I enjoy HOTS but the upcoming addition of loot boxes seems like a cynical cash grab. Now there is yet another F2P game in the market with a slot machine-based RNG system. I guess they gotta make money somehow and realized that people will spend more money on virtual slot machine spins than the heroes/skins/mounts they're currently selling in the shop. As of now, it's super easy to get a large collection of heroes for free and the aforementioned stuff in the store that they are selling for real money is not very compelling. Though for me, slot machine spins are even less compelling than what is currently available.

Trailer released today for 2.0.



Cliffs: Genji and D.Va are the new heroes. Hanamura is the new map. ICYDK, those are Overwatch characters and an Overwatch map.

They are really trying to get people to play both games, as you will get Overwatch rewards for playing 5 HotS "games with friends" each week for the next 4 weeks.

Should have added the Genji video.



Also see this site where you can determine which bundle provides the most value for you, based on which heroes you already own: https://new.shuzzle.net/heroes20/owned.html

The HotS rewards:

The new loot system will probably do the trick and bring me back to play.

Logged in and got ~30 boxes and actually feel compelled to level heroes now past 5.

I could never bring myself to spend $ on skins, 'specially when some of them would cost like $15, so it'll be nice to have an avenue to acquire some of that kind of stuff.

Alright, I downloaded this to grind for the Overwatch goodies. I played LoL for about a week or two once and largely had no clue and so far, in the tutorials, I still have no clue.

But if anyone wants to play the matches for the Overwatch stuff, I'm BrownTrout#1591 on Blizzard. THE FRIEND STORE IS OPEN.

I'll play tonight (or any night). Decided to start playing since 2.0 came out. Complete MOBA noob.

Daer#1142

For the rewards you can just team-up and battle the AI (for the first week anyway, then you have to play real matches). It won't know what hit it.

Do these string of quests need to be completed the week they come out or can I catch up in following weeks? I am going to away for most of the week and not sure i'll have time to get this first quest done before week 1 is done.

p.s. #nexuschallenge chat channel lets you easily find friends to play with to complete the challenge games.

You can catch up. They are all open until May 22nd.

I did that, was invited to a party, and played a game. Then I realized that I forgot to friend request the guy who invited me.

But this event must suck for the experienced guys. Back when I was grinding for the Hearthstone card back, I'd easily win the AI games because I was being paired with experienced people just grinding for gold. Yesterday, I played two AI games and lost badly because none of us really know how to play well. It doesn't matter because the games still count. But the guys who take HotS seriously probably hate it. Though I guess they don't get paired with noobs anyway.

My chat defaulted to new player chat so it was easy to find players who were just there for the Overwatch rewards. Played 4 AI games. Figured out after the first one that setting it to beginner was a good idea. I just used the default healer hero and followed the best player on my team.

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The 2.0 version came and basically sort of took all of my achievements away; with "1.0," I had to work for more to get my heroes, skins, mounts, that one now gets for free, basically.

I would now generally recommend to pick the free bundle (that one now gets) with 20 assassins for the region one is at, and the "warriors" bundle for the 2nd most important region, and the "supports" bundle for the 3rd region. Those bundles cover about all heroes and that is the general order of their importance. The (base) skins and mounts now come more or less as a bonus.

The total level (at 2.0) is now 200 instead of 40, as I had over 200 and got only 200 as the total level. It has no practical difference. When playing at other regions, (possibly) not getting in your games with a too low total level, so in the longer run one likely buys some of them to use in one's main region, but at least one now gets to play any hero one wants any time one wants without buying them.

The gold might (if one doesn't buy skins and mounts directly instead) for a start (for 1.0 players) now be going for running the "loot" boxes again -- more often than not getting nothing again. I got 3 good mounts, and some better or so skins for many of the top 5-12 heroes I play. I got skins for many heroes also I don't play, and especially Muradin (that was one of the three heroes I don't use now that I got free for no reason at all here) got many top skins.

I am only more or less happy to my Arthas (a (now meaningless) master skin, I think, that I got from a loot box, plus a top and fitting mount (can be used with any hero), though Arthas' skin is here pretty colour pale) and Jaina (the best I got and I am happy to have it) skin. Though I have funny ones also, like the half-naked Tychus, and Sonya (and Muradin) is Legendary but a bit too massive (and not my colour(s)) for my skills.

My top 4 heroes still have the same skins and mounts I had before. I used all my 5k gold to rerun loot boxes (I had like 20 total of them, plus the reruns). The few or so higher level boxes might be the best reruns but the costs are like 500 and after that 1k, that is too expensive when trying to hit one's top (4 or 14 out of the 60+) heroes with a skin (or mount) one likes, and even if getting a top skin (or a mount) there with this gamble, it is regularly not so what one prefers, though the mounts can be used with any heroes and so much more likely fit more or less somewhere.

There are also some other stuffs that might make a difference to if one reruns the box or not. With a limited amount of heroes that one might prefer to use, rerunning is less good an idea with high costs, being cheaper to buy with gold or so. In a month one gets 10k or so gold without any leveling, and so one can count that one can buy something good every month.

"In a month one gets 10k or so gold without any leveling, and so one can count that one can buy something good every month."

Just checked; it seems one can't get them with gold anymore but needs to level heroes or buy with money.

Nah, I wouldn't worry about it too much. There are people who complain, but I think it's pretty short-sighted. In the current state of the game, two of the PvP modes are ghost towns with massive matchmaking problems. I'll gladly take a temporary influx of newbies (and lower quality games) if it means that even a small fraction of them will stay to continue playing after the event.

The bigger issue might be that week 1 allows AI games, but weeks 2-4 require PvP games for the Nexus Challenge. That's where the real salt is going to come, but like I said earlier, I think it's worth it for the longevity of the game.

I used to be pretty good (not great by any stretch of the imagination, though). Came back for the event and it is funny how people rage at me in quickmatch or unranked draft for making small, rusty mistakes.

For those of you who are brand new, the best, quick advice I can give is: (1) Early in the game you should mostly be laning -- you will never get back the XP you lose from not having a teammate near the little minions when they die. This is why it is common to sometimes leave one player laning while 4 others go to do a map objective. (2) Do not die. It's even worse in HotS than it is in Overwatch. (3) Stick together in the lategame.

Any recommended guides on playing healing classes? I enjoy healing but it's so different in MOBAs from traditional MMOs and I generally suck at it in this game.

If Overwatch had thing HotS does, where each death means you're out of the game even longer, it would be unplayable. One of games, I died often enough that I was dead for over 60 seconds.

Honestly, I would not suggest reading guides. The reason is that the good players CBF with writing guides since they take time and end up obsolete after a patch or two. So what you're left with is scrubs that spend more time writing a nice looking guide than actually learning how to play the hero. You're better off watching streams, but it's difficult to find a streamer that consistently plays support in hero league.

Your death timer is based on your team's level, not how many previous deaths you've had. I think it caps out at 65s when you're level 20 or something.

HOTS has very forgiving death timers until at least level 10. It's a fun game and the only moba I am interested in. However, the addition of lootboxes has actually made me LESS interested in the game. They're just throwing more grindy BS into the game.

Why is it more grindy though? You still acquire heroes the same way as before, the only thing that's changed is that you get a bunch of optional cosmetic stuff for free now.

Yeah I pretty much have one skin per hero now, up from zero skins because I never bought any. And with the free hero pack I'm up to 54 heroes, all for free, so I'm very happy with 2.0

Also the first skins I got were Mecha tassadar and raider muradin, some of the best skins ever.

I bought the 50 box pack for the hell of it and between it and the free boxes I've received I've opened 8 heroes and a ****load of skins. 4 legendaries, 3 of which were skins. Of course I began at level 3 and it is really easy to gather boxes that low level. Currently at 36 heroes.

Legenaries were Cyber Anubarak, Night Spectre Illidan, Queen of Ghosts. Can't remember what my 4th legendary even was, maybe a hero or announcer?

EDIT: The 4th legendary was the Cyber Ram Mount.

I'm definitely not a fan of the substitution of the hand-drawn hero portraits in draft for the animated ones, which reflect your chosen skin. Especially given that there are a bunch of new heroes I know nothing about, it is really disorienting.

If you go to Settings and select Challenges and complete it you get a Starter Loot Box. Mine had a 7 day Stim (which I think is preset) and 2 heroes (Thrall and Arthas, both of whom I already had).

If you hover your cursor over the hero that a person is showing the game will display the skin name and hero name.