So I've decided to check out this game recently. I am fifteen games in, so here is my knee jerk reaction. I've never played League, but I have way too many Dota 2 games under my belt although I haven't touched the game for nearly a year and a half (almost two years if you don't count the New Bloom binge weekend). If you don't want countless "Dota does this, HotS does this" allusions, then skip this post.
+Matches are short. I think the longest match I had was about 29 minutes, with the shortest being about 13 minutes. Many games hover around the 20 minute mark, which is less than half of a Dota round. I find this a huge positive, as I hated having to dedicate basically an hour of my time to a game where the outcome is possibly decided within the first ten minutes.
+Objectives are interesting. Although most objectives are "collect X and turn it in" or "channel at this spot" there are enough twists that make them different. The best one is Eternal Conflict, where you have an angel and demon square off against each other and you have to assist in the battle. It's a very creative idea and a blast to play when both teams are in the center and you are trading blows between each other and the giant NPC. I think they are also balanced fairly well. Obtaining an objective turns the game in your favor, but the other team is still very much in the game. Though the pirate ship one is a bit OP. You can basically nuke their core to win the game.
+The visuals are nice. I guess it depends on whether or not you like Blizzard's artwork, and it certainly looks like what you'd expect from a Blizzard title. Heroes are noticeably larger than in Dota, which makes it easier to see where everyone is. The maps each have a visual flair that matches the theme and it changes everything from the buildings to even the creeps.
+The leveling system is pretty controversial since outleveling your opponent and having more gold than them is a huge aspect of MOBAs, but I think it works well for this game. It is actually quite similar to how you level up characters in Blizzard games. There are a lot of Paladins in WoW, but what sets them apart is what skills they pick and what attributes they focus on. Your Raynor may be completely different in terms of skills when compared to another Raynor in the same match.
+Personally, I like having your basic spells straight from the beginning. I know a big part of MOBA strategy is how you prioritize your skills, but you end up with all of them anyways. You can already do so much at the very beginning and you don't feel handicapped.
+There's no down time. In Dota, I often had no idea what I should be doing at some particular moment. We had board meetings discussing where the enemy team was (hint: it was always Roshan). The first eight minutes or so consists of you just trying to get strong enough where you don't die in one hit. In HotS, there is so much you can do right at the start of the battle. Some people say it reduces the amount key decisions you have to make, but it's good for a "pick up and play" type of game.
+Picking your hero before you join a party is a cool idea. It may result in some long queues, but there were a lot of times in Dota where I wanted to play a specific character or even a role, but couldn't due to the team composition. So basically an hour spent playing someone I didn't want to play. Though damn people stop picking Diablo. HE'S IN EVERY MATCH SOMETIMES TWICE.
+Lost Vikings are in this game, though I need some Rock N Roll Racing characters as well. The "Blizzard Classic" heroes are probably going to be slim pickings. They have Lost Vikings, Rock N Roll Racing... that's it. Maybe they can put some Overwatch characters in eventually.
-The game is very barebones in terms of content and features. I know LoL has about a six year head start, and Dota 2 has had years of updates as well, but I feel like it's missing many key features. It only has 30 or so heroes, which is like 1/5 of what LoL and Dota have. I almost never played the same character twice in a row in Dota, but you pretty much have to here. They do give some incentive for playing one character many times, but I don't think it makes up for how few there are.
-The menu UI is so plain and a bit obtuse. When I started the game up, I was taken to the home menu, where people were searching for parties. I joined one and had a game, but then I wanted to back out and make a new party. How do I do that? Was that really the home screen or just at the start up? How do I go back? Oh it's the logo on the top. I just had to guess. This is what Dota 2's menu looked like in 2012 when it was still in beta.
It visualizes everything I need and shows me what I need to click on to do what. It's very clean and straightforward. Not to mention it got
a sexy overhaul recently.. Watch that webm. It looks so professional. If I had to show a video game menu to the president, I would show him that.
-Speaking of UI, the ingame UI is also cumbersome. For one, it really needs to show how much mana a spell costs on the spell icon. I know it tells you when you hover over it, but I don't have time to do that in the middle of a big battle where I need to maximize my mana. I know this game is rather spell spammy, but it is still important. Not to mention they type up a paragraph saying what each thing does. That's fine, but it should at least immediately tell me if it's a target spell, AOE, skillshot or what.
-The flow of the game is a bit hard to grasp. In Dota, you have you laning phase where you try to get some levels and skills, you have your wandering phase where you help out your teammates and try to disrupt lanes, and then you go from there based on what's happening. It's fairly direct. Here I'm not sure what I should be doing when the game starts. Some people start trying to attack heroes, others fight creeps, others do god knows what. I'm not sure when I should be doing what and where. It feels less like tug of war and more like 52 card pickup.
-Not a fan of the free weekly heroes and general monetization method. They basically copied LoL. I can't blame them for that. LoL has made more money in the past five minutes than I have all year. But Dota does F2P better than perhaps any other game. You get ALL the heroes immediately. No BS. Not to mention you periodically get free customization items just for playing (equipable items > skins, although some skins do look nice). At the beginning they seem to give you quite a bit so you can buy a hero or two when you first start off. I have around 7,000 gold after 15 games (and the tutorial), so I can get a couple of heroes right now if I wanted to. But I have a feeling I am going to hit a brick wall where gaining new heroes will be a huge grind. You only get like 20 gold per game too. TWENTY. It's like asking for an allowance and your mom flicks a quarter at you.
-Matchmaking. This is just a goofy mess. I get paired up with people of random levels and it takes quite a while to even get into a damn game. I have no idea why it takes so long. Are only ten people playing HotS? When people are searching for parties I only see maybe three or so people wanting to join. Where is everyone?
-I feel like it could use a bit more complexity. It feels less like I need to make important decisions in terms of items and goals and more about just getting objectives and winning teamfights. I think they could have easily introduced items in this game. Along with your skills at certain levels, maybe you can pick from a list of items. These items are the same among all heroes, so you can really diversify your build in interesting ways. These items can be passive or active. I think you could implement it without it being overwhelming.
I think HotS is a pretty interesting game and I am definitely going to play it more. It still feels a bit unfinished and kind of sloppy compared to Dota, but I think a lot of the major decisions made that subvert MOBA expectations work pretty well. I think it's different enough that it would be worth recommending and it's not just "Dota for babies." Hopefully Blizzard can make it more content rich in the future. I'm still kind of waiting for them to do that with Hearthstone though.
