This is the major downside of an ‘always online’ game. We have our player record, but now it’s not worth playing unless you play ranked or are a masochist, with respect to the other game modes.
HotS has been neglected, obviously, and left with this terrible quick play matchmaking algorithm, probably at risk of hackers and exploiters (one could argue that pre-made groups in QM fit that characterization already), and the game gets progressively more unfun. For me, it’s becoming more of a time liability than meaningful moba challenge. I realize it’s just a game but we’ve spent a lot of time on this game. I think it deserves much better treatment than this.
Some issues that the game has:
Balance changes way overdue (which heroes need this is subjective of course but Genji comes to mind)
QM and ARAM are a disaster, I’m just getting premade matches left and right, and ARAM has curiously suspicious hero choices and outcomes - while also plagued with premades.
Bad Network behaviors, disconnects, or lag seem more frequent than it should be.
Honestly, are developers playing their own game here? Because I just think it’s awful as it is right now. Surely, they would see that also; unless, of course, they are the ones teamed up as premades, then I would just call it unprofessional lol.
Well, I think the good thing is that this is probably the most balanced the game has ever been. So if they were going to stop support, it was actually the best way to do it.
I don’t see a problem with people teaming up in ARAM. The mode is random.
It’s a hidden blessing that HotS was abandoned. They were starting to write a rather meh story involving the Raven Lord, his daughter, and boring cliches.
They deviated from the original purpose of the game which was to bring iconic heroes in from the many Blizzard ips. While I am certain both Orphea and Qhira are liked, they should never had been created. Nor should the farce of a story been written. I theorize they were really wanting to create their own league of legends with its own characters and lore.
Both took away time and resources that could have been better put towards bringing in two other well known heroes, perhaps more maps/realm lords, and improvements to the game before they unplugged it.
Fortunately, the game was put on life support before it became ridiculous with Blizzard deciding that WoW, Overwatch, and Diablo lore is far more interesting to muck up.
Though, in the case of Overwatch, the lore was a joke right out the gate if anyone pays attention to it. I recall trying to write a fanction for fits and giggles with me not finding a reliable timeline for that particular universe. The lore has only gotten worse since then.
While still on Overwatch Blizzard just scrapped what was left of OW2’s PvE, which completely negates the whole reason they put a ‘2’ on the end.
I look at each character individually. With each character I ask, “What came first in the development cycle? The character, or the kit idea?”
For some heroes, the character came first with the kit practically writing itself. All you have to do is just think about a Diablo barbarian and boom! Whirlwind, slam and leap just fall into place.
For other heroes, the kit definitely came first. Being hyper mobile sounds like fun, so does the ability to throw people around. What about mastering some sort of interesting stun combo? All very cool ideas, but what existing characters shall we use for these kits? Boom, Illidan, Garrosh and Kerrigan are born. Even though the kits don’t make a lot of sense for the lore of these characters, you can’t help but still enjoy playing these heroes in HoTS.
Orphia and Qhira definitely started off as interesting kit ideas.
Orphia has a very cool shadow waltz mechanic that’s super fun to play. However, if they shoehorned her kit into an existing character and told everyone she is HoTS version of a WoW shadow priest, I’m not sure people would accept that.
Quira’s kit is also fun, but what existing character do you believe would allow her kit to make sense?
As great as their kits are, i believe they are too far fetched to make existing characters work hence the invention of brand new heroes.
In regards to WoW there is A LOT of wiggle room. There are different versions of the same character and roles. So it would be less of a stretch of an imagination and more of finding a character that is close enough of a fit to justify the kit.
Shadow priest would be too mild, but some deep in the corruption follower of the Old Gods, or directly the Void, would fit in with that kit. It would just require some tweaking of the models used for the abilities.
It would require some tweaking, but it wouldn’t be a stretch as a lot of WoW characters use abilities that are not shown in Warcraft lore. For Orphea, she could potentially be replaced with Azshara with some tweaking of the abilities to be a mix of void and mage as she was once a mage prior to forming a pact with an Old God. The floating and waltz, as well as any high than thou feels to the kit would fit her quite well. Considering the woman is all about her appearance she could easily shift to a more elven one with her true form visible when hearthing or after she dies.
As for Qhira, well, again it would be who could fit with the kit or who could be changed to fit it. A lot of WoW characters do not have much in the lines of variety or they be iconic but their abilities had not been expanded upon.
As for a WoW character for her kit, oh that is an easy one: Kargath Bladefist.
Kargath would do that sort of chain, bleed, and bashing nonsense. The Shattered Hand orc clan is all about taking and dealing a lot of pain. Both main timeline and alternative timeline were bloodthirsty, even by fel orc standards for the OG Kargath.
I suppose it may have been a misused word. Overdone, bare bones, barely any effort put in the story, generic, boring, any of those would work.
Misunderstood brooding leader carries out questionable things in order to combat some unspeakable terror. Vaguely tells people his plan, comes across as a bad guy due to what he does, attacks kid, vaguely hints at stuff, gets stuffed by child, child declaires rebellion. Gathers a bunch of naughty people in preparation of something naughtier than all of them combined. Leads to–oops, funding was pulled.
I personally loved the lore. While it is true it was trying to be like League, I actually enjoy the fact they were trying to make something out of it.
I disagree with the notion it was taking away from anything. The only culprit for that is Blizzard. They set the expectations far too high to dethrone League rather than just making it its own thing. Homogenizing unique characters to ‘be more like League’ killed this game more than anything the lore could have done.
Almost everything you wrote I agree. But playing ranked as a solo player do is masochist. They’ll say it isn’t true overall (the fanboys), but yeah no room for fair solo players gameplay. Solo players who are succeeding in actual ranked mode were boosted/PL by teammates for qualifying at some point.
And by the way, matchmaking will be unfair, AND we all get long waiting queue cause solo players fled, are fleeing and will flee. They are just meat for pre-mades or 5th wheel if joining a 4 guys team atm and since ages now.
I know it’s a team based MOBA and I love HOTS for that, but solo players were the ground on which the game could have thrived. Activision made a mistake at that 2.0 version, and Microsoft keep committing it today.
There is only a finite amount of resources, and Blizzard used theirs for HotS to create a story that was I wrote average at best. HotS is a game that does not need any kind of lore beyond heroes getting snatched up randomly out of universes to fight each other. As Uther once said, and I may misquite a bit, “you really should stop thinking about these things so much.” which was just fine and dandy.
They would have butchered the lore in the long run anyways. Just take a gander at Warcraft and Diablo with the former having been retconned so many times that wiki pages have contradicting information. It is a result of having numerous writers as well as people not doing their research on past lore and instead just writing whatever they feel like to then cross out past lore to write whatever they feel like to make it connect.
Overwatch’s lore was in tatters right out the gate, and it continues to be a joke with their priorities in character development.
Overwatch’s lore is fine. They just lied to us about the story mode. Outside of some really dumb oversights (like how do you expect me to believe Kiriko trained with Genji and Hanzo despite being half their age?)
Again, I don’t think the resources were the issue. The game was dying well before any original Nexus lore was expanded on. And again, it was dying because Blizzard set an unrealistic expectation for the game and funneled way too much money into tournaments and crap.
It contradicts itself quite frequently to keep the story flowing, which makes taking it seriously extremely difficult. One example that comes to mind is Ana Amari taking a lead pill to the eye from the same sniper rifle that Tracer noped out of the way from that also factory resetted an Omnic (who are made out of metal) with no difficulty at all.
Even if Ana’s scope and cybernetic eyeball managed to stop the bullet the kinetic energy being delivered to her noggin would have turned her brain into the same consistency as Kool-Aid.
Don’t get me started on how incompetent everyone is. To the point that it is a cast on a Saturday morning cartoon. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing, but as with the Ana example with her backstory, Blizzard has been trying to go for a weird combination of Team Fortress goofiness with nitty gritty Call of Duty ‘realism’ and it just is not working. It’s like trying to mix oil and water together in a blender. Overwatch lore lurches from one to the other which keeps the lore off balance and not ‘settle’ so to speak.
If they went full on goofball like what Team Fortress 2 done than it wouldn’t be a problem. Same with if they stuck with it being nitty gritty (so long as it stayed consistent) in that it would not be a problem.
Granted, I may be looking too much into it, as I have been bitter towards Blizzard for a long time now over the decisions they have made.
No. Orphea’s kit is based on the concept a of a ballet dancer. Her core philosophy is dancing in close to your enemy then dancing away. She is meant to feel fluid and elegant, with the shadow part being set dressing. An Old God would NOT work with her at all.
Biggest erk that I only realized is that they put themselves in this situation by making extremely poor decisions to funnel on games without considering the risks, but because they are Blizzard (legends).
Then PvE gets cancelled so damn hard it’s insane, how did it end up like this, I uninstalled OW the moment I heard “PVE isn’t happening” and I honestly never looked back.
I then gave Azshara as an example as she would be the type of character to have such a style of combat, or at least present it that way as it is in her character to not taking anything seriously, thus turning a fight to the death into a dance or some other means of entertainment.
That was seriously her raid fight. She had a theater play going and not a genuine fight against the group of heroes fighting her. In fact if you used an emote at her before the fight she would do something up to including deleting your health bar without so much as blinking at you.
Also they could have just made up a new hero from WoW. They did that with Lunara and Murky who were added in Legion long after they debuted in HotS. To a lesser extent the same thing occurred with Valla and Johanna (as well as Li-Ming I think and the other Nephalem) both of which did not exist in Diablo but were later added in the lore later on.
I think you’re fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose of the two Nexus heroes.
Orphea was designed from the top down as a character originating from the Nexus. Why? Because they wanted to. They already had this universe set up from day 1 with its own lore, so why not explore it? They settled on starting with Raven Court since Cursed Hollow is the first map they ever added and worked backwards to figure out what kind of character would come from there.
Qhira on the other hand was a bottom-up design. They had this concept of a character with a sword that expanded into a whip, but there was no one in Blizzard’s library who fit this fantasy. After Orphea was released and established a precedent, they felt confident to go forward and make up a character to fill this incredibly fun gameplay loop they developed.
Orphea wasn’t designed to get a kit into the game, she was designed to get ORPHEA into the game, in whatever form that took. They wanted the open floodgate on a recognizable realm so they would have the freedom to add a character like Qhira, where they wanted her kit but didn’t have someone to attach it to.
Murky was in vanilla WoW. He was the companion pet for attending the first ever Blizzcon.
Can’t say I am terribly thrilled reading that, but if that is the truth than so be it.
Unless they retconned it and wiped away his original lore (would not surprise me if they did) then I am afraid that is false. I remember him being in Legion as there is a quest in helping him take over a tribe of Murlocs. I got excited seeing him and helping him become the next king of a murloc tribe.
There have been a ton of Murloc pets over the years looking like iconic characters such as Deathwing, Illidan, and I think even Hellscream.