Nobody talks about what really ruined the game

General Discussion
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Bias…

That’s exactly what did it. Blizzard went into a moba with clear and established bias on who were going to be the most powerful hero. For years, we’ve had Li Ming who is the poster child for a hero that is supposed to be a squishy mage but can end up shredding tanks.

Or Jaina, another example of a hero that gets protected by Blizzard solely for the fact that she’s supposed to be a feminist icon.

This is why the game died sadly, because Blizzard weren’t able to put their bias towards certain champs or classes to the side and make balance decisions that were in the interest of the whole community.

It is the same with WoW, you can tell in WoW who were clearly the classes that Blizzard loved the most and put the most effort into.

They clearly favourited some heroes over others rather then keeping the game sufficiently balanced and nerfing champs that were overperforming with meaningful nerfs. Its the same with Riot and League of Legends, both companies are not willing to risk upsetting their precious playerbase by making decisions which are in the best interest of the game, rather then the fickle playerbase.

Blizzard did nothing to prevent smurfing, did nothing to limit premades and then gave a surprised Pikachu face when the game died.

2 Likes
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The game still lives, without support, without puring money into esports.
It is just not as popular as lol or dota where one hero can destroy whole team.

But I agree about Li Ming being just a sorry pure bad idea…

3

I think that Blizzard killed that game by making every character deal same amount of damage in same amount of time during gameplay. They run away from burst damage. And changed abilities from unique to generic.
And there is no point who you play and how your skills work, you will end up in nearly same result. There is no feel of uniqueness of each character.

I still think hots has best system for moba, shared exp. That forces people to play together as a team. Also not everyone must finish creeps. So it’s not tedious fapping on last tiny portion of their hp most of the laning stage. Which is complete bad design that came from first dota from starcraft UMS map.

Also blizzards started to make a lot of bad decisions long ago. For me it was when they added Wild (dumpster) and normal (Milking players) modes in Heartstone. Perhaps WoW players felt it earlier.

They also made their map editor for SC2 bind every creator in fear that they could potentionally make something like dota was made and then Valve got it. While Blizzard were not paying attention. So there is no interesting UMS maps in SC2.

If we return to Hots, it’s also lazy approach to skins, recolors are meh decision, should only exist for color blind people.

Most interesting part is that, belive me or not, new fps moba from valve is taken some things from hots as well.

I would say, it is really a missed opportunity, because a lot of people who love blizzard games, enjoy playing their favorite character here.

If any dev or responsible dude read that, remake skills of heroes that it would be an interesting gameplay, a fun skills to throw, a challanging but rewarding.

Even dota 2 stole recently skills progression from hots.(You can now pick passive at the beginning of the match). Exactly what we are doing whole game in hots, affecting our skills and passives.

And cherry on top, if you try to open your mind, and look how advanced “AI” played in dota2 vs pros, and how it was winning and giving hard time to pro players.
The answer is AI was playing hots in dota2.
Minimizing differences in all heroes, they had no roles, it was spreading farm and exp between heroes, and played as a team. Exactly why I love hots. It forces teammates to work together.