I think heroes can go well above League and DOTA 2.

Dota has good features outside the game, but in my opinion many things inside the game are legacy from Dota 1 and hurt the gameplay. The game is kind of messy in its presentation of what to do, hard for noobs to understand. Kills/denies make the game unforgiving. 10 colors for players. Courier mechanics and how you can lose control of your char. Multiple shops. Dota 2 is most like Dota 1 and I feel thats where they get hurt the most. By today's standards, Dota 1 is just not that good of a game.

League has good features inside the game, but they lack features outside the game. Their archaic client setup means that going from "I want to play a game" to attacking something takes 10-15 minutes. And Riot struggles to have all the goodstuff that Dota 2 has, including community workshop skins, boosts, voice chat, chat during loading etc.

Which brings us to Heroes. Heroes I feel is the next evolution because its even less like Dota 1 than Dota2/league, which I feel is another step in the right direction. Talents over runes/masteries and items DISTILL the choice of how to customize their character into a bite sized package, and make it a lot easier to play. (Compare to eg. league where you might choose brutalizer vs hexdrinker, but a noob is not even aware they have that choice.) No last hitting means you lose the interplay of lasthit/harass in laning phase, but probably we will see that push/objectives is enough. Client is likely to be such that adding features will be easy, not hard like League. Maps are symmetric with respect to camera angle (no "blue side advantage"). Lots of good stuff here.

Matchmaking is working again.

Weee

Finally got daily quests, first one is: play 2 games as warrior class. Sonya =/ I suck with Sonya so bad.

I haven't played LoL, so can't comment on that but I agree with all your other thoughts on Dota and Heroes, well said.

Being a newlywed apparently rapes your playing time.

I hit level 8 yesterday. I'm liking what I've played so far. I feel like I'm rewarded for actually leveling now, since I'm unlocking different things per level, and the gold per level in combination with daily quest feels substantial.

I have enough gold to buy 3 2k toons or a 5.5k one. In 8-9 games, you couldn't really do that in league, due to needing runes. I mean, yes, you would have ~1200 ip, if they were all wins, and you could buy 3 450's, but it's not worth it.

No downside to buying a toon, also gold buys skins also, so that is pretty cool also. A lot of grinding would be necessary to buy toons and skins without spending $$$.

Anyways. I like the way the game feels, and you know a game will be over in around 20 minutes, unlike in LoL, games could stall on into the 40+ marker easily.

I'm really enjoying this so far. I like the team aspect much more than the individual aspect other moba's try to promote. That being said, the game is still plenty deep and has plenty of strategy. The goal should be for your team to win, not for you to have the highest level above your head when the game is over. If you are that elite then your teams chances of winning are greatly increased as well. I would like to see Blizzard add more stats soon though, especially to the score screen (and this is supposed to be on the way).

All about teamwork in this game... Nothing like your team's raynor split pushing (aka doing nothing) when the rest of the team gets slaughtered over the tribute 4v5...

There are going to be noobs (and this is only an alpha) and I really think people are going to have to learn to accept them if moba's are going to become more successful. Games like dota and LoL really suffer from how toxic the overall player-base is. Also, when players make mistakes they should be given tips not called idiots, not saying that happened here but that's how things normally happen in games like this unfortunately. I mean, if you can't even be a noob during a game's alpha period, what the hell can anyone realistically expect?

Also, eventually there will be ranked play so you can avoid most situations like this and will be able to play amongst players of similar skill. This is still in alpha, there will be new players (and new players should be encouraged rather than discouraged from continuing to play), and for every situation you think some noob costs you a game there will be one you don't notice that wins you a game. Just like poker it all equals out in the long run, people just notice the bad beats the effect them, not those that effect the other team (because you are so awesome you should win 100% right?).

Just try to have fun and be nice to everyone, it should be fun, and if you can't have fun while losing right now you probably shouldn't be playing at all.

I would disagree that games like dota and league are pretty much dead, in fact they seem to be absurdly popular. Due to the popularity and being free to play, you're gonna get that toxicity. There's no doubt in my mind that this game will follow the same pattern, even though sc2 (and most blizzard games for that matter) is an extremely non-toxic game for the most part.

And yeah, I expect the guy is a noob obviously, and I'm not sitting there smashing my keyboard going off on the guy, but just shaking my head because 95% of the time it's gg if you have someone like that on your team.

I feel like on cursed hollow the fight for the first tribute decides the winner of the game around 80% of the time. If one team rolls 4 people with no deaths, they go up 2 levels and that is usually an insurmountable disadvantage for the other team. The first team to hit 10 has a massive advantage over the objectives due to how strong ultimates are in this game... So if a tribute, or dragon knight shrine, doubloon turn-in etc. goes up around the time a team hits 10 and the other team is still level 8-9, you can either forfeit the objective and get further behind, or fight and feed a bunch of free kills and get behind that way. I'm not sure how they can fix it but I'd be interested to see how many games are won by the team who hits 10 first... I'm sure it would be a lot. At least the games are generally short when they're blowouts. I also like how if a player quits, the AI takes over, which is generally not a star player, but better than having no one there like in league.

But yeah, it's still a fun game, there have definitely been some lol-moments with a champ like stitches hooking someone from downtown, then gorging them and spitting them out behind your turret wall and watching them try to run through it because they don't know they can't get out that way... Or landing a money W while retreating with witch doctor, trapping a carry in the zombie ring while your team picks them apart. It's definitely a breath of fresh air in a moba, but it's got some balance issues among other things.

Will HotS be free btw?

Game definitely has balance issues.

Murky is god damn ******ed idea of a champ. Let's make a dude who does tons of damage to structures and allow him to ignore minion waves and continually suicide into structures with no CD on revive. When he does suicide, he spawns 2 more bombs to do even more damage to structures. Also, you can destroy the bomb, but minions don't attack them.

Li Li scaling is way strong. Healing people from like 5% health to full over 10 minutes into game.

Just off the top of my head.

yes i think it has to be to compete with other MOBA games

Yeah most likely it will be free considering the ripoff prices of the champs/skins in the shop.

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Stupid quoting bug on mobile.

Prices are really high, but you can buy skins with gold. Can't use IP in LoL for skins. So if you grind enough, essentially you can get everything without ever spending any money.


Still prices are high.

i still havent even played this. Faithful blizzard fan since 1998? and they never give me beta keys. i ll prob just stick to DOTA.

also, its annoying that Heart Of The Swarm and Heros Of The Storm have the same initials. completely unacceptable

You can't buy skins with gold... Gotta use them blizzard bux.

Did I misread?
Then yeah, lol price rape

gameplay dota2 >>> league and that is still considering dotas 'the worst community in any game ever' jmo

I'm probably awful at this game but I'm having a lot fun so far. Having the best success with support heroes since I seem to get no support from my teams just herpin and derpin around trying to 1v2 as support.

Tassadar is OP imo

That archon ult... jesus.

I feel like my winrate is higher as support because getting a 0 support team vs a team that has 1-2 is not that uncommon. But on the flipside, it sucks choosing support and getting some combination of murky/abathur/support, leaving our team with only 2 characters that can put out real DPS.

Had a Tychus/Tyrael get rolled by Uther/Tassadar. They thought they could kill us. Not even close. Too much heal

F U blizzard wheres my invite

this, buddy tried to get me into DotA 2 and I have no idea wtf is going on, this seems like DotA for simpletons like me

I haven't really kept track of news like this, but when the event that this game is going to be open to everyone, is this going to be a free-to-play with people having the options to pay for the better characters and stuff?