Quote:
Originally Posted by Nonfiction
Aesah would be interested in your thoughts on this given you being one of the top 2+2 LoLers
I've played maybe 15 games so far, it's really interesting. The main differences:
#1) I think the game is overall VERY well designed. The #1 best thing about it IMO (this *might* be because i have no idea what I'm doing, but I doubt it) is that game has a really strong sense of urgency where you feel like there are objectives all over the map that require your attention, whereas in LoL a lot of times I feel like you're like "OK guys baron is up in 2 minutes. Just farm and don't die until then." This is good because it makes every moment of the game feel intense where LoL is like, medium intensity laning phase, and then for the last 20 minutes it's like 17 minutes of running around and 3 minutes of intensity.
#2) I'm not sure how I feel about your team leveling up together. It definitely has some advantages, allows heroes such as Nova to roam and fufill their role without falling a ton of levels behind a pusher like Hammer. However I think a lot of people play to get individually really fed, in LoL and DotA some of the most fun games are the ones where you can 1v3. I mean ADC mains can argue that they are a team player, and maybe they do play 100% team oriented style, but lets be honest when they queue up they really just want to be able to snowball then 1v3. This is one of the main reasons people play LoL so i think it hurts the success of the game as a whole.
#3) No last hitting. Again as with #2, this has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is more ACTION, most people play just to fight- you can see this in lower level LoL games there are ALWAYS more kills than in higher level games because thats all they want to do. The disadvantage is that laning phase is like the most skill-intensive part of LoL and it's removed in HotS. The last hitting itself isn't very hard but it is 100% the central focus of what let's you outplay your opponents- if that sounds confusing, it's like shooting a soccer ball into a goal isn't very hard, but that's what the entire hard part of the game revolves around.
So yea so far IMO these are the 3 biggest differences and my opinions on them. Like I said earlier I think the game is very well designed, and I'm a huge believer of "real life variance" so even considering #2, if HotS was in the right place at the right time I fully believe it could be as popular as what LoL, and LoL could have flopped in terms of purely gameplay (maybe Riot crushed Blizzard in marketing or whatever, I don't really know).