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Heroes of the Storm Technical Alpha Thread: [Artifacts Removed]
- Thread starter fluffydelusions
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KojiKnight
Member
lets not bump this thread until they invite me
kthx
plz blizzard
Right-o I won't bump it.... oh... whoops.
Man I'm hoping the bundles will still be available after the wipe, otherwise I'm going to feel kind of cheated spending $30 even if that $30 is returned to my b.net balance.
Agreed!
Why would anyone want this game to be a DOTA2-clone? That's completely unnecessary.
I cannot stand most of DOTA2 mechanics. Specifically -- denial / every item having active power / item courier system / no inherent town portal
Those just add complications that I do not like.
I like LoL-style a lot more.
Just recall to town anytime and buy items directly from store without waiting for a physical courier to travel to you in the field. Also the courier can get killed.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you.
dave is ok
aztek is ok
To many people, multiple controllable units is too complicated.
Yeah this too, I don't like having another unit to control. It's just all the extra complexities that DOTA2 adds, not my style.
Also to be clear, I do not consider HotS to be my perfect mechanics either.
I actually consider LoL to be that:
-- I'm fine with last hitting; I don't like denial
-- Individual XP
-- Items, but mostly passive; I strongly dislike active items
-- Buying items directly from store
-- Inherent town portal
HotS is missing all of that, but I can tell I'm still going to vastly prefer HotS compared to DOTA2.
I actually consider LoL to be that:
-- I'm fine with last hitting; I don't like denial
-- Individual XP
-- Items, but mostly passive; I strongly dislike active items
-- Buying items directly from store
-- Inherent town portal
HotS is missing all of that, but I can tell I'm still going to vastly prefer HotS compared to DOTA2.
GoofsterStud
Member
This game is a let down. My first moba and I think it's to easy, to boring, and extremely buggy.
Hydranockz
Member
It's in Alpha in all fairness.
KojiKnight
Member
Did you really just complain about an alpha game being buggy?
Weird, I played up until around level 10 and didn't experience that many bugs (even if being in Alpha is a really good excuse). And what do you mean by to easy? Difficulty in a multiplayer game is a really weird concept when it comes down to the people you're playing with and against.
The Lamonster
Member
How are you guys getting alpha invites? Are you just random dudes like me or are you journalists or friends/family?
I find that porting from the lane to get my stuff, and then having to walk back to be more annoying. Most courier control is clicking a single button, and courier deaths are rare unless you're really stupid in where you call for it. I find that porting back to town all the time to be generally annoying. Probably one reason I favor Dota 2.
I'm just a random dude.
(Well I did get in the original Friends & Family Alpha for WoW back in the day, because I knew someone at Blizzard. Not sure if they still have my account flagged as higher priority now, but I don't think so.)
blitz64
Member
Random dudes are in the alpha.
I got in right after I did some fan art. Not sure if that had anything to do with it or not.
They are now flagging random accounts that have opted-in on a weekly basis, according to a post made on Reddit. There's already been at least two "waves" of these recently. The last one they did was right around when they took things down for patch/rotation which is happening again, so hopefully we'll see more people let in today.
KojiKnight
Member
Blizzard MVP, though I only got invited in when they started doing random people invites. The only reason I know it was because I was an MVP is because all of the other MVPs started posting in the Heroes forum on the same day as me
There is less competitiveness for games like these (in this genre), if the game has less complexity.
less complexity will equate to less effort required to concentrate in the game, would equate to broader player base who would have found the most optimal way to play the game(related to the variance of gameplay), would equate to less serious competition.
less complexity will equate to less effort required to concentrate in the game, would equate to broader player base who would have found the most optimal way to play the game(related to the variance of gameplay), would equate to less serious competition.
KojiKnight
Member
Less complex mechanics doesn't necessarily mean less complex gameplay. The added gameplay elements in individual maps help as well, as there are definitely reasons to go out of your way to chase them, or to completely ignore them in favor of rushing the enemy base while they are distracted elsewhere.
That said, I doubt the goal is to make it "competitive", at least at this stage. In fact, the official statement from Blizzard is that they are advising everyone AGAINST doing tournaments (at least for prizes) until it's out of alpha.
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/forum/topic/12504571461
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
I like ETC a lot
Love ETC for a warrior, but I need to play a few others.
Zeratul is pretty cool for assassins, but they all seem pretty neat in their own way.
Haven't played too many supports.
I really don't like Tychus, his skillset is just... I don't know. They just seem really strange.
KojiKnight
Member
Tyrande for support, Falstad for assassin. Falstad's "mount" ability is to fly directly to just about anywhere on the map, which greatly aids in getting to your allies that need help quickly. Tyrande is just awesome. Love starfall.
Falstad (flying around is fun, and his lightning Ult is great)
Nova (feel kinda dirty playing her sometimes... but its fun to sneak around and snipe people
Stiches (hook never gets old)
Tassadar (I like his abilities, and I feel like Im not completely gimped as a support either)
The talent system needs a lot of work I think, though. Most of the time I see only one viable option to choose. Especially with Ultimates, there are some that are completely underpowered compared to others (nova's triple tap compared to precision strike)
Fine Ham Abounds
Member
I pretty much only play Gazlowe and Abathur. Judging by the amount of times I'm getting slaughtered in VS, I should probably start playing Zeratul.
TurtleSnatcher
Member
Play more
You are judging it before you even get hero talents. At level 7 (outside the in match lvlimg) you unlock those talents, your options expand to 4-5 choices per tier.
Likewise, precision strike is not underpowered. You clearly haven't seen it with an organized group.
Let's say a Kerrigan is in your group. She grabs and bunch of people with her pull in skill and stuns them. You precision strike while a Brightwing drops a flare aoe and Diablo does his fire aoe. Kerrigan can also have a maelstrom ult.
Right there you can wipe a whole enemy team.
Another example instead of Kerrigan, using ETC and Moshpit with the other dmg combos. Or how about Gazlowe and his ultimate that pulls people in and explodes.
There are so many wombo combo kills that can wipe a team and allow for 5 enemy heroes to just march into your base while you all wait in a mid to late game re spawn timer.
Gazlowe, I think, is one of the strongest heroes. His can jungle like a boss
Abathur is okay. Tons of fun to play but hard to master. His effectiveness of jumping on others doesn't feel nearly as good in big team fights. His ult though is pretty amazing.
Purple Cheeto
Member
Maybe fun parts was the wrong way of saying it, but it just feels like so much of the strategy and impact of the early game is lost, so its 20-30 minutes of nothing interesting happening.
I dunno, I'm having a hard time explaining it properly I guess, but I just felt like my actions had no weight. Its like they wanted to make Blood Line Champions, with quests, but decided to keep the laning/tower aspect. I think if they just made it Blood Line Champions with Quests it might actually be more fun. The laning and tower pushing aspects of the game just don't seem fun/interesting/necessary with no real leveling, no items to buy etc.
I'm just a random dude who applied through the Blizzard site. I've played a ton of MobAs/Hero Brawlers/ARTS/LoMas whatever and beta tested a number. I used to work on games but I have no connections at Blizzard.
Hydranockz
Member
Is it still mostly US people getting in?
KojiKnight
Member
Yes, there is only a US server and it's a twitch based game so they aren't actively inviting non-North American users.
ChoklitCow
Member
Blizz is evil and sends an invite during the busiest time of year for me.
Sad Valla isn't "free" yet from my CE, as I played her exclusively at Blizzcon and loved it. Guess its time to learn and play other chars. Need to find a support I'm excited for.
Sad Valla isn't "free" yet from my CE, as I played her exclusively at Blizzcon and loved it. Guess its time to learn and play other chars. Need to find a support I'm excited for.
Fine Ham Abounds
Member
I mostly play Abathur in the cover near objectives or towers, drop mines around objectives and towers all over the map, and then support whoever is outnumbered until Bribe lights up and I tunnel to the highest level merc camp I can. His ultimate is really obnoxious if you have a Kerrigan or a Gazlowe in group you can double up skills with.
I tried Tassadar tonight, I really like him and seem reasonably decent with him so far.
I'm garbage at MOBAs, but I like how this feels a bit like early BGs in WoW to me since it's so objective based.
God I want to play this so bad. Anyone get an invite and have no interest in playing?
There are no codes. It's all account based.
I met someone about a week ago that works for Blizzard (woo perks of living in Austin), and he offered to get me on the list for the next wave of HotS Alpha keys. I got my email today sure enough, and got in and gave it a try. Here's my thoughts so far. Keep in mind I'm a seasoned Dota 2 player, so I might be making a lot of comparisons to that.
- The camera starts out locked on your hero, which is kind of frustrating seeing as I'm one of those people that prefers it unlocked in these kinds of games. They tell you how to unlock it in the tutorial, but it was kind of frustrating to have to wait until then to find out.
- Turn rates are pretty much nonexistent. In Dota 2 they are a game mechanic. It's not necessarily bad, as this is a different game, just different.
- You cannot animation cancel. I really hope they change tune on this one, as I cannot think of a single game in the Dotalike/ARTS/MOBA genre that doesn't have animation canceling. There is the "Stop" command with the S key, but that does not cancel attack or spell animations. In Dota 2 at least, there's many reasons that animation canceling is extremely important.
- Movement speeds are kind of slow. Dreams Visions compared it to Crystal Maiden from Dota 2 without Boots of Speed slow, and I agree with that comparison. The mounts are faster, but otherwise the unit movement speeds are kind of slow.
- No allied unit collision. Again, not really a bad thing, as the maps are nothing like Dota 2's map where that allied unit collision is necessary to do some techniques, but as someone that usually starts matches by walking in front of the creep wave and blocking it, it was off-putting to find I was unable to do that. However it does not really matter in HotS.
- The Talent and Heroic Ability systems are a different approach to basically handling items from other games. It does streamline the complexity of items. I know in Dota 2 it took me a long time to learn all the items, but I did get there. Some people that want to try something like this can be put off by complexity like that, and maybe this game is for them.
- This is a more overall observation. Even before I played it I could tell this game was probably not going to be competitive for a number of reasons. It is very much focused on teamfights, and very little strategies (other than the map objectives and such) can really originate other than "fight the enemy team to death and push" I do like that they have these objectives, as the modes are quite fun. I'll talk more about the maps in another bullet point though. I still think the game won't have a competitive scene, and honestly, that's okay. This is more of a game people will play for fun rather than going "tryhard" at it. People play TF2, and many other games that aren't particularly competitive but are just trying to be fun.
- My biggest gripe about the game, is still, and will always be the hero pricing model. I feel like they pull the "Oh, the heroes you want are 10k gold/$10, while the heroes you don't care about are 2k gold/$2" For instance I noticed the reward at level 3 was 2000 gold, so I looked through the hero prices out of curiousity. I really wanted Stitches if I could get him for free. Nope! 10000 gold for him! But who is 2000 gold? Only Malfurion and Raynor are 2000 gold, and I honestly didn't care to buy either of those heroes. Looks like I'm saving that 2k gold to eventually put toward Stitches. I wish Blizzard would realize that they really could make more money than they think off of purely selling skins/cosmetics to monetize the game. They really should take a page from Dota 2 on that one. Just in the couple of co-op bot games I played, there were people on my team that had bought alternate skins for their heroes.
- The maps are pretty cool. Again, this is probably another reason why the game won't be competitive, however they are fun to play. I played the Haunted Mine and Blackheart Bay ones so far. I really enjoyed the Haunted Mine one, with the two maps on top of each other like that. I thought it was really cool how you could actually look in the holes to the mineshaft from the top layer and actually see the heroes and monsters down there! You can click on both maps through the minimap, which is good. I think the maps are a cool idea, and look forward to seeing more of this.
- Some of the hero gameplay designs are pretty cool. My favorites in particular are Sgt. Hammer and Abathur. Abathur probably closest resembles something like Nature's Prophet or Tinker from Dota, but in a much different fashion. He's the HotS equivalent of "rat doto", for those that know what that means. Sgt. Hammer is the siege tank from Starcraft, and basically takes the concept of the Siege Tank and applies it to a Dotalike game. It works pretty well, and makes things quite interesting.
- UI and menus look nice, as well as the music. The presentation is very impressive for the game so far. However, my biggest gripe is the lack of keybindings in the settings. I'm not even 100% sure if voice chat is supported yet, but I could not figure out what key the voice chat key was.
Like I said, I know it's not trying to be Dota or LoL, it's a different game, and a casual one at that. Blizzard seems to understand to some degree that this game is very simplified and focused on the "fun" parts. Do I think Dota 2 is far and away better? Absolutely! However this will be fun to play in short bursts.
- The camera starts out locked on your hero, which is kind of frustrating seeing as I'm one of those people that prefers it unlocked in these kinds of games. They tell you how to unlock it in the tutorial, but it was kind of frustrating to have to wait until then to find out.
- Turn rates are pretty much nonexistent. In Dota 2 they are a game mechanic. It's not necessarily bad, as this is a different game, just different.
- You cannot animation cancel. I really hope they change tune on this one, as I cannot think of a single game in the Dotalike/ARTS/MOBA genre that doesn't have animation canceling. There is the "Stop" command with the S key, but that does not cancel attack or spell animations. In Dota 2 at least, there's many reasons that animation canceling is extremely important.
- Movement speeds are kind of slow. Dreams Visions compared it to Crystal Maiden from Dota 2 without Boots of Speed slow, and I agree with that comparison. The mounts are faster, but otherwise the unit movement speeds are kind of slow.
- No allied unit collision. Again, not really a bad thing, as the maps are nothing like Dota 2's map where that allied unit collision is necessary to do some techniques, but as someone that usually starts matches by walking in front of the creep wave and blocking it, it was off-putting to find I was unable to do that. However it does not really matter in HotS.
- The Talent and Heroic Ability systems are a different approach to basically handling items from other games. It does streamline the complexity of items. I know in Dota 2 it took me a long time to learn all the items, but I did get there. Some people that want to try something like this can be put off by complexity like that, and maybe this game is for them.
- This is a more overall observation. Even before I played it I could tell this game was probably not going to be competitive for a number of reasons. It is very much focused on teamfights, and very little strategies (other than the map objectives and such) can really originate other than "fight the enemy team to death and push" I do like that they have these objectives, as the modes are quite fun. I'll talk more about the maps in another bullet point though. I still think the game won't have a competitive scene, and honestly, that's okay. This is more of a game people will play for fun rather than going "tryhard" at it. People play TF2, and many other games that aren't particularly competitive but are just trying to be fun.
- My biggest gripe about the game, is still, and will always be the hero pricing model. I feel like they pull the "Oh, the heroes you want are 10k gold/$10, while the heroes you don't care about are 2k gold/$2" For instance I noticed the reward at level 3 was 2000 gold, so I looked through the hero prices out of curiousity. I really wanted Stitches if I could get him for free. Nope! 10000 gold for him! But who is 2000 gold? Only Malfurion and Raynor are 2000 gold, and I honestly didn't care to buy either of those heroes. Looks like I'm saving that 2k gold to eventually put toward Stitches. I wish Blizzard would realize that they really could make more money than they think off of purely selling skins/cosmetics to monetize the game. They really should take a page from Dota 2 on that one. Just in the couple of co-op bot games I played, there were people on my team that had bought alternate skins for their heroes.
- The maps are pretty cool. Again, this is probably another reason why the game won't be competitive, however they are fun to play. I played the Haunted Mine and Blackheart Bay ones so far. I really enjoyed the Haunted Mine one, with the two maps on top of each other like that. I thought it was really cool how you could actually look in the holes to the mineshaft from the top layer and actually see the heroes and monsters down there! You can click on both maps through the minimap, which is good. I think the maps are a cool idea, and look forward to seeing more of this.
- Some of the hero gameplay designs are pretty cool. My favorites in particular are Sgt. Hammer and Abathur. Abathur probably closest resembles something like Nature's Prophet or Tinker from Dota, but in a much different fashion. He's the HotS equivalent of "rat doto", for those that know what that means. Sgt. Hammer is the siege tank from Starcraft, and basically takes the concept of the Siege Tank and applies it to a Dotalike game. It works pretty well, and makes things quite interesting.
- UI and menus look nice, as well as the music. The presentation is very impressive for the game so far. However, my biggest gripe is the lack of keybindings in the settings. I'm not even 100% sure if voice chat is supported yet, but I could not figure out what key the voice chat key was.
Like I said, I know it's not trying to be Dota or LoL, it's a different game, and a casual one at that. Blizzard seems to understand to some degree that this game is very simplified and focused on the "fun" parts. Do I think Dota 2 is far and away better? Absolutely! However this will be fun to play in short bursts.
KojiKnight
Member
The reason why Valve can do go that route and Blizz doesn't though is because Valve doesn't make very many skins/items/etc themselves... They farm it out to their own customers to make and then they give them a small cut of the profits (something they don't mind because most times modders don't or can't be compensated for their work). They essentially have a staff of hundreds or thousands of artists for the cost of just a couple, and they don't even have to be paid up front!
Not every company can go the route of having your customers do all the work for your game (though Valve was brilliant in doing so, don't get me wrong!) and as more heroes are added, I'm fairly sure the price will probably be adjusted (Blizz has said they want to have 40 heroes in no later then beta)
Tatersalad
Member
Might be a silly question, but are they charging real life money right now when the game's in alpha?
I know Hearthstone charged money while it was in beta, but charging while in an alpha...just seems wrong to me.
I know Hearthstone charged money while it was in beta, but charging while in an alpha...just seems wrong to me.
How is it any different?
Tatersalad
Member
Not crazy about that either. The game's not complete, they'll obviously be a lot of bugs and changes. Even in this thread, some have talked about how buggy it is. "But it's an alpha! Of course it'll be buggy!" I just think if they're charging money for a game, there should be some expectation of quality and complete-ness. It's probably just me, but I hope the idea of charging money during an alpha / beta doesn't spread.
KojiKnight
Member
I paid $20 to play rust and it's in alpha. I paid $99 for GalCiv 3 and it's alpha. It's up to the individual to decide if the content available in any specific game is worth paying... Especially in a F2P game where nothing is truly behind a paywall (everything in the game can be unlocked with time).
That said, I bought the $30 starter bundle because I like blizz games and I like paying for things I enjoy.
TurtleSnatcher
Member
You realize that tons do it and not just Blizz. They shouldn't be the only ones called out here. Likewise, I sure as hell hope they test their pay system in beta/alpha as opposed to just hoping it works at final.
They offer probably more support than most other companies for a beta/alpha so I'm sure if something went off, they'd remedy it.
i need to play some more, but i liked it. i like the graphics and some of their ideas, but the "feel" of the game could use some more snappiness for sure. the whole team leveling at the same pace is kinda bleh to me. i like Diablo and the starcraft alien guy that shields people.
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