Heroes of the Storm 2.0

[Kelimbror]

What do you mean you can only play against AI the first week? Is Versus AI going away? Why? That's the fun part of the game...

Also I can't find anything about this.

It's just made up by someone who doesn't actually play the game. AI has multiple difficulty modes and has been there since launch. Nothing is happening to it. You get XP and currency slightly slower, but if you play with others and play on higher difficulty so the matches take a normal amount of time it's not bad. I don't ever play against real people in Hots.

[Maconi]

Clearly you don't know how it works then. The loot boxes in total would lose them out on money, because we're getting for free what a lot of people would spend money on. Instead of having to pay for skins, we just get them from loot boxes you can get easily for free.

I doubt changing the system from them earning more money to them earning less money is "profitable"

There's a reason most games are going to the loot box system (referred to as the "gacha" system in the East). The system usually ends up making the business more money in the end (similar to MMORPGs going F2P).

It's so funny to see people talking about Activision-Blizzard as an investment when they clearly know nothing about it. Blizzard doesn't give HoTS player counts to investors. Last I checked, they don't even announce the active player time of HoTS either. They don't announce how much money HoTS makes, whether it has gone up or down, or really anything HoTS-related in their quarterly reports (except a bullet point here or there like "we had our annual Heroes of the Dorm tournament last month"). You are grasping by trying to claim they made any change related to the game because of investors.

Now, clearly they changed the loot system to try to increase revenues from the game. I will give you that. The added sprays, voice lines, announcers, etc. will cause collectors (or "whales") to spend more money to get them all. Now whether that is to increase the profits they are already making on the game, or to recover losses from declining players, no one but people at Blizzard can say right now. HoTS has a very dedicated base, and it's in Blizzard's best interest to try to increase that base, even if they know they will never achieve the same player base as LoL.

Every investor call they report both Audience Reach metrics, referred to as Monthly Active Users (MAUs), and Deep Engagement metrics, measured by Hours Played. They report the overall number as well as the specific games that did exceedingly well that quarter. You can bet your ass they'll mention HoTS on the next investor call if there's a massive boost to either of those metrics because of the new system (although I wouldn't count on it happening, I think this is more a move of desperation rather than a tactical one).

[acinos]

I don't play Moba and everytime I load in to HOTS, every map is alien to me, there's no guide on what the objectives are, whether its to destroy the nexus or to do some other stuff.

Most of my time I just run around hoping someone wins so we can move on.

I started playing for the wow mount, the objectives where not very hard to figure out on the fly. i quit after getting it ofcoarse but still. i do wish there had been another wow mount... going to take convincing to get a few of my friends to play without a reward for wow XD

[Kolvarg]

People play only when there's a mount/pet bonus for WoW. They're basically wasting everyone's bandwidth

"I am the most amazing human being with the most exquisite taste and preferences in the world, therefore I am absolutely sure the majority of people agree with me and share my opinions and tastes, and therefore it is only natural that I speak for everyone else!"

[S7orm]

"I am the most amazing human being with the most exquisite taste and preferences in the world, therefore I am absolutely sure the majority of people agree with me and share my opinions and tastes, and therefore it is only natural that I speak for everyone else!"

Except you'd have noticed too if you bothered to log during the Primal Flamesaber event. No one was looking for any content other than quick games against AI. It was clearly a desperate attempt from Blizzard to increase the player pool.

[Deleted]

This was gold for heroes! So much fun to play, and can really feel you get rewarded for every each hero you play

[Irian]

I really do feel like this is a huge improvement to HotS, personally. As someone who's always liked the game but never quite loved it, I always felt like it was strongly held back by its overkill on nickel-and-diming of its playerbase combined with an extremely poor and barebones reward system that, summed up, was pretty much "You can't do shit except unlock more heroes with this gold and you won't be able to do it any sensible pace. If you want 10 heroes after 3 months of playing them have fun, otherwise pay up, sucker."

The new reward system is fun and relatively harmless, and better yet, weekly hero rotations and new hero releases are a huge deal now with each level up giving a box. Even better, the later levels on heroes have smoothed out to a decent pace even at the high levels (A solid 6 games or so got my level 20 Abathur up a level, whereas before it was giving something like a fiftieth of a level) so you're not really deincentivized from playing your main, but more just incentivized to play heroes you're not familiar with or have never played.

Overall I approached this with jaded boredom with the game and was extremely surprised with how much fun I've been having. Loot box obtained skins have me playing heroes I previously didn't care for only to find that they've been revamped since I last played, or try new ones entirely I wouldnt've otherwise looked at. The game's progression system has me excited for games, win or loss.

[Kolvarg]

Except you'd have noticed too if you bothered to log during the Primal Flamesaber event. No one was looking for any content other than quick games against AI. It was clearly a desperate attempt from Blizzard to increase the player pool.

And you would have noticed too that very cleary there are still people playing even when there are no active events if you had played when there are no active events. I can't say I'm a regular hots player myself, in fact I haven't had much time to play anything at all really, but I can defenitely say that with or without events I pretty much never had trouble playing quick match, unranked or league with reasonable queue times, independetly of what most people were doing in the chat.

Your personal experience, and especially your perception, do not necessarily equal to actual facts in the grand scheme of things.

Obviously during events the majority of activity will be around the event, especially in the visible side of things (chat), just like in WoW there's mostly talk and buzz about the latest and active patch and content, the latest raid, etc etc. Just because you don't see people looking for Wailing Cavern runs doesn't mean they don't happen.

Same translates to HotS; just because "all" you see in the chat is quick games agaisnt AI doesn't mean that is the only thing that's happening.


Granted, it defenitely is an attempt to increase player pool and by proxy profits, there's no doubt about that. Everyone does it one way or another, especially when you are competing with much larger and previously well established products such as LoL and Dota, and in an overall over-saturated genre as MOBA is. The question here is that you only see it as "desperate" because you likely have a negative bias towards the game and seeing (or believing) it fail quite possibly gives you a feeling of validation of your dislike of the game in the first place, no?

Either way, it's clear and obvious HotS is far, far away from LoL & Dota numbers, but no, people don't play JUST because of the cross-game events, and the game doesn't simply vanish into inactivity as soon as the cross-game events end.

[Adramelch]

It's just made up by someone who doesn't actually play the game. AI has multiple difficulty modes and has been there since launch. Nothing is happening to it. You get XP and currency slightly slower, but if you play with others and play on higher difficulty so the matches take a normal amount of time it's not bad. I don't ever play against real people in Hots.

You're referring to me and you clearly didn't follow the discussion (much like the poster you quoted). Good luck trying to do Week 2-4 of Nexus Challenge versus AI (unless they change the current plan in true Blizzard fashion).

[HitRefresh]

Nah the reason people aren't playing is because the game is shit lol. Having more characters, maps and rewards won't change that.

The game is a fan-service that players get railroaded into if they want skins/mounts/whatever for the games they do enjoy.

My sentence might have been misread there, that's exactly what I was saying.

[Deleted]

My sentence might have been misread there, that's exactly what I was saying.

I was just too high to post my agreement in a way that showed I was agreeing with you.