We can certainly see why this game failed…
Blizzard played obvious favourites with a lot of champions in this game. Characters like Butcher, Deathwing, Li Ming, Keal’thas, Artanus are massively overused and were never nerfed or changed to balance them.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have near useless champions that are basically an instant-loss when you use them because they either too old to be relevant or are so badly designed, they cannot compete with other easier champions in that role (I.E. Whitemane)
This is why this game failed and proof that although Blizzard helped birth the MOBA, they are not very good MOBA designers themselves.
For example, why play Tassadar when both Keal’thas and Li Ming do flat out more damage for less effort as with Tassadar you need to set up with your wall to actually kill somebody. This is an example of what I mean and this is why the game failed.
I’ll start off by saying no MOBA is perfectly balanced. Dota for example had an issue in a recent patch with the hero Razor where he was extremely annoying and hard to kill if he had bloodstone or the tank meta that dota had in the last patch which no one enjoyed etc. From what I have heard, League isn’t doing any better with balance, so if you can tell me a MOBA that is perfectly balanced, be my guest.
Now about HOTS balance, it’s really difficult to firmly call any hero unbalanced since HOTS is such a team oriented MOBA. Mages like Ming or Kael generally are pretty weak on their own in fights without the support of their team since a opposing Genji or Zera (for example) can take care of them with no problem if they’re left unchecked. The same can be said about other heroes and other roles. Butcher is a unique case where most of his dmg comes from his meat and if you have experience from other MOBAs, you are probably aware of the concept of NOT FEEDING MEAT TO BUTCHER.
1 Like
I can do more with Tassadar than kaelthas and ming. In specific scenarios ming is better, but Tassadar wall, especially in solo games is ridiculously good.
Honestly, this is a case of get good. Butcher is pretty trash
Not the right attitude, this game is dead because Blizzard played favourites and creatures like you still defend their awful decisions.
Certain heroes are just way better/way easier then others, almost to the point that there is no point in playing them. This is why Kael, Li Ming and Jaina are spammed so much and if a hero is overused, they are too powerful and need to be nerfed.
I think hots failed because it tried to be a team game when what people come for is owning.
Nop, all of the people who played and still play HOTS do it because of it being more team based and more casual. I play a lot of dota but I still come back to HOTS to have a chill match.
“O I can’t solo the whole team after being fed, I don’t want to play as a team”. Well boo hoo pal, HOTS did not fail because of it’d design, back in the day it had tons of players and it still has a lot of players even without any updates. HOTS failed not because of its concept but because blizzard pushed it so hard to be a esport when the game is too casual for that. Besides that, HOTS didn’t have the best monetization, especially with 2.0.
1 Like
Not saying it’s a bad thing how they made the game, I also think it’s good.
It was made to deal with problems that other games had, especially team play issues.
I’ve been on about how it’s too bad there’s no gold in HotS but seeing how carries in other games ignore team fights because they have to laser the farm makes me think it was a good call. Then again I do miss the gold farming. I was always thinking it has a place if it’s a minor thing and not a critical issue.
I’m saying that they never reached their audience because the moba crowd was, at the time, all about owning face and little about team play.
It’s a lot about farming to max and then getting as many one-sided skilless kills as possible before the other team surrenders. Farm-battles.
May be a bit unfair of me to say so but the tendency is there. That’s what the moba audience was actually looking for.
Today I don’t know. Mobas are on a decline. It’s popular but fading. The new thing has lost its shine. This is where I believe HotS could come in because it was made more robust, the small things were considered and the game does play differently. It’s cleaner and more balanced in my opinion. If there was effort made to rekindle the game it could stand out in a dispersing crowd. Maybe. It’s a good game. People keep playing it because it is.
1 Like
how can you list the weakest melee assasin, the weakest bruisers and kaelthas as overpowered heroes that need balance… ? have you played this game less than 10 hours or what?
Since when WM is weak btw ? maybe in bronze games it is D:
And there is balance between kaelthas liming and tassadar. Tass is Crowd Control and survival focused, li ming has 0 CC and teleport build is usually suicidal while KT is somewhere between them. KT has rather small burst compared to jaina or li ming and Convection is harder to hit than tassadars Q. bomb is cool but it hardly ever spreads. I dont see how is kaelthas overpowered. Try doing 65-75% wr on kaelthas on soloq games. Good luck.
Heroes were usually balanced by measuring wr of high rank players. But since HGC was canceled community has shrinked and former plats and golds entered master. And there is much more griefing these days as well, so data for further balancing is rather unobtainable.
If heroes were balanced only for new players, then anyone slightly better at the game could exploit them very easly making game at higher level veeery unbalanced.
and that attitude killed the game… congrats… this is why nobody plays it so you can feel smug, satisfied and probably have a heart attack by the time you reach 35… congratulations! Seriously, the arrogance of these people never fails to amuse me.
I would say the factor of match making is a bigger impact on balance. a 5man stack premade crushing a solo team … what does heroes have to do in that situation?
The most unbalanced thing in HOTS is the lack of the game’s ability to reconnect automatically after you get a DC, and the second thing is its pathetic matchmaking