Reasons why HotS failed to become popular?

General Discussion
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I see a lot of people on forums stating it’s because of “devs not listening”, but it’s completely untrue. Most of such opinions don’t have a single example of “not listening” and these which do, often have some ridiculous reasoning.

For example ppl bashing infinite ammo. PvE push meta, no, thanks. I appreciate playing with / against Zagara and Gazzlowe sometimes (after the change which made their push weaker), but don’t want an ignore-all-retard-push to be the meta.

Stealth change? On my screen it was extremely hard to notice stealthers before change, I played A LOT of games as Nova and Zeratul in Quick Match. Without much skill they stomped QM and were strong in ranked. In every single QM at least one stealther was picked and there were Nova mirror games all the time. Often Nova and Zeratul teamed up to kill in duo. What kind of fun is it for other people? If someone is not good enough to get good win % / high elo after change with these champs, like me - bad news, you played an overpowered stuff, reality is brutal and easy wins with them are no more.

So why did HotS not succeed? For me frankly it was never popular enough to begin with. Main reasons are not something developers can do anything about. There are some game problems however, mostly not because of bad decisions, but due to ignoring existing issues and not solving them at all.

  1. Release date. With LoL already well-established among most popular games in the world and DotA 2 gaining popularity, a successor to game which started whole MOBA genre, HotS came very late. Not everyone wanted to drop the game they like and invested so much time to get better at. What is more LoL targeted youngsters, by looking for example at game art and they recruited another youngster friends in the next years. I know from my friend’s brother that whole classes at his school used to compete who is better at LoL.
  2. A lot of other Blizzard games which don’t age fast exist. Target audience for this game (Blizzard games’ universes) still plays even Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 3 at least sometimes.
  3. MOBA genre market is quite saturated at the moment.
  4. With how HotS works, you can’t dominate everyone with snowballed champion like in LoL or DotA and when on receiving end, just blame “noob” allies. It’s why many people like these games so much. They boost ego when game goes good for them and if it goes bad, it’s always the allies!

What about game problems which surely hurt the game? For me the real ones are:

  1. Probably the only MOBA where leavers and afkers are not taking responsibility for a lose in ranked game, what causes a terrible gaming experience especially in lower and middle ranks, means where majority of player base is.
  2. Limits of Starcraft 2 engine, above all a terrible reconnect system. On top of it you can’t normally go forward or backward in replays.
  3. Matchmaking issues (apart from Hero League which is perfect). Smurfs can queue together in Team League and completely dominate the game. No minimum 5 hero level for TL makes it even worse. TL is easily too accessible for new accounts. No attempt to base quick matches on level and win % on particular champion, what causes frustration when 1st timer mages encounter this level 150 Genji.
  4. Excess of mobility and escapes on some of champions what is bad mainly for QM where these can hardly be countered. I almost never play QM unless learning new champions, but I respect that some people queue only in this mode.
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I can’t say I agree with all of it but I think another user recently said it best.

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connection in this game is one of the problem.

you cant use mobile phone 's internet and wifi to play this game. game will lag spike like hell.

i used to convince my friends to play this game with me . They cant play it coz the lag spike but they can play another games such as Dota , LoL very fine.

so my friends give up to try this game.

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I dunno people have been citing the same reasons you did for years now, which doesn’t make them wrong, but you act like it’s some great epiphany, when it’s really the same old that’s been said dozens of times before.

I’m of the opinion that they put too much money into e-sports, instead of letting it happen naturally, and activision expected too much of a profit for it to ever succeed by their standards. Sure it was never really popular, I guess (though blizzard will never release metrics) I have a hard time believing it wouldn’t have been profitable if they didn’t sink too much into a failed esports scene.

They tried way too hard to duplicate the success of brood war, which was something that just happened.

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The game was already in a coffin because of horrible matchmaking, the report system bled the compettive players enough to cause population issues and the cancellatoin of HGC and removal of devs was the nail in the coffin.

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I dunno people have been citing the same reasons you did for years now, which doesn’t make them wrong, but you act like it’s some great epiphany, when it’s really the same old that’s been said dozens of times before.

I must completely disagree here, my main point is that low popularity of HotS is mostly not caused by Activision’s failure to deliver good game.

Another one is that some controversial changes received a lot of attention, like stealth and ammo change, while I personally, and I’m sure most of player base considers them a step forward in terms of game health (no assassin vs pusher meta). Many points listed by Phoenix, especially great majority of 2nd quoted post are very subjective and by no way decide about game quality, while for example non-handled leaver / AFK in ranked games and reconnect problems are very basic unsolved issues, which are not a matter of any subjective opinion and you don’t see them in competing games.

You could post similar lists for LoL, but LoL on contrary it is very popular. Not because of reporting system which is like in every other MOBA - if you make others mad for any reason multiple times, you will be reported and if you are reported, you will be warned / banned, not because of reworks that some people don’t like. Not because of basically any thing mentioned here, but because this game was released very early and apart from some disastrous patches in its early life, pretty okay on technical side.

I don’t like adding Orphea myself, but what impact can such thing possibly have? As long as I don’t lose points in ranked when this said Orphea is afk 10 minutes and she receives harsh penalty, I’m rather fine with it.

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Making gameplay dumber because game is tagged as brawl, won’t help to get new players either, only you can lose already existing player base.
Garden of terror changes were unnecesary for example, like directed to bronze tier players. Bronze players are bronze because all they want to do is brawling, they don’t care about strategy, so generally making more brawl and less strat is bad for the game.

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I think the game is great too, I’m not disagreeing. You say you disagree with me, but nothing you said is in disagreement with what I said?

I feel like your reply doesn’t apply to anything I wrote, maybe you meant to reply to someone else. Nothing you listed is new though, it’s the same stuff that’s be said for years. Like I said it’s no necessarily wrong, but it’s definitely not a new idea.

Weird.

Maybe I misspoke, what I meant to say was that most of the profit margin on this game was wasted on pushing an esports scene that never took off. I think the game is great and I think it would have made plenty of profit, but they wasted a lot of the esports and activision is greedy.

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  1. QM was a clown fiesta for four years. They designed the game around team comps but completely neglected to enforce that in QM.

  2. Ranked didn’t have a proper division system and was plagued by bad matchmaking.

  3. Blizzard thought they could charge people for heroes even though they showed up to the genre 6 years late.

The game itself was fine, it was just the systems supporting it were poorly designed and unfinished. Launch-Tracer patch was the most fun I ever had playing HotS.

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unfair rules of game

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Nowadays, people focus too much into ‘tagging’ games as dead or failed.

There are a lot of prophets out there doomcalling some games and doom-wishing others as if they are trying too hard to prove something…

May be I’m too simplistic… they way I see it, if HotS is fun for me, I’ll play it… If I get “zero” enjoyment out of it, I’ll play something else. No drama

But some people seem to take this to another level, a personal one… as if they are very desperate to sh…t on something and then cross the fingers for it to happen; to then come out and say “see? see? I told you…”

It’s a bit pathetic to be honest…

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this wasn’t the meta anyway. While pushing was more effective in lower ranks with the limited ammo, in higher ranks people paid to much attention for this to be as effective as you think it was.

high skill players didn’t really have this problem and there wasn’t a single stealthy that did well in high level play just because of pre-rework stealth.

Nova was literally only known as the QM pub stomper so duh.

Nova has been horrible in serious ranked play for a LONG time. Zeratul wasn’t strong because of stealth, he was strong due to his burst damage and game defining Void Prison.

You really aren’t gonna convince people that you’re a high skill player after you blatant think Nova was GOOD in high level ranked play but also think she was “overpowered” lmfao.

Doesn’t mean much. Overwatched showed up to the FPS game very late and sold MILLIONS. it wasn’t until years after launch that players numbers started to actually dip.

not really, LOL is just aimed at the low end, F2P market which is currently quite big. the game is easy to run, is free to play and has a somewhat straightforward design when it comes to buying champs, skins, etc. the difference between that and HOTS is that HOTS didn’t know who it wanted to aim for.

what? the average Moba player doesn’t play RTS games.

Not really. most of the saturation is meaningless and games flicker and die out in a matter of months.

and yet team games like Overwatch are wildly successful despite the fact that ultimately they are about teamwork instead of 1v5ing.

finally an actual point. Yes, the lack of punishment for afkers, leavers, etc is one of the biggest issues. it’s part of why I haven’t played in around a month. little motivation exists when you can get paired up with people who afk, feed, etc and know they won’t get punished.

yep, the devs stated that the engine has its limitations. However they had years to switch over to a different engine but chose to keep Frankensteining this monstrosity.

nah, all game modes have matchmaking issues, including hero league. even hyper friendly, long time players like Grubby have largely avoided HOTS due to how bad matchmaking is.

This is more of an issue with the dev team allowing power creep. Just as an example, Raynor was considered in the bottom tier of HOTS when I started playing (late 2016) and not long after, he dropped to the very lowest of the tiers. There is nothing wrong with adding more mobility and escape options in a Moba because it allows users more opportunity to flex their skill and creativity. The problem only arises when devs take like 2 years to update an old hero.

Chen is still terrible. D.va is still terrible. Vikings are still terrible. Butcher is still terrible. Gazlowe still stinks. You get the idea.

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It’s really hard to carry in HotS if one of your teammates is an absolute potato. I think that is the Achille’s Heel to an otherwise amazing pvp game and what preventing it from really gathering steam.

When you put a lot of fresh newbies into a match, the transition into a well-organized team that can synchronize abilities is a messy process and full of frustration. The lack of All Chat guarantees it all gets directed inward in a game where that is especially venomous. Yet when teams work correctly, HotS stands in a league of its own. Sometimes I think the game is ahead of its time.

You can complain about matchmaker, or devs, or mobility, etc. but those issues are not why the game didn’t catch on in the beginning - they weren’t issues then.

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Came out too late. People were already too invested in LoL and DotA.

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From the local gamer’s feedback in my town about HoTS: Shared Team Level.

That is the primary issue that they have on HoTS and that is why they heed the advice from reddit players and HoTS fanboys, don’t play HoTS if you hate Team Leveling.

And now HoTS fanboys and HoTS reddits are wondering why is this game not popular. Also, the another biggest mistake is the developers take feedback from the reddit HoTS and not the official forum.

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REASONS WHY HOTS FAILED TO BECOME POPULAR?

“We nerfing Samuro because new players cant deal with him”
“Genji is fine”
“There is no hypermobility”
“Our AI can replace any leaver”
“Our creations are original and break the moba standards”
“Lets rework _______ again, people will understand”
“This game need to be more and more easy to play, so will it put into a mobile”
“Lets create a cosmetic system and flood with sprays and emotes… people likes this, right?”
“We dont make need new skins, just reshade them”

I fgt something?

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the game failed because

  • super garbage ranked system which was made worse through most of it’s life. Quick match should not be the main mode for a moba…

  • zero social features, no clans, no group finder, no spectate friend, no player profiles and an asinine silence system to discourage chat.

  • bad devs that either didn’t care or didn’t know how to make a game better. they didn’t even ask for help from those who are invested into the game.

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The loot boxes were kind of silly. The massive amount of stuff that didn’t really add anything to the game just felt lame.

I feel like they were a doubly bad idea:

  1. I would never spend money on them because of all the junk that I would most likely get.

  2. I got plenty of loot boxes from just playing the game which would gave me heroes, mounts, and skins. So why would I need to spend money?

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I remember HotS was promoted as having a lot of customization:
crossover skins! flexible talent builds! strategic decisions! play your own unique way! and yet they kept narrowing the possibilities to minimum.
Also, Blizz don’t know what people want and people don’t know what they want.
I don’t think you can really fix matchmaking or ranked system in game like HotS, until you really play as 5 man stack.
There will never be equal skill in any rank. No offense but HotS has more causal players than dedicated ones, because the system work that way. Short games, shared exp etc. is more attractive system for casual players. And you know what games play casuals? Definitely not competitive pvp games, pvp tag alone makes them unconfortable. There is fear of losing, being a loser and time consuming learning curve.
It’s a myth that HotS is easy to learn, everyone who starts playing will be as much clueless as in any other MOBA.
HotS hero mechanics aren’t very different and even can be more complicated, because of talents.
That explain why HotS playerbase is not as big as in other MOBAs.

  1. it aims at wrong playerbase
  2. it gives false promises (Like being easier, while is not really easier at all. As playing like a team is not easy feat, is like raiding in WoW with randoms)

Casuals will check the game, instantly give up and those who stay will never become equal to dedicated players.

So you can’t really blame mm for having bad teammates especially when there is shortage of players.
LoL has kids who are playing on potatos, DotA has hard die playerbase and community that is making skins/maps.
HotS has probably highest system requirements, best graphics and lower customization than DotA. Kids who can afford gaming pc probably aren’t interested in f2p games.
So what left for Blizz? welcome WIII reforged with custom moba maps and goodbye HotS?

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The game has more casual players because the matchmaking was so garbage, HL was dead.
It is absolutely the devs fault for the poor matchmaker. HoTS could have had a much better one.

  • placements letting people skip entire tiers (10 games were more important than the next 200)
  • people seeding from rank 1 into diamond when they were gold skill level,
  • QM seeding to plat/diamnd/master

All these things combined with the already shaky gameplay ( it’s very easy for one player to cause a wipe/lose the game ) killed the entire ranked mode.

They did fix some of this stuff but it was too late the typical moba player left back to league or dota or a new game.