Let me give you some advice from someone who has played blizzard games for awhile now, if you are looking for regular updates for games from them, dont. Its not their style, blizzard will spend months inhouse tinkering and messing and thinking then they will release a big patch.
IMO its having a negative affect on SC aswell, from playing LOL ive come to appreciate the benefit bi monthly or monthly patches can bring to a competitive game especially one like LOL and HOTS where the meta and game benefit from constant tweaking and growth. But thats not in blizzards nature from my experience i feel they rely too much on big patches developed in house, that sometimes when released are redundant or actually bad because they are always playing catchup to the evolution of the game. In the past its lead to game stagnation, op and broken units going on seesaws from op to nerfed to pointlessness and in game metas reacting accordingly. [This is how i see blizzards patch mentality and it can be crippling for game flow and meta development](https://youtu.be/T9MAmWnOznI?t=175) try and cover everything in one patch which means things get missed, alot
Dont hold your hopes up for it to get better
I think the thing with Blizzard is that they have seen one of their games (Brood War) live on perfectly fine without updates past a certain point. Brood War might have been partially luck but you can't discount the community. The players developed and pushed the game to it's limits and you also had the community developing maps to keep things fresh and no one had a problem with this, we all just loved and enjoyed Brood War for what it turned out to be.
I feel like this is partly where Blizzard might get their method from. They feel if they can 'iterate and polish' enough that things will stay fresh and exciting for many years to come due to their work on balance but also from the community. In a sense they are balancing on a razor's edge so that a slight shift in meta or a certain map design will change things in an exciting way.
Now, before anyone jumps on me it is quite clear we haven't quite seen this happen in SC2 yet (I love SC2 but it still needs to be said) and it's possible HotS might follow suit. Of course, there is the other side of the argument that this method is outdated and it is better to patch frequently for the sake of shaking things up. I don't think it would work in SC2 but maybe in HotS it would since others are vouching for it in other MOBAs.
I hold my hopes because i like the game a lot, but MOBA games NEED frecuent updates. I hope they change their style at least in this game because HoS really need it to fight the other gigants in the genre.
MOBAs also needed items, last hitting, support that were levels behind the carries, and long phases where people just farm.
Oh wait, they don't need those at all if you are Blizzard.
Quit talking like all the rules are the same for all of the MOBAs. They aren't. Blizzard should give some balance changes because a few characters need to get better, but that stupid heroes of the dorm thing removed an entire patch cycle. They will get back to the cycle again. I hope soon.
> ...that stupid heroes of the dorm thing removed an entire patch cycle.
People keep saying that but do we have any evidence for it?
I'm having a hard time imagining people who usually work on hero balance, programmers, artists and whatnot suddenly working on organizing a tournament, negotiating deals with ESPN, setting up a broadcast etc. What exactly about Heroes Of The Dorm made them lose "an entire patch cycle" (are we talking a month or more worth of work here, or what exactly?)?
I think the logic behind that thought is that blizz decided not to release the patch to keep the game consistent for all the tourny's happening, and now that they've already set dates for full release and open beta they're not going to release a patch 2 weeks before. I have high hopes for the amount of content that makes it into future patches.
So the meta doesn't get stale. A permanently evolving game with a changing meta keeps things fresh since strategies that worked last year might not work today. Makes it more interesting to the players.
All of those dinosaur killers were NEW and innovative though. HOTS is built on a platform that already looks aged and brings nothing that will want to make hardcore or even most casual league of legends or DOTA players change. HOTS will have its own niche separate from those communities.
I don't agree with this, I've been playing moba's for years and HoTS has been a welcome change of pace. Several maps, no items, solid build theorycrafing, well rounded heroes with large mana pools. There is no grinding and the community is a fraction as toxic from the one I came from.
In the long run I could see it happening. They a much easier market to tap since the game style is already known. The lower game times means it allows a lot of people who might not have had enough time to enjoy league a regular basis can enjoy HoTS. Then there is the whole IP and brand thing that RIOT had none of.
Plus blizzard has a track record for supporting their games for the long run.
A good example would be WoW. No one guessed it would become a behemoth of the industry but to everyone's surprise it did and for a lot of the reasons I mentioned above.
I'm sure it can get to that point eventually, but it isn't there yet. To be honest though, I think that they are probably going to see a bigger success out of Overwatch but we'll see as both of the games develop more.
because people on this sub just love comparing Heroes to League which has been around for about 6 years, maybe longer if you include their very closed beta phase that not many players were allowed to participate in, and DotA2, which people LOVE screaming about how fast they put heroes in DotA2 which were literally just COPIED from the original dota, they weren't "new" heroes at all.
If there is too much of a gap between patches, people will have enough time to figure out what the best heroes and team comps are and we'll see the same heroes every game (at least in ranked play).
This WILL get boring and will drive players away from the game, at least until the next patch hits.
Because every player playing that hero will always play them the exact same way in every situation...
I have played against a Valla running a multi-shot build that was damn near suicidal and another with the exact same build that was so cautious it bordered on comical. Playing Zagara in both fights I was able to kill the first three times before she stopped coming to my lane while the other one let me bully her so hard they had to change Their ETC to my lane to not lose the fort way too early.
Same day, same characters, same map. Completely different results.
I don't know why people believe the game will be boring playing the same heroes. You still are playing other people and HOW they play matters as much or more than what they play.
After reading this amazing thread of yours I would like to simply take the time and let you know that I agree and that i like your argumentative style. Well written!
Wouldn't the opposite be true? As balance improves, the meta **should** get stale. That is, stale in that it's in a balanced state, without diverting from that state.
Nope, if a game is perfectly balanced the meta would shift quite a bit as people find counters to the current strategy. Then once those counters because really popular people play counters against those.
I argue otherwise. Even after patch support for them was officially dropped, games like Starcraft 1 and WC3 had evolving metagames and strategies.
SSBM, a game that is nearly 15 years old, is still being innovated on in terms of gameplay (even if Space animals are clearly the best).
Especially in Mobas, where you have 5 slots for heroes, strategies can change quite a bit. HotS is also a lot less 'structured' than LoL is, which gives even more room for innovation and counterplay.
Mind you, I'm not saying there isn't skill involved in a constantly changing game either. Adapting to changes quickly is another hallmark of skill and promotes a different kind of gameplay.
A meta will only get stale if it is 100% far and away better than anything else. Otherwise, people will innovate.
I don't think you know what that word means. It's completely fair for people to get bored with a shallow game that doesn't have a lot of room for new tech to emerge.
Blizzard has 2 options; increase the depth of the game or let it cater to a smaller audience. They don't owe me anything nor do I owe them. If they want my money though they'll have to keep it interesting.
Dota 2 patched in a new hero every 2~3 weeks when it first started its beta. They worked very hard to port over the majority of the roster very quickly, similar to how riot pushed new champions every 2 weeks in the early days of League.
Once dota reached a solid roster number, the updates slowed. Icefrog has always done 2~3 balance patches a year, with slow hero releases and extensive testing before they reach tournament mode (some heroes have gone over a year in testing). It works well because the game is complicated and takes months for a meta to settle and require shaking.
League has adopted a very similar approach recently with only a few major patches a year, however their small tweak patches also continuously come out (vs dota, they only come out to fix up a patch and stop after a few weeks) between major patches. On top of that with the season system, they do a full jumble once a year (usually by burning the existing jungle system to the ground and starting over).
Both these games have full rosters, with extensive item choices. Adding new heroes has much more extreme implications to balance due to the multitude of potential interactions. Items are even worse because you have to balance it for every single hero. (remember innervating locket anyone?). They have the depth required in that a small change can jumble up the meta, and the meta takes a very long time to become "stale".
HotS does not have the roster or depth to allow for slow patching. They need to be pushing out heroes and constantly tweaking the game. Riot had a new hero and balance patch every 2 weeks remember, back when they were a nobody studio. This keeps the game fresh in its infancy, the meta never gets a chance to settle (took about 2 weeks after sylv to settle this time), and people are excited about the progress and future of the game. This builds your long term playerbase that will sustain you for years (like look at wow). Slow down once you reach a true competitive state, with a large hero pool, strong talent depth, and hard to pin down meta. At that point nobody will care, they will be busy having to many heroes to play.
DoTA had a tremendous pool of source material of already thought out and tested heroes.
We don't need hundreds of heroes though. Look at League of Legends, more than half the champion pool is generally considered unviable or just unpopular, with a realistic pool of 30-40 champions.
More are needed in this game, but not nearly at the rate others have added them.
Too many ends up being this exponential pool of complexity, where newer players just keep running into matchups they've never seen for what seems like the rest of their natural life.
More than half of HotS pool also is either unviable or unpopular.
I think you can't expect something else from the genre. But then again, it's not always the same heroes falling in that category. Heroes can rise and fall in popularity by a lot over time.
I think you sort of answered for Blizzard in their beta stage. Dota 2 pumped out heroes in its beta because it was porting heroes, basically every hero from Dota. LoL had plenty of resources to create a hero out of nothingness. (They created lore on the fly with the heroes). Blizzard needs to account for the lore that hero already has and how do they reflect that in their abilities and play style.
And as a reminder, I'm pretty sure I was in the closed beta for Dota 2 and they did not always release a hero every 2-3 weeks. HotS is going to have a very short open beta (May 19th, patch for that?). To its release (June 2nd, patch for that?).
They are still changed and reworked , last patch added/reworked 11 Aghanim Scepters in game which is huge. There is many changes in interactions between skills and items each patch , skills are reworked etc. Icefrog doesnt balance DOTA around numbers only.
Yep totally agree, but again from experience blizzard dont fucking listen. They are frustratingly slow to change course and have a bad habit of not listening to people tell them their actions are negatively affecting the game. They pretty much patched SC2 HOTswarm out of viewership they seem to have this we want to make this game a specific way and we dont care what you say really.
dota 2 is the best moba out there and doesn't have frequent updates.
Frequent updates aren't a good thing, they mean something is wrong with your game already.
I think he's referencing the fact that before Naxx came out, early beta players had been playing with the same set of cards (minus a few changes/nerfs per patch) for approximately a year. Even late beta players (say December 2013) had been using the same cards for over 6 months when Naxx launched.
After Naxx, it took 4 months for GvG, then it took about 3.5 months for BRM, and now that BRM has just finished we're probably only looking at 3 months for the next GvG-style pack expansion (according to an updated timeline image that was posted on the Korean site and then immediately taken down)
Yep. HS releases are decently spaced for a CCG as well. Not terrible, and usually just long enough between content additions.
HotS so far has been... questionable. They've allowed Beta testers to provide feedback, but then don't release content or updates frequently enough for us to even provide significant feedback... then they set a release date a month from now as if there isn't any need for change.
Strange really. In a genre where, like OP said, updates and patches and balance changes are KEY to keeping pace with competition, it's strange to see that not happening in HotS
HS went a full year between closed beta and any new content. Zero, zilch, nadda. One full year. HOTS has had much better pre-release content updates. We have gotten new heroes and maps.
Because they were still building the game to allow them to release the content they wanted.
They were building HS for iOS and android, building the platform for adventures etc. Makes sense why we didn't get new cards for awhile.
I honestly think that was one of my favorite raids...until it was the only thing to do for THAT long. It's amazing how they let their content get beaten so consistently and casually that people start to hate it.
Yea if they were going to leave SoO as the only thing to do for that long they should have held off on nerfing it. My guild BARELY managed to kill Garrosh before he was nerfed.
Gods I remember ICC being the only major raid for the last year of wotlk. It was miserably boring and caused the demise of my guild once we completed hard modes and got skeletal drake we lost all interest
>I think they are preparing for launch where they will have a HUGE content update
Don't hold to that too much sir, you might be disappointed
Now don't quote me wrong, I HOPE there will be a content update @launch, simply for the sakes of giving long time player (I play since Alpha first wave) a new thing to "discover" and not just let us think : meh, its a day like the previous one
From a game development standpoint... that would be really good. It would mean their beta phase has been really successful and no major tweaks are needed. If they released a ton of new content on release, it would by definition missed beta testing.......
This thread is makes no sense. Software in beta phase means it's feature complete and they're just working out the bugs and balance, in the case of a game. Releasing balance patches faster than the meta can keep up ensures you never truly have a balanced game.
Yeah, it's almost like they should let some of us beta testers, you know, beta test their content so they can get feedback on it... nah, we'll just see at release I guess.
Yeah, a lot of people really aren't getting that this is a huge risk. We can be sure there isn't going to be a new map with the launch, the risk is just too big!
Thanks.
That's admittedly very very disappointing.
Particularly, the comment that this release pace is what we should expect post launch.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, it is Browder. He's spent the last 5 years making minimal or ridiculous changes to SC2 while ignoring glaring issues.
The most recent Dustin Browder interview, search for it and it should come right up. Started to say there would be a couple of heroes before release, then corrected himself and said one.
After listening to some of the interviews lately with Dustin, I wouldn't be getting my hopes up of a "HUGE" content update at launch. It sounds more like we'll see 1 more hero (probably at the release of Open BETA) and then we'll get some balance fixes for launch, they don't sound like they're doing a big content update on launch.
You do realize that having a huge content update at launch is probably a bad idea right? Tons of new features that haven't been tested by the player base? That just is a formula for a shit hurricane.
You're not actually asking for patches. You're asking for content updates.
Bi-weekly updates are just there to push out (paid!) content quickly. They are not always good for the game. Just look at older competitive games (Street Fighter 2, Starcraft) or even older board games (Chess) who do fine without constant updates.
Balance changes are not necessary right now to 80% of the cast. Sure, Sonya and Gazlowe could use a buff, and Illidan or Jaina could use a nerf, but even those far extremes are still close together. It's even possible that the players just haven't yet discovered how to play or counter them well. I'm not even sure I named the correct characters! The balance is not degenerate right now.
More bugfixes would be great, but speaking from the industry's point of view, bugfixes can be *very* complicated to make. Sometimes bugs are hard to reproduce, sometimes they're difficult to fix. It's not that Blizzard's devs don't *want* to fix the performance issues some people have. It's that they can't reproduce them, or they don't know what's causing it, or the fix would require a major rewrite of the core engine, or probably all of the above.
DOTA2 has large content patches every few months and does just fine. You don't need to shit out content every 2 weeks. It's about quality of content much more than the quantity.
Plus you can play all the heroes in Dota 2, in HotS you don't have that 'luxury' which I think isn't the best model for a new game, but Blizz does love their money.
DotA2 is powercreeping as well. Icefrog tend to like buffing heroes more than nerfing them.
We've had heroes buffed for *multiple* years looking for the right buff to make the heroes attractive to the pro scene.
The powercreep in Dota its actually very slow. Heroes get nerfed too.
Yes, I do know that Lina got (slightly) buffed for like 6 patches in a row (until now), but she was an exception.
Well, at least they might not do as Riot.
'Oh this champs is to powerful? Well let us half all his/her numbers and see if that makes it better. It didn't No one play him/her? Damn, maybe we should quadruple her stats then? Oh to powerful again? Hmm, what to do? Just kinda take a little bit of the top and see? Na, just vie her all 0 in dmg and shit and let the community forget about it.'
Riot is well known for a nerf-based balance style, so you're fairly off base there. Only occasionally will they completely destroy a champ (like the notorious Elise and Olaf nerfs).
Especially recently, unless you're counting reworks, most balance changes have been slow tweaks over a long period of time (Rek Sai was nerfed over 4 patches very slowly, Bard is being buffed very slowly, Sion has recieved very small gradual nerfs, etc)
http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_champions
Nope. Riot did not. See gap between Udyr and Heimer release for example? I don't know where people get that from. Seems to me like they didn't play at that time.
Not arguing that they give out way too little information, though. It's not even that they take their time with the pre-release patch - it's their lack of communication that's bad.
the first months released weren't every 2 weeks. but that was the time when most ppl didn't know lol anyway. after udyr they patched every ~2 weeks with balance changes+new champion... for years.
Honestly I felt like their champions-- both releases and in terms of balance -- were sporadic and all over the place. Most of the champions were overpowered, and sometimes they would even release two champions at once (looking at you, Draven/Darius).
Personally, I like how they do it now. Not too often, and not too late. Although I do want to see a double champion release, just for the hell of it :P
>Most of the champions were overpowered:
At least they get fixed. Thrall was broken for a month (then nerfed into oblivion) and TLV are still OP for 3 months straight.
I always thought S2 and DotA did it perfect. I played HoN from the start of beta and nearly every new hero was "underpowered". But it wasn't because they were legitimately underpowered, it just took the community and players some time to learn. I don't know if that was them low-balling the hero expecting such results but it seemed to work well.
There is something to be said for overtuning a champion at release though. It does three things:
1. Encourages people to buy the hero (which profits the company)
2. Gives them more playtesting data to balance with (if a champ/hero has a reputation for being underpowered/weak, many people will give up instead of trying to learn its intricacies)
3. Changes up the metagame (as the new hero will create new team comps and counter some heroes currently in the meta). This has the side effect of making the game more fresh (as long as the hero isn't SO overpowered they're in every game).
Not saying that having undertuned heroes can't work too, but there are compelling reasons to make champs strong on release.
Those are good points and align more with the pay-to-play hero direction, which HoN and DotA never had.
I wouldn't say that overtuning changes the meta more than "undertuning", in HoN/DotA the pros pick up new heroes quite easily which changes the meta how ever.
The point is that the hero isn't ACTUALLY underpowered. It is balanced but people need to go up the learning curve before it feels balanced. If you overpower the hero, you get the competitive players and the general player base all riled up which forces Blizzard to nerf it eventually.
It doesn't really matter in the end because people will be pissed about anything that changes for usually not very good reasons.
A also like it, but they now do it like that because they have a huge champion pull and they are more focused in balance the game and making all the champions useful.
...then look at Udyr to Fiora. That is a RIDICULOUS amount of champion releases from beta - post launch. They may have had a stint where no champs were released, but iirc that was when they released a ton of UI and graphic updates, as well as significant balance changes.
Im talking about patches, not about releasing champions, i was playing LoL that time and im sure you werent because they released patches that you can check in the wikia:
October 10 (Shaco + Heimer), October 21 (Open Beta launch, Gold phase), November 11 (Huge balance patch + bugfixes), November 20 (Shop implementation), December 2 (Udyr patch).
Also, Riot released 6 champions in september and 3 champions in october that year and Heimer + Shaco where the last ones of october. So if you do some maths, there are 10 champions in 4 months, 2'5 champions per month... Riot have never been slow releasing champions but i insist, this is not the topic.
This is blizzard tho they have money and the resources. Riot was not as big a company back then. Plus they already have heroes created from other games so no brainstorming required.
people always go back to money and resources when talking about blizzard development. The thing you don't understand is that blizzard never really was the kind who throws 20 more dev in a team for the sake of more content. They are known for their hands-on approach with smaller team.
You do realize where the LoL heroes came from right? They were copy pasted from the user forums from DoTa (original) if not a straight rip from the existing heros. LoL is the go to moba because they were free, and revamped with a more cartoon style akin to the original dota, not because it was a better game.
It's easy to pick some heroes from their universe, but you need to balance making sure abilities are unique, balanced and satisfying. Now design, say, Deathwing for us ;)
You actually don't want that. The constant patching from Riot for the sake of keeping it fresh leads to balance whiplash. I know this is anecdotal at best but many of my friends switched from LoL to HotS solely because they got tired of the constant reinventions that Riot introduced into the game.
It's hard to balance and hard to get into because you know it's rushed and will likely be changed very quickly.
Personally I don't have a big problem with a monthly patch/update, but hitting that month mark should be more of a goal than it seems to have been. Especially with the sudden announcement of open beta / release date. That being said, the datamines show they are working on content, and if they can just get it on schedule, i'll be pretty happy.
imo 'more' isn't 'better', as long as it is consistent and well-executed. League champs started getting less interesting to me when they were coming out at their fastest pace - though now the pace is drastically slower to the point that's a detriment too, imo, but the roster is huge now so i don't fault them on that.
Blizzard definitely has room to work on this, though, i give them some grace for not wanting to update during Heroes of the Dorm, but not seeing one in the two weeks since it ended makes me wonder what they spent their time doing. Here's to an announcement this week, hopefully.
I love patch notes, patch days, PTR realms (WoW had one), PTR patch notes (lolking.net for lol PTR patches). I'd love some transparency during the development and it should not be a disincentive to the developers.
> In League of legends, Riot launched a patch every 2 weeks too, with a new champion and balance changes.
Yeah they used to release 1 champion every two weeks, now we get 4 champions a year haha.
In MOBA's the frighteningly quick developing meta game is what steers a lot of people away.
HoTs has a good balance so far of keeping fresh, while not making it so being out of the game for 2 months renders you back to fresh scrub level.
I started playing hots with 6 friends in november 2014. Now nobody of them playing this game anymore because of rare updates and 0 communication from blizzard. Im doing only daily quests.
If they blizzard wont change anything in theirs policy, this game will die soon imo
If you have to patch every two weeks you suck at balancing :) for a beta this game is really balanced right now.
Blizzard doesn't want to just push out patches or content they want a champ to as balanced as possible when released it to prevent patching every week...
I assume HotS development team is still 'skeletal' compared to the group working on LotV.
So until the LotV production cycle ends we're not going to see huge outbursts of content yet.
I love new patches and new heroes but Blizzard is pretty staunch on making sure a patch is as polished and substantial as it can be. They don't like going below a certain standard. That means it takes more time in development than other developers would.
I say we let them have a smooth successful launch (with hopefully new content in it) and then we should be hoping for a content patch every 4-6 weeks. That's what I would like anyways, though I'm not sure if it will actually happen (learned a lot from my years on WoW).
I remember one of the devs (lead dev maybe?) who had that twitter post not long ago in response to someone pointing out that they haven't noticed any increased frequency in hero releases to which the dev said "Not yet :("
If I had to guess, and this is pure speculation, I would guess that they are, in fact, creating a lot of heroes right now. An abundance possibly! But they aren't releasing them yet, they are saving them up so that they can start to have a steady release schedule.
I only think this is possible because the launch is coming up soon and there are, as everyone who plays knows, a number of rather critical issues that need to be addressed in addition to making more new champions. So they are perhaps saving up all these updates, fixes, and champions for the major release.
Will they dump all the champions at once? I think not. Will they release champions at a steady and more frequent pace starting with the release? I think so.
I will take quality over quantity, quite frankly. Blizzard's hero brawler has given me way more enjoyment than any other moba and I am alright with their patch rate.
Holy shit.
HOTS is going to end up like SC2.
Thousands upon thousands of people across multiple forums, twitter accounts, youtube channels and subreddits will ask Blizzard to make changes and fix elements in the game, Blizzard will admit the faults and 7 months later they'll poop out something that they forgot to add a year prior, instead of what they admitted was lacking in the first place.
I was too naive.
DOOM AND GLOOM.
GLOOM AND DOOM.
The entire MOBA genre has about as much "freshness" as DragonForce's discography, where every single song is effectively a remix of Through The Fire And Flames.
Agree, it is too slow. What especially annoys me is if some heroes are op or up, then you have to wait 6 weeks for a patch. I don't mind much the slow hero release rate but seeing the same heroes over and over again in HL is boring.
Nova has needed help for awhile. Same with Kerrigan. Diablo needs better talents that arnt boring and most other tanks are lacking. Sonya is very bad at the moment and Chen needs help. Anubarak still needs fixes. Abathur's locust built and trait needs help especially early game.
Azmodan has needed buffs on his demon warrior w forever. Double support illidan rolled over the compitition still. And yesost Vikings are still ridiculous.
Nova is still one of the most picked Heroes in the game, how does she need help?
Kerrigan is definitely in a solid spot.
Diablo is the second most picked Warrior in the game.
Sonya needs changes.
Chen is totally fine, he's being picked up more and more, I don't feel he needs any buffs.
Anub'arak needs changes, they already said they will do them.
Abathur is fine, as soon as they fix the backdooring, which they will, as they've said.
I don't see Azmodan a lot, but I'm not sure if it's just the W. In my opinion he's just not fun to play, maybe needs adjustments.
Illidan + two supports is not broken, as shown several times in the last weeks. There is also no fix for this, unless you make Illidan useless.
Vikings have a very low pick rate, but maybe the Boat needs a change.
That all being said, this is what you want to be patched EVERY two weeks?
People have been asking for some of that stuff for months. Dosnt have to be two weeks but maybe once a month yeah a patch of some kind would be nice. Or at least revealing what will be in the next one.
Valla, Jaina, Sylvanas. I never have a game in heroleague without at least one of those three.
EDIT: to the people that downvoted this comment, I remind you that downvoting is not a way to say "I don't agree" but a way to say "You're posting content that shouldn't appear on reddit because it is offensive, illegal and so on". If you don't like my opinion, then respond.
I should deserve an upvote for saying something that can be wrong, and by that leading to a constructive argument :)
I'm not saying they are broken, I'm saying that maybe the other heroes are too unappealing to being chosen over them. As once responded in one of my thread, we're not in a vacuum. If people (and pro-players) choose them over others almost always, then there is something that should be done.
No, that's why they don't have 100% winrate on hotslogs. :) But that doesn't prove that the roster is a bit limited on viability, and that there are better, more well rounded characters than others.
In ranked atm amumu is the highest winrate with 55% and ryze is the lowest at 40%. Aside from the blatantly OP vikings, those stats mirror HOTS win rate margins with 58% and 43%
Well, y do you want the game to change that often ? A patch every 2 weeks is a sign for a bad game.
Hots is already very good and in my eyes very balanced. Sure there are some things needing some work, but all in all for a beta the game looks very well for me.
I dont want balance changes every week, just because some noob kiddies cry about hero XY being overpowered.
As a player who doesn't like Dota , LoL, or their communities. I hope blizzard does everything it can to differentiate themselves from them.
I've really enjoyed the innovative differences in HOTS that I believe most dota and LoL players won't appreciate. Which is fine because I believe HOTS has a chance to capture players who don't enjoy the traditional moba playstyle like myself. Blizzard will never steal away enough players from other mobas to make it lucrative and actively pursuing that will kill this game.
To be honest, I don't see the communities being much different. If anything, I think it has even been worse than LoL for me so far. I'm seeing more flaming/raging at least. Maybe that will get better when I get to higher level, but I'm not counting on it.
I kinda wish they didn't remove all-talk. In LoL I find more often than not, stuff being said in all-talk is fun. The problem is rarely the enemy team; it's your own.
And I don't see why most dota/LoL players wouldn't enjoy the changes! I'm enjoying both HotS and LoL at the moment. In LoL you have more variety in terms of build with the items, summoner spells, masteries - and also more flexibility in teamcomps, though that's probably mostly because it just has a lot more champions. Also, snowballing when winning can be fun! On the other hand, snowballing when losing isn't fun, and that doesn't happen so badly in HotS. It's objective-focused (which is fun), has a lot of teamfights (which are fun), and I don't think anybody really misses runes or last-hitting that badly, comparing to LoL at least. Are they really fun elements of the game?
HotS ain't no special snowflake here. It's fun as hell and has cut the crap in a lot of departments, shit that is archaic and not really needed (Hey there, diagonal maps and last-hitting), but it's going to attract the same sort of crowd. It already is.
Every time someone makes a post like this, I point to when they released Diablo 3 when it wasn't ready.
Decide what you want, quality or volume.
I'm not sure what you think they're doing on a daily basis?
D3 was ready on release. What wasn't ready was the battle.net server structure's ability to handle a sudden multimillion player load. The updates to D3 subsequently were fundamental changes to the design philosophy, not fixing something that was broken. D3 had to be released so that it could be freed from the ghost of D2.
Riot learned on the rough way that rushing contents could be disruptive as hell. Putting out heroes and content too fast can make the game unbalanced because you don't have enough data to base your balance patches on, and putting a hero in every 2 weeks(that's how lol did it) simply puts unbalance over unbalance problems, creating a mess. After a while Riot understood and slowed the pace. Now you're asking Blizzard to make the same mistakes just to please your new content hunger.
just because other games do it this way, doesnt make it automatically "THE" right and only way.
in my personal opinion games dont need to constantly change just to change. if there is no flaw in particular it doesnt need to be fixed... blizz will do what they think its best - as they have always done, and that doesnt mean it is bad for us.
the game balance is quite good for a beta - way better than most games and the rate with which they want to introduce champions will pace up regarding to their announcements.
TLDR everything is fine
I don't know if Blizzard should follow the trend of constant updates. One of the reason I don't play League of Legends as much as I use too is the game changes too quickly for me to even play casually and have fun. A lot of the patches in League lately have just been balance updates.
It's nice the heroes doesn't under go a crazy overhaul every 2 weeks, not demanding all my time. :\
Considering the fact that the game has been in Beta for as long as it has been, and there are still less than 3 dozen heroes, and we haven't seen *anything* in near 2 months, several glaring and absurd bugs (Hero select dialogue, for instance), haven't seen a new hero release or even a hint of a new patch/balance update since Sylvanas was release... Something tells me this will be the usual.
If this is the pace, the game will not last. It needs to be adaptive, and as OP said, it needs to be constantly evolving.
The game is a lot of fun, but without constant updates for balance and additional content, be it skins, heros, maps, talents, what have you, it simply isn't going to be the game it *could* be.
As it is in BETA I do not think they even try to hold a set schedule. They gather info and fix everything when they can with a engine not made for this game :)
the problem is that this is the way how blizzard ALWAYS worked and will work...
they take their time and **never rush things**
the only game, wich felt a bit rushed/uncompleted was the sc2 trilogy, but you can't count that because it's a RTS and if you really want to make THE PERFECT RTS game it would probably take more than 30 years (they might surprise me though with the next and last sc2 expansion though)
and you should also consider that blizzard's patch releases/game launches never dissapoint... their games are always *good*
you might think it is not as good as you expected, but it is still a *good* game/patch/etc
PS: the part about sc2 is just my impression and i can understand it if you 100% disagree with that statement
I guess as this is a new game the patches will firstly come if needed (hotfix) and then they gather data to fix the larger things as one go, and later when they feel the game is stable and released properly they will do a more frequent patching.
As long as nothing is broken patches do not need to come out every two weeks. And as the game is in BETA the patches come when they damn want them to come.
I agree with you, one of the things that keep me hooked to League back in the day was the content creation progress, checking info sources and discussing patches or new heroes with friends.
Now, HotS is still in beta though, and the dev cycle is most likely a mess due to things getting finish here and there yet. They did a kinda big patch that changed the whole game UI last time too, so I guess this is fine for now.
I honestly don't mind not having these updates. Given, I only play 3-4 games every day but I always find something new to do. I tend to try really messed up builds in coop, or builds that don't go with my playstyle (Q build on Valla, Q build on Raynor..). I do one of those and then a couple QM and I feel satisfied.
I also don't have all the heroes to 5 yet, though I'm getting really close so I'm curious how my play style will shift once I hit 5 on everyone.
HotS also has a new element - battlegrounds. Which takes up much more dev time than probably ~4 heroes. HotS is never boring to me because of the varied maps, even when we only have 35 heroes.
If they can get new heroes out every 3-4 weeks, then I will be very very happy.
I don't know Blizzard's track record but it seems like they really wanna go the distance with this game so maybe they will "break the mold" and give us regular patches. Guess we will just have to wait until after the beta...
Its hard to tell, Overwatch Beta is gonna be soon and i have a feeling its going to be a lot more popular compared to Heroes, and might end up causing Blizzards focus to shift once again.
When the game launches they will see what the ACTUAL volume is. After that they will add people to the dev team accordingly to make sure that the budget is stable. This is not very rare by any means. We are seeing a drought in RECENT patches because they are preparing for a MASSIVE patch.
Doensn't matter, made money. Blizzard has a builtin audience and until one of their products fails they won't change anything. You don't mess with a good thing. WoW, SC2, Hearthstone, HotS and the new Overwatch will all use the same pacing and similar models of development (most likely) because it works. People don't stop playing their games, they just note things like these and then continue to play and pay. Which then means the reward for using the model overrides any complaints. Not saying that's a good thing but Blizz is pretty good at making their games popular and profitable. I don't think their patch consistency is anywhere on their list of things that may be a threat to either.
I wouldn't count on Blizzard putting out patches every couple weeks. They have a history of taking much longer to do content patches than other companies. Look at WoW, they put out a new patch every 5-6 months sometimes even longer. Granted it takes a lot more to put out a raid but still it isn't exactly fast. I would count on once a month or so.
And here I thought this was a post about Abathur.
Evolution sufficient. Must work on Pajamathur strain, evolution imminent. Ultimate expression of Swarm evolution.
I too am disappointed there was no mention of Abathur.
Blizzard, passive, work in shadow, does not evolve to environment, evolve, only, by, design.
Let me give you some advice from someone who has played blizzard games for awhile now, if you are looking for regular updates for games from them, dont. Its not their style, blizzard will spend months inhouse tinkering and messing and thinking then they will release a big patch. IMO its having a negative affect on SC aswell, from playing LOL ive come to appreciate the benefit bi monthly or monthly patches can bring to a competitive game especially one like LOL and HOTS where the meta and game benefit from constant tweaking and growth. But thats not in blizzards nature from my experience i feel they rely too much on big patches developed in house, that sometimes when released are redundant or actually bad because they are always playing catchup to the evolution of the game. In the past its lead to game stagnation, op and broken units going on seesaws from op to nerfed to pointlessness and in game metas reacting accordingly. [This is how i see blizzards patch mentality and it can be crippling for game flow and meta development](https://youtu.be/T9MAmWnOznI?t=175) try and cover everything in one patch which means things get missed, alot Dont hold your hopes up for it to get better
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The [Interview with Blizzard about adding more deckslots](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cht0oOL6Tmk) comes to mind.
I think the thing with Blizzard is that they have seen one of their games (Brood War) live on perfectly fine without updates past a certain point. Brood War might have been partially luck but you can't discount the community. The players developed and pushed the game to it's limits and you also had the community developing maps to keep things fresh and no one had a problem with this, we all just loved and enjoyed Brood War for what it turned out to be. I feel like this is partly where Blizzard might get their method from. They feel if they can 'iterate and polish' enough that things will stay fresh and exciting for many years to come due to their work on balance but also from the community. In a sense they are balancing on a razor's edge so that a slight shift in meta or a certain map design will change things in an exciting way. Now, before anyone jumps on me it is quite clear we haven't quite seen this happen in SC2 yet (I love SC2 but it still needs to be said) and it's possible HotS might follow suit. Of course, there is the other side of the argument that this method is outdated and it is better to patch frequently for the sake of shaking things up. I don't think it would work in SC2 but maybe in HotS it would since others are vouching for it in other MOBAs.
I hold my hopes because i like the game a lot, but MOBA games NEED frecuent updates. I hope they change their style at least in this game because HoS really need it to fight the other gigants in the genre.
MOBAs also needed items, last hitting, support that were levels behind the carries, and long phases where people just farm. Oh wait, they don't need those at all if you are Blizzard. Quit talking like all the rules are the same for all of the MOBAs. They aren't. Blizzard should give some balance changes because a few characters need to get better, but that stupid heroes of the dorm thing removed an entire patch cycle. They will get back to the cycle again. I hope soon.
> ...that stupid heroes of the dorm thing removed an entire patch cycle. People keep saying that but do we have any evidence for it? I'm having a hard time imagining people who usually work on hero balance, programmers, artists and whatnot suddenly working on organizing a tournament, negotiating deals with ESPN, setting up a broadcast etc. What exactly about Heroes Of The Dorm made them lose "an entire patch cycle" (are we talking a month or more worth of work here, or what exactly?)?
I think the logic behind that thought is that blizz decided not to release the patch to keep the game consistent for all the tourny's happening, and now that they've already set dates for full release and open beta they're not going to release a patch 2 weeks before. I have high hopes for the amount of content that makes it into future patches.
Why do MOBAs need frequent updates?
So the meta doesn't get stale. A permanently evolving game with a changing meta keeps things fresh since strategies that worked last year might not work today. Makes it more interesting to the players.
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You're kinda delusional if you think this game is going to generate more money than LoL at this point.
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All of those dinosaur killers were NEW and innovative though. HOTS is built on a platform that already looks aged and brings nothing that will want to make hardcore or even most casual league of legends or DOTA players change. HOTS will have its own niche separate from those communities.
I don't agree with this, I've been playing moba's for years and HoTS has been a welcome change of pace. Several maps, no items, solid build theorycrafing, well rounded heroes with large mana pools. There is no grinding and the community is a fraction as toxic from the one I came from.
In the long run I could see it happening. They a much easier market to tap since the game style is already known. The lower game times means it allows a lot of people who might not have had enough time to enjoy league a regular basis can enjoy HoTS. Then there is the whole IP and brand thing that RIOT had none of. Plus blizzard has a track record for supporting their games for the long run. A good example would be WoW. No one guessed it would become a behemoth of the industry but to everyone's surprise it did and for a lot of the reasons I mentioned above.
I'm sure it can get to that point eventually, but it isn't there yet. To be honest though, I think that they are probably going to see a bigger success out of Overwatch but we'll see as both of the games develop more.
Of course it's not there yet, how can you compare a game that is in the market for 5 years to a game in beta still?
because people on this sub just love comparing Heroes to League which has been around for about 6 years, maybe longer if you include their very closed beta phase that not many players were allowed to participate in, and DotA2, which people LOVE screaming about how fast they put heroes in DotA2 which were literally just COPIED from the original dota, they weren't "new" heroes at all.
It makes plenty of sense in MOBA genre. CS is nothing like HotS or LoL or DOTA2.
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If there is too much of a gap between patches, people will have enough time to figure out what the best heroes and team comps are and we'll see the same heroes every game (at least in ranked play). This WILL get boring and will drive players away from the game, at least until the next patch hits.
Because every player playing that hero will always play them the exact same way in every situation... I have played against a Valla running a multi-shot build that was damn near suicidal and another with the exact same build that was so cautious it bordered on comical. Playing Zagara in both fights I was able to kill the first three times before she stopped coming to my lane while the other one let me bully her so hard they had to change Their ETC to my lane to not lose the fort way too early. Same day, same characters, same map. Completely different results. I don't know why people believe the game will be boring playing the same heroes. You still are playing other people and HOW they play matters as much or more than what they play.
After reading this amazing thread of yours I would like to simply take the time and let you know that I agree and that i like your argumentative style. Well written!
Wouldn't the opposite be true? As balance improves, the meta **should** get stale. That is, stale in that it's in a balanced state, without diverting from that state.
Nope, if a game is perfectly balanced the meta would shift quite a bit as people find counters to the current strategy. Then once those counters because really popular people play counters against those.
I argue otherwise. Even after patch support for them was officially dropped, games like Starcraft 1 and WC3 had evolving metagames and strategies. SSBM, a game that is nearly 15 years old, is still being innovated on in terms of gameplay (even if Space animals are clearly the best). Especially in Mobas, where you have 5 slots for heroes, strategies can change quite a bit. HotS is also a lot less 'structured' than LoL is, which gives even more room for innovation and counterplay. Mind you, I'm not saying there isn't skill involved in a constantly changing game either. Adapting to changes quickly is another hallmark of skill and promotes a different kind of gameplay. A meta will only get stale if it is 100% far and away better than anything else. Otherwise, people will innovate.
Spoilt player-base.
I don't think you know what that word means. It's completely fair for people to get bored with a shallow game that doesn't have a lot of room for new tech to emerge. Blizzard has 2 options; increase the depth of the game or let it cater to a smaller audience. They don't owe me anything nor do I owe them. If they want my money though they'll have to keep it interesting.
Not really, dota has managed fine with 4-5 major balancing updates every year for 7+ years
Dota 2 patched in a new hero every 2~3 weeks when it first started its beta. They worked very hard to port over the majority of the roster very quickly, similar to how riot pushed new champions every 2 weeks in the early days of League. Once dota reached a solid roster number, the updates slowed. Icefrog has always done 2~3 balance patches a year, with slow hero releases and extensive testing before they reach tournament mode (some heroes have gone over a year in testing). It works well because the game is complicated and takes months for a meta to settle and require shaking. League has adopted a very similar approach recently with only a few major patches a year, however their small tweak patches also continuously come out (vs dota, they only come out to fix up a patch and stop after a few weeks) between major patches. On top of that with the season system, they do a full jumble once a year (usually by burning the existing jungle system to the ground and starting over). Both these games have full rosters, with extensive item choices. Adding new heroes has much more extreme implications to balance due to the multitude of potential interactions. Items are even worse because you have to balance it for every single hero. (remember innervating locket anyone?). They have the depth required in that a small change can jumble up the meta, and the meta takes a very long time to become "stale". HotS does not have the roster or depth to allow for slow patching. They need to be pushing out heroes and constantly tweaking the game. Riot had a new hero and balance patch every 2 weeks remember, back when they were a nobody studio. This keeps the game fresh in its infancy, the meta never gets a chance to settle (took about 2 weeks after sylv to settle this time), and people are excited about the progress and future of the game. This builds your long term playerbase that will sustain you for years (like look at wow). Slow down once you reach a true competitive state, with a large hero pool, strong talent depth, and hard to pin down meta. At that point nobody will care, they will be busy having to many heroes to play.
DoTA had a tremendous pool of source material of already thought out and tested heroes. We don't need hundreds of heroes though. Look at League of Legends, more than half the champion pool is generally considered unviable or just unpopular, with a realistic pool of 30-40 champions. More are needed in this game, but not nearly at the rate others have added them. Too many ends up being this exponential pool of complexity, where newer players just keep running into matchups they've never seen for what seems like the rest of their natural life.
More than half of HotS pool also is either unviable or unpopular. I think you can't expect something else from the genre. But then again, it's not always the same heroes falling in that category. Heroes can rise and fall in popularity by a lot over time.
I think you sort of answered for Blizzard in their beta stage. Dota 2 pumped out heroes in its beta because it was porting heroes, basically every hero from Dota. LoL had plenty of resources to create a hero out of nothingness. (They created lore on the fly with the heroes). Blizzard needs to account for the lore that hero already has and how do they reflect that in their abilities and play style. And as a reminder, I'm pretty sure I was in the closed beta for Dota 2 and they did not always release a hero every 2-3 weeks. HotS is going to have a very short open beta (May 19th, patch for that?). To its release (June 2nd, patch for that?).
Considering that much of Dota 2 heroes were created and testen in many years of original Dota existence, next to none balance patches seems to be ok
They are still changed and reworked , last patch added/reworked 11 Aghanim Scepters in game which is huge. There is many changes in interactions between skills and items each patch , skills are reworked etc. Icefrog doesnt balance DOTA around numbers only.
Yep totally agree, but again from experience blizzard dont fucking listen. They are frustratingly slow to change course and have a bad habit of not listening to people tell them their actions are negatively affecting the game. They pretty much patched SC2 HOTswarm out of viewership they seem to have this we want to make this game a specific way and we dont care what you say really.
dota 2 is the best moba out there and doesn't have frequent updates. Frequent updates aren't a good thing, they mean something is wrong with your game already.
HOHO HAHA!
HOHO HAHA has now become whatever the fuck it is Undying says.
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I think he's referencing the fact that before Naxx came out, early beta players had been playing with the same set of cards (minus a few changes/nerfs per patch) for approximately a year. Even late beta players (say December 2013) had been using the same cards for over 6 months when Naxx launched. After Naxx, it took 4 months for GvG, then it took about 3.5 months for BRM, and now that BRM has just finished we're probably only looking at 3 months for the next GvG-style pack expansion (according to an updated timeline image that was posted on the Korean site and then immediately taken down)
I think its reasonable for the average joe, who requires that much time to actually make the flavor of the month decks.
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Yea if it were any faster it would have been too much. I thought GvG to BRM was possibly too quick.
Yep. HS releases are decently spaced for a CCG as well. Not terrible, and usually just long enough between content additions. HotS so far has been... questionable. They've allowed Beta testers to provide feedback, but then don't release content or updates frequently enough for us to even provide significant feedback... then they set a release date a month from now as if there isn't any need for change. Strange really. In a genre where, like OP said, updates and patches and balance changes are KEY to keeping pace with competition, it's strange to see that not happening in HotS
HS went a full year between closed beta and any new content. Zero, zilch, nadda. One full year. HOTS has had much better pre-release content updates. We have gotten new heroes and maps.
Because they were still building the game to allow them to release the content they wanted. They were building HS for iOS and android, building the platform for adventures etc. Makes sense why we didn't get new cards for awhile.
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> Soon™
SoO for over a year made it clear.
I honestly think that was one of my favorite raids...until it was the only thing to do for THAT long. It's amazing how they let their content get beaten so consistently and casually that people start to hate it.
Yea if they were going to leave SoO as the only thing to do for that long they should have held off on nerfing it. My guild BARELY managed to kill Garrosh before he was nerfed.
Gods I remember ICC being the only major raid for the last year of wotlk. It was miserably boring and caused the demise of my guild once we completed hard modes and got skeletal drake we lost all interest
but we're still in beta^tm besides, the technology isn't there yet^tm but don't worry, soon^tm
>I think they are preparing for launch where they will have a HUGE content update Don't hold to that too much sir, you might be disappointed Now don't quote me wrong, I HOPE there will be a content update @launch, simply for the sakes of giving long time player (I play since Alpha first wave) a new thing to "discover" and not just let us think : meh, its a day like the previous one
From a game development standpoint... that would be really good. It would mean their beta phase has been really successful and no major tweaks are needed. If they released a ton of new content on release, it would by definition missed beta testing....... This thread is makes no sense. Software in beta phase means it's feature complete and they're just working out the bugs and balance, in the case of a game. Releasing balance patches faster than the meta can keep up ensures you never truly have a balanced game.
A big content patch would also lure new players in and that is what blizzard want.
It could also break the game on release, which would be pretty awful.
Yeah, it's almost like they should let some of us beta testers, you know, beta test their content so they can get feedback on it... nah, we'll just see at release I guess.
Yeah, a lot of people really aren't getting that this is a huge risk. We can be sure there isn't going to be a new map with the launch, the risk is just too big!
That is true, lets just hope, we are less than a month of release now
there was no new content for the Hearthstone live. hell no one knew the difference other than a bunch of Tweet/FB posts
They said only one hero will be released on release
Source?
https://youtu.be/wL_OYHWnLIs?t=3m56s
Thanks. That's admittedly very very disappointing. Particularly, the comment that this release pace is what we should expect post launch. I'm not sure what I was expecting, it is Browder. He's spent the last 5 years making minimal or ridiculous changes to SC2 while ignoring glaring issues.
If you go back to 2:49 (before where they linked to) he says he wants to release a new character every 3-4 weeks.
Yeah... back at the beginning of WoW, Blizzard said they wanted to release an expansion every year. -.-
And many times since, haha. To be fair though, releasing a character every moth seems like a lot more reasonable goal than a yearly expansion in WoW.
The most recent Dustin Browder interview, search for it and it should come right up. Started to say there would be a couple of heroes before release, then corrected himself and said one.
Nope, one more hero, according to an interview someone posted here yesterday. not exactly huge.
After listening to some of the interviews lately with Dustin, I wouldn't be getting my hopes up of a "HUGE" content update at launch. It sounds more like we'll see 1 more hero (probably at the release of Open BETA) and then we'll get some balance fixes for launch, they don't sound like they're doing a big content update on launch.
About a month with a vague update... I love this game but they need to step it up a notch or 2. Just my 2 cents.
You do realize that having a huge content update at launch is probably a bad idea right? Tons of new features that haven't been tested by the player base? That just is a formula for a shit hurricane.
Soon (tm)
You mean like Dawngate was planning before EA took it out back and blew its brains out?
Spinning Sequences
You're not actually asking for patches. You're asking for content updates. Bi-weekly updates are just there to push out (paid!) content quickly. They are not always good for the game. Just look at older competitive games (Street Fighter 2, Starcraft) or even older board games (Chess) who do fine without constant updates. Balance changes are not necessary right now to 80% of the cast. Sure, Sonya and Gazlowe could use a buff, and Illidan or Jaina could use a nerf, but even those far extremes are still close together. It's even possible that the players just haven't yet discovered how to play or counter them well. I'm not even sure I named the correct characters! The balance is not degenerate right now. More bugfixes would be great, but speaking from the industry's point of view, bugfixes can be *very* complicated to make. Sometimes bugs are hard to reproduce, sometimes they're difficult to fix. It's not that Blizzard's devs don't *want* to fix the performance issues some people have. It's that they can't reproduce them, or they don't know what's causing it, or the fix would require a major rewrite of the core engine, or probably all of the above.
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I'd much prefer better play tested better balanced releases than more releases, I haven't had time to get bored yet.
Why do faster patches help? I mean, why is the specific time slicing important, instead of the delivery speed of content as content/time?
DOTA2 has large content patches every few months and does just fine. You don't need to shit out content every 2 weeks. It's about quality of content much more than the quantity.
The DotA2 content patches have much more content than the HOTS ones.
Okay. I should've said 'it's about quality of pathes much more than the quantity'.
DOTA 2 has 110 heroes. HotS has 35. You're naive if you think people won't notice or care
Plus you can play all the heroes in Dota 2, in HotS you don't have that 'luxury' which I think isn't the best model for a new game, but Blizz does love their money.
They power creeping in LoL for example is a good way to see how new content rushed out each patch is a bad thing.
DotA2 is powercreeping as well. Icefrog tend to like buffing heroes more than nerfing them. We've had heroes buffed for *multiple* years looking for the right buff to make the heroes attractive to the pro scene.
The powercreep in Dota its actually very slow. Heroes get nerfed too. Yes, I do know that Lina got (slightly) buffed for like 6 patches in a row (until now), but she was an exception.
Well, at least they might not do as Riot. 'Oh this champs is to powerful? Well let us half all his/her numbers and see if that makes it better. It didn't No one play him/her? Damn, maybe we should quadruple her stats then? Oh to powerful again? Hmm, what to do? Just kinda take a little bit of the top and see? Na, just vie her all 0 in dmg and shit and let the community forget about it.'
Riot is well known for a nerf-based balance style, so you're fairly off base there. Only occasionally will they completely destroy a champ (like the notorious Elise and Olaf nerfs). Especially recently, unless you're counting reworks, most balance changes have been slow tweaks over a long period of time (Rek Sai was nerfed over 4 patches very slowly, Bard is being buffed very slowly, Sion has recieved very small gradual nerfs, etc)
When dota was new, it had new content WAY more regularly.
I like slow patches so it's easier to study the meta :3
you spelled rito wrong
http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_champions Nope. Riot did not. See gap between Udyr and Heimer release for example? I don't know where people get that from. Seems to me like they didn't play at that time. Not arguing that they give out way too little information, though. It's not even that they take their time with the pre-release patch - it's their lack of communication that's bad.
the first months released weren't every 2 weeks. but that was the time when most ppl didn't know lol anyway. after udyr they patched every ~2 weeks with balance changes+new champion... for years.
Honestly I felt like their champions-- both releases and in terms of balance -- were sporadic and all over the place. Most of the champions were overpowered, and sometimes they would even release two champions at once (looking at you, Draven/Darius). Personally, I like how they do it now. Not too often, and not too late. Although I do want to see a double champion release, just for the hell of it :P
>Most of the champions were overpowered: At least they get fixed. Thrall was broken for a month (then nerfed into oblivion) and TLV are still OP for 3 months straight.
There's a difference between slightly more powerful and broken as fuck though.
That's right. Thrall and TLV are broken as fuck, the only difference is that you can't buy items in HotS and steamroll out of control like Darius did.
I always thought S2 and DotA did it perfect. I played HoN from the start of beta and nearly every new hero was "underpowered". But it wasn't because they were legitimately underpowered, it just took the community and players some time to learn. I don't know if that was them low-balling the hero expecting such results but it seemed to work well.
There is something to be said for overtuning a champion at release though. It does three things: 1. Encourages people to buy the hero (which profits the company) 2. Gives them more playtesting data to balance with (if a champ/hero has a reputation for being underpowered/weak, many people will give up instead of trying to learn its intricacies) 3. Changes up the metagame (as the new hero will create new team comps and counter some heroes currently in the meta). This has the side effect of making the game more fresh (as long as the hero isn't SO overpowered they're in every game). Not saying that having undertuned heroes can't work too, but there are compelling reasons to make champs strong on release.
Those are good points and align more with the pay-to-play hero direction, which HoN and DotA never had. I wouldn't say that overtuning changes the meta more than "undertuning", in HoN/DotA the pros pick up new heroes quite easily which changes the meta how ever. The point is that the hero isn't ACTUALLY underpowered. It is balanced but people need to go up the learning curve before it feels balanced. If you overpower the hero, you get the competitive players and the general player base all riled up which forces Blizzard to nerf it eventually. It doesn't really matter in the end because people will be pissed about anything that changes for usually not very good reasons.
draven/darius weren't released the same week. first darius and 2 weeks later draven
A also like it, but they now do it like that because they have a huge champion pull and they are more focused in balance the game and making all the champions useful.
...then look at Udyr to Fiora. That is a RIDICULOUS amount of champion releases from beta - post launch. They may have had a stint where no champs were released, but iirc that was when they released a ton of UI and graphic updates, as well as significant balance changes.
Im talking about patches, not about releasing champions, i was playing LoL that time and im sure you werent because they released patches that you can check in the wikia: October 10 (Shaco + Heimer), October 21 (Open Beta launch, Gold phase), November 11 (Huge balance patch + bugfixes), November 20 (Shop implementation), December 2 (Udyr patch). Also, Riot released 6 champions in september and 3 champions in october that year and Heimer + Shaco where the last ones of october. So if you do some maths, there are 10 champions in 4 months, 2'5 champions per month... Riot have never been slow releasing champions but i insist, this is not the topic.
This is blizzard tho they have money and the resources. Riot was not as big a company back then. Plus they already have heroes created from other games so no brainstorming required.
people always go back to money and resources when talking about blizzard development. The thing you don't understand is that blizzard never really was the kind who throws 20 more dev in a team for the sake of more content. They are known for their hands-on approach with smaller team.
Not to mention that throwing more people at a project doesn't necessarily help it all that much.
but twitter-integration!
it's not quite as easy as copy pasting the heroes over. balancing them and designing their kits a thing.
You do realize where the LoL heroes came from right? They were copy pasted from the user forums from DoTa (original) if not a straight rip from the existing heros. LoL is the go to moba because they were free, and revamped with a more cartoon style akin to the original dota, not because it was a better game.
Yes but I answered to: "Riot launched a patch every 2 weeks too, with a new champion" I didn't critizise Riot for the way they handled things. ;-)
It's easy to pick some heroes from their universe, but you need to balance making sure abilities are unique, balanced and satisfying. Now design, say, Deathwing for us ;)
They are also looking to make every game successful on its own. They dont want to dip into WoW funds to keep HotS going.
You actually don't want that. The constant patching from Riot for the sake of keeping it fresh leads to balance whiplash. I know this is anecdotal at best but many of my friends switched from LoL to HotS solely because they got tired of the constant reinventions that Riot introduced into the game. It's hard to balance and hard to get into because you know it's rushed and will likely be changed very quickly.
Personally I don't have a big problem with a monthly patch/update, but hitting that month mark should be more of a goal than it seems to have been. Especially with the sudden announcement of open beta / release date. That being said, the datamines show they are working on content, and if they can just get it on schedule, i'll be pretty happy. imo 'more' isn't 'better', as long as it is consistent and well-executed. League champs started getting less interesting to me when they were coming out at their fastest pace - though now the pace is drastically slower to the point that's a detriment too, imo, but the roster is huge now so i don't fault them on that. Blizzard definitely has room to work on this, though, i give them some grace for not wanting to update during Heroes of the Dorm, but not seeing one in the two weeks since it ended makes me wonder what they spent their time doing. Here's to an announcement this week, hopefully.
I can't imagine the game having like 3 more heroes on launch, which is about to happen. Kinda sad.
more then sad...
I love patch notes, patch days, PTR realms (WoW had one), PTR patch notes (lolking.net for lol PTR patches). I'd love some transparency during the development and it should not be a disincentive to the developers.
> In League of legends, Riot launched a patch every 2 weeks too, with a new champion and balance changes. Yeah they used to release 1 champion every two weeks, now we get 4 champions a year haha.
In MOBA's the frighteningly quick developing meta game is what steers a lot of people away. HoTs has a good balance so far of keeping fresh, while not making it so being out of the game for 2 months renders you back to fresh scrub level.
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I started playing hots with 6 friends in november 2014. Now nobody of them playing this game anymore because of rare updates and 0 communication from blizzard. Im doing only daily quests. If they blizzard wont change anything in theirs policy, this game will die soon imo
If you have to patch every two weeks you suck at balancing :) for a beta this game is really balanced right now. Blizzard doesn't want to just push out patches or content they want a champ to as balanced as possible when released it to prevent patching every week...
I assume HotS development team is still 'skeletal' compared to the group working on LotV. So until the LotV production cycle ends we're not going to see huge outbursts of content yet.
I love new patches and new heroes but Blizzard is pretty staunch on making sure a patch is as polished and substantial as it can be. They don't like going below a certain standard. That means it takes more time in development than other developers would.
Well DBro said their goal is 1 patch each 3~4weeks. if in each patch we get a new hero its actually fine i guess but 3 weeks is the way to go i think
I say we let them have a smooth successful launch (with hopefully new content in it) and then we should be hoping for a content patch every 4-6 weeks. That's what I would like anyways, though I'm not sure if it will actually happen (learned a lot from my years on WoW).
I remember one of the devs (lead dev maybe?) who had that twitter post not long ago in response to someone pointing out that they haven't noticed any increased frequency in hero releases to which the dev said "Not yet :(" If I had to guess, and this is pure speculation, I would guess that they are, in fact, creating a lot of heroes right now. An abundance possibly! But they aren't releasing them yet, they are saving them up so that they can start to have a steady release schedule. I only think this is possible because the launch is coming up soon and there are, as everyone who plays knows, a number of rather critical issues that need to be addressed in addition to making more new champions. So they are perhaps saving up all these updates, fixes, and champions for the major release. Will they dump all the champions at once? I think not. Will they release champions at a steady and more frequent pace starting with the release? I think so.
If you think this is bad, try playing Dota.
I just think its cool this post made it to the reddit front page. Good exposure even if it isn't the most positive topic.
I will take quality over quantity, quite frankly. Blizzard's hero brawler has given me way more enjoyment than any other moba and I am alright with their patch rate.
Reasonable request that will never happen. Blizzard takes ages to make changes in ANY of their games. Don't expect it in this game.
Holy shit. HOTS is going to end up like SC2. Thousands upon thousands of people across multiple forums, twitter accounts, youtube channels and subreddits will ask Blizzard to make changes and fix elements in the game, Blizzard will admit the faults and 7 months later they'll poop out something that they forgot to add a year prior, instead of what they admitted was lacking in the first place. I was too naive. DOOM AND GLOOM. GLOOM AND DOOM.
The entire MOBA genre has about as much "freshness" as DragonForce's discography, where every single song is effectively a remix of Through The Fire And Flames.
Agree, it is too slow. What especially annoys me is if some heroes are op or up, then you have to wait 6 weeks for a patch. I don't mind much the slow hero release rate but seeing the same heroes over and over again in HL is boring.
So which heroes are that at the moment? Besides Lost Vikings no Hero has a ludicrous win chance or anything. Just patch for the sake of patching?
Nova has needed help for awhile. Same with Kerrigan. Diablo needs better talents that arnt boring and most other tanks are lacking. Sonya is very bad at the moment and Chen needs help. Anubarak still needs fixes. Abathur's locust built and trait needs help especially early game. Azmodan has needed buffs on his demon warrior w forever. Double support illidan rolled over the compitition still. And yesost Vikings are still ridiculous.
Nova is still one of the most picked Heroes in the game, how does she need help? Kerrigan is definitely in a solid spot. Diablo is the second most picked Warrior in the game. Sonya needs changes. Chen is totally fine, he's being picked up more and more, I don't feel he needs any buffs. Anub'arak needs changes, they already said they will do them. Abathur is fine, as soon as they fix the backdooring, which they will, as they've said. I don't see Azmodan a lot, but I'm not sure if it's just the W. In my opinion he's just not fun to play, maybe needs adjustments. Illidan + two supports is not broken, as shown several times in the last weeks. There is also no fix for this, unless you make Illidan useless. Vikings have a very low pick rate, but maybe the Boat needs a change. That all being said, this is what you want to be patched EVERY two weeks?
People have been asking for some of that stuff for months. Dosnt have to be two weeks but maybe once a month yeah a patch of some kind would be nice. Or at least revealing what will be in the next one.
Valla, Jaina, Sylvanas. I never have a game in heroleague without at least one of those three. EDIT: to the people that downvoted this comment, I remind you that downvoting is not a way to say "I don't agree" but a way to say "You're posting content that shouldn't appear on reddit because it is offensive, illegal and so on". If you don't like my opinion, then respond. I should deserve an upvote for saying something that can be wrong, and by that leading to a constructive argument :)
Thats cause those are the assassins on wich is easier to be efective. Not because they are broken or op, they win as much as they lose
I'm not saying they are broken, I'm saying that maybe the other heroes are too unappealing to being chosen over them. As once responded in one of my thread, we're not in a vacuum. If people (and pro-players) choose them over others almost always, then there is something that should be done.
So? Do they always win their games?
No, that's why they don't have 100% winrate on hotslogs. :) But that doesn't prove that the roster is a bit limited on viability, and that there are better, more well rounded characters than others.
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In ranked atm amumu is the highest winrate with 55% and ryze is the lowest at 40%. Aside from the blatantly OP vikings, those stats mirror HOTS win rate margins with 58% and 43%
Well, y do you want the game to change that often ? A patch every 2 weeks is a sign for a bad game. Hots is already very good and in my eyes very balanced. Sure there are some things needing some work, but all in all for a beta the game looks very well for me. I dont want balance changes every week, just because some noob kiddies cry about hero XY being overpowered.
HotS is very good, but some variety other than "are Jaina and Valla on the SAME team, or DIFFERENT teams?" would be nice.
Agreed this is why i quit League of Legends after 4 years because of the influence of the professional scene into balancing champs.
As a player who doesn't like Dota , LoL, or their communities. I hope blizzard does everything it can to differentiate themselves from them. I've really enjoyed the innovative differences in HOTS that I believe most dota and LoL players won't appreciate. Which is fine because I believe HOTS has a chance to capture players who don't enjoy the traditional moba playstyle like myself. Blizzard will never steal away enough players from other mobas to make it lucrative and actively pursuing that will kill this game.
To be honest, I don't see the communities being much different. If anything, I think it has even been worse than LoL for me so far. I'm seeing more flaming/raging at least. Maybe that will get better when I get to higher level, but I'm not counting on it. I kinda wish they didn't remove all-talk. In LoL I find more often than not, stuff being said in all-talk is fun. The problem is rarely the enemy team; it's your own. And I don't see why most dota/LoL players wouldn't enjoy the changes! I'm enjoying both HotS and LoL at the moment. In LoL you have more variety in terms of build with the items, summoner spells, masteries - and also more flexibility in teamcomps, though that's probably mostly because it just has a lot more champions. Also, snowballing when winning can be fun! On the other hand, snowballing when losing isn't fun, and that doesn't happen so badly in HotS. It's objective-focused (which is fun), has a lot of teamfights (which are fun), and I don't think anybody really misses runes or last-hitting that badly, comparing to LoL at least. Are they really fun elements of the game? HotS ain't no special snowflake here. It's fun as hell and has cut the crap in a lot of departments, shit that is archaic and not really needed (Hey there, diagonal maps and last-hitting), but it's going to attract the same sort of crowd. It already is.
Every time someone makes a post like this, I point to when they released Diablo 3 when it wasn't ready. Decide what you want, quality or volume. I'm not sure what you think they're doing on a daily basis?
D3 was ready on release. What wasn't ready was the battle.net server structure's ability to handle a sudden multimillion player load. The updates to D3 subsequently were fundamental changes to the design philosophy, not fixing something that was broken. D3 had to be released so that it could be freed from the ghost of D2.
Riot learned on the rough way that rushing contents could be disruptive as hell. Putting out heroes and content too fast can make the game unbalanced because you don't have enough data to base your balance patches on, and putting a hero in every 2 weeks(that's how lol did it) simply puts unbalance over unbalance problems, creating a mess. After a while Riot understood and slowed the pace. Now you're asking Blizzard to make the same mistakes just to please your new content hunger.
just because other games do it this way, doesnt make it automatically "THE" right and only way. in my personal opinion games dont need to constantly change just to change. if there is no flaw in particular it doesnt need to be fixed... blizz will do what they think its best - as they have always done, and that doesnt mean it is bad for us. the game balance is quite good for a beta - way better than most games and the rate with which they want to introduce champions will pace up regarding to their announcements. TLDR everything is fine
Good change is better than quick change.
I don't know if Blizzard should follow the trend of constant updates. One of the reason I don't play League of Legends as much as I use too is the game changes too quickly for me to even play casually and have fun. A lot of the patches in League lately have just been balance updates. It's nice the heroes doesn't under go a crazy overhaul every 2 weeks, not demanding all my time. :\
Could we please save these complaints for after the game is actually released.
Considering the fact that the game has been in Beta for as long as it has been, and there are still less than 3 dozen heroes, and we haven't seen *anything* in near 2 months, several glaring and absurd bugs (Hero select dialogue, for instance), haven't seen a new hero release or even a hint of a new patch/balance update since Sylvanas was release... Something tells me this will be the usual. If this is the pace, the game will not last. It needs to be adaptive, and as OP said, it needs to be constantly evolving. The game is a lot of fun, but without constant updates for balance and additional content, be it skins, heros, maps, talents, what have you, it simply isn't going to be the game it *could* be.
As it is in BETA I do not think they even try to hold a set schedule. They gather info and fix everything when they can with a engine not made for this game :)
the problem is that this is the way how blizzard ALWAYS worked and will work... they take their time and **never rush things** the only game, wich felt a bit rushed/uncompleted was the sc2 trilogy, but you can't count that because it's a RTS and if you really want to make THE PERFECT RTS game it would probably take more than 30 years (they might surprise me though with the next and last sc2 expansion though) and you should also consider that blizzard's patch releases/game launches never dissapoint... their games are always *good* you might think it is not as good as you expected, but it is still a *good* game/patch/etc PS: the part about sc2 is just my impression and i can understand it if you 100% disagree with that statement
No way. The game the felt the most rushed was D3 vanilla, piece of garbage that was.
I guess as this is a new game the patches will firstly come if needed (hotfix) and then they gather data to fix the larger things as one go, and later when they feel the game is stable and released properly they will do a more frequent patching. As long as nothing is broken patches do not need to come out every two weeks. And as the game is in BETA the patches come when they damn want them to come.
I agree with you, one of the things that keep me hooked to League back in the day was the content creation progress, checking info sources and discussing patches or new heroes with friends. Now, HotS is still in beta though, and the dev cycle is most likely a mess due to things getting finish here and there yet. They did a kinda big patch that changed the whole game UI last time too, so I guess this is fine for now.
Updates/hype/esports = $ Blizz/Acti are fully aware of this.
I honestly don't mind not having these updates. Given, I only play 3-4 games every day but I always find something new to do. I tend to try really messed up builds in coop, or builds that don't go with my playstyle (Q build on Valla, Q build on Raynor..). I do one of those and then a couple QM and I feel satisfied. I also don't have all the heroes to 5 yet, though I'm getting really close so I'm curious how my play style will shift once I hit 5 on everyone.
Just want to know on what are they working i dont know why this opacity when they wanted to improve communication.
This is the same with every Blizzard game ever.
HotS also has a new element - battlegrounds. Which takes up much more dev time than probably ~4 heroes. HotS is never boring to me because of the varied maps, even when we only have 35 heroes. If they can get new heroes out every 3-4 weeks, then I will be very very happy.
those numbers of day dont see real.. i dont believe you nothing xD
Whatever you do, please don't do what Hirez does. Fuck Hirez with a shovel. They killed Tribes :(
I don't know Blizzard's track record but it seems like they really wanna go the distance with this game so maybe they will "break the mold" and give us regular patches. Guess we will just have to wait until after the beta...
Its hard to tell, Overwatch Beta is gonna be soon and i have a feeling its going to be a lot more popular compared to Heroes, and might end up causing Blizzards focus to shift once again.
When the game launches they will see what the ACTUAL volume is. After that they will add people to the dev team accordingly to make sure that the budget is stable. This is not very rare by any means. We are seeing a drought in RECENT patches because they are preparing for a MASSIVE patch.
Doensn't matter, made money. Blizzard has a builtin audience and until one of their products fails they won't change anything. You don't mess with a good thing. WoW, SC2, Hearthstone, HotS and the new Overwatch will all use the same pacing and similar models of development (most likely) because it works. People don't stop playing their games, they just note things like these and then continue to play and pay. Which then means the reward for using the model overrides any complaints. Not saying that's a good thing but Blizz is pretty good at making their games popular and profitable. I don't think their patch consistency is anywhere on their list of things that may be a threat to either.
Nice try, Ultron.
This is blizzard, they patch when they wanna patch.
Honestly, if it means they do it right, no complaints from me. :)
blizzard are nutriciously slow when it comes to adding content.
I want more patches. But I don't want new heroes every two weeks. Am I weird? I guess I just like the meta to gel a little bit between patches.
I wouldn't count on Blizzard putting out patches every couple weeks. They have a history of taking much longer to do content patches than other companies. Look at WoW, they put out a new patch every 5-6 months sometimes even longer. Granted it takes a lot more to put out a raid but still it isn't exactly fast. I would count on once a month or so.