by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Artifacts are coming to Heroes of the Storm, but the community doesn’t seem too happy about it. The first wave of community response came both quick and strong,  and overall artifacts have had an overwhelmingly negative reception. But if you read the official blog, this should come as no surprise. One of the key pieces of information that Blizzard revealed today is that you are supposed to spend gold to unlock the Artifact slots, spend more gold on buying each artifact, and then spend some more gold to upgrade each artifact to its max rank. All of this simply because, and I quote:

“This new system will offer players a variety of new and compelling choices to add further depth to their heroes and how you play them, and it will also give you new things to spend your hard-earned Gold on that will further progress your Heroes in a meaningful way.”

I don’t need to write more about how this is bad for the game. It’s been done to death by now.

That in mind, let’s put all the rage aside for a moment and focus on the positives. Going back to that quote from the blog post:

“This new system will offer players a variety of new and compelling choices to add further depth to their heroes and how you play them…“

Compelling choices and depth is exactly what Heroes of the Storm could use more of, but compromising the simplicity that makes Heroes so appealing just isn’t the way to go about it. The positive is that Blizzard knows that in its current state, Heroes lacks a bit of depth. Sadly, their answer to the problem isn’t quite satisfactory.

First of all, plain bonuses aren’t that compelling.

• Primal Ruby
  • Increases basic attack damage by 1% per rank, up to a maximum of 10% at Rank 10.
• Skyfire Emerald
  • Increases speed of basic attacks by 1% per rank, up to a maximum of 10% at Rank 10.
• Bold Amethyst
  • Increases maximum health by 1.5% per rank, up to a maximum of 15% at Rank 10.
• Brilliant Topaz
  • Increases ability damage by 1% per rank, up to a maximum of 10% at Rank 10.

Those type of bonuses look just like the old talent trees of World of Warcraft… the same talent trees that were replaced because they were deemed too boring and often not really a choice. If artifacts are really going to become a thing, they really need to have build-defining bonuses. The dev team could really learn a lot from some of the other Blizzard games; just take a look at the new WoW talent grids and Diablo 3’s Legendary Gems to see the types of bonuses that can really have a deep effect on your gameplay experience. They might have to rethink their entire arsenal of artifacts, but the game is likely to be better for it.

How about:

• Get X% mana back when you kill an enemy hero?
• When you destroy an enemy building you get X% Increased Damage for Y seconds.
• Whenever you heal an allied hero you are also healed by X% of the amount.
• Increase your mounted speed by X%, when you dismount your next attack done within the next Y seconds is increased by Z%

Those are just wild ideas of the top of my head. I’m sure that if Blizzard puts their minds to it, they can come out with a lot of compelling choices. Right now we have a lot of plain options, plenty of boring options, and just a bit of ‘meh’ options.

Pre-Game Choices vs In-Game Choices

Flexibility is one of the things that is really awesome about Heroes of the Storm. With the way talents work, you can currently choose how to play your character depending on both your team’s and the enemy’s team compositions. You can even alter your play style based on the current flow of the game. Choosing your artifacts before the game starts, however, shoehorns you into a rather set, rigid spec, effectively undoing the flexibility of the talent system. When you think that you are not only tasked with the choice of which artifact to equip, but also with which artifacts to buy and level up, the entire artifact system is completely counter-intuitive to the current design philosophies. Moreover, the optimal choices on what to buy and improve are likely to be dictated by spreadsheets and theorycrafters.

If you really want these artifacts to be compelling choices you got to make them strong and significant, hopefully even build-defining. But if they are impressively strong like that, then choosing the different artifacts before the game is undoubtedly going to guide you on a set path and you will lose almost all hope of being both an optimal and flexible hero. Making the artifacts strong and interesting will also make them pretty much a requirement and will frustrate players who will constantly see the impact of these artifacts in matches, yet can’t devote enough time to unlock all of them on their own.

So how do we tackle those problems? For starters, get rid of the grind. Any type of artifact should be easily unlocked and readily available. If artifacts are to be chained to some sort of progression, I’d much rather have Artifact availability tied to account level.

Second, you need to be able to change your artifacts after you see which map, teammates, and enemies you have. Maybe you could do that on the small window between entering the game and the fight actually starting. Maybe you set up three choices for each slot before the game and then choose between them at certain levels, just like they were talents. Artifacts are undoubtedly the way in which Heroes of the Storm plans to replace the items present in similar games, but remember that in other games items are bought during the game, not before it starts.

If you are wondering what would then differentiate artifacts and talents, just consider that you will get the chance to use well-known items from all of Blizzard’s universes and that you will also be able to use them on any character. Who doesn’t want to be a Doomhammer-wielding Diablo?

Reward vs. Punishment

Blizzard has expressed its intent for this to be a rewarding system, yet artifacts seem like a tool to punish casual players in its current iteration. One might say it is a matter of interpretation, but I’m pretty sure that the reward that players can get from buying a new artifact or improving their existing ones will be heavily outweighed by the frustration of being crushed by players who have already farmed all of their artifacts. It will also become a problem when new players are searching for hero guides and the guides assume a certain artifact loadout that you just can’t replicate.

Thus far, Heroes of the Storm has been a game with a great and even genre-redefining design philosophy. At its core, it’s a really fun game to play casually. Having a good, enjoyable gameplay experience should be reward enough for the time spent playing the game. If you really want to incentivize players, you can have interesting cosmetic rewards for ranked play and also really put an emphasis on the eSport facets of the game. By that logic, I really understand trying to add more depth to make competitive and professional play more interesting.

Please though, don’t force casual players to spend countless hours behind the screen just to have a shot against those players with more time on their hands.