hear me out. I’m a former wow addict and the greatest recent expansion was legion. Legion had the feature of class artifacts. if you have no knowledge of wow or the artifacts in question here’s a link to Wowhead :https://www.wowhead.com/artifact-weapons-guide:
Dumb idea:
this feature… let’s bring it into heroes of the storm. unlockable after people reach 50 hero levels and purchase that respective taunt.
for a few examples. Add to or change to your heart’s content. I’m very curious as to what we could do or starcraft and diablo heroes alongside that.
Guldan: Sceptor of Sargeras. When equipped RoD ( rain of destruction ) summons infernals or lesser imps to attack enemies in that area.
Illidan: Aldratchi Warblades. Illidan metamorphism gains sigil stomp. a Sonya-style jump which imprints a sigil of destruction at the targeted location. after 3 seconds it explodes for x damage (a small amount since its aoe )
Arthas The lich king: Apocolypse. ghouls spawned from army of the dead explode after death. regardless if killed by Arthas.
Valera: The king slayers, Sorrow and Anguish. Smoke bomb becomes laced with poisonous toxins. any enemy entering suffers ticking poison damage.
Uther: The silver hand. A burst of light heals nearby allies.
Rexxar: Titanstrike. Beastial wrath causes Misha to crackle with lightning. her attack strikes harder and slows the opponent.
Something like that was once, during the alpha or beta iirc, in and was quickly and justly removed.
Reaching a certain level and having to spend a significant amount of in-game currency to unlock hero capabilities is a very bad idea on many, many levels.
If that’s not p2w, then what’s wrong about it? This idea might sound bad in theory, but the positive side effect on this would be that it’s would make smurfs less incentive, which is great tbh. Because players with “higher levels” would have a benefit towards smurfs.
I agree, but at least this would fix the smurf problem a bit. Because it would rate higher leveled accounts higher than low level accounts and since there should be an restriction between low level and high level account anyway in a dream scenario, where the population is good this idea isn’t that bad for casual experience. Only in professional environment this idea is really bad.
But in a scenareo where the population isn’t that good, the idea might have some nasty unintended effects.
If the matchmaker doesn’t consider artifact availability/level/whatever, then the games could be unbalanced; but if it does take it into account, then it might be even harder to make good matches, because it has to find players with similar MMR and similar Artifact power.
That was a problem I had many, many years ago when I played Metal Gear Online: the game seemed to match players based primariliy on their XP level (or at least that was my impression), and I would gain XP and level up even if I kept losing horribly.}
So, it wasn’t long at all before I was matched against players who had an idea what they were doing, but I didn’t. I was never allowed to stay in the noob pool, where I belonged.
I have a similar anecdote with Age of Empires 3 and its tacked-on deck system.
That’s part of why I think games that are aimed primarily at being a competitive PvP experience should not have out-of-match progression. Skill should be what determines the winner, not who has spend more time grinding power-ups (or more money, in P2W games)
Fairness: Every player has the same opportunities. Adding any kind of power creep would mean that new players have a lower potential.
Team: It could get ugly if one team gets players and picks heroes with these perks activated, while the others do not.
Reworks: I only have two characters above 50, but I don’t like to play them anymore, one of them is specifically undertuned (Nazeebo was nerfed for being overtuned less).
Pacing: I don’t know what these artifacts are doing, but it’s not Diablo 3 where you gain double damage to kill double health creatures. Everything has a fixed health and any such upgrade acts as a buff. Just like you can trivialize a specific difficulty level once outgearing it, so could you mess with existing numbers: you could become a literally unkillable tank, or you could really oneshot people. The designers would have to compensate, but it would be impossible.
One way I see your idea working is the ability to have many more heroic upgrades, or even heroics, and you could unlock them.
But it’s generally assumed to be better to play many heroes, and that sort of means that no one should have these perks below account level 500.
Well, that’s overcomplication. I see why. But in Heroes you don’t know in advance. So purchasing these powers and using them would basically increase your MMR.
Would it though? Would matchmaker only match non artifact players versus other non artifact players? If so, then this idea is a “crush newbies” smurf’s wet dream, because all they would have to do is never buy the Artifacts, and they would always be matched against low level players.
And if matchmaking DIDN’T split the playerbase into haves and have nots, then it would be even worse, as low level players would automatically lose against players who have artifacts, making them want to never play the game again.
Oh, and with how small of a population we have, anything that splits the playerbase is probably a bad idea.
At least I thought so, because this proposal would give high-level account an advantage over low level account. That means, if you want the same advantage, then you need to keep one account playing?
Now it’s the question does OP means total level 50 or level 50 for every single hero.
ooo… which would you think is better? I had the idea of just achieving 50 in that hero unlocking the ability to purchase just for that hero.
to address both of these at once. the match-making system could be updated with an added clause. once an artifact is unlocked and you have that hero chosen you will enter a que with only artifact players.
at this point i don’t think they will rework any more heroes drastically as nazeboo or say a sylvanis. id love more tho. keep it fresh.
yea i believe in those underpaid interns tho! they can do it xD
valid point tho all memes aside. it would be a balancing nightmare however, its just cool guy points for reaching 50. could just cap the max damage all artifacts could output on a cd.
i had to be honest. its truly is a dumb idea xD
<3 Love you 2
im getting better at maltheal btw thanks to your previous help.
The drawback of that is that it would GREATLY increase queue times, as it would split the player base into 2 groups that would no longer be able to play together.
Because it would rate higher leveled accounts higher than low level accounts and since there should be an restriction between low level and high level account anyway in a dream scenario, where the population is good this idea isn’t that bad for casual experience. Only in professional environment this idea is really bad.