As someone who would play on my own and be a MOBA n00b to boot, how welcoming is the community?
Nope, Win10, running in Boot Camp on a MacBook Air toaster from 2014, lol.
But Zagara!?
My biggest problem with this game is that it feels like it has no depth compared to league of legends or DOTA 2. The heroes are far too simple and lack depth, there are no decisions to make in regards to items just limited talent trees, there is no last hitting so lane interactions are very stale, and the maps are based around lame objectives that aren't fun such as the pirate bay level. Everything just feels so limiting and dumbed down compared to League or DOTA 2 that I can't enjoy it compared to its competitors.
The problem with HotS is that it feels like nothing I do matters. I mean, I know in the back of my brain it does, but there's no immediate reward when I make a good play or do something good individually. Everything is wrapped up in teamplay. No one can carry. And because of that, it often feels like a shallow experience.
Just not a rewarding game to me. But if you like it, more power to you.
Former lol player here. Tried Heros in open beta and this is exactly how I felt. I guess Blizzard wants to draw a different audience other than existing lol or dota players since there are too many design decisions that are in odd with the core idea of lol or dota.
I like it, but I don't have time for MOBAs in my life. Matches are too long, and there are other games I enjoy playing more.
Well a good thing of HotS is that matches are not long at all. Usually 15-25 minutes.
It's fine. Engine is bad, performance is bad, F2P model is bad. Game itself is fine, but I don't see much reason to play it. I stopped playing a few days after Greymane came out (and only really put 20 hours in or so).
I've tried every MOBA enough to know which one I want to play.
Well a good thing of HotS is that matches are not long at all. Usually 15-25 minutes.
If only I had friends to play it with me.
The game is great, way more streamlined than stuff like DOTA or even League, which makes it far less overwhelming.
The only problem is that the game makes you pick your character BEFORE you match with your team mates. This often leads to the game sticking you with a completely fucked team comp. I can't even count the amount of times I've been matched with no tank or no healer.
Heroes of the Storm is by far my favourite moba after years of LoL and then DotA2.
There's no denying that DotA2 and LoL have larger complexity in terms of overall mechanics, but, at least, in my opinion, most of these mechanics are just there for complexity's sake. It's not even last-hitting, it's the concept of: jungling, runes (LoL), secret shop, stacking creeps, denying that are not only counterintutive, they add outward complexity, instead of focusing on the basic complexity of teamwork, map movement, attacking and defending.
When I see an instrinsically-complex game, I think of Rocket League which has very basic mechanics but the depth lies in the interaction between the players and the ball which requires a huge amount of mastery.
In my opinion, major Mobas are now so complex that by the time you master the surface-level skills, like last-hitting, you don't really learn the coordination, team-based work, things that I think a good competitive game should be about. That's where HotS excels.
Sure, it's so much easier to pick up a hero in Heroes of the Storm and play him-her rather well after a couple of games. There's no complex timing of attacks, proper item builds or strategies to learn. However, what it means is that the players can now focus more on working together as a team instead of spending hours practicing mad Io or Sniper skillz. It's just a totally different game at this point, much faster one and honestly, quite stressful.
Just to add on what's changed recently: many new heroes and older heroes with reworks now have a solid outplay potential. You can now show off your skill a bit more with questing talents which usually tap into a person's individual Hero mastery. The game is slowly turning from prolonged sustained teamfights towards a more visceral combat with much faster blow-ups and clutch-plays. I think that the current direction is good as individual's contributions are more rewarding.
I like it a lot but it runs like crap for me on hardware that it shouldn't struggle on at all. Performance actually gets worse the more I turn things down.
Haha, I do the same with Murky. Love that little Murloc.My favorite move in HotS is to pretend you're on a role play server. I have had a ton of fun waddling around the map as Murky, communicating only in pings and "mrgl"s. People have usually been game for it.
But we're your friends!If only I had friends to play it with me.
Games are generally pretty short! Around 20-25 minutes on average, or 15 for a stomp.I like it, but I don't have time for MOBAs in my life. Matches are too long, and there are other games I enjoy playing more.
I get a stable 30fps on low settings. I'd of course love 60fps on max, but consistent frame rate is vital. I really can't explain it, there must be some weird bottleneck issue or something, because my CPU is a crappy 1.6ghz dual core.What do consider good performance then?
I am running it on a quad core i5 skylake and a 4GB 960M, on high settings at 1080p it hovers around 60 and feels playable but then when certain things happen it drops to the 40's the 20's and generally struggles with 4+ players on screen.
If I then turn things down the framerate gets worse, with everything on low, sound channels down, spell effects down it never even reaches 60fps and it still fluctuates all over the place to a worse degree than running on high settings.
When so much of what happens is decided in team fights I can't deal with half second freezes and grim frame dips in those scenarios and it usually ends up in a mis click or stupid death.
I have read someone say it's tied solely to CPU clock speed and that my 2.3GHz quad core would be fine if it was even a 2.8 Ghz dual core. There is something off about the optimisation and it basically means if i play any character that requires precision I can be sure that the performance of the game will ruin any enjoyment.
Woo, glad to hear it! If you're a fan of SC, I think you're going to love HotS. It feels very similar, and there are a ton of great SC heroes. They just added Alarak and two StarCraft maps which are really awesome for SC fans. Also they only recently started adding Overwatch stuff, but Tracer is in and Zarya comes out tomorrow. There's a skin for Nova that turns her into Widowmaker, too.Thanks for the write-up, OP. You've secured my interest!
I'm totally new to MOBAs, but Blizzard has a certain style and quality to their stuff that's quite endearing, so I'm definitely gonna give this a shot. Glad to hear it's accessible.
I'm also a fan of SC and OW universes, so curious to see how those characters carry over.
OT2 is here for anyone that's interested. Seems pretty active.
Love this post. And they removed Haunted Mines because it was too easy to snowball and ended too quickly/easily. If you knew to push the lane your golem was on and had Sylvannas you were likely going to win. I liked the map too, more than BHB or Garden at least. But luckily both of those are out too. I'd like to see Mines return after a rework.I have played Dota 2 for 3070 hours, but I really got burned out on it. Have played maybe 15 matches this year. So I started to play Hots again a week or two ago. I used to play in beta and in preseason earlier. I find Hots to be much less frustrating than Dota. Biggest reason might be the community. Sure I meet an asshat or two occasionally in Hots, but it's nothing compared to Dota or even Lol that I also tried for few games. I think the shorter matches are a factor in this, maybe even the casual/simple nature of the game. The worst elitists stay crying in Dota or Lol. I think Dota 2 is best game of these three, it's most complex too. But it has come to a point that I want to avoid the frustration Dota brings. And it differentiates itself more from Dota than Lol does, so it feels that I'm playing a different game rather than just worse version of Dota.
At first I was bummed out by having to unlock heroes, but to be honest I don't need that many heroes to choose from at a time. With the free rotation heroes I have over 20 to pick from right now and those cover every role and playstyle possible. Just level up those free rotation heroes too to gain gold! Ofcourse Dota 2 still does this best with every hero available from the start. And even when the hero you are interested in isn't in free rotation you get to try them out without buying them, so you don't need to get heroes blind.
But yeah, I'll add another recommendation to this topic. Even if you aren't a fan of MOBAs and especially if you are mostly afraid of the complexity and community, Hots could be the answer.
Oh I want Haunted Mines map back :I Why did they remove it? Had 75% wins in there, loved it!
Those are actually the two highest win rate heroes in the game at the moment, lol. Yes, Hammer (Siege Tank) is the highest win rate hero. Her AA build is really strong when played smartly.This is the one reason I can stomach playing and enjoy this compared to the other games in the genre.
It's also a massive love letter to Blizzard fans. I play Lost Vikings or Siege Tank when I play.
That's okay! Try some AI games with human allies! They're still fun!I want to get into HotS but I absolutely suck at Mobas D:
Honestly, I think they could do it. The level of competition wouldn't be as high, and they'd have to rework some heroes and change a lot of timings, but it could be incredibly fun on console.Put it on PS4 with Diablo 3 controls (or Lara Croft iso controls) and I am in. I don't play PC games that require a keyboard and mouse though.
HiRez gets my money in the Moba space right now. SMITE is so damn good on PS4.
Great post.Heroes of the Storm is by far my favourite moba after years of LoL and then DotA2.
There's no denying that DotA2 and LoL have larger complexity in terms of overall mechanics, but, at least, in my opinion, most of these mechanics are just there for complexity's sake. It's not even last-hitting, it's the concept of: jungling, runes (LoL), secret shop, stacking creeps, denying that are not only counterintutive, they add outward complexity, instead of focusing on the basic complexity of teamwork, map movement, attacking and defending.
When I see an instrinsically-complex game, I think of Rocket League which has very basic mechanics but the depth lies in the interaction between the players and the ball which requires a huge amount of mastery.
In my opinion, major Mobas are now so complex that by the time you master the surface-level skills, like last-hitting, you don't really learn the coordination, team-based work, things that I think a good competitive game should be about. That's where HotS excels.
Sure, it's so much easier to pick up a hero in Heroes of the Storm and play him-her rather well after a couple of games. There's no complex timing of attacks, proper item builds or strategies to learn. However, what it means is that the players can now focus more on working together as a team instead of spending hours practicing mad Io or Sniper skillz. It's just a totally different game at this point, much faster one and honestly, quite stressful.
Just to add on what's changed recently: many new heroes and older heroes with reworks now have a solid outplay potential. You can now show off your skill a bit more with questing talents which usually tap into a person's individual Hero mastery. The game is slowly turning from prolonged sustained teamfights towards a more visceral combat with much faster blow-ups and clutch-plays. I think that the current direction is good as individual's contributions are more rewarding.
This is only if you play quick match. They added unranked draft if you don't want to play ranked, which gives you all of the fun strategic benefits of draft but without the added stress. Most people only play quick match to try new heroes or play their selfish picks that they know they won't get in draft.The game is great, way more streamlined than stuff like DOTA or even League, which makes it far less overwhelming.
The only problem is that the game makes you pick your character BEFORE you match with your team mates. This often leads to the game sticking you with a completely fucked team comp. I can't even count the amount of times I've been matched with no tank or no healer.
*thumbs up*Eh. Tracer is in it and that cool co-op guy. I'll give it a shot. The only thing it'll cost me is time.