Came across this video about how employees are anonymously speaking on what is currently going on inside Blizzard and one of them briefly mentions a bit about how HOTS was a failure. Whether he was referring to it being a financial failure or a gameplay failure I don’t know. Take it all with a grain of salt.
Based on the context of the quotes given with the other games they definitely mean financial. Which also coincides with the other supposed Blizzard staff talking about finances being handled with the company, if the sources of the articles out there are to be trusted. Along with the stepping down of Morahaime, that they considered to be more “Anti-CEO” in that was less about profitability and more about quality.
HoTs would be equivalent too my ugly step sisters.
So what does this have to do with us, the fans and players?
You guys keep posting [Edited by Blizzard] about HOTS, that the game is unbalanced and that it’s DEAD etc.
If you don’t enjoy it, simply don’t play.
I don’t understand why you try to convince everyone else that the game is bad, and that we should quit.
HOTS is an amazing MOBA, and it’s main problem is that its underrated and that its community is really toxic. Otherwise as a game, it’s more fun and a lot more balanced than Dota2 or LOL. Learn to play and enjoy, or just stop crying about it. We’ve had enough of you.
Forum Mod Edit: This post has been edited by a moderator due to masked language as it is in violation of the Code of Conduct.
Still am going to play the game.
Now that blizz is at an all time low they have two options.
1 get better and when i mean better it is no rehash things like wc3
2 roll over and die
HOTS is currently too casualized. MOBA’s thrive on playerbases that are willing to put in the game knowledge to play them effectively. Other MOBAS also reward players for that game knowledge. What reward do you get in this game for having good game knowledge? Almost nothing. It’s why people are allowed to rise the ranks even though they are very subpar at the game. I could go on and on about the issues, but they’ve been discussed to death, and no one seems willing to listen.
Quite a lot frankly.
If Heroes of the Storm is considered a financial failure for Blizzard that that means it goes into their “give it to the interns” list and move on on to something else thus giving it way less resources to continue development and so on and so forth.
Sure in the short run the current player base can continue to enjoy the game they like but in the long run it will continue to die a slow death because of lack of new updates, content and whatever else like the HGC pro scene. They will probably abandon marketing for the game meaning even less players will come in sadly.
Agreed. Expeically with the anti-laning gameplay changes coming up.
The problem essentially stems from the unrealistic expectations, again if the sources are to be trusted, because while Overwatch became the benchmark for a “hit” apparently it simply isn’t enough for the company. Which is why HoTS was given the quotation marks, as it did see growth especially in breaking into Twitch. And why as well Blizzard is trying to make these mobile games, Diablo Immortal and the rumored Warcraft GO-esque game.
there’s not much to take away from a line in passing, esp since it wasn’t a pivotal point in the video, nor am I continue to persist in watching slow-mcdrab there take too long to convey slim amounts of information via clickbait.
If people have gotten word of the kotaku leak/article with supposed inside diablo events (fenris and all that jazz) then d3 was a failure as the ‘hype’ and playerbase of the game quickly eroded. HoTs could be argued to have a similar issue: its first vid hit 8.9M views on the herostorm yt, with a repub and the honamura showdown vid getting half of that: in the spam of announcement to open beta, it can look like a lot of interest disappeared for hots before it was even released.
Spot light vids for big-name heroes get over a million views, but the typical hots media gets less attention than the equivalent on carbot, and those are likely just fans of his other work willing to enjoy the weekly cartoon, even if its not starcrafts – per indicated by the comments that are “I don’t even play this game, but this cartoon is funny” – so the whole slew of posts of “oh, but d3 diablo isn’t even in hots” may reflect a very ‘real’ sampling of players that dropped out before hots even began.
On the other hand, the issue may have been monetization – the same metric of youtube hits (compared to itself) showed some interest has come back to hots, esp with the 2.0 release, but that’s all momentum/interest/investment lost, or at least, perceivably enough of a what-if to look that way.
If the concern has been player retention/hype, then sure the silence system seems to curb some of that, but on the other hand, if previous game figures gave enough evidence to dev/team/whatev to look like toxicity did have a big impact on game exodus (again, per early number projections) then that may be part of why ‘blizz’ (whoever makes the shot on this) is willing to endure the automated system hate.
Part of the thing with game projections though, isn’t necessarily what-if stories, but having stuff match expectations. Hype should be currently low cuz the back-to-back seasonal issues was a big kick in the pants for players who want to do more than just slog a habitual daily for gold.
On the one hand, sure, I can say I’ve had friends leave hots for other games, but those other games are other blizz titles, so they’re still the mau figures shareholders want or whatev, and the biggest issues for HoTS may have simply been too late/slow compared to fortnight and whatever else creeping in and stealing a massive bit of the sweet numbers people want to poke and giggle.
I’ve generally be sated with steady release bits, and made a number of posts in beta that the flow was about creating a consistent patter for future content – to which hots has largely kept to that – in favor of cash-grab hype for dumping the big names up first and up front.
Maybe the game ‘failed’ cuz it didn’t do flashy up front
maybe it was the “oh, game advert has d3 diablo, and they’re not in game”
maybe its the “zomg, ghost doesn’t nuclear strike”
maybe its higher ups didn’t anticipate the average/lowest-common denominator to be lower than expectations.
Part of it may be the splintered playerbase – overwatch plugs bring in numbers, but those may arguably chase off the ‘core’ playerbase that liked the game before OW.
Part of it may be the expectations of it being “blizz fan-service the game” and then getting a censored ladened ‘T’ rating game that’s trying to establish itself apart from just fan-service.
That said, it is all just speculation on a passing line that doesn’t indicate much. There’s stuff to look to see hots isn’t the have-all be-all of the genre, but there’s also stuff to show its not in D3 maintenance mode, and it still pulls numbers better than its competitors – some of which can’t be said of other blizz titles anymore.
Course, all that said, the biggest issue may just be monetization as there’s no clue if things were better before 2.0, or if things aren’t as pronounced as they would like, so the change on the stim packs is to try to improve that aspect of the gem/skin bundles.
Why is it always the same handful of people being doomsayers on this forum?
I’m not going to dissect the entire video because this is the same guy who called Brevik a founder – despite the fact that he was hired on from another company entirely. The same guy who said Big Mouth is a ‘SJW cartoon that went too far’. He goes for shock value.
I’m sure there is a grain of truth to this video about cutting costs but he makes it sound like everyone who isn’t a senior is miserable and living off scraps.
I don’t really believe that because if everyone is so unhappy and poor, Blizzard loses. Productivity and quality would be falling through the basement.
Holistically, HotS is in the best place of any Blizzard title right now imo. The business model is the easiest to sustain and interest in the game is spiking.
As for Blizzard as a whole, it’s a classic problem of falling prey to your own success. People always expect you to do better than your previous best. Inevitably that fails to materialize and the company may need to shrink back down to stay in the black.
There are also macroeconomic issues at play here, such as the US economy being waterlogged and more competition in the video game market than ever.
Everyone needs to leave HotS alone
Anyways as someone who plays like… 3-4 other Blizzard titles atm, HotS has the best dev team on Blizz. Idk about Hearthstone/SC but with Ben Brode gone…
Turns out the less serious more memey games (Kevin announcer pls put it live now :D) have “better” dev teams??
Any of you who think this game is/was doing well have no idea what you’re talking about. You need to understand that this game didn’t fit the need of all of its players… only casual/low skill ones.
You’re never going to make a game that fits the need of all of its players. If HotS is guilty of one thing, I believe it to be being too slow to implement tools and support to promote better team play. These things being guild/clan tools and other group oriented support. These things would allow the playerbase to form and train themselves and have a decent pool to group with for UD/TL
Focusing on and strengthening the team play aspect of this game will improve the solo queue aspect of the game. At least that’s my opinion.
That SIMPLY IS NOT TRUE. Warcraft does it fine, better than fine actually. You can be super hardcore and raid mythic 30+ hours a week… or just do pet battles and farm herbs all day, it’s totally up to you and one group of players doesn’t affect the other.
This game can do it as well. In fact it used to do it a wee bit better back when it started out but then Activision thought decimating its skilled player base by silencing/bans would serve all the other players (totally ignoring that skilled players only want to play with skilled not casuals/sjws) and that kicked them in the teeth. The playerbase kept bleeding after that. In fact its pretty much all gone right now. Now we have 20 minute queues everywhere.
People have no problems with playing the game as a team.
“Team aspects” and all that is just another code word for skilled players being saddled with teaching and grooming low skilled players who don’t care and /or unwilling or too slow to learn. Point is … there is a large portion of the player base that is low skill and they will always be that way. Thats fine. Blizzard just need to learn better how to organize those players better and more quickly so huge gaps in play style don’t occur.
#1 issue was the mass banning/silencing of players based on pretty much nothing.
#2 Not paying attention to skill in matchups enough (decay, placement, performance at extreme level) They tweaked it a tad over the years but still it needed a lot of work. They also needed more people to fill out the spectrum to help even out things but #1 defeated this purpose. They even told us it would be a bumpy ride because of the needed growth factors.
#3 going in the totally opposite direction of progress in all regards by encouraging low skill play in HL /TL by offering boosts and making them more rewarding there. They shouldn’t allow boosts to work in competitive mode at all.
The tiers were 200% better a couple of years ago… you wouldn’t recognize a gold player a few years ago, nor a plat or a diamond and definitely master… they were all way better players than they are now. All we have witnessed is players expanding into those brackets who wouldn’t otherwise (because the players that would normally beat them aren’t there) and making games 100% less fun for everyone else.
That’s because the game started out as a joke. There was probably no solid foundation for development going forward until at least HOTS 2.0 came out. No one expected hots to be liked let alone make it this far.
If they decide to ever do a sequel which I seriously doubt, things can be taken a little bit more seriously next time around.
I have to disagree with since this largely a result of the game having focused on solo-modes, e.g. Hero League and QM, while neglecting Team League for the longest time, which allowed them to delay development of things like guilds or clans which would have made a large difference.
Going back with the idea of a guild / clan system you wouldn’t be as saddled with the idea of just grooming low skilled players as like in WoW you’d eventually develop a team, one that you can expect consistency from.
What we have here is like WoW and pugging where you do have the various skill gaps creating friction, and in many cases just carrying people along, that comes from playing the game as solo as opposed to an organized group like guilds. The problem being that we don’t have much of a choice unlike WoW as we don’t have the same institutions to support the social aspect and organizing groups.
Hero League and TL are fine. What slowed TL down was people having to grind in HL to the point you felt comfortable. All by design … Activision wanted it to be a grind (placing you artificially low and giving you losing streaks with potato team mates to slow you down significantly because they wanted you to feel like you needed something to work at). If you were serious about a team you wanted to get a good HL rank first then find some players of same level top play with. The only players hanging around in TL back in the day were master players… and they had no one to play against majority of the time so if you had a team full of silvers you were going to have your butt kicked and often those teams fell apart rather quickly. Again also a population problem that Activision was fine with keeping artificially low via bans and silences … most of them unreasonable.
Having clans isn’t going to do anything for this game at all. It’s not an instant friendship system. If I were in one… I’d still be checking people out/“interviewing” them to see if i want to play with them. Doesn’t mean we are automatically going to do TL forever. Friendship is a skill and a lot of people don’t have that… all the tools in the world isn’t going to change that.
I disagree there because forming a consistent group and having a guild / clan system is more beneficial simply because your interactions are rewarded. The difference between having to mentor or teach a random stranger and a guild mate is that you will have repeated interactions with your guild mate whereas you’re far less likely to play with the random stranger again.
The repeated interaction plays a far bigger role than anything and I think this is something you’re downplaying. It’s not about ‘friendship’ but the consistency that you can gain through repeated interactions and teachings, which is what I see with proper functioning guilds in WoW.
Think of you wow guild life if you have one… do you automatically play with everyone in your guild? I don’t… maybe in casual guilds people do. In mythic guilds that doesn’t happen. You gotta prove you are worth playing with first. And I’m not there to teach people. I seriously don’t care anymore. Been in enough carry the POS player games for what seems like decades in this game. If I was in a “clan” in here it would be exclusive…and I’m sure there would be quite a few of those to the point people would start complaining about “even more premades.”
Overall this pales in comparison that is deliberate sabotaging and grooming of a fail skill system. Clans isn’t going to fix that.