it did work, just a few bugs they had to fix.
I propose we add talents to other Mobas to add depth to them.
Items are a vestige of when MoBA was a WC3 mod. There was no other way to grant abilities than to give items to the characters. When they made it into a game, instead of adapting it because they no longer had that limitation. They just ported everything.
The impact of which hero you pick is a lot higher here. And anyone who wants items has plenty of Generic MoBAâs to play. So I donât see the point of creating one more generic MoBA.
If you like items, you can simply play the other games.
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I feel like a lot of the differences in complexity across games are the design decisions trying to balance tactical decisions and strategic decisions in a MOBA. I would argue that MOBAâs given their single hero control, are best served with providing tactical and not strategic advantages to players to alter and augment gameplay. The games are best served when players are enabled to perform momentous moment to moment plays. Tactical decision making is often simple, often simple mechanically causing an immediate effect. Tactical complexity relies upon application in tandem with other abilities, alone they are powerful and experimentation yields immediate results. Many of the power enhancements provided by DotA and LoLâs item and crafting systems rest in strategic space which serve to provide advantages over time but usually not in the midst of combat. Strategic decisions are usually much larger than tactical decisions, and require learning about how to gain economic advantages and the whole breadth of what is available for purchase, not to mention the many interactions that may be possible. Often times, a strategic decision is reliant upon a grand understanding, because alone they do not provide an immediate benefit to the player and experimentation represents a dramatic opportunity cost locking one out of other options. Iâd also say that by and large, strategic decisions augment gameplay but donât change gameplay in an appreciably fun manner, in so much that you end up getting mired in the economy and die by inches rather than through outcomes of say an ability used in the right time/space.
Impactful Changes in Gameplay
The effects on the gameplay should affect the decision making of players in how they play, or otherwise accomplish major and intermediate tasks such as taking out heroes, supporting team-mates or approaching objectives. When you have a new way to approach a task, it becomes an interesting learning exercise. Changes in offensive, defensive, and locomotive abilities are impactful.
Problem of the Minor Gameplay
You can often end up with very nuanced gameplay changes with small systems that influence a meta-economy. Such subtle changes while influential to the outcome of the overarching success of a game, arenât very engaging on a moment to moment basis. Players will often become mired in achieving small goals to accumulate these benefits, but are not changing how they play. These become small chases, and too many of them can mire gameplay. How many often depends more on individual tastes than anything, but they act as a tax on players analytical focus rather than interactive acumen; it plays in the back of their minds but not actually on the field of combat. Armor upgrades, weapon power accumulation, critical hit changes increases, mana restoration over time represent many important but often background processes for players.
Maps
One of the major areas where complexity is expressed in HotS is in the map design. The objective events and how the maps are designed radically affect the strength of different heroes in matches and how players must react to successfully capture them.
Map objectives that give you an extra ability beyond what the characters can normally do are radical considerations. Suddenly, you have a new option to call in a nuclear strike, deploy a health drone, or exert map control space via vision. These are tactical effects that change how one engages a target and what opponents must consider during engagements.
Additionally, because these map-based objectives are often limited, either consumable, timed life, or localized, they are not incremental advancements nor advantages which can be attributed to snowball like effects that often occur with strategic style advantages.
Other areas to consider are
Discrete Learning, each new map vs the entire market
Design space, scoped to a single map scoped to all heroes/maps
â Particularly for Mistakes and Corrections, balancing out the problems of a mechanic, balancing it out for heroes that need it and not those that make it overpowered or absolutely necessary
I can understand how Heroes of the Stormâs gameplay could be considered simplistic compared to others in the MOBA genre, but I think many of itâs strengths are that the design team have approached the game in emphasizing player tactical, moment to moment, decision making and gameplay.
One area I would love to see is enabling players to create their own game-modes and maps. Many of the tools, considering it is based upon the StarCraft 2 engine, are available but are not integrated into the game to enable the community to experiment in new and complex ways. Setting up lanes with jump pads, conveyor belts, temporary ability power-ups, altered environments would be but the tip of the iceberg and really invigorate creativity in the community. I know the competitive scene is largely dead, but exhibition matches of seeing what a game can do is still a lot of fun.
3 Likes
Well that was fairly comprehensive. lol. Took awhile to read that, but I do agree with a lot of what you have said.
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Everyone complains about the matchmaking in every game. It will never be perfect, but it isnt nearly as dysfunctional as many would claim.
It is a lot easier to blame matchmaking for your losses than yourself, but in reality your team and your opponents team are pulled from the same MMR range of players and teams are on average pretty balanced
Best attitude ever. Okay I take your advice. Now I am gone simply because you said so. Now that is one less player, thus making MM even worse. Great job. Great advice.
Besides I never said I want items. I said I wanted additional complexity. In any form. Call it paragon for all I care, call it attribute points, call it anything. More choices, more customization, more depth to a rather shallow game.
This statement alone kinda shows you have no idea what you are talking about. Simply not true, and has been proven countless times. Sad thing is I think you are serious. Amazing.
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Yes, letâs add back in pay to win mechanicsâŚ
Or donât make them pay to win, but instead make it so it is nearly impossible to balance heroes because the hero will be OP with certain modifiers, and worthless with others.
So you windup where pretty much every hero has an ideal build, with the weirdos like me probably doing somethign different.
But you end up just balancing everything around these gems/etc.
And you find some heroes are broken.
A good chunk of the HotS complexity is invisible, and due to the multiple maps and objectives and etc.
There is probably a way to make it a bit more directly shown and influencing peopleâbut I am really not sure a way to do it that does not have noticable negative impacts on balance or gameplay.
Shockingly (doesnât surprise me) such a system is abusable by people who stat-pad.
There really is no good way to fix this unless you have a real person watch a replay and decide if someone is stat padding.
WellâI suppose that you could train via Deep Learning to get a reasonable system, but it would be likely need to be delayed, and would be a pretty massive investment that would probably show almost nothing for a long while.
But that is likely the most realistic way to do soâWhere youâre able to have the intelligences youâve trained look over every single game looking for instances of stat padding and not adjusting the MMR of those people in those games.
And thatâs assuming you manage to train a model well enough that it has an acceptable (probably <5%) rate of false positives.
Deep Learning/Machine Intelligence/et cetera is not the cure all most people seem to think it is =[
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Since when are talents âeasy modeâ for MOBAs? It doesnât take long to figure out what each item does in the shop, and which ones would benefit the hero youâre choosing. Any other kind of equipment mechanic (trinkets, gems, weapons, whatever you will) is just that with any other name. Most are boring stat boosts.
Talents can drastically change how a hero plays. Not only do you need to be familiar with the base kit of every hero, but need to be able to tell how theyâre building at a glance of icons, and what, if anything, you need to do with your own talents to counteract. Far more complex than any sort of gear system.
Objectives also offer a layer of complexity that no other MOBA has. The best heroes to fight over it. Best pushing strategies, like taking down the walls and well at the next lane the triglav will spawn to give your team an advantage. Or when to give up an objective to push down a keep or grab a boss. Youâve got quite a lot of maps to play on. Each playing to a variety of heroesâ strengths and weaknesses.
The game doesnât need any additional complexity for complexityâs sake.
hello trust level 3âŚ
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Absolutely. I fail to understand the item vs talents debate. Items in games like LOL are typically precisely like Cookie Cutter builds in most cases. The only thi g that really changes is which 1 defensive item you buy (if any) and how quickly you prioritise your endgame item order. Otherwise it doesnât change. A Twitch might have the option to purchase Rabbadons, but itâs completely pointless on him so saying he has the option of it to offer him more complexity is wrong.
I understand talents have similar cookie cutters. However as talents occur at regular intervals, shared by the team, I believe they offer much more in terms of potential team strategy. That and blizzard are getting steadily better at offering equally competitive but situational talents each tier for each hero. Not to mention many talents involve quests, which is a way to reward novel or skillful play to earn bigger rewards in your power. Lol rewards 1 kind of behaviour in this regard to enhance power. Last hitting. I like to think of quests as Hots last hitting. Something you have to do, a specific behaviour , to get power jumps. They vary however and some a pretty easy, others are quite difficult
For me the talents vs items is about equal in complexity. The thing that swings it is hots has objectives and LOL does not.
LOL has runepages and talents and summoner skills. We must be careful to not confuse these for genuine complexity though, because again in most if not all cases they are not genuine choices rather there are clear obvious choices and nobody explores other things. Eg if youâre Jungle you take Flash and Smite for your summoner skills. The end. You may take ignite over flash if your char has in built regular escapes.
These things donât make the game more complex or strategic (because more often than not there is no genuine choice, its just another layer of essential you need to be able to duke it out with other players without being at a, disadvantage) they make it more busy.
Objectives call up strategic decisions that vary per game. Sometimes itâs best to forfeit objective, sometimes not. You have to make a strategic assessment as a team. The jungle camps in LOL have a predictable value that rarely if ever changes and is very static. That is its generally always best to take as many camps as possible (enemies too) and this doesnât change, ever. Nobody can push hard enough in early game to make going for camps a bad call, and late game everyone and their mother can jungle so you just nick camps whenever in jungle and kill mobs in 2 seconds so no time is really lost.
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Lol, really?
Adding more complexity?
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people canât even rotate properly, wonât take camps at good time, have 0 idea how to soak, how to draft and counterdraft, no idea when and where the objective spawns⌠So why would you add more complexity when people canât deal with what already is in the game?
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You got talents instead of items. Items are bad and if you think otherwise, go back to DotA or LoL. There is exactly ONE item build for heroes in DotA and LoL for them to be effective. Wow, so much added complexity.
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HotS tried items in alpha, it was scrapped after few days. People are playing HotS because it is different from DotA and LoL. If I want items and single experience, I will go to DotA. I am here for a reason. You want items? Go play DotA.
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Talents already add a good layer of complexity, because you should pick them based on what your opponents pick, what map you play, what you intend to do. If you go the same talents every time, you are doing something wrongâŚ
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You make some of the better posts around here.
not sure how much worse the game can get before being declared âdeadâ or does dead mean server is gone? to me it when a game has reached the point of no return. there is nothing blizzard can do that will make this game successful, the population will only decrease over time till there is nothing left.
People in this forum are so negative, dour, and literally hopeless this game will ever amount to anything. Jamuro might be right about one thing however, there is something wrong with the community in this game. And it is not toxicity.
Game of thrones was crazy though. I cant believe John Snow died. And avengers 4 dammmmmm, Thanos wins. CrazyâŚ
=)
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Then stay with DotA2 etc and do not annoy us with items. Items have no place here and are generally bad (apart from the map ones, i like those).
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The only depth this game needs is proper MM.
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You are being trolly and annoying we donât need your passive aggressive attitude here sure the game isnât perfect as your beloved DotA but I like it because of itâs simplicity and easier approach I used to play league but I get tilted by players and preform worse in DotA I stopped because I had blood pressure problems from toxicity there.Even one Russian guy told me he will kill me IRL so I stopped playing,no thanks I ainât returning to that elitist,creepy and toxic garbage.People in DotA donât like it if you are new to the game god forbid ![:joy:](https://d3rakab8gpdsa3.cloudfront.net/en/heroes/images/emoji/twitter/joy.png?v=6" ":joy:")
you are still learning the game so that kind of attitude isHell no to the no no no.
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So much irony in one post. What makes you think I am new at this game? Because my post count is low? I never post here and this thread should give ample reason why. Presumptuous to say the least.
Hotslogs me, I am the one with the most games. I am not some noob wanting to make this game into another game. I want to make this game better. Ideas are shat upon, told to let this game die, it is hopeless ect ect what is wrong with you people? And I am the one being toxic? Hilarious but sad.
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You completely missed the point what I wrote why I donât like the games you are trying to turn this game into so please read what I said again and you can read can you?.
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Wait a second, you called me the noob right? How many games have you played anyways? More irony? You cant make this crap up omg lolâŚ
I did not call you a noob stop making up stuff and playing the victim card ![:yum:](https://d3rakab8gpdsa3.cloudfront.net/en/heroes/images/emoji/twitter/yum.png?v=6" ":yum:")
makes your sound weird.I just called you troll and annoying thatâs all.