I think that depth is probably the wrong description for what last hitting provides (it deepens the skill curve, widening the gap between skilled and unskilled players).
I think that there are features that last-hitting enables that do provide depth at high levels
I suppose I’d go along with this. It’s not just about the skill curve though. It dramatically affects how effective a given hero will be in lane if they’re matched up against a hero that can out last-hit them, either because of their base damage, their attack animation, or some other reason (eg OD’s Astral Imprisonment). So it does directly add depth by influencing tactical decisions about lane composition and whether/when to roam instead of contesting. I’m not saying this depth would be impossible to recreate in another manner, but it does exist.
I thought this video did a decent job of summing up the differences with no last hitting or items, etc. I haven’t played much LoL or DOTA2 but Heroes is looking a lot more interesting to me due to those differences.
I think last hitting is only a minor component of all those things, though. Whether a character matchup can result in one bullying the other out of the lane is more related to their general effectiveness against each other based on character abilities and player skill. Last hitting only enters into that really when you consider the snowballing nature of LoL and DotA and how the game becomes increasingly lopsided based on the tiniest imbalances in power. Last hitting as resouce competition within your own team does effect how everyone plays and builds, but that is directly responsible for the 0cs support metagame which I utterly loathe and is considered ironclad by basically the entire playerbase.
The items customizing characters does have a drawback vs character skill trees in that increasing the damage numbers doesn’t really change how the skills themselves function. The Ult Scepter in DotA is the closest thing, but that’s a half-measure at best that doesn’t really involve much of a choice beyond “Do I get it?” Then there’s the fact that you can look at someone’s items and see if they’re geared for tanking or being a glass cannon or a helpless support, but the reason you can do that is because 90% of items builds are mostly the same across all the characters in the game. For example everyone in LoL who is building mega attack damage gets IE and PD regardless of which character they are.
In Heroes, last hitting technically exists but has no impact on the game as there is no gold.
Can you elaborate on that? How does it manifest if there’s no gold impact? Just team XP?
Last hitting as resouce competition within your own team does effect how everyone plays and builds, but that is directly responsible for the 0cs support metagame which I utterly loathe and is considered ironclad by basically the entire playerbase.
I can definitely understand disliking the “0cs support metagame”, but I think 6.80 has gone a long way to making support play super-fun and more gank oriented. You don’t need CS to get gold any more, and most supports can now play really aggressive early game. They’ve toned down the support Midas meta that was rampant for a while, but it’s still a very support-friendly meta.
A change of pace would be nice.
Totally. Like I say, I’m really glad Blizzard are taking this approach and not just me-tooing it.
Right. Basically EVERYTHING you are near enough to get experience to adds to the teams overall pool.
I’m uploading a video to YouTube now, but it’s already on twitch, where I talk about some things you guys might find interesting. First, here’s the video Twitch and the part where I talk about talents is at about 24 minutes in. Otherwise, before that, it’s a game as Tychus against bots (I’m working out tech issues with the stream, so playing a lot of bot games) and if you want to see me play my worst, that’s the one to watch. However, the talent discussion is where one big issue comes up that I’m afraid will have to be addressed - Bribe.
Bribe isn’t a talent that’s available to everyone, just a few champs (Stitches, Raynor, and some more that I don’t remember), but it’s incredibly powerful. You see, when you select bribe (at first level no less) you start accumulating stacks. The stacks are based on creep deaths. Once your stacks hit 40, you can go instantly defeat almost any jungle camp. This camp then, as it does in this game, fights for you. The issue I have here is this - you don’t have to last hit to gain stacks (I thought you would, to make the mechanic much more difficult) you just have to be NEAR them when they die. So, you rush into lane, wait for 40 creep to die near you and then go fire a big monster camp into their lane. For right now, I’ll be taking Bribe whenever I can.
Of course, this is an alpha so stuff like that is to be expected. A lot of changes are incoming for this game, but it’s starting out VERY strong
I almost wish that last hitting would give an ever so slight XP bonus. Otherwise, it sounds like you should just be in lane to suck up XP, and harass the enemy champions. The only reason to hit the minions would be if the opposing enemy is to make sure the lane is either stagnate or slightly pushing in your favor. Depending on the effectiveness of a lane’s wave clear, minions really seem like a minimal factor.
I should watch more videos to review how easy/difficult it is for people to clear lanes.
I am suddenly much more interested in this game (from zero to fairly). I enjoyed LoL but I was terrible at it, and last hitting and item memorization were reasons why. If this is casualization, I welcome it with open arms.
If you just need to hang around in a lane to get the XP, then it sounds like you can just focus 100% on the other player which I have to side with being “less interesting.” What’s interesting about last-hitting is that it’s non-trivial, not hard but just not easy enough that you have to devote mental resources to it, which opens up all sorts of interactions with your opponent. Otherwise I would just stand as far back as I could to get XP and concentrate on not feeding.
I would liken last-hitting to dribbling in basketball.
But anything that isn’t Just Another MOBA is worth trying in my books.
From what I have seen in videos they have replaced some of the jostling for position that last hitting results in with other non-creep and non-tower objectives. For instance, in one map, you get gold coins from chests that you have to stand there and hit, and then have to turn them in at close range to a NPC (which basically requires you to channel for a few seconds). It seemed like it would be very necessary to have teammates do things like zone out other players to protect you. That said, I would guess it is purposely less complex than, say, Dota.
Unfortunately, as a person who watches Dota 2 more than plays it, HotS seems in many ways the opposite of what I was personally hoping for, which was a gateway game that allows me to improve heavy MOBA skill-based mechanics, only with 1/3 of the Dota match time and with only “friendly” communication options like Hearthstone. This appears like a strong enough departure that it might scratch the same genre itch but doesn’t seem like it would actually help me improve in the harder tier MOBAs.
I’m interested to see how they capture the complexity of the “laning phase” of a game where you don’t last hit. If the zone where you get XP for minions dying is rather small, then to some degree that helps. The thing with last hitting in a game like League is that an opponent trying to get a last is a chance for you to either stop them, or to hurt them and make it harder for them to get the next last hit because they are closer to death and risking dying. Once you hit a certain point, the actual “mechanics” of last hitting are pretty much a given, it’s how much you can mess up someone else by actively blocking them that’s important. There’s an incredible amount of complexity in that situation for example knowing about cooldowns of your opponent (do they have skills up to hurt you, or did they just use them?), or their relative strength vs yours at any point in the game. One of my favorite things is the “level 2” advantage, where both sides of a lane race to see who’s going to hit level 2 sooner, because it gives you a huge advantage in HP, damage, and abilities that you can take advantage of to push the other side out.
If the zones where XP is granted for being near minions is small, then maybe this zoning game exists as well. You can hit minions to push the wave and get that “level 2” type advantage. Do minions do damage to players? If you attack the other player, how do the minions react? Again, in League if you attack someone, their minions will attack you and do damage. This can actually be incredibly significant - if you have 2x as many minions as the opponent, those little guys can win a fight for you, so it can be useful to have that advantage. Does that mechanic exist?
(Full disclosure, I play a LOT of league of legends, at a fairly high level.)
They basically removed most of the farming phase of the game. Which is fine with me since that’s usually the most boring part of the game, and unless one player or pair is way more skilled than their enemy in the lane it’s mostly poking at each other while everyone sits around focused on last-hitting. In LoL and DotA you the laning phase frequently extends to around the 20 minute mark, which is when HotS’s stated goal is to have the game ending. Instead there’s the juggling the other objectives that xahlt just mentioned with the nuance that towers have limited ammo and resupplying their ammo is far slower than their firing rate, so the longer a lane is pushed up to the tower the less effective the tower will be. Having a team XP level instead of fighting with each other over farm also means that wiping out creeps directly helps your teammates, and if you can drive the enemy away you’re slowing down the entire enemy team.
It sounds like if you hacked off 90% of the laming phase and just jumped right to the bit where everyone runs around doing more interesting things is where Blizzard is trying to start the game.
Got my chance to get in there again with out all the glitz and craziness of Blizzcon not present last night. I thought the gameplay was fast at Blizzcon, but attributed that to everything that was going on around me (and waiting in line for like an hour.) So it wasn’t really the environment; it does move a LOT faster than League, all facets of the gameplay. The waves of creeps felt as if they came quicker for one.
There is definitely a lot of people playing that aren’t quite as familiar with MOBA style games. Small things like the timers at the camps will definitely help casual players, but a lot of people don’t even understand that you should attack those for advantages within the game.
Hopefully as time progresses people will understand better - and/or Blizzard will reinforce how important neutral aspects of the game board are to winning/losing the match.
It’s a nice video and nice to see people branching out the genre. I think that video is a little silly at times – admitting taking out last hitting and items makes the game simpler, but pointing out that ammunition provides complexity? As if AMMO is really in the same ballpark as itemization. It’s ammo that he even admits most players don’t even notice without him pointing it out. I also have a hard time with the idea that pushing people out of lane is a very feasible way to limit someone’s resources in the game, though I haven’t played – I mean, I can imagine forcing one person from a lane with harassment – But, looks like all the action is in 2 or 3 lanes, so how often does an entire team get pushed out of range?
FYI – Last hitting phase is really only up until 10 minutes, (for dota at least) after that it’s early mid and more gank/space oriented.
Anyway, I mean, yeah you cut to the mid game, and yeah it’s shorter – But you also cut out the crazy farmed carries, the picked on supports, the greedy team compositions, the punishing-greedy team compositions and so much more.
What I think will be worst for it is they are killing off the feeling of invincibility people can get by snowballing into a fully slotted carry capable of solo’ing an entire enemy team. It’s not like this is a strange concept for them, as their company’s great success came to them with WoW and those addicted to the phat loot quest.
Anyway, this game sort of reminds me of warhammer retribution games (in a good way). I am looking forward to trying out heart of the storm, hoping they have a lot of interesting objectives. I can’t see it garnering the same following that other games in the genre have, but who really knows?
