Originally posted by ZeGerman Its a very smart decision by blizzard rather than competing with LoL and Dota2, which they probably couldnt do anyways, they are going into the casual MOBA market like smite. The decisions they have made around team leveling and gold mean that they will likely never have a pro circut, then again most blizzard game esports suck anyways, but they will get alot of people just looking to have a bit of fun.
Yeah Blizzard esports suck....SC2 is only ranked number one on most esport sites and with combined game viewship Blizzard is only #1 by a hugh number. But hey they suck right.....
Sorry to burst your bubble, but SC2 is the only remotely large competitive scene in any Blizzard game. FIrst is League, second DOTA2 THEN perhaps SC2 but that's only in the Korean scene. NA is completely dead. There's no question as to why Blizzard is dipping into the MOBA genre but they're far too late and MANY dollars short, not just one.
Blizzard is no dollars short. Anywhere. Ever. Now that that's out of the way, this game has been in development since 2011, so I don't think they showed up that late. They're well known for not hesitating to take extra time before release for the sake of polish etc, so with Dot' 2's official release less than a year ago, I'm not so sure they're going to be too late to the party either.
Originally posted by kairel182 There is NOTHING refined about this horrible MOBA band wagon. Sorry, not even Blizzard will compete with League or even DOTA2. The market is already saturated and people are comfortable where they are in their currently established games (hows the reverse feel now, eh Blizzard?). After watching a few twitch streams and seeing people beat on bots for years without any sort of action and the fact that there are no items nor gold while playing makes this seem like there's zero point. There's a reason things exist in "MOBAs" otherwise it wouldn't even be classified as that.
the market is saturated. but for someone who doesn't play moba's if I did I would probably play this one. because it has characters I'm familiar with.
compared to lol or dota, sc2 market is tiny. that includes south Korea. I see this as a game that has potential. Whether it unseats lol as the big dog, not sure on that.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
What a surprise.. Blizzard did it again.. dumbed down a genre.
LoL is already a dumbed down version of DoTA/2, with less strategic(especially on the item side of things), and now Blizzard throw it out completely and removes other strategic aspects of the game. Well... after we saw it with WoW it wasn't really a surprise.. well it may not be the better MOBA, but i guess a lot of casuals will like it. I will try it out, but i guess i will stick with DoTA 2.
Originally posted by Thanosxp I like the game too. Slower than the other 3 big MOBAs, but it's a great game. I just find weird that you talk bad about itemization, and talk well about talents: It's almost the same thing, in a different pack. You had builds (with items) in dota, lol and hon, now you have builds (from talents) here. Kinda weird to hype something here, and talk ill about something so close in other games. A bias, maybe?
The difference is that you now only need to know the talents of your hero instead of all items in the game.
You also don't have to waste time going back to Base to purchase. Another small plus to having character specific builds, as opposed to crazy itemization.
I may understand why it is good for very casual players.. but those crazy itemization allowed more versatility, brought more tactil depth into the game, and give you a few(in DOTA2 often 3 and more) active abilities.. and for a game with only 4 active abilities(for most hereos) a few extra abilities just added more gameplay to it.
But ok.. for everyone not interested in MOBAs, and just for some casual carnage it may be the easier pickup.. but what is with any long term appeal? But, right.. WOW told us the lesson.. you don't need challenge for that... as long as you have enough casuals flocking to it.
Originally posted by ZeGerman Its a very smart decision by blizzard rather than competing with LoL and Dota2, which they probably couldnt do anyways, they are going into the casual MOBA market like smite. The decisions they have made around team leveling and gold mean that they will likely never have a pro circut, then again most blizzard game esports suck anyways, but they will get alot of people just looking to have a bit of fun.
Yeah Blizzard esports suck....SC2 is only ranked number one on most esport sites and with combined game viewship Blizzard is only #1 by a hugh number. But hey they suck right.....
Sorry to burst your bubble, but SC2 is the only remotely large competitive scene in any Blizzard game. FIrst is League, second DOTA2 THEN perhaps SC2 but that's only in the Korean scene. NA is completely dead. There's no question as to why Blizzard is dipping into the MOBA genre but they're far too late and MANY dollars short, not just one.
Blizzard is no dollars short. Anywhere. Ever. Now that that's out of the way, this game has been in development since 2011, so I don't think they showed up that late. They're well known for not hesitating to take extra time before release for the sake of polish etc, so with Dot' 2's official release less than a year ago, I'm not so sure they're going to be too late to the party either.
Actually they are VERY strapped for cash. They just shelled out 8.2 BILLION to buy its self back from Vivendi and STILL need to shell out money to their investors because they are still a publicly traded company.
Your high to think Acti/Bliz is not strapped for cash.
Now to say that Blizzard revolutionized the MOBA genre is the same as saying adding Iron Site revolutionized FPS's. All they did was take out a few things that were 'frustrating' in the hopes to create a more 'fun' game. The problem is with out any amount of frustration a game is bland, and its even harder to look at why specific mechanics are in the game when your bad at them.
Talents create a similar problem as items, yet don't replace the depth that items add to a heroes development. Heroes in HotS have 1 layer, at most 2 layers of progression, that is Leveling and Talents, and Talents come from leveling. If you think balancing this will be easy, well i'll tell you right now there is a reason its taking them so long to create this game, and it isn't hero design or gfx, its trying to balance and add enough layers of hero development to the game that makes it not a nightmare to balance.
There is only one level of balance going on in the game currently and that is within the hero. Once the game is released to the public you will see select heroes chosen because they will ALWAYS win. With out the layered progression of other MObas, you end up with straight stronger/weaker heroes that can't be counter acted with out yet another balance problem of specific heroes being 100% imba late game.
While some mechanics in mobas like Last Hitting and gold are tedious and some what unfun, they are mechanics that haven't been changed because they work so well. Its like trying to innovate on the mouse and keyboard. The next progression to mouse and keyboard was touchscreen, but what are we finding? Mouse and keyboard kills every other 'innovative' controller scheme out there, and will keep doing so because its not recognized as something far far ahead of its time.
The tedious mechanics in Mobas are what make the game so satisfying. Getting good at last hitting, getting good at denying, getting good at the lane phase brings a much higher sense of reward if its hard and challenging than if its streamlined and always the same.
This is not to say HotS won't have its place, it will, but it is not a MOBA. It may appear to be one, but its more akin to a WoW BG with progression than a MOBA.
Comments
Blizzard is no dollars short. Anywhere. Ever. Now that that's out of the way, this game has been in development since 2011, so I don't think they showed up that late. They're well known for not hesitating to take extra time before release for the sake of polish etc, so with Dot' 2's official release less than a year ago, I'm not so sure they're going to be too late to the party either.
the market is saturated. but for someone who doesn't play moba's if I did I would probably play this one. because it has characters I'm familiar with.
I see this as a game that has potential. Whether it unseats lol as the big dog, not sure on that.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
What a surprise.. Blizzard did it again.. dumbed down a genre.
LoL is already a dumbed down version of DoTA/2, with less strategic(especially on the item side of things), and now Blizzard throw it out completely and removes other strategic aspects of the game. Well... after we saw it with WoW it wasn't really a surprise.. well it may not be the better MOBA, but i guess a lot of casuals will like it. I will try it out, but i guess i will stick with DoTA 2.
I may understand why it is good for very casual players.. but those crazy itemization allowed more versatility, brought more tactil depth into the game, and give you a few(in DOTA2 often 3 and more) active abilities.. and for a game with only 4 active abilities(for most hereos) a few extra abilities just added more gameplay to it.
But ok.. for everyone not interested in MOBAs, and just for some casual carnage it may be the easier pickup.. but what is with any long term appeal? But, right.. WOW told us the lesson.. you don't need challenge for that... as long as you have enough casuals flocking to it.
Looks.... so.... slow....
All these games got reduced to crap for skilled players once smite came out.
Actually they are VERY strapped for cash. They just shelled out 8.2 BILLION to buy its self back from Vivendi and STILL need to shell out money to their investors because they are still a publicly traded company.
Your high to think Acti/Bliz is not strapped for cash.
Now to say that Blizzard revolutionized the MOBA genre is the same as saying adding Iron Site revolutionized FPS's. All they did was take out a few things that were 'frustrating' in the hopes to create a more 'fun' game. The problem is with out any amount of frustration a game is bland, and its even harder to look at why specific mechanics are in the game when your bad at them.
Talents create a similar problem as items, yet don't replace the depth that items add to a heroes development. Heroes in HotS have 1 layer, at most 2 layers of progression, that is Leveling and Talents, and Talents come from leveling. If you think balancing this will be easy, well i'll tell you right now there is a reason its taking them so long to create this game, and it isn't hero design or gfx, its trying to balance and add enough layers of hero development to the game that makes it not a nightmare to balance.
There is only one level of balance going on in the game currently and that is within the hero. Once the game is released to the public you will see select heroes chosen because they will ALWAYS win. With out the layered progression of other MObas, you end up with straight stronger/weaker heroes that can't be counter acted with out yet another balance problem of specific heroes being 100% imba late game.
While some mechanics in mobas like Last Hitting and gold are tedious and some what unfun, they are mechanics that haven't been changed because they work so well. Its like trying to innovate on the mouse and keyboard. The next progression to mouse and keyboard was touchscreen, but what are we finding? Mouse and keyboard kills every other 'innovative' controller scheme out there, and will keep doing so because its not recognized as something far far ahead of its time.
The tedious mechanics in Mobas are what make the game so satisfying. Getting good at last hitting, getting good at denying, getting good at the lane phase brings a much higher sense of reward if its hard and challenging than if its streamlined and always the same.
This is not to say HotS won't have its place, it will, but it is not a MOBA. It may appear to be one, but its more akin to a WoW BG with progression than a MOBA.