I’m gonna say no for two reasons. One, when I tried Dota 2, half of the problem was that every hero was available, I had no idea who I wanted to play since every single choice was there from the get go. Two is out of spite, because I’ve already spent the last 4 years trying to get every hero, and now that I finally have all of them, I don’t want some newbie to just have them all for free where I had to work to play them.
Okay I can get on board with that idea. Make all heroes free for custom, but you still have to put time into the game and practice before you can access the roster in matchmaking.
I think new players should have all the roaster free for their first 100 games, then they can choose 5 to keep.
And an overall reduction in hero prices.
I don’t get the point of having them all free, when it is so easy to get gold.
Every 5 levels, daily quests, gold for victories…
Yes for new accounts it may be harsh to get all the heroes, but be honest to yourself, do you even need them all?
This is not pokemon.
I doubt anyone is playing all the heroes anyway.
Most people main few of them and only selected roles.
And also, you have the weekly rotation in addition to that.
If i remember correctly they used to make these “free hero events” where they would allow every hero in the game to be free for a few days. Maybe they should do that more often? i know i appreciated that back before i had a full hero collection.
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there is no such thing as temporary ownership. you either own it or you dont. this is like saying renting is owning a property. it isnt, because you dont own anything.
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grinding gold for the free to play aspect is kind of the point. its suppose to be grindy so that you either buy gems to have it right now or you patiently wait until you have enough of free currencies to buy what you want.
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shards are easier to come by now. i realize this has changed since you made that thread. just pointing out that fact.
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9/10ths of year? thats a weird fraction dont you think? wouldnt it be easier to think of a year it its actual monthly form like twelfths. i suppose you really didnt think about it and were just exaggerating though because in reality 90% of the year isnt events either. also event items taking up disk space? what? this one is definitely a new one in the running for stupidest complaints.
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personally i like the aspect of unobtainable mounts and other cosmetics. i think the give something that you feel you achieved that someone else cant just buy later. true that even though i have been playing since alpha there are a few even im missing for team league and some events. which is because…
- team league use to be team only
- i took nearly around 8+ months off from the game at one point and missed some things
i mean, this is the best idea for me, but practically it isnt that benefitial. its like drugs XD ppl THINK theyre good whilst dying cause of em. BASICALLY. i think that if we get all free heroes, we will stick to max 10 or 15 heroes and ignore the rest early on in the game, which is a VERY bad idea to rank up, since in ranked, ALL pssibillities are open, you could get a team where all the enemies and allies picked ur heroes, or banned some, and u would not only have to change heroes to something u dont know, but also be obliged to cooperate with the roles. if they need healer u GOTTA be one, even if it sucks for some ( which is why i leveled myself on a couple amazing healers). if we level with heroes we dont know we adapt their playstyles, be more diverse when picking, and generally playing the game as it should, else why do they even release new heroes? so it may be better for the CURRENT u to like this change, but noobies and newcomers will suffer badly. i can prove this cause once i had to get chests for an event, so i tried a lvl 1 hero to quickly get the chests, AND SURPRISE SURPRISE i discovered the whole new world of li-ming. SHE IS SO GOOD like she was made for me. ik this isnt that relevant but what im saying is that diversity brings u the fun u seek in this game. making all heroes open is just wrong. blizzard wants us to be forced to try new heroes sometimes on early levels to get rewards like the 500 gold or chests, then be more experienced with this hero, making u move 1 step forwards to pro-play
I know he is a bit of a stretch but he can be easier to play if you don’t go for illusion master at 10. I wanted to avoid characters that had unique gimmicks that set them apart like Gazlowe and Murky and ones that are difficult to play well like Alarak, Zeratul and Illidan. Of the ones left I was between Valeera, Samuro, Maiev, and Kerrigan.
Maiev is super dependent on team coordination and having a healer along with her also having ults that don’t do damage and it’s unlikely a newer player would understand when and why to use them.
Valeera is a stealth hero and is all about doing a quick combo that’s not necessarily obvious and getting out.
I was mostly torn between Samuro and Kerrigan in that last spot. On the one hand Kerrigan is a much more iconic hero than Samuro but on the other she’s much more reliant on hitting a specific skillshot combo for her damage which is why I favored Samuro.
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Even though I believe it was a republican senator that introduced that bill I don’t think it will pass both houses. The american government will usually side with the corporations over individuals
How about allowing a custom ftp heroes list after a set level?
A player could choose a number of heroes he wants to add to the week’s ftp list.
The set level would be there to hamper smurfs if we ever need to.
Only heroes at 15k are excluded until the price falls.
We could make those heroes locked from ranked if people are afraid of 1st time playing and inting in ranked semi trolls.
It’s pretty obvious that I meant “Temporary Ownership” as ownership within the context of the new system - aka being able to earn rewards and/or access more than basic customization aspects within the proposed system. I’m not really sure why you’re nitpicking about this.
Also, while I would be more than willing to discuss the rest of your points, they’re not really on-topic in this thread, so uh… if you want me to address them, post them in the right place and I’ll be more than happy to talk about it with you. Necroing posts is only frowned upon when you don’t have much to contribute to the discussion, so I doubt anyone would be too upset about it.
My Suggestion?
New players get all heroes for FREE, up till, say, lvl 50 or so - This gives them the ability to try out the majority of the roster, or even the entire roster if they don’t have a boost.
After that, they can select 16 heroes of their own to have, with a caveat - They MUST select at least 2 healers and 2 tanks. (Personally, I would be in favor of 3 healer/tanks, but eh, may be a bit TOO much).
This will give them a solid base to start gearing up for additional heroes via the 500 gold per 5 hero lvls.
Here’s the thing about hero availability: how does it influence the economy of the game?
Dota 2 functions as ad space for Valve as the primary function they have is game distribution, so any means of getting people in that loop helps further that end. Some of the success of the effects of steam can be seen in how people evaluate all other game-related purchases to sales on steam for ‘games’ people may not ever play, but feel a sense of value in having ‘saved’ money to own such a thing.
Dota 2 then has a wide array of cosmetics that can be individually slotted, traded, auctioned and artificially bloat the value of specific effects in relation to the rest of the items esp in regards to questionably-legal gambling in ways that appear to spectators rather than outright gamers (esp in regards to the value placed on ‘owning’ stuff in Steam)
Now the ‘free’ aspect also works as a compliment since dota transitions away from dota-allstars where players already had access to the entire hero pool, and the production for dota 2 would be reselling already designed and balanced heroes for the next several years to come: to that end, it could seem distasteful to lock something that was already unlocked.
In regards to HoTS: can it function as the same sort of ‘advert’ for other games and services for the dynamics of the steam market, community creations, trading, gambling and so forth?
Not really.
The design of the game is intended to foster a sense of retention by having goals and taking a sense of pride in what people earn rather than what is given. Seen with some of the replies here: the attachment people can get to a game can come from having to ‘invest’ into getting some of the content/collection and fosters a type of regulatory expectation to game currency.
If the hero is ‘free’ then it not only becomes a bloat in the lootbox collection, but it dumps the drive for maintaining the acquisition of gold to anticipate for spending that gold by playing the game.
Part of the biggest issues of the dota-like genre is that its investment heavy (on time) and requires tons of practice to make short headway into the game. If things are easy to get into, then they’re just as easy to leave. Part of the big attachment to LoL and Dota is aspects of the Sunk Cost fallacy and a lot of the mindset applies to keeping some form of ‘game’ (or brand) loyalty to the company or service.
Part of the appeal of blizzard’s take on this style of game is that hey have heroes that already have appeal for players to want to use; its not the same ‘unheard’ new hero that hits LoL, or occasionally Dota. Now it could be said that blizz has squandered the hype/appeal of these heroes (esp in some of the “no name” ones added) but too much of the game is designed around how to get people to continue to play the game to really benefit from a “now all heroes are free” sort of transition.
Big changes, like the Heroes 2.0 event, could be said to have ‘insulted’ veterens by offering too much to newer accounts compared to vet ones, and the building around locked heroes, gold economy, and the blizz-hero history appeal all tie into the ‘collection’ design of the game. Overturning the entire roster “for free” could be seen as a bigger slight, and not necessarily provide any longer term gain for so doing it.
Having temporary event releases (or unlocks) or certain packages can help, but some things like “mode” shifts may not go so well as seen by the frequency of people that want to rush into ranked mode, get their butts kicked, and then blame anything else but their own inexperience for jumping headfirst into the shallow end of the pool.
Personally I have mixed feelings about this, as it will promote smurfing. I’m mostly against it, but if they are gonna do something like that, they could do something like in SC2 - each hero is F2P until they hit level 5.