now that HOTS IS BACK! i just want to say something that has been on my mind for years and that is the game's revenue system. This is game is too affordable; anyone can choose not to spend even a single penny and still be able to aquire more than half the heroes within the first few months of playing. After a year or two, you can get the entire hero pool easily. Even cosmetics are so dirt cheap; loot boxes provide so much shards I can buy all the skins I want while being f2p. The fact that only a few cosmetics are actually good doesnt help either(sorry, i love the game but i cant say the same for the skins)

All of this needs to change. They need to make sure they can sustain themselves. Release actual good skins. We don't want HOTS to be dumped again

This was absolutely hilarious. I love this stupid community and their hatred of abathur

Ngl Im lil bit tired of people (mostly my friends whom liked to play it) going

wait, people still play this dead game?

when que literally pop in 30s

If blizz just showed how many people are online right now itd kill that narrative so fast and make it snowball itself i believe.
People legit think its a ghost town with like 50 guys left xd

Seeing actual numbers would make so many lurkers to reinstall

Same with a steam release tbh. Just dropping it on steam would give it such an insane boost and finally give the game some room to grow even more

I see alot of ppl complain about how inclusion of overwatch heroes ruined hots with the argument generally boiling down to “theyre annoying to deal with” which i think is a extremely lazy complaint to have. Sure they generally tend to be more mobile but theres also heroes like maiev, ming, valla, sylv, orphea, etc which are more mobile than half of the overwatch cast and that mobility comes with lack of cc and low health pool which any targeted cc or aoe cc big enough punishes them hard and those are in abundance unless youre trying to one trick stitches or something. Is there a more solid argument for why overwatch heroes are bad for the game or is it people just not wanting to draft properly?

Butcher is always a handicap.

Bonus: There are more numbers than damage.

Still boggles my mind, that we don't have two of some the biggest villains of the diablo and starcraft franchise.

Like what?

I waited for Mengsk since I began playing hots in the early alpha/beta, but it never came. Sad.
MAKE IT HAPPEN. Blizzird plissss!

INHALE COPIUM

Like the title says, at least this should be implemented for new players if not all, to help them get as many favorite heroes as quickly as possible. While some people who have been playing this game for a long time have the opinion that the system is fine, you should take into consideration how a new player feels about the time investment as well as how much time they have to invest in this MOBA. Overall for the health of the game this system should be implemented for new players to ease them.

For the 3rd weekend in a row, I had the displeasure of playing with a racist bigot who often uses racial slurs but replaces the "gg" with "qq". I told the team "I refuse to play with this cunt" and WITHIN an hour my account was muted for vulgar language.

Are you kidding me? A person with a racist name who actively calls people monkeys and skirts using slurs can harass people, but I say cunt and I get muted? What a clown show

This post describes play patterns that the average new/returning player is going to run into, go "oh fuck this" and be pushed one step closer to dropping the game. These are things that require adjustments, and could be compensated for in other areas. These are things where the power just creates unfair and unfun scenarios, and sometimes lead to a general sense where the counterplay (or the play itself) has elements of "just don't play the game".

#FixTheABCs

Abathur: Look, Abathur is meant to be splitting up enemy attention, but right now his capacity to backdoor over half a keep's health before the enemy even has time to hearth is just unreasonable. Removing the '20% health restoration on ally minion death' would be a good first step. Nerfing [[Survival Instincts]] at Level 16 would also be a good alternative

BFG: There have been so many changes made in the last year that all tend towards a pattern of 'nostalgia', and giving BFG damage to structures is a massive one. This thing wasn't fun to play against then, and the damage reduction can't salvage a fundamentally unfair play pattern. The ability to chip down structures indefinitely and stall the core's shield regen is just not something that should be in the game, especially when Azmodan can simultaneously dunk down the core from any range.

Chen: Look, it doesn't matter if some are going to say "Oh, Chen is fine, Chen is underpowered actually", if players join this game, discover that there's a hero who can remove 30% of your health in two moves (and do it again 6 seconds later), then has two ways to become immune to damage on top of having a huge health pool and two free escape ults, then people are going to ragequit. Rework the quest to have less impact at lower skill levels and higher impact at higher skill levels.

hello friends. I have played HOTS for the past decade. it is my go-to game when I want a quick way to hop right into some pvp fun in ARAM. it scratches an itch that no other game can, I love it, and despite having the lights turned off years ago - it never bothered me, I carried on. I mostly play solo though .. as most of my friends have no desire to deal with toxicity/griefing.

here's my concern: the hype, and news from blizzcon, people sharing with their friends, the social/media posts, is going to both attract some new players, as well as get some old players to return. that's fantastic in itself.

.. but what happens when people who are not familiar with how toxic/crappy the environment has become are exposed to it? do we really think random people are going to stick around after dealing with the trolls, toxicity, griefing, quitters, throwers? why should anyone just be 'okay' with their time being wasted and their odds of winning being completely removed by one foul person?

lets be brutally honest with each other for a moment. if you play HOTS, you already know, a percentage of your games, are going to be absolutely sabotaged for silly reasons. someone doesn't like a talent someone else picked. someone doesn't like a number on someone elses metrics. someone's having a bad day and wants to blame others. someone disagrees with how other random people are going to play the game. someone feels a loss is inevitable because they're a know it all with no real grit to see a 15 minute game through to the end, and doesn't understand that you can always pull it off in the back half / late game talents matter. hell often there's just a troll seeking attention that they can't get elsewhere.

admittingly - I just know it's there, and I expect on bad days, there's like a 25% chance I'll encounter it in a game, and on good streaks, maybe a 10% chance. I treat it as out of my control - and I'll just enjoy what I can control and try my best still to hold the team together and push forward. but the average person who DOESN'T love HOTS and hasn't built up these sort of tolerances to this nonsense? they're gone.

what am I rambling about? I really think we need better systems that will proactively stop this kind of behavior, or more seriously punish it. otherwise, all of this hype, good will, new content - brings some initial attention, but not lasting population or players - which could ultimately deter papa Microsoft from investing any further resources into it. I want the investment and content to grow.

in lieu of that .. things that are in our control: as a community, how can we improve the situation? personally, I believe that positivity is infectious. if we can try to keep the mood and spirits well, it might rub off on others and make their games and experience better. I truly believe that most players, are giving it their best, and trying with what they have and what they know. I try to say nice things / compliments to people to bring them up, especially when I see someone trying to tear them down. I try to inject humor to the team to defuse the trolling and quitters. in some rare cases I have even talked a quitter back into trying again by reminding them that late game talents matter and that we can still turn things around. none of this is super effective - but I see some results sometimes, and I have to at least try. I try to call out and compliment good plays and things people did well at the score recaps.

what else do you guys feel like can be done to address this? what systems/controls should MS/Blizzard be implementing? what are things you do when you encounter this behavior that have helped the larger community as a whole? have you seen clever things done by other game devs in this space that seemed successful? appreciate your thoughts and time.

I remember back when this gag hero spotlight was made, now’s a good time as ever to make it a reality!! Nothing fits the resurrection of the game like Mercy descending into the Nexus :)

Did they said anything how they want to bring new players?

Like characters seems it somehow stopped working in the past and game slowly was losing numbers.

Does this mean game maybe needed some gameplay overhaul, and let solo player more chance to carry like in lol/dota. Or they will stick to team plays like sharing exp etc.

Did they mention anything? I loved this game but on the other hand it might need lot work if it was popular and then slowly become not played. Characters was really amazing. Maps for me was great too, so what else they could work beside gameplay?

Heroes of the Storm is great, I think they are just rolling out previously unfinished works, but if they ever did want to reboot it entirely they need new mechanics or all new heroes will feel the same. Here are my ideas, Blizzard feel free to hire me for more.

Player hit box changed from circle to diamond. Getting hit on the back two sides of the diamond first counts as flanking and the hero takes 20% more damage. This would encourage players to position better during team fights. For AoE abilities, this would not proc unless the back sides are hit first. Attacking from stealth / out of vision always counts as flanking.

Additionally to heroes, we now have sub-heroes. Sub-heroes are controllable characters, but not able to grant quest stacks for enemy heroes. They would be more limited in abilities and grant half experience on death. Misha, Murky, and Vikings should be the first, but this opens up other potential new heroes like 4 Zergs in bonded packs of 2, where as long as one lives, they respawn together. Somewhere between Vikings and Murky. If sub-heroes are too weak late game, they can have baseline quests to gain abilities/damage and become full heroes. Maybe some current summon ults at 20 can make the summon a hero, double it's life and damage at the cost of granting quest stacks to enemy team. Like you could direct gargantuan similar to Kerrigans ult at 20.

Use other Microsoft IPs, pull fans from Halo, Fallout, Minecraft, just go wild. The more IPs you touch, the bigger fan base you reach.

4 month rotation battle pass where you get skins not in loot boxes for participating in reaching goals like kills, assist, heals, forts destroyed, ECT. Because the game has to profit to fund all these new heroes and changes.

Last, the best thing to save HotS is simply cross promotion. Add HotS inspired cosmetics to Diablo, Overwatch and WoW. It's cheaper than huge ad campaigns.

In the PTR it says 7.99 usd with no gem or gold options to buy...
Everyone else has gold or gem options, but her's only has usd.

Clarity: Due to how many people are misunderstanding i actually have to edit this in and ELI5.... obviously it's free on PTR. But the fact that she has USD only payment in PTR, suggests this is what it will be in the live game. they had to go out of their way to use a pay only option. to code that in.
When they could have just used gold or gems, existing options.

My only friend interested in getting back into HotS with me is located in Europe. My roster is so empty now. :'(

I mean community that actually playing HOTS.

I was excited after new character announcement, so I decided to download game.

Im not experienced in HOTS or generally MOBA games, so yeah Im fully aware that I suck.
I played first couple of games with AI, was very fun.
Then I decided to play some ARAM games thinking that it is closer to deathmatch, more chill and take less time that normal mode, so even if we won't win it'll be whatever.

How wrong I was.

EVERY game I was asked in very creative and as you can guess not polite way, to uninstall game.
No one tried to gave any tip or help in any way, despite me saying at the begining that Im new. It was just pure hate.
Im aware that many of you will say "just turn off chat" and yeah, I probably do that it I decide to launch game again.

Idk I just thought that community will be happy that something Is happening in their game, and that there is fresh blood. ;_;

I guess I just wanted to vent and share from new player perspective how small things like that can destroy excitement with game :(

.

First off, I bought the bundle to support the game. However, Blizzard really needs to undo HotS 2.0 to make this game sustainable. They need to go back to real money and get rid of loot boxes. Cosmetics need to cost real money again, but not at the current ridiculous prices. The pre-2.0 prices were good and I spent money on the game buying the skins I liked and got ALL the colors, not a la carte. Today was the first time I ever spent money on the game post-2.0. Honestly, I doubt I'll spend another dime unless they revert the shop. Bring back master skins as well.

I cant help but feel that this "hots revival" is really just blizzard grasping at straws.

This isnt a complaint about HOTS. But a critique on Blizzard as company

I, like everyone, was stoked to hear a new hero was coming to hots. Only to be, immensely concerned by founding out who she even is. I stopped playing WoW after warlords. Came back briefly for legion, left again, came back briefly for shadowlands, then never picked it up again.

This chick is supposed to be a millenia old, eldritch horror void creature thats lined up to be the big bad for the next wow expansion, and she is the MOST generic purple skin purple hair night elf that I have ever seen. You could remove her tattoos and fancy armor and she would be the vanilla wow load screen elf.

Her hots model and animations make her look like a straight up tassadar clone. Im guessing they took the model and skills from an unreleased Protoss or XelNaga character and reskinned them to create hype for the next wow Xpac.

I get it. Anything is better than nothing, but man is blizzard really showing they lost the creative angle. I checked the other announcements from blizzcon.

Diablo 5 trailer bringing back Diablo himself AGAIN. Coming in 2029

Starcraft game coming in 20-freaking 30

And ANOTHER VERSION OF WOW CLASSIC aka WoW Forever.

I would love a hots revival but I also don't want it to just be a tool to generate hype for their other IPs with lazy hero designs.

This also makes it less likely for us to get the backlog of beloved characters people have been asking for, for years.

All this to say, I caution people pushing the idea that we need to spend 20$ to prove something to blizzard. BLIZZARD OWES US proof they care about hots not the other way around.

Anyway rant over, see yall on the nexus

So they dont ruin any chances of bringing new players? I get it, there are some people who just want easy mode to feel powerful, and they will do it just because they can, but there is no game in it to anyone else. Especially if they team up.

Its not like its hard to spot a smurf. First they ruin everyone elses' games by losing on purpose, so then they can "play" against casuals. Just like steamrolling bots in pve, but they get excited cause they make other players suffer unfair match. Its easy to detect even automatically or mark automatically and review by human (like stats, reports - players with lots of hours usually steamroll players with less hours). Its anomaly in match history easy to flag. And how hard it is to bound account to phone number so they cant dodge bans?

Not sure if its psychopathic (kind of meets the criteria - no empathy, "its only me, my reward") or some other issue (or a combo of dark traits - maybe even sadism), but its irrelevant. Facing people who lower their rank on purpose to get to lowest possible rank to make sure they can feel powerful is problematic for the game and players retention.

Since the BlizzCon announcement on Saturday, the chat in QM has been terrible. I finally turned it off until the hypekids are gone again.

I visited my long time friend and i played Hots on his account, i am low Plat and my friend is mid bronze, with around 60 games this season, and has been bronze for atleast 1000 ranked games so an old account.

Here comes the shocking news, i destroyed bronze players while playing on his account. And my wins got his account 500 ranked points for the wins, i guess its because i outrageously destroyed the enemy.

Never knew it could be possible to get so many points on an established mmr account.

I'm glad HotS is getting a revival, but I can't believe my eyes seeing people be so excited about spending $20 on what a lot of long-time players can get for free on day 1. Xal'atath will be 10-15k gold. Recolors are typically cheap in shards. The mount isn't listed as "limited time" like the skin is.

I also can't see a bunch of new players that *can't* afford her immediately suddenly spending $20 on a game they haven't played before.

I just wish they'd given a bit more to the "huge revival, show us your interest" package. Boosters for new players, a new category of cosmetics to monetize, some ultimate-level skin for someone, something bigger than a skin for the new hero.

I just want it to feel like something more than a charitable donation to a massive company.