Grubby. You will always be the most representative player of Heroes of the Storm and I understand how you may feel. We are just a few people still following you and playing this game and I want to thank you for still being that beacon for those who still play this uncomprehended, abandoned and underrated wonderful gem of a game that is Heroes of the Storm. Thank you.
Hots was? It still is! As long as we keep playing and creating. It was a mission doomed to fail but I sincerely believe that if we keep it alive it will one day become the game it deserves to be
I was a SC2-only player, and a fan of yours, when I happened to watch you stream HOTS. You brought me into this wonderful game, and I love the fact you’re still here playing with the rest of us!
I mean, I think we all agree that hots didn’t “fail”, it made money. It just didn’t make as much money as League or Overwatch or Diablo Immoral. So ActiBlizz execs canned it. That’s the only real reason, all this other stuff was just other minor things on top. Sometimes things really are as simple as they seen. But that’s just my opinion.
I never saw real advertisements on major gaming sites, which is weird since Activision Blizzard has a huge bank account. I’d imagine if they were to do a concerted marketing push even today they would see the game grow exponentially.
What makes this game so deep is how drafts evolve based upon the map and what your enemy is picking. You have to play multiple characters at a high level and there were still complex pocket picks. I loved how different NA , EU, KR, CN styles of play were. Best part is that you can carry in this game as any role if you know counters to picks.
I'd support the crap out of a mod for the this game. I really hope the game gets back to it's starting point as a mod. The only reason I say that is that I'd like a chance to show Blizz how badly they undercommited to it. HotS deserves so much better. More creative skins like different elemental Ragnaros would have been amazing. Imagine the game with it's own engine, skin designs taken from community suggestions and an arcade mode. That'd be freaking fantastic. Also, Blizz had no idea how to put their MMR system on a team game. They still practically force your to win or lose by who they put on your team in order to keep as many people at close to 50% win rate as possible. That is a very screwed up system.
HotS is what I’m gonna be playing for as long as the servers are up. I’m hoping Microsoft buying blizz revives it, it’d be so easy. Still the best game out there
And I quit HotS and started LoL for the first time 2 weeks ago. HotS was my first and only MOBA, loved it, but I just couldn't continue playing a game knowing there is nothing for me to build towards, nothing to look forward and play for, like a new skin or a hero. It was the last patch that made me quit, as it felt like a straight slap to the face - 1 old ugly mount and only 1 of many skins they have already in files and could also release... nah, just 1... that was the final nail for me.
Paulo you'll soon find out how horrible the matchmaking is in the game. About every 4 out of 10 games you're setup to fail and it is nearly impossible to win OR you completely stomp the other team easily all because of the matchmaking. Only about one or two games in 10 the matches are actually even and the game can go either way. This feels true in QM and ranked.
thats some bullshit, blizz basically "forced", in gaming terms, their crossgame playerbase to play hots for rewards, there was advertisement everywhere, the moba community just didnt want to give it a shot, thats about it, people in this tread with so much revisionism its legit crazy, we get it, fuck activisionblizzard, but stop lying to yourselves about hots holy crap.
I hate that they abandoned it. They should NEVER make further games if they can't support them for more than 5 years. It's such a GREAT game, I love it.
@Lucio The DJ How stupid do you really have to be to believe political correctness is something that killed off the popularity of a game? Did the same thing happen at Epic when they canned Paragon or was the market way too over-saturated with games of the same genre? You are just looking for any excuse to express your homophobia and it is cringe af.
@Lucio The DJ lol Blizzard doomed itself with the merge of Activision (2007). It doesn't have to do anything with PR moves for inclusivity and marketing.
Thanks for your continued support for HotS. I really appreciate your videos. I still really enjoy this game alot and always hope the best for it. There's still so much potential here and I wish they would have released a map editor for this game. I think it would have made a big difference. I think if they would change the way they monetize the game currently would help alot.
I recently restarted playing hots after 10 yrs of dota. I believe that all aspects considered dota is the better game for competition, but it's damn slow and complicated Lol is just awful. Returned to it after getting burn out with dota and i can just say that the game is boring... Laning stage, orribile. Teamfights? Also awful. No strategy, feels like playing cod, the first to pull the trigger wins Hots is fresh, fun, fast and playing makes me happy and not frustrated. In competitive people is not toxic at all. The heroes are just the best I would really like to see this game brought to life a lot
I liked this game but investing time, learning, ect... and don't know if it will not get final shutdown tomorrow was so scary for me. Was still playing somtimes for fun with friends but that's all. Really sorry for you guys who put so many of yourself into, hoping the best for the future of HOTS ! Peace
Thank you for the clarification. After several years I’m playing it again and it’s great fun. I wanna play it everyday, the last time I’ve felt this before was wow the burning crusade back in the days. Good friends of mine are more casual then me. But together we had awesome sessions! I’m still hoping that there could be any possibility for the game to be further developed. It’s a great game but it deserves more.
My friends and I were just playing last night for the first time in like a year and talking about why someone hasn’t tried to mod it to revive the game like how dota started out as a mod before it became huge and just keep adding new character? I mean I think at this point blizz isn’t gonna care about that
A few more in-depth thoughts: -HOTS switched from a really clear financial model of a flat cost per hero, skin, or mount paid in real money… into a system with loot boxes and two or three kinds of funny money in-game currencies, and all the toxic modern obfuscation and gambling. I don’t know that it necessarily hurt the trajectory of the game, but it certainly was a dark portent of how games would go wrong over time. -While HOTS is design to simplify a lot of the overly complex things of other mobas, the complicated parts of HOTS are fairly complex. There are only three or so talent picks per level, but there’s a lot of subtitles to them, how they work against enemy or with friendly comps, which maps they’re appropriate on. There are more than a half dozen different maps with radically different mechanics, which is great for game to game variety, but probably a steeper learning curve, since it’s not just a different maze in the woods-it’s an entirely different win condition. There aren’t a billion items to learn, but you also can’t just memorize the three or four items you actually want on the few characters you actually play.
I used to buy skins because that was the only way to get them. When HotS 2.0 introduced lootboxes I always had enough currency to buy whatever I wanted. Blizzard committed commercial suicide.
@@Trazynn To be fair, it was at the time Loot Boxes was THE DEVIL and they made the best system with Hots. I didn't have any money (still don't) and i have everything i want just by playin the game a lot. Stil... Master Skins were dope as a concept and it vanished for 2.0 :(
That's another thing. The skins got distributed so well that anyone could be having any skin and it doesn't stand out at all. Even the legendary skins are easy to get. Which means that the core reason to spend money, standing out, is gone as well.
I mean it is a pity, but I don't get how anyone can claim this game failed. It certainly made money that's for starters. The amount of genuine fun people have with this game is seriously unmatched by any moba, and Blizzard should really applaud themselves for all the improvements they made for the game over the years. This is not even close to game it was when it came out. As a once-GM dota player, I hated this game when it came out, and now it's my favorite MOBA. I want another one.
Amen brother, altho nowadays im only playin ARAM. And I have no roblem with this game being dead. Alot of great people still play the game and that sayys a lot. GL next
I've been playing since the alpha, and I have relatively minor art design and aesthetic choice gripes with the game, like how it took them until the first Diablo event to have Battlegrounds that were actually themed around a Blizzard property. You look at the starting pool of maps at launch: Blackheart's Bay, Cursed Hollow, Dragon Shire, Haunted Mines (Lmao this map they've always tried to make it work), Garden of Terror and Sky Temple. NONE of these have any links to WoW, Starcraft or Diablo when they EASILY could have been. What was the point in making them original places? You'd think a crossover game with have levels set in nostalgic franchise locations right? Another is Orphea and Qhira: I have ALWAYS been opposed to the addition of OCs in this game, it reeked so much of desperation to get more players. They've essentially taken character kits and slots that could have been used for other more recognizable Blizzard characters. Nobody gives a shit about them, and what's worse is that when they tried to expand the "lore" with comics, it was about these characters instead of putting the Blizzard characters we know and love through fun narratives where they all get to interact with one another. It was such a simple job to just make crossover fanfiction and Blizzard chose to make OC fanfiction. League and Dota get away with it because their settings are all OC, but HotS is like Smash Bros. The decision for lore in this particular manner was one of the signs to me that the dev team had lost their marbles and were wasting their meager pool of resources on something that was not going to see them returns.
100% there are many Warcraft characters to pick from, when adding more heroes. The fact that they decided to go with new and exclusive characters that no-one knew or had any relation to is unfathomable. I think some things are sacred, and should not be handled lightly. There are also many battleground options, in fact just about as many BG options as there are zones in the first original classic World of Warcraft expansions, most likely even a lot more. Imagine redridge mountains, barrens, straglethron vale, ashenvale, the list goes on.
Firstly, props to you for being an OG player and alot of insightful points. But I think alot of the original content they added was good. I don't personally play as either orphea or qhira but I like them conceptually. I get where you're coming from, wanting the game to be pure to the Blizz universe, but they aren't consistantly coming out with new products so that can only go so far. Eventually the well would have ran dry. This was a great game, is a great game and will continue to be a great game. It's shocking how unrecognized it's greatness goes purely based on it not being the early bird that got the worm. Heroes of the Storm Forever!!!
@@mikechristie9170 Yes the well would have run dry eventually but my god there are still dozens of recognizable Blizzard characters that could still be added and wouldve drawn in numbers because of nostalgia associated with recognition. My go2 for instance is Baal- Diablo and Mephisto's brother, the final boss of D2 LOD. The fact that the three Prime Evils were never reunited in HoTS before it got put on life support is one of the greatest tragedies, and I remember while the game was still active people were always hungry for more characters from Diablo 2, to the point that people made up conspiracies that Blizzard hated Blizzard North too much to want to add D2 content.
@@Mrcryptidsarereal Also they never put the OG's of Warcraft Where's my Antonidas, where's Garithos. There are uncountable characters they should've put in. Mekkatorque, Shandris etc.
the professional shut down is the death sentence. mobas live from the competition.and every competition lives from amateurs watching and learning from the pros. blizzards path from the most loved developer to an EA competetor for sure did its part too
Well... we still have tournaments. The problem was communication and the level of change. I changed from "We have one of the biggest price pools of all games and it's all concentrated in our own hands" to "We won't give a dime to support any tournament and don't even advertise them in our game launcher". And now again. Instead of "We won't produce any new skins and heroes and most likely no reworks anymore, the classic team takes it over, we will tweaks some numbers every 2 month" they go with "We won't do anything even if it only costs 8 hours per month to keep the game meta changing". That's just plain stupid. They could even pay a content creator like Grubby some money to give them some numbers to put into the config file. As long as it's only number it doesn't need much testing (and in the worst case roll back).
I played Dota back in the day, then some LOL and DOTA2. Early game was super boring and I'm glad HOTS cut all that. Imagine playing a baseball game , but first you have to do some sort of whack a mole battle. Some people might enjoy it cause more content, but it's not my cup of tea.
I have played original DoTA, heroes of NewEarth, DoTA 2, League of Legends, I’ve spent many hours in all of these MOBAs, but out of all of them Heroes of the storm has the best levels and the most diversity in character move sets and gameplay. I love this game and plan on playing it for as long as I can, I often bring new people to this game.
the monetization system was my biggest issue, when i first tried it i found everything too costly (comparing to other mobas) and it was super hard to get heroes for free (other mobas i have played i could have get at least 1 or 2 heroes in a week, for free). After that the game lost communication with players who already tried it (they never tried to reach players who tried it once and were pulloff by their monetization or content) and then they killed the esport scene which made it seem the game was dead.
I still have ~3000 shards from HotS 2.0 switch. I never had to buy anything ever again on my main account after that. The system is too generous compared to LoL where you have to grind a lot of games just to get something remotely good
My friends and I got on HOTS when 2.0 came and when used to play QM pretty much every night, it was so much fun. After a few weeks of Orphea release, we all went back to play LOL ARAM exclusively since it resembles the feel of HOTS the most plus the constant release of new champs and stuff. We still reminisce about the game from time to time.
Ironicly the muting of HOTS was recommended a long time but not cause: "PLAYERS ARE SPOUTIING TOXICITY" But... "Toxic players will report you for abusive, by turning it off, the admins and mods will unsilence/unban you faster or the system won't pick it up at all" While I was for the "removing silenced players from ranked" cause... alot of silenced players in ranked tended to throw matches and players would be toxic to them in general.... But the reason became the bane of my logic existance: "We banned players who are silenced from Ranked, cause communication is key in winning" Meanwhile when the automated system came up. The developers litterly said: "Just turn off chat and you won't get banned" And it drove a wedge in me... You allow players to turn off chat... THE FUNCTION YOU NEED TO USE TO WIN GAMES IN RANKED AND THE REASON SILENCED PLAYERS ARE BANNED AND EVEN ADVICE IT TO AVOID BEING BANNED FROM RANKED?! It made no sense.. so I advocated for the developer to say: "Toxicity isn't welcome in eSports" or another reason to ban silenced players from chat..but no.. to this day that quote is STILL the reason you aren't allowed to play ranked when silenced... Overall.. I think HOTS failed not due to it's gameplay... it's easy to get into, it's easy to play, it's hard to master... and yea... it's fun. It shakes up the formula... It's biggest problems were: -It was too late to join the party -Development was slow -Some releases like Qhira were misstimed and cause more strife -The lore implementation could been cool, but we never played the stories... so it was just "There" -Very bad advertising -Killing eSports division over night without any reason. -Quick match shouldn't been the default mode... Unranked should been it.
Quick match is mostly what I play and I highly recommend muting chat for that. Ranked is also frustrating due to the team-oriented nature of hots. It can be hard to escape bad ranks because the chances for you to personally fight your way through bad allies are low
Not enough players/money being made for Blizzard standards sadly. Maybe if hots came out before 2015 it would have had a chance when moba's were skyrocketing but League/Dota were just way more popular. It's a shame it was really well made with the skins and unique heroes. I loved the Battleground feels of it like in wow BGs. Working together as a team for the objective. There was still so many heroes they could have brought out too damn shame.
HotS 'failed' because it was released too late. The problem was never with the game itself. It had a devoted and hard working dev crew that eagerly and happily engaged with the community and they were widely loved for it. For Gods sake remember when Kevin Johnson got an announcer pack? People LOVED that. The game itself was clearly made exactly as described: a Love Letter to the games a beloved company had put out over a period of 20+ years, that an entire generation had grown up with. A company that in it's golden era quite literally was the bar against which all other AAA developers were measured - and found wanting. HotS failed for the same reason SC2 failed, for the same reason D3 failed, for the same reason WoW was on the brink of collapse for so many years: Activision. One Robert Kotick's influence is enough to drive any game, any company, so deep into the ground digging for that one last MTX that whales will swipe to obtain that not even Blizzard could survive it. Vivendi owned Blizzard for years and during that time Blizzard made enough money to buy themselves out from under Vivendi's Umbrella. It wasn't until Activision started sinking it's claws into the upper eschelons of Blizzard's management crew that things began to go sideways and then, straight downhill. SC2, D3, HotS, WoD, BFA, Shadowlands. All of that can be ultimately laid at Bobby's feet because of what happened to the upper management at Blizzard. It stopped being about making games people would play for the next 10-15 years with dedication and love and started being about how much money the company could make off the people dumb enough to keep buying what they were selling.
Ive been playing Since Alpha off and on. Ive never spent moeny on a hero. An occasional boost was well worth it though since you got all the currencies through leveling.
The biggest problem is definitely the teamplay, playing in a team with random people and depending so much on their decisions (unless you play at a high level, which is unlikely for most players) makes the game lose interest for most people, the most fun thing about this type of games is the dopamine you get from doing a 1 vs 5, 1 vs 3, things like that that are impossible in this game. Another reason that directly sinks it is that the matchmaking depends on the MMR, which is an optimized system to score a player, it is not a useful system to score the performance of a player in a game based on a loss or victory depending on the team.
With Dota is the same. The actual game is Captains mode - drafting, positioning, coordination. And you start being able to play it after something like - 40 hours. :D
After spended over 2000 hours in DOTA, I quit and started to play beta HOTS. There was 2 reasons to quit - first toxicity by Russians players on EU servers, second reasson was time of one match - often 45+ minutes. I tried to play LoL many times, but beside of high toxicity, was second problem unbalance the game when support players _(my fav role)_ are just food for enemy carry and in late game they are dying with full hp within 1,5sec because in game are not good defensive items for supports and mostly carry-players have some blink-abilities in their kit. I m still playing HOTS to nowdays, beacuse game have almost zero toxicity and its team oriented when each player have big impact to the game and all players have only one goal - win the game. In LoL main goal for dmg dealers is compare length of their d**ks with another dmg dealers.
To me, HOTS did the same thing that League did to DOTA, and a lot of the player base reacted similarly too. They took out nonsense filler mechanics that were skill checks that ultimately detracted from the core gameplay loops. Removing items/gold was like removing last hitting your own minions to deny gold/exp to enemies. The dota community called it a dumbing down of the game, it's where the people who are bad go, etc, and the league community did the same to hots. To me, it lets you focus on what actually makes the moba a moba, and less on the sim city.
Last Hitting is a core Mechanic of Mobas. It wanted to be a Moba without alot of things that actually make a Moba addictive if you ask me. A Moba is not just about outplaying the other Hero. The Macro is a very important and big part of a Moba and Hots really dumbed that down wich probably threw alot of Moba Fans of. Me included, i hated that i couldnt buy Items and last hit minions because those are Core mechanics of a Moba. You just saying thats not essential to a Moba is kinda weird to me. Feels like saying that Shooting in Shooters is not a Core Mechanic.
@@TheBlackfall234 See? I told y'all the community did that. Same exact thing the dota community said about league. The more apt comparison would be comparing it to the economy game in counterstrike, not the shooting, yes, outplaying the enemies is VERY MUCH the comparable core mechanic to shooting in a shooter.
It amazes me the hoops people are willing to jump through to pin this game's failure on things that were really just nails in the coffin. Universally, if asked, students will agree that they do not want their grade in a class to be an average of all the student's performance. If you approach a hard working, successful adult if they'd like their income to be an average of his/her own and four other random people's, they'll say no. But in an online game, where you play with online strangers, Blizzard thought it would be a good idea to tie individual progress, HP, damage, and access to talents, to every other bad player they chose to match you with. No, you don't get to be Michael Jordan. You get to be the average of Jordan and the worst player on Jordan's team. Sound like a dream? Yeah right. You can both have teamwork and individual performance. You don't make a team of randoms, who will never meet each other again, work well together by forcing the standouts to be held back by the weakest player. HotS worked REALLY well as a 5v5 brawl. It didn't work well as a solo/duo queue game, which is how most games are played. All the bad business choices just drove people away faster. It was never going to work with a system like that.
Interesting video Grubby, I think you summed up what caused HotS to fall off the rails well. I've been playing the game since release and I still enjoy it, but for a reason that wasn't mentioned - HotS encapsulates all of the old Blizzard nostalgia into one, short 20 minute game. I love seeing how the characters (and their playstyles) are almost indentically tranferred from the original game to HotS - It feels like I'm playing the original Diablo/SC/WC/OW character in a different game with all the grace Blizzard game them! Their lore and incredible worlds they built was their goldmine and instead they squandered it on petty cosmetics. I hate where the company has gone but I'm eternally thankful for what they have created. The best thing moving forward for HotS would be to open it up to the modding community WC3 style. I no longer trust any big corporation to advance the game and feel that the community themselves can improve the game the best
Blizzard released hots as a desire for caputing a moba market. Compare Overwatch and HOTS (on release). Overwatch: Original game idea + PR + blizzcon hype + box price for all heroes included and only cosmetic monetization. HOTS: Copy of already popular game + very bad monetization + very weak PR + very weak hype (compared to LoL hype, which is INSANE). However, Blizzard has killed all e-sports they touched since Starcraft 1. Here is my take on it: You create an esport around a very popular game (Starcraft 1 in korea, CS was a mod, dota was a mod), but blizzard wanted to create an "esport" game. In order to be able to do that you have to create the game that will be the most popular game. If you can do that, you don't need to make the game into an e-sport, it will become one. But Blizzard wanted to create it in order to control it. And because they tend to mes things up, everything they controlled went badly. Blizzard has tried and failed with: Starcraft 1, Starcraft 2, HOTS and is in the process of failing with overwatch league. Blizzard thought they could fix the problem by throwing money at it (unsuprisingly, Bobby Kotick modus operandi seems in line with such approach).
There was a serious lack of advertising as to what Hots is supposed to be. All my friends preferred Dota and LoL and viewed Hots as easy mode due to the lack of last hitting, gold, items. I had to keep explaining that it was a TEAM focused game requiring better communication and objective control rather than a, "I bought all the items and carried everyone" game.
Great video. I've thought a lot about the team play you mentioned. IMO it's great that XP is shared, but the problem is that there is no reward in trying to individually be the best WHILE also serving the team. That works great for organised teams, but in solo is a real nightmare. They implemented the MVP screen way after the initial launch, and even then the parameters they use are not necessarily clear, thus it's kind of meaningless. I'd have love a more complex system that would allow XP and level still to be shared for each team, but the individual XP that each player have earned, could be used in-game for other purposes, like buying items, units, etc. But that's just my outside view that was born out of the sadness of seeing the game dying, because it was my dream game since I was a child playing DOTA in W3, but Blizzard rushed the launch the game, while also delaying the actual development of it. Thanks Grubby, for keeping the game alive.
When I saw the title of the video I immediatly checked the date, and got confused, and you covered it at the start of the video, I was sure it was shut down in 2018 and I was sad cause I liked it at the time... now I discover it was active for 4 years and I haven't heard of it for so long.
personally never took League serious, i tired it when it first came out (had 5 years of dota1 experience) and as a noob i was crushing, and because of the limited champion choices i quit after playing for a week. HOTS had the same limited pool which is a huge problem imo. nobody wants to pay just to be able to experience the base game. but HOTS had it's advantages which was the short game lengths. when i had only 20-60 min and wanted to play a moba, i chose HOTS, when i had multiple hours, i played Dota2
Technical issues was actually a really big problem in HoTS. Some people I know quit or didn't play because they would disconnect consistently (their internet is totally fine and they had no such issues in other games), and then reconnecting took forever. On top of that, the game was just really poorly optimized. The "treats you like a customer instead of a mark" thing in that reddit comment was probably referring to the monetization model fishing for "whales" instead of being upfront about the monetary costs, as is usually the case for any sort of loot-box system. The other common complaint (from other MoBA players) has always been that "carrying" felt hard, because your good plays reward the entire team instead of the individual player. Personally, I really like that, because it keeps away from the extremes of "high" or horrible experiences that you get in a game like LoL, where even when you win, sometimes the game feels horrible to play because you individually can do nothing in the game due to falling behind/not having gold while someone else on the team hard carried (generally with a lot of support form the team, while you were left to fend alone while getting gooned repeatedly). Though I guess I can understand people not liking that the game is more team oriented when they want to play for the solo carry (which isn't really a good mindset to foster in a team game, but that's a different matter...). That's the dopamine rush though; some people like the more polarized experiences and they're more addictive (which is why so many people that play league also don't like the game), so the design that's less focused on team play and allows for more extreme individual experiences probably has an easier time with a certain level of player retention and drawing in those "whales" that spend huge amounts of money.
Hi Grubby! Great video man! I've have met so many great people on HOTS and made so many awesome experiences that it broke my heart with the level disregard that Blizzard gave to it. What you mentioned that blizzard wanted to monopolize the eSports scene for HOTS, reminded me A LOT of what Blizzard did to KESPA in StarCraft BroodWar. Blizzard sued and forcefully made organizations retire SC:BW in favor for SC2.
I played HOTS since the beginning and got many RL friends into the game as well. We regularly play ranked ladder as full premade and it's always super fun. I played LOL, DOTA, Smite, before HOTS came out and when HOTS came out i could not go back to other mobas because they all felt less fun to play. For me HOTS was quite a sucessful game.
I remember the founders pack, you could buy access to the beta and some cosmetics. I started playing in the (really) open beta and couldn't tell when the game was "released" as it was perfectly funcional already and I think they just picked a random date for the release.
The base game and gamedesign of HOTS was amazing. Personally I havn't played in ages. The 'metagame' of HOTS is absolute garbage dogshit. No way for Blizzard to monetize, lootboxes are a boring waste of time, hero level-up is a pointless grind, general chat is a toxic mess that only felt engaging when people are worshiping 'godemperordonaldtrump', the competative scene was completely out-of-the-loop of the average player, quickmatch was the only casual-friendly playmode but had broken matchmaking (balanced comps vs imbalanced comps), and new heroes had the LoL problem where they were purposely made overpowered to get players to buy them on release. But by god it was satisfying to learn a map, learn how to communicate a stratagy with players you will never see again, and pull a win out of your ass when the enemy makes a dumb mistake at level 20.
I remember when someone asked Thijs the fastest way to grind for hearthstone cards. His answer: get a job and use the income to buy card packs. Big brain
The late release is a bummer yes, but it was so fresh and so different and so FUN it suckes away me after one game from League so it could've been a "greener neighbour's garden" or rather playground that slowly lured in gamers.
I still watch Khaldor's tournament commentaries and Fan regularly. I wish they hadn't went overboard in the beginning and stayed moderate and sustainable for long term release of new heroes and maps with the old direct buy system.
All of what you said is valid and right. I feel the game had big problems on very basic things around it while the game mechanics and visuals are more or less top of the genre. - The game was not friendly to starters when it began (Not all talents choosable, little heroes to play in rotation, no starter packs, multi maps (not choosable)) - In it's prime eSports time (shortly before HGC and then through HGC) the game was evolving to fast. This included players (for professionals no problem but as a "normal" player a new hero every 3 weeks + balance patch every 2 was plain unusable and the balancing was often not really good) but also they stated it was a problem for the devs and I believe that. They had no time to test their stuff, the work times were deadly and the team lost motivation and members. - The rework of progress did worsen it as you said - We can buy heroes for 10k gold. That was ok with a new hero every 3-4 weeks (you never had all unless you payed sometimes or played a hell lot). But we 2-4 heroes per year like the last 3 years there was no need anymore. - The same problem for skins and mounts (who cares banners and sprays?). Especially skins were cool with 3 variants you got for one purchase. But with the loot boxes you were guaranteed to get one of the 3 (or now sometimes 5) variants sooner or later. Maybe it's not may prefered color of volleyball Li-Ming but I would not buy if for a tint, wtf? Imagine a season pass for the Mecha-Storm event. 15€/$ and you can play through it over the season and get all your cool Rehgar, Tyrael and Abathur skins. That's rewarding. That's motivating. And fair pricing. That could work. And pay for the skin work and the video making. And I am sure other event seasons could have worked like this, too. Be it the toy skins, a Diablo event, the "classic" skins or whatever else. I hope they fix this stuff around the game now so it is welcoming to new players AND can get money from the established playerbase. The current system fails at both. It got quite some money from whales when it was released but now? I doubt it. That's surpringly ineffective. For me this means: - Get a starter hero kit for low money or even free (maybe both, a little pack (10 heroes) for free and a bigger one (20? more, maybe even choosable) for little money) - Remove Gold, it does nothing useful. Use shards or jewels to buy heroes. - Bundle all tints of skins / mounts again to one (or make the alternative tints a thing to work for with little shards or just progress by playing the hero) - Make every loot destroyable for shards - Make chat hero emotes free (by level 10) - Lootboxes? OK, but then only for shards, heroes, boosts and skins / mounts. Reduce things per box instead of giving worthless /basic stuff - Announcers can be buy / box only. They are super cool. - Season pass can include boost So: Make your monetization motivating. And fair. And don't give away to much free stuff. Really, that doesn't work. It should be enough to play well but not to have everything. Pls MS, make this game working again. Some balance patches can keep it alive until you can release the revamped monetization. And if you want: Bring it to consoles or mobiles. Currently playing Brawl Stars and it takes a lot of HotS and works very well.
This was my first MOBA , and it made me addicted . I grinder for all the characters and it’s really fun. I jumped into league and it did not stick with me at all . I hope Hots gets a revival
Still playing after several years and now also when my son growing up a bit, we play together almost everyday. Think I’ve been playing for 5 years or so. Still super fun!
I loved the vid, great talking points. I do have to disagree with the release date being a real problem. Other gaming genres have had late comers that have pushed their own genres forward. Apex Legends comes to mind, late to the game but has added new gameplay and ideas to be discovered from other BRs and shooters.
Im pretty sure the mastery rings were just there to give people something to do with all of their gold coins that they were stacking up since they owned all of the heroes.
In case you're still wondering, a Mark is someone being targeted by a grifter or a robber/mugger. They recognize someone who has cash and is planning to rob them specifically of it. A Target.
Hi Grubby, I share with you the passion for this game. I cannot be more agree that the game is fantastic. Is not the purpose to find only one reason, but I think the reason with more weight that made this game no popular is the awful matchmaking system that the game has. As consecuence the feeling of the people is that there was not feeling of advancing on the league rank. And this aspect dragged the game. People wants to have the feeling that they're improving and not being paired with people that doesn't understand with the same level the macro strategy on each map. For other hand, I understand that the game is Team oriented which is not a bad idea, but I think that if you are performing okay (even if your team mates are not) the game should provide you some extra benefits to compensate and give you chances if your performance is good. Thanks for the video and specially for helping on keeping the game alive. Regards.
I just found this video, I would love to see if you have any new takes after playing Dota for some time now. Thanks once again for the nice quality of uploads :)
To me it really feels like they wanted to kill it by stopping the marketing, they hoped people would just forget about it, but it's not happening. And by the way, I love QM! It's the one reason I still play the game, and saying the most popular game mode is a reason why this game failed is madness. In my experience, most of what you said (queuing as groups with the in-between-roles heroes) applies to higher levels, at least I never see that, even though I have the occasional Platinum or Master rank player in my games. A good Auriel-Cho'Gall comp in SL is really as bad on Silver. Sure, the outcome in QM is mainly random because your comp dictates a lot and an AFK kills your game most of the time, but I have no problem with that as long as I win my 50% and I can play the hero I want. I stopped playing ranked years ago mainly because of the toxicity you could do nothing against, because reporting is useless or could even work against you. People are invested in getting out of "silver hell", games there aren't nice. There's constant draft dodging, it takes like forever to constantly go through 2-3 drafts only to get a shitty game with an AFK or without tank and healer anyways. And most of the things you said against QM apply there as well, because nobody understands how to counter something or people straight up don't care. And then there are the folks who queue in with useful roles to get in quicker and then do something else (surprise, ppl pick Aba and Vikings there as well). And if you fill in, you can wait 10 games to play the hero you want. And sooo many tryhards tilting because you're picking or doing something they don't understand... I do not need that. Exactly the things you said were rare and the exception, I experienced on a daily basis. SL for me is 100% more toxic than Valorant, and maybe even more toxic than CS:GO. Without a working and strict reporting system like RIOT has, I cannot see myself return to this. Now, I am not whining about SL. The reason I am saying this is, that your perception of SL is probably not that of 95% of the player base. Many moons ago I played a season in Platinum (lucky placement games + stronger teammates), so I could experience for myself how that is. And yes, if I could play there consistently, I would never set my foot into QM. But that's not how it's gonna be for most.
As someone who played at HOTS start and only plays a game or two a month, they had a unique edge on the MOBA category and I really wish they ran with it but, they jumped into the scene as the weird kid and then ran it back to be as normal as they could instead of embracing the weird. What m thinking of rn was the old Mining/Graveyard map when you had to enter the mines and get the Skulls. That was so much fun and it felt like you were playing a map and less team fight simulator (i.e LoL). Now it just feels like a bad LoL with Blizz characters.
Abathur, lost vikings, Cho/gall, deathwing are so weird. They never stopped being weird, thus I don't know why they made this mistake with the old mines...
It's pretty clear why HOTS failed to everyone who plays. The MMR system is so bad that the game is literally unplayable. For example I am losing every single game, which is discouraging to say the least.
I had the exact same thing with the shops. I gladly spent a lot of money on great content in 1.0 shop in addition to really valuing the master skins you needed to grind for. After 2.0 came out, I didn't spend a single euro on the game, even though I played it just as much
There's a very simple counter example for HoTS; Legends of Runeterra from Riot games. It doesn't profit well and it was designed this way, it's a cardgame that's actually easy free to play even for casual users. Riot cut the development team tho, but it still has competitive stage, even growing as the qualification is very user-friendly and they are releasing new content constantly. Riot games said clearly that they don't mind the game not making profit, they have enough from other sources and wants to keep LoR for the users! HoTS was or at least supposed to be the Crown Jewl of the Blizzard Universe, uniting the wast playerbase and the games themselves. Back in the day people loved this concept and was having a ton of fun. You were rewarded in HoTS for most of the purchases, or simply the playtime in other Blizzard games. It was a perfect composition for one of the most loved gaming company of all time with diehard fans and a loving community. But noooooo Activision came in, saw not enough dollar signs while not caring for the game itself or the fans request and killed the game. The two most hated characters for me is Quira and Orphea. They are the prime example of the failiure of Activision-Blizzard not understanding their own game and playerbase. Who knows what would have happened if they've released two legendary heroes, instead making up new ones? The message for the community was "We don't give jack about what you want, we release a stupid anime-pedobait goth character, because we think yall are only horny idiots. Oh you don't like it? What you never watch prn?"
Heya Grubby...Naviamente here. I think one of the major things we didn't talk about in the video was the absolute nightmare of the ranking system.....and the issues we had with hero league and storm league that eventually led to storm league. I don't recall exactly when it was...but there was a season where they reset the ladder three times because people were not placing where they should have been placing....all the ranks got totally distorted...and people were just done because Blizzadd couldn't figure it out. Really sad stuff =/
That team experience seams for many people as giving to your team mates what you trouble to get. But it allows so much more strategies ! Plus for roles as "support" that are so unrewarded in LoL, here you are rewarded of your actions if it has a good impact on the whole team. Not just you. It sad they didnt understand what the true community wanted and not just the loudest players cry about.
Dota was in open beta for like 3 years tho. It was playable for free for anyone in like 2010 or 11 or some where there.. the dota 2 launch was just official wording because the game was already "launched" for all intents and purposes for so long.
Started playing soon after launch. Haven’t played in a few years but recently started playing again and it’s so fun. Never played other MOBA’s before but the others don’t look that interesting to me. Heroes had so many fun games and moments for me especially playing with friends and my brother. Great times. I wish it wasn’t in the current state though it’s very sad to see.
How ironic, they wanted a team game where no one player shines but instead it becomes a single player game where one guy will lose the game for the whole team.
Can we please give even more shoutouts to amateur leagues like Heroes Longue at every occasion? In Europe we're currently finishing season 18 with more than 100 teams and 600+ players of ALL skill levels actively competing. Some of your games will even be casted. Heroes Lounge allows you to play HotS just as it was envisioned (5v5 on comms) and is hands down one of the best multiplayer experiences you can have in any game period. I've actually looked for something similar in supposedly more popular games like Rocket League, but have yet to find anything that even comes close to Lounge.
Not gonna lie, I was crushed when the final patch came out. Before, we HoTS players could lie to ourselves and say "its just on the backburner, Theyll pick it back up and its go time! Better save up my gold and shards just in case!" Even if we knew that it was being killed, we still held hope to just keep playing the game we love. But with the final patch, it was them saying "its officially over." Now, it is just....there. I still pop in now and again, but I dont play the way I used to. I dont like other MOBA's, so this officially killed my desire to even play MOBA's. Heroes might have failed, but it was set up to fail from the beginning.
The thing is, I feel like HotS beats LoL as a competitive team game. In LoL as long as you can feed your ADC more kills than your opponent can do for theirs, you've basically won the match. This just leads to one player quarterbacking for the team every single game while the other players don't have to do as much work once their one player-killer becomes fed. In HotS, because there are no items and exp is shared among your team, you have to focus more on working together to eliminate your opponents. You aren't guaranteed to die just because one specific damage dealer on the other team showed up in your lane. Heroes of the Storm won me over on that premise alone.
Tbf if they just released more skins/heroes (remember when we were getting one every few months?), then the loot chest system wouldn't be dead. The sprays and banners were specifically there for fluff so you don't always get mounts, heroes and skins. But after a while when it was just that one intern working on the game during his lunch break, we've all ran out of mounts, skins and heroes to unlock, so nobody gives a damn anymore.
Where I'm from, mobas are HUGE. By far the most played game in gaming shops. Yet I've never seen HoTS played there once and few people seem to have even heard of it. I don't recall seeing any kind of advertising for it either.
HOTS was a dream come true for me to play with all my favorite blizz characters. However, I am the type that who wants to hop on the quickmatch and just play with the character I want for a few matches rather than being forced to a team comp for the sake of a game. Sure all that teamspeak and planning is cool and all that but that's a lot of work to put everyone together at the same time if you are an adult. Then they introduced the loot boxes then they introduces Overwatch characters that I had no connection with. Then it was done for me shortly after that. I had good times tho.
HOTS failed because of balance... balance was so bad that playing ranked meant spending up to 10 minutes in queue only to play same heroes against same heroes over and over again. How many heroes were (don't know if someone still plays ranked) meta in ranked? About 10 OP ones that either got snatched or banned and 15-ish good ones to fill holes in your comp (a.k.a weaker versions of 10 OP ones). The rest of them were for QM only. That gets boring very fast. I played ranked for 2 seasons and didn't bother again because it was basically same experience every time. And then they started releasing flavor of the month heroes that were so OP that they were always picked or banned ... and so they nerfed them 2 weeks later to point in which they should have been released in (like Genji for example...).
I have played from the beginning with breaks here and there. I only have 3 heroes left to buy without having paid a penny. I love this game so much and have played quickmatch the entire way. Your rant about how terrible quickmatch is makes me feel like I have really missed out on something special.
Quick Match is "terrible" because it's much more random than other game-modes: Without a draft phase, you don't know what your team-mates or enemies are picking, what map you're playing on, etc, and that can make a TON of difference: for an example, right now, Zul'Jin has a (rounded) 66% win rate on Sky Temple. By comparison, he has a 42% win rate on Cursed Hollow. He has a 61% win-rate vs Brightwing, and a 34% win-rate vs Rehgar. And sure, there's some fun/charm to that kind of chaos. It lets you stress-test your skills with a given hero in a variety of circumstances. You can find team combos that don't make sense on paper but click in play. But, in general, it's much easier to have a less frustrating game in Storm League or Unranked, because you're making more informed decisions.
My personnal experience : 1) I started to play the game during the beta, to be precise at the end of the alpha exactly (and i'm still playing to this day) 2) I was buying some cosmetics at that moment, even buying some bits on twitch for the HGC only to get those unique mounts (i know i shouldn't have), i probably spent a total around 40-50€ into this game. 3) 2.0 got released, everything turned totaly free (and some "previous buyers" that i knew were really mad about that), and personally i never put any more money in the game after that, also i already got 300k gold at that moment in the game so i never purchased any heros with real money. (mainly playing only few heros so i didn't spend the gold during a long time and i got the feeling i could get everything i wanted if i trully wanted and that's probably a problem for this kind of game). I'm sure i'm not the only player in that case, i mean i got mostly everything i wanted by simply playing and i didn't need to spend money anymore. Moreover, when they've announced the end of the HGC, i'm sure it had repercussions on the sales.
I disagree with your Quick Match comments @ 17:00 - as a long time player of ranked, I find lots of people really enjoy Quick Match and the fact that team comps are totally bizarre makes you play very differently. My QM builds are a total hybrid and "anything goes" opposed to my tried and true ranked builds. I think for players that have been playing long, its an interesting dilemma to figure out a way to win - no comms, just pings, all different skillsets. I like that challenge. And for new players its just all overwhelming anyhow so might as well clown fiesta!
I will say I used to very much not like QM, it depends on how you are playing and what you are used to. After I took a break from Heroes Lounge quick match was very strange indeed and I found you can't compare it to serious play. QM you just have to play over and over and then it clicks, You do some sort of self challenge (like a Pokémon nuzlocke) you can have lots of fun with it. At least I did and still do.
Individual space to shine is important, in most games you do well you are rewarded, in hots your team is rewarded. I played enough and at a young age to understand why communism does not work playing hots
HoTS's needed to be marketed as "The working man's MOBA". There's a lot of people who want to play a MOBA, but don't have the time to grind to get good.
I remember when you could pay $5 for a 7 day xp pass, then they changed it so the same $5 fell just short of the 7 day pass so you had to buy use $10 to get the 7 day pass
Wasn’t a money thing, I just couldn’t play the game all the time and just paid week by week. It was the principal of it, that they were being pirates with their shady monetization practices
I think this game set a lot of benchmarks and other game developers really need to take note of what worked and what didn't. I finally quit hots after many years of playing. the issues with the game just to much for me and the toxicity in my region in next level. great video as always ❤
Grubby. You will always be the most representative player of Heroes of the Storm and I understand how you may feel.
We are just a few people still following you and playing this game and I want to thank you for still being that beacon for those who still play this uncomprehended, abandoned and underrated wonderful gem of a game that is Heroes of the Storm. Thank you.
I think he represents Warcraft 3, lol
I disagree.
watch a lot of hots content over years still watch competitions but never ever se this guy bevor so i think not
It's really a shame. HOTS was such a clean, clear game. It's really understandable, but the skill-cap is still high.
Completely agree!
Hots was? It still is! As long as we keep playing and creating. It was a mission doomed to fail but I sincerely believe that if we keep it alive it will one day become the game it deserves to be
*is
There is no way HOTS is high skill capped. It's pure casual fun in it's design.
@@noxed2432 so is smash. But it has a ridiculously high skill cap
I was a SC2-only player, and a fan of yours, when I happened to watch you stream HOTS.
You brought me into this wonderful game, and I love the fact you’re still here playing with the rest of us!
I mean, I think we all agree that hots didn’t “fail”, it made money. It just didn’t make as much money as League or Overwatch or Diablo Immoral. So ActiBlizz execs canned it. That’s the only real reason, all this other stuff was just other minor things on top. Sometimes things really are as simple as they seen. But that’s just my opinion.
Just like what Grubby said in the first 2 minutes
I never saw real advertisements on major gaming sites, which is weird since Activision Blizzard has a huge bank account. I’d imagine if they were to do a concerted marketing push even today they would see the game grow exponentially.
And still they went all in on professional esports, suffocating all the amateur leagues around it.
What makes this game so deep is how drafts evolve based upon the map and what your enemy is picking. You have to play multiple characters at a high level and there were still complex pocket picks. I loved how different NA , EU, KR, CN styles of play were. Best part is that you can carry in this game as any role if you know counters to picks.
I remember buying a Founders Pack!! My husband was invited to the alpha and I wasn't so as soon as I could pay my way into the beta, I did it!
Those were the days!
@@GrubbyPlays Back when Abathur would Ult Tychus and have two ODINs!
I'd support the crap out of a mod for the this game. I really hope the game gets back to it's starting point as a mod. The only reason I say that is that I'd like a chance to show Blizz how badly they undercommited to it. HotS deserves so much better. More creative skins like different elemental Ragnaros would have been amazing. Imagine the game with it's own engine, skin designs taken from community suggestions and an arcade mode. That'd be freaking fantastic. Also, Blizz had no idea how to put their MMR system on a team game. They still practically force your to win or lose by who they put on your team in order to keep as many people at close to 50% win rate as possible. That is a very screwed up system.
HotS is what I’m gonna be playing for as long as the servers are up.
I’m hoping Microsoft buying blizz revives it, it’d be so easy.
Still the best game out there
I actually recently started playing it because I started to get bored of League. I find it fun and hope they had advertised it better
Stay (we need you)
And I quit HotS and started LoL for the first time 2 weeks ago. HotS was my first and only MOBA, loved it, but I just couldn't continue playing a game knowing there is nothing for me to build towards, nothing to look forward and play for, like a new skin or a hero. It was the last patch that made me quit, as it felt like a straight slap to the face - 1 old ugly mount and only 1 of many skins they have already in files and could also release... nah, just 1... that was the final nail for me.
Paulo you'll soon find out how horrible the matchmaking is in the game. About every 4 out of 10 games you're setup to fail and it is nearly impossible to win OR you completely stomp the other team easily all because of the matchmaking. Only about one or two games in 10 the matches are actually even and the game can go either way. This feels true in QM and ranked.
thats some bullshit, blizz basically "forced", in gaming terms, their crossgame playerbase to play hots for rewards, there was advertisement everywhere, the moba community just didnt want to give it a shot, thats about it, people in this tread with so much revisionism its legit crazy, we get it, fuck activisionblizzard, but stop lying to yourselves about hots holy crap.
Nice to have you in the Nexus :)
Been playing since Alpha/Beta. I have 13,559 games played, still love Hots to this day.
me2. I hope they will bring it back one day. I mean, there are still a lot of players. It takes me only
I hate that they abandoned it. They should NEVER make further games if they can't support them for more than 5 years. It's such a GREAT game, I love it.
Didn't they support it for like 8 years?
@@DanielDroegeShow nope dropped support at 5 years last 2 have been maintenance mode like SC2
@@Drakkiss I guess we have different definitions of support. Running servers cost money, i.e. financial support.
@Lucio The DJ How stupid do you really have to be to believe political correctness is something that killed off the popularity of a game? Did the same thing happen at Epic when they canned Paragon or was the market way too over-saturated with games of the same genre?
You are just looking for any excuse to express your homophobia and it is cringe af.
@Lucio The DJ lol Blizzard doomed itself with the merge of Activision (2007). It doesn't have to do anything with PR moves for inclusivity and marketing.
Thanks for your continued support for HotS. I really appreciate your videos. I still really enjoy this game alot and always hope the best for it.
There's still so much potential here and I wish they would have released a map editor for this game. I think it would have made a big difference. I think if they would change the way they monetize the game currently would help alot.
I recently restarted playing hots after 10 yrs of dota.
I believe that all aspects considered dota is the better game for competition, but it's damn slow and complicated
Lol is just awful. Returned to it after getting burn out with dota and i can just say that the game is boring... Laning stage, orribile. Teamfights? Also awful. No strategy, feels like playing cod, the first to pull the trigger wins
Hots is fresh, fun, fast and playing makes me happy and not frustrated. In competitive people is not toxic at all. The heroes are just the best
I would really like to see this game brought to life a lot
I liked this game but investing time, learning, ect... and don't know if it will not get final shutdown tomorrow was so scary for me. Was still playing somtimes for fun with friends but that's all. Really sorry for you guys who put so many of yourself into, hoping the best for the future of HOTS !
Peace
even tho HOTS might have been a failure in a lot of people's eyes, we will share the love for it for as long as it will exist ♥️
Let’s be mecromancers by heart and keep this zombie alive as long as we can
It's simple. If the game was the first moba to appear, it would be the most popular.
Thank you for the clarification. After several years I’m playing it again and it’s great fun.
I wanna play it everyday, the last time I’ve felt this before was wow the burning crusade back in the days.
Good friends of mine are more casual then me. But together we had awesome sessions!
I’m still hoping that there could be any possibility for the game to be further developed. It’s a great game but it deserves more.
Come on Blizzard, just hire Grubby and let him revive your games
My friends and I were just playing last night for the first time in like a year and talking about why someone hasn’t tried to mod it to revive the game like how dota started out as a mod before it became huge and just keep adding new character? I mean I think at this point blizz isn’t gonna care about that
@@Gu3ssWhatsN3XT I wish we can play the pre alpha blizzard dota tester game we haven't played that version it is so different
you mean Activision Blizzard😔
@@Gu3ssWhatsN3XT Bliz doesn't allow it, they issue legal cases
Grubby is a trash troll
A few more in-depth thoughts:
-HOTS switched from a really clear financial model of a flat cost per hero, skin, or mount paid in real money… into a system with loot boxes and two or three kinds of funny money in-game currencies, and all the toxic modern obfuscation and gambling. I don’t know that it necessarily hurt the trajectory of the game, but it certainly was a dark portent of how games would go wrong over time.
-While HOTS is design to simplify a lot of the overly complex things of other mobas, the complicated parts of HOTS are fairly complex. There are only three or so talent picks per level, but there’s a lot of subtitles to them, how they work against enemy or with friendly comps, which maps they’re appropriate on. There are more than a half dozen different maps with radically different mechanics, which is great for game to game variety, but probably a steeper learning curve, since it’s not just a different maze in the woods-it’s an entirely different win condition. There aren’t a billion items to learn, but you also can’t just memorize the three or four items you actually want on the few characters you actually play.
I used to buy skins because that was the only way to get them. When HotS 2.0 introduced lootboxes I always had enough currency to buy whatever I wanted. Blizzard committed commercial suicide.
@@Trazynn To be fair, it was at the time Loot Boxes was THE DEVIL and they made the best system with Hots. I didn't have any money (still don't) and i have everything i want just by playin the game a lot. Stil... Master Skins were dope as a concept and it vanished for 2.0 :(
That's another thing. The skins got distributed so well that anyone could be having any skin and it doesn't stand out at all. Even the legendary skins are easy to get. Which means that the core reason to spend money, standing out, is gone as well.
People don't change systems because the first system was so successful...
I mean it is a pity, but I don't get how anyone can claim this game failed. It certainly made money that's for starters.
The amount of genuine fun people have with this game is seriously unmatched by any moba, and Blizzard should really applaud themselves for all the improvements they made for the game over the years. This is not even close to game it was when it came out.
As a once-GM dota player, I hated this game when it came out, and now it's my favorite MOBA. I want another one.
Amen brother, altho nowadays im only playin ARAM. And I have no roblem with this game being dead. Alot of great people still play the game and that sayys a lot. GL next
I've been playing since the alpha, and I have relatively minor art design and aesthetic choice gripes with the game, like how it took them until the first Diablo event to have Battlegrounds that were actually themed around a Blizzard property. You look at the starting pool of maps at launch: Blackheart's Bay, Cursed Hollow, Dragon Shire, Haunted Mines (Lmao this map they've always tried to make it work), Garden of Terror and Sky Temple. NONE of these have any links to WoW, Starcraft or Diablo when they EASILY could have been. What was the point in making them original places? You'd think a crossover game with have levels set in nostalgic franchise locations right?
Another is Orphea and Qhira: I have ALWAYS been opposed to the addition of OCs in this game, it reeked so much of desperation to get more players. They've essentially taken character kits and slots that could have been used for other more recognizable Blizzard characters. Nobody gives a shit about them, and what's worse is that when they tried to expand the "lore" with comics, it was about these characters instead of putting the Blizzard characters we know and love through fun narratives where they all get to interact with one another. It was such a simple job to just make crossover fanfiction and Blizzard chose to make OC fanfiction. League and Dota get away with it because their settings are all OC, but HotS is like Smash Bros. The decision for lore in this particular manner was one of the signs to me that the dev team had lost their marbles and were wasting their meager pool of resources on something that was not going to see them returns.
100% there are many Warcraft characters to pick from, when adding more heroes. The fact that they decided to go with new and exclusive characters that no-one knew or had any relation to is unfathomable. I think some things are sacred, and should not be handled lightly. There are also many battleground options, in fact just about as many BG options as there are zones in the first original classic World of Warcraft expansions, most likely even a lot more. Imagine redridge mountains, barrens, straglethron vale, ashenvale, the list goes on.
Firstly, props to you for being an OG player and alot of insightful points. But I think alot of the original content they added was good. I don't personally play as either orphea or qhira but I like them conceptually. I get where you're coming from, wanting the game to be pure to the Blizz universe, but they aren't consistantly coming out with new products so that can only go so far. Eventually the well would have ran dry. This was a great game, is a great game and will continue to be a great game. It's shocking how unrecognized it's greatness goes purely based on it not being the early bird that got the worm. Heroes of the Storm Forever!!!
@@mikechristie9170 Yes the well would have run dry eventually but my god there are still dozens of recognizable Blizzard characters that could still be added and wouldve drawn in numbers because of nostalgia associated with recognition. My go2 for instance is Baal- Diablo and Mephisto's brother, the final boss of D2 LOD. The fact that the three Prime Evils were never reunited in HoTS before it got put on life support is one of the greatest tragedies, and I remember while the game was still active people were always hungry for more characters from Diablo 2, to the point that people made up conspiracies that Blizzard hated Blizzard North too much to want to add D2 content.
@@Mrcryptidsarereal Also they never put the OG's of Warcraft
Where's my Antonidas, where's Garithos. There are uncountable characters they should've put in. Mekkatorque, Shandris etc.
the professional shut down is the death sentence. mobas live from the competition.and every competition lives from amateurs watching and learning from the pros. blizzards path from the most loved developer to an EA competetor for sure did its part too
Well... we still have tournaments.
The problem was communication and the level of change.
I changed from "We have one of the biggest price pools of all games and it's all concentrated in our own hands" to
"We won't give a dime to support any tournament and don't even advertise them in our game launcher".
And now again. Instead of "We won't produce any new skins and heroes and most likely no reworks anymore, the classic team takes it over, we will tweaks some numbers every 2 month" they go with "We won't do anything even if it only costs 8 hours per month to keep the game meta changing". That's just plain stupid. They could even pay a content creator like Grubby some money to give them some numbers to put into the config file. As long as it's only number it doesn't need much testing (and in the worst case roll back).
I played Dota back in the day, then some LOL and DOTA2. Early game was super boring and I'm glad HOTS cut all that.
Imagine playing a baseball game , but first you have to do some sort of whack a mole battle. Some people might enjoy it cause more content, but it's not my cup of tea.
I have played original DoTA, heroes of NewEarth, DoTA 2, League of Legends, I’ve spent many hours in all of these MOBAs, but out of all of them Heroes of the storm has the best levels and the most diversity in character move sets and gameplay.
I love this game and plan on playing it for as long as I can, I often bring new people to this game.
the monetization system was my biggest issue, when i first tried it i found everything too costly (comparing to other mobas) and it was super hard to get heroes for free (other mobas i have played i could have get at least 1 or 2 heroes in a week, for free). After that the game lost communication with players who already tried it (they never tried to reach players who tried it once and were pulloff by their monetization or content) and then they killed the esport scene which made it seem the game was dead.
I still have ~3000 shards from HotS 2.0 switch. I never had to buy anything ever again on my main account after that. The system is too generous compared to LoL where you have to grind a lot of games just to get something remotely good
My friends and I got on HOTS when 2.0 came and when used to play QM pretty much every night, it was so much fun. After a few weeks of Orphea release, we all went back to play LOL ARAM exclusively since it resembles the feel of HOTS the most plus the constant release of new champs and stuff. We still reminisce about the game from time to time.
Ironicly the muting of HOTS was recommended a long time but not cause: "PLAYERS ARE SPOUTIING TOXICITY"
But... "Toxic players will report you for abusive, by turning it off, the admins and mods will unsilence/unban you faster or the system won't pick it up at all"
While I was for the "removing silenced players from ranked" cause... alot of silenced players in ranked tended to throw matches and players would be toxic to them in general....
But the reason became the bane of my logic existance:
"We banned players who are silenced from Ranked, cause communication is key in winning"
Meanwhile when the automated system came up.
The developers litterly said: "Just turn off chat and you won't get banned"
And it drove a wedge in me... You allow players to turn off chat... THE FUNCTION YOU NEED TO USE TO WIN GAMES IN RANKED AND THE REASON SILENCED PLAYERS ARE BANNED AND EVEN ADVICE IT TO AVOID BEING BANNED FROM RANKED?!
It made no sense.. so I advocated for the developer to say: "Toxicity isn't welcome in eSports" or another reason to ban silenced players from chat..but no.. to this day that quote is STILL the reason you aren't allowed to play ranked when silenced...
Overall.. I think HOTS failed not due to it's gameplay... it's easy to get into, it's easy to play, it's hard to master... and yea... it's fun.
It shakes up the formula...
It's biggest problems were:
-It was too late to join the party
-Development was slow
-Some releases like Qhira were misstimed and cause more strife
-The lore implementation could been cool, but we never played the stories... so it was just "There"
-Very bad advertising
-Killing eSports division over night without any reason.
-Quick match shouldn't been the default mode... Unranked should been it.
Hots should be next to dota 2 and LOL as Best mobas...... But it's like developers never believe in it
Quick match is mostly what I play and I highly recommend muting chat for that. Ranked is also frustrating due to the team-oriented nature of hots. It can be hard to escape bad ranks because the chances for you to personally fight your way through bad allies are low
Hahaha “Diablo immoral” a true Freudian slip
Not enough players/money being made for Blizzard standards sadly. Maybe if hots came out before 2015 it would have had a chance when moba's were skyrocketing but League/Dota were just way more popular. It's a shame it was really well made with the skins and unique heroes. I loved the Battleground feels of it like in wow BGs. Working together as a team for the objective. There was still so many heroes they could have brought out too damn shame.
35:10 the most ironic part is they still called being 'took down' deaths in game lol
And they are still using KDA stat in game 😛
HotS 'failed' because it was released too late. The problem was never with the game itself. It had a devoted and hard working dev crew that eagerly and happily engaged with the community and they were widely loved for it.
For Gods sake remember when Kevin Johnson got an announcer pack? People LOVED that.
The game itself was clearly made exactly as described: a Love Letter to the games a beloved company had put out over a period of 20+ years, that an entire generation had grown up with. A company that in it's golden era quite literally was the bar against which all other AAA developers were measured - and found wanting.
HotS failed for the same reason SC2 failed, for the same reason D3 failed, for the same reason WoW was on the brink of collapse for so many years:
Activision. One Robert Kotick's influence is enough to drive any game, any company, so deep into the ground digging for that one last MTX that whales will swipe to obtain that not even Blizzard could survive it. Vivendi owned Blizzard for years and during that time Blizzard made enough money to buy themselves out from under Vivendi's Umbrella. It wasn't until Activision started sinking it's claws into the upper eschelons of Blizzard's management crew that things began to go sideways and then, straight downhill.
SC2, D3, HotS, WoD, BFA, Shadowlands. All of that can be ultimately laid at Bobby's feet because of what happened to the upper management at Blizzard. It stopped being about making games people would play for the next 10-15 years with dedication and love and started being about how much money the company could make off the people dumb enough to keep buying what they were selling.
teamwork,teamwork,and teamwork,everyone want to be THE hero,not one of the heros.
Ive been playing Since Alpha off and on. Ive never spent moeny on a hero. An occasional boost was well worth it though since you got all the currencies through leveling.
That Boston Bisons and Houston Rockets game was a classic. I'll never forget it. Cricket at it's finest.
One of the last footages of Grubby before Dota2 sucked out his soul, when he was still a wholesome streamer :D
The biggest problem is definitely the teamplay, playing in a team with random people and depending so much on their decisions (unless you play at a high level, which is unlikely for most players) makes the game lose interest for most people, the most fun thing about this type of games is the dopamine you get from doing a 1 vs 5, 1 vs 3, things like that that are impossible in this game.
Another reason that directly sinks it is that the matchmaking depends on the MMR, which is an optimized system to score a player, it is not a useful system to score the performance of a player in a game based on a loss or victory depending on the team.
With Dota is the same. The actual game is Captains mode - drafting, positioning, coordination. And you start being able to play it after something like - 40 hours. :D
After spended over 2000 hours in DOTA, I quit and started to play beta HOTS.
There was 2 reasons to quit - first toxicity by Russians players on EU servers, second reasson was time of one match - often 45+ minutes.
I tried to play LoL many times, but beside of high toxicity, was second problem unbalance the game when support players _(my fav role)_ are just food for enemy carry and in late game they are dying with full hp within 1,5sec because in game are not good defensive items for supports and mostly carry-players have some blink-abilities in their kit.
I m still playing HOTS to nowdays, beacuse game have almost zero toxicity and its team oriented when each player have big impact to the game and all players have only one goal - win the game.
In LoL main goal for dmg dealers is compare length of their d**ks with another dmg dealers.
To me, HOTS did the same thing that League did to DOTA, and a lot of the player base reacted similarly too. They took out nonsense filler mechanics that were skill checks that ultimately detracted from the core gameplay loops. Removing items/gold was like removing last hitting your own minions to deny gold/exp to enemies. The dota community called it a dumbing down of the game, it's where the people who are bad go, etc, and the league community did the same to hots. To me, it lets you focus on what actually makes the moba a moba, and less on the sim city.
Weren't you listening? It's not a MoBa, it's a Hero Brawler!!
@@-DRF- Please forgive my transgression :(
@@Ryuujinv01 XD
Last Hitting is a core Mechanic of Mobas. It wanted to be a Moba without alot of things that actually make a Moba addictive if you ask me. A Moba is not just about outplaying the other Hero. The Macro is a very important and big part of a Moba and Hots really dumbed that down wich probably threw alot of Moba Fans of. Me included, i hated that i couldnt buy Items and last hit minions because those are Core mechanics of a Moba. You just saying thats not essential to a Moba is kinda weird to me. Feels like saying that Shooting in Shooters is not a Core Mechanic.
@@TheBlackfall234 See? I told y'all the community did that. Same exact thing the dota community said about league.
The more apt comparison would be comparing it to the economy game in counterstrike, not the shooting, yes, outplaying the enemies is VERY MUCH the comparable core mechanic to shooting in a shooter.
It amazes me the hoops people are willing to jump through to pin this game's failure on things that were really just nails in the coffin.
Universally, if asked, students will agree that they do not want their grade in a class to be an average of all the student's performance.
If you approach a hard working, successful adult if they'd like their income to be an average of his/her own and four other random people's, they'll say no.
But in an online game, where you play with online strangers, Blizzard thought it would be a good idea to tie individual progress, HP, damage, and access to talents, to every other bad player they chose to match you with. No, you don't get to be Michael Jordan. You get to be the average of Jordan and the worst player on Jordan's team. Sound like a dream? Yeah right.
You can both have teamwork and individual performance. You don't make a team of randoms, who will never meet each other again, work well together by forcing the standouts to be held back by the weakest player.
HotS worked REALLY well as a 5v5 brawl. It didn't work well as a solo/duo queue game, which is how most games are played. All the bad business choices just drove people away faster. It was never going to work with a system like that.
Interesting video Grubby, I think you summed up what caused HotS to fall off the rails well. I've been playing the game since release and I still enjoy it, but for a reason that wasn't mentioned - HotS encapsulates all of the old Blizzard nostalgia into one, short 20 minute game. I love seeing how the characters (and their playstyles) are almost indentically tranferred from the original game to HotS - It feels like I'm playing the original Diablo/SC/WC/OW character in a different game with all the grace Blizzard game them! Their lore and incredible worlds they built was their goldmine and instead they squandered it on petty cosmetics. I hate where the company has gone but I'm eternally thankful for what they have created.
The best thing moving forward for HotS would be to open it up to the modding community WC3 style. I no longer trust any big corporation to advance the game and feel that the community themselves can improve the game the best
Blizzard released hots as a desire for caputing a moba market.
Compare Overwatch and HOTS (on release).
Overwatch: Original game idea + PR + blizzcon hype + box price for all heroes included and only cosmetic monetization.
HOTS: Copy of already popular game + very bad monetization + very weak PR + very weak hype (compared to LoL hype, which is INSANE).
However, Blizzard has killed all e-sports they touched since Starcraft 1. Here is my take on it: You create an esport around a very popular game (Starcraft 1 in korea, CS was a mod, dota was a mod), but blizzard wanted to create an "esport" game.
In order to be able to do that you have to create the game that will be the most popular game. If you can do that, you don't need to make the game into an e-sport, it will become one.
But Blizzard wanted to create it in order to control it. And because they tend to mes things up, everything they controlled went badly.
Blizzard has tried and failed with: Starcraft 1, Starcraft 2, HOTS and is in the process of failing with overwatch league.
Blizzard thought they could fix the problem by throwing money at it (unsuprisingly, Bobby Kotick modus operandi seems in line with such approach).
Great vid, summarized with perfection.
There was a serious lack of advertising as to what Hots is supposed to be. All my friends preferred Dota and LoL and viewed Hots as easy mode due to the lack of last hitting, gold, items. I had to keep explaining that it was a TEAM focused game requiring better communication and objective control rather than a, "I bought all the items and carried everyone" game.
Great video. I've thought a lot about the team play you mentioned. IMO it's great that XP is shared, but the problem is that there is no reward in trying to individually be the best WHILE also serving the team. That works great for organised teams, but in solo is a real nightmare. They implemented the MVP screen way after the initial launch, and even then the parameters they use are not necessarily clear, thus it's kind of meaningless.
I'd have love a more complex system that would allow XP and level still to be shared for each team, but the individual XP that each player have earned, could be used in-game for other purposes, like buying items, units, etc. But that's just my outside view that was born out of the sadness of seeing the game dying, because it was my dream game since I was a child playing DOTA in W3, but Blizzard rushed the launch the game, while also delaying the actual development of it.
Thanks Grubby, for keeping the game alive.
When I saw the title of the video I immediatly checked the date, and got confused, and you covered it at the start of the video, I was sure it was shut down in 2018 and I was sad cause I liked it at the time... now I discover it was active for 4 years and I haven't heard of it for so long.
personally never took League serious, i tired it when it first came out (had 5 years of dota1 experience) and as a noob i was crushing, and because of the limited champion choices i quit after playing for a week. HOTS had the same limited pool which is a huge problem imo. nobody wants to pay just to be able to experience the base game. but HOTS had it's advantages which was the short game lengths. when i had only 20-60 min and wanted to play a moba, i chose HOTS, when i had multiple hours, i played Dota2
Technical issues was actually a really big problem in HoTS. Some people I know quit or didn't play because they would disconnect consistently (their internet is totally fine and they had no such issues in other games), and then reconnecting took forever. On top of that, the game was just really poorly optimized.
The "treats you like a customer instead of a mark" thing in that reddit comment was probably referring to the monetization model fishing for "whales" instead of being upfront about the monetary costs, as is usually the case for any sort of loot-box system.
The other common complaint (from other MoBA players) has always been that "carrying" felt hard, because your good plays reward the entire team instead of the individual player. Personally, I really like that, because it keeps away from the extremes of "high" or horrible experiences that you get in a game like LoL, where even when you win, sometimes the game feels horrible to play because you individually can do nothing in the game due to falling behind/not having gold while someone else on the team hard carried (generally with a lot of support form the team, while you were left to fend alone while getting gooned repeatedly). Though I guess I can understand people not liking that the game is more team oriented when they want to play for the solo carry (which isn't really a good mindset to foster in a team game, but that's a different matter...).
That's the dopamine rush though; some people like the more polarized experiences and they're more addictive (which is why so many people that play league also don't like the game), so the design that's less focused on team play and allows for more extreme individual experiences probably has an easier time with a certain level of player retention and drawing in those "whales" that spend huge amounts of money.
Hi Grubby! Great video man! I've have met so many great people on HOTS and made so many awesome experiences that it broke my heart with the level disregard that Blizzard gave to it. What you mentioned that blizzard wanted to monopolize the eSports scene for HOTS, reminded me A LOT of what Blizzard did to KESPA in StarCraft BroodWar. Blizzard sued and forcefully made organizations retire SC:BW in favor for SC2.
I played HOTS since the beginning and got many RL friends into the game as well. We regularly play ranked ladder as full premade and it's always super fun. I played LOL, DOTA, Smite, before HOTS came out and when HOTS came out i could not go back to other mobas because they all felt less fun to play.
For me HOTS was quite a sucessful game.
For me HOTS is best when playing with friends, Smite when playing solo. I like Smite character design since the 3D element gives it depth.
9:04 Grubby "I want to check out Dota"
I remember the founders pack, you could buy access to the beta and some cosmetics.
I started playing in the (really) open beta and couldn't tell when the game was "released" as it was perfectly funcional already and I think they just picked a random date for the release.
I loved played HOTS from when it came out, a few revival brush strokes to fix some holes :/
The base game and gamedesign of HOTS was amazing. Personally I havn't played in ages.
The 'metagame' of HOTS is absolute garbage dogshit. No way for Blizzard to monetize, lootboxes are a boring waste of time, hero level-up is a pointless grind, general chat is a toxic mess that only felt engaging when people are worshiping 'godemperordonaldtrump', the competative scene was completely out-of-the-loop of the average player, quickmatch was the only casual-friendly playmode but had broken matchmaking (balanced comps vs imbalanced comps), and new heroes had the LoL problem where they were purposely made overpowered to get players to buy them on release.
But by god it was satisfying to learn a map, learn how to communicate a stratagy with players you will never see again, and pull a win out of your ass when the enemy makes a dumb mistake at level 20.
I remember when someone asked Thijs the fastest way to grind for hearthstone cards. His answer: get a job and use the income to buy card packs. Big brain
The late release is a bummer yes, but it was so fresh and so different and so FUN it suckes away me after one game from League so it could've been a "greener neighbour's garden" or rather playground that slowly lured in gamers.
I still watch Khaldor's tournament commentaries and Fan regularly.
I wish they hadn't went overboard in the beginning and stayed moderate and sustainable for long term release of new heroes and maps with the old direct buy system.
All of what you said is valid and right.
I feel the game had big problems on very basic things around it while the game mechanics and visuals are more or less top of the genre.
- The game was not friendly to starters when it began (Not all talents choosable, little heroes to play in rotation, no starter packs, multi maps (not choosable))
- In it's prime eSports time (shortly before HGC and then through HGC) the game was evolving to fast. This included players (for professionals no problem but as a "normal" player a new hero every 3 weeks + balance patch every 2 was plain unusable and the balancing was often not really good) but also they stated it was a problem for the devs and I believe that. They had no time to test their stuff, the work times were deadly and the team lost motivation and members.
- The rework of progress did worsen it as you said
- We can buy heroes for 10k gold. That was ok with a new hero every 3-4 weeks (you never had all unless you payed sometimes or played a hell lot). But we 2-4 heroes per year like the last 3 years there was no need anymore.
- The same problem for skins and mounts (who cares banners and sprays?). Especially skins were cool with 3 variants you got for one purchase. But with the loot boxes you were guaranteed to get one of the 3 (or now sometimes 5) variants sooner or later. Maybe it's not may prefered color of volleyball Li-Ming but I would not buy if for a tint, wtf?
Imagine a season pass for the Mecha-Storm event. 15€/$ and you can play through it over the season and get all your cool Rehgar, Tyrael and Abathur skins. That's rewarding. That's motivating. And fair pricing. That could work. And pay for the skin work and the video making. And I am sure other event seasons could have worked like this, too. Be it the toy skins, a Diablo event, the "classic" skins or whatever else.
I hope they fix this stuff around the game now so it is welcoming to new players AND can get money from the established playerbase. The current system fails at both. It got quite some money from whales when it was released but now? I doubt it. That's surpringly ineffective. For me this means:
- Get a starter hero kit for low money or even free (maybe both, a little pack (10 heroes) for free and a bigger one (20? more, maybe even choosable) for little money)
- Remove Gold, it does nothing useful. Use shards or jewels to buy heroes.
- Bundle all tints of skins / mounts again to one (or make the alternative tints a thing to work for with little shards or just progress by playing the hero)
- Make every loot destroyable for shards
- Make chat hero emotes free (by level 10)
- Lootboxes? OK, but then only for shards, heroes, boosts and skins / mounts. Reduce things per box instead of giving worthless /basic stuff
- Announcers can be buy / box only. They are super cool.
- Season pass can include boost
So:
Make your monetization motivating. And fair. And don't give away to much free stuff. Really, that doesn't work. It should be enough to play well but not to have everything.
Pls MS, make this game working again. Some balance patches can keep it alive until you can release the revamped monetization. And if you want: Bring it to consoles or mobiles. Currently playing Brawl Stars and it takes a lot of HotS and works very well.
This was my first MOBA , and it made me addicted . I grinder for all the characters and it’s really fun. I jumped into league and it did not stick with me at all . I hope Hots gets a revival
Still playing after several years and now also when my son growing up a bit, we play together almost everyday. Think I’ve been playing for 5 years or so. Still super fun!
I loved the vid, great talking points. I do have to disagree with the release date being a real problem. Other gaming genres have had late comers that have pushed their own genres forward. Apex Legends comes to mind, late to the game but has added new gameplay and ideas to be discovered from other BRs and shooters.
Im pretty sure the mastery rings were just there to give people something to do with all of their gold coins that they were stacking up since they owned all of the heroes.
In case you're still wondering, a Mark is someone being targeted by a grifter or a robber/mugger. They recognize someone who has cash and is planning to rob them specifically of it. A Target.
Hi Grubby, I share with you the passion for this game. I cannot be more agree that the game is fantastic.
Is not the purpose to find only one reason, but I think the reason with more weight that made this game no popular is the awful matchmaking system that the game has. As consecuence the feeling of the people is that there was not feeling of advancing on the league rank. And this aspect dragged the game.
People wants to have the feeling that they're improving and not being paired with people that doesn't understand with the same level the macro strategy on each map.
For other hand, I understand that the game is Team oriented which is not a bad idea, but I think that if you are performing okay (even if your team mates are not) the game should provide you some extra benefits to compensate and give you chances if your performance is good.
Thanks for the video and specially for helping on keeping the game alive.
Regards.
I just found this video, I would love to see if you have any new takes after playing Dota for some time now. Thanks once again for the nice quality of uploads :)
To me it really feels like they wanted to kill it by stopping the marketing, they hoped people would just forget about it, but it's not happening.
And by the way, I love QM! It's the one reason I still play the game, and saying the most popular game mode is a reason why this game failed is madness. In my experience, most of what you said (queuing as groups with the in-between-roles heroes) applies to higher levels, at least I never see that, even though I have the occasional Platinum or Master rank player in my games. A good Auriel-Cho'Gall comp in SL is really as bad on Silver. Sure, the outcome in QM is mainly random because your comp dictates a lot and an AFK kills your game most of the time, but I have no problem with that as long as I win my 50% and I can play the hero I want.
I stopped playing ranked years ago mainly because of the toxicity you could do nothing against, because reporting is useless or could even work against you. People are invested in getting out of "silver hell", games there aren't nice. There's constant draft dodging, it takes like forever to constantly go through 2-3 drafts only to get a shitty game with an AFK or without tank and healer anyways. And most of the things you said against QM apply there as well, because nobody understands how to counter something or people straight up don't care. And then there are the folks who queue in with useful roles to get in quicker and then do something else (surprise, ppl pick Aba and Vikings there as well). And if you fill in, you can wait 10 games to play the hero you want. And sooo many tryhards tilting because you're picking or doing something they don't understand... I do not need that.
Exactly the things you said were rare and the exception, I experienced on a daily basis. SL for me is 100% more toxic than Valorant, and maybe even more toxic than CS:GO. Without a working and strict reporting system like RIOT has, I cannot see myself return to this.
Now, I am not whining about SL. The reason I am saying this is, that your perception of SL is probably not that of 95% of the player base. Many moons ago I played a season in Platinum (lucky placement games + stronger teammates), so I could experience for myself how that is. And yes, if I could play there consistently, I would never set my foot into QM. But that's not how it's gonna be for most.
As someone who played at HOTS start and only plays a game or two a month, they had a unique edge on the MOBA category and I really wish they ran with it but, they jumped into the scene as the weird kid and then ran it back to be as normal as they could instead of embracing the weird. What m thinking of rn was the old Mining/Graveyard map when you had to enter the mines and get the Skulls. That was so much fun and it felt like you were playing a map and less team fight simulator (i.e LoL). Now it just feels like a bad LoL with Blizz characters.
Abathur, lost vikings, Cho/gall, deathwing are so weird.
They never stopped being weird, thus I don't know why they made this mistake with the old mines...
It's pretty clear why HOTS failed to everyone who plays.
The MMR system is so bad that the game is literally unplayable. For example I am losing every single game, which is discouraging to say the least.
I had the exact same thing with the shops. I gladly spent a lot of money on great content in 1.0 shop in addition to really valuing the master skins you needed to grind for. After 2.0 came out, I didn't spend a single euro on the game, even though I played it just as much
there were too generous, true. i own every hero, every skin, every mount without spending a cent ever.
There's a very simple counter example for HoTS; Legends of Runeterra from Riot games. It doesn't profit well and it was designed this way, it's a cardgame that's actually easy free to play even for casual users. Riot cut the development team tho, but it still has competitive stage, even growing as the qualification is very user-friendly and they are releasing new content constantly. Riot games said clearly that they don't mind the game not making profit, they have enough from other sources and wants to keep LoR for the users!
HoTS was or at least supposed to be the Crown Jewl of the Blizzard Universe, uniting the wast playerbase and the games themselves. Back in the day people loved this concept and was having a ton of fun. You were rewarded in HoTS for most of the purchases, or simply the playtime in other Blizzard games.
It was a perfect composition for one of the most loved gaming company of all time with diehard fans and a loving community.
But noooooo Activision came in, saw not enough dollar signs while not caring for the game itself or the fans request and killed the game.
The two most hated characters for me is Quira and Orphea. They are the prime example of the failiure of Activision-Blizzard not understanding their own game and playerbase. Who knows what would have happened if they've released two legendary heroes, instead making up new ones? The message for the community was "We don't give jack about what you want, we release a stupid anime-pedobait goth character, because we think yall are only horny idiots. Oh you don't like it? What you never watch prn?"
Heya Grubby...Naviamente here. I think one of the major things we didn't talk about in the video was the absolute nightmare of the ranking system.....and the issues we had with hero league and storm league that eventually led to storm league. I don't recall exactly when it was...but there was a season where they reset the ladder three times because people were not placing where they should have been placing....all the ranks got totally distorted...and people were just done because Blizzadd couldn't figure it out. Really sad stuff =/
Grubby is so cute and innocent XD
A "mark" is what criminals call their targets/victims ;)
That team experience seams for many people as giving to your team mates what you trouble to get.
But it allows so much more strategies !
Plus for roles as "support" that are so unrewarded in LoL, here you are rewarded of your actions if it has a good impact on the whole team. Not just you.
It sad they didnt understand what the true community wanted and not just the loudest players cry about.
Dota was in open beta for like 3 years tho. It was playable for free for anyone in like 2010 or 11 or some where there.. the dota 2 launch was just official wording because the game was already "launched" for all intents and purposes for so long.
Started playing soon after launch. Haven’t played in a few years but recently started playing again and it’s so fun. Never played other MOBA’s before but the others don’t look that interesting to me. Heroes had so many fun games and moments for me especially playing with friends and my brother. Great times. I wish it wasn’t in the current state though it’s very sad to see.
Kinda funny that during one of the most dangerous sports that has ruined lives due to excessive concussions, they are morally against cartoon violence
I assume, Grubby has started playing DotA2 after this vid :) So glad he did.
How ironic, they wanted a team game where no one player shines but instead it becomes a single player game where one guy will lose the game for the whole team.
Can we please give even more shoutouts to amateur leagues like Heroes Longue at every occasion?
In Europe we're currently finishing season 18 with more than 100 teams and 600+ players of ALL skill levels actively competing. Some of your games will even be casted. Heroes Lounge allows you to play HotS just as it was envisioned (5v5 on comms) and is hands down one of the best multiplayer experiences you can have in any game period.
I've actually looked for something similar in supposedly more popular games like Rocket League, but have yet to find anything that even comes close to Lounge.
Not gonna lie, I was crushed when the final patch came out. Before, we HoTS players could lie to ourselves and say "its just on the backburner, Theyll pick it back up and its go time! Better save up my gold and shards just in case!" Even if we knew that it was being killed, we still held hope to just keep playing the game we love. But with the final patch, it was them saying "its officially over." Now, it is just....there. I still pop in now and again, but I dont play the way I used to. I dont like other MOBA's, so this officially killed my desire to even play MOBA's. Heroes might have failed, but it was set up to fail from the beginning.
Why? Just keep playing who cares if it's not being developed?
The thing is, I feel like HotS beats LoL as a competitive team game. In LoL as long as you can feed your ADC more kills than your opponent can do for theirs, you've basically won the match. This just leads to one player quarterbacking for the team every single game while the other players don't have to do as much work once their one player-killer becomes fed. In HotS, because there are no items and exp is shared among your team, you have to focus more on working together to eliminate your opponents. You aren't guaranteed to die just because one specific damage dealer on the other team showed up in your lane. Heroes of the Storm won me over on that premise alone.
Tbf if they just released more skins/heroes (remember when we were getting one every few months?), then the loot chest system wouldn't be dead. The sprays and banners were specifically there for fluff so you don't always get mounts, heroes and skins. But after a while when it was just that one intern working on the game during his lunch break, we've all ran out of mounts, skins and heroes to unlock, so nobody gives a damn anymore.
Where I'm from, mobas are HUGE. By far the most played game in gaming shops. Yet I've never seen HoTS played there once and few people seem to have even heard of it. I don't recall seeing any kind of advertising for it either.
HOTS was a dream come true for me to play with all my favorite blizz characters. However, I am the type that who wants to hop on the quickmatch and just play with the character I want for a few matches rather than being forced to a team comp for the sake of a game. Sure all that teamspeak and planning is cool and all that but that's a lot of work to put everyone together at the same time if you are an adult. Then they introduced the loot boxes then they introduces Overwatch characters that I had no connection with. Then it was done for me shortly after that. I had good times tho.
HOTS failed because of balance... balance was so bad that playing ranked meant spending up to 10 minutes in queue only to play same heroes against same heroes over and over again. How many heroes were (don't know if someone still plays ranked) meta in ranked? About 10 OP ones that either got snatched or banned and 15-ish good ones to fill holes in your comp (a.k.a weaker versions of 10 OP ones). The rest of them were for QM only. That gets boring very fast. I played ranked for 2 seasons and didn't bother again because it was basically same experience every time. And then they started releasing flavor of the month heroes that were so OP that they were always picked or banned ... and so they nerfed them 2 weeks later to point in which they should have been released in (like Genji for example...).
I have played from the beginning with breaks here and there. I only have 3 heroes left to buy without having paid a penny. I love this game so much and have played quickmatch the entire way. Your rant about how terrible quickmatch is makes me feel like I have really missed out on something special.
Quick Match is "terrible" because it's much more random than other game-modes: Without a draft phase, you don't know what your team-mates or enemies are picking, what map you're playing on, etc, and that can make a TON of difference: for an example, right now, Zul'Jin has a (rounded) 66% win rate on Sky Temple. By comparison, he has a 42% win rate on Cursed Hollow. He has a 61% win-rate vs Brightwing, and a 34% win-rate vs Rehgar.
And sure, there's some fun/charm to that kind of chaos. It lets you stress-test your skills with a given hero in a variety of circumstances. You can find team combos that don't make sense on paper but click in play. But, in general, it's much easier to have a less frustrating game in Storm League or Unranked, because you're making more informed decisions.
My personnal experience :
1) I started to play the game during the beta, to be precise at the end of the alpha exactly (and i'm still playing to this day)
2) I was buying some cosmetics at that moment, even buying some bits on twitch for the HGC only to get those unique mounts (i know i shouldn't have), i probably spent a total around 40-50€ into this game.
3) 2.0 got released, everything turned totaly free (and some "previous buyers" that i knew were really mad about that), and personally i never put any more money in the game after that, also i already got 300k gold at that moment in the game so i never purchased any heros with real money. (mainly playing only few heros so i didn't spend the gold during a long time and i got the feeling i could get everything i wanted if i trully wanted and that's probably a problem for this kind of game).
I'm sure i'm not the only player in that case, i mean i got mostly everything i wanted by simply playing and i didn't need to spend money anymore.
Moreover, when they've announced the end of the HGC, i'm sure it had repercussions on the sales.
Tbh in Silver /Gold I experienced tons of toxicity. Even of this bad toxicity that you described.
the main reason a friend doesn't play it it's because the movement feels "rough" in comparison of the snappy movement in league
HoTS Mobile is needed to bring this game back to life.
I disagree with your Quick Match comments @ 17:00 - as a long time player of ranked, I find lots of people really enjoy Quick Match and the fact that team comps are totally bizarre makes you play very differently. My QM builds are a total hybrid and "anything goes" opposed to my tried and true ranked builds. I think for players that have been playing long, its an interesting dilemma to figure out a way to win - no comms, just pings, all different skillsets. I like that challenge. And for new players its just all overwhelming anyhow so might as well clown fiesta!
Fair enough!
I love and hate QM. I love that I can pick a hero and always be able to play them. But I hate Abathur.
No.
I will say I used to very much not like QM, it depends on how you are playing and what you are used to. After I took a break from Heroes Lounge quick match was very strange indeed and I found you can't compare it to serious play. QM you just have to play over and over and then it clicks, You do some sort of self challenge (like a Pokémon nuzlocke) you can have lots of fun with it. At least I did and still do.
@@TheSchnieder6 bro the amount of people that soloqueue abathur in QM is criminal
Individual space to shine is important, in most games you do well you are rewarded, in hots your team is rewarded. I played enough and at a young age to understand why communism does not work playing hots
HoTS's needed to be marketed as "The working man's MOBA". There's a lot of people who want to play a MOBA, but don't have the time to grind to get good.
I remember when you could pay $5 for a 7 day xp pass, then they changed it so the same $5 fell just short of the 7 day pass so you had to buy use $10 to get the 7 day pass
Wasn’t a money thing, I just couldn’t play the game all the time and just paid week by week. It was the principal of it, that they were being pirates with their shady monetization practices
Very clear analyze. HOTS is a great game I started at launch, and still playing!
I think this game set a lot of benchmarks and other game developers really need to take note of what worked and what didn't. I finally quit hots after many years of playing. the issues with the game just to much for me and the toxicity in my region in next level. great video as always ❤
What issues ? :) I really love that game, the reconnexion time is the only one I can think of