Heroes of the Storm: State of the Game Panel–Discussing the Future!
by JR Cook - 7 years ago show comments
Dustin Browder, Alan Dabiri, and Travis McGeathy held a panel to talk about what was added to the game and what may be coming in the future.
Dustin started the panel talking about what changed in Heroes of the Storm over the last year since Blizzcon. It may sound crazy to think about but 14 heroes have been added to the game since last Blizzcon and 4 new maps if you include The Lost Cavern. 19 Characters that were already in the game got Hero and or Talent reworks. There doesn’t seem to be any indication that the coming year will be any different!
Alan then takes over the panel to discuss internal data gathered and potential changes in the future based on that data. The team would like to make adjustments to the Hero League ranking system. The goal is to get more players into gold rank as a majority of they players seem to reside in silver. They would also like less of the player base in diamond as it should feel more exclusive of a rank. A test for a future season Hero League will likely be coming as well. The idea is to make Hero League solo only to make it feel like an individual progression goal. Then make Team League for groups of 2’s 3’s and 5’s. No groups of 4’s are possible because solo players will be in Hero League. They hope that this change will improve the quality of rank and lower queue times for groups of players.
Travis takes over the panel and discusses new features that might happen in the future. Personalized Stats is something that is being worked on at the moment. An example of that is a player might see something like “Great Job people playing Kerrigan in your skill bracket over the last 7 days average 11.7 assist per game and you got 21!” after a game.
Haunted Mines is coming back and soon! The way the Golem spawns will be changed and will now spawn in alternate lanes. This is to make the map not feel like one lane is only for pushing and the other is only for defending. The Golem will no longer spawn where it died instead a fixed distance from the core. This change will help prevent the snowball nature of the way the map used to play. They also replaced the bruiser camps with the sapper camps from Tower of Doom.
The layout of the mine was also changed. There will now be 4 entrances into the mine on the top side of the map. Inside the mine the skulls are more evenly distributed and the Boss is in the dead center of the new mine. Haunted Mines should be back to play before the end of the year!
The player and hero progression system will be getting changed in the future. Hero levels right now too grindy after 10 with infrequent rewards. Progression will be uncapped for both account and heroes. Your account level will equal whatever the combined level of all of your heroes are. They will also be trying to make it so that every hero level gets you some kind of reward and not just gold.
Hero Swaps in draft is something they want to do. It is likely to be tested in custom and tournament modes first before rolled out into the main game. Battleground rotations is something they do for events and would like to implement on a more permanent basis. Ranked play goals are to have a pool of 6-7 maps at any given time while quick match will still have all of the maps in the pool. The maps in the pool for Ranked play will be changing around once a month or 3 times a season.
The team would also like to integrate the Blizzard Voice Chat so it’s easier to talk to your team. They Easier to find party by making the party finder more intelligent by allowing the player to define preferred roles and match you with groups looking for those roles. Clan is something being discussed but nothing is developed at the moment. The hope is to create Clans that would allow Clan ranks and Clan advancement and maybe even things like clan vs clan tournaments.
Blackhearts Revenge is the new brawl mode. One team tries to defend against the ship and sink it while the other team tries to advance the ship and blow up the docks. It’s the first time an attack/defend map has been released and the team is excited to see how the community receives it.
The panel was then opened up for a Q&A from the audience. A questions was asked about PVE content similar to Dr. Junkenstein in Overwatch. It may be coming as their are a group of developers very passionate about that type of content but there is currently no set date. A questions was asked about players losing rank because of on or multiple disconnects before or during the match which doesn’t feel good. Loss forgiveness is on the list of things to do so that teams that are put at a disadvantage in ranked from disconnects are not punished for it.
