9 Differences Between Heroes of the Storm and Other Mobas
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My girlfriend recently got me trying MOBA's, and so far Heroes is the one I like the most. Mostly because it lacks the item buying system, I think. It makes the game a lot less stressful, something that really annoys me about LoL, and I always felt that it was somewhat superfluous in most MOBA's anyway. I mean, you always get the same item progression with the same character so where's the fun and creativity in that? Felt a bit like a needless cog in an already damn chaotic machine. It's all so fast and everyone shouts at you to do stuff and all those abilities going off and oh my god. But Heroes is just a little friendlier in that regard, not to mention that it doesn't have that last-hitting and kill-stealing nonsense going on.
And the community is just a little less awful than LoL's or DOTA2's. A little.
And the community is just a little less awful than LoL's or DOTA2's. A little.
It's certainly more accessible than the other two behemoth's...
If I was Valve or Riot, I'd be just a tiny bit concerned. But in the end it depends what experience you want I guess.
Easy: Blizzard just kind of go 'pools open!', give everyone 3 different floaty toys to play with and let them have at it in a shallow but entertaining experience.
Intermediate: Riot kind of open the pool up to people one at a time and ask them to choose which floaty toys they want out of a mess of hundreds of them and let everyone play in a different lane. Might have to work for your fun but rewarding.
Hard: Valve leave ALL the floaty toys IN the pool and kick people in while the people trying to swim laps collide with the people playing. Want to make a game out of your masochism? Lets do this.
If I was Valve or Riot, I'd be just a tiny bit concerned. But in the end it depends what experience you want I guess.
Easy: Blizzard just kind of go 'pools open!', give everyone 3 different floaty toys to play with and let them have at it in a shallow but entertaining experience.
Intermediate: Riot kind of open the pool up to people one at a time and ask them to choose which floaty toys they want out of a mess of hundreds of them and let everyone play in a different lane. Might have to work for your fun but rewarding.
Hard: Valve leave ALL the floaty toys IN the pool and kick people in while the people trying to swim laps collide with the people playing. Want to make a game out of your masochism? Lets do this.
The DOTA2 player in me wants to point out: DOTA2 isn't a MOBA.
Anyway, played Heroes and it just doesn't grab me. It suffers from the same problem as LoL in that you have to buy characters and to me that makes the entire idea of it being played competitively absurd in the extreme due to the inherent imbalance in "have" vs "have not". And it just feels...well that there's less to it.
Good fun to play about with now and again, but honestly just no staying power with it. I can't play for more than a couple of rounds at most. With LoL I can sit down for a good hour or two and just play ARAM but Heroes is...eh its okay I guess.
Anyway, played Heroes and it just doesn't grab me. It suffers from the same problem as LoL in that you have to buy characters and to me that makes the entire idea of it being played competitively absurd in the extreme due to the inherent imbalance in "have" vs "have not". And it just feels...well that there's less to it.
Good fun to play about with now and again, but honestly just no staying power with it. I can't play for more than a couple of rounds at most. With LoL I can sit down for a good hour or two and just play ARAM but Heroes is...eh its okay I guess.
What makes it 'not a MOBA' to you? LoL's pretty much the only game that actually claims that title, with HOTS prefering 'Hero Brawler', etc. It's kind of a nebulous term, I always saw it as 'you got the lanes and the minions and the guys on each team who fight each other and stuff' in the general sense.Lightspeaker said:
To be frank, I do prefer the term "ARTS." I know that "MOBA" is a more inclusive term, allowing its application for games like Smite, but "ARTS" seems more specific to DotA/LoL/HotS/whatever, given the control scheme.
Anyway, played DotA 1 back in the day, played Strife for the first time today. Insert calls of "dirty casual" at your leisure.
Anyway, played DotA 1 back in the day, played Strife for the first time today. Insert calls of "dirty casual" at your leisure.
Just remember guys, different does not necessarily equal good or enjoyable.
To elaborate, I realized about a couple months or so ago that I didn't like Heroes of the Storm. I got int the beta when the Escapist was doing a key giveaway, and I started playing lightly but regularly. Life got in the way so I had to take breaks from gaming, and I realized that while I was going back to other games like LoL, I just felt no real desire to keep playing Heroes. I'm not entirely sure what it is about the game, although I think I have a couple of ideas why I didn't like it (shared exp doesn't feel rewarding, progression is to slow, and where unique character ideas are tried they are either poorly implemented or poorly balanced, and the random maps both don't feel different enough while simultaneously either helping or screwing certain characters). Maybe you'll like HotS and that's fine, but for me it just wasn't engaging like LoL or DotA can be.
To elaborate, I realized about a couple months or so ago that I didn't like Heroes of the Storm. I got int the beta when the Escapist was doing a key giveaway, and I started playing lightly but regularly. Life got in the way so I had to take breaks from gaming, and I realized that while I was going back to other games like LoL, I just felt no real desire to keep playing Heroes. I'm not entirely sure what it is about the game, although I think I have a couple of ideas why I didn't like it (shared exp doesn't feel rewarding, progression is to slow, and where unique character ideas are tried they are either poorly implemented or poorly balanced, and the random maps both don't feel different enough while simultaneously either helping or screwing certain characters). Maybe you'll like HotS and that's fine, but for me it just wasn't engaging like LoL or DotA can be.
I think it would only work if it was different from DoTA though. Right now there are enough DoTA clones on the market for the type of game it is, with most of the market dominated by DoTA 2 and LoL, which have a natural monopoly on the more competitive and casual parts of the niche respectively.inu-kun said:
Given how the margins are not as high as people think for these types of games (some even speculate that DoTA and LoL may actually be in bad financial situations right now) coupled with the already numerous DoTA clones on the market, it's probably a good idea to try and have Heroes of the Storm be different from other MOBAs.
Skill ceiling determines how long people will stay with a game.Charli said:
Counter Strike has a huge one, (for example) and that's why it has survived and stayed relevant for as long as it has. It's why CoD's pro scene is relatively tiny and why that series of games almost necessitates a yearly release because it is relatively shallow.
HoTS could make it, but it'd be because of Blizzard. There are many, many such DoTA clones/MOBAs that had interesting twists on established formula but have failed to stay afloat, because LoL and DoTA 2 have such huge sway in the market. It'd be due to Blizzard's reputation and support that HoTS will make it, less so due to its mechanical merit because as far as I know, the game isn't very complicated.
Everyone with even a little bit of knowledge knows that the correct terminology is: Aeon of Strife Styled Fortress Assault Game Going On Two SidesHawki said:To be frank, I do prefer the term "ARTS." I know that "MOBA" is a more inclusive term, allowing its application for games like Smite, but "ARTS" seems more specific to DotA/LoL/HotS/whatever, given the control scheme.
Anyway, played DotA 1 back in the day, played Strife for the first time today. Insert calls of "dirty casual" at your leisure.
You mean an ASS..oh...oh...Kyber said:Everyone with even a little bit of knowledge knows that the correct terminology is: Aeon of Strife Styled Fortress Assault Game Going On Two SidesHawki said:To be frank, I do prefer the term "ARTS." I know that "MOBA" is a more inclusive term, allowing its application for games like Smite, but "ARTS" seems more specific to DotA/LoL/HotS/whatever, given the control scheme.
Anyway, played DotA 1 back in the day, played Strife for the first time today. Insert calls of "dirty casual" at your leisure.
...yes, I did write out the acronymn before hitting backspace, thanks for asking. 0_0
HotS is a great SC2 expansion. I actually liked Kerrigan's campaign much more than... Wait, it's not about Heart of the Swarm? Oh, Heroes of the Storm. Right, let's try again.
HotS is an okay MOBA. Its focus on gameplay with the removal of items and individual levels does make it faster and more eventful; full team brawls before the creeps even meet being common. This isn't all positive though, since its leveling system doesn't offer nearly as much flexibility as the traditional item build/shop system does. HotS focuses too much on teamfights and ends up being a shallow experience that, while fun for a few days, grows repetitive quickly.
Bottom line is that it's a much simpler game than LoL or doto. Whether that's good or bad depends on the person playing it, as not everyone wants the same thing. Personally, its simplicity doesn't appeal to me.
HotS is an okay MOBA. Its focus on gameplay with the removal of items and individual levels does make it faster and more eventful; full team brawls before the creeps even meet being common. This isn't all positive though, since its leveling system doesn't offer nearly as much flexibility as the traditional item build/shop system does. HotS focuses too much on teamfights and ends up being a shallow experience that, while fun for a few days, grows repetitive quickly.
Bottom line is that it's a much simpler game than LoL or doto. Whether that's good or bad depends on the person playing it, as not everyone wants the same thing. Personally, its simplicity doesn't appeal to me.
The video is an ad for HoTS rather than any sort of constructive comparison. Listen to the end at around 7:08.
A lot of DOTA2 players refuse to class DOTA2 as a MOBA because MOBA is a term manufactured by the people who tried to kill DOTA All-stars. So its viewed in the same way that "Champions" and "minions" are: they're LoL terms, not DOTA terms. DOTA2 is a DOTA-like, or AoS-like if you're feeling retro, or if you don't like the "x-like" format then an ARTS.Uratoh said:
Also because MOBA is a damn stupid acronym that tells you nothing about the game. Quake and Team Fortress 2 are technically MOBAs; because they're set in arenas that you do multiplayer online battle in.
Although interestingly there was an article over at PC Gamer a few months ago arguing that it quite literally isn't a MOBA; not just a terminology thing but that it can't be compared to stuff like LoL or Smite:
http://www.pcgamer.com/three-lane-highway-why-dota-2-might-not-be-a-moba/
Wow, Blizzard is really going for the hard sell. They must be pissed so few people actually watched their tournament on ESPN 2.
I don't know, for me lot of the features are only there for the sake of being different. The shared XP pool is as much of a good idea as a potential disaster (PUGs ftw), and no items seems less options. And less hillarious lulz. Blink Dagger Pudge hunting for people without TP scrolls was the best thing in the original DOTA ever.
I am still waiting for a full Werewolf Transylvania game, my second favourite WCIII mod after DOTA.
I am still waiting for a full Werewolf Transylvania game, my second favourite WCIII mod after DOTA.
We use stupid acronyms for all kinds of game related stuff though.Lightspeaker said:
Hell the big term, MMO, can quite literally be applied to any game with an online component dependin on how far you want to stretch massively. I've long thought of Diablo 3 as an MMO because of the way you interact with the community in that game. Its like if you were just playing dungeons in WoW using the LFG tool. You hop in to random peoples games, play with them for a set amount of time, hop out and play with other random people.
CoD and Battlefield are MMO's as well.
Specifically about mobas though, it wasn't until the big kerfuffle betwenn Valve and Blizzard where Valve tried (and succeeded) to trademark the name DotA that I saw moba in use more often. Every single person I've ever talked to before that happened has called them DotA games, because that's what the genre was considered back then. The actual genre was literally synonymous with the game that popularized it (like post-its and kleenex).
Its like how games get classified as GTA like simply because they're sandbox crime games.
Really? Blizzard is the one with the IP that's more teamwork and less twitch/micro intensive? I'll be damned, I wouldn't even have considered such a thing.
I should probably give it a try and see if I can migrate my group over, our individual skills are a tad inconsistent.
I should probably give it a try and see if I can migrate my group over, our individual skills are a tad inconsistent.