Heroes of The Storm: Playerbase

[Charge me Doctor]

Then why after having a winning streak I am suddenly in games full of people ranked lower than me (Often 2-3 divions lower)? I guess the challenge is not to play with better against better, but to see if you can carry the worse.

Well i see three options here - either system thinks it put you too high for your personal performance and wants to fix that, or it couldn't find high ranked players who fly down the stairs MMR-vice, or these "2-3 divisions lower" (which is not big of a difference) players are performing well and going high.

[RH92]

either system thinks it put you too high for your personal performance and wants to fix that

And why is that..? I mean, the system shouldn't try to punish me for my good performance over short period of time.

[Reza2001]

The biggest problem with HotS the stupidity of players.

They refuse to learn anything and game itself fails to teach any fundamentals and even if you lose you still get commendation you were good in some random area. You might have died 12 times, but you did 2% more damage than average! Good job!



Then why after having a winning streak I am suddenly in games full of people ranked lower than me (Often 2-3 divions lower)? I guess the challenge is not to play with better against better, but to see if you can carry the worse.

Well don't expect much from a MOBA or an online game , People do mistakes a lot but I do agree that they should learn from them . However , it is impossible because of greediness ... the same reason that players chase after a low health enemy and then find themselves being ganked to oblivion and losing the game afterwards

[Seramore]

Gameplay wise, the game is fine. It's actually refreshing and all of the heroes in this game are fairly unique, there aren't really slightly different versions of the same ability like League has with a good amount of champions. Player base wise, You're likely to be matched with a less-skilled player than you would in DOTA or League of Legends, though.

If you want to play the game casually, you'll enjoy it. The biggest problem with HOTS is that if you want to competitively play the game, it will be very hard to climb if you get placed in a lower league. Ranked is currently a pretty flawed system as a whole. The game is also incredibly team based and isn't one of those games where you can turn a game around solely by yourself. You're as strong as the weakest person on your team, someone can easily throw an entire lead away.

[ForrestAnthony]

I've talked about this extensively with my peers, but I really feel the game took a huge hit (playerbase wise) due to its incorrect marketing strategies coupled with drawn out, somewhat greedy development time. It was the first time Blizzard truly had to be reminded that even they can be beaten by the competition.

2011 - 2014:
- The game spent its first 3 years as a SC2 mod, only ever getting attention at Starcraft panels at Blizzcon
- Once attention started to garner demand, it was rebranded to HotS and then took 2 very long years of development, while the primary competition (LoL/Dota) was already very fierce and snowballing.
- Amidst this long development period, they chose to advertise and market the game as a fun alternative to other MOBAs, with an emphasis on casual play, short game times, quirky mechanics, and a variety of game modes: All things that work against a competitive eSports game.

2015:
- Finally upon releasing it, despite community pleading, prices of mounts, skins, and heroes was vastly overpriced. Some mounts were $20.00 USD, and say what you will about Riot Points and the indirect spending involved in that, seeing a direct price of something in a game like this can often be confronting.

Fast forward to 2017,
The game is attempting to be taken seriously as an eSport, however the game's short match durations lead to short watched time, further made worse by small viewership numbers and the game generally being confusing to all non-player spectators (constantly shifting maps, etc).

And the game's playerbase and sales were waning, and Overwatch's huge success taught them many things; Somewhat similarly to Riot Points (indirect spending), Loot boxes showed that people are will to pay absurd costs for the chance of getting what they want + other free stuff. Heroes needed to adopt this as the game was simply living in a corner as is. Now it is living in the shadow of Overwatch with a slow and steady climb in playerbase.

For the game to grow, the key is for Blizzard to keep up the consistencyto let the other games (LoL/Dota 2) make the mistakes. At it's core though, unless drastic changes are made, the game will forever reek of "casual" - the key taint keeping the game from growing competitively with a serious playerbase.

[DesoPL]

HOTS community is sick and disgusting. Look at the drama with Alexstrasza, then you will have idea what i mean. Because of that i am highly dissapointed.

But other than that? Everything normal i guess? For example i yesterday lose 9 games, because on QM's nobody have bloody idea how to play with Varian with our team or against him. Yep i mostly picked Provocation at 10 level, and even if i ping who i taunt to kill, people are allready pull back or focusing someone else.

But also noticed, that when i play Tyrande on QM's lately, i got more wins than loses.

[DenniZ]

Everyone hating on the HotS community should try Dota for a week. Now that is a toxic bunch.