I hate that Ranked doesn’t take your old Versus MMR into account. My first ranked games have had some really green players (hey we have a 4v3 advantage… let’s take merc camps and not force team fights!).
I’d also love some sort of option to get put in a team where you’ll be lastpick, or close to last. Counterpicks matter so much more outside of blind pick.
It’s pretty fun though I am a cheap bastard and would say it is not worth buying the founder’s pack unless you have hella cash to blow. Better off waiting until you’re invited in and then spending the $40 on heroes you’d enjoy (Raynor and Tyrande are both pretty low-tier picks and not all that fun to play).
The game has many design choices that make it very different from most MOBAs on the market. There’s more emphasis on war tactics and teamfighting, and each map plays very differently from the rest. Items and skill points are nonexistant. The laning phase lasts maybe 2 minutes. Carrying a game by outplaying your opponents is very rare, if you want to lead your team to victory you have to do it through communication and strong teamwork (similarly, snowballing is also very rare and comebacks are quite common thanks to player psychology)
If you’re coming from League or DotA2, you have to be ready to leave everything you know about those games at the door and learn an entirely new game (and learn to appreciate/love the things that make HotS different from those games) or you’re going to not enjoy yourself. You should just stick with those games if that’s the case.
If you enjoyed League’s Dominion, Smite’s Siege, or IC’s Gotham Heights, HotS is likely a good fit for you. If you enjoy other war games but never got into DotA or League, HotS is a good choice for being your first MOBA.
The game is better with a friend of equal skill (if your friend is better or worse than you, it’s just awkward). It’s still decent solo, but of course it’s easier to lead a team of three strangers and one friend than it is to lead a team of four strangers.
ranked is in a weird place right now. it’s best to not think of it as ranked and think of it as draft pick mode.
the rank system is supposed to make players feel like they’re making progress when MMR is actually running everything under the hood, but with the way it’s currently set up rank 1 is an inevitability/grind and serves little purpose. you get 200 points for a win and lose 60-70 for a loss, so as long as you swing above a 25% winrate you will eventually hit rank 1.
That sounds about right for HotS though. Their primary goal is to make players feel good about themselves and do everything possible to avoid people being held accountable, not foster balanced and nuanced competition in their game. It’s smart on their part, really. There isn’t anything similar on the market right now.
Then again, they might be the only company that could have gone after LoL at their own game at this point. RIP Dawngate.
That’s part of why I feel like it was the wrong approach. They’re one of the few companies with the kind of clout and brand recognition to challenge Riot directly at their own game, and instead they chose this casual game path. Despite that, despite everything they’ve done to limit death notifications and broadcasting which individual players are ahead or behind, these kids STILL out there raging and making the experience worse. HotS kinds of proves that we’re probably never going to see a MOBA with both a large AND overall friendly community, there’s something intrinsic to this genre that just makes everyone into huge assholes.
So nice job Blizzard. You coulda just made a real MOBA, but instead you tried to make this friendlier experience, and people are still being giant chodes in almost every game.
It’s certainly different, there’s no arguing against that. I actually enjoy traditional MOBAs though, so if it’s going to be that casual AND people are going to rage and fuck games up for me? Not a whole lot of reason for me to play it that much. If people weren’t constantly being dicks and doing stupid shit, I could play it just to relax and not have to put any effort in, but that’s not the case right now.
I do play with friends. On League. None of them can be bothered with HotS for similar reasons.
Honestly, taken on it’s own it’s fun. But I get MORE bitching and crying and wild claims of cancer/autism/whatever the latest word the internet is using instead of calling you the N word this month in HotS than I do in LoL. There’s something seriously wrong with that. You literally just respond to the announcer and go to the glowing thing on the map and get in a fight, and people just cannot handle this emotionally, they lose their shit every single game almost. I expected less of this nonsense when I installed the game, I’m still not sure why I did.
It’s the same thing that had people trying to enforce make believe rules back in the day in SF2 and shit. Nobody wants to accept that it’s their fault that they lost.
Thing is in MOBAs, it very occasionally can ACTUALLY not be your fault, which just adds fuel to the fires.
Well imagine playing with the absolute worst of people in teams for thousands of hours. The kinds that not only play bad, but are just obnoxious as well, or one of either. Then there’s those that just give up hope early on and then just leave your team to a 4 v 5 early on.
That’s just scratching the surface but its a completely different environment than competitive fighters and starcraft where you only have your opponent as your enemy; in mobas if you don’t got a premade team of friends, your team can be more of an enemy than the opposing team.
*dont want to use the word toxic lol
Anyways yeah. Pretty messed up from the outside perspective and sorta the reason why I haven’t invested myself into Dota 2 yet, don’t have the time or a dedicated team. Sure as hell i wouldn’t be able to stand grinding rank solo.
