BlizzCon 2018 - Heroes of the Storm: What's Next
Where: Mythic Stage
Panel Description: Join a team of Heroes of the Storm developers as they recap the biggest and best moments from the past year and explore exciting changes that are coming soon to the Nexus.
Time: November 2nd, 430pm Pacific/November 3rd, 0030 CET
Duration: 45 minutes
Panelists: Kaeo Milker (Production Director), Joe Piepiora (Lead Systems Designer), and Matt Cooper (Lead Content Designer)
2018 Retrospective
- The team keeps going because of the fans. Feedback is always welcome!
- On the topic of Transparency, there are a lot of features that haven't come to fruition yet, such as the custom map editor
- Party Finder and Social Features are not dead, there's just a lot more work to be done on them
- Performance-based Matchmaking didn't do everything they wanted, but they've still been gathering data for it. More work to be done, keep giving feedback!
- Content will continue being prioritized, so the game won't feel stale
- 8 heroes have been released this year, starting with Blaze and culminating in Mal'Ganis. Orphea will be discussed during tomorrow's panel
- Alterac Pass got added. Hanamura Temple and Garden of Terror got reworks. Been a busy year for battlegrounds
- 2018 brought themed events as well! Starting out with MechaStorm and most recently adding King's Crest
- 4th Heroes comic will release later this month and focus entirely on Orphea
- We also saw Voice Chat and Third Bans implemented
- Live events this year have been more "versus" oriented (Nexomania, Echoes of Alterac, Fall of King's Crest)
- Lunara was picked by 53% of players in Nexomania
- Horde was picked by 58% of players in Echoes of Alterac
- Defiled Tombstone mount was picked by 64% of players in King's Crest
- More events of this type to come!
Role update!
- The game has outgrown the original four roles
- Tanks, Bruisers, Healers, Supports, Melee Assassins, Ranged Assassins
Call of the Nexus
- Quick Match is the most popular gamemode. Quick to get into, quick to play
- Compositions are typically less than optimal
- Enforced QM compositions are coming. Forced tank, healer, ranged assassin, and 2 fillers
- XP bonus will be given for roles that are needed in the queue
Boosts
- Works like current stimpacks, AND stacks 5% XP bonus per player in a game who also have a boost active
Ranked Play
- Feedback was given
- "Team league queues are too long"
- "Add duo queue back to hero league"
- "Never add duo queue back to hero league"
- Recent team league changes were to help all of these cases
- Massive spike in team league games played. It didn't just take people from other game modes, it brought in a lot of new/returning players as well
- Hero league and team league queues will be combined, with HL players having an option to force solo-only queues
- Loss forgiveness is being implemented for games where someone disconnects and is replaced by AIs. Leavers will be punished! Others will not lose MMR or ranked points for those games
- Less placement matches needed, from 10 to around 3
- Seasonal ranked quest line for the seasonal rewards. Will be given after placement games, and will require a certain amount of ranked games in the season. Additional rewards wil be given out along the way
- Promotion and demotion games are being removed
- Performance-based matchmaking will be used to educate players, giving players a guideline on where and how to improve
- PBMM has been running in the background since last December, collecting data
- Visible MMR!
- Ranked points are being removed
- MMR changes will instead be directly affecting your rank
Rework Philosophy
- The developer team is constantly learning when heroes are put into the game. Over time heroes may fall out of favor when new ones are released. The team uses all this collected information when working on reworks
- Next reworks coming in December: Stitches and Sylvanas
- The team sees Stitches as a tank. He takes a lot of damage, sets up kills with Epic Hooks(TM)
- The rework won't touch Hook, since it's awesome. Slam does need some love however
- Talents will of course also be leveled up
- Sylvanas is somewhat unique in having a strong identity in Warcraft, but being a specialist in Heroes that shuts down buildings
- Sylvanas is becoming an "epic ranged assassin", since Specialist is going away
- Black Arrow is a unique ability that the team likes, but they want to make it more of an active decision
- More information on the reworks coming in the near future
Gameplay Updates
- Last year had the camera updated, stealth revamp, regen globes going neutral, and tower ammo being removed
- The team hears the feedback on tower ammo being gone. They won't go back on the decision but are looking at alternative ways to address the concerns
- "The game feels better when the teams are more evenly matched"
XP Changes
- These are to combat the often snowballing matches
- Forts and keeps give no XP. Towers give 50% less XP
- Mercenaries give +100% XP
- Passive trickle going up by 15% XP
- Internal testing revealed that it didn't feel rewarding to take down forts. Keeps were still rewarding since it spawns catapults in the lanes
- Taking down a fort now spawns a catapult in every third minion wave
- The goal is to smoothen out the advantage that could otherwise snowball
Armor Update
- Pro players have been expressing concerns about armor-stacking drafts
- UI armor visibility has not been good
- All armor types will now be shown at all times
- Armor stacking is being removed. Biggest armor buff, or largest armor debuff, will take priority
- This should make each armor (de)buff feel stronger individually
Q&A Session
- Post-game stat tracking is something they want to look at in 2019, possibly as an extension of PBMM
- Tyrande spell armor talent will still stack. The team went through all similar talents on a case-by-case basis
- The team is experimenting with reducing clutter, such as smaller health bars and selection circles
- Hero Select is getting a new feature at some point next year
- The ranked changes will be releasing a few parts at a time
- Dark Nexus Dehaka? "Noted."
- Towers of Doom and Alterac Pass don't have catapults. ToD may still have the current XP gains from destroying buildings. Alterac Pass has the tanky minions but those have been tuned down significantly to not get out of hand.