Esports
The 2018 Gameplay Update for Heroes of the Storm brings a range of massive changes to Blizzard’s MOBA – so we chat to pros and devs to get their thoughts on everything brand new for the year.
Although balance patches have all been par for the course in Heroes of the Storm, the 2018 Gameplay Update represents some of the most fundamental changes the game has seen since its launch back in 2015. The list is extensive, with tweaks made to stealth heroes, laning mechanics, structures, mercenary camps and a host of other smaller gameplay elements. To help wrap our heads around just how all these changes will affect the game, we gathered the game’s developers, pro players and casters to gain their insights.
Matthew Cooper, balance team lead on Heroes of the Storm, tells us that the idea of the Gameplay Update originally stemmed from a desire to improve the overall experience of playing the game. “We definitely wanted to look at the core gameplay and see are there areas of the game we can improve or make better?” he says. “That comes from pro player feedback, that comes from the community, it comes from just us playing a lot of games in the office.”
Wading into that massive discussion forum, one topic that constantly popped up, was stealth heroes. A tricky subclass to balance in their own right, there’s the need to give players the opportunity to spot them and react before they are jumped on, while also giving the stealthed hero the power to execute surprise attacks. Skew too far one way and stealth heroes feel useless; go the other and playing against them is hugely unsatisfying for squishy targets. The HOTS team think they’ve found a solution in the new update.
“We did a pretty major stealth update where we made the stealth visual a lot easier to spot,” explains Cooper. “The reasoning behind that is we get a ton of feedback on our stealth heroes. I'm part of the balance team and we want to see, OK, what change – balance or design wise – can we make to these stealth heroes so that we maybe bring them down a little bit in Quick Match but also bring them up a little bit in esports play.”
In the new update, stealth heroes have a much more visible outline compared to the translucent shader that was used before. However, if they remain stationary for a short period of time they become completely invisible to enemy players. “We want to see a nice balance across our game modes and skill levels,” continues Cooper. “We found that making the stealth shader less of an eye test and making them a little bit easier for players to spot will help there.”
To compensate for this, stealth heroes across the roster have seen small buffs to help increase their gap-closing ability, damage potential or overall utility. In the case of Zeratul, for example, Vorpal Blade has now been made a baseline ability so he has more options to stick to his targets.
Overall, the change has gone down well with players, with Heroes of the Storm Global Championship (HGC) caster Manuel ‘Grubby’ Schenkhuizen saying, “It makes it easier for people with bad monitors, or bad eyesight, or bad settings, or bad awareness to see cloaked heroes. It’s going to be easier for everyone across the board. I think that’s a great change.”
Elsewhere, in what may at first seem like a relatively small change, regen globes dropped by minions can now be claimed by the opposing team if they’re not collected quick enough. Previously, they’d sit in lane for eight seconds and only your team would be able to gather them or they’d disappear if not touched. Now, however, after three seconds they will switch to a neutral form, which can be picked up by either side or disappear three seconds later.
What difference does this make? A potentially huge one. With no last hitting or gold gain, laning in Heroes of the Storm has all been about soaking experience. Therefore, it was relatively easy to sit back and clear minions as they approached the towers if you were in a tough matchup so you didn’t miss any experience. With the globe change, you’re rewarded for winning your lane with more health and mana regen and denying your opponent.
“Yeah, I'm super excited about this one. I was a big proponent of this change so during playtesting I really wanted to make sure we kept it. It makes it much more tense,” says Jade Martin, game designer on Heroes of the Storm.
“It also adds a little bit of skill and thought into the laning phase where I can maybe zone out my enemy player from getting their globe and I can take it from them. That always feels really good because that's giving me more sustain but it's also making me think about the laning phase just a little bit differently.”
Pro player, Benjamin ‘BadBenny’ Eekenulv, agrees and gives his own perspective with the changes to structures too: “It's going to be interesting to see how it will impact the draft as some heroes will rise in priority because they're better at doing that kind of stuff. Also, now that towers don't run out of ammo, that change will be huge in terms of what heroes are good or bad in 1v1 lanes and how you want to play it.”
His thoughts are also echoed by Team Freedom support, Jerome ‘KilluZiioN’ Tanguay: “There’s a bunch of matchups you can snowball more right now, where if you can control the wave better than your opponent you can get more globes – and that’s a huge thing right now. Same thing in the rotation where you have something like ETC farming globes for his quest or any globe talent. If you control the waves and the rotation you get so much value out of it.”
Another aspect that will further promote better laning gameplay is the reworked spawn timers and warnings for objectives. By keeping these consistent across maps and giving all players more of a heads up when these events will happen, preparing for them becomes less of a mad scramble than it has in the past.
Where this is most drastically felt is on Cursed Hollow, which has sent pros weighing the positives and negatives of the change. “I don’t want to say it’s worse or better. They took the map and totally changed it, like, it’s not the same map at all. Every team is going to be prepared for the curse and then it’s just the team that plays it the best,” says KilluZiioN on the TownHall Heroes Podcast.
But, isn’t that a good thing? With more stability around objective spawn timers and positions, doesn’t that make for a better professional game? Isn’t this much in the same way as Dragon and Baron in League of Legends which spawn at regular intervals to encourage contests? Now, planning and preparedness are more important factors that getting a lucky spawn.
“I think most players, especially in the pro scene, would say in 90 percent of the cases – yes,” says Jake ‘SolidJake’ Kulinski. “But, there’s a beauty to Cursed Hollow where there’s a risk/reward… but when you just look at the map and see if you know that next tribute is in top lane, you can then very safely punish and abuse the bottom lane. Your rotation is guaranteed to be an easy one and you can then theoretically have an opportunity to take down a wall.”
Add to that, there’s now much more to consider about when to take mercenary camps. Before, they were neutral minions that – generally – you would just capture and forget about as they nonchalantly strolled down a lane to help the push. In the Gameplay Update, they now come with additional bonuses that may affect when you want to set them loose.
Matt Cooper explains: “As part of updating the core gaming experience, we wanted to look at all of our mercenary camps and make sure that they're providing interesting or different strategies behind them. We don't want them to just be something you capture and let them do be tower fodder or push on their own. You should actually want to push with these mercenaries and think about them differently.”
For example, Knight camps now give all allies in range a spell armour aura and Hellbats offer a stacking armour debuff on their attacks. Even just by adding these extra passive skills, SolidJake has already seen the player base adapting to the new mercenary specialities.
“I really like the mercenary camp changes and it honestly feels like my teams are trying so much harder to make sure they maximize mercenary camps. Not only just getting them, but pushing them. I think the mercs having more value feels good. It’s not just set it and forget it.”
If the goal of the 2018 Gameplay Update was for Blizzard to reflect and improve upon areas of the game they feel are in need, then how players are responding to changes so far shows it’s promoting greater strategic awareness and opportunities to outplay your opponents. For a MOBA that’s been decried in the past because shared experience and no item buys limits individual player skill, these changes seem like huge positives for the depth of the game, and should see a stronger, more competitive 2018.
