Heroes of the Shit: A Review

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Pseudo Stupidity
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Heroes of the Shit: A Review

Post by Pseudo Stupidity »

Heroes of the Storm is a ripoff of a game that was a ripoff of a custom map in Warcraft III. It's like if Michelangelo tried to copy some guy's attempt at creating David. I love Blizzard Entertainment and really wanted this game to be a viable alternative to League, especially since it touted SHORTER GAMES and LESS SNOWBALLING.

Unfortunately it's shit, it is deeply disappointing in almost every way it could have possibly been. Yes, it's in beta, but no, these problems are not going to be fixed (or at least not quickly).

Just...god damnit how did they make a game this bad? Blizzard, you're better than this.

Padded Sumo
The first thing you'll notice in Heroes of the Storm is that the aforementioned Heroes have a lot of fucking health. I'm talking a THOUSAND health at level 1, with endgame totals going up to 4k for a tank, and at least 2k for a damage hero (plus all the HEALS and SHIELDS which is what Blizzard thinks supports should do). Damage is much lower, with even a damage per second hero cranking out maybe 100 dps at the start, building up to 300 or so later while using their ultimate (oh, sorry, heroic) ability.

These numbers are a problem, because it makes the game DRAG THE FUCK ON even when you know how a fight is turning out. You can know who's winning the teamfight a couple seconds in, but it'll take 30 seconds to slug it out depending on heroes and talents chosen (and everyone may just get away alive anyways...excitement!).

Heroes of the Slog: The Game Is Slow and Decisions Don't Matter (Much)
The game is slow in the sense that things do not happen very quickly. Early game you can hardly push waves, and your early game decisions (before any objectives come up) just don't matter. Die in the first 2 minutes? Eh who cares, you spawn in 5 seconds and all XP is shared, so your team might not even fall behind. If everyone on your team dies twice in the first few minutes then you'll get snowballed on (and snowballing is a very real problem in this game), but other than that it's not a big deal.

Any time after earlygame is teamfighting over objectives, and teamfights take a long time. There is no real split pushing, and objectives are so important you have to contest them since a fast push really doesn't matter (maybe at the top level it does? Does this game even HAVE a top level?) compared to an objective.

Objectives Are All That Matters
Objectives will do things like make all enemy turrets stop attacking while reducing all enemy minions to 1 health, give you a hero that is strong enough to 1v4, or just demolish an entire section of the enemy base. They are all that matters for fucking obvious reasons.


Hero Selection and Talents: or Determing Who Will Win Before the Game Is Even Played
Each Hero in Heroes of the Storm stats the game with 3 abilities and gets to choose 1 of 2 ultimates at level 10. Heroes of the Storm lacks any items, and decision points are when to fight (when an objective is up), or what talent to select at certain levels. Talent decisions matter a little, they let you improve abilities or your champion's tanking/controlling/dpsing power, sometimes they can be a special ability with a fucking long ass cooldown (CD). You get a talent at level 1, then every 3 levels after that (except 19, you get that last one at 20).

Talents don't really change much about your hero. If you're a DPS guy you're picking whatever combo gives the most damage per second or maybe a tiny bit of crowd control, and if you're a tank you're picking things that let you tank harder or add more crowd control. This creates the unique problem of teamcomp completely dictating who wins the game, as you're not going to turn Diablo, a fat tank with CC, into a DPS machine. You can give him a little damage, but never enough to make him a big damage threat outside his ultimate.

Since you will always be teamfighting, whoever's team is better at teamfighting wins the game.

Also, some talents are just trap options. There will be decision points where you can scale your basic attack infinitely (and quickly enough to matter), or improve your healing skill by about 35% (on the highest basic attack ranged champion in the game). This is a decision you make at level 1.

Outplay? Hahaha, No.
Everyone is equal always, and misplays are hard to punish because the game is so fucking forgiving. All that matters outside of huge fuckups are how you play teamfights. This does mean outplays can happen in a teamfight, but individual plays rarely matter outside the context of a teamfight.

1. There is no last hitting for gold or experience. As long as you're in (very generous) range for experience, you get it. This means, as long as you don't get killed, you lose nothing for fucking up except maybe some damage on turrets or objectives lost.

2. Experience is shared globally amongst team members. Even if you're doing shit and get forced back a few times, you will rarely lose enough experience for it to give the other team an advantage. This is good, because snowballing is fucking crazy when it happens.

3. Crowd Control has laughably short durations. Fall behind? Good luck coming back, catching somebody out is HARD AS SHIT since one of the champions with the most CC can hold you in place for 2 seconds...if you're next to a wall and really damn close to him.

4. It is nearly impossible to impact the game alone. Your abilities generally don't matter all that much (the damage ones tickle, the CC ones hardly CC, ok the heals and shields are fucking RIDICULOUS but that's the most boring way to impact a game) and plays don't feel very impactful. I've felt like I turned around a fight exactly once and that's because the other team was dumb and I was a fat tank who had an AoE CC ultimate that works if the other team stands still for a few seconds, which they did.

The One Good Thing: Games Are Short (Usually)
Games in Heroes of the Storm take maybe 20 minutes, going as short as 10 if the other team is new or somebody disconnects. However, when a game goes long it can get pretty damn long, making it hard to predict game length. Evenly matched teams will teamfight and everyone will survive because catching people is almost impossible and taking objectives often means you're putting yourself into a dangerous position.

Since objectives are so strong you have to send your whole team there, and nobody wants to fight in a bad spot because that can potentially lose them the game once respawns are 60 seconds or higher. I have had multiple points in the game where both teams were standing on opposite sides of an objective waiting for the other team to try it because doing anything BUT that would be a loss. This also brings up the problem a short game has...

Spawn Timers are Fucking Ridiculous Compared to Game Length (Past 15 Minutes)
Spawn Timers seriously become more than 60 seconds in a game that lasts 20 minutes. You can potentially spend an eighth of the game not playing at all and that would not be unusual if teamfights happen and people actually die a lot and can't safely take an objective.




So there, the game is generally boring and quite shit. It's like if 4e was a MOBA. Ugh.
Last edited by Pseudo Stupidity on Tue May 05, 2015 2:08 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by RelentlessImp »

I was a fat tank who had an AoE CC ultimate that works if the other team stands still for a few seconds, which they did.
It's pretty fun power sliding in and turning the area around you into a mosh pit. But yeah, Heroes of the Storm is pretty fucking bad. It has SOME good ideas, but it took them all from the 4e playbook (making combats last longer so decisions matter more, making the basic mechanics easier to understand/benefit from, etc). You nailed it on the head with the 4e comparison.

One thing you left out is that Heroes of the Storm fills a vacuum that needed filling: Beginner MOBAs. League, SMITE and DOTA2 have varying levels of mechanical complexity, but they are complex, and in certain places fucking obtuse as shit (Aghanim's Scepter is a good DOTA2 example - you gotta go to a wiki to see who benefits from it). Heroes lays it all out for you in plain view, and its mechanical complexity is next to nil, and with the slow-ass teamfights it lets people grow more comfortable acting in them.

It doesn't make it a good MOBA - it makes it a good tutorial. And that's where it succeeds.
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Post by DSMatticus »

I know nothing about HoTS, but does anyone actually think last-hitting is an interesting mechanic? I am generally a big fan of twitch gameplay, and even I think last-hitting is kind of fucking stupid.

In the original DOTA, towers and minions were dangerous enough to prevent early pushing "just because," and you got gold for killing units because that happened to be how the WC3 engine worked. It wasn't some clever design decision intended to create a distinctive early game centered around last-hitting and lane management, it was just one big happy accident. Towers are scary, so don't push your lane. But minions give gold, so even though you don't want to push your lane you do want to be fighting in it. Sort of. Don't fight too hard, because the tower's a lot further away than it looks when multiple champs are trying to murder you.

Every game since then has just unthinkingly copied the recipe, but there's no reason you can't just axe that early game entirely and have people pushing lanes from level 1. After that, the decision between last-hitting and proximity gold is just an arbitrary toggle. Fuck, who wouldn't love for MOBA games to be ten minutes shorter?
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Post by maglag »

RelentlessImp wrote: One thing you left out is that Heroes of the Storm fills a vacuum that needed filling: Beginner MOBAs. League, SMITE and DOTA2 have varying levels of mechanical complexity, but they are complex, and in certain places fucking obtuse as shit (Aghanim's Scepter is a good DOTA2 example - you gotta go to a wiki to see who benefits from it). Heroes lays it all out for you in plain view, and its mechanical complexity is next to nil, and with the slow-ass teamfights it lets people grow more comfortable acting in them.

It doesn't make it a good MOBA - it makes it a good tutorial. And that's where it succeeds.
I would say it's still a good MOBA for people who want to play this kind of game with no need of spending hours in wikis and/or just don't enjoy twitch gameplay.

The OP complains how about everyone needs to stick together, I complain on how other MOBAs you need to spread around and can't actually fight as a team until everybody got a bunch of levels up. The OP complains about how there's no gold or items, I complain about how in other MOBAs I'm supposed to not actually attack until the enemy units are almost dead.

HoTS is a MOBA where the first 10-15 minutes of the game aren't spent farming and hugging your towers, where there's objectives other than "let's see who can fatten up their heroes faster with the NPCs". Doing objectives is a lot more fun for me than constantly ordering my hero to don't do anything at all so they can get last hits.

Also no items means not being a ward slave that isn't even allowed to get kills, and that's even better.
Last edited by maglag on Tue May 05, 2015 9:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Kaelik »

DSMatticus wrote:I know nothing about HoTS, but does anyone actually think last-hitting is an interesting mechanic? I am generally a big fan of twitch gameplay, and even I think last-hitting is kind of fucking stupid.
It allows you to do anything at all in lane that is skillful. If people have to last hit, then you can force trades. If no one has to last hit, then you can't take advantage of them when they attack minions and you can't zone them out of gold when you are ahead.
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Post by Pseudo Stupidity »

maglag wrote: I would say it's still a good MOBA for people who want to play this kind of game with no need of spending hours in wikis and/or just don't enjoy twitch gameplay.

The OP complains how about everyone needs to stick together, I complain on how other MOBAs you need to spread around and can't actually fight as a team until everybody got a bunch of levels up. The OP complains about how there's no gold or items, I complain about how in other MOBAs I'm supposed to not actually attack until the enemy units are almost dead.

HoTS is a MOBA where the first 10-15 minutes of the game aren't spent farming and hugging your towers, where there's objectives other than "let's see who can fatten up their heroes faster with the NPCs". Doing objectives is a lot more fun for me than constantly ordering my hero to don't do anything at all so they can get last hits.

Also no items means not being a ward slave that isn't even allowed to get kills, and that's even better.
Most of Maglag's complaints are straight up wrong in League, with the exception of preferring being forced into teamfighting all game every game.
maglag wrote: I would say it's still a good MOBA for people who want to play this kind of game with no need of spending hours in wikis and/or just don't enjoy twitch gameplay.
I'm curious why you need to spend hours in a wiki for other MOBAs but not HotS. The game is very unclear as to what the fuck is going on half the time. Did you know that guy with a guitar can jump far and has an AoE CC ult? Did you know that if Diablo dies it can trigger his ult again? Did you know what his ult even does, when it detonates, or how hard it is to see in a teamfight with other abilities going off since it appears on the ground rather than having a super flashy animation?
maglag wrote:The OP complains how about everyone needs to stick together, I complain on how other MOBAs you need to spread around and can't actually fight as a team until everybody got a bunch of levels up
Yeah, aside from level 1 fights being pretty common and ganks in the early game, and even the early teamfights if you pick a comp that wants to force things. The other team can choose not to fight early and not be throwing the game away (kind of like how you can give up an objective maybe once for free in HotS and not necessarily be throwing), but tactical diversity isn't a bad thing.

It's weird that you complain about not being forced to group from the start. That's like complaining that there are too many opening move variations in chess.

maglag wrote:The OP complains about how there's no gold or items, I complain about how in other MOBAs I'm supposed to not actually attack until the enemy units are almost dead.
You can actually attack minions before they die, last hitting just means you have to also land the killing blow. In League you almost always push the lane by auto attacking and using spells and then also try to get the last hit, because that way you'll get a level advantage for a few seconds and try to zone/kill the other champion(s) in your lane.

No items is different, but it goes back to that pesky lack of tactical diversity in HotS. You can't adapt to the other team outside champion select and largely irrelevant Talent selections. Raynor primarily does damage. Diablo primarily tanks. Talents aren't changing these things.
maglag wrote:HoTS is a MOBA where the first 10-15 minutes of the game aren't spent farming and hugging your towers, where there's objectives other than "let's see who can fatten up their heroes faster with the NPCs".
Yeah, because nobody takes early objectives in any MOBAs. Ever. Invading the enemy jungle does not happen, neither does pushing, ganking, or taking early turrets/dragons. These are not things that are common both in casual and competitive play.

Do...do you play MOBAs at all? I can't speak to HoN or DotA 2, but League does not have these issues.
maglag wrote:Also no items means not being a ward slave that isn't even allowed to get kills, and that's even better.
I'll you that no items does mean the "4 revenue streams, 5 players" problem does not exist. It's not a huge problem in MOBAs (it hasn't been in League for 2 seasons, and I guess DotA just adopted support income items) anymore, but hey.

No wards is dumb though, the vision game was interesting. What does HotS replace the vision game with? Another fucking objective that gives some vision of the map. How interesting, another reason all that matters is your ability to teamfight.



HotS is a padded sumo MOBA teamfight simulator. That is all it is. It's the Brawl of MOBAs, and it'll probably have the same shit happen to it unless something changes dramatically. The padded sumo is unbearable and the tactical decisions are threadbare. As my friend who loved it for about 2 weeks and recently quit said early on "I like HotS because I don't need to think at all and the games are short."



On last hitting as a mechanic: It forces action in laning. You have to put yourself into a vulnerable position and lock yourself into your auto attack animation (or use a spell, which at the very least uses a cooldown that makes you more vulnerable) to get the last hit. That opens you up to harass. If the gold proximity was close enough you could get that with proximity gold, but it is more dangerous to last hit. It's not a brilliant mechanic or anything, but it certainly does something.

People do push lanes from level 1 now. The brief moments of level advantage in the early game matter a lot, and a lot of lanes can get screwed over by the other side hitting level 2 or 3 first and then attempting to get a kill or force you out of lane. It's also common for ranged champions to push to get early damage on turrets, or for anyone to push to set up their lane for a turret dive.
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Post by maglag »

I played quite a bit of the original Dota back in the day. Mostly LAN with people I actually knew their faces, nobody really cared about last-hitting or denies, matches where there were more divine rapiers than players, good times. Stopped for years because studies, then tried LoL for some months but gave up because it was just starting to feel the same thing over and over. Too streamlined, farmfarmfarm 90% of the game for a few seconds of genuine fun. Also gave some shots at Dota 2, at least there I can recycle some of my Dota knowledge, but again everything has been "pro-ified", with last-hitting and denies, and I'm not even allowed to kill stuff if I choose to play a support.

Anyway adressing your issues:

-In HoTS you need to know what the heroes do. In every other Moba you need that plus learning what the hundreds of items do and how they interact with the hero's abilities, exponencially increasing the amount of knowledge you need to don't play like a scrub.
-Early game ganks in Lol/Dota are made by 2-3 people tops. I've never seen a full-team gank before 10 minutes, although I guess you'll be able to find some video of some uber-pro team pulling that off with some success. Your average dota/LoL team however won't be doing it. And probably in HoTS's future some team will be able to make spread-out work.
-People call last-hitting "a way to show off your skillz", I call it "boring work when does the fun begins?".

Basically my main point is that the moba genre has space for a variant where you're supposed to play as a 5-member team all the time instead of 5 independent farmers who only get together for 1/10 of the game, nor need to learn hundreds of recipes on top of hero abilities, and where there's more than a couple maps with different winning mechanics. It's understandeable if you like last-hitting and gold spreadsheets, but those are the kinds of things that I would like a more casual 5-team game.
Last edited by maglag on Tue May 05, 2015 3:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Kaelik wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:I know nothing about HoTS, but does anyone actually think last-hitting is an interesting mechanic? I am generally a big fan of twitch gameplay, and even I think last-hitting is kind of fucking stupid.
It allows you to do anything at all in lane that is skillful. If people have to last hit, then you can force trades. If no one has to last hit, then you can't take advantage of them when they attack minions and you can't zone them out of gold when you are ahead.
The mid- and late- are not not skillful, and both involve fighting in lane for reasons other than solely goldfarm. I'm not saying the MOBA early game should be "you watch minions murder eachother while your gold counter slowly goes up." I am saying that you could just cut the early game entirely by jiggering tower/unit/champ numbers around and skip right to the part where people are trying to win the game in the "crush the enemy and destroy their base" sense instead of the "gain relative advantage for later attempts to crush the enemy and destroy their base" sense. MOBA rounds take too goddamn long and the early game is really goddamn boring; cutting the early game DOTA created completely by accident seems like a smart move.
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

But it's not actually boring. Especially when you get to higher levels of play, you'll notice that the laning phase will have plenty of interaction. In addition to being a skill expression and a method of garnering early advantages, it also creates a constant pressure behind other game strategies (farm v take tower for example) and allows for non-deathball fights.

I think the only reason someone would find that "boring" is if they can't (or don't want to) understand the process. And that's fine if you don't -- a super casual MOBA without the laning phase would be a decent idea and I'm sure some people would like it -- but you are very wrong in thinking that sort of thing is boring or kept around purely for historical reasons.

Also maglag: I played 6 games yesterday, and 2 of them involved the entire 5-man team invading our side of the map and hunting for kills before 2 minutes. It's a common strategy to send a bunch of people to gank.
Last edited by ...You Lost Me on Tue May 05, 2015 5:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.
DSMatticus wrote:Again, look at this fucking map you moron. Take your finger and trace each country's coast, then trace its claim line. Even you - and I say that as someone who could not think less of your intelligence - should be able to tell that one of these things is not like the other.
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Post by DSMatticus »

YLM wrote:I think the only reason someone would find that "boring" is if they can't (or don't want to) understand the process. And that's fine if you don't -- a super casual MOBA without the laning phase would be a decent idea and I'm sure some people would like it -- but you are very wrong in thinking that sort of thing is boring or kept around purely for historical reasons.
I don't think you've thought about what you're saying at all. If you say a MOBA without the laning phase would be a super casual snorefest, then you are saying that all of the actual MOBA's that actually exist actually turn into super casual snorefests post-laning. And that's insane. Post-laning is more complicated, not less. All of the interesting elements of the laning phase persist, with the mid-game adding a bunch of new decisions on top of that, and you're more likely to see the massive teamfights (which emphasize a different skillset, but are absolutely not simpler than controlling a lane).
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Post by maglag »

DSMatticus wrote:
YLM wrote:I think the only reason someone would find that "boring" is if they can't (or don't want to) understand the process. And that's fine if you don't -- a super casual MOBA without the laning phase would be a decent idea and I'm sure some people would like it -- but you are very wrong in thinking that sort of thing is boring or kept around purely for historical reasons.
I don't think you've thought about what you're saying at all. If you say a MOBA without the laning phase would be a super casual snorefest, then you are saying that all of the actual MOBA's that actually exist actually turn into super casual snorefests post-laning. And that's insane. Post-laning is more complicated, not less. All of the interesting elements of the laning phase persist, with the mid-game adding a bunch of new decisions on top of that, and you're more likely to see the massive teamfights (which emphasize a different skillset, but are absolutely not simpler than controlling a lane).
Yeah, 100% agreed. I could totally see a game of "see who can last-hit and deny more creeps until you reach X gold" having plenty of fans. But the whole "crush enemy base and 5x5 teamfights" interests me a lot more personally.
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

DSMatticus wrote:I don't think you've thought about what you're saying at all. If you say a MOBA without the laning phase would be a super casual snorefest, then you are saying that all of the actual MOBA's that actually exist actually turn into super casual snorefests post-laning. And that's insane. Post-laning is more complicated, not less. All of the interesting elements of the laning phase persist, with the mid-game adding a bunch of new decisions on top of that, and you're more likely to see the massive teamfights (which emphasize a different skillset, but are absolutely not simpler than controlling a lane).
I don't think you actually understand your main point, or you are confusing your words. You talked about removing last hitting, which is not the same as removing the laning phase. Last hitting is not some thing that shackles the first ten minutes of the game and then magically disappears as soon as the first tower falls, it's one of the primary driving forces of gameplay for a very long time. You try to get big creep waves to push in an opportune times so the carry can go farm them without losing an objective. You see tactical differences based on hero choice (e.g. Nasus or Viper want long laning phases, Talon or Pudge want laning over ASAP). If you get rid of last hitting, you are encouraging the game to become deathball fights over objectives for 20-30 minutes because not only are contested objectives the only way to get advantages, there's also nothing else to do so no one splits up. The fact that you don't understand this is a demonstration that you're not really aware of how incremental advantages work in MOBAs.

If you want to remove the last-hitting system, you need to compensate for it. There needs to be some aspect(s) of the game that:
  • Differentiate power gain between characters
  • Give teammates a reason to regularly split up.
  • Periodically drive activity into each lane
I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm also not saying that killing creeps for a long time isn't monotonous. All I'm saying is that you cannot just rip a vital component of the game out because you think it's boring.
Last edited by ...You Lost Me on Tue May 05, 2015 8:29 pm, edited 3 times in total.
DSMatticus wrote:Again, look at this fucking map you moron. Take your finger and trace each country's coast, then trace its claim line. Even you - and I say that as someone who could not think less of your intelligence - should be able to tell that one of these things is not like the other.
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Post by DSMatticus »

YLM wrote:I don't think you actually understand your main point, or you are confusing your words. You talked about removing last hitting, which is not the same as removing the laning phase.
DSM wrote:I know nothing about HoTS, but does anyone actually think last-hitting is an interesting mechanic? I am generally a big fan of twitch gameplay, and even I think last-hitting is kind of fucking stupid.

In the original DOTA, towers and minions were dangerous enough to prevent early pushing "just because," and you got gold for killing units because that happened to be how the WC3 engine worked. It wasn't some clever design decision intended to create a distinctive early game centered around last-hitting and lane management, it was just one big happy accident. Towers are scary, so don't push your lane. But minions give gold, so even though you don't want to push your lane you do want to be fighting in it. Sort of. Don't fight too hard, because the tower's a lot further away than it looks when multiple champs are trying to murder you.

Every game since then has just unthinkingly copied the recipe, but there's no reason you can't just axe that early game entirely and have people pushing lanes from level 1. After that, the decision between last-hitting and proximity gold is just an arbitrary toggle. Fuck, who wouldn't love for MOBA games to be ten minutes shorter?
There's my first post. It's seriously the exact opposite of what you think it is.
1) Does anyone actually like last-hitting as a mechanic?
2) In DOTA, last-hitting combined with early champ suckitude to create a distinct early game around farming gold and managing creep waves.
3) If you axed the early game (i.e. skipped to the part of the game where champs can reliably tower dive), you would not need last-hitting. Also games would be shorter.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Tue May 05, 2015 9:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Pseudo Stupidity »

DSMatticus wrote: 1) Does anyone actually like last-hitting as a mechanic?
2) In DOTA, last-hitting combined with early champ suckitude to create a distinct early game around farming gold and managing creep waves.
3) If you axed the early game (i.e. skipped to the part of the game where champs can reliably tower dive), you would not need last-hitting. Also games would be shorter.
You got a lot of answers as to why last-hitting is a good thing, it forces moments of vulnerability in lane. Without last-hitting laning would be boring and overly safe.

Eliminating the laning phase removes a fun part of the game that lets certain picks shine. If you jump right to "2-man tower dives are easy" then solo lanes basically can't exist because they'll be getting dove all day. Once people hit the point they can dive 2v1 safely you start seeing a lot more grouping for obvious reasons.

The other thing DSM and Maglag do not understand is that decision points are important, and HotS has none. The game is a snorefest because the only decision making is "when do I use this ability in the teamfight?" rather than "should I teamfight at all? Could I trade objectives? Could I just gain an advantage elsewhere and try to take objectives later because I can scale well?" or any of the many, many decisions you can make in other, better games.

What really irks me is HotS doesn't even do teamfights well. The lack of big-impact plays make the teamfights fucking boring. If I'm playing adc well and am sneaking into openings and killing enemy squishies it feels good and the teamfight swings quickly and decisively, even if we were losing it due to other mistakes. If I'm a support and land a good CC it can erase 2 carries if my team follows it up quickly. A single good play can swing the fight or make it easy for your team to swing the fight. If I'm in HotS and playing minigun dude well I'll...slowly kill a tank, or maybe kill an enemy dps hero in 5 seconds if I use my ult while they don't have an escape and nobody helps them.

If you enjoy HotS, just play League Dominion exclusively. Dominion is a better game than HotS, with more interesting fights and more meaningful decisions. It even gets rid of last-hitting as your primary source of income and experience, so you can't complain about that shit. Fuck, it starts you at a level where fighting all the time is practical and pretty enjoyable. Dominion is tactically shallow, but it is an objectively deeper game than HotS (and it takes about the same amount of time) and just...better in every way except map variety (not that HotS maps do anything but change how objectives win you the game).
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

DSM, you wrote these words
DSM wrote: After that, the decision between last-hitting and proximity gold is just an arbitrary toggle.
You are literally saying that last-hitting should be removed. That is literally what you have been saying. Let me make my point clearer:
1) I am not talking about whether you think the earlygame should be axed.
2) I care that you are talking about removing last-hitting.
3) Therefore I am talking about how removing last-hitting is bad.
4) I am still not talking about whether the earlygame should be removed.

Whether or not you remove the earlygame (which is stupid on its own), removing last-hitting really truly does cut down on the tactics of a MOBA, and you need to compensate for that or else the game will be more boring. I would bet you that removing last-hitting is one of the biggest reasons HotS isn't doing well.
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Post by maglag »

Pseudo Stupidity wrote: The other thing DSM and Maglag do not understand is that decision points are important, and HotS has none. The game is a snorefest because the only decision making is "when do I use this ability in the teamfight?" rather than "should I teamfight at all? Could I trade objectives? Could I just gain an advantage elsewhere and try to take objectives later because I can scale well?" or any of the many, many decisions you can make in other, better games.
More decisions does not equate a better game.

SSB is a great fighting game despite characters only having very few moves relatively to older fighting games.

Meanwhile most modern FPS games severly limit what decisions you can make by only allowing you to grab a couple weapons and often not even able to pick up enemy weapons. Gone are the days of Unreal Tournament where you could pick from 10 weapons each with an alternate fire mode regardless of who you spawned as.

That's particulary true when the "option" is "boring grinding".
Pseudo Stupidity wrote: If you enjoy HotS, just play League Dominion exclusively. Dominion is a better game than HotS, with more interesting fights and more meaningful decisions. It even gets rid of last-hitting as your primary source of income and experience, so you can't complain about that shit. Fuck, it starts you at a level where fighting all the time is practical and pretty enjoyable. Dominion is tactically shallow, but it is an objectively deeper game than HotS (and it takes about the same amount of time) and just...better in every way except map variety (not that HotS maps do anything but change how objectives win you the game).
Perhaps you missed the part where I explained that I gave up on LoL precisely because it was the exact same thing over and over and over and over. I did like Dominion a lot more than "last-hit: the farming", but it too got stale after a few months. At least HoTS keeps pumping out new maps with new objectives to keep me interested.
Last edited by maglag on Tue May 05, 2015 11:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by DSMatticus »

YLM, you are being retarded. How in the fucking fuck do you read "after X, the decision between Y and ~Y is arbitrary" as "~Y." The very part of my post you are quoting in order to claim that I am only talking about removing last-hitting is a quote in which I talk about removing something else entirely and after that being able to also remove last-hitting. Own fucking goal?

I think last-hitting is a stupid mechanic. I said as much. I also understand what purpose last-hitting serves in the current era of MOBA's. I said as much in the exact same post where I said I think last-hitting is stupid. None of you jackasses trying to tell me what last-hitting does for the game are telling me anything I didn't already know and didn't already allude to in my very first post.

After mentioning that I think last-hitting is stupid and describing what role it serves in MOBA design, I vaguely suggested restructuring the game such that the role last-hitting serves would no longer be needed, and that as a result you could axe both last-hitting and games would be shorter, both of which are things I'd call a win. Since then, the herp-a-derp has forced me to be increasingly specific about what I mean by restructuring the game. But that's not a change in position, because talking about the removal of the early game is in my very first fucking post for fuck's sake god damnit I hate you all ARGHHHH.
Pseudo Stupidity wrote:You got a lot of answers as to why last-hitting is a good thing, it forces moments of vulnerability in lane. Without last-hitting laning would be boring and overly safe.
I have already addressed this by responding to YLM, I just want you to know that you are also being an idiot. The idea is not to replace the current laning phase with watching creeps murder eachother, it is to skip to the mid-game. You sure as fuck aren't safer in the mid-game than you are when you're laning.
Pseudo Stupidity wrote:If you jump right to "2-man tower dives are easy" then solo lanes basically can't exist because they'll be getting dove all day. Once people hit the point they can dive 2v1 safely you start seeing a lot more grouping for obvious reasons.
Yes, the mid-game plays like the mid-game. Thank you for this sage wisdom. Now, can you tell me why that's... bad? Seriously, what's the fucking problem? Instead of 90% of games following a rigid meta that deterministically assigns everyone their position and role, you're forced to be dynamic and fluid out of the gate.
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

DSM, please understand this basic thing I have only said three times. When you say "We can remove X because if we get rid of Y", and I say "No you can't remove X because [blarg]", then I am talking about X and not about Y. Just because you wrote about last hitting and laning phases in the same post does not mean everybody has to address both laning phases when they tell you not to remove last hitting.

I really want us to get past this point, because your ideas are terrible for so many other reasons and I can't wait to get to them. So here we go.

First: You can't actually remove the "laning phase". You might be able to start people off with more XP and gold, but there will still be "laning" because not everyone wants to lane forever. In DotA, Pudge's laning phase ends right when he hits 6 and no later than that. In DotA, Lycan's laning phase lasts so long that his strategy revolves around ignoring his team and killing creeps the end of the game. There is no magic "end laning phase" button, which you would know if you learned the slightest bit about MOBAs.

Second: Removing laning phase kills a titanic amount of strategy. You talk about how midgame there are tons of plays, but that shit is driven by performance in lane. Objectives taken are dictated by gold differentials and the consumables / abilities used while players are farming early. Imagine if everyone on DotA could start off with a free healing salve or had no magic stick charges after laning against PA. That shit would be retarded.

Third: Equal distribution of gold (e.g. proximity gold) kills tactical diversity. Remember that this is a reference to you saying you want to remove last-hits, and not that you want to remove the laning phase (remember that, I know it's hard). Instead of having the following options:
  • 1 person farms, 1 person defends them
  • 1 person farms
  • Multiple people farm
You lose the first option. Vulnerable characters that scale strongly (carries) can't safely farm without losing half of what they earn. That's a vital part of the game and throwing it away makes the game more boring. Again, a thing you would understand if you took more than a cursory glance.

Four: Character diversity gets cut down significantly when you remove the part of the game where characters are overly weak or overly strong. For instance Spectre from DotA has an awful laning phase, but if you could just start with Morbid Mask and Stout Shield you could safely farm and sustain and then turn into a monster with much less risk. DotA's Axe would also essentially be a non-factor, because lane cutting would be useless and he couldn't bully for those essential 10 minutes.
Last edited by ...You Lost Me on Wed May 06, 2015 12:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by DSMatticus »

YLM wrote:DSM, please understand this basic thing I have only said three times. When you say "We can remove X because if we get rid of Y", and I say "No you can't remove X because [blarg]"
That is not what you are saying you lying assface.

DSM: Last-hitting is kind of stupid. If you got rid of the early game, you wouldn't need it.

Kaelik: Last-hitting is the only thing that makes skillful play in lane possible.

DSM: Last-hitting is the only thing that makes skillful play in plane possible during the early game. But I just said I want to get rid of the early game, presumably by tweaking tower/unit/champ numbers.

YLM: I like laning. If you think it's boring, you just don't understand it. A game without a laning phase would be super casual.

DSM: Are you saying that MOBA's turn into super casual snorefests post-laning?

YLM: You were talking about removing last-hitting, not about removing laning.

DSM: My first post specifically talks about removing the early game.

YLM: You are literally saying that last-hitting should be removed.

DSM: No, I am literally saying that the laning phase should be removed and after that last-hitting would serve no real purpose and could also be removed and yes I consider both of those removals a plus.

YLM: Nonono. I'm not talking about laning, even though my first response to you was "I think the only reason someone would find that "boring" is if they can't (or don't want to) understand the process. And that's fine if you don't -- a super casual MOBA without the laning phase would be a decent idea and I'm sure some people would like it -- but you are very wrong in thinking that sort of thing is boring or kept around purely for historical reasons."

Your first response is specifically a rejection of my idea to get rid of the early game/laning phase. When I made fun of you for suggesting that without the laning phase a MOBA would be "super casual," you changed the topic to focus on last-hitting. And now you are claiming that "all along" you were only complaining about how we can't get rid of last-hitting because it's the only thing that makes the laning phase mean anything. Which brings us full circle back to my suggestion to get rid of the laning phase and then also get rid of last-hitting. Which you think is impossible, because "how else will we know who has more gold and experience at the start of the mid-game?" and a bunch of other stupid shit. :roll:

Yes, the game would play very differently at the beginning without the laning phase. It would even have to be radically rebalanced. That is... an incredibly trite observation.
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Post by Pseudo Stupidity »

DSM is obviously in way over his head, whereas maglag doesn't understand the different between options and decisions (protip: having a bunch of viable options lets you make more interesting decisions).

DSM, why do you have the early game?

Teamfighting is fun, but teamfighting the entire game is...boring. Having a laning phase where people can get ahead and behind is important to make the midgame fucking interesting. Setting yourself up for the midgame is important, and you do it by focusing gold and ganks onto certain champions, grouping for early objectives, or trying to set certain people on the other team behind.

Early game is when you can make really risky plays to get a slight advantage because you don't suffer a huge amount if you fuck up. If you fail a turret dive at 20 minutes you're losing an objective or two. If you fail a turret dive at 6 minutes you're losing 30 seconds of pressure on the map.

Everyone knows which objectives are most important, grouping for them isn't actually interesting. The interesting thing is tactical play, and having a laning phase lets a lot of interesting things happen. If everyone starts at midgame you'll see much safer play and more boring and predictable games. Laning phase is where a lot of plays get made, and removing it because ??? is stupid.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

What sort of idiot thinks it's last hitting that makes or breaks laning phase skill anyway?

Laning phase decisions about pushing and not pushing, over extending or playing conservative, and every damn thing else still exist without last hitting.

Last hitting performs one and only one function.

It rewards dumb ass click fest micro. That. Is. It. Period.

Oh and it satisfies really stupid internet MOBA grognards who rabidly hate change for no reason.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Wed May 06, 2015 2:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Kaelik »

PhoneLobster wrote:What sort of idiot thinks it's last hitting that makes or breaks laning phase skill anyway?

Laning phase decisions about pushing and not pushing, over extending or playing conservative, and every damn thing else still exist without last hitting.
Well actually, no they really don't. Because if you take out last hitting, there is no reason to overextend, pushing doesn't accomplish anything, and everyone can play conservative while doing whatever they want.

I mean, either your proximity gold mechanic is so forgivable that it doesn't matter, or it punishes ranged champs by being shorter than their autos or abilities, or it is tied to range somehow, and you did nothing but remove the attack animation that was a thing that actually allowed meaningful in lane trades.
PhoneLobster wrote:It rewards dumb ass click fest micro. That. Is. It. Period.
Last hitting is not even actually hard. I mean, there are mechanical skills, aside from Riven, clicking fast multiple times isn't even beneficial, so "clickfest" is basically never correct, but even the things that are actually mechanical skill are not last hitting.
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

DSM you cannot read. It's driving me crazy. Find the quote where I say this is about laning and not about last hitting or please accept the fact that you are wrong and possibly also illiterate. Just because you talked about "early game" in one place in your post does not mean the rest of your post refers to "early game" or that people responding to you need to talk about the "early game". If you honest-to-god think that last hitting is so tied to the earlygame that it the terms are synonymous, then you really are in over your head. That goes double for thinking that removing enormous amounts of tactical expression just needs "rebalancing".

ON TOPIC: I would honestly want to replace last hitting with something more interesting. This isn't really the place for it, but I thought about an all-jungle map with different varieties of monster to fight. Some of them could be easy, but some might need 2-3 people and you'd all roam around trying to catch the other team while taking monster buffs.
Last edited by ...You Lost Me on Wed May 06, 2015 3:49 am, edited 2 times in total.
DSMatticus wrote:Again, look at this fucking map you moron. Take your finger and trace each country's coast, then trace its claim line. Even you - and I say that as someone who could not think less of your intelligence - should be able to tell that one of these things is not like the other.
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Post by DSMatticus »

YLM in his latest post wrote:Find the quote where I say this is about laning
YLM in his first post wrote:But it's not actually boring. Especially when you get to higher levels of play, you'll notice that the laning phase will have plenty of interaction. In addition to being a skill expression and a method of garnering early advantages, it also creates a constant pressure behind other game strategies (farm v take tower for example) and allows for non-deathball fights.

I think the only reason someone would find that "boring" is if they can't (or don't want to) understand the process. And that's fine if you don't -- a super casual MOBA without the laning phase would be a decent idea and I'm sure some people would like it -- but you are very wrong in thinking that sort of thing is boring or kept around purely for historical reasons.
Okay, done. Will you shut up now?
Pseudo Stupidity wrote:DSM is obviously in way over his head
Yeah, having to read YLM's own posts to him is so difficult.
Pseudo Stupidity wrote:Teamfighting is fun, but teamfighting the entire game is...boring. Having a laning phase where people can get ahead and behind is important to make the midgame fucking interesting. Setting yourself up for the midgame is important, and you do it by focusing gold and ganks onto certain champions, grouping for early objectives, or trying to set certain people on the other team behind.
Okay, you are not really arguing for an early game of any specific form, you are just arguing that there should should exist a part of the game where people make choices and maybe take risks with the intention of gaining an advantage later in the game. No shit, but people are already still doing that when laning ends.
Kaelik wrote:Because if you take out last hitting, there is no reason to overextend, pushing doesn't accomplish anything, and everyone can play conservative while doing whatever they want.
You realize that you actually win the game by destroying the enemy's structures, right? Neutrals still give gold/XP. Ganking heroes still gives gold/XP. Destroying towers still gives gold/XP. There are still the red buff, blue buff, baron buff. Even with proximity gold/XP, there is a bunch of shit to do to earn a relative advantage and you are encouraged to do as much of it as possible at any given time. And the more of that shit you try to do the more you expose yourself to ganks. And the less of that shit you try to do the more the other team might. It's really not all that different; the mid-game is not driven by last-hitting in the same way that the early-game is. It is driven by all that other shit.

If you just got rid of last-hitting, then the first part of the game would be a completely pointless exercise in standing around and watching creeps murder eachother. If you moved the balance points around to make towers and creeps less initially intimidating and tweaked the level scaling a bit, the mid-game depth would come online at the start and you wouldn't need the depth created by last-hitting to bridge the gap.
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