to this genre.
Lastly, most of your points seemed to be trolly. You disagreed about parts of each point simply to do so, and not provide anything of value.
Case in point:
- Compared MMO PvP to MOBA PvP
- You agreed with me about the tier breaking heroes, but you still wanted to complain for some reason.
- I was talking about fighting Murky, and his lack of repercussions for dying. Not about laning/soaking versus him.
- While Wiki sites can be useful, it’s not necessary to use them. Again, it doesn’t harm anything to add the things I talked about to the game - especially since a game that’s much more popular has implemented exactly what I talked about.
- Aside from ARAM, you finally had something somewhat positive to add!
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I’ll try and echo some of my favorite responses from above. I believe that, at this stage, HotS has plenty enough number of heroes at this point.
Better directions for development would rest with making content more accessible through revamping the store (recalibrate/reduce pricing, make direct purchases available again, more use for gold, less focus on lootboxes), improving matchmaking mechanics (including through the fusion of some play modes and potentially getting rid of brawl), and possibly adding some maps and more community-driven content.
From Saul to Paul. my faith in you has returned. I wish you and the remanig devs all the best. May all your ideas become real.
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how is this game so broken beyond absolute belieff
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I’d like to see the highly abused reporting system get canned. It causes more harm than good. Let’s not ban away the remaining players… Let’s stop silencing/suspending/banning people for standard gaming rhetoric in a war-based game where you kill each other and destroy structures… It’s ludicrous.
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Oh thank goodness! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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There are quite a few skins, including the latest Whitemane skins, that i would love to purchase for 300 gems each. However, there is no way I am going to pay 900 gems to purchase 2/3 skins I do not want to get the 1/3 skin i do want.
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Will we ever see matchmaking 2.0? Because, it’s broken and getting worse, also reporting system broken too. I report a player for afk/feeding and meet him in next round again!
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The whole shards nonsense and splitting tints off as unique skins were the two biggest misfires in the game’s infrastructure. I’d rather tints simply be rolled back in under the skin that they’re variations of.
I get that microtransactions need to happen to support the server upkeep. Development is expensive enough, maintaining a game long-term is even more so, and I get that, but the current system for them is just so convoluted and unnecessary. I’m glad reversing course is finally in the cards.
Gotta love it when rulebreakers who like to pollute communities and abuse people call the tools designed to stop them ‘abused’. Criminals irl need to try that tactic. “Dude, I was just holding you hostage and demanding money for your safety! Why’d you people have to go abuse me by calling the cops?”
Gotta love when someone doesn’t analyze the topic being discussed and doesn’t contribute something worthwhile. There have been many well written threads analyzing the reporting system and how it disproportionately punishes people who play more frequently at a higher rate due to accumulating a higher quantity of unjustified reports. Many have quit the game over the reporting system, and its not because they deserved actions taken against them. My friends including myself have no action taken against us in other games but on Heroes of the Storm we have had actions taken against us because many people will report you for anything they don’t like, including strategic decisions in-game or draft picks. Now I’m one of the last few standing still playing this game of my real life crowd… I’ve been around since alpha and at this point I’ve exhausted all my silences and now I only receive suspensions lasting >= a month. My biggest offense? Telling people I think they are playing bad and should be practicing more in quick match. In a game centered around violence, death, and destruction; standard gaming rhetoric and taunting shouldn’t be a bannable-offense… It’s ludicrous and rather hypocritical, really.
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/heroes/topic/20769127844?page=1
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I mean, yeah, you are doing that. Good of you to notice.
Maybe stop breaking the rules, stop treating other players like dirt, and you’ll stop getting punished. If the reporting system is anything like Blizzard’s other games, then there’s no automation; it’s reviewed and penalties are applied. Usually people are just that rude and trashy that there’s really no ambiguity about whether they’re breaking rules. And of course they come on the forums or go on reddit and tell a sob story, trying to make themselves look better than they ever were by hiding what exactly they said.
There’s no reporting abuse, and the ‘why’ of it doesn’t matter. Treat your fellow players with respect, be nice, don’t break the rules, and you won’t get in trouble. The only ones guilty of abuse are people such as yourself.
And those “well-written threads” are by people just as clueless about how things actually work as any other toxic folks who think they should be allowed to get away with treating players like garbage.
Go to bed you little kid, tomorrow uninstall the game and you done. We will continue playing with out you, and we will happy 
I have always thought that you should have goals to shoot for other than the daily quests. I know that the board game has me playing many more games each day than before.