Heroes of the Storm

Eternal Conflict Event. PTR - 23rd June / Release - 30th June.

New Diablo 3 maps, heroes, mounts and skins.

Next Hero is The Butcher (Assassin):


Next Map Battlefield of Eternity:


That map looks insane and can't wait to get on that.

Also if you are bored for a couple of hours here is The Mayhem Begins event that happened yesterday.


Info taken from here: http://www.heroesnexus.com/
 
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Q&A

General
3 to 4 week New Hero cycles after release (ideally).
Big influx of new players with Open Beta and potentially Release. Lots of players like to wait for the "final game".
Unique heroes (Murky, Abathur, Lost Vikings) are quite popular despite their different design.
Gold Gain is in a good place - will keep monitoring feedback on that.
Heroes was originally a mod, so at first they were trying to stablish its own world first.
Now that they have 7 maps, they feel it's time to revisit their original franchises' worlds - hence the Diablo Themed Event.
They are ok with releasing a hero and have the community and pro-players show their potential.
Tendency to always have everything perfectly tuned before it's out - doesn't work too well in this genre. It's ok to release it and adapt to what happens.
Players will always find issues the devs could not find internally. Work with them to always balance and tweak the game.
Glad to not have to hold the game for 7 years until it's perfect and shiny, and rather work with the community!

Hero League
Lots of feedback to sort heroes by role on Hero League - also on their wishlist.
MMR likely won't be revealed - does not mean much > arbitrary number that loses some significance cross region. Would rather have their Ranking System represent that, rather than a number!
Flaws with the current Ranking System are acknowledged - they're thinking of ways to improve it. Like Placement Matches.

Maps
Rotating Battlegrounds out of the pool - maybe in the future when they have more. If everyone greatly dislikes a map, they may just remove it entirely.
Recently made a change so players don't get the same Batleground multiple times in a row - to improve map rotation.
No Battleground blacklist option planned currently - maybe in the future.
Immortal design for Battlefield of Eternity was meant to be unique and new!
Hell vs Heaven map will be repurposed at least once - new mechanics and looks, but different layout.
They could have an Elwynn Forest map turn to Felwood or Plaguelands.
Missing map art and assets on the hands-on was because Battlefield of Eternity has two tilesets. Also no Easter Eggs in yet - but will be included.
Battlefield of Eternity on PTR June 23rd - hopefully launch at June 30th!
Map Editor something they really want to do, since the genre was born from it - still not actively working on it, but they'll get there.

User Interface
Buff and debuff tracking was on old and incomplete UI element - will be brought back improved.
More hero specific UIs (like Thrall's), above the character's portrait.
Jump to Last Ping hotkey being considered - not difficult to be added.
Death Recap is on their long list of "to-do" things.
UI editing might have issues with their Terms of Service - but they're listening to feedback.

Heroes and Skins
Gifting Skin/Heroes to Friends is something they want, but takes a focused effort from them - gotta take into account the technical difficulties and potential fraud situations.
Bundle improvements - not sure if they want to give a discount, credit or keys for previously owned heroes. But definitely want to incentivize people purchasing bundles! More info soon!
On old school Diablo and Starcraft character skins - they really want to add those iconic characters, but it's much harder artistically! Very simple visually back then, and can't be "ported" as easily!
With Alternate Reality skins there may be some overlapping on sillhouettes and themes. They try to keep it as unique as possible.
No boundaries on what they can make as skins - Bikini Stitches. For "funny" characters it's ok to have more funny skins, for others they prefer "serious" skins - with maybe at least one funny skin.
Developing Heroes has a sequence - dev team decides the role they need > art and design team discuss it. Or they start from an iconic character they want in the game!
Hero making process has been so optimized they can schedule it out pretty well (up to 8 months ahead).

Talents
Lots of removed or changed talents in the hands-on version of the game!
Talents are never final - they're constantly tweaking and working on them!

Player Toxicity
Quite concerned about Player Toxicity. Don't want your team to become your enemy instead of your allies!
Some mechanic designs are made specifically to improve that - Ping System (already quite robust, but they know there's room for improvement); Mute All.
Reports do work for toxicity! There's a Customer Support team always analyzing those.
Maybe they can match toxic players with other toxic players similar to what they do with Leavers/AFKers.
Internally discussing a system where players rate other players!
 
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The new map does look very cool!

And I'm glad they are committed pushing out new heroes quickly as it's seriously lacking, dota has the advantage that such a huge hero pool means that even heros that could be OP are brought into line by either hard counter picks or soft counters with items. In HotS (especially in quick match) there are a few that seem way OP simply because unless you have that 1 specific counter there are no other tools in game to combat them.
 
In all honesty it's hard to compare HotS with the likes of Dota and LoL with regards to heroes, one has been out a week the others have been out years.

That said I do get your point and with them aiming for new heroes every 3-4 weeks by the end of the year it will look healthy.

That said I don't think anyone is massively op.
 
I still think Sylvannas is the only real op hero. Immense lane pushing, escapes, stun and does good hero damage.

Haunted mines is a win if you have her and the opposition don't.
 
Just ignore johanna in a team fight. She is super tanky. But not op. Easy to tale down if you have a tyrande and use hunters mark on her. She melts like butter!
 
I think Johannas abilities make her seem like more of a threat than she is, people seem to see her sucking people in so focus her when in actual fact like others have said you can pretty much ignore her until everyone else is dead.
 
Making gold is too slow in this game. Even playing up to 20 games a day (which is a long session) over the weekend and not missing a single daily quest, I just cant afford to buy anything. It's ridiculous.

I want to buy Murky's master skin but you can only buy these with gold.
 
I don't think the gold is too bad, get to level 40 thats 10k gold plus 1k gold for doing the training missions.

Stimpack and you get 50 for a loss, 75 for a win. I think an aim of about 2 weeks to get the most expensive heroes or master skin is fine. Otherwise why would anyone buy anything.

I've got 11k and not sure if to get Jaina master skin or Johanna, although can't see me sinking loads of time into Johanna.
 
I wouldn't mind if you could buy all things with real money, but you can't. So you're almost forced to save gold for master skins you want while spending ££ on the heroes, because you can't do it the other way around.

The quests are pretty poor too. 200-300g quests need to go.
 
I don't think there is anything wrong with the amount of gold you accumulate.

Most of the things are cosmetic anyway and the things that matter (heroes) are priced well and are totally obtainable (even for a casual player like me).
 
I've got most of the heroes i want now apart from johanna (not spending 15k on a meh hero), I buy the ones on offer each week for about £3.50 and the rest with gold.
 
Hi chaps,

I really want to get into this game, I am a bit of a blizzard fan boy and sunk days into WoW and similar currently with Hearthstone. I have always wanted to try a LoL style of game so this is perfect, however I am complete noob.

I followed the tutorials and staggered my way through to level 6 so far but still have absolutely no idea what is going on (online especially). I just find myself button mashing and then quickly dying still unclear on the objective.

Is there any good beginners guide for someone who has never touched this style of game before?
 
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