It seems like a lot of the ground is covered already, when it comes to ability mechanics. Apart from just making new AoE shapes, I don’t see much in the way of room for creative development without fundamentally changing the game. And, frankly, it doesn’t seem like Blizzard has allocated the resources for that sort of thing.
In short, I think we have about as many unique heroes as we need to have for the game to function. There’s some balancing that needs doing, but apart from that there’s enough diversity to carry the game. Maybe one new hero a year, just for grins, but otherwise it’s not needed.
However, this isn’t going to satisfy a lot of people. They want new heroes because it’s fun to learn new kits. What if there was some middle ground between adding new kits and not doing it? Some cheaper option that would take less development time but would still satisfy the desire to see new heroes?
And that brings me to transmogrification (or whatever you’d want to call it). The idea is that there is another hero customization tab that allows you to switch to a similar hero instead of just a skin. So, for example, Nova. Instead of a widowmaker skin, she might have a widowmaker transmogrification option. This would allow players to actually play as widowmaker instead of nova. Her E might change to be a venom mine, for example, that does damage over time. Talent selection would have to reflect the new ability, but the idea is to make minor tweaks to existing kits instead of creating completely new ones and packaging them as new heroes that are “transmogrified” from similar existing heroes. This greatly diminishes the need to come up with 4 - 5 unique abilities for every single hero.
Varian is a perfect example of a hero that could probably be split into two transmogrification options. The shield varian would be one, and the other two would be the other. This way everyone knows what to expect before the game even starts - obviously, transmogrified heroes would have to be selected before being drafted and before queued in QM.
If I understood correctly, then I could choose for which of Valira’s specializations I could play? If, by default, we have Valira in the killer specialization, then with your suggestion, could you let me change new talents and abilities to play the battalion specialization? (This is a single simple example that I remembered)
I don’t know enough about valeera (or the rogue class) to answer this question specifically, but it’s not really a specialization - though it easily could be for WoW heroes. It’s just when two distinct heroes have lot of overlap, combine them into one hero, but then swapping between transmogrifications would tweak their kit and talents (and change their names and skins) without drastically altering their kit and talents.
So, for example, Soldier:76 could be added, but instead of a full new hero, he could be a “transmogrification” for Raynor.
So his speed-up would be self-only and his heal AoE (the oposite of Raynor), and one of his heroics replaced for the visor thing he has in OW. (and of course, Talent changes to fit with the ability changes).
So all in all, Raynor and Soldier:76 would have similar but not identical playstyles, and would be considered two “transmogs” of the same “base hero”, rather than fully distinct heroes.
(I’m thinking of Mario and Luigi or Ryu and Ken not being separate characters, but kinda sub-options) Is that what you’re suggesting?
I think if skins changed how abilities worked on characters, it would either make balancing near-impossible or too unfair and/or is very complex for mechanics.
in a word: yes. But of course, blizzard would probably do their thing and find other iterations of what you described that would also work.
yeah. they “can” but they don’t “have to”. It takes development time to do that, which is in short supply at the moment. What I’m suggesting is a way they could possibly ramp up hero releases, but as transmogs of existing heroes requiring less balance testing, design time, possibly even art since they’d necessarily be very similar to those existing heroes.
that’s not what I’m suggesting. It’s more of a gimmick to release new heroes with less development effort, and less clutter on the selection screen.
As Cammykins has already said, if you make new heroes based on old ones, this will not lead to good. If Blizzard releases a new hero (for example, support), then this justifies a little why other support is not popular. But if we are talking about your method, it looks like that instead of just changing the hero and returning him to a meta or just making it a little more popular, we are releasing an Improved version (Here I will give an example with Raynor and Soldvt 76) of Raynor, who it just makes sense as an independent hero, because why is Raynor needed if there is a soldier with exactly the same mechanics, but just better. If at first it seems that releasing a transmogification of a hero is cheaper and easier. Then later this causes more problems, because you need to maintain a balance of 2 characters so that a person wants to choose from 2 specializations that have their advantages in one or another suit, and not so that 1 specialization is super flexible, and the other is forgotten.
What you’re suggesting would take exactly the same amount of development time as a new hero, only to produce a final product that doesn’t actually warrant the effort it took to make a new hero.
I’m sorry it looks that way, but that’s not what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting an “alternate” version. Not improved.
Like I said, it’s just a gimmick - an interface trick to allow for the cheap development of new heroes without anyone making the complaint “but this new hero is the same as X but with one ability different!”
Yes, if we can replace 1 ability with an alternative skin, it seems like a much better idea. There was a standard Uther, select on Bolvar with a changed E (Deals periodic damage, instead of stunning).
Replacing 1 ability is a very good idea. This would help me and people like me (the mainers of one hero).
One of my main problems with this thread is just how little faith you have in the developers and how unimaginative you are. Every mechanic is covered? There are hundreds of concepts not only on this forum but across different games that could create exciting and creative new designs. Implementing this idea would save a very small amount of design time (unless you aren’t suggesting they change voicelines, silhouette, or visuals), for a very small benefit. It would be like admitting defeat; while the game is dying, I’d much prefer we have something polished rather than tossing together something like this.
Going a bit away from “one ability different”, they can also be testbeds for rework mechanics and throwbacks for access to previous versions of Heroes, such as having a second Diablo Necromancer as a transmog of Xul to test out a more trait-centric version of the character, and gradually going down the line to turn Xul into a D2 Necromancer while the transmog gets his current W build to preserve that playstyle while breaking apart the combo.
Similarly, Prime Evil Diablo could be turned into a transmog to turn Diablo into more of the Tyrael or Muradin style of “forever in your face” tank, or the other way around, while the combo-based blowup version we have currently is preserved on a separate “tab” with more blowup and less sustain.
A potentially fun part of it is deliberately not having the portrait change, as you can change skin at any time during a draft and part of the point of the system is to fix Varian in Quick Match. So you don’t know which “version” of the Hero is in use until the match starts, making some particulars of counter-drafting considerably different.
Honestly, if such a system were implemented, I’d pair it with a “blind draft” to fully casualize the game, embracing the clownfest of the game and forcing the meta into “Cover All Assess” instead of the current situation of being completely screwed because your first two picks were Zul’jin and Imperius, followed by them getting Johanna, Li Li and Cassia, or conversely ending up with easy wins on the back of counterpicking strongly.
The money is not coming from those people, the money is coming from QM and AI, and forcefully differing the game’s basic nature of competitive play from the bigger two can help with re-capturing a big playerbase. Hell, replace bans with player-chosen mutators and have the competitive scene revolve around who can capitalize harder on the resulting clownfest, turn this into a full-on party game in the process. The only meta should be chaos because it’s clear this game will not be a serious contender in any plausible future.
It can easily shave off two-thirds of the mechanics, save concerns with silhouette overlap and reduce about half the visuals to the work of a skin. It also means having a system for Heroes that have no choice but spectacular overlap like trying to get Niadra into the game.
Visual clarity is an incredibly important part of a fun game. This is a basic game design dogma. It’s not a matter of casual vs competitive. Even a basic, commercial game such as Mario is built on visual clarity and some semblance of responsiveness. To shirk that entire side of design is nothing more than short-sighted.
Dropping visual differences, possibly talents and a good deal of ability variability is a doomed endeavor. There have been many games in the past that have tried to approach this idea in a MOBA setting and it has ultimately gone nowhere. The time to program abilities, implement new model skeletons, animations, ability visuals, all of this takes a considerable amount of time.
Personally, I feel like cluttering everything for the small benefit of some more names and slightly faster content is the fastest way to kill the remaining playerbase.
Mario color-codes a lot of power ups, and action RPGs have been color-coding enemy difficulty and qualities for a very long time. The visual distinction angle is “these few skins have this ability and these talents, instead of these other ones”. And the bar currently being set for visual difference is Raynor and Soldier 76, Nova and Widowmaker, Prime Evil Diablo against his regular version and Varian’s level 4 Talents.
The last statement is the entire point of it, so you agreeing that it’s a huge time sink to do that “fully new Hero” stuff is supporting the part of our point that there’s a lot of labor to be saved.
One more tab in customization/Hero selection is the extent of the clutter, and it’s not a small benefit. Literally bloody half the effort in mechanics and graphics can be shaved off, on the low end, and it can be used as a way to testbed variations on what a Hero does separately from their base kit.
And in the long run, when there’s been enough skins for the “transmog” and enough ability variations worked over, many can be split into their own fully separate Heroes with the greater effort taken to do such a distinguishing, turning the development cycle into a staged effort that gives the players access to mechanics much more frequently as they’re working out the full package to make a completely new Hero.
It also simultaneously reduces the stress of narrowing down a Hero concept because some of the clashes can be resolved with the Transmog system, letting them include more of the character’s abilities and have somewhat more generic design because they can have the heavy overlap turn into transmog options as they work on generating the distinction to make them fully separate Heroes.
Finally, Diablo and Warcraft have a persistent issue of Hero design in that there are a vast amount of builds in the history of the games, and a Hero that fits one of the classes must figure out its one niche, forever locking down that name and face as that one build. With the transmogs, we can get a lot more of the playstyles in the game.
I disagree. If you’re not putting in the effort to make it feel like, visually, you’re playing a distinct character from whoever they’re a ‘Transmog’, you’re probably going to offend some of the few standing players of this game who really liked whatever hero became one of these ‘Transmog’ options and basically made them a mildly more glorified skin for whoever.
For example, right here. You say Niadra would be forced to have spectacular overlap, but(if I recall which queen Niadra is), you can do so much with the fact that Niadra is on a Protoss Mothership and using it to fight the Protoss; Protoss & Zerg mixed together into a kit design pretty much no other character could feasibly represent, while quite mechanically different from anyone we have if done right. If you just did this ‘Transmog’ instead, you’d likely upset any fans of her instead of make them happy because their character they know could be different is a mildly different Zagara.
I mean, I’ve personally only played III as my Diablo entry, but you can switch niches pretty easily in that. Not to mention moderately altering a single ability in a character’s kit isn’t going to really drastically change their playstyle… If I took Lalution’s example of Bolvar as a ‘Transmog’ for Uther(Which I have several problems with, but not the time), you’re basically playing Uther… Except you have more damage(Something Uther doesn’t really want) and less team protection. If we do your own example of Widowmaker, not only are we getting a thematically poor Widowmaker that doesn’t represent the character, we’re also basically still playing Nova, only you have to play a little safer and can’t troll the enemies quite as hard.
That actually brings me to my main problem: You’re going to be forcing several characters to be something they aren’t(or shying away from what they could be). Bolvar isn’t a Holy Paladin; Widowmaker isn’t an Invisible Sniper; Niadra could be so much more than a simple Queen-- I don’t think there’s a single hero that you could argue that would work better as a ‘Transmog’ than an actual hero for any reason other than “Quantity Beats Quality”, which is basically what this post equates to, if I’m being honest.
Wow, this topic seems to be a lot more controverisal than I imagined.
It has been suggested in the past, but those times it was pretty much ignored (as far as I could tell), so I really didn’t think it would ruffle so many feathers
I wonder if this idea would be too much work to implement as a mutation* and see how it goes?
EDIT: *I meant “Anomally”
As I understand it, OP is mainly suggesting it for heroes who’re already reduced to skins (not even “glorified” ones ), like Widowmaker or Magni.
It would really not harm those heroes, since they were already just a visual option for someone else; it would arguably make them closer to their fantasy/identity, 'cause they could get different abilities to the “base” hero, which could fit them better.
Using your Niadra example, I agree she could be made in a way that’s totally different from Zagara, but IMO it would be quite a difficult undertaking for the devs to make her visually distinct.
Same for the aforementioned Widowmaker and Magni, and arguably for some heroes not yet in the roster, for example Varimathras/Tychondrius/any other Dreadlord (and some have said Grom, from either Samuro or Garrosh, but I think that one’s more debatable)
), like Widowmaker or Magni.