OG players who remember haunted mines, how did you feel about it?
At the time, I remember that it was removed because several of the specialists in the game could just steam roll and snowball the entire game on their own.
However, if they brought it back today, would it be better?
Personally, it wasn’t my favorite my a long shot. However, I would take it any day of the week over BHB. Unless there was a said specialist on the enemy team, it was a pretty ok map.
Part of the issue of haunted mines is the objective and the other part is the bugs from how the map handles the mines, and the transition between them. Some heroes, like rexxar and deathwing, have game-breaking bugs.
There was a Khaldor tournament that featured Haunted Mines as a map in the pool and iirc, one of the biggest issues of the map is that mercs are stronger than the objective. While the idea of the map is to attempt to split a team to prioritize soaking the lane while contesting the skulls, the objective is more a liability that weakens a team going for a completed skull count.
I don’t think that shortcuts in other maps, like warhead junction, create the same issues, so it could be possible to restructure Mines to address heroes getting stuck or separated.
I think another adjustment to the map would be to have hero takedowns drop addition skulls, so either the golems can get to 100 without claiming all the skulls in the mine, or the golem can get strength to exceed 100 and be more threatening that way. However, the first suggested method gank (ganks for skulls) takes further power away from delving the mines.
BRING IT BACK now please
The original would snowball hard and fast after even the first objective. People complain about Black Heart’s Bay, but OG Haunted Mines was worse with how destructive the objective was and how easy it was to get carried away. A single golem with enough skulls and backing could smack down a fort, towers, gate, and be parked in front of a roughed up keep in the first go.
When they reworked it though the objective was nowhere near as powerful with the camps doing significantly more than the golem ever did. One team just need to have some members run interference in the rabbit hole while one or more teammates (Samuro, Rexxar, Gazlowe, ect) captured camps.
Maybe if the golem is less snowbally and object is made more balanced.
It depends… how long matches do people want.
Braxis also has a tendency to snowball.
When the game was new, people expected 30-60 minute matches with all the rich elements. Roaming, cost of splitting, etc.
Today, we have faster move speed, way more power and CC to gank efficiently, and of course the preferred modes in order are AI, ARAM, QM, SL, roughly. With little money being offered, hardcore competitive is in other games, it’s mostly for fun.
(
Everything is competitive. I trust that John Oliver wasn’t joking when they showcased a professional speedrun championship of hacking objects in half with a sharp knife in a room: ropes, rugs, stuff like that.
Yes. Seriously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HqAQTf u K7o
^ lol. Delete the spaces. Word is not allowed.
Can you split rolling table tennis balls vertically not worse than 45-55%?
How fast can you chop a stick?
)
I still play the map very occasionally in big custom games. I particularly enjoyed all the gorilla warfare that went on in the mines. Unfortunately tho, the objective was really bad compared to the camps on the map. Its like a more extreme version of Hannahmura.
Dispite all its flaws though, Haunted mines was alot of fun and nothing else feels quite like it.
It had a weird cadence but I didn’t really hate it because they lack of other activities or space forces you to double down on fighting, but at the same time the sheer distance between the bases would prohibit a core rush. The buildings would also collapse very early and then it would take another 40 minute before the game ends because of tight lanes.
Whatever problems there where in terms of balancing, it all could have been fixed by introducing a cooldown on using the mine shaft and by creating a safe zone at both ends.
That way you wouldn’t be allowed to interrupt projectiles or channels by traveling up and down constantly and you would be somewhat shielded from spawning into 20 of Abathur’s mines.
It’s got the Hanamura problem where the mercs are way more important than the objective. However, I’m a weirdo freak who actually likes Hanamura, so I don’t have any issue with that. The real issue is the game-breaking bugs with certain heroes, which I don’t think the current team has the manpower to fix currently. I’d like to see the map come back, but I doubt it will.
Also, remove Blackheart’s Bay.
BHB just need a rework with cannons doing less dmg or have less cannon shots to shoot.
ircc, BHB had the most variations in brawl, I assume as ways to try to ‘fix’ the map.
Added shortcuts could help alleviate the size of the map (temporary hatches opening) and the overall objective power could be reduced, but add smaller cannons that need ammo runs to fire a one-time shot per spawn.
Are we talking about Hanamura? 
Old or new Hanamura? I feel I must interject in stating that the old, Mercenary Lord boosted samurai camps were splendid.
Old Hanamura was bad aswell becasue each team got a cart to defend which lead to a 4-1 split which some team comps cant defend against. Also the point each shoot gave for each fort/keep that went down made it even worse. Old Hanamura was just old specialist staying in one lane pusing a fort uncontested while your team had to spread resources to both defend that and cart which lead to the team who had the better team winning much faster.
The mid boss was funny tho with it sometimes swallowing a random hero which could lead to team wipes if the tank is gone.
I very much miss Haunted Mines, and I think an easy fix to make it less of a snowball, would be to remove the Sapper camps for a start. The other change I’d like to see, is that all camps disappear during the objective phase, that would make fighting over skull collection more desirable.
As much as I’d like HM to return, with the many bugs this map has, I don’t think the one Dev that occasionally works on Hots has enough time to devote to fixing them all. But eh, I never expected mirror games to be added back to ARAM, or all the bug fix and balance changes we’ve had over the past year, so there is still some hope.
Old Hanamura had a single Samurai Boss in the middle, which was impossible to take unless you wiped the enemy team. If you tried to random it, you’d end up with your pants down in a 4 vs 5 because the boss swallowed one team member.
Ah yeah, I forgot. I was referring to after the change before they reworked Sylvanas and the camps.
For all the things I hated about old Hanamura, this boss fight was intense.
Don’t get me wrong, old Hanamura sucks, but I wish they would have reworked the map to make the non-traditional way to win work.
Clearly, the real change HotS needs is putting old Hanamura boss on Garden of Terror to better set it apart from the other ‘collect 3 and push’ objectives 
The problem with this boss was that it was either no one took it, or it was win more, because, you were already winning.
It was right in the middle of the map so there was no way to sneak it.
I’d still like to know why they changed GoT.
Maybe they wanted to streamline things to make it easier on new players?