My opinion of Heroes of the Storm

General Discussion
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I have been playing for two weeks, thinking about all the stuff and things going on in matches. This is my opinion of the game, after leveling 39 characters to level 5. The game looks great, the character skins and maps, the abilities FX and even the dialog all amazing. Things look good for the game, it plays smoothly enough, to want to play it a few times. Makes me wonder what’ll come of it. It’s a simple game, with fairly easy heroes to play. I’ve spent plenty of time in matches, without difficulty getting a game with players. And for a Moba with competition, I think it’s a better example than others on the market. So yes there are more pros than cons. I’ll name a few cons most moba’s have in common, in hopes the developers will read this and attempt to think creatively in replacing them.

Noticed that these three things are most annoying, that they are also over powered.

Stuns for one is play time related, it reduces the amount of time a player is active in a match. This is a lack of creativity, as it’s been in every Moba that I’ve played. I think there’s a way to remove completely this mechanic, with some creative working. It’s in my opinion as with the next two mechanics, simply a place holder waiting to be replace with something acceptable. I thought the point of the game was, to make plays against an enemy team, impress your team mates and people watching. Stunning, rooting, or stopping them from making plays is what I consider counter intuitive or counter productive. I cannot react to anything basically, I mean yes the enemy gets to kill me or making my team mate react, as punishment for being in the game with them. Though I want to make plays, so let me make plays. If I lost a fight and ran away to heal, then that’s okay we’ll fight again.

Slows are just simply slowing a player, to go toe to toe with another. Unless it also slows your attack speed, then it’s really strong. Also something in need of a remedy. Restricting a player from playing in a moderate way, isn’t much better and it’s a video game so i’m not suffering a injury, but it might as well be injuring people, this is frustrating. I can see slows being repurposed, to act against spell casters. For instance casting a slow against Kael’thas’s pyroblast or Li Ming’s Arcane orb, so the targeted hero can attempt to knock it back at them, or simply out run it. I mean seeing these things coming, knowing you can’t really do anything about them, other than hope you have a healer is kind of lame.

Invisible is a inability to react to a players presents. Even with the additional level cover, they remain unchanged. This has level support so I don’t know why it’s even a thing. It’s one of those mechanic that actually angers me. They get all this level support, though can go invisible before my eyes. Then can run around me like it’s ok, im going to stab you, you know about it, just you can’t do anything until I let you. (HAHAHA!) Makes me want to punch the guy who’s idea this was, one right in the kisser. In all the things in Moba, this is the worst one. Creativity may not be easy to implement in games, and I realize it’s got to replace something, due to limitations. Find another way to impress players, this isn’t doing it for me.

Update:
I forgot silence is another fun ruining mechanic in the games. It’s stops you from making your character be useful, so this also needs a remedy. One thing is I don’t think this one needs to be completely removed, just make it harder to be able to use.

On a positive note Orphea is a amazing hero, not to strong with mobility to defend herself. She’s got cool abilities and I like her. I’m not a spell caster kind of person, I would rather sit with a controller spamming the attack button against mobs of enemies in a grind fest, then I would fast track my way through a good game with a easy mode caster any day. Though what you did with her makes me reconsider, what it means to point and click, to use a mouse with her was fun again.

Controller support please. I know it just doesn’t work with the game, though it would if you made it.

Update: After reading others post on my opinion, I realized something important.

One: If there’s away to make something better, this isn’t always good as player base will move. This will cause hacking problems, to demoralize the game that took the player base.

Two: Not really HotS that I want to play, according to others. This is not so, I just want a more advance and refined game mode, that’s the same thing as this, with different mechanics. This means making a game mode, a lot of people won’t play because it’ll require a higher skill to play. That’s okay if it’s just a mode, because the simple version is still available to play. This is easy enough to play, though to easy at times. Making games hard isn’t what makes them bad, just makes them harder to play. Plus with enough development making the “Harder game” easier to play in time.

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ok… i dont understand your points on CC (stuns, slows, roots, displacement). you seem to say you want to make plays, but you dont understand how they tie into making the plays. for example i was just in a game yesterday with a malfurion and i was playing chromie. everytime he would root someone i would would fire off a full combo on them. nothing they could do unless they got cleansed. they were stuck there. even better though was right after that i could temporal loop them to drag them back and hit them again with sand blast. if they werent already dead. that is what is making plays imo. being able to combo off your team is very important.

i also dont see what your saying about stealth. in the past sure. they were pretty invisible. now though? you can easily see them. all you have to do is hit them with a skill shot or aoe to knock them out of stealth and then they can be targeted normally.

controller isnt coming soon if ever. i remember this being asked about before even years ago. i think there would be a greater chance of a mobile release at this point with the current company direction. where if you look at something like Diablo 3? …at the time they pushed for cross platform onto various game consoles.

which on that note Diablo Immortal will eventually come out and being draining phone batteries everywhere. :slight_smile:

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I played Diablo 3 and 2 and 1. I know about Immortal’s upcoming release and am a Diablo fan sense the first released. Yeah mobile gets a bad rep and I agree to an extent, but looking forward to it anyway.

As for making plays. I mean like kicking people around like bumper cars is totally fun. Diablo picking you up and moving you is one thing, though rooting you to a spot kind of lame. I don’t want to play with 100 seconds of game time, standing in one spot due to some root effects. They should be able to think of more creative ways to move players around the field. I think of a team and look at them and say lets move that one away, so the rest of the team has to react. How can I move one player, while getting between the rest? I’d say if I have a shield, then i’ll shield bash you away from your team. My team has to react because the direction i’m moving them, though so does theirs. Now you have to move your mouse and click in a new spot, that’s also assuming you’ve got camera lock on. Another way could be, using a club or branch to siege damage? Siege damage is something when your weapon is large enough to strike multiple target at one time. If my weapons that big, then maybe I can move some players with it too. Reduce damage for the effect, move players like bumper cars and they can still cast spells and attack back. But the point is I just want to think creatively about how the next Moba it will benefit from what we’ve learned from HotS or improve HotS to be better.

And yes I hate Stealth forever. I hate mages too and their glass cannon ways, due to the fact the first Diablo I played, I played and chain lightning my way through it. It was easy and dull, so I stopped playing mage classes in about every game ever sense. I picked them up in this, to be fair on my opinion, which I could be more detailed about I suppose. But I am writing things offline, so I can better detail what I expect of “my game”. I don’t make games, though I enjoy them enough, who know maybe someday I will and i’ll do my best.

As for controller I am hinting in the direction of other games, within a brawler category you may not know or remember. They did well enough tons of fun, though nobody makes them anymore. Maybe it’s Moba put them out of business? I’m missing out on console games, so maybe im mistaken. But if you remember games like Power Stone or not so much Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance then you’ll know what I am getting at. Power Stone is a top down brawler, with some character skills like this. Though it’s played with a controller and I think had its advantages (Or legend of Zelda ocarina of time the fight with Ganondorf I think it was, you could knock his fight ball back at him. I would totally love to see these kind of mechanics in this game.). Playing with a controller adds new mechanics K/M can’t use. Though combining both K/M players with Controller players, will offer a game with a larger fan base (maybe). Plus with controllers support more buttons then they used to, there’s enough room for a whole lot of skill buttons. And lastly I liked the idea of Wii’s controller nunchuck with the joystick on a separate control, because then I can use a mouse for spell casters. Such a popular game type, could go a lot farther and I would like to see it. Just need to define some products to place the games, in a spot in every home across the world.

I realize HotS won’t do this, due to the roster. Making a list of characters, just to support controller? IDK maybe they’d do just to expand the roster some more, doubt it though. Melee characters to ruin some of the current lineups would be fun though.

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Without slows, stuns, roots and silences, there won’t be too much to do in this game.
Also you are totally cool with displacements, which is weird, because they’re basically a stun which repositions you.

Also there are good counters against CC, like protection, invulnerability, cleanse and some Heroes still have abilities, traits or talents that lower the cd-s of those CC abilities.

Sure, it’s not good to be stunlocked, but that’s playmaking. And it’s better than dying. It’s not like the increasing respawn times are lowering your “gametime”… should we remove those as well? Traveltime?

Plus there are really cool abilities which would be beyond broken without CC, so removing them would decrease variety, creativity and diversity a lot more.

But glad you like it mostly. But CC is the “curse” of most multiplayer games. Even games like Injustice, Tekken and MortalCombat have them.

1 Like
5

There it is, let me quote this.

This makes a good point, to focus for a minute. This is a lot of effort developed into the game, as a way to stop people from playing. What if I were to change this effort, into what I think is something people will find cartoony and fun. We’d loss stuns and blinks because we need stuns for blinks. We’d loss slows because each character class would have a different base speed. We’d loss invisible because maps will support invisible herpes. I have a keyboard and a mouse, to press some buttons and point and click on things. That’s going to take some skill for players to do, so increasing the stuns and slows makes this easier, increasing blinks and invisibles makes this harder. I could try developing a target lock system, that makes things easier. I could use aim bot or aim helpers to make it easier. I could make the game support controller, then use that for my melee classes. I could offer mouse for spell caster and people who don’t like that, it’s a problem so apply the aim bot/helper thing and we’re good. Then what are we left with, need for abilities and skill, to give each character personality and a place. I could increase the amount of counter spells, to deal with the things above or thinking creatively what do I have to work with. Then I think having a soft pull trigger is a must, I can whined up an attack then aim it where ever. I would also agree I could hold my weapon in positions, to give me added strength to hit or be ready for when I can get close to a spell caster. I could use the controller to make more complex button combinations, that keyboard is difficult to do with on these terms. So how do I give spell caster a chance to live? Ideas like Orphea make sense, she seems to have a good mobility function for it. I could give them wind spells, that move you like already in game. I could say I really just want to take a melee character and Mage Mash because I think it’s more realistic and less difficult than thinking of ideas to fix the problem. But that’s the point im trying to get at, is not to stop with one and think of many, so the game can be redefined better than ever. And seem mobilities not the only thing, as damage and support are things too. Spell caster are less damaging than Melee because their ranged and you can hit a melee target before it gets to you. So you than have to think how would a tank ever be able to live against a spell caster, sense it moves so slowly? Team work of course. Assassins don’t need invisible because they move so quickly, though they also don’t need the damage they have, they should be poking at you retreating and trying again. There’s a lot to say about this, i’m not really thinking about it now, though that’s kind of my unorganized thoughts on it.

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Imagine if this guy was around when stealth was actually hard to see?
Or before stuns were nerfed across the board.

Wut… I… This sentence hurts my brain

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LOL Yeah I played Dota 2 where invisible can only be seen with a ward placement. The sentence yeah. The point is fighting my way through Diablo a second time with Paladin was way hard and more fun.

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So basically you want to remove anything that requires you to put some actual effort into avoid it (most of the time) or at last coordination by your team mates to react to it or combo with it.
Removing those effect will just make the game more boring and simple, without adding any depth to it.

Also the request for controller make clear that you’re missing some of the more advanced (and not so intuitive) mechanics of mobas, like stutter stepping and the like (that will pretty impossibile with stick).

Sorry man, I appreciate a nice suggestion topic like yours but - imho - making things more casual and plain simple is not what this game need to be better.

6 Likes
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No I want to remove everything that requires little to no effort to think of put in game and ship. I want to think of a better way to do what we’ve already got, with more effort place in the right places. Just need to distinguish what those places are. Besides the art stuff. The problem will be, there’ll fewer heroes, to satisfy as many people. Though I think fun factor could be greatly increased, if the effort of these things is put else where. Like dodging, jumping or combo abilities for defensive purpose. I want to bring back the classic health regen, crit modifiers and movement speed buffs that were all OP, when the mechanics I mentioned were important. They’ve served us well, giving us something to look at, thinking maybe I can do better now I know what I am looking at.

Stutter step? Maybe that’s what Orphea is going. And I also think that “casual” is wrong. More like competitive and aggressively so. Those things are making my aggressiveness sad.

P.S. I also forgot to mention, the objective of the match, will make things progress regardless of kills. And also I am thinking about how could I make the 1 v 1 quality work in 5 v 5. Because in 1 v 1 we’ve learned that the match timer will run out, due to counters, dodging and blocks. If you get your button presses right, you’ll not be able to defeat each other. Though that style gameplay in 5 v 5 might be what I am looking for. Take Illidan for example, with a controller he would fatigue you hands by the end of a match, that way he get away with his moves.

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People don’t know how to play maps. If there are 2 bosses on a map, you need to try to sometimes take one and not allow the other team to get all the bosses, and then blame the player that says let’s get a boss while instead all u do is team fight like noobs that u are.

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So you want it to be like Diablo in a moba setting.

Thanks, but no thanks.

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Yeah that’s a point, allowing player a little freedom. It’s not like I am saying, you have to do this or else!!! It’s more like a open mind ideal, to improve upon things. Just need to know where to look, with so much going on in a match. How can we think creatively about this, without completely ranting about things. Things are the way they are final. So making suggestions to these 3 mechanics is just the bottom of the ice burg in my opinion.

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it sounds like you’re wanting to change the game into something completely different, so it won’t be HotS anymore

i mean, different movespeeds for different classifications? why? is there a purpose in making tanks walk more slowly than everyone else?

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Seems hammer got nerfed or something. I used to be able to fight using hammer 1v1, now he dies to every hero.

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Yeah taking HotS as a base of what’s to expect, isn’t really a bad idea. They’ve got a lot of good ideas, with a strong line up to play with. Using it to identify what needs to be different, then working in a different direction. Or I mean it’ll be just another clone for criticism am I right? But then again I like Blizzard once upon at time, and think the evolution of this game could rekindle their relationship with a player base. They’re half way there, just need to take HotS to the next step.

Update: After playing enough matches, I realize they get boring before the level 20 mark. I’d say they have a 15-22 minute excitement time, anything after that point is simply to long and drawn out. On the competitive side this maybe okay, as the majority is simply watching. Though as a player this is how it is for me.