heroes Heroes 2.0 Reddit Q/A Summary: Apr 5

[Stan 5,252]

Developers have been answering questions about Heroes 2.0 over at reddit today and we bring you a summary of the most interesting answers.

• Rarity has a different meaning with the introduction of Loot Chests. Literally, it's the rarity of an item now.
• They don't plan to do announcers for every Hero.
• All cosmetic items from Loot Chests appear in your Collection and there are no plans to add special items that cannot be crafted.
• They'd love to support better synergy between mounts/skins for players with auto-select.
• Bringing Loadouts into the Collection system is on the radar.
• They want to add victory poses and animations from Overwatch, but first they need to do an investigation and explore technical issues.
• The team is very interested to introduce a Clan system. It would add a lot of social aspect to the game. There's no ETA just yet.
• Awarding XP to a Hero in Brawls is intentional, the beta score screen didn't get updated for it, but the live version of the game will have it fixed. In Arenas with multiple rounds, XP earned will be split between the Heroes you played.
• They would like to update older models, but there's no specific time frame.
• A Hero at the current level cap of 20 converts to level 55 with the experience curve used in the beta.
• Easy in-game use of emojis is a priority, but there's no specific solution at hand right now.
• The drop rate of Loot Chests in beta is close to what we'll see live, but there may be tweaks before launch.
• An official API is being internally tested, but there's no release ETA.
• The team's looking at ways to increase visibility into Armor (both permanent / temporary Armor adjustments).
• ETC was doing too many things. The devs felt the Attack Speed was the most vestigial component, as it was moderately hidden, and wasn't so strong as to be an obvious draft implication.
• Shards are earned from opening loot chests.
• No extra rewards if you receive duplicate items.
• There are no plans for a talent rework for the Lost Vikings.
• New Heroes won't have Master skins, there are still plans for Heroes to have launch skins, but whether they have a second skin is more flexible. 
• Devs have a lot of plans for new item types and doing tie-ins to HGC.
• No plans to adjust Greymane's trait, he's in a good spot balance-wise.
• Blizzard's exploring ways to show the UI for Skins in a more pleasing way.
• Contents for Loot Chests are rolled at the time they are first opened. It's your choice to open it at a later point.
• Taunts are self-limiting. If you're spamming it, you're likely going to get yourself killed.
• Taunts lock you in while doing them, Mastery Taunt VFX should not end up interfering with gameplay.
• The team's looking into opt-in like alternative ways of showing off Hero mastery during draft.
• Sprays and banners won't intrude on gameplay.
• There are no plans for a Raynor talent update.
• No major updates to matchmaking are planned, but improvements for Team League matchmaking are in the works.
• Healer reworks are aimed to move a portion of their "power pie" (what things they're strong at) out of healing and into utility, to give them more versatility and more ways to make plays and influence battles.
• Giving in-game UI customization to players is something the team has been discussing (like moving the mini-map from right to the left side).
• Seasonal and holiday-themed items won't be available in Loot Chests year-round. These items will be available only during the holiday they're associated with.
• The team's looking at allowing players to use target unit abilities on allies only (as this benefits healers the most).
• The idea behind Cassia's lower attack range was that they wanted to encourage players to be close to their targets while keeping the Avoidance trait active. This allows flexibility to threaten her opponent with a Fend at any moment and fulfills the fantasy.
• They're discussing map rotation and map unlock feature for future to help players with the learning process, but there are no details to share at this time.
• Alarak's certain "Mildly Popular" Level 4 talent is making it in baseline. Talent reworks for the favorite Tal'darin are coming soon.

[Laragon 269]

The clan system could be interesting, and makes sense. Much like a guild in WoW, you can only ever play with a portion that you interact with. Also gives a bit of a "safe space" to ask questions without getting trolled and flamed as you would in general.

Interesting clarification on the 20=55 level curve. Personally not overly concerned with the whole curve as long as this goes live soon. I'll get whatever levels their math already determined. But wow, that's over double!

Overall still really pumped for all this. Nervous of the clutter, but they figured it out for Overwatch and other games, so I believe they will manage.

[Valhalen 1,486]

"They don't plan to do announcers for every Hero."

I will be severely mad if they don't add The Lost Vikings as announcers. They added Murky, they HAVE to add The Lost Vikings.

Edited April 6, 2017 by positiv2

[Laragon 269]

6 hours ago, Valhalen said:

"They don't plan to do announcers for every Hero."

I will be severely mad if they don't add The Lost Vikings as announcers. They added Murky, they HAVE to add The Lost Vikings.

That's fair. They would be entertaining, but clearly not every hero needs an announcer cover. I feel like Morales, Leoric, and at least a hand full of others would be boring to most. Their in game voice lines aren't even clever.

[Plergoth 277]

Was hoping they would maybe think about changing the MVP system after a game. HotS isn't Overwatch, where the criteria for being an asset or a liability to your team is different in each. In OW, if you played badly, you will not get on the score screen, you probably won't get play of the game, and so on. On HotS, you could be the most trash talking, refuse to heal, show up for objectives, kind of person and still be on the mvp screen because you capped a bunch of merc camps, it's just bad. 

I'd much rather see that scrapped and have a system where I can upvote players for teamwork / cooperation, skill and friendliness, and upvote players on the opposite team as well. I'd like the actual voting to count towards something, and to be meaningful besides a gold star from a bunch of randoms, with far too much emphasis placed on the death stat. 

[BrightwingMain 26]

Alarak rework, and making double cross baseline sounds very good. Alarak in general had really poor talent balancing (some were terrible some were ridiculously overpowered and mandatory to pick up), and making some of his auto-include talents baseline and making some new talents for him sounds something he really needs. Gameplay wise he is in an "all right" spot, although his winrate is pretty trash. As Alarak is one of the highest skill floor heroes, I'm not worried about making him overpowered, would actually like for Blizzard to give him high power level to reward people who are good at the game with a hero that actually gives value for playing well. Even though we already have a lot of those "skill heroes" as melee assassins, more wouldn't hurt.

[Caldyrvan 377]

Funny, with all the stuff they are giving to us I would prefer they take away the emotes (in-game) and maybe scale down the in-game chat a bit and move it to a bit more suitable position.

[MurkyFelix 51]

1 hour ago, Caldyrvan said:

Funny, with all the stuff they are giving to us I would prefer they take away the emotes (in-game) and maybe scale down the in-game chat a bit and move it to a bit more suitable position.

I was thinking maybe if they did a VGS ping system like Smite but instead of pings (that stupid Kukus spam) they'd have the emotes appear in chat. That way the emote packs would make sense (the pack you would want displayed) and stuff. But I dunno, it seems like too much button pushing xp But yeah, if they could tone down the chat it would be nice. It's not fun to have dead people being bitchy while you're still stuck in a fight and it covers a good bit of the screen (right in the center too)

[Valhalen 1,486]

1 hour ago, MurkyFelix said:

I was thinking maybe if they did a VGS ping system like Smite but instead of pings (that stupid Kukus spam) they'd have the emotes appear in chat. That way the emote packs would make sense (the pack you would want displayed) and stuff. But I dunno, it seems like too much button pushing xp But yeah, if they could tone down the chat it would be nice. It's not fun to have dead people being bitchy while you're still stuck in a fight and it covers a good bit of the screen (right in the center too)

I think that Smite's ping system works for that game specifically, where you don't have a whole map view as HotS. If they added that ping system to HotS, it would be a huge mess. Honestly I think that HotS non-verbal communication is the best of all MOBAs, with very distinct sounds for "On My Way", "Danger", "Assist" and "Defend", whereas Heroes will only say something if you ping normally a specific thing (a Hero, structure, mercenary camp, etc).

I really hope they give us the option of customizing our entire UI someday, allowing us to move and scale elements.

Edited April 6, 2017 by Valhalen

[Skyewalker 20]

Do all things you acquire on the PTR translate to your live account when 2.0 goes live?

[InfernoRFU 125]

1 hour ago, Skyewalker said:

Do all things you acquire on the PTR translate to your live account when 2.0 goes live?

Nothing from PTR transfers to live.

[MurkyFelix 51]

2 hours ago, Valhalen said:

I think that Smite's ping system works for that game specifically, where you don't have a whole map view as HotS. If they added that ping system to HotS, it would be a huge mess. Honestly I think that HotS non-verbal communication is the best of all MOBAs, with very distinct sounds for "On My Way", "Danger", "Assist" and "Defend", whereas Heroes will only say something if you ping normally a specific thing (a Hero, structure, mercenary camp, etc).

I really hope they give us the option of customizing our entire UI someday, allowing us to move and scale elements.

Ah, I see what you mean, but I don't think I was all that clear. I meant that it would only put an emote into chat. So like (taking the syntax directly from Smite, it wouldn't work in HoTS for obvious reasons) VEL would put a laughing emote into chat; VVS would put a sad emote into chat etc. I guess I'm not explaining it very well but I didn't mean replace the ping system, I like the way it is in HoTS. I just meant that instead of pressing Return and typing or selecting an emote, you could use a quick button combo.

The UI customization would be awesome though I think if I changed anything now, I'd just end up confusing myself. But I would scale down the top bar somewhat in size