^Totalbiscuit's discerning thoughts

My first thought: "Oh no.... another MOBA, as if there isn't enough of that already..."
After watching the video, my thought is "Hmm! This actually looks promising, I'll definitely give it a try!"
Noting that, due to creating Temple Siege, I have been very stubborn when it comes to game design in MOBAs, this is quite an interesting thought. Here's why.

Intersting Things

• NO ITEMS
  no way, no f*cking way. The one HUGE design flaw that causes me to dislike ALL mobas before.. is not here. YES!
  Making TS, I strongly believe items are a huge pain in the ass and purely fluff that detracts from hero vs. hero interactions. Heroes of the Storm takes away items and goes for Level by level Special Upgrades called "Talents"
  
  
• TALENTS
  Every few levels you gain a talent. It is unclear as of now how the talent tree plays out.. whether or not picking one talent forces you to that branch, or if the talents are randomized. But importantly, the talents give specific upgrades to certain things that leans the hero to a certain playstyle. This is exactly the same model as the shop upgrades in TS2. For example, you can upgrade Siege Mode Range, and Hover Siege Mode later on to become an annoying ranged tank... Or go pure armor.. Or get ability upgrades. Of course, there's also boring passives like "increased damage".. but at least there's a very solid, well defined choice.
  Note: Talents is the *only* progression system in the game.
  
  
• INTERESTING HEROES
  I swear, the zeratul hero is the exact same as the assassin in TS2. It's got a blink spell, a cloak spell, and an AoE sword spell that stuns... wtf eh? Anyway, Heroes like Zeratul and Kerrigan who cloaks when mounting, or the Siege Tank, or a Zerg Unit that summon drones to attack (just like TS...) have extremely different playstyles in even the most basic things. That is good.
  
  All heroes also start with the first 3 abilities, with the ultimate coming in @ a certain level. This is cool, as giving abilities levels, and leveling each ability one by one, to me, seems tedious. Ultimate abilities are Ultimate. Having to put levels to get passive buffs to the abilities makes them boring. (special talents that improve the abilities in a certain way, like increased range/stun, is not)
  
  
• MAP-SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
  Big one. Each map has their own specific objectives. One map has you capturing tributes around the map. 3 tributes will curse the enemy's team, making their creeps and towers much weaker. Another map has you collecting doubloons, and giving it to the pirate king in the middle of the map. You can kill heroes holding doubloons so they will drop them. Once enough doubloons are given, the pirate king will barrage the enemy's towers and lower their HP.
  This is an EXTREMELY interesting way to force players out of the paths and instigate battles away from paths and creeps.
  
  
• TOWERS HAVE AMMO-REGEN
  This is a stroke of genius. A problem the TS team and I always faced was balancing the photon cannons. Here, the towers have limited ammo, and need time to regenerate them. There are also walls around the towers that you can destroy so you can bypass the towers entirely (and let creep surround them). What happens is that, even early game, you can pressure the towers by forcing them to use all their ammo, then you have free reign to attack them without taking damage. Excellent mechanic, excellent design!
  
  
• JUNGLING HAS VERY SPECIFIC FUNCTION
  Killing a jungle camp rewards you with the exact units you just killed. It helps you push. That's it. Nice and focused! (also gives exp i think?)
  

Not-So-Good Things

• HEROES ARE ALL SLOW, BUMBLING UNITS
  Ugh. So big, so slow. Pretty unexciting. Even tho it seems the rest of the game is focused on hero vs. hero interactions, the heroes themselves are far too big and slow for any twitch plays. They are seriously the size of carriers.. with comparable speeds. You'd think with such different heroes, they'd throw in some with faster speed.
  
  
• MICROTRANSACTIONS
  $20 rainbow unicorn mount.... $20?! ..
  MTs are fine, but the prices atm are bloated.
  

Things that are Meh

• MOUNTS
  You get a mount that increases your movement speed. You can activate it anywhere in a few seconds. You still get a "b" button to recall back to your base. It's interesting, but I don't see any particular pros or cons about it
  
  
• TEAM-WIDE LEVELS
  There are no individual levels. Your entire team shares the same level. Again, there are good and bad to this.
  

---

So, what do you think? A part of me feel a tinge of jealousy as they took two things that I felt differentiate TS from other hero battles. Nonetheless, I'm really glad the makers of the Heroes of the Storms have set themselves apart from other dota-style games.

I've been fortunate enough to have been playing it for a little while now, and I think the game has definitely come a long way and has great potential to be a casual brawler thing. Here's my pros and cons list.

Pros:

• Relatively quick matches in terms of match length.
  
• Really easy to get into.
  
• AI replacing a player that leaves.
  
• Map objectives feel fresh.
  
• No set lane meta.
  
• Mounts. I actually really like this aspect of the game, funny enough.

Cons:

• Gameplay feels slow to me. The movement animation in particular is like watching everyone move through mud.
  
• Melee assassins feel too squishy. I don't have any issues staying alive with the ranged assassins, but when it comes to the melee ones every single character seems to be able to easily run away or jump away from me, and I'm left dying.
  
• "Unlimited range" abilities are not universal among all characters that have them. Abathur can spawn his egg-things (blanking on the name right now) anywhere, including the mine. Nova's ult can hit anywhere on the map except the mines. That inconsistency really bugs me.
  
• Team levels. I like them for the most part, but if you have someone on your team who feeds, your entire opposing team gets fed. Without items, this isn't as big a deal as in League or other MOBAs, but since stats are based on level, this can still be an issue.
  
• Talents versus items. My major issue right now is that I don't feel like the talents are varied enough and I always find myself using the same cookie-cutter builds each game. If they change the talents up and then add a respec feature, I don't think this would feel as bad.

Overall I'd say I've had a very uneventful experience. I spent all this past weekend grinding to level 20, but once I managed that I felt like my interest in playing more waned. Every match felt the same with each character I used, and I didn't find any desire to push forward. Sadly, I ended up playing ARAMs on League rather than wanting to keep leveling my account or getting those character perks.

Devlin, what's the talent tree like?
When you pick one talent, can you take other talents that you previously skipped, or are they gone?

They're gone. It is very similar to the current WoW talent trees, but in a MOBA. I think they mentioned that people have requested respeccing in that live Q&A thing they did yesterday and they may consider that, but who knows.

That's too bad.
What are they replacing it with?
Thought you meant the whole talent thing is gone.
Gotcha.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 22 2014, 3:22 am by UnholyUrine.

Respeccing is something that it desperately needs in the later stages of the game, especially on heroes like Valla and Muradin. The latter sucks pretty hardcore, but respec would help him a lot.

I have a stream up on hitbox, since the delay, lag, and codec over on Twitch is absolutely horrible. http://www.hitbox.tv/letsgrowoldtogether

Replacing what?

The meta is already starting to settle in the higher tier games that I have been playing, you can never escape a meta in a game. They exist for a reason. While a lot of people say the gameplay feels slow, it rightfully should. I do not like League of Burst and DOTA is all about how much CC they can put out while you die. This game is a very nice balance of both, but it drags out combat, allowing for more interesting fights. All of the greatest plays/team fights in DOTA were not some simple stroke of luck or guessing something, it was a series of reactions in a single team fight that completely turned heads. Or a long drawn out fight in which so many good decisions were made that made the outcome that much greater. That is what it seems like Blizzard is going for and I love it. Mounts are a huge part of the game right now, any time you will not be auto attacking for 3+ seconds, mount up, or you will regret it.

Team levels is actually pretty great, yeah if the opposing team gets fed, that poses a giant issue. However most of the time they will try to capitalize on that lead. Have one person in each lane getting experience and then send the rest to defend, but not engage. Instead your job is just to minimize damage without endangering yourself and if they don't already have the Giants. have 1 person go around to get each camp. You can dodge their attacks as they are skill shots, so you can theoretically finish them without ever taking damage. At the moment, 2 levels is a large advantage, same as any other game. The problem is that in others, you will have someone that should be really high level that your team had been pooling experience to... You cannot have that safety cushion here. If the opposing team ever gets 3+ levels ahead, chances are that you will never win a fight with any of their core heroes.

Now at first, I thought the switch from Items to Talents was going to doom this game. Quite the opposite really, it's absolutely fantastic. The moment they add a respec option that gives you at least three points I wont have any problems with it. And yes, while having cookie cutter builds is quite a problem right now, I believe that will sort itself out with balance changes along the line. An example is that right now, building Illidan as tanky as possible is the best route because without it... You do zero damage because you're dead the moment they touch you. Or Valla, without her cookie cutter build, she doesn't stand a chance against the other assassins. Zeratul is the same, you need to maximize damage and burst isolated targets... Or you get ripped to shreds.

I am level nineteen already and can honestly say, that this game took my bad impressions from before I played it and had me eat them.

My biggest problem with the game at the moment are as DevliN said, cookie cutters. You need to build the hero a very specific way to compare with the other heroes, it's almost like they were designed that way. Would like to see what they advertised, that you could build your hero according to the match. If you don't build Illidan like this, you will probably lose. The rest of his talents, and his other ultimate, are horrible in comparison. You can switch out the level 20 talent for Resurgence, that's about it.

EDIT: Forgot to say that the current ammunition system is horrible, it takes far too long for them to regenerate ammo and I consistently see them without ammo. Not sure if they regenerate each shot extremely slowly or reload them all at once, but they are always out of ammunition if they are at the front of the wave for longer than 5 minutes.

EDIT2: A lot of people seem to be complaining about prices. I have seen plenty of people with 1800 to 3000 riot point skins, you do know that's 20 to 30 dollars, right? Or that heroes are 10 dollars. Aren't a majority of heroes in League of Legends 9+ dollars? If they aren't, they are mostly above 5 with some of the oldest and least popular going down to 3 dollars. So... Pretty much the same as Heroes at the moment.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Mar 22 2014, 6:38 am by LoveLess.

So, Longer battles requiring good decision making and teamwork to win in the end. I'll have to wait and try the open beta when it comes out to see. These sort of things are hard to get a feel of just by reading or watching. However, I'm still disappointed at the heroes' speeds. They are too slow and, from a spectator's perspective, the fights aren't interesting enough because of it. Yes, I'm sure there're still skill shots and whatnot, but as a spectator who doesn't know anything about the abilities, I don't see any quick plays or narrow escapes very often. Meh... again, I need to wait till i get my hands on this and try it out.

I'm really glad that team levels and talents are working out and have the potential to be balanced and polished up. I feel like team level is interesting, and talents are much better mechanically than items. Hopefully, as they rebalance the games, heroes will have a lot more viable builds than they do now.


@Price. I understand that the prices reflect those of LoL. However, as a non LoL or DOTA player, I find them too expensive. Borderlands 2 has Season Passes for $20, and that includes 11 more levels and 4 more campaigns, one being the infamous Tiny TIna's Assault on Dragon Keep. TF2 Hats mostly cost $5-10 from the store, but many people sell them in terms of keys. A key is only $2.50, and they always go on sale during the summer and Christmas. In other words, I do not expect anything cosmetic to be >$10 when I compare the prices to other games with cosmetic microtransactions.

By reducing how effective a high APM is, they are opening the game up to more players. Pretty sure that was the theory behind that design choice and it really isn't that bad. When you get your hands on the game, you will hardly notice a difference. As someone who is ranked in the top 10% in DOTA2 (that's not that impressive actually, just a number), I notice that in this game, you have a lot more time to make movements and decisions. That's not a bad thing to me.

DOTA2 has cosmetics ranging from a couple USD to thirty USD, League has the same thing, Smite isn't excluded here, and neither is HON. It's not like you need a twenty dollar Unicorn mount. You also unlock free color changes by progressing with the hero, which is good enough for people who do not want to pay money for the game. Really don't see what the big deal is, if you were like me and had bought Borderlands 2 when it first game out, that was $70 dollars for the game and the first season pass. Now it's what, $40 for the same deal? Prices will go down in time and people who want a discount, will get them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ue0AQAnC9o

lol loveless was that you at the start of this game bitching about the game being blackwater bay three times in a row?

Nice - gaming with day9!

They receive 1 ammo every game second. AfaIk, the game is played in "normal" game speed, right? Then it would be 1 real time second, too. Towers can hold 10 ammo, townhalls (the fort things) can hold 20.

Yeah, I played with him a lot that day.


There is no way that is right, when they run out of ammo, they go into some kind of downed state where they do not attack at all. If they have to recharge their ammo for 10 real time seconds altogether, that still doesn't sound right.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 23 2014, 8:18 pm by LoveLess.

I got into the alpha yesterday and I've only been playing a few practice games against bots so far (they're really bad). So far it's been a little better than I had expected, though it's a bit too simple for my liking.

Pros:

• I really like the talent system. Every nth level you get the choice between two upgrades that improves one of your abilities or the champion in general.
  
• The maps are pretty neat. I've played three different ones so far (dunno how many there are). The main objective is always the same, but there's different side objectives that will assist you if you do them.
  
• I also think the merc concept is pretty cool. Having neutral jungle monsters fight for you is nice

Cons:

• The graphics makes it look like it's made 10 years ago. Then again that goes for every Blizzard game made in the last five years...
  
• The absence items makes the amount of customisation rather limited.
  
• Your champion is finding it very hard to stay on target. If the enemy you're attacking walks outside your attack range, your champ will start shooting something else or just stand there if there's nothing in range rather than chasing.

Valid points, but the biggest problem I have with the game at the moment is a lack of a map that I can call "classic." The side objectives are fun at first, but they completely ruin people's sense of objectives by overwhelming the idiots.

Have not played this game much since I went on vacation since premades are the way to go and everyone has their established groups. Pub games are just horrible to play without a good ranking system and how broad the range of skill is.

Then don't even get me started on the heroes, they are either amazing, or useless.

So, 1-2 days after the big artifacts patch, my competetive team was matched against a team around two sc2 professionals and brothers Lucifron and Vortix on the new Garden of Terror map. It was out second or third match on that map (most likely the same for our enemy), but it turned out to be an amazing match.

It was picked as the match of the week by TZGamer, so I hope you enjoy it.

Nice Ahli. I didnt think replays were available in alpha yet though??? How is this video possible?

There are replays and it is possible to run them (at least the ones of the current patch, older ones might not be playable anymore).

How to watch a replay:
1. Create a shortcut of HeroesSwitcher.exe in the Support folder of Heroes installation.
2. Edit the shortcuts properties, you have to add " - run " to the end of the target path. Press OK.
3. Start Heroes. Now drag and drop a replay file onto the shortcut and Heroes should load it.

Replays have a lot of bugs and Blizzard is aware of that, hence they didn't officially release them. But it should help a lot to fix bugs, if they can just look at the problems ingame themselves.