I'm pretty surprised they are going with a nexus hero when so many iconic characters are still missing. Not to say she may not be great as a hero, it's just an odd choice.
Should get a lot more info later, but apparently she will be free for virtual and in person blizzcon attendees.
The Content Team focuses exclusively on reworks and awesome events Considered the "heartbeat of the game" by the Heroes team Major focus on releasing new Heroes Blizzard is optimistic about the direction of the Content Team as it pertains to storytelling
Previously, they would take a cool idea and just drop it into the game once fleshed out The current approach is to create thematic elements through events (Dark Nexus, Fall of King's Crest) Events allow them to celebrate the true diversity of the game Exploring the Raven Lord and King's Crest, the true narrative of the Nexus, has cracked the world wide open New comic book coming out this month, will be all about Orphea and her back story Quests are incredibly important and fun for engagement with the player base
Undesirable Quick Match compositions are all too common– this needs to change Call of the Nexus will implement Tank + Healer + Ranged Assassin + 2 Fill system for Quick Match 50% call-to-arms experience bonus when roles are in need
In any game with a Boost active, the players in the game will earn an additional 5% XP up to 45% Sharing is caring!
Ranked Update
At its heart, Heroes is team-based– this is going to be a major focus in 2019 Devs are being much more responsive and proactive with listening to feedback from the community (re-adding duo queue in Ranked, lowering Team League queue times)
Reimagining Ranked (Hero League and Team league to be combined with option to only queue vs solo queue players) + Show Spoiler +
Combining Hero League and Team League Will allow for an option to only queue against Solo players Loss forgiveness implementation– no loss of MMR or Ranked Points if you have a leaver on your team Leavers will be penalized if it happens multiple times across a season Reduce placement matches from 10 to 3 Seeing your points change is part of what makes the game fun– Blizzard wants to get you to this step ASAP Seasonal Quests You must play through a seasonal questline in order to get your end of season rewards Removing promotion and demotion games Anxiety surrounding promo and demotion games isn't fun By reducing the stress, more players won't halt progress due to ladder anxiety Performance-Based Match Making will be modified Great potential to edutcate players instead of determining ladder positions Goal is to utilize PBMM in order to judge how you're doing relative to others, not to become a be-all and end-all judgement MMR will be shown, matching the gradient of skill levels and ranks currently in game
Develop his "fantasy"– what is his back story? Stitches will be a Tank Hook will be integral to his kit, will remain in tact and build his kit around Hook
Sylvanas
Examine her Hero fantasy as it has developed over time Blizzard wants to make her an "epic Ranged Assassin" Her current kit is unique– the goal is to keep her "existing fantasy" in tact
The best game experience is when both teams are evenly matched and have a chance to win. Blizzard's focus
Forts and Keeps are worth 0 experience Towers are worth 50% less experience Trickle experience is worth 15% more experience Merceneries are worth 100% more experience Catapults will begin spawning every 3 waves after a Fort is destroyed
Armor system has been beneficial but wonky. Armor stacking, in particular, was dominating the professional meta and creating a negative gaming space. Additionally, the UI is strongly lacking in Armor display
UI updated to show all Armor types next to portraits Armor stacking removed
On a completely unrelated note, if you log into battle.net and check your gifts at the launcher, everyone got a free copy of Destiny 2 base game.
Literally the only reason everyone wanted a MOBA made by Blizzard was to be able to play their favorite official Blizzard characters they've gotten attached to throughout playing their respective games. Now they're trying to fit unique lore into this game which nobody asked for, ever, when there are still tons of already existing characters to choose from. Jesus, Blizzard has gotten so tremendously out of touch with their (apparently now former) target audience, it's just sad at this point.
Just tuned in for the tournament - late - but it's sooooo worth it.
As for the quantity and quality of game development, I can only echo everybody's disappointment. Not happy about the direction with the second set of questionable at best laning changes. A Nexus character nobody asked for and only one skin. Hopefully the coming character at least plays well...
With the combination of team league and hero league coming, I am curious how the draft is going to work. The who ever locks in first option is fairly popular at higher levels, but opens up for some players consistently locking in first every game without consulting the team at all, which could be frustrating. Especially when new heroes are released, the race to lock in first and negative reactions to those who don't get it could be a problem. At low to mid level ranks where some players either don't know better or don't care it could be a consistent problem.
On the other side, using the current team league open drafting could give significantly better stats on win rates if used optimally. No more pressure for someone who isn't good on Genji to lock in Genji with a first pick when he isn't banned. Players who are playing heroes or roles that aren't first pick material can wait and still get their pick of choice most of the time. So win rates in theory will more reflect the best player on each hero more often.
The other thing is adding restrictions to how far apart people can be in rank on the same team. It's virtually impossible to balance match making when bronze and GM players are on the same team. Even more so if the "bronze" player is really a GM who tanked their MMR to boost the team.
My suggestion would be to re-add the option to make a team roster for team league, but don't make being on a team roster required. My initial idea for that would be:
If you make a team roster your team can have players of any rank on the same team, but the team has an MMR that only changes when the team is playing together.
Team rosters do their placement matches as a team, so having a tanked bronze account does nothing to help boost anything.
If you solo queue or party with people not on your team in team league, that is a different MMR from your team roster MMR, and neither one effects the other.
Blizz would have to decide if players can be on multiple team rosters, each with it's own MMR.
If you aren't playing with a team roster, you can only group within one rank and have to have heroes at level 5 or higher. If you are playing with a team roster, you can play heroes less than level 5 and there is no restriction on how far apart your ranks can be.
There could be a separate ranking ladder for top team league roster and top team league individual.
There are more things that would need to be worked out, but that's a general starting point of how it could work.
This would let friends of any rank compete together, but no benefits to having a really low member on the team with GM players since the whole team roster shares one MMR, and they can't group together if they aren't on a roster.
On November 06 2018 00:33 karazax wrote: With the combination of team league and hero league coming, I am curious how the draft is going to work. The who ever locks in first option is fairly popular at higher levels, but opens up for some players consistently locking in first every game without consulting the team at all, which could be frustrating. Especially when new heroes are released, the race to lock in first and negative reactions to those who don't get it could be a problem. At low to mid level ranks where some players either don't know better or don't care it could be a consistent problem.
On the other side, using the current team league open drafting could give significantly better stats on win rates if used optimally. No more pressure for someone who isn't good on Genji to lock in Genji with a first pick when he isn't banned. Players who are playing heroes or roles that aren't first pick material can wait and still get their pick of choice most of the time. So win rates in theory will more reflect the best player on each hero more often.
The other thing is adding restrictions to how far apart people can be in rank on the same team. It's virtually impossible to balance match making when bronze and GM players are on the same team. Even more so if the "bronze" player is really a GM who tanked their MMR to boost the team.
My suggestion would be to re-add the option to make a team roster for team league, but don't make being on a team roster required. My initial idea for that would be:
If you make a team roster your team can have players of any rank on the same team, but the team has an MMR that only changes when the team is playing together.
Team rosters do their placement matches as a team, so having a tanked bronze account does nothing to help boost anything.
If you solo queue or party with people not on your team in team league, that is a different MMR from your team roster MMR, and neither one effects the other.
Blizz would have to decide if players can be on multiple team rosters, each with it's own MMR.
If you aren't playing with a team roster, you can only group within one rank and have to have heroes at level 5 or higher. If you are playing with a team roster, you can play heroes less than level 5 and there is no restriction on how far apart your ranks can be.
There could be a separate ranking ladder for top team league roster and top team league individual.
There are more things that would need to be worked out, but that's a general starting point of how it could work.
This would let friends of any rank compete together, but no benefits to having a really low member on the team with GM players since the whole team roster shares one MMR, and they can't group together if they aren't on a roster.
Not sure if this would overcomplicate things. In LoL you just queue with a role intention. Maybe sth along those lines can work for Hots too, since they doin it in QM anyway now
Maybe for the draft issue. Still leaves the problem of vastly different ranked accounts on the same team making match making virtually impossible to get right unless the whole team is sharing an MMR or they restrict who can play together to closer in rank.
I'm not at all happy with the hero. One of the reasons I play and was so into HOTS was playing with all Blizzard's major lore characters. I have 0 interest in them creating heroes out of thin air just for the sake of it when they still have hundreds spread across all their franchises, it feels like a betrayal of what HoTS is.
Also, I'm not feeling their MM updates. Like I get so many bad games still its unreal, very lopsided compositions.
I would prefer an established character over a completely original one, but in the end if a hero is fun, that matters the most to me. But it's an odd decision to add a completely original hero at Blizzcon when established heroes are more likely to bring in cross interest from fans of other Blizzard games, and a ton of your existing fans look on the original hero negatively from the start for reasons you listed.
The blizzcon updates are not in the game yet, but match making is tough in any MOBA. Not to say there isn't room for significant improvement, but in a game where it's exceptionally difficult for a single player to carry, there are lots of factors that can make what looks like a balanced game on paper turn out completely one sided in any MOBA's match maker.