Email: Heroes of the Storm article by Polygon

I like this quote:

“There were people on the team against the idea of an item shop and a gold system, as they just allowed those in the lead to remain in the lead and crush the other side. It added a layer of complexity that may not be welcoming to new players.

“You guys don’t get it. Dota is about shitting on people. That’s what it’s about,” designer Justin Klinchuch said.

Browder remembers the moment well. “We look at him and said ‘Well that’s true, but is that the kind of game we want to make?””

The link: http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/21/5723572/heroes-of-the-storm-making-of-blizzard

 

Great article. I’ve been following Heroes and its development. Go Murky!

A comment from that article I agree with: I hope they plan to bring out more irreverent single player content. I’d be far more likely to pay for a full single campaign then for mounts and skins.

If Blizzard is serious about differentiating Heroes from other MOBAs, I’d love to see single player content or, more realistically, team vs. environment content. Perhaps a ‘training exercise of a scary monster’ to build up team development? Heroes is 100% PVP. Some PVE would be devoured. Blizzard knows that single player content is what sells its games.

Sometimes when I play a game, I want the experience to be right. Multiplayer games always have douche-bags that sour the experience. This is why a team vs environment game would work wonders. Even if it is something like ‘survival against lots of monsters’ or ‘kill a big bad boss together as a team’. One cool map idea would be if one team could control the environment and the other team would have to fight through it like a mini-Dungeon Keeper thing.

I remember a popular mode in Unreal Tournament (don’t laugh, DOTA ripped [literally] the ‘monster killer’ announcer sayings from UT) called Jailbreak. When someone died, they went to jail which was located in the other side’s base. All it took was one person to free everyone. If all the people got stuck in jail, game was over. Sometimes, the game would have people in jail do a 1vs1 versus the other team member in jail. Winner would get free. For Heroes, I wonder if a map could be made if the enemy team could be put in ‘jail’, like a dungeon, and they would have to fight their way out of it. But the dungeon would be ‘crafted’ by the enemy team based on stuff they find in the map. Due to varying events, sides could change.

A map editor for Heroes would be HUGE. I was part of the Warcraft 3 modding community and everyone loved playing with the heroes and making multiplayer RPGs. Starcraft 2 sucked because editing was overly complicated, no real heroes, and making RPGs meant you had to make the engine for the RPG system to work. And all the art assets were science fiction themed which were ‘dark’ and not the bright fantasy theme that most RPGs use.

The Heroes map editor could be the true start of the future MOBA scene.