heroes NO HGC in 2019?

[Stan 2634]

A shroud of uncertainly looms over the future of HGC and Heroes Esports as a whole due to the lack of HGC updates for the upcoming year and many pro players as well as casters are either done with the game or transferring to other games.

Gillyweed (HGC Caster)

The well-known female HGC caster is moving to Rocket League in 2019.

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Trikslyr (HGC Caster)

Tim announced he won't be casting HGC in 2019 and he plans to make streaming his major focus.

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Tetcher (HGC China Caster)

Chris voiced his uncertainty on Twitter today, following the lack of HGC information.

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We're going to closely monitor any announcements, so keep an eye out on the Heroes news section!

[Brutalis 86]

Wouldn’t be surprised. Making a moba aimed towards casuals but trying to also sell it and make it work as an esport is a dumb idea. It cannot be balanced for both and, frankly, I never found HOTS enjoyable to watch especially compared to LoL or Dota 2.

[Dejo93 348]

Dead game

Shame, I actually enjoy it

[Arcling 214]

Don't have any interest in e-sports, however this does not bode well for the game's budget. For game to survive, they should really focus more on casual side, if many pros and commentators are abandoning it.

Edited December 10, 2018 by Arcling

[Primici 7]

Biggest shock to me with this Post is that Trikslyr is focusing on streaming.
I'm sure the guy has many talents, but streaming definitely isn't one of them!

[Laragon 217]

20 minutes ago, Primici said:

Biggest shock to me with this Post is that Trikslyr is focusing on streaming.
I'm sure the guy has many talents, but streaming definitely isn't one of them!

He regularly has 250+ viewers for pretty much any game he plays and pushes to 750+ whenever he plays hots and 1k+ if there isn't mewn or bambam on. Also has well over 1k subs, which is a big deal for any streamer. So even if he's not your taste, streaming is definitely a viable talent he has.

[Godeyes 24]

2 hours ago, Arcling said:

Don't have any interest in e-sports, however this does not bode well for the game's budget. For game to survive, they should really focus more on casual side, if many pros and commentators are abandoning it.

Focusing on casuals is what killed it in the first place.

NONE of the competitive players want to be matched with casual feeders/afkers/dontgiveafukers which happens in this game all the time. And who is keeping the game alive if not the DEDICATED player base? Casuals come and go and whenever sth catches their attention they will be gone in no time. But hardcore players stay for years and many games showed that already many times. But if you make a game to only drain the pockets...
I enjoy this game a lot but even dedicated players like me are exhausted.

Edited December 10, 2018 by Godeyes

[Plergoth 277]

I hope it's still happening, to an extent. The game must still be making the numbers or close to it? And since 2.0 it feels like a completely different game with ups and downs but definitely a lot of fun to be had and despite some uncomfortably dictated and cookie cutter metas, HGC has been really the only esport I've followed, on top of being a breath of fresh air after a few years of LoL. 

[greatCraft 29]

2 hours ago, Godeyes said:

Focusing on casuals is what killed it in the first place.

NONE of the competitive players want to be matched with casual feeders/afkers/dontgiveafukers which happens in this game all the time. And who is keeping the game alive if not the DEDICATED player base? Casuals come and go and whenever sth catches their attention they will be gone in no time. But hardcore players stay for years and many games showed that already many times. But if you make a game to only drain the pockets...
I enjoy this game a lot but even dedicated players like me are exhausted.

5 hours ago, Brutalis said:

Wouldn’t be surprised. Making a moba aimed towards casuals but trying to also sell it and make it work as an esport is a dumb idea. It cannot be balanced for both and, frankly, I never found HOTS enjoyable to watch especially compared to LoL or Dota 2.

I think many of you have casuals and more dependent on teamwork, team fighting mixed up. 

Brutalis: I guess you like watching people laning (killing mobs and collecting resources) more often than teamfighting? Balanced for both? Balance means mostly skill dictating the outcome of games. The HGC has teams and players that are consistently superior in ability every season. Have you really given HoTs a fair shot? Or are you speaking from your prejudices? 

Godeyes: You make many baseless assertions. 

 

 Even if HoTs is a superior product, players tend to be religious; they will stick to DOTA or LoL no matter what. 

Edited December 10, 2018 by greatCraft

[Arcling 214]

3 hours ago, Godeyes said:

I enjoy this game a lot but even dedicated players like me are exhausted.

There are dedicated casuals as well, meaning people who quite often play only a couple of games, mainly in QM, but aren't serious about competitive aspect. HotS initially was marketed as "hero brawler" and for more casual players, only later they started trying to somehow appeal to more competitive people and pros as well. These problems you described come from busted matchmaking, so far they didn't manage to really fix that. Afaik, many gm and master players complained about being matched with players from lower tiers, then they changed that, and many of them started having hour long queues or even longer. This resulted in even more of them quitting the game.

[lChronosl 157]

Same with the exp changes, I feel like most people are overreacting. Blizz's silence is unnerving, but not necessarily bad news. And a "dead game" wouldn't have such an active (even if a bit too much) community online, be it Reddit, Twitch or Forums.

For all we know Blizz hit some kind of snag with Activison or whatever, maybe budget cuts, and can't say anything until it's solved. I am sure the devs are itching to post explanations, and to assure people that all is well, but probably are being told not to.

Edited December 11, 2018 by lChronosl

[Brutalis 86]

2 hours ago, greatCraft said:

I guess you like watching people laning (killing mobs and collecting resources) more often than teamfighting? Balanced for both? Balance means mostly skill dictating the outcome of games. The HGC has teams and players that are consistently superior in ability every season. Have you really given HoTs a fair shot? Or are you speaking from your prejudices? 

You sound fairly combative about this but I'm a sod for misinterpreting tone via text on forums, but regardless I'd say I've more than given this game a fair shot. I've played hots for 3 years, was invited when the first lot of public alpha keys were given away - got given several infact. Played 1800 hours of Dota 2 but quit and haven't played the game since. Same with LoL. Thousands of hours, quit. HOTS is now the MOBA I've played the longest, and the most, and I play around 10-20 games a week. Admittedly, not as much as I did last year, because it's not as fun as it once was but still.

By far, the best MOBA to watch IMO is Dota 2 because the map is a lot bigger and fights last a hell of a lot longer. The tense moments are much more tense and the big wombocombos are far more impressive. Compare a 5 man Enigma Blackhole with a 5 man Warden's Cage and you'll see what I mean. HOTS fights are 10 seconds of rapid particle effects whereas Dota's are several minute long battles for better positioning and combos. Same is true for the laning phase. Sure, there's last hitting. But there's also insane outplays in midlane or fantastic 1v3 victories for the solo-offlaner who manages to time everything right to evade a gank - which takes a good 2 minutes of screentime and has everyone on the edge of their seat. The final moments of the TI3 Grand Final is the best bit of esport-viewing ever and HOTS has nothing at all that can compare to that million-dollar Dream Coil.

The issue with balancing for both casuals and top players is best exemplified by the 2017 changes to Stealth. Heroes like Valeera were absolute Quick-Match stompers against the right comps, which was most given the sparse amount of detection talents available, because casual players couldn't notice the fairly obvious shimmer stealth had. In pro games however, Valeera was *filtered*. Pros could see the stealth, could easily draft against her, and rendered the hero useless. So how did they balance stealth? They made stealth visible and made you untargettable. Lo and behold! All stealth heroes are still useless in pro games but QM players are happy because they no longer get oneshot by an invisible menace. That's not balancing for both at all.

Tobiwan demonstrating a typical teamfight in Dota. The reason this got traction wasn't the content but the way he managed to cast it so well.

ODPixel casting another fight - again, this is high skilled but not abnormal.

Million Dollar Dream Carl

Edited December 11, 2018 by Brutalis

[Amit 17]

8 hours ago, Godeyes said:

But if you make a game to only drain the pockets...

ActiMoney detected!! u.u

[CyberDVonaven 80]

22 hours ago, Dejo93 said:

Dead game

Yeah... right... 'oh dead game, doesn't have as big an audience as LoL or DOTA, dead game dead game...'

Someone explain to me how HOTS is a 'Dead Game' when it's played by a huge amount of people still. 

19 hours ago, Godeyes said:

Focusing on casuals is what killed it in the first place.

So what you're saying it was killed the day it released 3 years ago then? Cause I'm pretty sure it was geared towards 'casuals' from the getgo. And didn't start trying to be geared more towards pro and Esports till later on down the line.

19 hours ago, Godeyes said:

NONE of the competitive players want to be matched with casual feeders/afkers/dontgiveafukers which happens in this game all the time.

I would consider myself a 'casual'. Cause I'm only silver-gold rank and I play this game pretty much every other day for about 2-4hrs at a time. Sometimes longer if all my other HOTS friends are on too. Some of those friends are more of the 'dedicated' players you refer to (Plats, Diamonds & Masters). They can sometimes be a bit 'toxic' about feeling like I'm being a, as you put it, 'feeder/AFKer/don'tgiveafucker' since they're so much better of players and will *filtered* at me sometimes when we play and I'm not playing as competent as they expect.

That attitude will drive people away too you know. It makes me stop playing some nights when one or two of them are berating me a bit harder then usual. Now in fairness, other nights they're great and are the sol reason I keep playing.

15 hours ago, Brutalis said:

because casual players couldn't notice the fairly obvious shimmer stealth had

Speaking to this, I always had a problem seeing it on my screen while one of my HOTS friends had no problem seeing it. I wear glasses so my vision is depending on my glasses. His vision is good so doesn't have glasses or contacts or anything. Also another friend had a top line monitor and PC and never had an issue. I have/had a monitor I got on clearance at the time. And a PC that runs/ran the game on low-med graphics settings so it ran/runs smoothly. And yeah, I had problems seeing it.  So this was an issue on an individual level outside of the game. So they made adjustments to help with this and while some people felt it was unnecessary I felt it was a good change. And if it didn't matter at high levels of play either way for various reasons then sounds like it was a change worth doing. Also I still see Valeera and Zeratul murdering lots with ease when played well. But then I'm silver so I guess that's expected, right? *rolls eyes*. 

All this arguing aside

Overall people will get tired of anything if it's the only thing they do all the time. My roommate loves Diablo and plays it a lot lately, but he has to take a break from it for at least half the week or he gets sick of the loop of it all over and over and over. Honestly, I been taking a break from HOTS for longer days between lately myself. Hell, even the HOTS streamers and YouTubers take a break from HOTS sometimes and play something else. WoW has it's lulls too. Let's just hope the players come back to HOTS sooner rather then TOO much later. 🙂

[CyberDVonaven 80]

OH also, Gillyweed's (adorable cute self) didn't say she was leaving HOTS announcing did she? She just said she's going to be doing Rocket League. I mean it's not like HGC is a year round thing. Or that they go on at exactly the same time as one another... do they? Not like sports commentators are exclusive to one sport and can't do any other one OR ELSE! 😛

[Godeyes 24]

Quote

So what you're saying it was killed the day it released 3 years ago then? Cause I'm pretty sure it was geared towards 'casuals' from the getgo. And didn't start trying to be geared more towards pro and Esports till later on down the line.

Maybe this is true. Maybe this game is slowly dying from the very beggining because of the broken advertising/selling model ...

 

Quote

I would consider myself a 'casual'. Cause I'm only silver-gold rank and I play this game pretty much every other day for about 2-4hrs at a time. Sometimes longer if all my other HOTS friends are on too. Some of those friends are more of the 'dedicated' players you refer to (Plats, Diamonds & Masters). They can sometimes be a bit 'toxic' about feeling like I'm being a, as you put it, 'feeder/AFKer/don'tgiveafucker' since they're so much better of players and will *filtered* at me sometimes when we play and I'm not playing as competent as they expect.

That attitude will drive people away too you know. It makes me stop playing some nights when one or two of them are berating me a bit harder then usual. Now in fairness, other nights they're great and are the sol reason I keep playing.

By 'casuals' I mean people that play the game only for THEIR enjoyment.
People that don't want and don't need to leran the game. About heroes, about maps, about strategies.
People that write to you "reported" or "stop bitchin its only a game" when you try to give them some advice.
People that that don't give rats ars about 4 other players in their team.
People that always WHINE instead of getting better at the game (aka Chromie fans).

These I consider as casuals. I will always "forgive" my teammate after lost teamfight (because of him) if he can say sth like "Im sory guys, that was my mistake. Will try not to fuk up again". Because I know he understands it and he can admit that it was because of him. I respect that. I would be probably still mad but I wouldn't report nor trashtalk such person 🙂
And I NEVER connected rank in game to being casual. I saw many high plats with none understanding of the game because they were seeded from QM and I saw many golds that were very good at understanding map mechanics/shotcalling,etc. but they were ranking from the very bottom of bronze 5.

Edited December 11, 2018 by Godeyes

[lChronosl 157]

12 minutes ago, Godeyes said:

By 'casuals' I mean people that play the game only for THEIR enjoyment.

People that don't want and don't need to leran the game. About heroes, about maps, about strategies.
People that write to you "reported" or "stop bitchin its only a game" when you try to give them some advice.
People that that don't give rats *filtered* about 4 other players in their team.
People that always WHINE instead of getting better at the game (aka Chromie fans).

These I consider as casuals. I will always "forgive" my teammate after lost teamfight (because of him) if he can say sth like "Im sory guys, that was my mistake. Will try not to fuk up again". Because I know he understands it and he can admit that it was because of him. I respect that. I would be probably still mad but I wouldn't report nor trashtalk such person 🙂

I don't think this is the most commonly known meaning of  "casual". Those are examples stupid and borderline toxic behavior. Not to mention some of them would probably even argue that they are not casuals, but hardcore, and that's why they won't listen to the "casuals" (aka, anyone they would consider inferior or something).

By casual I assume most people mean players who don't invest their time and effort to climb ranks and/or win competitively. I would say there might even be "casuals" Masters players, as long as they think of themselves that way.

And this whole thread (as any similar on Reddit or anywhere else) are proof that HotS is not dead.

[ecO1 9]

For me the game gets less and less fun to play. Not because the gameplay itself is getting worse or because the heroes are not getting the reworks they need, but pureley because of how its matchmaking and ban system works or at least how it seems to be working. 
Players who are toxic get banned - and don't get me wrong, that is a good thing. However, at least thats what it feels like, players who afk or suicide are stil in way to many games and reporting them feels like throwing cotton balls at Diablo.
The next problem that I personally face is, that the matchmaking rules seem to be completely random. After not playing team league for 1 season and then winning 5 of 10 placement games, I got ranked in gold 3, with me being master in tl before the one season I did not play. This ruined teamleague for me. Since my request to adress this isue got ignored, I have barely played any teamleague at all. 

Then they ruined hero league for me. Simply by allowing solo players to play team league and therefore increasing the queue times for hero league to easily 5 minutes and more. Not only does it not make any sense to call something "teamleague", if you can play it alone, but also I don't see any reason to play that mode on my own, when there is a huge disadvanatage in being alone, compared to teams of more than one player. I get how this is a teambased game, but I'd stil like to play it on my own from time to time and stil being able to play competitive.
Then there is the matchmaking, whitch allegedly got fixed in qm. Last I played it, we got matched with only assassins and a Zarya vs a team with 2 supports and a Varian. Not only should this not work after those new changes, but also should this never happen at all. If there are 2 supports that are not premates, then why are they in one team if there could be one on either team. 
The next and final problem that i face is the already mentioned issue with casual players. 
I am arround level 1500 and spend alot of time, not only playing the game, but also reading and watching videos about it. From simple patchnotes to in depth hero analysis videos. Not saying that I am a pro or anything, but compared to those "casual" players who don't even read the patchnotes, there is a gap in knowledge. This gap has always been there and it will always be there. In all the ranks that I have been in so far, there were casual players and not only a few, even in hero league. 
Even though it is a good thing, that this game is so open to casual players too, it also causes issues. On the one hand, it can be frustrating to play a game that is constantly changing, when you only want to jump in and play. On the other hand, it can be frustrating to have a player in your game, that doesn't even know how to play the hero because he just wanted to try it, or because the patch notes were to long to read.
How to fix this? Easy, make quickmatch and unranked more apealing to casual players by adding rewards for them. Rewards that can be obtained easily by only playing a few games a week. And I don't mean gold rewards, no one cares about that any more. Give them some chests. Sure, less money for you, but you might get some players back.
And for competitive: fix hero league. Make it playable again for solo players. Change team league back to what it was, a TEAM based competitive mode, and not a solo game. 
And last but not least and probably the most difficult task: make a better mmr. One that does not put a player in master and then after not playing teamleague for one season 3 whole ranks lower. That is frustrating to say the least. 
So, rant over. Sorry but I've had that in me for a while now and I had to air it somehow. 
After all heroes is a game that I really love for the most part and I would really hate it, if it would die. 

[lChronosl 157]

Well... f@ck.

[TangentChaos 1]

On 12/10/2018 at 3:16 PM, Godeyes said:

Focusing on casuals is what killed it in the first place.

NONE of the competitive players want to be matched with casual feeders/afkers/dontgiveafukers which happens in this game all the time. And who is keeping the game alive if not the DEDICATED player base? Casuals come and go and whenever sth catches their attention they will be gone in no time. But hardcore players stay for years and many games showed that already many times. But if you make a game to only drain the pockets...
I enjoy this game a lot but even dedicated players like me are exhausted.

Since there is clearly no LACKING of passion, and incentive to those of us who LOVE HoTS, very much, I'm sure there are smaller groups who would be VERY interested with the right presentation, to fund/sponsor, HCG etc, why are we depending on Blizzard when Activision is driving the greed bus and corporations typically do not operate in the interests of the individual? Lets get away from that then? I don't have money to start a campaign here, but I'm sure we could find people who do, networking is a powerful thing;) Lets do it?!I just discovered this game! Why stop playing and doing what you do now (this is a generalized philosophical statement to apply to many ppl and things)? this seems from what videos I've watched, a great time to start discovering the game it looks so much better now. I don't want everyone getting all negative like they do with Wow, Diablo, and just quit. If everyone would stop quitting everything, I think things would normalize again. Extreme negativity and reactions don't usually beget great responses then the negativity downward spiral happens. This applies to just about everything. I'm so grateful for the time NotParadox, MFPally, Grubby, nubkeks, rhykker, lord fluffy, (icyveins, tentonhammer,etc) have taken with videos to help me play so much better than when I just showed up last month and played a few games with no idea, started searching, found all this. I'm TangentChaos#1131. I sincerely hope you they do NOT stop educating as I haven't seen much in new videos for HOTS, and we really need them with the changes to all the characters(redo the 2015-17 ones). If it wasn't for these videos, I wouldn't be having as much fun, spent as much time as I have on this, and I see a lot of value added. We gotta keep together here, and never quit, and don't let the negativity spiral suck the soul out of things so much, just ignore that *filtered*. ("the game is dead." "I hate that game, this game is a waste of time" type comments").

I've only played this for a month, sure but while I'm "casual" at this, Diablo, WoW, warcraft 3, etc I still take how I play and how it impacts others VERY seriously as I am a competitive person, and sincerely hope that interested parties use their networking resources to band together independently to show corporate companies that ruin everything what the point was of independent/grassroots communities in the first place.  That's kind of how Blizzard started out anyway, and how they got Activisions attention.

[lChronosl 157]

1 hour ago, TangentChaos said:

[...] I just discovered this game! Why stop playing and doing what you do now (this is a generalized philosophical statement to apply to many ppl and things)? this seems from what videos I've watched, a great time to start discovering the game it looks so much better now. I don't want everyone getting all negative like they do with Wow, Diablo, and just quit. If everyone would stop quitting everything, I think things would normalize again. Extreme negativity and reactions don't usually beget great responses then the negativity downward spiral happens. This applies to just about everything. I'm so grateful for the time NotParadox, MFPally, Grubby, nubkeks, rhykker, lord fluffy, (icyveins, tentonhammer,etc) have taken with videos to help me play so much better than when I just showed up last month and played a few games with no idea, started searching, found all this. [...]

Well said, sir. I second this, and also hope more people can see and understand your way of thinking.

Edited December 19, 2018 by lChronosl