Heroes of the Storm Content Update - December 21

General Discussion
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Greetings, Heroes!

I wanted to check in and give everyone an update following our latest announcements.

First, the next few months will unfold much like we’d originally planned. In fact, our 85th hero will be announced soon before hitting the PTR the first week of January, and that hero will be followed by a string of cool events and hero reworks en route to our next hero release.

What we want to do beyond those releases is currently under discussion across the Heroes of the Storm team. The plans moving forward are going to be focused on the things that the Heroes team and all of you in our community are excited for. Our team has always thrived when we’re working on things we’re passionate about. While our team is smaller, we’re a fully functional group of developers who can create the features and content we all want, in time. I know everyone is eager to hear more, but we’re still in the early stages of these conversations, so we’ll share updates once the team has made some decisions.

And while I can’t give you all the details just yet, I will also say that we’re actively discussing not only the right cadence for our patches and content – we’re also reconsidering some very core areas of the game to identify more ways we can make Heroes even better for players.

Just a few of the many things we’re currently discussing include:

  • Finalizing the Hero Role overhaul
  • Timing for rolling out the Ranked Play consolidation and improvements we discussed at BlizzCon
  • Bringing back the ability to directly purchase individual skins with Gems
  • Adding the ability to get more content like skins and mounts with Gold

More immediately, we just had a balance patch on Wednesday which will be followed closely by additional matchmaking changes to both Quick Match’s queue times and to the division spread used for matching high-level players in Ranked modes. Please check out the patch notes for all the details on the balance changes and be on the lookout for our matchmaking forum post as those improvements roll out.

So, in summary: meaningful changes are here now, and more content and updates are on the way shortly. As we move into the new year, please be valiant with us as we take some time to evaluate our new approach to all the exciting things we want to do. And as always, please share your thoughts on what you would like to see in 2019 while letting us know how we can continue improving this game that we all love.

Lastly, the team has been having a ton of fun with the Most Amazingest Board Game Ever and we’ve decided to extend our Winter Toy Event into February to give everyone more chances to play. The game can be completed 50 times during the event for up to 50 free Rare Toy Chests, so have fun, and we hope you enjoy the event as much as we do!

Thanks,

Kaéo

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A new hero for the new year yay

also individual skins and mounta for gems like the older model are welcome…

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Please keep us updated.

I also really like the recent interaction from the devs here by making thread announcements like these, I hope this doesn’t stop any time soon.

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It is nice, and reassuring, to get some updates about the direction of the game and i am happy that there will be indeed a new hero at the start of the new year.

If you´d like to have some input, there are two points i personally would like to see adressed in the near future:

  • The teams in QM at least seem to be composed of players of quite different skill-levels which is detrimental to the enjoyment of the game.
  • Heroes that require more skill should be/stay rewarding in relation to the higher amount of work needed to play them

The former might help with the later as preventing mixes of high/low prevents high-skill-players annoying lesser skilled ones with heroes that can do a lot when played well.

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I hope that consistency patches are planned, too!

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In some ways I’m glad to hear the toy event is being extended, but it also has me worried about the lack of future events. I would not be against just going from one event into the next with no downtime between them, though.

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as long as I get deathwing im fine

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Swift response, unlike Diablo. Neat.

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In my opinion, what is most important are balance patches.
As long as those come every 2-3 weeks, everything will be fine. Balance is what is most important to an competetive online game.
New heroes are great as well, but of course I know it’s unlikely that they will come every 4-8 weeks like they usually came.
But as long as there is a new hero every 2-3 months I think everything will be fine.

New events and all are cool, but should not take priority over new heroes and balance patches. But if those are the things (along with skins) that bring in the most money, then do it to keep the game alive.

41 Likes
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Now this is how you approach the community. Thank you very much for the update. As long as you keep showing interest and devotion, we will as well.

As for your monetization efforts, please get rid of the gems, we don’t want to overpay for digital items via gem bundles, integrate the game store properly (I mean directly) to work with Blizzard Currency and set up fixed prices for each item available, not in gems but local real money currency.

Also reconsider the pricing altogether because the bundles usually cost more than a new game. As long as you make the pricing realistic and affordable for the majority, more people will participate. This is where you originally failed, you have a fantastic game but stayed out of touch with customers completely.

We want to support the game via purchases and boosts, but the company is really making it hard for us to do so with some of its predatory practices as of recent (such as the fear of missing out on the WOW digital store items through temporary retirement).

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Thanks for your constant updates, hard work, and dedication to this wonderful game!

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For 2019 I would like to see Blizzard give support to the 3rd parties that are going to try to fill the void left by the sudden demise of the HGC. More specifically I would love for you guys to promote the leagues and tournaments that exist and might be created; please put them on the launcher, please make a splash screen like you did for the HGC every now and then, especially when there is a big community driven event (Bloodlust maybe?). I know it takes people to make things like that happen but it would be great if you could manage.

Thanks.

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Please fix optimization on Mac. I was playing the game fine on the highest setting 3 or 4 patches ago. Each patch since has made the game run worse and now it’s downright unplayable even on the lowest settings. I’ve tried everything found in other forums including reinstalling and doing repairs (as well as turning off background apps and Battle Net client). HOTS is one of my favorite games and I want to support this game as long as possible, but not when its not even playable. Thanks for the hard work so far.

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Thank you for putting your time into the community and showing you still have a desire to provide content to a game I love so dearly. I look forward to seeing what you have to bring in the new year :heart:

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Hey Kaeo,

Besides content at a decent pace, what we really need right now (specially minor regions, since times and language barriers make everything harder) is a Looking for Group feature, not different than what Overwatch has.

This is a team based game. We love to play with friends and I think both we (the players) and the team understand that where the games shines brighter is when we bring that coordinated teamplay to lay down that Entomb + Planet Cracker against their squishy (for example).

I know this feature is planned (been watching and reading all the Blizzcon interviews and streams), but I kindly ask if you can move it a little sooner along the chain.

We need it more than ever.

Cheers and looking forward at what you will bring in 2019!

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i am gald u are keeping make this game live as we the player doing it to, just one thing could u check about latin servers ?? cuse lately we had to wait at least 5 to 10 m in waiting a match on QP and sometime is get bored waiting so mush it would be awsome if u can fix the match making pls !! and keep the good work

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hearing all this is a great relif! Thanks for talking with us!
Hope we are getting Vol’jin this year <3

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It’s great news that things aren’t as bad as Brack’s letter made them seem. Thank you for not giving up on us.

I think a great bang-for-the-buck investment in the game would be to have someone who is obsessed with talent balance just work on that full time, tweaking numbers every week or month so that talent viability improves and the game gets more variety and unpredictability. It’s a shame that so much work done on talents goes unseen in game. For me, every hero has 1 or 2 builds that are correct 100% of the time. I would like the forums to be filled with people arguing until the end of time about which talents are best. :smiley:

More heroes and maps do not make the game more fun. Infrequently picked heroes and maps (and talents) are the same as content that doesn’t exist. A dollar spent making existing content more viable will go a long way.

I think it’s time to merge the game modes that can be merged. One AI mode, one QM mode, one ranked mode. Consider splitting off the wonderful quick ARAM brawl into its own game mode so the people who prefer that kind of gameplay can do it 24/7 because it’s a unique culture. Make the popular brawls like pool party just long seasonal events so that you don’t need to switch between them as often. Kill the unpopular brawls and maps for the time being.

I think a role queue could have saved the matchmaker and the game, but I don’t see how you guys have the time and money to implement that now. People are simulating this today in quickmatch by queuing up in “favorites” mode. I think players specializing their practice and having tighter MMR accuracy could really raise game quality to a new level.

I think the automatic weekend tournaments idea that you guys had, with formal teams people could create etc, was really great.

I think you really need to consider if Heroes is at its best as a DOTA clone like League, or as its own game with principles like easy access and Blizzard character fantasy. I think we’re at our best NOT chasing DOTA and League.

Take the occasional fort catapults as an example of the complexity that HOTS was created to remove from this genre. Mathematically it makes sense and achieves the goal of keeping everyone at the same level, but it’s not something the players knowingly have fun with. The fort catapults just kind of show up sometimes and you notice the lane pushed in more. Focus on the fun, and if you want everyone to be closer in level, just increase the passive XP rate of the old game built so the games end in 15 minutes rather than 20, that way there’s less time to notice steamrolls and less time wasted on them.

Thank you for working on my favorite game. :purple_heart:

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I appreciate the update, this last week things were starting to look really grim, I’m excited to hear about new things to come. It felt like radio silence before and when blizzard entertainment had that sales banner up where heroes wasn’t there but CoD and Destiny 2 was…bleck. Anyways. Thanks for posting this. =).

P.S. I would love to see Mekkatorque or a gnome join the nexus soon. They’re my favorite race!

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