Quick Look: Heroes of the Storm

Kept me waiting, huh?

I'm confused, this does not appear to have anything to do with metal gear, what's it doing on giant bomb dot com?

Heroes are so expensive :(

Lords Management Simulation

Play discreetly, my lord.

Yes

Not really. The daily quests get you pretty big chunks of gold, and so do the account-level bonuses. I definitely think it's less tedious to grind for than LoL.

This game has such a low skill cap, I don't see how it'll ever be competitive. It was my first MOBA and I found it to be boring, my friend told me to get into Dota 2 since HotS was for noobs and so I played with him. Dota 2 is so much better, people make it out to be the hardcore thing, but no it just has more meta game. The depth kept me excited for Dota 2 and not having to buy Heroes is another big thing, the limited pool in HotS ruins it so much.

I'd suggest getting into Dota 2 with Brad, it's much better.

I KNEW Dan would be tempted with the Stars and stripes Raynor.

I still don't see the appeal but I'm glad others have fun with it.

There's more skill and dynamic team play involved in a 5 minute Rocket League match than any MOBA. I can't see the appeal in playing the same mini-rpg over & over for an hour at a time.

edit: This was an awesome quick look though!

Well, if you want to go there, might as well call them Aeon of Strife-like.

Nice. An adequate LOMA.

Jason must be loving this!

:D

I totally understand why people would get into this instead of Dota, but the lack of balance and strategic depth (not to mention gating characters) makes me not want to play this game at all.

And I have 0 faith in blizzard keeping any amount of balance in there multiplayer games.

So, will this game be popular enough that eventually people will just start referring to it as "Hots"? Because Hots would be funnier to hear all the time than Dota.

I played alot of this game and like it alot but the problem i had with it is that it has almost no depth and quickly become boring.

The thumbnail for this video is the most Dan Ryckert picture anyone's ever taken of a FARTS game.

Any current players of Hots, how's the community? Dota's community is basically the only thing keeping me from actually getting in and trying it out. The few times I've tried Dota I've just been shit on for being a new player.

When you guys say 'no depth', do you mean in an absolute sense or 'no depth for a MOBA'. Just playing through the tutorial stuff (as someone new to the whole thing) and it already feels like there's a lot to bear in mind!

@danryckert If you like to continue playing HotS, one of the biggest tips I can give you is to be aware of the minimap more. I tend to just stare at the minimap 50% of the time. It gives you clues as to where enemies might be (i.e.: if they just captured a merc camp you know where they are), where team fights are happening, and you can tell if you are safe or not if you keep track of where the enemies are. Also, the ping tool (hold in alt or G and swipe in direction) is very key to team coordination/communication without actually typing.

Matchmaking should NOT be taking this long, HotS quickmatch is never more than a minute for me.

I suspect CBS internet is screwing the guys over again

Isn't every genre name born in a marketing department somewhere?

To anyone still playing HoTs did they ever fix that really rotten map hack bug that was going around a while back?

@thisluckyguess: There's depth, it's just different because it turns the genre on its head. Hots is to Dota and League what Smash Bros is to Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat.

Yeah, I don't get Dan ever getting good at a MOBA. He's just never been a good team player. "I just like to go off and do my own thing."

I mean, I know he's new at this but at no point did he do anything resembling teamwork in this video. No defence. No team fight. He run when he oughta fight, fight when he oughta bail. Spam Ults for no reason. Bah!

Come on Dan, it's a free game. You don't want to spend $5 for America?

Dan the expert in all things moba. This should be epic.

Gold comes pretty quick in the game, i've spent zero money on Heroes and have more than 15 unlocked. Most new heroes are 10,000 coins but some are 4000 or 7000.

@larrydavis: ehh it's enough to buy a few when you first start playing- they give you a good amount of gold at the beginning of the game, but it slows down pretty quickly. Regardless of anyone's feelings on the game itself I'd definitely like to see more game take DotA's approach to monetizing things.

Dan just went through all the stages of grief in about 10 seconds

I giggled at the South/Central American player getting pissy in chat when he died and dropped his gems but Dan didn't pick them up at 22:00-ish. It's like DotA after all!

I was playing as Zeratul a few days ago and had a game where a Kael'thas almost always knew where I was when stealthed, even during team fights. I'm not sure if the KT was just really good at detecting stealth or what, but that's the closest I've had to experiencing anything like that. This was during Quick Match and I'm around ~2750 MMR if that matters.

Can this be played like it's Diablo?

Well, the daily quests are about 300 gold each, and you can usually knock them out in about 5 games (less if you hit it lucky and can double-dip, like Diablo/Assassin quests or something). That amounts to somewhere around 1,000 gold per 3 quests, and heroes are around 10k gold. Doesn't take that long. The account-level bonuses definitely slow way down though, you are correct.

Also, I know I'm in the minority with this, but I much prefer the free-rotation, buying heroes model. I think the "YOU HAVE ALL THESE DUMB CHARACTERS HAVE AT IT" approach is really daunting and makes it nearly impossible to find your "main", whereas by trying out these pre-selected characters it gives you a better feel for them. Helps for both playing as them and against them. If anything, I think the costumes should be free... I do really like that HotS has the Elite costumes that you get from leveling a hero to 10. Some of them are pretty rad.

There was a video floating around a while back of someone super blatantly map hacking this game. Because its built on the SC2 engine it uses the same replay system and there are apparently ways to run a program in the back round that intercept the replay data and run it on your screen in real time. I was under the impression it was an unfix able problem in SC2 because of how deep it was buried in the code of the game.

He didn't mention the daily quests, which are things like "Play 3 matches as a starcraft character". That's the main way to earn gold to unlock characters.

I didn't really care for this when I played in the beta.

or you could just play dota and have them all anyway

There are vikings, but no Kyle from Blackthorne?

@larrydavis: Well if you want to play a limited pool of heroes, Dota 2 has a mode just for that. The difference is that once you're familiar enough with the game you can start expanding your heroes pool without needing to grind.

Been playing this for the past two months and have been having a great time, as someone who wasn't into these games at all. It's like DotA for people who aren't out of their goddamn minds.

Having played Dota 2 for a long while, i switched to HoTS because i just didn't have the time to play Dota with the length of matches and matchmaking.

HoTS is so much fun and the community is great, Dan's first game ended with a loss and the response from his teammate was "darn, nice try" If this was Dota 2 from my experience when the game starts to go in the enemy teams favor the blame game starts up and the chat gets quite toxic. Hoping the casual gameplay of this game keeps all the super competitive MOBA players away.

@cheebahh said:

I really hope you're kidding

I like how Dan is caught between his principles.

On one hand, he doesn't want to put money into a MOBA. On the other hand, he's the AMERICANIST MAN WHO HAS EVER LIVED.

this is jimmy

Yeah, and gold is way too slow to earn, especially compared to IP gain in League.

Wich wouldnt be as bad if the hero's were a bit cheaper, but 20-30 gold gained per match, 10,000 or even 15,000 needed to buy the more desirable heroes, is way too slow.

Could use some balancing in my opinion.

Brad secretly trying to get every Giant Bomb member into Moba's. Damn you Brad!

I never really had a crew when playing Dota 2 to be honest, still you can have some fun with strangers.

I actually started playing this the other day. Teh only character I really like is Raynor but this feels like a concise moboa.

One tip for Dan is to get used to Attack-Moving. Instead of right-clicking to move anywhere, you press the a key then click somewhere, then your character will move to that spot but if something becomes attackable on the way will just start attacking that instead. Then if it dies, will continue to where you wanted to go. Then you can just use right clicking for when you need to move and DON'T want to attack things