This game going to be revived? still seem to get decent ranked que times.
One part of MOBA games is learning every hero and all the talent picks all the builds. Is it worth switching to League of Legends and taking a year to learn 100 new heroes? what does the owner of the game need to do to revive it? brain storm on thoughts
Lets be real here and not hate on HoTs. It is a great game probably my favorite of all time out of every category. get some real thoughts here on this topic not spite because (we lost that game we tried so hard in).
There is a lot of speculation that Hots 3.0 could happen based on continued small balance updates and bringing âhero brawlsâ back, things to keep the player base engaged. It seems like a no brainer right? Like a money printing machine just sitting idle. Why not turn it on?
Moving on to rumors and theory-craft, my thoughts are that if they are ever going to do a major revival, it will be in the form of a new game engine. Starcraft 2 (the engine HOTs runs on) was shelved at the same time as HOTs. Itâs a super old game engine developed in the mid 2000âs (almost 20 years old). SC2 has/had a major player base as well and is also receiving light balances as of late.
If I were tasked with redesigning HOTs, I would take developing a new game from the ground up or a new game engine as a serious consideration. Quite an undertaking, but holding out hope we might hear something at this yearâs Blizzcon⌠I just hope they arenât going to lead us down on Warcraft Rumble for PC rabbit hole
In a relatively recent balance patch, Aurielâs resurrect was buffed to have a 3 second delay before respawn, down from 5 seconds. In the most recent patch, Auriel received a massive buff to hope generation.
Is this all a hopeful coincidence? My 2 cents is that itâs all planned.
It would be too much work and i donât see a reason to change the engine, the only one iâve in mind is improving the replay system. I donât believe at all in a hots 3.0.
I guess i got enough disappointed by what they have done to Warcraft 1,2, 3 and now i donât have any hope anymore for any of their older games, including Hots.
Itâs kind of weird but most of the Auriel i meet still never pick ressurect. I donât know what is the issue, could it be the range ?
Iâm curious to know what is the real reason behind those changes, i personally bet on some trainees at blizzard they put in charge to make coherent balancing and entertain the remaining playerbase.
I bet on trainees because we also got 1 new raynor skin that is slightly changing an already existing skin, but for the first time since long years, itâs not only a simple color swap.
Well⌠that complaint is funny, it really doesnât take that long to learn what each champ does. Iâd say bigger problems are
current marketing (apparently itâs quite âp2wâ now, since the âmoneyâ to buy champs is harder to get), and
Vanguard (the anti cheat) giving terrible lags on older computers.
I donât know who tries so hard in hots, definitely not the people I get matched with /s. Seriously though⌠if the game banned bots, trolls and repeat feeders, not just for chat, it would already be a better game. Right now, itâs basically a half dead tree, that no one wants to cut the dead branches off, because âit would look worseâ. The afks are already making it BE worse, no reason to make game seem more alive than it is.
Just make adding a phone number necessary, and ban the phone number after someone gets 1 (or 2?) accounts banned. So simple.
These would be some actual quality of life changes, but they wonât revive the game. I doubt most people whoâve tried and quit would give this another chance. Game needs a âHOTS 2.0â, with a different design, to have a chance. Keep some heroes and maps, redesign others, add some more, add some sources of âsolo xpâ in case you get a 0 10 nazeebo bot that only lanes until game over or an afk/ troll. In general, itâs far too hard to carry for how easy it is to grief. If youâre mentioning league; you have far better odds to win 4 v5 in their âqmâ (especially if someone quits after laning phase), than here.
If it ever gets revived Iâll be sure to say THANKS JARED
There are many games superior to HotS made over a decade ago, but I understand if you enjoy this game, itâs always been fun aside from the mismanagement.
HOTS and SMITE 1 are my top MOBA picks of all time, with DOTA2 coming in 3rd for various reasons.
HOTS is the most team-oriented MOBA, with a heavy focus on team coordination and doing special objectives. This is a stark contrast to the gameplay other competitive MOBA players enjoy from DOTA/League. This is a strength that HOTS could lean into heavily if they were sincere about reviving it in some capacity.
Rather than chasing the big 3 for PVP e-sports players and viewership, they could instead embrace their team-oriented cooperative strengths and put together larger PVE delves like some really good custom Hero Defense RPGs you can find in DOTA2. And if they donât have the budget to develop and test maps, they could go the DOTA2 route and give players official ways to build custom game modes (Source2 engine is quite capable, Iâm sure SC2 engine is as well).
Range is a big one. It is reactive as well, so it requires safe positioning after an ally death. These two lead into the 3rd reason most wonât use it⌠Enemy team still gets the experience from the original death, and if you frantically use it to rez someone without an escape/too squishy, youâve potentially just fed an extra kill or 2 lol. So ppl prefer to go for the proactive choice and prevent a death in the first place.
that might have been more effective 5 years ago, but even back then there were cheap/easy ways around that, and the means have only increased since.
It only seems a solution to people that donât know how few clicks it takes to get around; if someone wants to chronically cause problems for a game, then it doesnât deter them much. Changing the game to a paid venture would probably be more effective than requiring a phone number and actually get money for the company inconvenienced by bannable actions.
the replay system is pretty much linked completely with how the game makes matches, so changing the replay would probably require changing the entire game.
âEngineâ changes are the go-to solution for layplayers to think it fixes and an every issues with a game as itâs sort of the reverse of a boogie-man. Itâs just an easy way to claim thereâs a fix that could be done without caring about details, costs, or if it would even fix the âproblemâ.
A few years ago, there were job posting at Blizzard specifically for working on a new engine for their next generation of games. I havenât bothered looking into anything since then, so I donât know if that project actually went anywhere, if it got shelved with the microsoft acquisition, or whatever other possibilities.
Some companies have decided to use existing engines, like Unreal, but some still do fixate on making and updating their own in-house engines, especially for selling remakes of older games with ânew featuresâ.
Dota 2 falls into that camp in getting a revamp of that game to showcase Streams updated engine, at that time, but Dota is also a drop in the bucket for valve services and has functioned as a âadâ in a way HotS probably should have, but hasnât. If an âengineâ were to be made that could handle remaking HotS into something else, it might be âworthâ the effort to do that â provided new tech requirements donât isolate the intended playerbase â but hope on HotS ârevivalâ is probably slim.
The increase in updates and bugfixes may be:
a) prepping the game for microsoftâs gamepass â they have a number of old games as is
b) getting ânewâ staff to learn HotS spaghetti code to be able to make more dramatic changes
c) just a way to fill time for retained staff between other projects.
The starcraft 2 engine is brilliant and has stod the test of time well.
There is however 1 great âflawâ with it, it only uses 2 threads at any one given time.
Effectively it doesnât matter how high end of a system you have, you will not be able to maintain a steady 120fps when 2 completely maxed out armies clash in SC2.
Now does this matter for HotS?
Honestly it properly doesnât, as the total number of units on any given HotS map pales in comparison to what SC2 sees.
It will never be worth the costs to upgrade or change the engine to breathe life into their older games.
However for a new sequel to either Starcraft or HotS theres a not insubstantial amount to be gained.
True. But people still get banned, despite being redundant, donât they? Like you said, the goal is to deter them and slow them down at least, not to make it absolutely impossible for them to ever play the game again. I could very well advocate for a dna test to play the game but that would be a bigger price than the gameâs value.
I think youâre giving too much credit to the average troll. If they were able to learn how to make some macro program to automatically make new accounts/ be able to by-pass phone number requirements⌠most of them wouldnât be just sad trolls.
Also the engine change is mandatory because apparently the game is very easy to cheat on without getting caught (maphack). Iâd call that a real problem, not sure about you.
There are other improvements beyond the replay system, just a few:
Graphics and Rendering - to support modern GPU capabilities, DX12+, advanced shaders, ray tracing, etc.
improved physics
Support for multi core processing - (fixing single thread bottle necks)
Behind the scenes networking / server architecture improvement
Cross platforming for increased player base and $ rev.
Improved AI scripting- (common complaint)
I hear ya. Blizz hasnât exactly had the best track record over the last 5 years or so, but it is Microsoft now with ultra deep pockets. With new talent and something to prove along with leadership vision, they could easily make it happen, it is not a lot of work for the potential ROI.
It will not happen. In terms of numbers the game was a flop. I also donât expect that Microsoft wants to compete with Dota and LoL, the MOBA market is hard and itâs also not a thing on gaming consoles.
This engine, speaking in metaphor, should be taken behind the barn and shot in the face. In all honesty I believe it is also responsible for why the game never really took off. Not because of the aesthetics or pricing, but the limitations and inherent flaws within it that it had taken the developers forever to adapt both the editor and the skeleton of the game to support even the most basic of functions.
Before the game even launched I was hoping it would be based on D3. Some of you may remember the short lived PVP patch. It was a balancing nightmare, a disaster, but quite impressive from a technical standpoint for that time and the gameplay felt superb. It also had a unique art style with strong WC3 influence but leaving enough room for future improvements.
I retrospect, they have never even figured how to the get the replay rejoin feature from SC2 to work with hots. A game so hell bent on esports taking how long to introduce a basic draft mode for custom games?
Appetite for this kind of game still exists but next time it needs to happen without taking any shortcuts. Unfortunately hots had started out as a mod which everyone and their grandma was paid to play.
Resurrect is bad, conceptually. Theyâve only ever buffed it, but just by its design itâs never going to be viable.
Itâs a major issue where Crystal Aegis and Resurrect both do the exact same thing, but Aegis also deals damage and is instant to use, and also doesnât require you to feed a death. Plus, a bad Aegis means you fed one kill XP. A bad Rez means you fed two.
Yes i see what you mean, iâm also playing sometimes to Ark Ascended (previously known as Ark Evolved), that game manage to sell again the same game but on a new unreal engine and people thought it would fix all the problems the original game had, but in fact this only made new bugs/glitch + they also managed to make the playerbase to accept purchasing DLCs every 3 months and they donât even try to fix the bugs of their game. (itâs probably one of the less optimized game ever made).
Actually ray tracing from unreal engine, managed to make people really motivated to purchase the game once more lol.
I thought it was linked to the SC2 engine. Itâs what i read about it.
Now, because itâs Blizzard, i really donât think they would accept to not make a game on their own engine. But maybe since Microsoft has purchased them, things could change.
Honestly it would be strange because Hots is already a F2P, so i donât know what gamepass might change. It would make a game already available for free, not free.
Ok consoles players could play the game like that, but iâm not sure if it might worth it.
Itâs what iâm thinking.
It could be that too.
Iâm not really sure Hots needs a lot of those things, of course itâs better when the game manage to run better on most computers but i donât think itâs the main reason why Hots didnât become that popular among mobas.
(Nevertheless I would also be happy to see all kind of improvements)
As i mentionned above, i was also very confident about blizzard to vastly improve Warcraft 3 Reforged for the 30 years anniversary of the Warcraft franchise but they really gave no efforts for that patch.
The only problem i have with Hots is how slow the replays are when you want to watch them. For me itâs the main issue on the game.
Moreover maybe all those errors we got sometimes at the begining of the game (start being cancelled / people who are on a different hero they have chosen / characters who are on a basic skin despite not choosing it / the unqueue button that is sometimes disappearing from the screen. These are minor errors but they shouldnât exist, especially on a Blizzardâs game.
As long as you bringing up Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine 3 came out at right around the same time that the SC2 Engine did (2006). UE4 came out in 2014, and the current UE5 came out in 2022. Each one of those engines came with their major technological leaps, and their CEO is already talking about what UE6 will have in-store. Virtually nobody is making anything with UE3. Developers still use UE4, but that is largely due to legacy projects still in development before 2022, licensing among some other reasons, but for the most part it is being phased out.
Bugs will always happen when new engines drop, but developerâs own their share of the issues as well. Eventually things become more stable, but stability is no reason to live in the past, especially when we are talking multiple generations of engine development.
Iâm a little concerned about the future of game engines. Croteam made a really good looking game with their own engine for Serious Sam 4, but their next game, The Talos Principle 2, they threw all that away and used Unreal Engine 5. Sadly, there are a lot of really bad visuals that came from that decision. (Mostly things like beams of light that are right next to player, reflecting off of ocean water way off in the distanceâas if the water was a foot away. And stars leaving ghost images when you move the screenâon all the settings I tried before giving up.) They just announced that they are going to remake The Talos Principle 1 in Unreal Engine 5. Probably in the name or real time ray tracing. But their own engine looks so much better!
Actually all the games I have played that are made on any of the Unreal Engines have had undesirable visuals with no options to turn them off. Except Splitgate.
The point is: they caved in and decided that others can make game engines better than they can. If Blizzard does the same thing, whoâll be next?
This is a bad take on rez. Honestly both ults are viable and have the same exact win rate. Your comp + enemy comp should help you determine which is best.
A good portion of team fights go: person on your team dies / person on other team dies, now it is a 4v4. Why would it ever be a bad idea to rez a down teammate to full health at the fight location?
On the flip side, you can Aegis a low health teammate and they still end up dying 2 seconds later when the Aegis expires. The Aegis doesnât heal to full health.
Where I do like Aegis is when the enemy team is high burst. For example when the enemy team has a KT who goes Pyroblast. Heavy enemy cc comps also viable for Aegis.
To say you have to âfeed a deathâ to find use out of rez is a misconception. Even assuming your team is good or competent⌠deaths will still happen, so its not a feed.
Games used to be frozen in time on their original engines, companies were changing their engine only for newer games or real remakes.
What i wanted to say with the game i was talking about is that the developpers managed to sell again the same game and changing their economical model with it, only pretending to use a new engine. The game like it is right now is still insanely bugy, with constant crashs or servers crashs, nothing has been really updated aside from the graphics.
Of course the developpers of that game are to blame, their orignal game was already a mess.
but that would be a bigger price than the gameâs value.