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    Heroes of the Storm AMA - December 5, 2019 Recap

    Heroes of the Storm AMA - December 5, 2019 Recap

    Heroes
    • Deathwing was meant to be the first Mythic hero, hence the 20k gold cost.
    • More heroes are in development.
    • Will we ever see another Overwatch hero? Yes.
    • The Tassadar rework is being finalized, with a Soon(TM) release date.
    • D.Va's rework is still a ways out. The rework will address some fantasy mismatch between her Heroes and Overwatch iterations.
    • Deathwing did not release with an alternative skin due to it not being ready yet. It is in the works though.
    • Destroyer Brightwing was floating around as an idea for years, but the idea was to wait until Deathwing happened.
    • The Butcher is in the spotlight to make him more generally usable.
    • Qhira is untargetable during Revolving Sweep due to weird interactions with other heroes' movement abilities. Playtesting had several incidents, such as Qhira and Chen targeting each other at the same time and then flying off the map together.
    • Lilith would be cool to have in the game, but the team does not want to steal the Diablo team's thunder with her.
    • Chromie had a heroic ability to slow down everyone else on the map during development.

    Storm League
    • Seasonal rewards will be adjusted going forward, and communication about potential rewards will be more accurate.
    • Loss-forgiveness is in limbo at the moment due to the current leaver penalty system.
    • Active performance-based matchmaking won't happen anymore, but the system is still passively gathering data about players and their actions. The team is aiming to present this data to players in the post-game score screen to help highlight areas where players are doing well and areas where they can improve.
    • Storm League rank will be added to replay files in the future.

    Brawl
    • Brawl mode will likely be replaced with a full-blown ARAM mode in the future.
    • Other brawls may make a return as seasonal events in the future.
    • Non-ARAM brawls are very expensive for the team to maintain.
    • Azmodan and Chromie are available in ARAM again.

    Miscellaneous
    • The team will continue iterating on the XP globes Nexus Anomaly in future updates.
    • An open API is not likely to happen due to data protection regulations, but the team is looking into releasing balance and winrate info at specific intervals.
    • Spectator mode is still on the table.
    • The team would love to add ingame notifications for player reports resulting in action, but other things in development have been taking precedent.
    • During pre-alpha, the game had a Hero Buyback system where you could swap heroes mid-match.


    Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
    with nexus anomalies, how are you going to balance heroes? when the anomaly ends, if the trial game mechanic is not kept, will balance changes made to heroes during the anomaly be rolled back?
    Hey superjasegive! We’re still super early on nexus anomalies, and we’re not done with iterating on this pass, as it’s only been live for a few days. In regards to balance, this will depend on the specific heroes and on the anomalies themselves. Each situation will likely be incredibly different, so I’m hesitant to give a blanket statement on how we would tackle every possible scenario. However, to give you a real answer, I will say this:
    • We’re aware of anomalies sometimes impacting heroes, and we don’t plan to leave them in the dust if it’s seriously detrimental to their performance.
    • There is often an initial reaction that the sky is falling when a big change happens. While it’s easy to theorize what will happen, things rarely end up being as huge of an impact as they are initially perceived to be. It’s important on our end to find out what’s really going on, and then to react accordingly
    • In regards to if heroes are balanced around an anomaly and then the anomaly is rolled back, I would say that we’re always balancing heroes based on the current state of the game and what’s going on. If that state changes, due to an anomaly being rolled back, a meta shift, or any other reason, then the game’s balance will move forward accordingly based on the new state of the game. (/u/BlizzAZJackson)


    What are your thoughts and plans regarding Abathur's Locust? Surely the team can't be happy with the current state of it and its talents. Were ideas discussed that didn't have time to get implemented before the nexus anomaly?
    Hey Pscythic, thanks for the question! I think that saying that Abathur’s locust trait serves absolutely no purpose is a bit of a hyperbole, but I understand the sentiment. I largely agree with you, and I think since the removal of tower ammo they have had a less clear role in the game, and that they can use a change to make them feel like a better, more effective part of Abathur’s kit. I’ve made a note to think on it. Thanks for the post! (/u/BlizzAZJackson)


    Are you able to comment on the lack of season rewards ? A large emphasis was placed on reaching the 50 win threshold to unlock these season end rewards.
    Late response here, sorry about that. We hear your feedback on the lack of meaningful ranked season rewards. This was our first jaunt into the new quest-like progress in Storm League, and we intend to tweak them season-over-season based on our experiences and your feedback. We will discuss ways we can include things we all love and covet like mounts in the rewards moving forward, and I hear that another part of the concern here was that we did not communicate the rewards (or lack thereof) well. Noted, and we'll do better. Thanks for the feedback here, and please keep chiming in as we tweak this stuff to let us know the kinds of things you'd be excited to see in the reward track. Thanks! (/u/KaeoMilker)


    Is the official (statistics) API still a possibility?
    Hi! I replied in another thread on this, but see this one is much more specific with the replay API ask. I don't think we'll be able to send all replays anywhere for you for the same data protection reasons that limited us in our earlier API efforts, so we'll likely still end up in a similar boat with trying to expose expose aggregate balance and winrate info in a more static fashion at specific intervals around game updates.

    As for the supporting/partnering and/or promoting HotSAPI/others - we can talk about this. No promises, but I'm in the boat of wanting the community to have this info in the ways we can safely help them get it. (/u/KaeoMilker)


    Are there any plans to expand the information stored in replays regarding quests & quest talents?
    This is definitely something I would also like to see. I really like people being able to get some good analysis out of replays so if this is something that we can add I will see what I can do! (/u/Blizz_DGower)


    Have you guys considered adding a spectate mode?
    Every day. We even put some time into designing out how it would look. There are a bunch of challenges with it, but it's definitely something we want to do. (/u/Blizz_RyanM)


    Right now it is hard to get friends from other Blizzard games into HotS, because the first few heroes take so long to acquire with in-game currency. Could we award heroes for players' activity in other Blizzard games?
    Hi, /u/jjp3! We try to create many opportunities for new players to jump in and get access to heroes that they want to play, including several of these types of cross-game rewards (mostly tied to game ownership) which are still active in-game. I love these kinds of things and will encourage the team to revisit these rewards in search of more ways to help bring in friends from other Blizzard games. We’ll see what we can do! (/u/KaeoMilker)


    Hi everyone! Who led the Brightwing as Deathwing troll and did they get a raise?
    I think that was our Art Director Trev and I don't have access to his pay information. We're close but not sharing pay stubs close. (/u/Blizz_KinaBREW)

    I gave him some Gems, we good. (/u/KaeoMilker)
    May I ask, is the art director still is our beloved legendary Samwise Didier?
    Trevor Jacobs has been art directing Heroes for several years and is the driving force behind our team delving into all these varied event and skin themes. Trev is a 20+ year Blizzard veteran who worked closely with Sammy for most of that time and he has contributed to our games all the way back to Warcraft II!! He's also super fun to be around and an awesome partner in making amazing things...basically, he completes me. (/u/KaeoMilker)


    Any plans to release Official API?
    Greetings, /u/DemisodaLemon! We’ve been talking about a data API for Heroes for YEARS and at times have even made strides on bringing it to you. Unfortunately, those initiatives hit hurdles with everything from data compliance complexities (GDPR has been fun!) to prioritization against other game features and have lost steam over the years.

    In the absence of the actual API, we’ve discussed exposing official winrates and stats alongside updates that are more balance- and gameplay-centric, and that is something I’d still be open to exploring if you think it gives you a portion of what you’re looking for? (/u/KaeoMilker)


    Why can Sonya use E to pull herself to. Deathwing, but Qhira can't use E to pull herself to Deathwing?
    Qhira's E (Revolving Sweep) is a special case scenario for becoming disconnected from Unstoppable targets that we found was the most elegant solution to several issues we were having during Qhira's development. Story time!

    It all started a long time ago when we were currently working on the Chen rework and Qhira was in development at the same time. During a playtest game we had a Qhira on one team and a Chen on the other. During the middle of the game in a heated team fight, Qhira used her Revolving Sweep on Chen and Chen used his Flying Kick on Qhira. Suddenly, Chen and Qhira both blasted off into the sky and disappeared off the map. Laughter erupted throughout the bullpen as everyone wondered what they just witnessed. This happened because of the way Qhira's Revolving Sweep moves her around her target. It is constantly and instantaneously updating her position. Chen was never able to resolve his Flying Kick movement, and since he has a bit of elevation to it they would fly into the sky.

    As more playtests came, we started finding this issue more and more. Kerrigan would leap to Qhira during Revolving Sweep and the same thing would happen. Varian's Charge. Cassia's Fend. Illidan's Dive. The list went on and on. Clearly fixing each of these on a case by case basis would take a significant amount of time and effort and would probably still not cover all of the possible scenarios.

    This led us to making Qhira untargetable during her Revolving Sweep -- if she can't be targeted then no other Heroes can use weird movement abilities on her and none of this will happen, right? Well, no. In the rare case that Chen kicks Qhira while she is casting Revolving Sweep, the same problem will happen. Ok, no big deal, we can stun the target too, that way it knocks them out of any kind of movement ability they're doing! Except for if they... are unstoppable. So in that case, the best thing to do is just not let her Revolving Sweep hit an unstoppable target.

    We explored many different solutions to this problem. We tried changing the way her movement worked, we tried adding special cases for all of the major movement issues that we could find (a very time consuming process I might add), but ultimately there would always be additional bugs and problems that would appear as a result of those changes. Each hero had a different special case that had to be setup in a different way. We found that the simplest and least bug-prone way of fixing Revolving Sweep was to do exactly what I described above. Become untargetable, stun the target, and pass through unstoppable targets.

    This actually meant we had to make significant balance changes to the rest of her kit to compensate for this huge power that was just added to this ability. In the end, we felt that since Revolving Sweep is Qhira's most awesome ability in the first place, it was ok for us to make these power adjustments and balance around it in other places. We also felt that becoming Unstoppable added a level of counter-play to the ability that was somewhat lacking before, as well. (/u/BlizzKyle)


    Any traction on getting Storm League rank added to the replay files? Would help Heroes Profile out a lot, on top of allowing us to provide a better service to the Amateur Leagues
    Hi there! I looked into this and it is possible to do. I wasn't able to get it in for this release but would love to get some time aside to see if this can go in soon. (/u/Blizz_DGower)


    Can you give us more transparency as far as what goes into reporting players and how those situations are handled? I would like it if you could be as specific as you can so I know you're not just tossing bullshit at us.
    Hi, /u/silly_walks_! It’s super important that you report players, when appropriate, as we action accounts daily based on a combination of player reports and detected behaviors. This results in thousands upon thousands of players receiving punishments in the form of everything from brief silences to permabans.

    I can’t go into specifics on the thresholds, timing, and methods we use as that info simply arms offenders with ways to circumvent them, but we agree that giving you more feedback on your reports would be beneficial. We’ve done some tests with email confirmations that players on reddit have commented on and would still really like to have in-game notifications a la Overwatch as well, though we are constantly prioritizing the work we want to do on the game and that confirmation work has been losing out to broader game-impacting initiatives. Please keep reporting, and keep giving us feedback on how we can make that system and visibility on it better! (/u/KaeoMilker)


    When a Hero is killed while a Damage Over Time effect is on them, could the Death Recap be updated to feature the total potential damage that could have happened to them?
    This is something we can definitely look into doing. Thanks for the suggestion. :) (/u/BlizzKyle)


    If you can answer, what is the day-to-day goings on like as part of the Heroes Dev Team?
    I uh... roll in to work, get some water, answer emails, pull up the ol ZBrush, Modo, Max the Editor and Photoshop and get to makin cool stuff. Do the mentoring thing if needed. Every other day or so I participate in a playtest and attend meetings I'm invited to. Rinse then repeat. (/u/Blizz_KinaBREW)

    Yep, That's pretty accurate for me, except with less modelling and more fire and sparkles... but mostly i'm just waiting for someone to bring donuts and/or cake. (/u/Blizz_Thomas)


    What is one thing that keeps you excited about your role or your craft day over day? (Love you guys!)
    I really enjoy putting the bells and whistles on the work of everyone that comes before me in the pipeline. Modelling, Animation, Design etc. It's super satisfying to see a piece of art come together, and since VFX is near the end of the dev process I get to help put the icing on the cake and see everyone's reactions when they finally see the finished product. #GGOG (/u/Blizz_Thomas)


    What to you is the ultimate goal behind balance patches? Is the goal to strive for some perfectly balanced ideal, or is some sort of change from time to time to keep things fun and diversified more of a priority?
    Hey Cheesecakegod, great question! With the balance patch changes over the last year or so, I’ve had a pretty strict philosophy to them that I’m fairly passionate about. Here are some of the major things that we strive for with every balance patch:

    • The ultimate goal of the balance patches is to make the game more fun. This sounds like a very basic concept, but there’s a lot of specific actions that we take to make this happen. When it comes down to deciding between two difficult choices, asking this basic question is a guiding star for decision making.
    • Buffs and design changes are more fun than simple nerfs. As much as possible, we try to make heroes feel better when changing them, not worse.
    • In every patch we try to put in at least 1-2 design changes that are super crazy/exciting. There should be something in each patch that you read the note and go “no way that’s so busted, I’m going to break the game with this”.
      • This has been a change from how we used to do things. We didn’t really used to do this due to the fear of making something incredibly unbalanced, but nowadays we have more embraced the view that it’s better to create more exciting changes to the game than to never try, and if we mess up then we’ll fix it down the road. So far this has worked very well, as we haven’t had any huge blowouts due to changes in balance patches over the last year.
    • Hitting the right balance between player perception and reality is important.
      • If Hero A is being picked and banned in every game and the playerbase is begging for changes to them, but is at a 46% win rate, and Hero B is totally under the radar but is at a 58% win rate, it can be easy to fall into the trap of buffing Hero A and nerfing Hero B by balancing strictly on win rates. The real situation is much more nuanced than that, and in these situations we look for design-related solutions. (/u/BlizzAZJackson)


    It has been nearly 2 years since Kaeo has stated that performance based MMR is something targeted to return when the time is right. Is this still a possibility or has that project been sidelined into oblivion at this point?
    That Kaéo guy!! So where we last left this system is that it’s still on in the background gathering data about player performance. What we really want to do with it is use that data to power a post-game scorecard feature that gives players detailed info on how they played their hero, on that map, vs. other players of similar skill in an attempt to highlight not only areas that they are performing well, but more importantly areas that they should focus on improving (and how). We have some really cool designs for this and would love to bring the feature to the game, but don’t currently have an ETA for it. Thanks for the question, /u/MisterSadPanda and I hope you aren’t even moar sad now… (/u/KaeoMilker)


    What was the craziest thing you tested/developed, and then scrapped before us players got to see it?
    In one of the the first iterations of Chromie she had a heroic ability that slowed time for every other unit in the game. It was pretty wild.

    In general it isn't uncommon to create and discard 10 or more abilities before landing on the final kit. Same goes for talents. It's a lot of work, but it's my favorite part of the process. (/u/BlizzKGu)

    My favorite was when we had the Hero Buyback system. This was wayyyyyyyyy back in the day, pre Alpha, when we had Gold, before the talent system that we have today. Basically you could spend a relatively small amount of Gold, and at any time during the game you could completely switch your hero.

    Entire metas were based around this, where, for example, you could play as Zagara in the beginning stages of the game to bully your opponent, then switch to Valla or Zeratul midway through for a power spike, then in the end game go to someone tanky like Arthas for the final few teamfights. Entire metas were developed around this, and we actually had it in for a long time. It was wild.

    Edit: Oh, and we once had a map that was entirely circular, with both Cores in the middle left and right parts of the map. It was appropriately called Crazy Town. (/u/BlizzAZJackson)


    With so much of art, and especially art for a larger video game company like Blizzard, being digital nowadays, not to mention how flexible the tools are, do you still have any preference for physical media? Do you still do art on the side for fun?
    These days my usual at home medium is crayons, colored pencils and markers on an assortment of Disney princess coloring books... Sometimes I even let my daughter join me! (/u/Blizz_Thomas)

    Pencils and Pens are my go to. I do art on the side for fun but not as much as I would like. (/u/Blizz_KinaBREW)


    Please tell us how this amazing bad dragon skin came to be? Who came up with this idea? And why Brightwing (myself) is the real deathwing?
    The idea for the Destroyer Brightwing skin has been kicked around for a very long time. Lots of people had the idea but I'm not sure who had it first. I think when it was proposed the team imposed the stipulation that it would only come out if we were able to get Deathwing into the nexus. So there you go.

    You'll always be the real Deathwing to me. (/u/Blizz_KinaBREW)


    Tell us a lie!
    /u/Blizz_KinaBREW refuses to soak lanes and never goes bot. (/u/Blizz_Thomas)
    100% (/u/Blizz_KinaBREW)


    What's the deal with the little guy that is just below the Tomb of the Spider Queen right-side top-lane fort gate? Little guy gets brutally slaughtered just as soon as the game starts, but I think he deserves to live on.
    This is where feeders go to die... for eternity. (/u/Blizz_KinaBREW)

    I would like to know why you think he deserves to live on. What do you know?! (/u/Blizz_Thomas)


    Do you have any questions for us?
    Why do you play the heroes/game modes that you play? What stops you playing the heroes/game modes that you don't play? (/u/Blizz_DGower)

    Pineapple on pizza? (/u/Blizz_Thomas)

    Is there a hero that you aren't good at but you really like to play anyways? Why? (source)


    Experience globes significantly encourage "freezing" lanes to deny experience. How does the team feel about this becoming a common strategy due to this Nexus Anomaly? Is it good, is it bad, is it different, what's up?
    Hey Pscythic! Great question. I think the answer is a bit complicated, so I’ll try to give my views on it in as simple of a way as possible. Hopefully nothing gets misinterpreted! I’ll start with a few declarative statements. I’ll clarify that these are just my point of view, and not necessarily those of everyone on the team, so I wouldn’t take this as gospel:
    • I think lane manipulation is and always has been a part of our game, particularly at the higher levels. There are micro instances where it’s a good idea to let enemy minions hit you in front of your tower to make the waves crash near your tower in order to gain advantages like enabling a gank by a nearby teammate or to soak safely in a bad match up.
    • I don’t believe that being encouraged to freeze a lane ever is a terrible thing for the game. However, I do believe that if this is happening all the time at all stages of the game that it is a problem, largely due to encouraging too much passive play when we want our game to be about aggression.
    • In our experience, the experience globes haven’t universally motivated passive play. In general, they have motivated more aggressive play and more interesting combat, as both sides are trying to get a better position so that they can collect the experience globes for themselves.
    • Our game is very differently paced from other MOBAS due to a variety of factors. I’ve seen the narrative that two people are just going to sit near their minions and do nothing while they collect XP, but, at least in my mind, our games just don’t play out that way. We have multiple 2, 3, and 4 man rotations on nearly all of our maps happening at different points of the game, we have map objectives that heavily encourage teams to fight 4v4 or 5v5 depending on the map and game state, and we have mercenary camps that add another layer of depth to where heroes should be positioned on the map at any given point and time. All of these factors heavily disrupt the idea of being able to sit in a lane for multiple minutes on end while doing nothing but soaking XP. Because of this, I don’t believe that due to this change that the optimal play for all 5 members of each team is going to be to sit near minions and collect globes. If I’m wrong and this kind of passive play does dominate proper gameplay, then we would make changes to ensure that it isn’t the case anymore.

    Overall I would say that yes, this is a big change to the game, and it’s something that we are going to iterate on, and, like all changes to our game, it’s something that we can remove, keep, or only keep the best parts depending on how it pans out. (/u/BlizzAZJackson)


    Are there any other heroes in development?
    Yes. (/u/BlizzKGu)


    I wanted to ask you guys about the recent Deathwing spotlight. Was this something that you guys brought Cloaken in for specifically? I know a lot of folks were even guessing that it may have been pre-recorded. Any plans to work with Cloaken again in the future?
    We love Kevin. We were super happy to be able to ask him to reprise his beloved role as the voice of our spotlight videos. We're happy that he said yes. We would love for him to do it again. (/u/Blizz_KinaBREW)


    Can you share any information about your plans for ARAM? Plans in general, or specific ideas, anything would be appreciated.
    Heya Dsingis. The team has been discussing replacing the existing Brawl mode with dedicated ARAM queue (random ARAM map rather than weekly map rotation). That would mean reworked rewards, ARAM games will likely to contribute towards daily and special events quests credit, and probably some improvements to the hero selection screen (swaps or rerolls maybe?).
    Does this mean we would not be seeing any of the other previous Brawls or would those make a return?
    Sadly, non-ARAM Brawls are pretty expensive to maintain. We'd love to keep the Brawl mode hidden, and set up something fun there, for a week or two, on special occasions, such as seasonal events. (/u/Blizz_SMorozov)


    A brightwing polymorphed sheep cannot use Mediehv's portal,why not? Since not rooted and got wings and legs.
    Because you need thumbs to use his portal, duh. (/u/BlizzKGu)


    Aside of improving the AI, there are any plans to implement any loss forgiveness/safe abandonments features for matches with leavers, specially at draft modes?
    I agree, there's hardly anything as frustrating as losing Ranked game 4v5. Handling AFK/desertions in Ranked has been a hot topic for years, and we have done a lot of research on that. Loss forgiveness doesn't play along with the current leaver penalty system too well though. We'd like to rework the ranked penalty system at some point, and that will get us into a better spot for adding some insurance against leavers. (/u/Blizz_SMorozov)


    You stated before Deathwing would be a difficult hero to implement into the game, yet here he is. Does this mean that pretty much any character from a Blizzard IP is fair game for being added?
    When we answer questions on whether or not a hero would be challenging to make it is usually because we don't yet know definitively whether the Hero would be fun or compelling to play. For example, Reaper in Overwatch shares almost the same kit as Valla. The same could be said about Roadhog and Stitches. It would be difficult to do something that would stand out. This doesn't mean it is an impossible task, just that the answers aren't clear at the time. (/u/Blizz_KinaBREW)


    Can we get a progress update on improving the AI? The current state is dreadful.
    We have a blog post specifically about the state of Heroes AI that the team is currently finishing up. Please stay tuned. (/u/BlizzKGu)


    Why was Deathwing gold cost increased to 20k instead of 15k? I wanted to get him on day one so I saved up 15k. Now I have to go farm another 5k to even get him.
    Hi, /u/f....yeah! This was something we planned from early in his development to recognize that Deathwing is something truly special in the game on many fronts. Giant Raid Boss! Two ability kits!! DEATHWING!!! For those reasons and many more, the original intention was actually for him to be our first Mythic hero. Those plans happened long ago and got a little lost across his development even internally, so I understand how people feel disappointed that they didn't have the opportunity to save enough gold for him in advance. We should have set that expectation at his announcement and I'm sorry about that. We'll do better communicating about one-offs like this in the future. (/u/KaeoMilker)


    [vegan butcher skin?]
    This looks pretty fun for sure. The vegetarian/vegan Butcher is a reoccurring idea that comes up from time to time. Great minds think alike am I right? We're not against the idea of this skin. Could be cool to do. We've got a lot of good ideas for Butcher skins as well. Picking the right one, finding a place to drop it and what it would drop with is the harder part. I think a food related pack with a baked potato mount sounds like a win to me. (/u/Blizz_KinaBREW)


    Can you shine some light on how the Tass and DVa rework are coming along?
    Both are coming along nicely! Tass recently got some of his new art FX (courtesy of /u/Blizz_Thomas) and we're pretty much finalizing his balance/design changes. He should be in your hands soon™. Dva is still a ways off, but we're working hard on it! (/u/Blizz_DWarner)


    Why did Deathwing have no skin at release?
    His skin wasn't ready for this year. We have something really cool planed for him though. This is what I'm personally working on at the moment. Please accept The Destroyer Brightwing skin in the meantime as a peace offering. (/u/Blizz_KinaBREW)


    Are you willing to release the average player count for Heroes? I'm sure a lot of people are curious.
    None of you are average, you're all amazing! (/u/Blizz_DGower)


    Why does the Collection page for Deathwing have a button to switch modes (which changes nothing) while Alexstrasza does not have a button to switch modes (which changes everything)?
    Setting up the collection page with additional information about the kit takes up a good amount of time. But if we were to do this with every hero who has some sort of change we would need to do it for Tychus too for his Odin. It would be nice to go back and add these changes to the collection screen. However, the challenge with that is that once something is in the game and out for players to play we are usually well into the next thing or the thing after that thing. Going back to address some of that work can be challenging to our already packed schedule. (/u/Blizz_KinaBREW)


    What has been your favorite part about working on Heroes of the Storm?
    Working with the amazingly passionate and talented developers on this team, and being able to interact with you guys has been an inspiring and truly unique experience for me. (/u/Blizz_Thomas)


    Have you thought of making a weird map, like a single-lane map with a real objective (so not just an aram)? Or 5 lanes, to go silly in the other directions?
    Yes! Very early in development we experimented with a lot of different map types like 4 lane maps, giant maps with huge jungles and only 2 lanes, etc etc. We learned a lot about how easily macro play could become the dominant strategy and how mount speed/globals should be tuned. I vaguely remember a map that had "waygates" on either side of the map which let you instantly teleport between the two if your team had control of both. We learned very quickly that giving your entire team a Zagara Nydus Canal was a bit OP. (/u/Blizz_DWarner)


    Last question for ya guys, who is the most notorious in the office for being a shameless one-trick?
    Kyle really, really likes to play Kel'thuzad and Li-ming, but he also has a pretty wide hero pool.

    While people have phases, no one here is really a one-trick. We pretty highly prioritize playing a lot of different heroes so that our playtests are a better representation of what is happening in the live game. (/u/BlizzAZJackson)


    Not really an important issue, but as a D.Va main across both games it always sort of bothered me how in Overwatch D.Va's mech shoots alternating spread shots, like two shotguns, while in Heroes it is animated more like two chainguns, constantly firing projectiles rather than staccato bursts. Is there a technical / design / deliberate reason for this? Not a big problem, I've always just been curious.
    That fantasy/mechanical mismatch is something we will be addressing in her upcoming rework :) (/u/Blizz_DWarner)


    u/Blizz_Thomas I think Mephisto needs some fix to his Q animation. The skull forms near his hands but the real damage hitbox starts a bit further. My friend often complains about it when he tries to hit a melee hero.
    Interesting, I didn't originally work on Mephisto, but I believe the skull forming is just the "tell" that the ability is about to be cast and the damage doesn't begin until the skull starts moving. I will take a look though and see if it can be adjusted to be clearer or if this is an intentional design decision. Thanks for the feedback. (/u/Blizz_Thomas)


    Can we get a look under the hood at the Match Point breakdown? as in how does one person get 15 points and the other 26 points in the same Bronze 5 win
    Hi there! There are a couple of factors involved with this:
    - Uncertainty: The more time between games, the less confidence the matchmaker has in your skill rating and so the more it is adjusted
    - Dampening: At extreme ratings, we limit the ability to move in a particular direction. This is so we don't get people off in Narnia without the ability to play with anyone
    - Bronze 5 Hugeness: Bronze 5 covers a large skill rating and has its own dampening in it as well, so while you are moving the same rating, you might not be moving the same ranked points until you get to Bronze 4.
    This last point is something we're taking very seriously and investigating what to do about it. (/u/Blizz_DGower)


    Lilith is clearly the most hyped character from Blizzard IPs right now. She got great introduction followed with perfect visual design. It's going to take years before we see her in Diablo 4. Since hots already introduced decent amount of diablo lore, how insanse is the idea of having Lilith in hots before D4 is released?
    Lilith is awesome and though we would love to bring her to the Nexus, we think it would be best for the Diablo team to show her off in their game first. Sorry guys, gonna have to wait on that one for a bit. (/u/Blizz_KinaBREW)


    I am clearly biased when I ask this, but are there any plans to retune Butcher into baseline Ranked viability while simultaneously nerfing his snowball potential (so he doesn’t simply break QM completely, especially for new players)?
    We're currently taking a holistic look at Butcher, focusing especially on ways to make him more "generally" usable and reducing some of the pain points with his baseline quest :) (/u/Blizz_DWarner)


    Why don't you update all Regions at the same time? I'm just curious!
    We want to make sure the game is available to the maximum number of players the maximum amount of time, so we try to make sure we take each region down when the lowest number of players would be playing. When the US has the most people online, Europe has the least and vice versa. There are other factors that affect the time, but that is far and away the biggest reason. (/u/Blizz_RyanM)


    You undoubtedly have lots of internal statistics on which you based your hero balancing. Would you mind sharing these statistics? It does not have to be something fancy - for example just posting a spreadsheet here on the subreddit. I might be useful to see how i.e. hero winrates differ from the data available to community through replay analysis.
    Hey AnkisCZ! We do use a lot of statistics when looking at balance. However, at this time we don’t have plans to share them publicly. I do share statistics from time to time, but am wary of showing something like a whole spreadsheet of win rates on some specific date. The main reason is because statistics can and almost always are misinterpreted to fit a certain narrative, and it takes lots of stats from different places to put together a complete picture about what’s going on.

    For example, in regards to purely win rates the game has almost always been in an excellent spot across the board, yet that hasn’t always felt like the case with player feedback, nor with what they are picking and banning at various levels of play. If we balanced the game purely based on win rates alone, you would see a whole lot of changes that seem to make no sense at all, because they don’t reflect the reality of what players are experiencing.
    I can give some broad points about our statistics over the years that I’ve observed:
    • Win rates across the board, especially for talents, are almost always very close. I would say about half the time is the most picked talent the one that’s actually winning the most often.
    • Niche heroes tend to have much higher win rates than others. This is even more impressive if you think about how they often have a negative stigma for not being strong, yet they still win despite that team morale hit that often happens when they are taken.
    • Hero pick and ban rates rarely reflect what’s actually winning, and more often reflect community sentiment on what they believe is strong, or is something that players more generally just don’t want to play against. (/u/BlizzAZJackson)


    Since we got ARAM, both Chromie and Azmodan got reworked. Would you consider enabling them for ARAMs in their current state?
    Good news! Azmodan and Chromie are available in ARAM as of the Deathwing patch :) I'll bring up the Varian question in our next design meeting. (/u/Blizz_DWarner)


    Will we ever see another Overwatch hero?
    Yes.
    .seY
    Yes (source)
    Last edited by Nerraw; 2019-12-06 at 10:20 PM.

  2. #2
    The Lightbringer DesoPL's Avatar
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    Overwatch heroes in progress? I hope it means Reinhardt.
    .

  3. #3
    Thanks for the write up.

    Really hope they do eventually release the overall winrates in different modes and on different ranks. HotSLogs is gone for now and the other websites often don't have a ton of data (anymore).

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by ophion1990 View Post
    Thanks for the write up.

    Really hope they do eventually release the overall winrates in different modes and on different ranks. HotSLogs is gone for now and the other websites often don't have a ton of data (anymore).
    https://www.heroesprofile.com/

    This is the biggest site currently. And while it doesn't have the amount of raw data available that Hotslogs did, it has enough to be reasonably accurate.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Nerraw View Post
    https://www.heroesprofile.com/

    This is the biggest site currently. And while it doesn't have the amount of raw data available that Hotslogs did, it has enough to be reasonably accurate.
    For overall stats it's fine, yeah. When you want more detailed stuff like map picks or counters, data starts getting a lot more sparce, though. That said, I'm glad third parties are still willing to provide a service like this to begin with.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by ophion1990 View Post
    For overall stats it's fine, yeah. When you want more detailed stuff like map picks or counters, data starts getting a lot more sparce, though. That said, I'm glad third parties are still willing to provide a service like this to begin with.
    Spread the word and have people upload to https://hotsapi.net/!

  7. #7
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Will we ever see another Overwatch hero?
    Yes.
    .seY
    Yes
    Subtle. Very... symmetrical.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Zardi View Post
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Will we ever see another Overwatch hero?
    Yes.
    .seY
    Yes
    Subtle. Very... symmetrical.
    They like to joke around like that with such questions.

  9. #9
    They Stil put time and money into that game? I thought it would be long abandoned by now and running in maintenance mode?

    Shame Hots turned out as a clunkier, boring LoL-Clone...I liked the idea of a Blizzard Allstar Brawler

  10. #10
    The Lightbringer DesoPL's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nerraw View Post
    They like to joke around like that with such questions.
    But that dosen't mean, that no more OV heroes right?
    .

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by DesoPL View Post
    But that dosen't mean, that no more OV heroes right?
    They wouldn't say yes in that manner if it were not true. There's 100% at least one OW hero coming in the next year.

  12. #12
    The Lightbringer DesoPL's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nerraw View Post
    They wouldn't say yes in that manner if it were not true. There's 100% at least one OW hero coming in the next year.
    Or two. Depends how things with OV2 will go right? Like promoting game etc.
    .

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by DesoPL View Post
    Or two. Depends how things with OV2 will go right? Like promoting game etc.
    Oh, I had forgotten that's coming out. Yeah, there will definitely be a promotion hero there.

  14. #14
    Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
    Will we ever see another Overwatch hero?
    Yes.
    .seY
    Yes (source)
    I'm wondering if this is a hint that Sigma might be the next Overwatch hero added to the Nexus.
    "Go back...I just want to go back...!"

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Zardi View Post
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Will we ever see another Overwatch hero?
    Yes.
    .seY
    Yes
    Subtle. Very... symmetrical.
    Good call.

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