Heroes vs other MOBA's

The only MOBA I have ever played is Heroes. I play it because I have been playing Blizzard games for more than 20 years. To those who have played other MOBA’s, putting aside what you make think of the player base in Heroes is like, strictly talking about the game design, maps, characters, etc. do any of those other MOBA’s really offer anything to someone like me who really dislikes the idea that Orphea and Qhira where introduced into Heroes and took up space that real charcters from say Starcraft or Overwatch could have taken.

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Having played many many mobas even crappy phone versions, I feel like I can say HOTS has a feel that is unique.

I used to be hardcore into a few, especially the big ones DOTA and League but even after all the games started slowly blending into the same vibes due to all the updates to make players happy, HOTS still felt unique. I am not saying it is perfect, it is FAR from it but I still want to play it no matter how mad I get at certain things like bad ranked match making.

It is like Smash Brothers for Blizz. I love these heroes and I am connected to their games and I want Diablo fighting Thrall etc.

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I credit HotS’s uniqueness to its team experience and the map rotations.

Other MobA’s get a bit lazy with just one map.

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In a way, not really.

Old dota-allstars was an ‘allstar cast’, so to speak, that has some references that pulled or borrowed certain character traits into a semi-warcraft story and, at the time, the gameplay was Sentinel vs Scourge so heroes were (supposed to be) aligned with a particular side in their play. However, the want to play all heroes, and not just mirrored version particular to their side, pushed the game away from what little ‘lore’ it was building up, and when valve adopted Icefrog for Dota 2, the change in terminology, backstories and character ‘lore’ pretty much killed what little interest people may have had between some of the characters (dire and radiant iirc) as there really isn’t anything that happens that “matters” in the context of the games.

Riot, for LoL, has recently started a push of comics, has two branching games, and has some short story segments since they reconned their game lore. Before, the ideas was that games were a sort of Olympics hosted by power time mages (Summoners, the player) who could will these champions into being their pawns for these events. Now, the summoner aspect is down played for lore and characters just talk smack to each other or have occasional backstory somewhat akin to a wiki entry that would summarize an overwatch short.

Smite then uses known Gods and tosses them together, but that’s just a collection of myths and less an adventure. And that’s the main thing going for Blizzard, players connect with these characters because they experienced these characters through other adventures and aren’t just told about it.

You could prob look up some of the taiwan/china/whatever eastern hemisphere mobilemobas that rip-off known characters (such as blizz ones, japanese anime, and other video game settings) for their all-star moba, but that’s just banking on people recognizing these faces (despite minor edits) and being hyped for playing not-jaina or not-Saitama in a 3v3 or 5v5 game.

A few select ones are semi-moba games that have a solo pve mode where it plays kinda like a wanna-be dungeon crawler (think League of Angels) that’s used to gain the gear and levels outside of the pvp matches, (used stamina, can be auto-played to get loot) but when players do the 5v5 matches, it just fills with mixed ai and players so a single player (esp if they paid enough) can pretty much storm towers and structures on their own.

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I play HotS because it is casual allows me to play other games.

If I were to play LoL, it would have to be the only game I play, which is not what I want.

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  • Teamwide XP. Having your teammate come over and save your butt isn’t an active detriment to you because of stolen XP.

  • Talents instead of items. Instead of just asking the internet what flat stat boost to go all in on, you have a wide variety of choices, all tailored to the hero’s specific abilities. And barring a few extreme cases, none of the choices are objectively wrong, so you’re allowed to play around with them yourself and find what you prefer.

  • Multiple maps with unique objectives. Who in their right mind would want to play the exact same map again and again for months at a time? I’d die of boredom within an hour.

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No, no other Moba will interest you.

Going off the only information you’ve given, that you like Blizzard characters/locations, and dislike the Nexus original characters, I would say no.

Well maybe Smite if you like mythology I guess.

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i played dota and lol for long time but i find hots more fun its just no farming arguing about ks etc… plus you get very unique heroes like aba and chogall and maps too.If you dont like changes no other moba will interest you.

I played LoL and hated the meta lane maps. (Top solo, Mid Solo, Jungler, 2 bot ADC and Supp)
when LoL was first established that didnt exists…

Before Hots I played Heroes of Newerth (“Dota-clone”) and Dota 2, but even HoN copied dota too much it was still more unique than dota, because there you also had some more maps quantity than dota 2 or lol. And it was very fast paced engine-wise like Hots, not so slow like Dota 2/LoL. That last reason is one of the reasons I can’t stand D2 anymore and prefer Hots. The gameplay feels so smooth.

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A few reasons I like HotS:

  • Not a competitive person, HotS let’s me play with AI teammates v AI opponents (I’m still building courage to try playing with others even after years of playing the game… Because of other mobas. I’m like rank 170 something, from just playing solo…)

  • Dislike most MOBAs; not a fan of mobas in general but things like various maps with objectives, no equipment to worry about, small quirky character interactions during the game, great art style and quality art, really really cool events like Nexomania, etc, makes HotS fun.

  • Love Blizzard franchises in general

  • My husband Kel’Thuzad

  • The setting

I do try to play SMITE every once in awhile but it’s lacking a few qol things I enjoy from HotS and grow weary of it after a game or two.

There’s a YouTube video about why hots failed. Objectively, it’s a pretty good video actually talking about the game’s history.

One thing it did mention is that HoTS has a very well designed macro game.

Fighting at the objective isn’t always the answer and there are multiple ways of reaching the core. It’s pvp fighting mixed up in a pve environment. There is a lot of depth to the seemingly simple notion of where should you be positioned on the map. Rotations are very fluid and it’s all done really well.

I’m not fully versed in other mobas, but when the game tells me at the start of the match which lane I’m assigned to i start to question its depth.

I mean, is it me or does LoL feel like multiple independent 1v1 or 2v2 matches that just so happen to be on one map? Bot lane players have such little interaction with top lane players, why isn’t the game just broken into smaller aram maps?