Thoughts on hots as a long time player

General Discussion
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TL;DR:
hots used to be good, changes made it bad, devs have given up. let us have the good stuff back or just cut the servers. mostly looking for others’ opinions, these are my personal thoughts. dont get angry about it if i strike a nerve with anything said here.

back in the glory days of hots, it was an incredible game, i personally saw it as the best moba out there for its’ simplicity and being overall easy to learn for new players that want to get into this genre of gaming, having characters for everybody to play and some really cool maps and objectives, brawls used to be new every week and not just ARAM, it was a blast.

since then though, the game has seen much better times. since then, there have been many changes to the game that makes it feel a lot less friendly to play and it feels like the devs have given up on making it a fun experience, more-so a quick money grabbing scheme before they cut the servers for good. the changes that have been made to heroes, map objectives and brawls, the additions of other heroes, it’s mostly incentive to just quit playing. that’s what it feels like - the devs are rolling dice on stat changes and bringing in heroes that are purposefully overpowered in order to get players to buy them, causing other players to quit so it will be easier for them to cut the servers as they did the playerbase.

why has the game gotten to such a point where, it’s somehow managed to remove pretty much every fun aspect from it in the past 3 years? let me give a few examples.

back during the good days, garden of terror had an objective that made the map feel a lot less “linear” i guess. each team had to collect enough seeds to channel into becoming the garden terror to siege enemy forts, but it was always a new experience, both teams had a shot because seeds were everywhere, there weren’t as many 5 man team fights. now we have what’s essentially tomb of the spider queen’s objective, but forcing fights, which can make the objective unfair on teams that are behind on exp or overall are just a less viable team for fighting (teams that may not have a lot of CC for example). so, either team has a chance to stomp the match, but only one ever does. haunted mines used to be an incredible map that went through some addition/removal to the rotation, it was always my favourite map. hanamura’s objective and map was a lot more interesting than it currently is too.

let’s get onto the next point - brawls. i dont understand how the devs just cycle through every ARAM, can’t we at least have the luxury of having the old fun brawls, hosted for different events and holidays? ARAM makes the game a lot less enjoyable as a whole, it’s based entirely on luck and if you’re on the receiving end of the bad luck, it’s a terrible time overall, all for a loot box that will give basically nothing, it’s more worth your time just levelling characters for it.

the final point i want to get onto that is a lot more opinion based are hero changes and heroes that were added since. my view on it is that for one, the stealth changes in particular weren’t at all necessary. it’s really easy to take heroes like valeera out of stealth and removing all her viability in a fight, where previously it would be a little harder to see them, it doesnt feel like “stealth” anymore. it’s just “untargetable”, because they’re so easy to see. heroes like orphea and qhira were never needed and neither was nexus lore - because they’re “original heroes” to the nexus there isn’t any reference as to what their kits should be. they haven’t been seen before so blizzard has to come up with their stats with, of course, dice rolling. what else? and as they currently stand, they have insane amounts of damage compared to other heroes in the game and can easily carry a game with little to no skill required. heroes like abathur and illidan can stomp an entire team with little to no effort when in unison. it’s obvious what’s overpowered in the current meta, i just dont think blizzard wants to do anything about it because it “incentivises” paying for the powerful heroes while leaving the less viable ones in the dirt, until they get a rework and thus begins the cycle again.

feel free to prove me wrong but the devs have given up on this wackfest of a game. the least they can do is give us back the things that, from hearing a lot of opinions by older players that no longer play, used to make the game fun to play. but if they’re gonna let the game die, let it die quickly instead of giving us all immense disappointment every update.

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HotS was late to a race Blizzard themselves started, but in their infinite wisdom never took part in when it was relevant.

The fact is that with modern Blizztivision at the helm, it’s worthless unless it’s a one and done or drums up sub fees. This whole keeping a free game alive thing, it didn’t work for them so good. That’s all there is to it. Their new direction isn’t good for lasting quality, just for quick hits, and since they never matched League’s pace they never had much leg to stand on even for quick hits in the MOBA market.

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Tbh i’m fine with the game itself. The only problems are the release date and the current slow development.
HOTS was a in beta until it got released (2015) meanwhile other MOBAs such as Dota 2 and LoL were already popular enough to make HOTS look like it never even existed in the first place.
Blizzard also made a huge mistake for downsizing the team. Why slowing the development of a still-being played game? Just cause it didn’t make the money they wanted?

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I don’t agree with everything you said, but it’s nice to get a post that’s well expressed and not just a “game is dead” post.

I don’t think the Devs have given up, I think they are working with what they have, which seems to be a very small team and limited resources.

I miss the glory days, mostly because you would get heroes more often and simply because more people were playing. You mentioned the game was simpler back then, for some people they see this as a fundamental flaw in HOTS (I don’t) and the reason why it failed. Many have asked for more complexity.

It’s all subjective, some people want change as much as possible. There is a thread from yesterday I think, where someone wanted meta shifting changes to occur every two weeks. When I first started HOTS I would get a bit weary of many changes and reworks, but then I understood it just comes with the genre of a MOBA. You could argue not every change was necessary, but many others are for simple balance reasons. Again I’m not defending every change, I miss many things like old HL and haven’t liked every hero or map rework. But for everything I didn’t like, other people did.

Many of us miss Brawls, apparently they aren’t using them because it’s more expensive. I’ll have to take their word on it, but like you I miss the classic Brawls.

Yes, yes, the old GOT was an amazing map, even if many complained games could take longer than average to play there. It had unique mechanics that they started to remove and started to homogenize many maps in favor of an TOTSQ kind of objective. Again some people like this change. I too also miss Haunted Mines, for what it’s worth the devs have said they’re working on bringing it back.

I don’t have a problem with Nexus original heroes. I didn’t think the game needed lore, but I don’t feel they hurt the game. Again subjective opinion.

I can’t prove you wrong, it’s your personal feelings about the game and its direction. I still enjoy HOTS, but do I like every change or direction? No. I wish you the best and stay safe. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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i agree, cutting the team to basically just the team’s janitor even though the game still has players and enthusiasts was kinda a kick in the jaw to the community

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I dont understand the arguments that other brawls are more expensive.
Like what is expensive?

Once you code it, you have it available.
What is the problem to rotate chromie pool, pve braxis, stitches pull party and so on? You have it done, all files prepared, whats the issue to add it to the rotation?

I just don’t get why is it “expensive”?

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expensive on resources, because without ARAM people would actually play brawl and that would set blizzard’s toasters running all the servers on fire :kappa:

on a serious note it’s all pretty dumb how brawl still exists. it was made as a new way to play the game, as a break from all the bull that happens in QM/draft/SL. now it’s just ARAM which isn’t fun in the slightest, and all you get for playing is a loot box.

give us the gameplay we deserve :frowning:

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