Does Heroes of the Storm look TOO casual and or dumbed down?

[Wildmoon]

Tbh im not really sure you understood my points. Come on mate, i don't have anything against the team oreintation of this game. I actually really appreciate trying to do it this way. However im concerned about how is this going to work in reality. Because quite honestly i think that as much as Starcraft 2 is based around and promotes 1v1 as the one and only gamestyle, this will promote team vs team game (meant as a ranked team in lol - no solo duo queue). You say youre happy with just skills you can make builds with. Ok you get that. The game starts youre going for an objective and suddenly get ganked and probably almost aced. Yes almost aced because the game encourages you to go together from the get go. Now what? The other team takes an objective and get a boost and while boosted prevents you from taking an objective on your own. You get where im going with that? You will always fight an uneven fight after that first one. This is basically analogous to sc1 / sc2 problem where people are complaining that all you need for a win in sc2 is more populated deathball because unlike sc1 it doesnt promote microing (analogous to individual players skill) as much. And you see where sc2 (being a dustin browder baby too) has gone with this approach.

Im completely with you on the fact that some of the mechanics present in the current mobas might be there just for the sake of hardcoreness and lack of intuitivness. However there is one lesson i learned in my life and after starcraft 2 and diablo 3 i started to apply it on the blizzard products as well. Being new and innovative doesnt always mean being better. Before you embrace something new, you need to look at it critically to see how it will work and how exactly its supposed to be better.

Actually, people who complain about all you need is bigger deathball to win in SC2 is living in 2010 because that's not true at all in TvZ,ZvZ,TvT,TvP. The game just has evolved greatly past that point. Deathball won't go anywhere but it's not the absolute way to play. It's just one of the way that has its advantages and disadvantages. There's a myth that deathball didn't exist in BW and that's wrong. I was a terran player in SC1 and mech deathball was the absolute way you crushed protoss in TvP.

Not sure what you are trying to point out. You are saying that SC2 has gone terrible? It has done very well both business wise and Esport. The game does have average viewer number comparable to Dota2 which is a MOBA game with far larger playerbase than an RTS like SC.

[Deleted]

Just to clarify you don't choose your talent tree at the begining. You choose your load out which is the selection of talents available, so say you have 10 level 1 talents for a character, you can take 3 of those into the game, and then choose 1 of those when you start after you see the enemy team. Whilst not as in depth as item buying it does provide some opportunity to build around enemy teams and the meta (Arthas strong in the current meta? I'll take this talent in my loadout to deal with him if he shows up)

Umm i might have missed on something there. But i'm still a little bit confused and can't get a clear picture out of what you described to me so far. Can you maybe give me an example? How exactly can you change the course of your character THROUGH the game? From what I've seen and know so far, you can only change your ultimate, the remainder of your skills stays the same and it's only getting stronger through levelling.

In regards to balancing the scales, you say that if one team gets an objective uncontested, the other team fucked up. But as we see in one of the dev matches, the one team lets the other do just that, but wins whilst they're busy wtih the objective. I think the game will be much more nuanced than you're giving it credit. We also see in the interivews that they say it's very easy to tell who the better players in the office are, and there are plenty of games where one side just stomps the other every fight.

That dev match was exactly what gave me the worries about snowball balance issues. What you describes almost perfectly fits into that cathegory, mentioned in my previous post, where "one team fucks up and the other team capitalizes on it". Except for the fact that in this case one team only seemingly fucked up and eventually "capitalized on the enemy team's capitalizing". Basically same as the situation in LoL where one team shows up a in a split up fashion in lanes, making the other team race to get a free Baron Nashor, whereas in fact the first team was only waiting for them to leave the base so it could storm it, take inhibitor or two, and return, knowing that the enemy team can't attack them with inhibitors down. Those are tactics, not mechanics. You can't be fully reliant on tactics. You can't expect the enemy team to be dumb, you gotta have an alternative way to deal with a lost battle, to give yourself a second chance otherwise it's gonna be snowbally as hell.

And as for the better players argument well sure they can shine on their own in the battles but with this system they will never be able to take the burden, to partially replace and to correct mistakes of the worse players. Put it plain and simple: i don't really think there is a way one can go 1v2, or 1v3 and come out victorious. Only in very rare cases and again assuming the 3 players all just suck.

All this suggests there will be ways to distinguish yourself as a better player, but they also say if you want a solo game go play a different game, this game will be about team fights.

If you want a solo game go play a different game... are you are aware about how crazy that sounds and how hard it's gonna be to pull off in reality? I mean come on dude you can't just put solo queue on the sideline. Where do you want the get the teams then? Out of thin air? It sounds like sorry buddy if you don't have four with you, you better gtfo. But seriously: most teams are formed out of solo queue playing and solo queue is always the most played mod in the game. Check out queue waiting times for solo and for team, if you don't believe me.

And should solo queue be flawed, in a way that it puts people off, then you can't expect much teams on the scene either. We just have to see how it turns out; but the more I think about the shared exp concept, the more I get the feeling that it's probably a result of quick brainstorming on how to diferentiate the games from traditional moba's. And with the positive response to that from Blizzard's internal playtesters (as they work as a team already), they didn't thought much on how it will affect people who just happen to play together because the system connected them.

Actually, people who complain about all you need is bigger deathball to win in SC2 is living in 2010 because that's not true at all in TvZ,ZvZ,TvT,TvP. The game just has evolved greatly past that point. Deathball won't go anywhere but it's not the absolute way to play. It's just one of the way that has its advantages and disadvantages. There's a myth that deathball didn't exist in BW and that's wrong. I was a terran player in SC1 and mech deathball was the absolute way you crushed protoss in TvP.

Not sure what you are trying to point out. You are saying that SC2 has gone terrible? It has done very well both business wise and Esport. The game does have average viewer number comparable to Dota2 which is a MOBA game with far larger playerbase than an RTS like SC.

Erm... I don't know what to say. The last thing I want is to turn this thread into a speculation about the quality of SC2. I know you probably love the game so please take this as my opinion only. For me, if the game gets a lot of negativity here and there, when it gets dropped out of MLG, fails to follow up on the Korean scene, and gets such a number of posts of dying state and how to save it, even from such highly respected personas as NeoDestiny or Day9, then I can't help myself but think that something is just wrong. I was avid SC1 player but the sequel turned me off quickly. And all of my friends who I used to play SC1 with followed the suit. Yeah might be we are just nostalgia freaks but still...

I won't deny that deathballs existed in SC1 but apparently they weren't as frequent as people didn't complain about them. To be frankly honest the case you mentioned, TVP.. iirc it wasn't that much of a deathball when you moved your vultures in and positioned your siege tanks behind them. It required a lot of micro, unlike MMM, which people usually complain about. But again - my opinion only.

[Deleted]

fails to follow up on the Korean scene,

I would take this with big handful of salt, the story in Korea is very complex and there seems to have been a lot of backstabbing here and there with KeSPA not being happy about Blizzard not agreeing with them (and them not agreeing with Blizzard).

I was curios so I did a bit of research and the results are very ambivalent. As far as I read around all the pros from BW where forbidden by KeSPA in participating in tournaments, only IdrA at the beginning and then as time moved on and KeSPA had to let the gamers play SC2 as well and so more of them moved to SC2 from BW.

If the fault is really of the game or not cannot be verified for certain as for now

Also I'm not sure what you mean about "SC2 dropping form MLG" the Major League Gaming seems to still host tournaments for the game, latest video of a tournament game is of just a month ago form an event in NY, however I do admit that I do not follow them enough to understand how the scene works as a whole

EDIT: Read some more posts here and there. it all boils down to "SC2 is not BW with new shiny graphics so we do not bother" It is the usual damnation with sequels that are deemed the most difficult games to design and develop especially if they have had a successful predecessor. *shrugs* I do not care enough to go more than this over what I found

[Wildmoon]

Erm... I don't know what to say. The last thing I want is to turn this thread into a speculation about the quality of SC2. I know you probably love the game so please take this as my opinion only. For me, if the game gets a lot of negativity here and there, when it gets dropped out of MLG, fails to follow up on the Korean scene, and gets such a number of posts of dying state and how to save it, even from such highly respected personas as NeoDestiny or Day9, then I can't help myself but think that something is just wrong. I was avid SC1 player but the sequel turned me off quickly. And all of my friends who I used to play SC1 with followed the suit. Yeah might be we are just nostalgia freaks but still...

I won't deny that deathballs existed in SC1 but apparently they weren't as frequent as people didn't complain about them. To be frankly honest the case you mentioned, TVP.. iirc it wasn't that much of a deathball when you moved your vultures in and positioned your siege tanks behind them. It required a lot of micro, unlike MMM, which people usually complain about. But again - my opinion only.

[/QUOTE]

All those posts about SC2 dying came from the fact that SC2 is not as big as all these MOBA games which is frankly stupid. SC2 would never as big as them by its nature as mechanical demanding RTS game. I don't even remember Day9 talking about any negative thing about SC2. Destiny on the other hand will always talk about negative things. MLG also dropped SC2 because its schedule clashed with Redbull tournament and Blizzard gave Redbull the license to host because they contacted first. There will likely be SC2 in next MLG.

MMM in SC2 actually require shit tons of micro if you try it yourself in game. Spltting against storm,EMP templars. You know what? Not even Flash could micro MMM that well. Maru(SC2 player) does it much better than "God of BW".

Deathball refers to huge ass army of doom that come in ball. That's what mech was in TvP. Yes, you lead with vultures and plant mines but your ball is shit tons of siege tanks in clump that will obliterate everything. That's why it's Protoss's job to get around it with arbiter and shits. So yes, BW's TvP mech was a deathball.

About Heroes of the Storm talent issue, it works like this. When the game goes live, you will have a lot of talents for each heroes and you will be able to narrow them down to like 2-3 which you will bring into the game. You will be able to choose 1 of those 2-3 each tier. You will be able to choose it at each specific level. Some talent +dmg, some +health and some even modify your skill such as stiches's hook talent. Of course you will be able to choose your heroic ability according to the situation you are in. Tassadar for examply has 2 heroic abilities one being force field and one is tranforming into archon which deal a lot of dmg.

[Deleted]

Guys, we're pushing too far the line about SC2 talk. It's becoming very irrelevant to the discussion now, so let's stop it please.

[Thallidomaniac]

Going back on the mentions about how snowballing in this game won't be as huge as in other MOBAs, will they leave the chance to epic comeback after losing almost the entire game with a perfect wombo combo? (As in Malph Ult + Orianna Ult + Fiora Ult in League, or a Magnus RP + Enigma Black Hole, Juggernaut Ult in DOTA)

[Deleted]

Going back on the mentions about how snowballing in this game won't be as huge as in other MOBAs, will they leave the chance to epic comeback after losing almost the entire game with a perfect wombo combo? (As in Malph Ult + Orianna Ult + Fiora Ult in League, or a Magnus RP + Enigma Black Hole, Juggernaut Ult in DOTA)

I think it's possible since they are trying to make the game not rely on snowballing to win a game, meaning that both teams will have the same strength, to a certain extent, and thus always possible to win a team fight with or without a wombo combo.

[Deleted]

I would take this with big handful of salt, the story in Korea is very complex and there seems to have been a lot of backstabbing here and there with KeSPA not being happy about Blizzard not agreeing with them (and them not agreeing with Blizzard).

I was curios so I did a bit of research and the results are very ambivalent. As far as I read around all the pros from BW where forbidden by KeSPA in participating in tournaments, only IdrA at the beginning and then as time moved on and KeSPA had to let the gamers play SC2 as well and so more of them moved to SC2 from BW.

If the fault is really of the game or not cannot be verified for certain as for now

Also I'm not sure what you mean about "SC2 dropping form MLG" the Major League Gaming seems to still host tournaments for the game, latest video of a tournament game is of just a month ago form an event in NY, however I do admit that I do not follow them enough to understand how the scene works as a whole

EDIT: Read some more posts here and there. it all boils down to "SC2 is not BW with new shiny graphics so we do not bother" It is the usual damnation with sequels that are deemed the most difficult games to design and develop especially if they have had a successful predecessor. *shrugs* I do not care enough to go more than this over what I found

First of all I have to appreciate the work you did with the research. I'll admit that i'm rather lazy in this matter to do it on my own so especially those details around KeSPA are new for me. Still I can't help myself feeling that the game seems rather one dimensional and for me and my friends not that entertaining to watch as SC1 used to be. And for me if the pros start to feel it the same way it's kind of a proof there is wrong direction. Again emphasize: for ME.
As for that last paragraph of yours, I'm afraid I can only answer by quoting myself (yes i'm narcistic sorry about that):

...there is one lesson i learned in my life and after starcraft 2 and diablo 3 i started to apply it on the blizzard products as well. Being new and innovative doesnt always mean being better. Before you embrace something new, you need to look at it critically to see how it will work and how exactly its supposed to be better.

I might come out as conservative for you with that. I don't consider myself to be like that, though, I'd say I'm more like catious about new things, as the thing I really care of is if it's better not if it's new. Which is why I'm thoroughly examining HoTS concept and voicing my concerns. And one last thing: I had similar concerns about SC2 back in 2010 when it was everyone's precioussss....

About Heroes of the Storm talent issue, it works like this. When the game goes live, you will have a lot of talents for each heroes and you will be able to narrow them down to like 2-3 which you will bring into the game. You will be able to choose 1 of those 2-3 each tier. You will be able to choose it at each specific level. Some talent +dmg, some +health and some even modify your skill such as stiches's hook talent. Of course you will be able to choose your heroic ability according to the situation you are in. Tassadar for examply has 2 heroic abilities one being force field and one is tranforming into archon which deal a lot of dmg.

OK. This looks like it could work, providing the design of the talents would be clever enough. If one team gets an advantage, the other team will go for defensive talents to compensate. There is still a flaw though. Should we really talk about this system being equal with item system, then the defensive talents should be avaliable a level earlier, than the offensive ones. As the offensive items cost more. Also will the enemy team be able to see the other team's talents?

[Thallidomaniac]

It looks like that David Kim (from SC2) will be in charge of game balance in Heroes as well. But are the complaints about him being terrible at game balance warranted at all? The only complaint would be how Swarm Hosts are design, but people seem to be crucifying him even more than Morello gets regarding LoL game balance, heck he could even give Ghostcrawler the run for the money on "worst game balancer". At least they haven't begged for IceFrog to balance the game instead, despite Blizzard pretty much blowing him off.

[Deleted]

It looks like that David Kim (from SC2) will be in charge of game balance in Heroes as well. But are the complaints about him being terrible at game balance warranted at all? The only complaint would be how Swarm Hosts are design, but people seem to be crucifying him even more than Morello gets regarding LoL game balance, heck he could even give Ghostcrawler the run for the money on "worst game balancer". At least they haven't begged for IceFrog to balance the game instead, despite Blizzard pretty much blowing him off.

When you talk about game balance you can put whoever you want on top and you will always heard a great deal of complaining and "he should be fired" always, regardless of who it is. It is a dead end road, there's not saving it and if you've been famous before you will become an incompetent the moment that you will step into the industry as more than a modder/passionate/whatever

[vaccine]

Umm i might have missed on something there. But i'm still a little bit confused and can't get a clear picture out of what you described to me so far. Can you maybe give me an example? How exactly can you change the course of your character THROUGH the game? From what I've seen and know so far, you can only change your ultimate, the remainder of your skills stays the same and it's only getting stronger through levelling.

No problem. At levels 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16 and 20 you get a new talent point as it were. Each hero has an array of talent points for each level and these aren't shared with other heroes. Lets say for arguments sake there are 10 talents per tier per hero. Before you even queue for a game you go into your hero load out and you get some slots. You can take into battle 3 level 1 talents, 2 level 4, 3 level 7 etc..., this is what they refer to as your loadout. You don't get all of these, but these will be your choices in game. Now you queue for a game (and you can queue as a specific hero too so no one can steal it from you) and once you start playing, you have your 3 loadout choices available to you, of which you pick one. It may be after a few games you think "There was never a time I wanted to take that lifesteal talent on Arthas, lets switch it for something else" and change your loadout. Also tying into all that, you get all your abilities minus your heroic ones at level 1. Your talents improve and change those.

Thise video illustrates the basic UI so far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjhwZXDRRbM&noredirect=1
These are in game choices, you can see at each tier he has a different highlighted talent. You can change which talents appear there before the game though is what I'm getting at.

What will bum you out as you don't like the model is that they aren't all free. Some will be earned via currency or tied to achievements. But again they want to keep them all as balanced as possible.

If you want a solo game go play a different game... are you are aware about how crazy that sounds and how hard it's gonna be to pull off in reality? I mean come on dude you can't just put solo queue on the sideline. Where do you want the get the teams then? Out of thin air? It sounds like sorry buddy if you don't have four with you, you better gtfo. But seriously: most teams are formed out of solo queue playing and solo queue is always the most played mod in the game. Check out queue waiting times for solo and for team, if you don't believe me.

There will be chat lobbies to go make friends in. They specifically stressed the point that you will get bonus currency for playing games with people on your friends list vs solo queueing, so you're encouraged to make friends even if it's just an alliance of convenience, as they think some of these will develop into online friendships and make the game stronger. They really want to hit the socal aspect, and given it's on Battle.net and free to play most current Blizzard customers will have lots of friends on their list to invite. So yeah they're going to be really pushing playing with your friends rather than solo queues.

[Wildmoon]

OK. This looks like it could work, providing the design of the talents would be clever enough. If one team gets an advantage, the other team will go for defensive talents to compensate. There is still a flaw though. Should we really talk about this system being equal with item system, then the defensive talents should be avaliable a level earlier, than the offensive ones. As the offensive items cost more. Also will the enemy team be able to see the other team's talents?

Blizzard said at Blizzcon that you will be able to see other team's talents but the UI at Blizzard was not finished. I don't really know about offensive and defensive talent because talents will be unique for every hero. Some may not be classified as offensive or defensive.

- - - Updated - - -

It looks like that David Kim (from SC2) will be in charge of game balance in Heroes as well. But are the complaints about him being terrible at game balance warranted at all? The only complaint would be how Swarm Hosts are design, but people seem to be crucifying him even more than Morello gets regarding LoL game balance, heck he could even give Ghostcrawler the run for the money on "worst game balancer". At least they haven't begged for IceFrog to balance the game instead, despite Blizzard pretty much blowing him off.

David Kim is actually great at what he does. The winrate for each race in WCS throughout this year has been really close to 50% which is impressive. DK is actually a really good StarCraft player himself. He knows a lot more about high level StarCraft than most people who complain about balance.

[Askyl]

You can't really do any good theorycrafting about this game until you've played it for real (release or atleast a good beta build) when it comes to casual or hardcore.

Even if this game is a moba, it's not the same as LoL, HoN or Dota in matter of the game structure. So you can't compare these games that much. Sure, it's "more casual" in the matter of no items and team levels and less individual skill. But the skill cap for playing as a team might be so high it makes Dota 2 looks casual. Who knows? No one until we see some real action by real gamers.

I hope it's both casual and "hardcore". I wouldn't mind taking a break from Dota 2 and play another game a bit more seriously. I've given LoL a chance but it's just too childish for me (graphics) and the lack of core elements like denying and penalties for dying is just sad. But I also want another "play for fun" game.

[keese]

This game certainly has promise. I'm really excited for maps that aren't 3 lanes 5v5. I think that WoW style BGs like arathi and alterac with dota-like heroes has the potential to be seriously fun.

I'm worried about no items though. Currently it seems like you depend on your team too much which anyone who has ever played a MOBA in their life knows can be more painful than pouring molten lava in your eyes. With so much emphasis on teamplay it seems that if you're playing with noobs or trolls you could have a bad time, or honestly someone who doesn't speak english could ruin your game. Especially with such a focus on objectives it's going to be hard to get your team to actually be a team. I could be wrong though.

I definitely see it being fun, but I have doubts if it will ever be more than a fun little SC2 arcade-like game.

EDIT:There's absolutely nothing wrong with a fun little arcade game, but personally I like my online games to be complex and competitive. This may not be the game for me but it might be the game for you.

[Thallidomaniac]

When you talk about game balance you can put whoever you want on top and you will always heard a great deal of complaining and "he should be fired" always, regardless of who it is. It is a dead end road, there's not saving it and if you've been famous before you will become an incompetent the moment that you will step into the industry as more than a modder/passionate/whatever

Then again, people revere IceFrog for his "perfect" balance of DOTA, saying that that both Riot and Blizzard fucked themselves over by not acquiring him.

[Deleted]

No problem. At levels 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16 and 20 you get a new talent point as it were. Each hero has an array of talent points for each level and these aren't shared with other heroes. Lets say for arguments sake there are 10 talents per tier per hero. Before you even queue for a game you go into your hero load out and you get some slots. You can take into battle 3 level 1 talents, 2 level 4, 3 level 7 etc..., this is what they refer to as your loadout. You don't get all of these, but these will be your choices in game. Now you queue for a game (and you can queue as a specific hero too so no one can steal it from you) and once you start playing, you have your 3 loadout choices available to you, of which you pick one. It may be after a few games you think "There was never a time I wanted to take that lifesteal talent on Arthas, lets switch it for something else" and change your loadout. Also tying into all that, you get all your abilities minus your heroic ones at level 1. Your talents improve and change those.

Thise video illustrates the basic UI so far:
These are in game choices, you can see at each tier he has a different highlighted talent. You can change which talents appear there before the game though is what I'm getting at.

What will bum you out as you don't like the model is that they aren't all free. Some will be earned via currency or tied to achievements. But again they want to keep them all as balanced as possible.

There will be chat lobbies to go make friends in. They specifically stressed the point that you will get bonus currency for playing games with people on your friends list vs solo queueing, so you're encouraged to make friends even if it's just an alliance of convenience, as they think some of these will develop into online friendships and make the game stronger. They really want to hit the socal aspect, and given it's on Battle.net and free to play most current Blizzard customers will have lots of friends on their list to invite. So yeah they're going to be really pushing playing with your friends rather than solo queues.

Nah. What bums me out isn't that the heroes aren't free. Altough I'm pretty much sure I know the reason ($$$), I can see the bright side of it as it narrows down the champions you can choose from making it less overwhelming. Still I think that everyone should have the right to choose one of the heroes from weekly rotation for free.

What bums me out is still the shared exp concept. Despite what you said about lobbies, there is still a general flaw within this system. First of all In almost every review I can read how this is great that the game won't punish you that hard for failure. Yeah .. it won't punish you, it will punish the whole team. There are brushes there (is there fog of war?) So ganks are possible. And when one member of the team dies, how is the team gonna take objectives? In 4v5 battle? with shared exp? I can't help myself but I think that the only battles the game is counting with are 5v5 battles, or just even battles.

The problem there is that this kind of battle is not actually that much of a common thing. Moving around in deathbally fashion is really not something you will see often in bronze/silver elo (and you've probably experienced yourself how hard is to actually gather people and target them towards a specific goal. One follows you to to push tower, one goes for dragon one goes for blue buff, one goes farming one returns to base to heal etc...

If Blizz really aims at the LoL community, it's running a big risk because for these people it's gonna be very hard to break out of their mentality. I wonder how they are gonna get them even to use the lobbies when all they can to do now is click that red Play button on the top center and choose the game...

[Arbs]

It is more appropriate to say DOTA is a more skillful MOBA than most. Though it's relative complexity is about equal to other MOBAs.

Somewhat lazy to equate mastery with complexity.

That I can agree with

[wariofan1]

After having played LoL for 2 years, I quit because everyone and their children wanted to partake in playing like the pros and throw the metagame into normal games too. It's not even that it was hard, but it took away the fun since you couldn't play the champion you wanted to, and you'd rarely ever get to play with your friends despite being in the same game.

Heroes looks to be all about fun. Taking their greatest heroes from different franchises, throw them into some whacky stages. That sounds like fun. All that metagame bullshit wasn't. Of course you still can't play a game with a team full of supports, but there's not all that shitty laning, at least not in the same way. I also love that they're shaking up the genre with gimmicky stages, I was afraid that Mobas would become the next FPS, but I'm glad Blizzard are taking the extra step. I'm all for the casual playing, it's probably not going to be hot stuff for e-sport people, but that's not what I'm looking for, I just want to have fun.

[Radux]

I feel that the entry skill level to play many Champions won't be that high. However, I feel that this game will fall right in line of Blizzard's mantra of "easy to learn, hard to master", given all the possible strategic metas that could come about from taking various objectives and such.

I think there are definitely skill things that were removed (i.e. maximizing farm in lane phases from last hitting minions). But I personally prefer the idea of having a team heavy strategy game that doesn't emphasize/weigh too much on a single player or two (i.e. an AD carry in LoL), and much more of completing a bunch of objectives as a team.

[Starpunk]

I feel that the entry skill level to play many Champions won't be that high. However, I feel that this game will fall right in line of Blizzard's mantra of "easy to learn, hard to master", given all the possible strategic metas that could come about from taking various objectives and such.

I think there are definitely skill things that were removed (i.e. maximizing farm in lane phases from last hitting minions). But I personally prefer the idea of having a team heavy strategy game that doesn't emphasize/weigh too much on a single player or two (i.e. an AD carry in LoL), and much more of completing a bunch of objectives as a team.

I agree with your point of view and feel the same but I just wanted to note that there's no particular role in LoL that has more weight or is more gamebreaking than the others on any stage of the game. It might seem that a particular player/champion/role is dominating (and it might even be so on the lower levels) but when it comes to Diamond1+ level of play it becomes so complex that literally every action in the game can decide the outcome.

That said, what I like about Heroes is basically exactly what you said. Less emphasise on "small" things (last hitting, micro, etc) will hopefully lead to more emphasise on the "big" things (objectives, strategy, etc) which will hopefully result in much more fun