Blizzard admits: Heroes of the Storm is a failure

Corona said:
D3 was good. Overwatch is okay but has potential to be a lot better than it is but their dev team sucks. The company is more interested in just making money possible now as opposed to making quality content. Every wow expansion since wotlk has been trash, hots is dead, sc2 was alright but not nearly as good as brood war.. and Jordan.gif at diablo immortal.
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Unfortunately it has become nearly impossible to defend this. Overwatch would seem to be their lone great success, here.

Heroes of the Storm might have been okay, but they pandered too hard to casuals not understanding that MOBA is intrinsically not a casual genre. They didn't seem to care to understand that first.
Hearthstone is beloved, but every top CCG player I personally know has complained that it has effectively become pay to win.
Diablo 3 is another massive commercial success, still huge over in those Asian cafes, but crawler gamers clearly feel Path of Exile wears the real crown now for quality gameplay. The franchise's legendary reputation has been destroyed. Seems most are barely interested in Diablo 4. The cynicism is palpable.
Haven't paid too much attention to Starcraft 2. It still seems to be a religion in Korea.
 
Other than OW I haven't been interested in anything Blizzard does which is weird to say. They used to be my favorite game dev. I honestly didn't even think I would like OW but my cousin bought it for me and I fell in love with it.
 
I liked HOTS, it dealt with a couple of the big things I particularly dislike about MOBA's the first 20 minutes where nothing happens, lack of map variety, and the 3,000 item store where only 20 of them are actually used. It's the opposite of LOL and DOTA and it filled a nice void.

Overwatch was fun but the lack of content kind of killed my enthusiasm about the series. Blizzard seems more focused on making it an e-sport rather than building a decent game and letting it become that organically. The newest events have been pretty lackluster. The new modes/maps haven't been very good, the Paris map especially sucks balls. The new characters are ok but the game has changed alot since it first came out, now it's more about counters, rock paper scissor.
 
I don't think you can successfully market a game as competitive (at least to me) if players don't all have access to the same characters, especially in a counter-heavy genre like MOBAs. I moved from DOTA2 to HOTS because of one friend who just couldn't handle the complexity and pressure of DOTA, and while I thought HOTS was okay, I thought it was a bit of a joke having most characters locked when DOTA2 gives you every character for free.

I also kind of felt like a bit of a quitter moving from DOTA to HOTS because it's a baby mode version. I've noticed that this same friend of mine tends to hate any online game which shows a leaderboard at the end of the match, which I guess is why he likes HOTS and Overwatch so much. Blizzard make games for people who like to be babied online. They're for people who want the online experience without ever feeling like a loser (hence the entire team levelling at once in HOTS so that you never feel like you're the one letting the team down, Overwatch ending with that "positive only" commendation board thing, half of the Overwatch roster having guns which don't require aim so that even shit players can be fine etc.). I think their games now are based on surveys conducted by female players or something. Seems to be the kind of mainstream audience they want.

Sometimes I don't mind it, but as MadMick said, MOBAs are competitive by nature and the appeal is that you're not babied.
 
Dead Spirit of MMA said:
I don't think you can successfully market a game as competitive (at least to me) if players don't all have access to the same characters, especially in a counter-heavy genre like MOBAs. I moved from DOTA2 to HOTS because of one friend who just couldn't handle the complexity and pressure of DOTA, and while I thought HOTS was okay, I thought it was a bit of a joke having most characters locked when DOTA2 gives you every character for free.

I also kind of felt like a bit of a quitter moving from DOTA to HOTS because it's a baby mode version. I've noticed that this same friend of mine tends to hate any online game which shows a leaderboard at the end of the match, which I guess is why he likes HOTS and Overwatch so much. Blizzard make games for people who like to be babied online. They're for people who want the online experience without ever feeling like a loser (hence the entire team levelling at once in HOTS so that you never feel like you're the one letting the team down, Overwatch ending with that "positive only" commendation board thing, half of the Overwatch roster having guns which don't require aim so that even shit players can be fine etc.). I think their games now are based on surveys conducted by female players or something. Seems to be the kind of mainstream audience they want.

Sometimes I don't mind it, but as MadMick said, MOBAs are competitive by nature and the appeal is that you're not babied.
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I didn't think it was a baby version, I think of it as a more streamlined version. Like I noted in my other post, it got rid of some of the things that I didn't find enjoyable about the game. Leaving action to go back to town... that's sexy... No. Last hitting creeps, sure it's skillful, is it fun, no. Items... who needs 3000 items when only handful of sets are used. Why should I have to wait 20 minutes for action? Does reading 20 pages worth of patch notes every month excite me? no. The design of LOL characters got really lazy, it's like hey let's take one skill from this champion and this other champion but make them slightly better to make a full skill set. I used to play that game for hours but life kind of happened and I don't have the time or energy to invest into a game. Now I tend to prefer things I can pick up and I don't feel locked down.

I agree with you there, alot of pro e-sport are data focused and in alot of Blizzard games, Overwatch especially that data is hidden away, you can't easily gauge how people are doing mid game aside from that you're able to gleam from how the match is going. You can see that your DPS or tanks aren't doing their jobs but you don't have the game data to support it, therefore bad players are kind of hidden from the type of information that would make them want to get better or quit. Instead you're given shitty medals at the end of game which seem to be the most random game statistics rather than things that are important. I mean on the OWL circuit, they post all of that data to the viewers but as a player alot of that stuff I want to see.

I also agree that alot of the newer characters that they're adding require little aim skills and seem to hard counter characters that do, and are frustrating to kill, which I find stupid. Also they're trying to make a social agenda with every single character. I remember playing games when I didn't know or even care to much about the characters background. Now it's like every single genre of people has to be represented... OMG Blizzard there are no quad amputee transfluid left handed nose blind characters that wear fedoras in this game... #Boycott #Protest #TheGigIsUp #StayWoke
 
Naramie said:
I didn't think it was a baby version, I think of it as a more streamlined version. Like I noted in my other post, it got rid of some of the things that I didn't find enjoyable about the game. Leaving action to go back to town... that's sexy... No. Last hitting creeps, sure it's skillful, is it fun, no. Items... who needs 3000 items when only handful of sets are used. Why should I have to wait 20 minutes for action? Does reading 20 pages worth of patch notes every month excite me? no. The design of LOL characters got really lazy, it's like hey let's take one skill from this champion and this other champion but make them slightly better to make a full skill set. I used to play that game for hours but life kind of happened and I don't have the time or energy to invest into a game. Now I tend to prefer things I can pick up and I don't feel locked down.

I agree with you there, alot of pro e-sport are data focused and in alot of Blizzard games, Overwatch especially that data is hidden away, you can't easily gauge how people are doing mid game aside from that you're able to gleam from how the match is going. You can see that your DPS or tanks aren't doing their jobs but you don't have the game data to support it, therefore bad players are kind of hidden from the type of information that would make them want to get better or quit. Instead you're given shitty medals at the end of game which seem to be the most random game statistics rather than things that are important. I mean on the OWL circuit, they post all of that data to the viewers but as a player alot of that stuff I want to see.

I also agree that alot of the newer characters that they're adding require little aim skills and seem to hard counter characters that do, and are frustrating to kill, which I find stupid. Also they're trying to make a social agenda with every single character. I remember playing games when I didn't know or even care to much about the characters background. Now it's like every single genre of people has to be represented... OMG Blizzard there are no quad amputee transfluid left handed nose blind characters that wear fedoras in this game... #Boycott #Protest #TheGigIsUp #StayWoke
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Gonna have to agree to disagree there. Frankly, without this mechanic, I barely see the point to the genre. As I see it there are six chief elements to playing MOBAs:
  1. Positioning/Range
  2. Timing
  3. Rotation (as of DPS cycles on creeps, or to handle creep spawns on the map)
  4. Recon & Map Awareness
  5. Teamwork: Tactics & Strategy (not just how you handle lanes together, or jump opponents, but how you approach the early/mid/late phases)
  6. Building/Counterbuilding
#1, #2, #3, #5, and #6 are all heavily influenced by the last-hitting mechanic. Working to gain the advantage by efficiently collecting, and to disrupt the opponent's attempts to net income, are the heart of the gameplay. Almost every fight against a human opponent results from a mistake made or an advantage gained in this battle. If you take this away, you've dumbed down eliminating mob trains to such a stupefying level that I wonder what's the point?

It sounds like you just want to battle heroes. That's fine, but that isn't a MOBA. It sounds like you want to play ARAM without the mobs. Sounds like a cool game, but it also sounds like a completely separate genre. That's team-based Warcraft 3 minus the unit micromanagement & resource collection.
 
Did you guys see the art changes they made in hearthstone? There's speculation that it was to appease the China sensors

RIP Secret Keeper, my favorite card art:

jfi7a7Hw48SjoSzUipkLH6-1200-80.jpg


Not as bad as the Succubus, which they just completely changed:

q6ivkGszmHFgDio39oNxZR.jpg


I been playing since the game launched, best game to play while taking a dump imo, but I uninstalled it, because, fuck all that and fuck appeasing China fuckin' sensors
 
After finally learning how to play DotA I have zero interest in learning some other watered down version of the same game. I tried LOL, and it was ok; nothing compares to the intricate complexity of DotA imo though. It's like comparing Tecmo Bowl to Madden Football.
 
lowlife said:
After finally learning how to play DotA I have zero interest in learning some other watered down version of the same game. I tried LOL, and it was ok; nothing compares to the intricate complexity of DotA imo though. It's like comparing Tecmo Bowl to Madden Football.
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Tecmo Bowl is the superior game though... it's not watered down with a pay to win paywall.
 
Naramie said:
Tecmo Bowl is the superior game though... it's not watered down with a pay to win paywall.
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I didn't know Madden was a pay to win now, that sucks. Still that's a pretty ridiculous statement, I'm pretty sure you understand what I meant by that comparison.
Edit: How is it pay to win though? Do I have to pay like 9.99 to unlock Tom Brady or something?
 
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