We probably just disagree on whether Warcraft 3/World of Warcraft has an appealing art style, that’s all.
My bad. I forgot to put an emoticon at the end of my reply. Wasn’t trying to be adversarial. Fixed!
I got some time in with this for the quest (thanks Harkonis) and started to remember why I spent so much time playing it. It is a pretty darn good MOBA that also turns out to be rather friendly to returning from a long absence. I always felt like returning to LoL or such was a headache as talent trees reset, runes changed, and shop options were overhauled since my last time playing. LoL sort of felt like jumping back into a MMO.
Also playing something like Cho’Gal was a hoot as always (thanks again Harkonis).
Blizzard’s evil machinations might have been successful in luring me back.
Great! Now dump versus AI in favor of QM (or draft mode) and really learn to play! :-)
Let me at least step in the pool first. I spent one night with AI. Going into that I could not remember hot keys and spent way too much time reading talent options. But it came back fairly fast. QM soon.
Also, after a full weekend of DoW3, playing a MOBA felt like easy mode. Maybe this is my chance to finally pick up Vikings.
Trying this again made me remember my primary complaint about Heroes, that unlike DotA and LoL, a strong player simply can’t carry a team. Playing three maps in a row where my teammates ignored objectives was enough “fun” for me.
In solo queue on LoL or DotA, you can maintain a pretty high win % if you know the meta and are a good player. You’ll still lose when your team is universally awful, but it is far more forgiving of having 1 or 2 players being extremely subpar. In HotS, if the enemy team has 5 people going for objectives and you have 4, you better hope all 4 are WAY better players than the other team.
Depending on your team composition and the BG, you sometimes want one of your teammates to continue pushing a lane instead of helping on the objective, particularly in the early game.
Just discovered a new daily quest: Play 3 Versus AI games. Bleh!
I’m not sure I agree. One player feeding the right enemy in LoL or DotA can give a huge advantage.
I generally hate when people smurf, but a pro French player did get a 98% win rate up to Platinum and only played tanks –
picking Arthas whenever possible – so he wasn’t even running around getting tons of kills. Pretty insane.
I’m not trying to argue that player skill doesn’t play a factor. Rather, if you watch pro level LoL players stream quick matches vs pro level HotS players, the LoL players win rates are way higher across the board. I mean, this might just be an example of better matchmaking as far as I know. From my somewhat casual experience with both games I do feel less handicapped with a super meh team in LoL, though.
In either game you’re going to lose if you have an intentional feeder or someone who just dives the enemy team 1v5 over and over, though. Not really much that can be done about that. I think the truth of the matter is that I’m some combination of better at LoL and DotA than Heroes and those games also let a decently skilled player pick off a weaker one and steamroll to victory moreso than HotS, making you feel like a rockstar in the process.
tl;dr: I feel like a rockstar way more often in LoL and DotA, which is a pretty good feeling to get from a game. In HotS when I win it’s more like, hooray my team wasn’t terrible!
Well the difference in hots is far greater because one feeder puts the entire team at a huge disadvantage. That disadvantage can be worked around easier when you have hard carries being fed and playing smart in lol or dota.
Pros can carry in hots fairly easily though gold and probably a good chunk of platinum just by exploiting the huge mistakes that the other team makes constantly. Near diamond and beyond those mistakes are much smaller and less frequent and it starts to resemble the team game it’s supposed to be.
Three big things contribute to a single player having a bigger impact. LoL and Dota have money in addition to exp along with an item shop, and the laning phase of the game is way longer. They also use individual v team exp. This allows a good player to face off and really set back an opponent as they will not only be underleveld but also undergeared by the time team fights break out proper.
Since the tutorial happened to be an Assassin character, and that’s the first character I ever sort of enjoyed playing in a MOBA, I went with the Assassin’s Pack instead of the variety pack that had a bunch of different types of characters.
But just to see what I missed out on, I noticed Diablo is a free character, so I tried him out. And I must say, so far I’m glad I picked the Assassin’s pack. Diablo was cool, because he’s Diablo, but he wasn’t as fun to play as the Assassin from the first tutorial. So I’m feeling good about the Assassin’s pack decision so far.
I love playing this game, but I don’t know how much fun I would have solo-queue. Might end up playing again tonight, to get that D.Va skin, you need to play quick match, ranked, unranked 5 games. Which kinda sucks, as they take a lot more time to complete than vs AI matches. But still, very fun.
Played 2 matches as ETC last night, and I really do love that guy. Mosh Pit is such a team-fight auto-win ability.
You have to play quick match while partied with a friend. It’s not enough to just play.
I need to do 4 more. I did one last night and my team said “We can’t take any more of this, we’re playing Overwatch now.” We won the game easily too.
Oh yeah, I know, I only had time for 2 last night. I will probably work on it again tonight. I was trying to word it like, I only like playing this game in a group. Soloing is just not fun.
Game -1
Our team vs 1 tank 5 assassins. I was ETC, friend was genji, we had 2 other assassins, and Tyrande was our healer, and she specced damage. We almost won, only because their party comp was just so bad, but since the healing was so weak, we were screwed.
Game -2
Their team had a 3-man party, with a Lucio, tank, assassin. And 2 other assassins. We wiped the floor with them, I was ETC, friend was Li-Li, and they couldn’t win a single team fight.
The great thing about HOTS is it is a very important team game, the bad thing about HOTS is that you need a good team to win. So, it is fun to play with a group, not as fun to play 100% solo. And in quick-match, try playing a non-assassin, likely your team will need a support or tank.
This is so true. As much as I love this game, I’m increasingly succumbing to frustration. That never happened to me in any other competitive multiplayer game (even team based ones like Company of Heroes 4 player). I’m at the point where I’d really like to be done with HOTS, but I occasionally succumb to the addiction and jump back in for a week. By the end I start acting/talking like the sort of salty players I used to laugh at :( It’s embarrassing.
In general I tend to play AI games for dailies and stuff unless I can play with someone else.
It depends on the day, but my own tolerance of solo queue play definitely varies.
There are some of us still playing fairly regularly. So anyone new (or old) looking to do anything other than solo queue, feel free to add Dante#1142.
It’s great everyone is playing this again, I forgot how much I liked it! Agree it can get pretty frustrating solo. Even just having one person to commiserate with helps, plus you get bonus xp.