by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Murky’s been a decidedly controversial hero since he was released. The adorable murloc has been difficult for teams to deal with, whether as an ally or an opponent. After numerous complaints and what were hopefully at least some constructive suggestions, the Heroes team made changes. Community Representative Trikslyr discussed these changes with Game Designer Kent-Erik Hagman, in an effort to be transparent with the community.

Bringing unique concepts and ideas to the Nexus is a goal that’s very important to the Heroes design team, and Murky is a true manifestation of that goal. After listening to feedback from the community, it was clear that this rather unconventional Hero might need a few tweaks to help him fit more naturally in the Nexus. Game Designer Kent-Erik Hagman stopped by to provide insight on the changes we brought to Murky in our latest patch. 

Before we begin, the exact changes to Murky can be found in our latest patch notes.

Trikslyr: Murky and his Egg were hit with a few adjustments this week. With the newest patch, Murky will be revealed for 10 seconds after his Egg is destroyed. Also, Murky and the practice of destroying his Egg are now worth some extra experience. What was the design team intending to surface with the changes mentioned above?

Kent: We definitely heard the community, and agreed wholeheartedly that the reward for getting Murky’s Egg was not worth the risk of hunting it. We hope this change will create some fun moments for the Murky player, who will now be very aware of when his Egg has been destroyed, and cause him to adapt his play when he is revealed. We also wanted to take this time to try and address the issue that killing his Egg is really a team moment. Your entire team will now be aware that Murky’s Egg has been destroyed, and that killing him is worth it! Hopefully these changes will get us that desired gameplay we’re looking for. If not, we will, as always, continue to iterate and re-evaluate until it is.

Trikslyr: Let’s take a look at Slime and the recent changes associated with the Murloc’s Q ability. What did the design team hope to achieve with these alterations?

Kent: There were a couple issues at stake here. First was an oversight on my behalf. In the past, during development, Slime used to stack itself when re-applied. This brought about some interesting gameplay in trying to survive long enough as Murky to apply multiple Slimes to an enemy Hero, and deal significant damage to them. However, it also had some major issues: No other damage over time abilities in our game stack, and we try to be as consistent as we can. We also ran into a problem with stacking slimes on Structures, and… Well, I think you can see where that could go bad ;-). So we cut that at the eleventh hour, but didn’t adjust the talents that played well into that build and playstyle. These changes are the result of us trying to rectify it, and make Slime builds much more viable and rewarding to play. We hope to see more Murky players out there directly engaging the enemy team.

T: How about Pufferfish?

Kent: We moved the “Out with a Bang” Talent down a tier to compete with Wrath of Cod, in order to force a variance in how players were using Pufferfish. Those two were often being picked hand-in-hand.

T: Murky’s Heroic Abilities got their fair share of attention as well. March of the Murlocs has been toned down a bit, while Octo-Grab received a little love. What were the Design team’s intentions with these modifications?

Kent: We really wanted to split the use cases for both abilities. We wanted to reduce the Team Fight power of March so it could shine more in its anti-Structure usage (in addition to reducing its power to destroying the Core almost on its own!). We also wanted to strengthen Octo-Grab to make it much more viable in team fights, and act as a more reliable stun for teammates to take advantage of.

Thanks to Kent for stopping by and giving us the low-down on Murky. Let us know what you think of the Murky changes in the comments below.