Allowing Dota run to Valve, Blizzard made probably the biggest mistake in their history. When they (and at the same time and millions of people around the world) realized the real potential of a single card for Warcraft 3, It was too late: neither the court, nor panic throwing from the extreme to the extreme helped Blizzard to regain for themselves what once significantly pleased right under the nose.
But not too much like Blizzard is very giggling. It didn’t work out-we will make our own: from the idea of the Blizzard Dota ideas in the air, the Blizzard All-Stars project, a heroic crossover from the universe Warcraft , Starcraft And Diablo – And then they thought about him ten more times, and it turned out Heroes of the Storm. The last couple of weeks we spent on her alpha version. It was fun.
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Take out the excess
► Given the volumes of Blizzard universes, inspiration sources for new heroes will never run out.
Heroes of the Storm many in absentia offended by the stigma of “moba for casuals”, but in reality it turned out to be anything but not casual. Understanding is easier than even League of Legends, And as a result, it’s easier to get pleasure from it. But if you get to feel like how you will almost certainly meet a team that will make you realize how slices and puny you.
In general terms, Hoths is no different from the same "Dota". There are bases of two teams, towers, uncontrollable soldiers-“creeps”, and there are heroes, each of which is controlled by one of the players. But with the exception of the foundations, Blizzard threw out from the mechanism everything that could confuse the new player. For example, there is no equipment here – a huge list of “body kit” for heroes was replaced by a set of talents. From time to time you are offered to choose one of three or four talents-it can be a passive perk, active skill or improvement of congenital skills. And at one stage, the heroes choose “heroic ability” to themselves – in other words, “Ultu”. Most characters have two of them, and both come in handy in completely opposite situations.
► in the lower left corner – a list of talents from which we can now choose one. At the first level of interesting, they offer little. ► One of the "heroic abilities" Diablo leaves deafening pentagrams under the feet of all enemy heroes, wherever they are.
At the expense of talents, the heroes gradually gain specialization. For example, one Illidan will rely on survival and learn to take a demonic form in order to remain in the thick of the battle for a long time. The other will sacrifice protection and will become a pure killer. Another “heroic ability” will be useful to him – it helps to overtake vulnerable opponents from afar.
With talents, instead of equipment, the concept of the hero’s “assembly” itself is really easier to delve into, but from the point of view of the space for experiments, Heroes of the Storm does not withstand any comparison with the classical “dota”. There are mountains of objects with unpredictable properties, here is only a narrow list of talents inherent in a particular hero. But this, frankly, is nonsense – in all other things, the system works fine. In the end, look at the priestess of the tyrant: the abilities make it a completely logical doctor or a swivel archer – and why does she become, say, a “tank”?
Controlled chaos
► unlike LOL and DOTA 2, here we first choose a character and only then see who we will have to play with.
Together with the equipment, money disappeared, along with money – the need to finish the monsters to accumulate gold. Of the resources, only experience remained, and in Heroes of the Storm experience and level – this is not one player, but the whole team. They did this, as they say, so that weak players do not lag behind the strength of those who are more powerful – and often really helps.
But in the alpha, this system found a side effect: if there are several unlucky players (or even one, but very bad), then the weak links pull the whole team down. Opponents gain experience with a fifth, we are only the three of us, and as a result, the gap is growing continuously. And it doesn’t matter how well you own your hero: if the opponent of the twentieth level, and you are the fifteenth, in an honest battle it is unlikely that you can win.
At the same time, the refusal of gold mining made it possible to reduce the early phase of the game, when the heroes scatter along their lines and try to put together capital, from time to time biting each other by the heels. There are no reasons for lingering at starting positions at all – while at least one player is standing near the “creeps”, the experience is dripping on the general expense of the whole team. So the rest can calmly go into a maneuver throughout the map.
► Each hero (except for a three-three pair clearly for this) has a horse that allows you to move faster outside the battle. Genre veterans often forget about them and crawl on the map like turtles.
Heroes walk as they want, where they want, with whom they want and often meet someone. Because of this, large team skirmishes in Heroes of the Storm happen from the first minutes of the batch. This is also facilitated by the size of the cards (the enemy barely disappeared from the radar will be visiting you after a second), and the fact that the main part of the skills of the heroes, not counting the “heroic ability” and auxiliary skills, is unlocked from the start. No preludes, no warming up. Revenged – beat.
But killing at least someone at the very beginning of the party is quite difficult: if the team does not concentrate the fire on one, the victim will most likely just leave on foot. This is a thick hint that only in Heroes of the Storm is kneading in Heroes of the. You can try, but an intelligent opponent is unlikely to allow you.
Look under your feet
► Ship ship bombing enemy fortifications. Purely theoretically, six to seven such attacks will be enough to demolish the base to the base.
There are more than one card in Heroes of the Storm – now there are four of them, and it is impossible to single out the “main” among them (like Summoners Rift in Lol). The main set of rules to them does not change, however, each arena has its own side purpose, the execution of which will help the command to win. On one players collect coins and hand them over to the captain of the ship. If you have time to pass enough, the pirates will bomb a rather big part of the enemy fortifications. Two altars on the opposite sides of the map are held on another team so that one of the heroes can climb inside the hefty siege knight-dragon and defeat the towers in a matter of seconds.
Most entertaining in the arena with the mine. There, players from time to time are called in a dungeon – in fact, a map in a map where you need to kill skeletons and collect their skulls. At the end of the race, siege golems will appear on both sides, and the golems the more, the more their teams gained skulls.
► preventing the enemy from paying the pirates easier – you just need to inflict damage to him in the process. ► undead from mines is not a threat. The main thing is to have time to choose skulls before the enemy reaches them.
Victory in each of such competitions is able to fundamentally change the course of the party, but it is far from always worth the head -headed head to rush into the same mine. It is sometimes more profitable to pick up enemy fortifications in order to spread everything to hell while rivals play with undead. In addition, there are camps on the maps of mercenaries, which, unlike forest monsters from other games, join you if they beat them. It is often that the “hired” siege giants disassemble the towers even more efficiently more than the golemes.
Card control in Heroes of the Storm is almost the main factor of victory, and to provide it, the efforts of the whole team are needed. This is just wonderful, because Dota and others are games primarily about consistency and cooperation. But at the same time, it is especially painful to stumble up a grim of random passers -by on a well -coordinated five – even if you manage to demonstrate the miracles of motor skills, in the end you will simply be lifted up. In a closed alpha, this often happens: there are few players so far, and the matchmaking match does not disdain anyone with anyone.
Faster! Even faster!
► You can defeat giant mercenaries alone at any stage of the game-it is very easy to dodge their attacks.
But even completely hopeless parties do not depress here as much as in the classics – simply because they last much less. The normal match takes about twenty minutes; it happens that it is delayed up to half an hour, but very rarely. To think, to dream and look at the sides resolutely, he yawned – and found that your bastion was already sharpened by mercenaries, pirates or the same grave golem.
And all these experiments with the mechanics allowed Blizzard to pamper with the nerd heroes. The usual roles in Heroes of the Storm work somewhat differently – since the emphasis has shifted from skirmishes for side goals, most of the party is all approximately equal in level, and the heroes are not dying as fast as everyone is used to it. Therefore, some of the local types are unlikely to ever see in the same League of Legends. For example, Abatur-a gragor scientist-evolutionist-is almost never present in battle personally. He sits in some quiet place, litter the map with mines and, in which case, hangs on one of the allies of the Symbiont, which is controlled by himself. With his help, abature can protect his partner from damage and shoot at opponents with spikes – and in fact it is much more useful than at first. Good abatur is able to lead the whole team to victory, but he must know what is happening anywhere in the https://sister-site.org/casiroom/ card at any time, and in which case it is ready to be ready to help.
► Two against me – the starcraft sticus I have been beaten and another Diablo. None of them noticed the Abaturovsky symbiont on me. I will kill both.
Saying something about the balance is still difficult. The testers have already appeared favorites, as well as recognized outcasts, but all this is very controversial: it seems that everyone was scolding Tirael, and in the meantime we had a great success with him. It is just as difficult to say if there is an optimal team. In any case, Heroes of the Storm will find their optimizers – it’s good to optimize something, and very curious teams are already gathering from the currently available two dozen heroes.
In any case, until everyone plays seriously. Not far off, rank regimes, but from there not far to serious tournaments. And although Blizzard assures that they will not forcibly push the game to e -sports, judging by the unexpected popularity of championships Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm is waiting for the same future. It has potential, and it is very interesting for us to see what strategies the tournament teams come up with.
Well, buy at least something!
► Пока я играл в догонялки с заполонившими шахты противниками, наши на поверхности забрали всех наемников. Although their golem will be much cooler than ours, the mercenaries will bring much more benefit.
Recently, when it comes to monetization, everyone who does not live at the expense of decorative things, like Dota 2, the people are glad to betray ostracism. It is likely that the case, although the Valve trick is rather know-how than an immutable standard. It is quite predictable that Blizzard has chosen the League of Legends business model, which was once considered the ideal of a democratic free-to-play. Although it is no less predictable that many are already dissatisfied with this.
The economy in alpha works, and we are almost sure that the current system is not final. But the prices of heroes are still inspired by anxiety: from three dollars for simple to ten for the most interesting ones, like abbot, prices are about like in LOL, but in LOL it is much easier to collect a sane set of characters for the in -game currency. Now the money in Hots is dripping mainly for daily quests like “win two parties for the support hero”, but they don’t pay much, and if you have completed the quest, today you have nothing to earn money. It is upset. Perhaps so Blizzard wants to encourage us to play a little, but … what if we do not want? At least I am pleased that before buying every hero you can run into a special training ground and decide whether we need him.
► In addition to simple and daily quests, there are tasks like “kill so many heroes Zeratul”. For some of them give color options for heroes.
In addition, images for heroes and horses are bought for dollars. If you want to remake Carrigan to Sukkuba from WoW, and Diablo-in the Murlok-Peretnok? But what about the rainbow unicorn instead of a pure bay horse? The latter now costs exactly twenty bucks.
Just think, only twenty bucks – and you are great!
* * *
Despite the problems of Alpha (which will almost certainly solve), Heroes of the Storm pleases. Blizzard offered more her ideas than any Lol or Dota 2 imitator, and their game is felt in a completely different way. It’s nice to play Hots even at the alpha stage and with a long ping to American servers. And in reality it is much deeper and more interesting than it seems from the side. Even if you are a fanatical ponder in the forty -fifth knee, try Heroes of the Storm is meaningful at least in order to make sure that not every game should have stalls, hypercarry and other terrible words.
Success factors
Risk factors
- The teamwork decides much more than personal skill;
- short and saturated matches;
- There are not familiar types of heroes for the genre;
- different and equivalent cards;
- Fanservice works as it should.
- Weak players drag the whole team down;
- Not all cards are equally balanced;
- Dota 2 Business Model I pretty spoiled us.
Stage of development
Closed alpha – operates properly, but much more requires improvement.
We will wait?
Blizzard managed to get rid of most cliches inherent in MOBA, Action RTS and, after all, they are called. This is already enough for Heroes of the Storm to impress an order of magnitude more interesting project than any of the “catching up” genre games.
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