heroes Heroes of the Storm - What's Next

[Stan 5,248]

Game Director Alan Dabiri talks about new features coming to Heroes of the Storm in December 2017!

• By the time Hanzo goes live, the game will have 75 Heroes
• The team continues to rework old Heroes to bring them back to the meta

Current Anatomy

Blizzard is not satisfied with the current anatomy of release. Reworks are often than not overshadowed by new Heroes.

Future Anatomy

In the future, the anatomy will be more linear, allowing individual elements to shine.

Most Crafted Items Since Heroes 2.0 (by count/value)

Here are some fun stats of most crafted items since Heroes 2.0 launched.

Heroes in the Hiding

• It will be more clear, which Heroes are currently within Vehicles or Objects

Voice Chat

The long-awaited feature will be finally integrated into the game. In the screenshots below, you can see how the in-game UI for Voice Chat looks like. You can adjust the volume or mute other players from within the tab.

Target Info Panel

Even more information about Heroes will be available to all players in the new target info panel.

Performance Based Matchmaking

• The next update to the matchmaking system is coming mid-December
• MMR will take into account Individual performance of players

2018 Updates

Camera

• Camera updates are coming. The devs are increasing camera height to enhance team fight clarity. As a result, the game should be easier to read

Stealth

• Stealth visual will be updated soon
• Currently, it's more of an eye test to spot a Stealth Hero. Blizzard's shifting away from that
• In a future update, it will be a lot easier to spot stealth Heroes while they are moving, but Blizzard is internally testing making Stealth Heroes completely invisible as long as they remain stationary
• Stealth Heroes are receiving various reworks.
  • Nova has a new active ability to instantly stealth.
  • Gains +15 % stealth move speed.
  • Snipe damage will be reduced, but Snipe Master is made baseline.

Lane Updates

Ammunition

• Structures will have infinite ammo. to encourage players to play more offensively.

Structures

• Truesight will be added to forts and keeps. Structures now reveal any stealth Heroes in sight, due to Heroes like Abathur or Murky.
• Blizzard's removing certain structures.

Regeneration Globes

• To make the laning phase more important and reward smart laning, globes will now disappear in 4 seconds.

Minions

• Strength of minions will be increased

Map Mechanics

• Objective notifications will now be provided earlier.

Mercenary Updates

• To help create strategic advantages for players, Blizzard's giving Knights, Hellbats, and Siege Giants each their own respective updates.

All the changes above will not increase game duration. The plan is to launch the update in December, before the next Ranked Season.

Let us know your thoughts about the update in the comments below!

[Valhalen 1,485]

Structures with infinite ammo is... Concerning. I'm not sure if it'll help or not. But it's worth a shot.

[Kaelos 74]

RIP stealth characters so much

[Laragon 269]

21 minutes ago, Valhalen said:

Structures with infinite ammo is... Concerning. I'm not sure if it'll help or not. But it's worth a shot.

Really curious about this impact. It will slow the game down, because solo pushing is MUCH less impactful. But is that a good thing.

[HenrySteinway 20]

Shouldn't they slightly move each fort to centered it on a lane? I'll miss those lone towers tho.

Pushing is a piece of cake now, a boring specialists' job, so I'm even glad that they gets rid of ammo.

I read that healing spheres will be working to both teams? No mentions of it.

[Caldyrvan 377]

Oh this will be fun for globe gathering quests :D

[MZLICH 43]

Even If they buff stealth heroes I wouldn't take them if they lose their current stealth style!! That was reason stealth heroes could do something because people couldn't realize that they are in danger..

so blizzard can remove stealth name if they wont be stealth by real mean and replace it with *untouchable till you hit them with ability*  BLAH!

[Caldyrvan 377]

I was never a fan of stealth heroes, they are just good to make the game less fun for the opposing team, same as the excessive mobility of some OW heroes, I guess that's one of the reasons for the reworks of older heroes.

Edited November 4, 2017 by Caldyrvan

[Drachar 45]

Globes gone after 4 secs sounds very short, will see how that works out.

[gamerk2 20]

7 hours ago, Valhalen said:

Structures with infinite ammo is... Concerning. I'm not sure if it'll help or not. But it's worth a shot.

In theory, you'll see a lot more heroes that can siege well (Sylv/Azmo come to mind). 

Heroes that can tank shots (Zarya) or summon minions that eat shots (Zagara, Xul) will see their usage decline as they won't be as effective.

I'm OK with this honestly; it slows the game down which is something that's needed right now.  Also like the minion buffs (I expect a lot more minion kills).  Not sure on the regen globes, but considering how mana already becomes a non-issue for most heroes post level 10, I think it's a good change overall.

[positiv2 955]

I believe it is 4 seconds before a Globe turns into a neutral one, then another 4 seconds before it disappears.

The changes look great. Not sure about the stealth nerf, but the rest looks amazing! Can't wait to see them in action.

[Undeath 67]

So, they are fixing one of the most grave issues of the game by bringing individual performance factor into the rating calculation formula, and all ppl is concerned is f-ing infinite ammo and stealth? Wow. Seems everybody is fine with being stuck in gold with clueless scrubs who got carried there by accident.

I personally think it is the most important change in the list of this topic. Its implementation will make or break HL, but I believe it is a mandatory step for Hots simply because ranking in this game is undervalued: you can be a f-ing Master league and that doesn't mean shit, cause every league in the game is full of people who actually belong to much lower ranks because of legendary trash MMR system. High gold is full of 12 yo, clueless braindead zombies, and is a terrible painful torture to climb out of.

Now, the most important goal I hope this change will achieve is bring back the value to the leagues in the game. I mean, there must be a significant and noticeable difference in skill and game understanding between all leagues, skill level of population within a league must be homogeneous. This is not the case at the moment, there is absolutely no difference until Master league, and even then match quality is not at its best. I climbed from silver 4 to gold 2 and it all feels the same. In other words, I mean even if you don't jump from silver to diamond after the new MMR feature, at least your current league will stop being such a shit pile of garbage and Platinum, or even high Gold will feel like it's worth something.

Finally, why is it crucial to have individual performance in HOTS MMR while other games successfully get by without it? Oh it is so very simple: because while being team games, other mobas provide you with enough tools to single handedly influence the match in so many ways. Hots doesn't, you are as trash as the worst player on your team. I won't dwell on it any further, I'm sure you know what I mean.

Hope this improvement will change all these things and make HL enjoyable to play and climb through.

 

Edited November 4, 2017 by Jonar

[Godeyes 25]

I totally agree with @Jonar

There are 3 changes that are HUGE for HotS. And those are:
1. Voice chat - sth community wanted for years now. So much easier to communicate with ppl that "don't see" your pings and after lost fight 3-4vs5 tell you that "they thought you are there"...
2. Performance based matchmaking - Im so excited about this one. Hope it will change matchmaking the way @Jonar described.
and in the future...
3. Camera adjustment - much easier for new players to control the game, avoid ganks, etc.

Every other change is a minor detail imo. Yes - they will impact game in some way but it is strictly "technical" (well, camera adjustment is technical too to be honest ;) ).
BTW, those infinite shots on towers - won't matter imo. Every specialist/assasin after 7th lev is capable of destroying a tower in couple of seconds (when he engages with minion wave). Same thing for forts when full team attacks one after for example won team fight. It dissapears in seconds. And you don't even need minions to take the shots. The only thing that will change is the "slow pushing strategy" where you wipe enemy's minion wave and let yours do the "sieging".

Edited November 4, 2017 by Godeyes

[XeaKon 23]

I dont think infinite ammo will be a good adition. They should just make the ammo replenish faster and it should have almost the same effect without changing the game too much. The ammo is one of the details that makes Hots stand out from all the other mobas.

True sight should be added to the towers only or just to the tower next to the keep(so they dont remove it and to make it usefull).

The globes should remain unchanged so you dont have to hurry to pick them up(the globe quests are hard as they are).

Nova will finally reward mastery while she wont be as hard to escape from(thanks to the lower stealthed speed).

Camera zoom is a big improvement as it will remove tunnel vision and hopefully improve all players( more vision=more info=more strategycal moves/less errors).

They shouldn't change stealth though just make it glimmer slighty more when moving and remove the influence of mounts on stealth(more area to glimmer= more chances to be noticed).

Oh and Icy Veins crashes often on Windows Phone.

[Plergoth 277]

8 hours ago, Caldyrvan said:

Oh this will be fun for globe gathering quests :D

Mmmhm. This is going to make things like globe quests very difficult in team play with communication, let alone casual and pugs >.< Lots of changes here I am very sceptical of here... truesight? Aren't stealth heroes struggling already or are the reworks going to be roflwaffles?  

[SteveFrost 97]

WHAT? They realised Nova needs a 2nd rework cause first was an epic fail? I'm shocked. The little tidbits sound promising but if they reduce Snipe's damage even more, it will barely do any damage-you'll be better off auto-attacking lul. Hopefully, they'll add something (baseline or talent) that doesn't take ALL the damage you've stacked away (like Butcher has) if you miss just once cause that will make Nova inaccessible to most imho.

I liked the "find the stealth Hero" mini game, testing your reflexes and awareness. But this will hopefully make it easier to have counterplay options against them.

About lengthening the game time idk... That HotS is designed to be fast in nature is one of its unique elements I like the most. Perfect for people who want to play a moba *cough it's not a moba it is a hero brawler-blizzard cough* and don't have much time (which is the case for most nowadays). A single game in other mobas can go 60+ minutes. Of course I'm not totally keen on 7-minute blitzkriegs (have been at both ends) but I wouldn't like the fact that games in HotS rarely go above 20 minutes in general to change-you get the ocassional hour long game but this usually happens between pro teams (and it can be a great viewer experience).

Edited November 4, 2017 by SteveFrost

[Godeyes 25]

5 hours ago, XeaKon said:

They should just make the ammo replenish faster....

True sight should be added to the towers only or just to the tower next to the keep(so they dont remove it and to make it usefull).

The globes should remain unchanged

They shouldn't change stealth

I always adore reading statements like that. Statements from ppl that didn't spend even 1 MINUTE playing with announced changes but they already know what should or not be done. Kinda lame...

[Valhalen 1,485]

20 hours ago, Godeyes said:

I always adore reading statements like that. Statements from ppl that didn't spend even 1 MINUTE playing with announced changes but they already know what should or not be done. Kinda lame...

Yep, people hate changes. Even though they haven't experienced the changes to see how well it perform.

21 hours ago, SteveFrost said:

Hopefully, they'll add something (baseline or talent) that doesn't take ALL the damage you've stacked away (like Butcher has) if you miss just once cause that will make Nova inaccessible to most imho.

Snipe Master will be made baseline. I can only assume that it will work in that the damage is cumulative and won't be lost when missing, much like Chromie's changes to Sand Blast.

21 hours ago, SteveFrost said:

About lengthening the game time idk... That HotS is designed to be fast in nature is one of its unique elements I like the most. Perfect for people who want to play a moba *cough it's not a moba it is a hero brawler-blizzard cough* and don't have much time (which is the case for most nowadays).

I don't think that removing ammo will make games last much longer; it will just be a bit harder to solo lane, instead of just make minions soak all the ammo from structures. Plus, they said that minions will deal more damage, therefore they will have a bit more impact when attacking Forts to compensate the ammo removal.

I think Blizzard will also probably compensate this for Heroes like Xul, Zagara and Azmodan (who relies on summoned minions to soak damage from forts) by making their minions slightly more resistant to structure damage. But that is just a wild guess.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Valhalen

[Caldyrvan 377]

7 hours ago, Valhalen said:

I think Blizzard will also probably compensate this for Heroes like Xul, Zagara and Azmodan (who relies on summoned minions to soak damage from forts) by making their minions slightly more resistant to structure damage. But that is just a wild guess.

I thought the same. If they can endure one more shot from a tower/keep that would compensate it, I guess. But we have to wait and see :)

[gamerk2 20]

21 hours ago, Jonar said:

I personally think it is the most important change in the list of this topic. Its implementation will make or break HL, but I believe it is a mandatory step for Hots simply because ranking in this game is undervalued: you can be a f-ing Master league and that doesn't mean shit, cause every league in the game is full of people who actually belong to much lower ranks because of legendary trash MMR system. High gold is full of 12 yo, clueless braindead zombies, and is a terrible painful torture to climb out of.

I don't play HL anymore because of this exact problem.  Get into Gold by going 6-4 or so in pre-season, lose two games, then stop playing to avoid demotion.  And most of the games are just people who can't rotate, can't take camps, position poorly, and draft bad heroes.

[SteveFrost 97]

11 hours ago, Valhalen said:

Snipe Master will be made baseline. I can only assume that it will work in that the damage is cumulative and won't be lost when missing, much like Chromie's changes to Sand Blast.

I don't think that removing ammo will make games last much longer; it will just be a bit harder to solo lane, instead of just make minions structures soak all the ammo. Plus, they said that minions will deal more damage, therefore they will have a bit more impact when attack Forts to compensate the ammo removal.

I thought they'll take the talent as is even when baseline (with minimal changes). Don't really play Chromie (mostly in Brawls if I can't pick something more broken or a Hero I like teehee) but I think you didn't lose everything if you missed once.

The official post says these changes won't increase game time but many times official Blizzard posts failed to deliver on their word or then they went back on it and I see many people here expressing that concern. Perhaps it will be the case when both teams are really close in skill and evenly matched.

[Valhalen 1,485]

7 hours ago, SteveFrost said:

I thought they'll take the talent as is even when baseline (with minimal changes). Don't really play Chromie (mostly in Brawls if I can't pick something more broken or a Hero I like teehee) but I think you didn't lose everything if you missed once.

The official post says these changes won't increase game time but many times official Blizzard posts failed to deliver on their word or then they went back on it and I see many people here expressing that concern. Perhaps it will be the case when both teams are really close in skill and evenly matched.

Regarding Chromie, I meant cumulative damage infinitely on her Sand Blast. But since @Oxygen posted the reworks on Nova yesterday, it'll work differently (with a power spike reward once you reach X stacks), but it doesn't mention if missing shots makes you lose the stacks on Snipe.

[SteveFrost 97]

11 minutes ago, Valhalen said:

Regarding Chromie, I meant cumulative damage infinitely on her Sand Blast. But since @Oxygen posted the reworks on Nova yesterday, it'll work differently (with a power spike reward once you reach X stacks), but it doesn't mention if missing shots makes you lose the stacks on Snipe.

Yeah, because Snipe Master works like that and I assumed it's gonna stay like that since there's no telling otherwise (so far).

[Valks 2,388]

On 11/4/2017 at 1:24 AM, Kaelos said:

RIP stealth characters so much

My main and most played heroes: Nova, Valeera, Zeratul, Valla and Samuro. RIP me.

[Caldyrvan 377]

I think it's a healthy change. Hopefully we will see less players who draft a stealth even if it's totally pointless and not every QM with one or two stealth heroes in a team.

But if they become unplayable (I doubt it) I'm sorry for you, You obviously enjoy these heroes.

Edited November 7, 2017 by Caldyrvan