Rise and fall of HOTS.

[DesoPL]

I will leave it here, but no doubt...

Diablo Immortal affected HOTS greatly.

[Soluna]

I will leave it here, but no doubt...

Diablo Immortal affected HOTS greatly.

How about you actually write some points, and tell us why you think so? It's kinda stupid, and looks like either a) self promotion if it's your video, or b) the inability to actually create a proper thread.

I don't want to check a 20 minute long damn video to even start contributing to your thread. Needless to say though, Heroes of the Storm was a dead game for a loooooooooooooong time, even without Diablo Immortal, it certainly looked like it wasn't a profitable game. It wasn't the esport blizz hoped it would be. One look at the tournaments would show you that almost none gave a fuck about the esport itself, as literally everyone was spamming a variation of ''!drops'' ''!rewards'' ''!loot'' and no one would get hyped for the duking out between the teams or anything.

Diablo Immortal is annoying, but to pretend that Heroes of the Storm wasn't dead almost at its arrival is being oblivious at best, and I dare not say the worst.

[DesoPL]

How about you actually write some points, and tell us why you think so? It's kinda stupid, and looks like either a) self promotion if it's your video, or b) the inability to actually create a proper thread.

I don't want to check a 20 minute long damn video to even start contributing to your thread. Needless to say though, Heroes of the Storm was a dead game for a loooooooooooooong time, even without Diablo Immortal, it certainly looked like it wasn't a profitable game. It wasn't the esport blizz hoped it would be. One look at the tournaments would show you that almost none gave a fuck about the esport itself, as literally everyone was spamming a variation of ''!drops'' ''!rewards'' ''!loot'' and no one would get hyped for the duking out between the teams or anything.

Diablo Immortal is annoying, but to pretend that Heroes of the Storm wasn't dead almost at its arrival is being oblivious at best, and I dare not say the worst.

Your problem not mine.

[skorpio]

Meh, HotS was released too late (2015). There were tons of differents mobas already and many players stick to one, mostly LoL (2009) and DoTA2 (2013). Blizz just fkd up, they should team up with Valve to create competitive moba.

[Shuji V2]

Diablo Immortal is annoying, but to pretend that Heroes of the Storm wasn't dead almost at its arrival is being oblivious at best, and I dare not say the worst.

This. Thinking otherwise is just stupid. Hots never rose because the game was late to the party. Additionally the way it was designed to be played stroked against what the dota/lol/moba communities actually wanted which caused a low adopt/switch over rate. There are a lot of reasons why hots failed, but Diablo immortal is not one of them.

[DietzThought]

I watched the video (it was interesting), but Diablo Immortal isn't even mentioned once.

[Soluna]

Your problem not mine.

Even if you somehow do not get that this is not the way to create threads, as we might as well find the video then, at least read the rest of my damn comment, which seems like it is the general impression of people have about HoTS after reading other users' posts. Or do you want me to make a 20 minute long video as a reply because you don't know how to read/write?

[Yoshingo]

HotS is a fine moba they just made the mistake in thinking somehow they were going to overtake Dota or LoL. They should have just accepted it was the smaller tier moba like Smite and supported it that way instead of gutting the entire support system.

HGC was a fantastic event, even if it never approached LoL or Dota2 events, which it never was going to.

[melzas]

OP must be really butt hurt over hots to come back to this over and over again with whiny shit posts about the game.

[RH92]

The video touches on a primary reason why HotS failed and it is the lack of emphasis on teaching the playerbase how to play it.

They tried to make it very simple for players to pick up and go, yet the game was quite complex when it came to drafting and creating a gameplan for chosen composition based on the map being played. None of that was ever explained in the game, all you got was big "FIGHT OVER THIS" even though ignoring it completely might have been better idea in the long run and also all the fools thinking big damage numbers mattered more than experience and low death count.

This in my opinion created a huge rift inside playerbase where both sides were frustrated with the other. You had people who just wanted to pick their favourite Hero and brawl it out while the others tried to replicate what they saw in HGC (aka play it properly). I even think the developers themselves failed to notice in time what the game is about which led to very late and weird decisions - the game was just confusing for all players.

[MHMabrito]

They tried to make it very simple for players to pick up and go, yet the game was quite complex when it came to drafting and creating a gameplan for chosen composition based on the map being played.

Literally got to master just playing Meta assassins, and never communicated with my teams. Sure, there was some synergy but to believe it was "complex" is just not my experience in high ranks.

[RH92]

Literally got to master just playing Meta assassins, and never communicated with my teams. Sure, there was some synergy but to believe it was "complex" is just not my experience in high ranks.

What you say doesn't exclude what I said.

In my experience climbing higher in ranks just meant the level of Hero micro management was better. I had games in Masters where players just mindlessly brawled and also had games in Platimum where players were executing solid gameplan. Both macro and micro could get you pretty far but one is less evident and game failed horribly to teach you that.

For example I wasn't that good player when it came to mechanics, as a primarily Solo Laner I just had good understanding of most matchups and great macro decision making to create leads for my team to capitalize on.

[mojojojo202]

The video touches on a primary reason why HotS failed and it is the lack of emphasis on teaching the playerbase how to play it.

They tried to make it very simple for players to pick up and go, yet the game was quite complex when it came to drafting and creating a gameplan for chosen composition based on the map being played. None of that was ever explained in the game, all you got was big "FIGHT OVER THIS" even though ignoring it completely might have been better idea in the long run and also all the fools thinking big damage numbers mattered more than experience and low death count.

This in my opinion created a huge rift inside playerbase where both sides were frustrated with the other. You had people who just wanted to pick their favourite Hero and brawl it out while the others tried to replicate what they saw in HGC (aka play it properly). I even think the developers themselves failed to notice in time what the game is about which led to very late and weird decisions - the game was just confusing for all players.

That same thing applies to all Blizzards games.

Luckily they have a fanbase who will spend huge amounts of time either making or reading guides and shouting down anyone who doesn't do that.

[caervek]

The problem with HotS was very simple, they created a product to fill a void, it worked excellently, then they decided to completely change their approach and butcher it into a product to fill a different void, except the was no void there as the new area was fully saturated, complete and total failure on Blizzard/Activision's fault.

I mean lets sum up the journey of HotS:

• Blizzard create a casual focused MOBA to offer players a valid alternative to competitive MOBAs like LoL/DOTA.
• It works spectacularly, for a brief period HotS is the fastest growing MOBA and generating an unexpectedly high revenue through it's cash shop profits and low development costs.
• Blizzard decide that if they make it into an E-Sport and focus it more on competitive they will make even more money and take on LoL/DOTA and it will be awesome.
• Blizzards work to change it into an E-Sport/competitive MOBA alienate the PVE playerbase (yes this was once an actual thing in HotS).
• Blizzards attempts to push it as a competitive MOBA/E-sport result in changes that damage it's popularity as a casual friendly game (the niche it was originally designed to fill and excelled at).
• Through further attempts to balance the game around PVP focused competitive combat Blizzard rework multiple maps (to their determent).
• Blizzard remove the siege/specialist role, converting those charecters to assassins and altering minions/buildings, all in an effort to push PVP Herostorm Deathmatch 2000.
• Blizzard decides there isn't enough interest in the game anymore to justify current development levels and so puts it on the back burner (who would have thought removing/nerfing what people like about a game makes less people play it /shock).

[Oneirophobia]

The problem with HotS was very simple, they created a product to fill a void, it worked excellently, then they decided to completely change their approach and butcher it into a product to fill a different void, except the was no void there as the new area was fully saturated, complete and total failure on Blizzard/Activision's fault.

I mean lets sum up the journey of HotS:

• Blizzard create a casual focused MOBA to offer players a valid alternative to competitive MOBAs like LoL/DOTA.
• It works spectacularly, for a brief period HotS is the fastest growing MOBA and generating an unexpectedly high revenue through it's cash shop profits and low development costs.
• Blizzard decide that if they make it into an E-Sport and focus it more on competitive they will make even more money and take on LoL/DOTA and it will be awesome.
• Blizzards work to change it into an E-Sport/competitive MOBA alienate the PVE playerbase (yes this was once an actual thing in HotS).
• Blizzards attempts to push it as a competitive MOBA/E-sport result in changes that damage it's popularity as a casual friendly game (the niche it was originally designed to fill and excelled at).
• Through further attempts to balance the game around PVP focused competitive combat Blizzard rework multiple maps (to their determent).
• Blizzard remove the siege/specialist role, converting those charecters to assassins and altering minions/buildings, all in an effort to push PVP Herostorm Deathmatch 2000.
• Blizzard decides there isn't enough interest in the game anymore to justify current development levels and so puts it on the back burner (who would have thought removing/nerfing what people like about a game makes less people play it /shock).

Bonus point: Then they started fixating on “lore” of HOTS, and not by building on stories of popular franchise characters throw together from various IPs, they make brand new characters nobody has any attachment to who exist in a vacuum completely separate of Blizz’s existing cast, and only involve the existing cast very slightly if at all. Then they double down on this with their newest character who has so little to do with the rest of Blizzard’s characters, their appearance in her reveal may as well be target dummies or Easter eggs with how inconsequential and disconnected they are.

People who are still playing are doing so because they want to play their fav heroes and villains from their childhood (or current) games, not to play no-name brand, shallow league of legends-esque characters.

[TyrianFC]

When HOTS was first announced my first reaction was - why? We have Dota, and we have LOL - choose your flavour. Why the hell would we need HOTS? And it turns out... we didnt.

They were just way too late to the party, so much so that nobody cared anymore whether they wanted to bring their same-shit-slightly-different-flavour offering to the table or not.

[cface]

HotS is the perfect example of what happens when blizzard touch something these days. What a shitty lame moba. So glad they denied DotA and Valve said yes. Imagine how shit Dota2 would have been in the hands of this company.

I still don't understand how OW is still alive. I barely hear of it when it comes to esport.

[Kralljin]

• Blizzard create a casual focused MOBA to offer players a valid alternative to competitive MOBAs like LoL/DOTA.
• It works spectacularly, for a brief period HotS is the fastest growing MOBA and generating an unexpectedly high revenue through it's cash shop profits and low development costs.
  

I don't recall that part.

I've played HotS, it's a good game but at the end of day it remains something that was way too late at the party.

The sole reason why it surged initially was because Blizzard has (or used to have) a pretty loyal fanbase, but getting actually new people into the Moba genre (beyond the Blizzard fanbase), let alone players from DotA / LoL wasn't something the game could do.

I doubt HotS would have received any resonance whatsoever if it wasn't for the Blizzard name and characters in it, else it would have been just another LoL clone.


Sure, Blizzard did put a huge ton of money into E-Sport HotS in order to potentially have "their own" massive Moba, but i doubt even with that component removed, the game would have fared that much better in terms of actual player numbers.

This entire E-Sport thing, barring those annual big tournaments such as The International, are a massive bubble anyway, so i'll expect more of those popping sooner or later.

HotS is the perfect example of what happens when blizzard touch something these days.

Not sure, some design elements in HotS were in my opinion solely driven by "let's make things different for the sake of it", such as the shared XP mechanic.
A big part of Mobas such as LoL and DotA is that RPG Progression elements are part of the game (such as Levels and Items, that kinda neutered this mechanic pretty heavily.

[qwerty123456]

For me its fall was when they ruined the iconic looks of characters like they did with Stukov and Alexstraza.

Its still either the 3rd or 4th(if smite is ahead of it) popular moba so its not like its completely dead. The problem is that they wanted/expected it to be as big or bigger than LoL. Had they had more realistic expectations this thread probably wouldn't even exist.

[d00mh4cker]

HotS could have been gone but they thought they had to create something new, if hots were a classic moba with individual leveling i would play it.