Blizzard dies and Bobby rides

MDI is pretty cool to watch just because it’s very apparent how well they can play the game. The downside is that for anyone who doesn’t play M+ there is no context to the skills people need to be able to pull it off so it ends up niche.

I never understood the idea of heroes of the storm as an eSports. The entire design was to minimize the impact of individual player skill, how do you build engaging narratives around that?

Warmuth said:

MDI is pretty cool to watch just because it’s very apparent how well they can play the game. The downside is that for anyone who doesn’t play M+ there is no context to the skills people need to be able to pull it off so it ends up niche.

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You don't really "watch" MDI nowadays, you just wait for the first team to lose on a wipe. Also it's on Youtube, so you don't really watch it at all.

Kuro said:

I never understood the idea of heroes of the storm as an eSports. The entire design was to minimize the impact of individual player skill, how do you build engaging narratives around that?

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While Heroes of the Storm was more designed/focused on team play rather than individual play, you could still make some pretty impactful plays as an individual with high skill. Most of what killed HotS are all the things that became "industry standard" or "accepted" before its release and people just not gravitating toward anything that was "different".

HotS was a FAR superior "team" game to LOL and DOTA - that just doesn't translate well for your average Twitch viewer who wants to see their favorite streamer "make plays".

Neranja said:

Also, the abysmal matchmaking system

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This was honestly the largest destroyer of any "early" momentum they might've been able to muster. Their matchmaking was absolute garbage for a while - some of the worst I've seen in "modern" gaming.

Kirun said:

While Heroes of the Storm was more designed/focused on team play rather than individual play, you could still make some pretty impactful plays as an individual with high skill. Most of what killed HotS are all the things that became "industry standard" or "accepted" before its release and people just not gravitating toward anything that was "different".

HotS was a FAR superior "team" game to LOL and DOTA - that just doesn't translate well for your average Twitch viewer who wants to see their favorite streamer "make plays".

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Dopamine was the problem. I could run up 20-0 on the Butcher and get close to what would qualify as hypercarry in HOTS which isn't saying much. I'd dominate the game but the way lanes and phases work plus the nexus ending is designed to suck the fun out of the push. And even while "carrying" you never felt any dopamine hits from a kill. The reward was lacking.

Leagues has dopamine hits coming in at every stage of laning and every play. I couldn't squeeze a dopamine hit out of that lemon HOTS if my fucking life depended on it.

Shit still makes me sick. I can only hope they retire HOTS and pull the plug someday. Also not allowing chat to enemy is the most coward thing a MOBA can do. Police it heavily like Leagues, but the ability to communicate should be there. If someone wants to say Artemis is a virgin, fucking let them. Ban them later if you have to. It's the design decision that's a turnoff.

jayrebb said:

Dopamine was the problem. I could run up 20-0 on the Butcher and get close to what would qualify as hypercarry in HOTS which isn't saying much. I'd dominate the game but the way lanes and phases work plus the nexus ending is designed to suck the fun out of the push. And even while "carrying" you never felt any dopamine hits from a kill. The reward was lacking.

Leagues has dopamine hits coming in at every stage of laning and every play. I couldn't squeeze a dopamine hit out of that lemon HOTS if my fucking life depended on it.

Shit still makes me sick. I can only hope they retire HOTS and pull the plug someday.

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You never felt it because HotS was still focused on the "team" aspect. Some tryhard solo laning and making "dominate" plays didn't mean shit if he was ignoring objectives, not paying attention to countdowns, camps, etc. That was the entire point - to take away the whole ADC "hero" aspect of LOL, DOTA, etc.

Some people hated that and I get it, but for me that was the largest part of the appeal of HotS.

Kirun said:

You never felt it because HotS was still focused on the "team" aspect. Some tryhard solo laning and making "dominate" plays didn't mean shit if he was ignoring objectives, not paying attention to countdowns, camps, etc. That was the entire point - to take away the whole ADC "hero" aspect of LOL, DOTA, etc.

Some people hated that and I get it, but for me that was the largest part of the appeal of HotS.

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I barely make plays in Leagues these days and suck donkey dick after so many years off. But I can still have fun losing a lane.

HOTS just wasn't engaging for whatever reason, probably because you didn't feel the personal responsibility to win lane. Like you said, the team emphasis on design. Which also makes just being a normal player and doing mediocre in the lane generally not fun either, compared to Leagues where it is actually very fun to just play the game. The lack of feeling of importance on role and responsibility is absent in HOTS.

After a week and assessing that-- the appeal is completely gone, as even a low skill team player won't be able to have any fun due to the lack of personal responsibility HOTS imparts. In Leagues just maintaining lane is a victory in itself, no plays necessary. And it's considered great fun doing that.

Kirun said:

While Heroes of the Storm was more designed/focused on team play rather than individual play, you could still make some pretty impactful plays as an individual with high skill. Most of what killed HotS are all the things that became "industry standard" or "accepted" before its release and people just not gravitating toward anything that was "different".

HotS was a FAR superior "team" game to LOL and DOTA - that just doesn't translate well for your average Twitch viewer who wants to see their favorite streamer "make plays".

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Completely disagree. HotS was Blizzard's extremely lazy approach and a huge indicator of their move towards what I called socialized gaming. Massive catch up mechanics, shared Team XP, no items, etc. At a minimum they were seeking to reduce workload and at a maximum they were playing politics trying to remove the special people and make it "fair" for all, and I say this as someone who is just average at MOBAs...

Imagine how successful HotS could've been had they put in the extra effort. Itemization that everyone knows and can relate to. Quests beyond the basic shit they added. Trade skills to get certain items, and the list goes on. Beyond that they could've made items actually change the way your character looks which is something no other MOBA does.

HotS as an esport was never interesting because at the back of your mind you knew if you took the best of the best HotS team and stuck them in league or dota, they'd be a tier 3-4 team at best.

A couple streamers I was watching in the long long ago were burned out on League and hopped to Heroes of the Storm to get in on the ground floor of the hot new thing in a burgeoning genre. Their channels died a death. That game was so fucking shit to watch. Honestly, if your game is shit to watch in Current Year you need to start the fuck over. I'm looking at you, Artifact. What a fucking disaster that one was.

xmod2 said:

EOMM is some darks art shit like esoteric morality, where it really relies on no one finding out you're doing it.

Once people know that's what you're doing, their behaviors shift and your 'churn' calculation will change as a result.

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I think the study controlled for that observation, actually. The really cool part is how their findings apply to everything subjected to game theory; which is to say, everything.

EOMM said:

Furthermore, EOMM is not even limited to games. In broad applications, such as friend connection in a social network and 1-on-1 tutoring in online education, EOMM’s formulation and optimization techniques still apply. In the future, we expect EOMM equipped with more advanced models, such as skill model and churn model, can have higher optimal bound.

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Paper is at https://web.cs.ucla.edu/~yzsun/papers/WWW17Chen_EOMM it was one of the studies suggested by the facebook whistleblower during her testimony to congress.

You could imagine positive applications of the principle: like keeping kids interested in classwork by quantifying which techniques or educators engage each student. But yeah, it'll be used to sell lootboxes.

Years ago I was doing my 10 placement games for a new League of Legends season on a smurf account. I showed up planning on losing all ten games and then just fucking around on it here and there rather than try to get a thousand kill game or whatever typical shit smurfs do. I'd pick jungle, get both buffs and then go die mid. Get buffs when they respawn and die top. Just fuck up the whole game. Easy ten losses.

Except it wasn't easy. It was impossible. It couldn't be done. There were games that could not be lost. I gave up when I was 5-2 and just played the reason of the placement games and season normally. It broke my head. We can all see when we get a game that is unwinnable, just some some fucked-at-char-select crib death of a game that never should have even launched, and we bemoan our bad luck. What we don't get to see (and often don't care to even look for) are the games that we cannot lose. It took a lot of wind out of my sails to realize the amount of impact I actually have in a match is nowhere near what I think it is. Boy howdy you sure played well in that match it was literally impossible to lose you fucking Alpha Chad.

That some companies configure their matchmaking algos for retention rather than balance isn't surprising I guess but it's a bit disappointing. Must the entire world be trying to run an angle all the time?

They could just make a more engaging coop-vs-ai mode, I suppose. In fact, they could integrate those EOMM principles into the coop-vs-ai systems to maximise those engagement outcomes.

Of all people, Riot/Tencent could afford to build GAN-based AI's that modulate its behavior for optimal player engagement. Not too easy and just hard enough to keep you buying skins. Maybe something based on OpenAI's thing but instead of finding novel ways to cheat it's optimized to keep you feeling challenged and motivated to keep playing:



I vaguely recall some discussion on why they never worked on more engaging coop-vs-AI but never bothered to remove the feature entirely. Like too many people keep playing it but it undermined their model somehow.

phisey said:

They could just make a more engaging coop-vs-ai mode, I suppose. In fact, they could integrate those EOMM principles into the coop-vs-ai systems to maximise those engagement outcomes.

Of all people, Riot/Tencent could afford to build GAN-based AI's that modulate its behavior for optimal player engagement. Not too easy and just hard enough to keep you buying skins. Maybe something based on OpenAI's thing but instead of finding novel ways to cheat it's optimized to keep you feeling challenged and motivated to keep playing:



I vaguely recall some discussion on why they never worked on more engaging coop-vs-AI but never bothered to remove the feature entirely. Like too many people keep playing it but it undermined their model somehow.

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This was a serious concern with HOTS because chat being silenced between teams.

There was no evidence the enemy team was not AI that Blizzard implemented to fill positions. Due to the way HOTS is designed this was entirely plausible.

It lead to several more reactions of disgust and disdain from my crew. i pushed back on it, saying it's real players...the truth is, I couldn't prove it. HOTS is played with fucking bots and marketed towards ages 7-12.