Ok so I have been playing this game on and off since launch. What I found the core issues with it are:
The heroes are too expensive and the gold acquisition is way to slow. In LoL and Smite (for example) after a week’s play you can easily afford to buy a new Hero/God/Champion in HotS they basically copy/pasted the quest system from HS, to put this into perspective the chunkiest quest you can get rewards you 800 gold (requires you to play 8 games) which is 1/12 of the price of most heroes, you also get that quest roughly once a week (also yes you do get 500g every 5 levels on a specific hero).
I do not think that MOBAs work without the item system. Like there is no way to counter a specific type of dmg once the game starts. Most (if not all) other MOBAs have the option to just buy DMG resist items and most people take that for granted or completely not understand the value of that. If lets say a Li Ming is just melting you with orbs there should be an option to get magic resist on all heroes.
Very poor balance. Simple as that.
The lack of a surrender option. Like I said I have been playing this game on and off, and most of the times I have stopped playing this game and uninstalled where midway through a game when it was very clear early on that my team had 0 chance of winning and we were just getting curbed stomped. Nothing feels worse in these kinds of games than feeling like you are a hostage due to the lack of a “fast finish” option. Even when you are getting curb stomped it takes way too much time for the enemy team to push your towers and destroy your core (which on itself is not a bad thing, it’s only bad when you lack the “ff” option) and that’s IF the enemy team actually do decide to go for the finish, there are also the times that the enemy team will decide to just prolong your suffering and just farm you and not finish.
I play League and Hots and I can say that it’s way easier to buy heroes in Hots than champions in League. I’ve got all heroes in Hots in like 1 year or 2, something like that. In League I barely have half the champions after playing for a couple years. Sure League has much more characters, but you can see that proportionally it does take longer.
The best thing about League though is you can unlock all characters with gamepass, which is something I thought Microsoft would/will do for Hots.
I do like talents but I also like items for the reason you said.
Talents are good because you can modify your abilities into something very different than just adding some extra damage/CC or removing some of its cooldown. You can make some very interesting combos with different talents which is very fun.
Items are good because of what you said. If you pick some character that gets hard countered by the enemy team, you can still play the game by buying some items to protect yourself or something like that. Or let’s say the enemy team drafted mostly ability damage and didn’t take much AA damage, you could buy magic resist items so enemy team can’t really hurt you. And then they could buy magic pen to start doing damage through all that magic armor. It is a fun concept as well since not all talents will cover everything on all heroes.
Which one is better? Both are great, it just depends on how the game was made. Talents work great in hots, while items work great in other games. Also Dota has both, kind of. I do not think items would work in Hots just because you would need to create something to use to buy them since we don’t have gold here. Exp? I don’t think so. Plus the maps are very small compared to other mobas, and you don’t really farm.
This is probably more of a personal opinion, but I think it has good balance nowadays. Not perfect of course.
People will probably say Hots doesn’t need surrender because there’s always a chance of coming back, but other games also have that. I don’t know much about Dota, but League also has really big comeback mechanics and they keep making new ones with each season (every year). It is a totally different game now and I know most people think about the game as it was back in 2013 or something.
Anyway, I do think Hots could use some surrender options in case of an afk/AI on the team, or if someone never connected at the start of the game. In case of unwinnable matches (yes those exist and I agree, you can’t comeback from everything and you won’t win every game), I think it’s fine not having the option because the game usually ends very fast. In other mobas it’s a good option because even in a stomp fest it still could take 5 to 10 minutes for the enemy team to finally be able to hit the core.
In Hots, by the time you notice the game isn’t winnable, it’s almost at the end of the game already. In other mobas it takes a little bit more, 15 minutes in League for example and you still could have more 5 to 10 minutes of gameplay before the end.
it be cool if they introduced a selection of items you could get at lv 10 but make it non refundable and then again at lv 20
so say you’ve got a god tier Li-ming you could buy like a damage mitigation so they can only do X amount of spell damage in a period of time
but then you’re stuck with that for the rest of the game
but I really don’t know how they’d balance that with talents
I don’t think items would work in HotS, either what I was aiming to highlight is the advantages item based MOBAs have over HotS.
If I was a to come up with a solution I would say probably add Armor/MArmor as talent options for the majority of Heroes. For example lets say at level 12 you get all your normal talent choices or you can go for more Armor.
I don’t like the idea of items in HotS, especially at this point in the game’s life, for two main reasons.
First, one of the things I enjoy most about Storm League and amateur league play is the chess game that is the draft phase. Knowing the draft order, map, and in the case of organized play, what your opponents tend to do, all shape what heroes you pick and which you ban. Knowing the counters, and counter-counters, makes it much more engaging to choose just the right hero for the situation. Do you need the double-layer of defense that Blaze and Tyrael can bring? Is a tank buster mandatory? Don’t forget that wave clear! All of this would be to some extent negated by an item system. Why bother drafting Varian when you can just add a shield breaking item to any old hero?
Second, it is unlikely that Blizzard/Microsoft will do any sort of balance adjustment to the hero pool, so items could make the stale meta even more stale. If they do have a Ming who could pop off, just add spell armor to that Garrosh rather than drafting Anub’arak.
One of the things that appeals the most to me about HotS is how very niche heroes can change how a game plays out. The most recent SL match I played was on Braxis, and when the enemy team early picked Gazlowe for the top lane, my team late picked Zagara and made him cry hot goblin tears of woe. This is the kind of thing you wouldn’t see happening as much with an item system.
The cost is really cheap compare to LoL (not even talking about the skins), mb the issue is the low xp won each game or at least the requirement per level after hitting 11 on a hero. Maybe just a few bonus starter quests on fresh account to unlock ~4-5 choosen heroes could be enough
I totally disagress on 4., the big diffence with hots is the shared xp. The other moba can be carried by 1 player that get fed early which won’t happen here. The chance of comeback exists even when 3 lvl under.
& 3. (a bit of 4.) Maybe, the real problem is the balance of some heroes that make you feel the need of buying armor/magic resist ? I still understand why you would want to choose armor/mr/apen/mpen at different stage of the game => Maybe for late game only, like any level above 20 could be used for this kind of stuff (but then the balance could be bad, like garrosh/yrel going way too far in armor)
Items are also mostly just to glorifie your hard carry instead of making decisions as a team and not as 5 individials that only buys the same items every game.
Also people gets mad very quick if you kill steal so that is one thing I dont want in this game too cause people want as much gold as possible to buy the best meta items.
Depends on the hero, some of them are pretty cheap, others quite expensive. A lot of people have run out of sensible things to spend gold on at this stage.
This is done during the draft stage. If your enemy is spell damage heavy, then Anubarak would be a better choice than Muradin as a tank. If they have a lot of percentage damage, then avoid drafting Garrosh, Deathwing and the like.
Except the items also give options for players to change where their power is focused, nullifying that benefit. If everyone is going magic resistance, then people will start taking items to boost auto attack damage. In the end it creates a lot of newbie unfriendly spreadsheet data players have to learn so as to maybe know what items to take in what situations.
In this case you either need to draft in someone to debuff her, either reduced spell damage or silence, or to buff friendly spell armor, such as Brightwing or Whitemane. You could also use someone like Mediev to counter out the burst aspect of her damage.
Such as?
Anyone who regularly plays HotS knows that turn arounds can and do happen. Even if they do not, it is still just 10 minutes of time at worst from the “midway”, rather than something like a DotA Allstars match that could last 30-40 minutes.
Talents are basically items in this game. Items are sort of fun because you can tailor the way you want to buff your character. There is something to be said of the fun in learning that whole different part of the game, but it’s that kind of learning that really has to be researched outside the game because it’s just a lot to absorb, and requires a lot of grief when you don’t do it correctly. Talents are a lot more digestible and presented right there for you instantly. And games are a lot shorter.
Not saying one is better than the other, it’s just, if you like one more than the other. Go play that?
I do think there should be more options to counter things through talents. More talents and generics too would make the game more interesting. Like, I think Purge should have never been baseline. That would have been a great talent, but if you pick it, it comes at a cost from another cool talent.
Yeah, i kinda agree. It would be nice if my new friends could catch up just a bit faster.
It especially sucks for those who only enjoy playing a couple heroes.
I don’t completly disagree. HOWEVER the whole gold farming thing sucks so much and theres alot of kinds of items that would really mess up hots. For example, I think any kind of damage buff would be a bad idea.
That being said, I think the game could only benefit from an extra layer of depth. If anyone’s played paladins, what do you think about that games card system? For anyone who hasn’t played, they are kinda like talents that you choose before a game starts but they are pretty much entirely utility. Personally, i love the card system.
A couple heroes can feel very pub stompy at lower levels. It gets better as you learn more but that’s an issue all mobas have.
Is there anyone specific your haveing trouble against? I’d be more then happy to help. C:
The only surrender option I’ve ever been ok with is in league if you start a match and someone is afk for the first minute or so, you can vote to have the entire lobby requeue except the game findsa replacement for that player.
But the surrendering your opting for I don’t want to see. First off hots matches are only around 15 min. It’s really not that dire a situation. Our matches are over before league players are even allowed to surrender.
Surrendering is also just such an unsatisfying way to win a game. If half your games end in a surrender like in league. It works both ways. If you want to sing the praises of Surrendering, also talk about why the enemy team Surrendering makes for a more fun match.
Yeah, I also like to talk about both games since I like them very much and play both. I would write more in this forum but I know a lot of people just hate League for the sake of hating and thinking it’s still the same game as 10 years ago.
For example, I know someone hasn’t played or read something about League in a long long time when they say some of these things:
1 - you just need one player alone to get fed and carry everything without teamwork
2 - just has one boring map
3 - don’t have objectives
4 - you farm for 30 minutes then one fight is over
5 - you only buy the same items every game
I’m open to discuss everything at any time though.
Because this board always seemed to be under the impression that the poor, poor HoTS devs did nothing wrong, when in reality they did quite a large number of things wrong and that’s probably why this board (and game) are totally dead.
It’s funny to watch people still believe that, even after all these years.
That’s the strawman the illiterate around here post because they’re too busy recycling the same garbage instead of actually reading and getting involved in a relevant discussion. Maybe if you’d stopped choking on your blame-binges you could be bothered enough to read.
And maybe if the devs decided to maybe throw Arthas, Illidan, Raynor and few other iconic heroes some buffs, between “Tracer Rework #3” and “Genji Rework #2” we might still have a player base.