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Heroes of the Storm |OT2| Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
- Thread starter Nirolak
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Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
His portal shenanigans were hilarious and impressive on an apm lvl.
Don't you dare dis my waifu chromie the GOAT.
brickwalker0
Member
i had a lot of fun playing as Kharazim with a really good Sonya player for a couple games. really any melee + monk is fun.
Cho'Gall maybe?
Kerrigan + Jaina can have some fun wombos.
Tass + Artanis for never dieing.
If you like playing illidan or sonya try tass with either, very fun
If you guys have a hard time figuring out solo tass supp try rehgar
We've done Illidan Tass, but solo Tass can be pretty questionable in QM. Rehgar could work though.
Ans we've of course played tons of ChoGall, representing that master skin!
As Milly said, him and I have actually talked about this. I don't know that there is much to discuss on a day-to-day basis with this game or most games.
I know in the past we've gotten heat from former regulars/semi-regulars about the thread being cliquish or too many in-jokes/memes, but when I look at the other major gaming community OT's I see the same thing. Not a whole lot of talk about the actual gameplay in most games because there's just not much room for discussion.
You can post a scoreboard, or Facebook post a recap of your game, but in the end there's not a lot to talk about regarding it. You're pretty much at the devs mercy to release new content or make changes/patch for new discussion, and esports helps add onto that for another facet.
The thing that I think saddens me most about what may be a dip in HOTS esports is that it was easily #3 in MOBAs with a bullet earlier this year. As viewership dips, though, it'll possibly be overtaken by Smite. It's a petty thing, but I liked being #3.
Do you have really high MMR or really low MMR? Anything 3300-3500 and above or anything 1700 and below definitely take more time. The higher end cause of a lack of players, the lower end because of the lack of diversity of heroes picked if I were guessing.
GAF lyfe and reddit lyfe 101. Every game must be 100% free of issues and feature complete on the day of launch or your money was wasted.
I think they've done a hell of a job with the game itself in the past year. It's came a long way.
The esports life or death is just a footnote to this game. In the end, the vast vast VAST majority of players never watched it outside of Blizzcon. I'm not sure the esports exposure even attracted anyone to the game, sad as that is, so it may be in Blizzard's best interest to steer away from it as it may truly be a sunk cost. It looks like despite a lot of us initial opinions on OW it's going to be the better bet with that kind of money for them moving forward, if they keep iterating on the lessons they learned with SC2 and HOTS esports.
If the pros pull out I will personally be less interested, but that's on me, not Blizzard. They've done and continue to do the things they need to in order to make the game better.
It would be kind of ironic if they set up all these systems in game that the pros have clamored for and to mirror the pro game as was requested, but then the pro game begins to dry up though.
Oddly enough, the esports stuff is what got my wife into the game. I was watching one of the last qualifiers before blizzcon and for whatever reason she was totally enthralled. Now she watches even more of it than me. Though I seriously doubt there's too many other people that got into the game that way.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
The e sports keeps me interest and invested in the game even if I don't play for weeks at end. I wouldn't have bought 3 of the last 5 heroes released otherwise.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
You're one to talk.
Yea I still highly doubt overwatch is going to be big in esports, it's popular right now, but mostly because it's new
And honestly I don't think that blizzards esports treatment or twitch or the proscene for hots is going to change that much, it's probably not gonna grow to take any more of the market share, but I never expected it to. Even if current big named pros/personalities drop out more people will rise up to take their place. I think it'll always be on the level of any blizzard esport, that is to say similar to Starcraft or wow pvp... And that's fine, it doesn't have to be league or Dota to be successful and certainly doesn't make the game unfun.
The issue with hots that I feel like doesn't get talked about enough (even though it does get talked about) that actually has potential to hurt the future of the game are the design issues (i.e. QM team comp/hero classification/support meta shit) and the technical issues. Like micro stutter for example, it's the fucking worst, been there since alpha.... Like for people who love the game they can put up with it, but for a large portion of the player base these little things are the things that keep people from coming back after a new games come out...
And back to overwatch, it's super frustrating to me how silky smooth that game runs compared to heroes janky ass shit... Like why the fuck can't they fix it for hots? How is this unsolvable for blizzard in 2016? Like why does it take 2 years to get HL and oh by the way replays, observer UI, in game drafting, reconnects, unplayable heroes (because they're so old and bad), shitty ptr experience, supremely poor optimization, and general lack of progress in any of these areas. But I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and be like: making games is hard, and the core gameplay is super fun, they'll figure it out eventually, and then overwatch comes out and runs so incredibly well that it has me wondering if theyve even triedto fix the jankiness in heroes.
I don't know for sure, but I think a lot of even the most dedicated hots fans here can probably agree that the game absolutely should be in a better place then it is now, and that feeling makes me not even want to play it when there's other games that actually are living up to their potential.
And honestly I don't think that blizzards esports treatment or twitch or the proscene for hots is going to change that much, it's probably not gonna grow to take any more of the market share, but I never expected it to. Even if current big named pros/personalities drop out more people will rise up to take their place. I think it'll always be on the level of any blizzard esport, that is to say similar to Starcraft or wow pvp... And that's fine, it doesn't have to be league or Dota to be successful and certainly doesn't make the game unfun.
The issue with hots that I feel like doesn't get talked about enough (even though it does get talked about) that actually has potential to hurt the future of the game are the design issues (i.e. QM team comp/hero classification/support meta shit) and the technical issues. Like micro stutter for example, it's the fucking worst, been there since alpha.... Like for people who love the game they can put up with it, but for a large portion of the player base these little things are the things that keep people from coming back after a new games come out...
And back to overwatch, it's super frustrating to me how silky smooth that game runs compared to heroes janky ass shit... Like why the fuck can't they fix it for hots? How is this unsolvable for blizzard in 2016? Like why does it take 2 years to get HL and oh by the way replays, observer UI, in game drafting, reconnects, unplayable heroes (because they're so old and bad), shitty ptr experience, supremely poor optimization, and general lack of progress in any of these areas. But I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and be like: making games is hard, and the core gameplay is super fun, they'll figure it out eventually, and then overwatch comes out and runs so incredibly well that it has me wondering if theyve even triedto fix the jankiness in heroes.
I don't know for sure, but I think a lot of even the most dedicated hots fans here can probably agree that the game absolutely should be in a better place then it is now, and that feeling makes me not even want to play it when there's other games that actually are living up to their potential.
I've said it before and I will say it again, the game is just now (with the hero league update) up to the level it should have been on release. The engine is a relic, with its terrible reconnect system, but it is what it is. The OW engine feels good to play on, and I enjoy playing it right now, but I still love hots and will be back to playing it a lot once the patch drops. I hope they have some big plans for this game but who knows.
This games potential for cross marketing their games is just too fucking juicy for them to not polish it to a diamond. I wonder how much this game engine holds them back, if at all? I am really ignorant on that kind of stuff.
This games potential for cross marketing their games is just too fucking juicy for them to not polish it to a diamond. I wonder how much this game engine holds them back, if at all? I am really ignorant on that kind of stuff.
I havent really felt the urge to play this game in a pretty long time, not really related to the jankiness or meta or whatever in my case, just not feelin it
Part of why i liked following this game was to see where it would go, but it kind of feels like it's arrived already so. I still enjoy thinking about the game and watching high lvl play but also not as much as before. Kind of want to see hots reinvent itself the way league does every season and the way dota does when it patches, but it's a really involved and difficult thing to do for the way they've built this game (only real one i remember is scaling changes and they kinda just changed it accross the board, was still interesting tho)
Might play more when arena comes out
Ppl are probably predisposed to calling this game out in part due to not living up to the same standards of other mobas, but i dunno if that's related to success in a meaningful way, smite shipped smoothly and full of necessary features (and pretty good esports support and monetization models) but they are pretty neck and neck with heroes in viewership at least, dunno about profit (i think i read they are also in da money so there's that). But yeah an example of a company that "did it right" vs. one that "shipped incomplete" doesnt really net you much of a difference in success from my limited perspective.
Part of why i liked following this game was to see where it would go, but it kind of feels like it's arrived already so. I still enjoy thinking about the game and watching high lvl play but also not as much as before. Kind of want to see hots reinvent itself the way league does every season and the way dota does when it patches, but it's a really involved and difficult thing to do for the way they've built this game (only real one i remember is scaling changes and they kinda just changed it accross the board, was still interesting tho)
Might play more when arena comes out
Ppl are probably predisposed to calling this game out in part due to not living up to the same standards of other mobas, but i dunno if that's related to success in a meaningful way, smite shipped smoothly and full of necessary features (and pretty good esports support and monetization models) but they are pretty neck and neck with heroes in viewership at least, dunno about profit (i think i read they are also in da money so there's that). But yeah an example of a company that "did it right" vs. one that "shipped incomplete" doesnt really net you much of a difference in success from my limited perspective.
I think two weeks in it's safe to say that Overwatch isn't just popular because it's new. It's been consistently in the top 2-4 on Twitch since it dropped and is still pushing 40-60k viewers a day. It's been unbelievably successful (250,000 more subs than HOTS on reddit, the Twitch views, the fan art, the sales numbers, etc). Even with a precipitous drop it'll still be considerably higher than HOTS ever achieved which also, I would assume, will translate into a more viewed esports scene.
They had 34k and 40k+ viewers respectively for two LANs (one EU, one NA - their very first to boot) the week of launch. The last time we saw those numbers were the regional qualifiers for Blizzcon last year/Blizzcon itself. I'm not saying it's going to be Dota 2 or League, but the insane popularity of that game all but ensures it's gonna shit on what HOTS accomplished as the #3 MOBA unless they fuck it up. Naturally, it has it's own issues to contend with to be a scene like HOTS did, but the base is much broader to draw from if they figure those out.
The issues you and many have with HOTS can't go away though. It's the engine itself. It wasn't meant to be it's own game, but it turned into it. I don't know how much money it saved them using a pre-built system on the front end, but it would be interesting to see an alternate reality where they built one from the ground up and see how much money that would've made them. I'm sure they are happy with the money they are getting, though. It's still my favorite, but damn if it doesn't hurt my feels seeing the "what might have been" if it had gotten this OW push.
I personally haven't been playing HOTS or Overwatch. When I've played I've played Marvel Heroes, lol, but that's for multiple reasons. No reason to HOTS til the update, and playing Overwatch is much more fun with friends and I don't catch you on when I am and any other time Milly doesn't particularly want to play OW so we play MH.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that HOTS is making a shitton more than Smite. The way Smite monetized itself is one reason, but the other is...well, Blizzard.
That's why I bolded your comment. Smite "did it right" but even doing it right can't compete with two established behemoths plus all the fan service and nostalgia of a huge dev like Blizzard. It couldn't even secure them 3rd place in the landscape once Blizzard went all-in. I don't think that had anything to do with Smite itself, it had to do with Blizzard's massive fanbase and this genre's built-in hooks keeping people playing the same game they already played (much like MMOS) due to the amount invested already. It's just too hard to start over, so Smite, despite having all the features and a new approach, couldn't make a ton of headway and less so once it had to contend with another entry with more clout in the gaming world.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Well this happened
It's just a HR person but AA was quick to protect their image
It's just a HR person but AA was quick to protect their image
RumblingRosco
Member
Is it possible to disable that new "Hold Alt for more info" thing? I don't like it
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Congrats!
I don't even know what this means or refers to.
That AA guy there was a tweet after he got let go
Alpha Centauri
Member
Just finished a match where i first picked rehgar, 2nd pick was morales. rest of the team filled out with a sonya, sylvanas, and xul. The morales was apologizing, thinking i was Thrall. Enemy team had anub, rexxar, lunara, tychus, and malfurion. More or less a normal team.
Oh my God did we wreck them. Bloodlust + stim + beserker on Sonya = death for whoever she targeted. Xul and syl just mopped up the rest. I get so used to standard comps that I forget how unorthodox and fun the game can be. The enemy team tried to dive on morales but it didn't work once.
so good. As a cherry on top, the enemy team were favored to win that game!
Oh my God did we wreck them. Bloodlust + stim + beserker on Sonya = death for whoever she targeted. Xul and syl just mopped up the rest. I get so used to standard comps that I forget how unorthodox and fun the game can be. The enemy team tried to dive on morales but it didn't work once.
so good. As a cherry on top, the enemy team were favored to win that game!
The other team fucked up bad w/ that draft. They drafted a low damage diving double frontline with no big gun DPS behind it- only Tychus (who has to get close) and Lunara (who has 0 burst.) There's also only the two tanks for CC. They let you just faceroll w/ Sonya. (Smart pickup.)
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Lunara has burst if you take the AA talents that increase the speed and stack the crits. It's not instant but it's a ton of damage in a relative short amount of time.
I'll never let you go milly.
Also, grata on the baby! way to create life you stud.
Also, about hots, I never felt like it needed or wasn't living up to other moba standards, I liked it for its differences. What bothers me is that it doesn't live up to traditional blizzard standards.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Now would be a bad idea to bow out Blizzcon is still the biggest gig and it's gonna prioritize NA casters a bit. Though I have to say impact on the scene aside I ain't gonna miss him particularly.
I can't believe my son had a kid. I'm getting old. Why'd you have to make me old, Milly? Got that new dad smell. It smells like diapers.
I listened to Jake's THOW podcast the last two weeks and it was way better. More like old school THH. The one with ZPs was particularly good. Him leaving the scene is a bigger blow than Zoia, cause he was the face of HOTS until the last few months when he fell out of favor with Blizzard or whatever. Not sure what the real deal was. I prefer JHow at this point, but if he backed out and did only Overwatch or Overwatch plus production behind the scenes for HOTS I wouldn't be shocked.
I listened to Jake's THOW podcast the last two weeks and it was way better. More like old school THH. The one with ZPs was particularly good. Him leaving the scene is a bigger blow than Zoia, cause he was the face of HOTS until the last few months when he fell out of favor with Blizzard or whatever. Not sure what the real deal was. I prefer JHow at this point, but if he backed out and did only Overwatch or Overwatch plus production behind the scenes for HOTS I wouldn't be shocked.
ZPs made it clear he wasn't happening and was flipping to Overwatch months ago.
It's totally a $/exposure thing right now where HOTS isn't providing these guys enough income to stick with it.
jaundicejuice
Member
Overwatch is the result of six years of development for a failed MMO, so it had a massive team of developers and a huge budget behind it, while Heroes of the Storm is the red-headed step-child that wasn't originally going to be a stand-alone game. It was a Starcrat II arcade game that was going to ship with Heart of the Swarm and it was likely made by an incredibly small team of people for next to no money, relatively speaking. One product clearly has a lot of internal buy-in--or upper-management desperate to recoup some of the development costs--just by looking at the amount of support and marketing behind it, while the other product clearly did not, HotS was "released" before it was feature-complete with a woefully inadequate amount of content. A lot of HotS technical issues, like the completely horrendous re-connect state and The Stutter (aka funtimes with deterministic lockstep), are legacy from its foundation, the SCII engine. The SCII engine allowed for rapid prototyping but likely provides a framework of limitations that makes implementing new features difficult and comes with some technical baggage that will always be there unless there's a significant overhaul or a new engine is made. Not an easy or cheap thing to do.
HotS must have some sort of traction because they are hiring more people for the team but the biggest mistake they made was that absurdly fast closed-Alpha, closed-Beta, open-Beta, "Released" cycle the game went through. People have certain expectations and some of those might be tempered if the game was still in open-Beta, which it is, instead of being "Released". By next year the game might be in a more genuine place for a release candidate. In another year we might have all of the features and enough content for HotS to be a relatively competitive MOBA.
jaundicejuice
Member
Medivh has a level 20 talent that lets Arcane Rift instantly delete creeps.
lol
If you land AR, it's insta-cooldown, if you miss it, it's only a 6 second CD. Medivh may only have one nuke but he can cast it so often it doesn't matter. He's gonna be able to harass heroes pretty easily in laning.
"This playmode is currently disabled"
"This playmode is currently unavailable"
Please wait while game mode is...fuck it, I'll go play Overwatch.
lol
If you land AR, it's insta-cooldown, if you miss it, it's only a 6 second CD. Medivh may only have one nuke but he can cast it so often it doesn't matter. He's gonna be able to harass heroes pretty easily in laning.
"This playmode is currently disabled"
"This playmode is currently unavailable"
Please wait while game mode is...fuck it, I'll go play Overwatch.
Is it? That'd be neat. I didn't even log into it TBH. Just assumed it was QM only as usual.
jaundicejuice
Member
QM and bot matches are disabled. Only Unranked and Ranked Draft are available...maybe. PTR is super wonky atm.
brickwalker0
Member
yeesh. i guess them?
I'd bet on the other. Stun, Blind, Stun, nothing, Silence vs a team that's all in on Illidan.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
I think it's a trap. Sylvanas makes Immortal pushes way better, Lunara with Nature's Culling and Tyrande's Hunter's Mark just melt it and ETC only needs to catch thrall or wait the sundering out.
brickwalker0
Member
cmon proto youre killin us >_>
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Monstrosity might have been an actual decent choice there given the babysitting Illidan needed.
Something that amazed me with Naventic the past weekend was how willing they were to burn UE to just channel an objective.
Something that amazed me with Naventic the past weekend was how willing they were to burn UE to just channel an objective.
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