The death of HGC CAN be a good thing

General Discussion
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I’m not necessarily saying it is a good thing, but there are positives to no longer having a pro scene.

No More Balancing around a Pro Scene

You know all of those changes seemingly coming out of left field nerfing already weak heroes that makes us all scratch our head? That’s because of the pro scene.

With no more HGC there is no more need to balance heroes around a very very small pool of players who can do ungodly things with a hero. Instead, the focus can be on balancing around Master league like it should be.

No more flashy and downright oppressive hero designs

Without a pro scene to care about having something “fun” to watch, there’s no more need to create these flashy extremely high skill cap heroes who end up being useless to most players but absolutely awful to deal with when played well. This is the Genjis, the Tracers, you know, the highly mobile assassins that don’t really have a place in a MOBA to begin with but make for something entertaining to watch.

No more wasted time and resources trying to force an ESports scene

This is one of Blizzard’s biggest mistakes, they’ve funneled all of this money into trying to launch ESports for 2 games only to have it blow up in their face financially.

ESports are born from a good game, a good game is not born from ESports. It’s taking something that already exists and televising it.

I understand Blizzard doesn’t want to lose control of a potential market like they did with Starcraft blowing up and literally creating the ESports scene, but at the same time, they can’t force it either. It’s something that has to come naturally, and you get there by making a game that people actually want to play first.

More focus can be shifted to making the game actually good

Perhaps the biggest plus to not having a ESports scene, there’s no pressure to make ESports successful and the development team is more free to develop something that is fun to play, but not necessarily fun to watch.

This isn’t to say Blizzard will actually do any of these things, but with no more HGC there’s no reason to waste time and energy on generating views, but way more incentive to get people actually playing the game.

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If there’s no more balancing for the pro scene, what happens to those “competitive casuals” who want to play the game as intended and showcase their skills?

Are we doomed to let ourselves faff about and B step somewhere in the jungle and roleplay with our team?

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And who’s gonna do all that when the good developers are getting moved to the mobile projects?

Hell, how do the developers themselves feel when the higher ups say they’re moving “their best developers” and yet they’re not chosen for these mobile projects?

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This isn’t about that, I’m just saying that there ARE positives to no more forced ESports scene.

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opposite. a lot of nerfs to weak heroes came from the devs listening to complaints from low skill players. Nova and Valeera’s nerfs were from bronze 5 QM only players complaints, not pro players. Even chromie’s nerf was due to lower skilled players. I’m actually kind of curious how you came to the conclusion that nerfs on weak heroes were the result of pro play.

This is a BAD thing, NOT a good thing. Pros are often the ones figuring out new strategies, new ways of playing, new synergy, etc. It’s why I’ve always said the devs should talk to masters, GMs and Pros about game balance. Masters and Grand masters are the best in non-pro games while pro players represent that next level of skill and teamwork. the fact we now have an entire pool of skilled players basically vaporized (most probably won’t return to playing ranked) is BAD.

I don’t think you have a basis to argue that Genji and Tracer were added because of the pro scene. They were added because they exist in a Blizzard IP. also there are champs in other Mobas that are WAY more powerful than Genji or Tracer, especially after you take Item Builds into consideration. somehow, those games are doing GREAT.

Blizzard mismanaging games that have Esports scenes isn’t the same as esports scenes being a mistake.

The thing is that people DID want to play HOTS. instead of further cultivating those players, the devs kept making balance changes to appeal to literally the worst players (many of whom are coming from bronze or silver league in LOL) which is why many big changes to HOTS made the game more like league of legends (including mechanical changes that increase laning times and game lengths). That is why the game is failing.

Devs are being moved to other projects and to be quite frank, Hots has some of the worst devs in Blizzard (many don’t even understand basic statistics or how to read numbers) as it is. also, esports tend to run themselves. Besides scheduling events, people already have jobs to set up cameras and streaming systems, get the game rolling properly, etc. The people who were on the ground weren’t the ones developing the game. BUT THE LATTER ARE THE ONES WHO ARE NOW UNEMPLOYED.

Killing off a big source of viewership, visibility, sponsorships, etc is a great way to make sure people DON’T play the game.

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And i’m saying who will DO those positives when their best guys are GONE?

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There is no positives, this isn’t wow where arena was a side part of the game added on after the fact, this game is a competitive game from the ground up, and the end of the pro scene doesn’t do any of those things you think will happen.

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That’s a bad thing. Balancing around people who aren’t very good is not balance, its reinforcing poor play.

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And you know what balancing around that 0.1% of players does? It drives people away.

Heroes should be balanced relatively well for all levels of skill, not just the best of the best. If they’re not, you’ve designed a bad hero.

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I have my doubts that there is going to be enough of a team left to do anything major at all once the existing library of unreleased content runs dry, they specifically mentioned Diablo 2 for a reason I would venture, and all they do is maintain the servers and reset the ladder once a year so its not a great sign.

I will say that if I’m wrong, and there are actually enough people left to make real changes its possible. a ton of the horrible design decisions and reworks that helped bury this game were angled at forcing HotS into becoming a traditional esports MOBA.

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I like how you are trying to purposefully hide the truth of your argument with numbers. 0.1% of players sounds malicious on its own with how you presented it. Except you conveniently left out of the fact that the tiny percentage of players mentioned represents people whose skill level is above those of even Masters. also, balancing for good players tends to trickle down to the rest of the playerbase. Pro players tend to make guides on heroes, which allows other players the chance to get better.

factually impossible. characters will require different levels of skill for different things. One character may be easy to get started with but hard to master. one character might be hard to get started with but easy to master after that. Some may be hard to learn AND hard to master. there is no magic button that just makes characters balanced for all levels of play.

this isn’t how balance and design work.

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Would agree with you if they didn’t mention shifting devs away from hots and slowing down the release cadence.

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Only if the goal is to play at a pro level. If the goal is to play a fun game with a group of friends without having to take it super serious then balancing at a mid-level is a brilliant move. Look at how co-op mode in SC2 has been received. Most people who play that mode have zero interest in competitive but it brought new life into the game.

Hots could do the same thing if they embrace what makes it different from highly competitive MOBAS instead of trying to be one of them.

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Lmao, fanboys will always find something positive. Good luck with the queue times.

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I agree, actually. But that should be the job of the talents. Base kit should be pretty morphable, with talents that do better at high levels of play, where timing and teamwork can be more precise and talents that work better at low levels of play, where they make things more forgiving.

For example, if we use the always hated Genji, you could have deflect grant armour instead of protected, and a talent that changes it to protected at the cost of channel time.

I see this complaint as 2 distinct complaints.

  1. designing around pro play is bad
  2. balancing around pro play is bad

You have an argument that 1 is bad for everyone else, but I completely disagree that 2 is bad for anyone.

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I agree.

But the issue with balancing around pro play isn’t that it impacts all the heroes, but that it will impact a couple of heroes very hard.

So while the average impact on balance is minimal… you have heroes like Tassadar. Who, in my opinion, was ruined because of pro-play, which of course means HGC.

I think that Tassadar wouldn’t be great without pro-play, and his current design is just flawed. But he would be much better overall if not for pro-play.

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That sounds kinda fun compared to the typical MM game.

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Who gives a damn about HGC and toxic e-sports garbage? They’re moving devs off the game. They’re not going to have the resources to keep the content fresh. The game’s dead now.

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Well, I agree with you, but I do hope all new heroes and contest is fun to watch. Don’t want them losing seight of making fun things to play. But yes, they can now focus on balancing more around the majority playerbase instead of the select few that were most likely heading towards HGC.

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So much this. This is the truth of it. The game catered and still continues to cater to the lowest skill whiniest players in the game.

So tired of these wild and selfish assumptions that casual low skill AFK potatoes are the majority and anyone who has a brain and can play at a decent level is .000000001. Seriously LOL. You guys do this in wow too. It gets really tired. Bad argument. Really bad.

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