Upcoming Changes to HotS F2P System

[TheFeniX]

Partial article posted at the bottom.

I hate MOBAs. Really do. Too samey across multiple roles and heroes. You can't convince me otherwise. And it's not even that really, it's the community. I tried LoL and DotA2. I lasted 15 or so games for each because they players are just the worst kinds. I had ideas about how bad they were before-hand, but in your second game, when you're being called a "<slur for a black person><no-space><slur for a homosexual>" does not bode well for a community. And that was just the worst. There literally was not a single-game I played where someone wasn't bitching about something: win or lose. And WRT to Lol: we were just playing (and winning, mind you) against fucking bots.

I've been on XBLive since beta and I would take that over the MOBA community. Now that I've taken my shots at the players, let's move on.

I like HotS. The community in general seems much better. Maybe because fewer people play it, but you run into maybe 1/10 guys like you find in other MOBAs. I also like the addition of characters outside the meta-bullshit. Namely, specialists that play wildly different but also Cho'Gall who is just such a cool concept for a character. It helps I get to play as something besides Generic McHero Guy/Gal.

But the F2P system is balls. I've spent about $30 because I feel I owed them something. I also bought the Kerrigian Succubus skin on sale when the wife saw me looking through stuff and said "whew, sexy." So, I'm like $35 in. I consider it money well spent. But there's so much I would buy (well.... maybe) if it just weren't stupidly expensive. That and the grind is fucking real past about level 8. This game needed massive changes to keep making them some cash and it seems to finally be getting it.

Today Blizzard announced what is arguably its biggest update to Heroes of the Storm yet. Dubbed "Heroes 2.0", the update will completely revamp the game's account progression systems and cosmetic rewards, including adding Overwatch-style loot chests filled with new announcer packs, in-game sprays, and more.

"We weren't a great free-to-play game before," Heroes of the Storm production director Kaeo Milker told me. "I think we were a really great game, but we weren't really a great free-to-play game." The 2.0 update is a significant change in strategy for a game that has previously locked nearly all of its cosmetics behind real money paywalls. Access to those extras have now been opened wide up, and Milker says he thinks "the barrier to entry is really low now."

The cornerstone of the change comes from Blizzard's decision to uncap hero and account leveling, which previously stopped at 20 and 40 respectively. Now both numbers can just keep going up, and your account level is simply the sum of all your hero levels combined. Milker said the goal was to introduce "frequent meaningful progression with rewards." The hero leveling experience curve has been significantly lowered as well, where before it could take up to 15 hours to get a single level up with a hero between levels 10 and 20, Milker now says it will only take two or three hours at most.

We're high-enough that we're going to lose out on some of the lock-boxes. But other players have complained that they'll be losing out majorly. Some guys have put in the time where they will be getting like 7% of the free lock-boxes they should. Shit sucks I guess. Screwing early adopters has been the season for a while.

[Cykeisme]

I missed something here.. why are some players losing out?

[TheFeniX]

I missed something here.. why are some players losing out?

Blizzard has been going back and forth on it. Essentially, you will only get X number of boxes no matter how high your level was. So, if say a new player magically leveled to 100, he would get 100 boxes. But if a veteran player came in already at level 100, Blizzard was capping the number of boxes to 70 for the veterans. So, they would lose out on 30 boxes. There a reddit post talking about it a bit, but Blizzard has already released a few statements. I honestly don't know where it all sits right now. I tried to mess around with the Beta this week, but Elder Scrolls Online is Free this weekend and we're giving that a shot, so no time for Heroes.

Either way, this change can't come fast enough.

[TheFeniX]

Ok, been slacking. The update has been live for quite a bit. If I had to sum it up, here goes:

"From what I can tell with 2.0: everything in the game has the potential to be unlocked without spending real money." This is a baseline for good F2P. While the grind it real, though reduced considerably in certain areas, I can find no real complaints with this new F2P system. Had HOTS released this way, I could easily have seen it getting a lot more traction. Play games, get levels/loot boxes, get loot. While I do not prefer RNG mechanics, it's hard to complain when the RNG only comes up after I've played the game.

There's a lot of cross-promotion with Overwatch. This has been hilarious as they queue up and I feel incredibly bad about stomping them hard. While I normally play against AI 90% of the time, Mumz wants the unlocks. Out of about 20 games, we've lost one. And that was only because two players didn't understand why we were doing well at first and why things changed when the enemy team started pushing nothing but team fights.

[TheFeniX]

Ghetto edit: I'd also like to take a second to talk about another thing that's irked me forever. The idea that "a woman needs a good man" is mutually exclusive from "a man needs a good woman." Society does idolize the idea of an older male spinster much more than a woman and it does tend to be easier for an older man to continue to find and bed women.

However, I find Hollywood CAN and does do a good job portraying that men and women do need each other. Or more specifically: they need someone. I remember a scene from the old Uncle Buck movie (a comedy, no less) where he's talking to a dog while drinking. I'll butcher it a bit:

"Everyone used to tell me 'oh man, Buck you got no boss. You answer to no one. You aren't locked down by one woman."
He takes a sip of his beer.
"They don't say that anymore."

Even watching that originally as a kid, that scene was a huge bummer and I barely understood the concept of a job, sex, or romantic relationships at the time.

I've never really bought the idea that a man winning the woman at the end of a movie is all about the male ego. Not knowing what I do about media women traditionally devour. If anything, the sexism comes into play when an exec says "throw in a romance plot for the wimmins" and the racism comes in when they say "we have a black male and white female lead, just leave it kind of buddy-buddy."

Sidenote: I highly recommend any John Candy movies.

[TheFeniX]

Ghetto edit: I'd also like to take a second to talk about another thing that's irked me forever. The idea that "a woman needs a good man" is mutually exclusive from "a man needs a good woman." Society does idolize the idea of an older male spinster much more than a woman and it does tend to be easier for an older man to continue to find and bed women.

I might want to NOT have multiple posts open at once. This was meant for here. Fun fun.

This is only mildly related to F2P games.

[Gerald Tarrant]

I've been playing this a fair bit recently. The loot change is a big improvement from when I started playing right after they released things. It's probably enough to keep me paying for the occasional stimpack. It also feels like they did a fair redesign on both generic hero abilities, and Quick Match in general. I vaguely recalled that self sustaining talent used to be a lot more powerful before 2.0, and quick matches comps while still generally trash (I've done several 2 support 3 specialist games) are not as bad as they used to be. QM seems to have the rule that "both sides will have a healer or neither will" which is much better than when I poked around in QM a year or so ago. I've enjoyed the time I've plonked down into the revamped HoTS, plus some of those new heroes are loads of fun. Valeera and tracer are fragile, finicky, and high damage which is kind of a blast to play.

[Alferd Packer]

I'm generally terrible at MOBAs, and HotS is no exception. That said, I am enjoying myself immensely, even when losing horrifically like I'm apt to do. Being able to mute chat out the outset is nice too.