I would be very surprised to see a four-lane map unless it was crazy tiny or else had some kind of quick movement mechanic, but it’s not just because it would make Cho’Gall weaker (and you’re correct that it would).
A four-lane map would drastically increase the effectiveness of characters with global presence. Vikings, Dehaka, Falstad, Abathur, Azmodan, etc.*
Characters like these can, if used properly, leverage massive experience point leads by farming experience/pushing in unattended lanes, by hanging out in a lane while the enemy team is rotating to objectives and then simply teleporting across the map as the teamfight is starting, or by otherwise being able to identify unattended lanes and push them out from any point on the map.
A map with an extra lane would make these guys even more difficult to answer and would drastically change the game’s meta.
If you’ve played any ARAM, think about how useless the Vikings or Abathur feel there. That penalty is about how much *more *effective they’d be with an extra lane.
On the other hand, we already have a map that makes most specialists very nearly useless (Towers of Doom), so maybe they don’t care much about that sort of thing.
Towers of Doom doesn’t make specialists useless but it does change the way they have to operate and how the friendly team reacts to those pushes.
There will always be maps that are inherently better for some heroes and worse for others, but I definitely would not say ToD invalidates an entire class category.
Yeah, Towers of Doom doesn’t make specialists useless at all. Pushing is just as important on that map… in fact, even more so, since once you start losing towers and you keep needing to run between them to re-capture them, the game’s pretty much over. The towers are more spread out than the keeps in other maps so they’re harder to defend.
Check out the win rates for the heroes in plat/diamond/master play by map here. While Towers isn’t as good for most specialists as, say, Sky Temple, it’s usually in the middle of their win rates rather than the lowest. And it’s actually Zagara’s best map (and Murky’s second best).
I haven’t tried the 2.0 beta yet, but the subreddit is exploding about a few things.
Apparently Blizzard is capping the number of loot chests you can be retroactively rewarded with. Longtime players are saying they’re being “punished” for having played so much since newer players will gain rewards much more quickly. Since these players tend to have complete or nearly complete hero rosters, it means they’re just getting fewer cosmetic rewards than they might have. They’ve already gotten thousands of hours of gameplay, so I don’t particularly feel for them here.
Blizzard is also doing away with the experience gate on master skins. This is causing a much bigger uproar, and I’m fully on board. Master skins don’t necessarily mean you’re good at a character, but they do mean that you invested not only time (to get to level 10), but a substantial amount of gold, which you cannot directly purchase with real money. When I play Cho’gall, I get compliments on the master skin because players know it means I’ve put in the time on a difficult character.
They represent something special and I hope Blizzard listens to the community on this one.
Overall, I’m a little sad that Blizzard is moving to loot boxes and multiple in-game currencies. Blizzard did a great job making HotS not feel like the chintzy “free to play but spend money anyway” games which have flooded the modern gaming space. That will be gone with this new system.
God, these people on reddit are a bunch of whiney bitches. They keep going on that they’re being “punished” because they aren’t getting as much free stuff. Blizzard doesn’t owe them a single free box. You (generic you) got to play with your skin for as long as you played with it and you get to keep it. I honestly don’t get the whining.
I’m more sympathetic to the master skin, though. I’m not bothered by it because I only got masters that I think look cool and I don’t use some of them because I don’t want the other team to know that I know what I’m doing (Chromie, in particular).
My understanding is that gold will almost exclusively be used for new heroes now. I think. Chests will be purchased with gems.
I think I also saw that gold is used for rerolling chests, so maybe save your money for the occasional high-value chest (and double-check that I’m remembering right).
It’s easier to get the first few levels of a hero, and most of the experienced players already have most or all heroes up to level 5. So they no longer have the chance to grab those easy crates. Which means a new player (or a player who specialized in only a few heroes) will get many more loot boxes per time played as old players.
Imagine there were no free crates given back to them, and that everyone was just earning new crates starting now, but the guys who already played every hero some earned 1 crate per 3 hours but everyone else earned 1 crate per 1.5 hours. That would be unfair to the older players, right? That’s the complaint.
The 70 crates thing is an arbitrary way to try to stem off that complaint but it’s just that - arbitrary. They’re gaining those 70 crates, but at a cost of getting their next several hundred crates much more slowly than other players.
I suspect it’s not going to be as big a deal as it sounds, because they’re not accounting for the flattening of the leveling XP curve (1-5 takes longer, but 6-11 is faster, and all levels above 11 are the same as 10-11), but there’s still unequal treatment there.
One thing I haven’t seen (or retained) - will existing players get to keep the standard skin tints that they’ve already unlocked through leveling? Or am I going to go into 2.0 with one tint/character excepting the very few master/paid skins I have?
That’s rad, and it also means I think Blizzard is fine with the 70-chest limit.
One of these players complaining that about having leveled 50 characters to 10+ is also going to be getting a hundred skin tints that a new player will have to randomly unlock through chests. That’s not nothing.
One thing that would be very nice is if Blizzard also gave out a pile of shards to all players based on their new hero level, with unlimited growth but diminishing returns rather than a hard level cap. That would let everybody buy a few things for their favorite characters and everyone could go into the beta feeling like they’ve gotten something cool out of the switch.
I stopped playing before loot chests, so I’m not sure what the story is there, but the whole point of master skins is that you need to be level 10 to buy them. It gives you something to set as a goal. Why change that?
Yeah, the master skin is an indicator to other people that you’ve played that hero a decent bit and you like it enough to have gotten a 10k gold skin in it. It’s not completely reiable - there are lots of bad players with mater skins - but it’s a bit reassuring when someone highlights a hero with a master skin in the draft. Now I guess they’re going to award it like a random tint.
Incidentally, I hope this means they’re coming out with a lot of new tints. I always figured 3 was far too few - once you’ve done the character model, changing the colors around is trivial - an artist could come up with 10 different color schemes in a day. I always figured each character should have at least like 8 tints to help better personalize them.
They are - somebody on reddit made an imgur (or something) album showing off exactly what you’re describing for almost all the characters, though not all of the tints are on the basic skins - they also added tints for premium skins as well.
Though I suppose there’s no such thing anymore - just different rarities.
Loaded up the beta and, I have to say, the new announcers are really cool. I hope they do a lot more.
In DotA, you could use any announcer being used by any player in the match. This was especially nice since some of them were hard to come by. It would be cool if they do something like that here.
I’m really can’t get too upset about the cap of 70 boxes… free stuff is free stuff, and I played before knowing full well what I was getting for leveling up heroes at the time (just gold). Yeah, newer players will get some loot boxes quicker, but whatever, it’s just cosmetic stuff.
As long as all the skins (and unlocked tints) carry over, I’ll be happy. It’d be nice too if the mount tints were independent of hero level (so say if you got any hero to 9, you’d have the black horse tint unlocked for everyone).
The master skins change is a bit weird, but, meh. As long as they carry over and keep the skin, no biggie. But I guess I say that only having one or two. I never really cared about them showing “dedication” (since anyone can grind a hero to level 10 and still suck), just whether they looked better or not. And most of them were underwhelming (ooh, bigger shoulder pads and a dumb hat!)
The only downside for me is that I know I won’t drop any cash on loot boxes - I’ll pay money for a skin if I like it, but that’s because I 100% know I’m getting a skin. I’m not going to pay money for a lotto ticket. But Blizzard isn’t going after me, they’re going after their whales with shitloads of money and/or gambling addictions, so, their choice.
(Oh, and I guess I hope I can turn off emotes/sprays too since they’ll horribly clutter up everything)
If you haven’t played in a while, or even just interested, be sure to sign on next week. They’re giving every player a change to grab one of four themed bundles, each with about twenty heroes each, for free.
