Is this game still worth fixing?

General Discussion
1

I don’t know how many of you are still out here playing this game. But I know for a fact is that many of you are on the edge of quiting the game for good. This post is not an I Quit post but one that helps you decide if you want to stay or not. Here are some problems that we all as hots players are facing everyday. Feel free to add some more.

  • Decreasing number of players
  • Lack of new blood, lack of ads outside the Blizzard community (easy to find Overwatch ads on the street than hots)
  • Depressing and toxic community
  • Not even sure if the report system is working
  • Long queue time (5 minutes+)
  • Deteriorating MM quality in both QM and ranked
  • Questionable story plots (why do we even need that?)
  • Slow balancing patches
  • Imbalance/broken heroes
  • Limited ways to tackle sticky situations (many ‘you are fuxked’ situations in game)
  • Hero roles (going to get fixed soon™)
  • OP hero releases
  • Lack of attention from Blizzard in general

So my question is simple, is this game still worth fixing? If not, why are we still playing?

1 Like
2

dude, you play this game because you are addicted. I had it the same way, played for 6-8 games a day.
Finally my account is permamently locked - dont have any will to play this game.

The bad thing is, that there are hardly any good new releases outside indie games, so when im bored and have nothing going on or any will to go out, i look towards this game. Trust me, if you ever get banned or receive a lasting silance (3month for once), you will unlikely return to the game, unless ofcaurse no other game will be of any good.
That is why reporting system feels like not working. on 15th nov 2017 i received “final warning” before i get pema banned. After that time i got sinalnced and suspended, wrote to supports to delete my account, than i got silanced and suspended and THAN i got a perma one. You really need to try hard, especially with number of games i had.

As for the matchmaking here… read below its surprising (for me)
To play ranked you need:
14 heroes as bought or in free rotation - technically you dont need to EVER buy a hero to play HL and TL
lvl 5 per hero available - technically player level 70…

People to have HL access buy cheapest heroes - 8 can be bought for 2000 gold - get 4 heroes to level 5 and you can buy a new hero and have gold from wins and quest to get a 2nd one. Super easy.

Now look at this situation:
You have 10 heroes and 14 rotation, but only 17 heroes available for HL due to lvls.
After picks and bans, you can chose between 2 low damage warriors, mage and a hero you cant play as. Your team already has low damage warrior, low damage healer and a mage. No matter what you pick your team is in heavy disadvantage.

This situation can keep for a very long, as players tend to get 2-3 heroes above level 10 and others just on 5 to be HL viable. They dont get their one-trick-pony they are done.

Blizzard is fine with it. The more heroes are added, the bigger the problem will be, as people will more focus on being viable for ranked, than to have heroes they are good with, especialy with high pricing.

Another thing is that i have a feeling Blizzard wants to make single player games in multiplayer engine. Heroes they release are made to be “fun for the one playing” and they balance the hero based on “solo performance”, like if he can self-sustain, solo-lane, solo-chase, solo-do high damage etc.
And than they are surprised when a hero gets into a team and does wonders… or get shut down without any value to team.

Every OP hero is super strong in solo play, while UP are also strong in solo-play.

The bottom of hotslogs - all of those heroes are great in 1-1 or in ganking/roaming. But in TFs they get crippled.

It is design, Blizzard wants the game this way. If you dont, get your account banned. Its much easier than just leaving a game you enjoyed.

3

Slow balancing is right. I’ve been waiting for my Chen buffs for how long? Years?

4

Do you have statistics for this? I don’t necessarily believe this. Seems most just play QM now.

This was around since the days of SC and WC3. I have yet to find a competitive computer game young teenagers play that does not have it’s share of toxicity. At least now they have a mute button…

It’s an algorithm. In theory it should work, but I agree is currently broken. Begs the question why bother with this when there is mute button.

QM should not matter. It’s a QM.
I thought ranked let you pick characters, and opponents are more or less equal talent (as a whole). Of course there will be some easy and some impossible wins.

No we don’t need, and you don’t have to follow them.

Apart from the OP hero releases the game is more or less balanced. Most players are not pros, and I would argue the slight imbalance will not influence the outcome.

It goes both ways. There are some underpowered (Whitemane, remember Rexxar?) that needed buffing. You will need to cut Bliz some slack here. Players will find ways to exploit some abilities that originally was not thought of. THat’s when adjustments are made.

I would challenge this. Blizzard is constantly tweaking heroes to balance the game. I don’t always agree with the changes, but the constant changes proves Bliz is paying attention.

2 Likes
5

It’s as if people don’t realize the majority of these issues translate to almost every similar game. Do you see League being praised for having a perfect community, perfectly balanced heroes, no MM issues or elo-hell etc etc? That is a game with far more funding and a much larger playerbase - some might even say a more reactionary company behind it - yet you don’t see it being the beacon of perfection because, spoiler, MOBA’s are not exactly capable of perfect balance when the whole concept is multi-roled paper-rock-scissor arena - and there is no perfect system to guide communities towards being wholesome and respectful that doesn’t cost too much time and money. It also doesn’t help that competitive games such as this never fail to bring out the worst in most people.

Even the most stringent rules won’t stop plebs from being plebs. If you want the perfect report system it’ll require a lot more staff and time-investment to legitimately investigate issues - they can never keep up with that to a satisfactory level, hence automated options are typically employed. Check out League with its “Community - help us sift through all these reports” feature it had (unsure if it still exists). Nothing but the most passionate company with the time and funding to spare is going to manually sort through the throng of toxic drivel, and even rewarding your own community to try and help them with it won’t guarantee any stable results.

Is it worth fixing? That’s the wrong question to ask. I don’t like cauliflower - people who DO like it won’t convince me to like it by putting sauce on it or hiding it in other food. 90% of these threads are spoken in a manner that give the impression you have already made your mind up about it. This seems like such a thread, hence you have YOUR answer - but you don’t have everyone else’s.

2 Likes
6

No I do not. However you can infer this from many aspects. Increasing match making queue time, decreasing views on Twitch and Youtube, decreasing post numbers per day on Reddit and this forum.

You have a point on the mute button. I still don’t understand why hots doesn’t have a ‘surrender’ button. Nevertheless, in terms of ‘depressing and toxic’, I am also referring to the toxic community against Blizzard. Read along, how many posts are actually positive here?

Because the report system is not just about reporting hateful speech, it’s also about reporting trolls and afks. The mute button doesn’t save you from matching with a troll over and over again.

QM should matter. It’s the primary way of playing the game. Unless Blizzard decides to remove QM in the future, which I am all for it, QM still matters. And yes, theoretically speaking, ranked play should match you with more or less equal talent players. But you can still find many games where bronze players are matched with gold and plat players.

I would agree with you on this someday when Blizzard finally decides to rework/remove Genji from the game. I know some OP heroes are less concerning in pro games, for example Tracer and Kel’thas, but they are still headaches in QM.

Attention is a relative thing. There is a joke about ‘your favourite kid’, it doesn’t mean that you don’t LOVE the other one, after all, that’s your offspring. Just that he/she is not your favourite child.

7

I’ve played HotS since beta and it still is by far my most favorite moba, mainly because of a very few design choices:

  • different, randomly selected maps
  • common XP for the whole team
  • in QM you select a hero before you are matched

The last point is probably the most important. In QM there is no rigid meta-thinking stuff like “oh no, we don’t have a healer and you have the last pick. You must take a support, or we will blame you for everything, afk and ragequit”.

Yes. The game is worth fixing. Just return QM Queue times back to 20-30 seconds and let random team compositions have their fun!

1 Like
8

It is beyond fixing.
In the past warriors were warriors - hard to kill melee fighting who if ignored will eat your backline.

Currently such warriors are only Muradin, Arthas, Artanis, Chen, Tyrael and Stitches.
Rest are either burst or cant do anything alone, mighty legendary heroe of Blizzards universe that hide behind towers from some random trash minion.
ETC is super low damage, unless pinball wizard that gives him ASSASSIN damage of 272, which when used in combo with 3 basic attacks easily dont to stunned target lets him dish 600 damage which is about 35% of assassins max HP.
Imperius that can deal 600-700+ damage on his combo, based on lvl 1 talent. Not to mention most of his talents are damage.
Leoric can be made to deal 35% max hp damage with 1 ability.
And lets not forget Diablo, who can make his shadow charge the strongest basic ability in the game with 460 collision damage, rechargable by overpower to deal collision again, chain with either of his heroics and 10% life steal talent. He can solo burst 70% max hp of most assassins in game.

9

Honestly it doesn’t look good for trying to fix hots.

Something like matchmaking isn’t a small thing to change, and frankly I think it needs an entire overhaul. But then there’s the issue of players. Most people who have played HotS to any sort of competitive degree probably know about the abuse of the report system, which never should have happened in the first place.

But honestly I find limited enjoyment in playing HotS casually (perhaps it’s just me). If you’re playing something like QM because you want to play a hero you like for a lot of heroes it’s just rolling the dice to see if the next 10 min of your life will be fun or not depending on whether you get countered. Going into something like draft will usually give you a better game but it is more hardcore and more of a hassle if you aren’t used to it.

But beyond that, what exactly is the incentive now to bring new players in after the admission of downsizing, and then the recent announcements from Actiblizz firing more employees despite record profits this year?

At the moment it seems people are getting much more concerned about business practices, and frankly actiblizz has one of the worst reputations in the industry in this regard (seriously, how many publishers are worse than Actiblizz? Only Konami and EA come to mind, and with EA it’s at least debatable).

For the sheer amount of work to get over these hurdles, it would probably be easier to build a new HotS, and while they’re at it they should fix the reconnection system to, it’s moronic.

10

At about main topic…
Yes…it worth to be fixed.
Yes,both sides( Blizz,community) to now couldnt fix it to now or gulity for this current “good” situacion.

In future 2,3 years would be better.
Problem is …this year they will add.more ideas,mechanics,rules wich will help to be better…but result of quality will come after 3 years i quess.