Played through the tutorials and yeah, this is definitely a game for me. I just hope I can find folks who are either similarly inexperienced or supernaturally patient for the first couple of games until I figure it out.
I was responding directly to SenorBeef’s comment about it being an entry to the genre.
With quests, it’s really not that bad.
Above I said I have 20 or 30 heroes without having spent any money, over the course of I think four months of play, but I later remembered I did spend I think $10 to get a single stim pack early on (the one that lasts seven days). This did greatly accelerate my early acquisition rate. But many people are totally happy with the pace just relying on quests. (And since that week, I’ve been happy with the no-stim-pack pace as well.)
Alright, so I like it. I like the way the maps are designed, the dynamic events system works pretty well and makes an interesting effect on game flow. I’m still not sure if it’s too casual on a tactical level, I need to play more of it. The general fast pace and flow of the battle is pretty satisfying. I like that there (so far) don’t seem to be abilities that you can directly use to target a hero, but you have to aim and hit. The stun hammer for Muradin, for example, in other games might just be a “click this hero and stun them”, but you have to actually aim and make sure it crosses their path - and you can get a talent to make it stun two, making aiming even more important. I like that sort of mechanic to re-insert some of the tactical skill into player vs player fights that’s lacking in terms of creep mechanics.
I would recommend the $5 starter bundle they have going right now, I’m not sure when that sale ends. But you get Muradin, the Keeper of the Grove guy, and Raynor, a mount, and a one week booster pack for $5. Muradin is my favorite hero so far and the keeper of the grove guy seems like a much better healing hero than the farseer shaman guy. Raynor is kinda boring, but his attack speed bonus is one of the better pushing buffs in the game.
I just played through the tutorial and one training game.
Yeah, there are so many heroes to choose from. I’m lost. I’ll probably play a training round with each of the free ones and see not just who I like but which role calls to me.
Any general tips? What’s the best way to get experience?
The entire team gets experience as long as at least one of their heroes is closeby when an enemy dies, so it’s best not to go roaming unless you’ve got an objective in mind.
Those are called skillshots. In HotS, some attacks are and some aren’t skillshots.
Eats, shoots, and leaves. It sounds like you’re saying that the Keeper of the Grove guy is named Muradin, and the mount is named Raynor.
Yeah, I phrased that badly. Muradin, Malfurion, and Raynor are the heroes. You also get an armored horse mount and a 7 day experience booster, all for $5. The game in general is way overpriced, but that seems like a pretty reasonable value.
It would appear you never get a discount for the gold value of heroes, right? So even if a $10 hero is featured that week and is 50% off, it’s still 10,000 gold. Seems like the most efficient use of money in that case, if you’re willing to spend a little, is to buy your 2000-4000 gold priced heroes with gold and wait for featured sales on your $10 heroes. Also, play the free heroes that week over the ones you’ve bought at least while you’re starting out - getting higher levels with heroes gives you gold, so get the gold on the freebie heroes first, then use that to purchase more heroes.
The monetization isn’t awful but it does seem greedy to me. It seems like with all the cosmetics they’ve got on there they could do a DOTA 2 style model. $10 is kind of ridiculous for a hero - you buy 5 (of the 25 and growing) heroes and that’s the full price of a game.
The real-money prices are ridiculous. They’ll put out a new costume or mount and it’ll be 15 bucks. Then I remember that this is Blizzard, and people regularly drop 25 dollars for WoW mounts. I guess you can’t blame them for knowing their customer base.
I would spend real money on DOTA costumes from time to time, but that’s because you could buy them for just a few cents on the steam market. There’s no chance in hell Blizzard will do that for heroes, so I’ll stick to the free stuff.
So, is it just me, or do the bot AIs suck? I’ve only played training matches so far, and I’m facestomping through them, because the bots don’t ever seem to use any of their abilities. Are those just easy-difficulty bots, or is that the best the game can throw at me? I can’t see any option to increase their difficulty.
And it doesn’t seem too tough to get enough gold to buy a few heroes-- It looks like the way to go is to spend a few weeks sampling free-rotation heroes, and then buy one or two that you like. Of course, you don’t even need to buy them until they go off of the rotation.
Raynor seems to have been in the free rotation two weeks in a row, now, and he’s also the hero used in the tutorial. Does he ever go off rotation? If not, is there any reason to buy him?
The skillshot mechanic takes some getting used to: When I use an ability and click on the ground, I expect my character to move close enough to that point to reach it, and then use the ability. Instead, the character just shoots in that direction from where he or she is standing. This isn’t too much of a nuisance for Raynor’s penetrating round, which usually has a long enough range anyway, but it’s a pain for Jaina’s cone of cold, which is fairly short. On the other hand, all of Malfurion’s abilities seem to work like I expect.
The bot AI is terrible, yes. A lot of people grind daily quests by playing co-op bot matches because they rarely take much more than ten minutes.
Yeah, playing against the AI became not fun very, very quickly. I’m crappy at this game - I love it but I’m terrible at it - and I’ve never once been in even distant danger of losing in any of the training games I’ve played against the AI. I guess I’m going to have to dive in to the PVP world… but I’m going to be absolute garbage at first, because the computer is not training me for anything more challenging than click-to-win.
Yes, the bots can be truly idiotic. They’re for farming dailies or getting the hang of a new hero and not much more.
Raynor does come off free rotation. He wasn’t available two weeks ago.
Some skillshots work like that (you fire in the direction of the cursor) and some you run up to. It depends on the type of skillshot. Raynor’s shotgun and Jaina’s cone are both directional (that is, not targeted at a location or creep/hero). Malfurion’s root is the other type (location targeted) and he’ll run into range to get it off on the location you selected.
You can find me under my screen name above+#1224 if you have any questions. We can play a cool if youd like, or team up.
Raynor isn’t free this week. Maybe you own him? The little HOTS icon over the portrait indicates it’s on the free rotation.
Free heroes are Kael’Thalas, Sgt. Hammer, Valla, Kerrigan, Brightwing, Chen, and Malfurion.
I like malfurion quite a bit, his innervate trait is extremely useful to a mana-heavy team, especially if you take the talent that lets it be used every 20 seconds. Haven’t played any of the others.
I’m considering purchasing Jaina with gold. I’d generally rather get a bunch of cheaper heroes than one expensive one, but I’m really good with her.
I noticed the bundles and sales didn’t change. I had assumed they changed every week with the heroes. When do they change, and how often?
OK, that’s odd. Apparently Raynor’s on free rotation, but only for practice matches, not for any other mode. Maybe that is just because he’s the tutorial character, after all?
And it also turns out that I was actually playing against the easy bots. Training mode is apparently different than versus AI mode, even though superficially they look identical: The versus AI mode bots are still pretty weak (I can usually win against them, despite being a complete newb to this game and not too great at Dota 2 either), but they at least have the basics down (like, they actually use their abilities).
I tried this game, and I like it, but the UI is very confusing. I’m sure it will make sense eventually, but at first I’m just lost lost lost.
Can you play an AI game just by yourself? I tried to play an AI game, and I thought it would be just me, but I ended up playing with a bunch of other live players. It turned out fine, but I’m still learning how to play the game.
The mass of characters is overwhelming for my teeny tiny brain. I was playing a healer and having to click on teammates was frustrating. Either they would scamper away or they would be all on top of each other so I didn’t know who I was clicking on. Is there a better way that I don’t know about?