How to improve Heroes of the Storm Part 1 - Echo Heroes!

General Discussion
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Aside from balancing issues and matchmaking, I would say one of Heroes of the Storm’s biggest issues is how infrequent and slow content is added to the game. That problem has become even more noticeable now with the shifting of some of Heroes main devs out of the project and on to other things.

The reason for this is obviously that Heroes just isn’t making as much money as it should be, and therefore funding for the game has been drastically dialed back.

Well… I have a solution to both of these problems. In order to add more content to the game, we should be looking for ways that are both cost effective, and something that would be well received so players will be more likely to keep playing and spending their money.

The idea? It’s a simple one, and is something I have taken from Smash Ultimate that I feel could work perfectly here. What is it…? Why echo heroes of course! (AKA Echo Fighters)

What are Echo Heroes? They are basically just clones of existing fighters with a few minor changes. These changes could be small stat changes, attribute changes, a different passive, or 1-2 different abilities or Ultimates.

Echo heroes share a model with their existing counterpart, so development time on these heroes is cheap, and fast. They are essentially just reworked skins that have enough effort put into them for them to take up a completely different character slot all together.

What Echo Heroes allow the developers to do is add in certain characters that otherwise would never be added do the the fact they have too many similarities to already existing ones.

Some good examples would be a Raynor Echo Hero with Soldier 76, a Nova Echo Hero with Gabriel Tosh, a Garrosh Echo hero with General Nazgrim, a Varian Wrynn echo hero with King Llane Wrynn, and as something a little more ambitious, all the D3 Heroes as echoes of their male/female counterparts.

Since normal hero releases end up being so long, usually 2-3 months per new hero, Echo Heroes could be implemented during the halfway point of each hero release to keep the hype building and to also not make the wait so painful.

Since Echo heroes are essentially skins with small alterations to the model and abilities/stats, they wouldn’t take anywhere near the amount of time, effort, or cost to make them. So halfway point releases are actually quite possible.

Also to mention, they could sell these Echo heroes for 75% of what the hero they are based off of would normally cost if they already own that hero. So they are cheaper to buy, and also still give a decent amount of revenue to blizzard during slower points of their development cycle. People would be happy to finally see their favorite character who before they thought would never be able to show up be finally placed within the game.

There would no doubt be a demand for this, if Smash Ultimate is anything to go by, as Echo Fighters have become increasingly requested within that game. It is essentially a win-win type of deal.

(As a quick note I forgot to mention, all echo heroes would come with different talents as well, which would further help to make them feel and play differently/uniquely to what they are based off of.)

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I’d main Dark Raynor.

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I think it is a cool idea. I like the idea of a dark version of all my favorite heroes. Maybe they could be unlocked through gold + progression. Like play 100 games with Raynor to unlock the option to buy Dark Raynor.

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You want to play as different versions of the same hero?

Boy, are you gonna be excited to hear about skins!

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Echo fighters are basically skins.

We already have those.

There will always be heroes that can’t be put into the game because of the raw quantity of possible ones if nothing else. For big names, it’s only a matter of time. I think most people would rather take a chance to get a unique hero than play it safe by getting a skin. It’d be really disappointing waiting for your hero to come out only to get them as an echo fighter.

Flawed thinking. New kits can be made for many heroes who are supposedly too similar. Like maiev and zeratul. Raynor and tychus,ect.

Look, you’re saying two different things here. Having a different set of talents is certainly not “just a clone”. Same thing with any different abilities. It wouldn’t be so simple as getting the art people to make a skin. And minor changes to stats/abilities are pretty pointless.

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I disagree. Talent changes are still a minor thing. A character would still be a clone even with a few new talents added to their kit so long as their model and the beef of their abilities are still the same. Now you also say some characters that are too similar can also have new kits? No, they can’t, not for all of them. You can’t compare Zeratul and Maiev, who even before Maiev’s new role in WoW, was already still different enough. But during her role in WoW, she picked up on new abilities that helped fill out her kit. Some characters though, like Nazgrim, King Llane Wrynn, and General Duke would be just too similar. They may have 1-2 unique things about them to set themselves apart from their counterparts, but not enough to make them a full fledged character, and that’s how Echo fighters will be useful. You will never see these characters in game otherwise, so why not? I’d rather an echo fighter which brings some of their unique tools to the game rather than just a complete skin which would not let their uniqueness shine at all.

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If you take into account hero reworks, I have never felt content added to be infrequent. There are always a few lulls here and there, but for the most part we have received new heroes, skins and reworks at a steady pace.

It’s a nice idea, but I’d prefer them to develop completely new heroes than slightly modified versions of heroes we already have. More dark version skins would be great. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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