Heroes of the Storm

[Audio Ace]

I didn't see a topic for this and I'm not too sure if anyone here plays it, so I'm making it. After putting in over a hundred hours into league of legends, my cousin got me a key for heroes when it was still in alpha. I am now max rank 40 and I have enjoyed this game alot. Compared to a game of league 20-50 minutes , Heroes usual match time ends up being around 20 minutes or even less. This is a great moba for beginners cause their is no farming phase or jungle of sorts and every map has different objectives. Their is no item builds, instead their are "talents". When you level up, you get to chose 1 talent out of 2-5 depending on which level you are at. Also, instead of everyone having their own xp, the xp you gain is apart of a team pool. So instead of one person leveling up, your whole team levels up. Their are 6 maps (I think) and each has a different objective but they all have to do with destroying the opposing teams nexus. If anyone would want to play I would be down. If anyone has questions, feel free to ask.

[Kiwi the Tortoise]

I started playing it while it was in it's Beta phase and generally liked it.
In particular due to the heavy focus on objectives (depending on the map) and the presence of characters that simply wouldn't work in other MOBA's.
Murky, Abathur and the Lost Vikings are the best examples for this, as all of them have mechanics that would conflict with e.g. Riot's design philosophy with LoL.
However, the more I played it, the more I started to notice things.
The mounts are basically completely unecessary and just exist to sell skins, about as gratuitous as LoL's Runes.
But what bugs me the most are aspects of Blizzards art direction, since once you see the characters side-by-side you notice how similar and interchangable it is. Roughly 1/4 of the cast can be described as 'walking pair of shoulderpads', we have at least four 'sneaky women shooting stuff' and recently the count of 'fat dudes with meathook' reached two. It doesn't really matter if you have Diablo horrors from hell or Starcraft horrrors from space, as their design is fairly alike. For some reason this really bugs me and the reliance on pre-existing franchises may actually turn out to be a problem. Compare it to the cast and art-direction of LoL, in which basically everything somehow works and the designers are free to add whatever they come up with (e.g. Tham Kench, a catfish with blues-singer voice, coat and hat), and you realize how big their advantage is.

[Audio Ace]

I started playing it while it was in it's Beta phase and generally liked it.
In particular due to the heavy focus on objectives (depending on the map) and the presence of characters that simply wouldn't work in other MOBA's.
Murky, Abathur and the Lost Vikings are the best examples for this, as all of them have mechanics that would conflict with e.g. Riot's design philosophy with LoL.
However, the more I played it, the more I started to notice things.
The mounts are basically completely unecessary and just exist to sell skins, about as gratuitous as LoL's Runes.
But what bugs me the most are aspects of Blizzards art direction, since once you see the characters side-by-side you notice how similar and interchangable it is. Roughly 1/4 of the cast can be described as 'walking pair of shoulderpads', we have at least four 'sneaky women shooting stuff' and recently the count of 'fat dudes with meathook' reached two. It doesn't really matter if you have Diablo horrors from hell or Starcraft horrrors from space, as their design is fairly alike. For some reason this really bugs me and the reliance on pre-existing franchises may actually turn out to be a problem. Compare it to the cast and art-direction of LoL, in which basically everything somehow works and the designers are free to add whatever they come up with (e.g. Tham Kench, a catfish with blues-singer voice, coat and hat), and you realize how big their advantage is.

Yeah from a design aspect some characters fairly look the same or could be confused with each other. But the one thing that peeved me when it came to league of legends was the passives that have been made for alot of the champions. lot of them can be boiled down too, "hit a person 3 times, bonus effect and more damaged". Even though you have all these unique designs they usual follow a set of rules when it comes to abilitys. I just didn't feel that they were putting in alot of effort but at the end of the day that is my opinion. Compared to Heroes you do have alot of sneaky women, but to me, they all have a different playstyle. Nova and Valla for instance. One has the ability to cloak and has the ability to make holograms that can also attack. Valla has a dash that can set traps (if you use that talent) and has her kit and talents more designed to self healing through constant damaged. I will give you Stiches and The Butcher though. Even though they are different classes, i could get them confused too.