hey HoTS team. I personally love new changes, finally towers and forts are useful. I love new core changes too. The only thing which is missing is that core on brawl feels very weak, weaker than forts . If there is a need of changed to current situation I would suggest You to choose second option: Change Tower aggro so that the front Towers prioritize Minions, but the Forts, Keeps, and Kings Core prioritize Heroes who attack other Heroes
1 Like
Honestly towers should feel something you protect not to be protected by, the less you lose the more map pressure is created, I think we are pushing far off this concept, and I hope we get this back or similar feeling to it.
Enhancing tower defense capabilities will only make games longer in the process.
5 Likes
Structures don’t need any buff, should revert all changes.
Making structures strong doesn’t help losing team. Winning team can choose where to act. it’s just bothersome.
On the contrary, it works as insurance for winning team. i have seen many games with 3 Fort lived. Now, there are no comeback mechanics truly.
If you think tower diving is problem, adjust to some specific heroes.
For example, these change is helpful. Increasing keep attack speed, making keep splash/AoE damage, giving armor allied hero.
But sylvanas is a big problem as long as her trait remains.
Also, healing fountain should be invulnerable until fort gone. This helps losing team while objective push.
Core needs to be stronger than Medivac backdoor.
But unique mechanics should be flavor. Long CC is ridiculous.
2 Likes
Mercs capped at the right time are very much useful, I’m not sure what you’re on to haha.
I want to start off by saying, that initially I was very hyped for the changes. They sounded cool on paper, but after a couple games I realized how flawed the system is when actually playing it.
Nowdays, I am a staunch enemy of this anomaly, I don’t want to make a secret of that. But I will still try to be constructive and try to explain why I dislike it.
1. Slowing down the pace of the game too much
This game was designed to be a fast-pasted MOBA, in contrary to the other big competitors out there. DotA and LoL.
Single matches in both of these games can take a very long time ( from what I heard game time was reduced a bit over the years, but still). These games are designed for a prolonged downtime of just trying to last hit minions, and trying to deny the enemy from doing so. The laning phase in these games don’t incentivize pushing, but grinding to become more powerful.
The tower mechanics in these games are there for exactly this reason, to prevent too much pushing and to allow both players to have a “safezone” for longer which enables them to grind more gold and XP for longer, which is of absolute importance to be even useful in this game. Losing a tower in LoL is faaaar more dangerous than losing a tower or fort in HotS, since in LoL it directly hinders you from becoming more powerful.
Now to my point: HotS is an entirely different game with an entirely different design. Not only is the average game time lower, it compresses the game to a point where the downtime isn’t as long and boring as in LoL, and not as dominant.
In HotS there is no distinct “laning phase” where we just all go to our lanes for a prolonged amount of time because it’s necessary to even continue to be useful to your team.
This game screams: Aggression! Fun! Fast Gameplay! And that is why I love this game.
The tower changes, in my opinion, change something so fundamental to the game’s design, that it’s just too much. It changes the fast-paced design of this game to a waaay slower experience, where turtling is much stronger than attacking. So much so, that instead of going out there, making plays, being fast and aggressive, having fun, we’d rather sit around doing nothing, because that gives us more of an advantage.
In short: Being aggressive is now so much worse than being defensive, it changes one of the core game design aspects. It’s like if Call of Duty suddenly removed all firearms and replaced them with melee weapons.
2. The maps were not designed around this
Like I said in point 1, HotS is supposed to be a fast-paced MobA. The maps were designed around this idea as well. Some are compacter than others, sure, but overall their entire design was not crafted around the idea of the current tower targeting aggression.
On some maps (like Tomb of the Spider Queen) this feels actually so incredibly bad, that in the entire early game, until you have taken down a fort or two you can actually not do anything other than going to a lane where the enemy isn’t currently and kill minions. Even stepping a bit too far out would result in the enemy having a huge advantage and kill you. So what do you do? Like I mentioned in point 1: you are just being defensive and do basically nothing.
There was a post on reddit about this showing the zones of control of towers in comparison on HotS maps and the one LoL map. The LoL map is way more open, because it was designed with these tower aggression in mind. It has way more space to fight and do something out of range of towers. HotS maps are not designed for that. And since redesigning the maps is out of the question I assume, the tower changes have to go.
I’d also like to add the point of structures existing being already an advantage itself. Because of the map design they offer so much area of controll to your team, that YOU should actually be the one defending THEM.
3. Attacking is so unintuitive
When pushing, being aggressive, attacking something my intuition tells me: Kill the enemy! Hit them hard, bring them down!
But no, thanks to this change the exact opposite is the case.
When you are trying to push you actually have to AVOID attacking the enemy. How unintuitive is this?
4. Heroes weren’t designed around this change
Now, some heroes are affected worse than others, sure, and balance changes all the time, but there is a difference between certain heroes being good or bad in certain situations, or numbers being too low, and the fact that certain heroes can’t even perform their designated role at all.
Malfurion and Whitemane are two healers who need to damage others to heal their team. With attacking properly now requireing to NOT attack the enemy at all, this means they can’t even play their role at all!
And what about Tassadar? His AA build gives you no controll over where his AA’s jump. The same goes for other heroes who have little control over their damage.
-List end-
So much for the fundamental design aspects of this game, that I feel can’t really be fixed by changing numbers, or altering the target priority. Of course there are other issues like the damage being too high, or objectives being worthless, but these are things that could be fixed by numbers or target priority, so I feel they have less of a “weight” when it comes to arguing against this anomaly.
In my opinion these issues are just so dominant, that the anomaly should just be removed in it’s entirety all together. Now, you mentioned in your post:
You said you removed the anomaly internally, and got feedback, that the anomaly felt better.
Now, please keep in mind for how long you have played with this anomaly internally. I assume way longer than we did. But even if not, you are probably playing the game much more than any of us. So YOU all have gotten more “used” to the anomaly than normal players, and since the anomaly is basically the “child” of your brains you are more inclined to like it.
So, I just want to say when making a descision on whether to keep it or not, please keep in mind, that you have gotten more playtime with it and got more used to it, and that you all are probably more inclined to like it, since it was your work.
Now, while I certainly am an advocate of returning to the old system, I would also like to propose some alternatives, that I feel based on just thinking about it, would feel much better.
1. A buff aura around the forts.
So basically we return to the old targeting system, but in order to give the defender more of an advantage (but not too much) the fort could have a buff (or debuff) aura around it which would give defenders an armor (or healing) bonus.
Alternatively it could be a debuff arua, which would gradually decrease the armor of attackers being in the radius. Like how Cassia’s armor increases, but it gradually decreases for attackers and would gradually return once leaving the aura.
2. (MAYBE) Keep the changes but bring back ammo
I’m still a little sad about removing ammo, but I have accepted it by now xD
Although, I think one of the issues with the current system is, that towers are too strong, like you and I mentioned. So by limiting the amount of shots a tower or keep could shoot off at heroes we would give the attacker the opportunity to “prepare” a structure for pushing.
I know this is a more controversal proposal, and you probably have already tested that out. I am not even sure if I’d like that change, but I just had to bring up ammo somehow 
At the end of this post, I’d like to repeat my stance of wanting the change removed altogether. Not because I’m a grumpy old man sitting on my porch yelling at all the new stuff, not liking change, but because I honestly feel like this change changes the fundamental aspect of this game’s design to something too different.
3 Likes
This is an issue that the most skillful players, former pro-players and grandmaster streamers keep pointing at. It has NOTHING to do with being bad - in fact if you’re not seeing this then this states something about your knolwedge of the game. If you are pushing with your objective the enemy team is able to attack and damage you without your team being able to respond, sometimes until all surrounding buildings are destroyed. Pro players now often go for split pushing instead of pushing with the objective.
2 Likes
Then your team is that bad.
It’s not like you can’t fight under current forts. I do that all the time - to great success.
But it is more dangerous.
Also the enemy has to choose if they want to attack an objective or you. Whatever they chose - the other one does siedge damage. If they attack me - I just run around, poke and waste their time. If objective - I cheerfully destroy their fort.
It is not a “pro player” tactic. It has always been better to split push on maps where the objective is going down one lane.
The idea is - if they send a lot of players to destroy the objective - then it still does a little damage, but chances are your team does A LOT of damage elsewhere.
If they send only a couple of people to deal with obj - then both lanes get damaged a fair bit - not to mention that the player lane gets an advantageous 5v4 or 5v3 fight.
If they send none to defend - then the objective gets free massive damage off.
This has ALWAYS been like that, and it will not change - towers or no towers. People who go 5-man with an objective - are just wasting the potential.
yes, of course, the opinion of the heroes team who had data is false.
Well, I have news for you, your opinion is wrong. Because apparently that’s how opinions work now.
Did you actually, you know, READ, the original post?
they do not always know what they want*.
But, they generally know what they don’t want when they get it.
Players didn’t want the original regen globes, because they were trash.
They made them okay (I have issues with them, mostly as they make soaking far easier and allow people to spend less time in lane early to safely soak).
given that there has been near zero balance around the tower aggro except for changing what triggers the aggro, these complaints are the same ones that existed before.
HAH!
HAH!
Maybe their statistics do back that up, I don’t know. But I’ve certainly not felt that way.
go play dwarf fortress than. Go play a needlessly/overly complex game with loads of mechanics.
I do enjoy Dwarf Fortress myself. But if I wanted to make it a truly enjoyable game for a wide audience it would involve massively making the game mechanically simpler to play.
Although in the case of Dwarf Fortress, a UI/new engine overhaul would help a lot there.
Go play Hardcore McShootyShooty on your controller
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_original/fbmhhyx2f8luiejsyrpo.png
depends completely on the map.
Just no.
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Hey there. I’m really torn about the changes as well. I can understand that forts werent as protective as maybe they should be. As you explained, trying to work out details about how forts would aggro can make things weird.
As a veteran player, it wouldnt be a big deal for me to understand subtle changes, but it could feel non intuitive for others. While debating about it with friends, structures directing their aggro to objectives (punishers, etc…) would be a big improvement. I think it’s the simplest ways to handle it while still allowing the team pushing with the objective to actually play the game. Currently, it creates some really awkward situations. Playing Raynor, the AOE on your 3rd AA is really annoying, I just want to auto structures, playing by the anomaly rules, but I cant really, the AOE will hit a hero and I get aggro 
But I have to come clear, I like aggressive plays. In the end, I enjoy how the structures worked before the anomaly. I kind of hope you dont keep that anomaly.
All stationary structures are defensive in nature and should always prioritize the greatest threat ie.: Heroes.
If an enemy hero & defending hero are present and either hero attacks the other hero, the tower should then target the attacking hero.
Just reduce the damage and armor reduction and put back in the slow.
Mercenary camps exist to push defensive structures. People should utilize them better.
Most of the time mercs are capped and abandoned in lane so that teams can death ball an objective.
I think the changes of towels are generally good. My opinion is to add a new mechanism. If the towel’s target is changing from non-heroes instead of heroes, the towel should stop for about 1.5 seconds before attacking. If the attacking side could enter and leave the towel’s attacking range continuously, the towel’s efficiency of attacking the non-heroes would be greatly decreased.
“Authority is always right” fallacy.
Opinions work by providing arguments. Which I did and you didn’t.
Your words are empty air, even if your reply sounded very cool in your head.
Yes. That’s why some players are advocating for the tower changes while reddit cries rivers about how they can’t dive anymore.
That’s exactly the point - tower changes balanced those heroes our. When they were extremely oppressive before, now they’re fine.
Your arguments are basically trying to shoo me away for disagreeing with your opinion.
That… seems like it could be effective, don’t you think?
Immortal - very strong, but promotes off-lane pushing
Raiders - very strong
Garden terrors - very strong
Dragon knight - promotes off pushing
Robot - takes two characters so not very strong for that matter, but he would be if he disabled forts by having them focus it.
Zerg wave - extremely strong and promotes off-pushing
Did I miss anything?
Without arguments, this is empty air escaping your bowels.
Reading through some of the coments here, I am starting to understand detractors of the anomaly better. It does discourage aggressive play an have unintuitive aspects (like the attackers having to avoid hiting heroes while pushing)
I was recently chatting with a friend and Age of Empires came up, which gave me the idea:
If this whole thing came about because it was frustrating to get killed under your own base with impunity, why not make defensive structures protect you in the same way they do in that game, by allowing a garrison?
That is to say, instead of changing structure behavior, let Forts and Keeps work like Blaze’s Bunker, where you can go into it to be protected, and maybe fire back from inside (allowing the garrison to target the hero, instead of the structure itself).
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They now sometimes completely abandon the objective to just split push the other lane(s), that’s what I meant. Obviously people have always been sending of players to split push other lanes before and it only makes sense to 5-man push a lane in very rare occasions. For example on Infernal Shrines you always had to soak the other 2 lanes in the early game even when your team got the first punisher as the value it provided was always very small.
Did you watch some of the Inhouse League games? Or even Meta Madness?
If you’re a meele assassine or a bruiser you’ll have to walk into their range when you want to contribute to destroying the buildings, it has nothing to do with being bad. I like the aggro changes myself but I definitely agree with many of the complaints that it is making the gameplay during pushes a bit more passive for some of the heroes. Of course you can go back and forth but obviously it is MUCH easier now to punish offensive pushes.
Again, never talked about a 5-man push in particular (unless you know that you can end the game with it). You’re defusing an argument that I did not make - my bad if it wasn’t clear enough for you though.
1 Like
I believe the current design assist the winners more than the losers. It really helps the winners defense so they can focus on offense and how to attack. It creates a bigger snowball than before, just a slower one.
Let’s talk about the un-intuitive advantage:
When defending, I do whatever I can to get hit with AOE. That is now priority number 1. Stunning is priority number 2, after I have been accidentally hit in tower range. Encouraging players to take damage should never be an advantage; however, this change makes it so taking damage can give you the advantage.
Feelings Changed:
Past: I played an active role protecting the towers.
Current: I feel like I play a passive role getting protected by the towers.
1 Like
I really like the new towers, it gives more strategies for the game, like when to dive for an enemy or how priorize the team attack to the gates, i think this new towers are really awesome and more funny tho, maybe a think for change could be the damage, but all the other things are peefect.
And as a suggestion, nerf Qhira.
And I meant exactly the same.
You wouldn’t believe - I play melee assassins as well.
And I still can dive under forts. Miracle, isn’t it?
This “you think you do, but you don’t”-style mentality is one many of us are hoping the devs don’t adopt.
(I mean, it’s dangerously close to “do you guys not have phones?!”* ).
*
Note: this was a joke. I actually think the first infamous quote is worse than the second one.
if the community (as a whole) is “whining” about it, then it’s arguably bad for the game.
It’s not exactly what you’re saying here (so I’m probably going off on a tangent), but this feels close to the “balancing around QM is stupid” mindset that a lot of forum regulars seem to follow.
I disagree with that mindset because devs have said repeatedly that QM is by far the most popular mode.
It’s like saying Fortnite should make balance changes based on its “save the world” campaign, rather than its “Battle Royale” mode, just 'cause that was the original “vision” of the game.
(end tangent)
First: devs didn’t say they will make all their decisions based on player feedback, they’re just considering players opinions to reach the best outcome.
Second: Never looking at player feedback is worse than looking at player feedback all the time.
Honestly, it feels like you spent the majority of the post berating the devs for things they didn’t even do (or haven’t decided on yet), like
When the OP clearly states that they haven’t made a final call.
Maybe you should focus just a little bit more on telling them what you think they should do moving forward (which is what they were asking), and not what you feel they did/are doing/will do wrong or why you feel their reason for doing it is wrong too.
Side note, I find it funny that you’re the one stating this, given what I said before about your apparent “devs know what they’re doing, players should shut up”-type response.
TLD;DR: IMO you should focus more on what to do moving forward. “No use crying over spilled milk” (especially when the milk hasn’t even been spilled yet).
1 Like
Hello AZ Jackson
Before anything else I would like to congratulate you and the rest of the developing team for the effort you guys put to this game to keep it fresh and interesting as well as the transparency that you show us saying openly to the community: this is what we think, this is where we stand and we want your feedback.
Now down to the point!
First, I believe the tower changes was the best change that you ever did to this game. I play heroes since the technical alpha and I was never big fan of the tower ammo neither of the idea of the towers prioritizing minions over heroes. Therefore, I believe that this change is good and healthy for the game overall.
This is the “right feeling”. I can’t agree with people who believe that the towers/forts should be there to be protected and not protect you, or protect you when there is no enemy minion in lane.
Over the last 5 years playing this game, every single friend who tried it always questioned this design. Why the towers don’t protect me when I run to them? What should I do, just die where I stand? Why I should even go back and not stand and fight till I die? Like this at least I will reduce the health of the enemy hero as much as I can before I die.
And yes, all of these questions are relative from high to low experience players for various different circumstances even now, however it feels just right for people to be able to go back when they are in need of doing so.
On the argument that this is a bad design because it takes away for the aggression of the game and forces people to play defensively. Defence is a strategy as well as is aggression. There are various tactics that you can use to defend as well as to attack. There are plenty of opportunities to kill an enemy hero in a lane before it runs into the towers. Therefore, at least in my humble opinion these types of arguments are favoured by a specific bullying playstyle that rewards specific heroes and has less to do with player skill but mostly with hero mechanics.
My view about the aggression/defence is somehow like this: if there are equal number of attackers and equal number of defenders next to structure then the defenders should almost always have the advantage. This advantage can be changed when a camp is helping with the push or when the number of attackers is greater than the number of defenders OR when the objective exists.
And here is the problem: THE OBJECTIVE.
The objective is something you fight for. However, the way that the objective is scaling is not clear to players. New players or even veteran players overestimate or underestimate what you can achieve with the objective in different circumstances.
“It feels right” for people to go and get the objective to fight for it and have this massive Immortal on the battlefield helping you pushing the lane. However, there are plenty of times that you achieve nothing with it even if you push with it or not.
The new tower/fort changes made this feeling even worse.
Now heroes can’t go and push with the objective because the moment that the attacking team hits any member from the defending team the towers will push them back.
Therefore, I believe that giving back to the attackers the advantage of capturing the objective is the right decision to do.
Of course, there are alternative tactics that you can do like let the objective do its own thing and go and push another lane as mentioned before.
However, this should be a gameplay decision and not the only tactic every single time.
Another valid point is the fighting next to the towers and the difficulty that this has for the early aggression or later aggression if the tower-walls are still standing.
I generally agree with what people already mentioned about the Armor reduction and ESPECIALLY the tower one. It feels very punishing mostly for tanks to get this high reduction value in your armor from the towers and getting focused down immediately after from the defending team.
I believe that most of the people agree that the tower damage is not high but the armor reduction is.
I suggest that the towers should NOT apply armor reduction but only forts and keeps .
With this change you will not feel such strong defence if you grouped up against an enemy team trying to break the first line while you still need a higher effort to take down that fort/ keep.
Of course, this is a tweaking numbers game and maybe there is a golden ratio playing around by adjusting the armor de-buff vs the actual damage of the towers/keeps (as previous people already mentioned.)
Finally, I believe that the Core mechanics was an Excellent addition to the game. They give great flavor and add one last chance to the defending team to manage and defend the most valuable structure in the game.
However, I think you should re-examine the core mechanics; some are way better than the others and therefore improvements to the inferior ones can be made.
To sum things up:
Change all structures to prioritize Map Objectives before anything else
Yes, this is very important
Change Tower aggro so that the front Towers prioritize Minions, but the Forts, Keeps, and Kings Core prioritize Heroes who attack other Heroes
No, This is not a middle ground solution and mostly favors the attack element of the game. Instead, remove the armor debuf from the tower and keep focus as it is. This is the middle ground to the problem which will benefit both teams.
Lower the damage that Structures do to Heroes
Damage of structures is not high, armor reduction is the problem. If you go down that road then try to find a ratio between the two by increasing the damage and reducing the armor reduction.
Thank you and the rest of the Heroes of the Storm team again for your love and dedication to this game.
It was and remains to this day a correct mentality when making products.
It may not be pleasant to hear as a consumer. And it may have been a PR disaster to say that from the high stage…
But every company that is worth its salt - NEVER gets led by consumer requests and “feedback”.
Do you see Apple asking you what to put into their new device?
Do you see CD Project Red ask for your feedback about what features should be in Cyberpunk or Witcher? Did you see Sony Santa Monica go something like “Ugh… Guys. We want to give Kratos a one-handed axe instead of his signature blades. How do you feel about that?”
Can you imagine the feedback that’d received if they did?
No. This is and has been a truth about making great games/products/anything. Know what your customers need before they know it themselves. NEVER ask them what they want, because that gets south really fast.
So yes. To this day, I applaud the phrase “You think you do, but you don’t.” That was spoken when Blizzard still had balls.
No. Because those who are content and who like the current state - have one hundred times less incentive to go on forums and make their opinion heard.
That’s why, no matter how good the feature is - you will mostly see negative feedback about it.
First: always sucking up to feedback and being scared of their community - is what Blizzard de-facto has become in the last 3-5 years.
Instead of making cool new things and bringhing to life new ideas - they try to “fix” what the community is most whiny about as well as give tons of fan service.
Legion - was a fan service based on TBC positive response
BFA - the same, but about Classic
Shadowlands - is a fanservice galore. “Meet all the dead characters” BS.
Then again, look at Diablo 4 that desperately is trying to pretend that it’s D2 sucessor.
Blizzard has stopped being about making new things - and are currently 100% about repeating past sucesses.
If they didn’t look back at reddit and forum - they would have listened to the opinion of their focus group and their own opinion that told them that the game is better with tower aggro.
Instead, they are so scared of the playerbase that they come here, seeking validation and almost asking for permission to keep the changes.
That’s different.
Sticking to your vision - is how you make something good in the first place. It’s the only way to make something GREAT. Yeah, you can make mistakes - but you can never progress if you don’t.
But when it comes to player response analysis - it is really easy to make a right call by going off of forum feedback. Because like I said - most of the feedback comes from players who have things to complain about. In other words - negative feedback. It is really easy, if you read those a lot, to feel that the changes you made suck and make your playerbase frustrated - while you completely ignore that it’s only the negative feedback that you see.
People are creatures that do not like to expend effort to give positive feedback. They’ll just keep playing the game. I myself is in this thread because I’m bored - not because I come to the forum to spread love and positivity.
Keep the tower machanics as is.
Possibly even increase their damage.
I personally would go with how it works in LoL. Where instead of armor debuff - each next shot hits you harder (but player damage does not scale, like from armor debuff). Think of it as hidden tower-only armor.