BlizzCon 2015: Heroes of the Storm State of the Game panel

Four Heroes of the Storm designers came to the Panels Stage at BlizzCon on Saturday to drop the latest on upcoming hero balance changes, snowball counters, and how they are addressing the hot topic of bad matchmaking by the system. They also lay out their plans for the rest of the year and what’s being worked on for 2016.

How balance is determined

Game Designer Brett Crawford reiterated that they look for heroes to have around a 50% win rate. Anything to far above or below is a red flag in terms of balance. But win rate per hero can change by region, how skilled you are with the hero, quick match vs ranked play and more. Talent pick rate is also another determining factor if a hero needs a balance pass or not. The example given is Gazlowe. His TNT talent is chosen the most by far, more than 45% of the time, but his win rate is solid no matter which of his talents are chosen.

Other examples of balance include how they recently rebalanced Kerrigan. She had fallen out of favor so they changed up her talents and she’s back to being chosen and winning. Another example is the problem of Uther. He has a solid win rate and a solid kit, but he was picked or banned 100% of the time in competitive games which makes him too good. They identified that his abilities were too disruptive of the coordination of the enemy team. So they are going to increase Divine Shield cooldown from 70 to 90 seconds and drop his Eternal Devotion trait duration from 10 seconds to 8. These Uther changes will hit the Live servers in next Tuesday’s patch on Nov. 17.

How Cho’Gall exposed the snowball problem

Next up is Game Designer Alex Neyman. He said when the devs started play testing their new two-player Warrior/Assassin Cho’Gall, they saw that the games quickly went the direction of Cho’Gall’s team or against his team and the losing side couldn’t catch up before being defeated. That caused them to start looking at all matches, not just the ones with Cho’Gall in it and they realized this was a larger problem. So they implemented some changes to smooth out the power progression of heroes as they level so there isn’t such a large power gap between levels that can’t be overcome.

These changes went live on limited maps with the Lt. Morales patch and they feel they have been a big success in keeping the matches on a razor’s edge until the end. But now because all players have more power earlier in the game, they also increased the death timers in the early levels to make early take downs more meaningful. These changes will be coming to all the maps on the Live servers on the Nov. 17 Cho’Gall patch as well.

Future Heroes getting balance changes

Lead Live Designer Matt Cooper took the stage to go over some heroes that are currently at the top of the list for changes. Gazlowe is first as he has a very low pick rate, though a good win rate for when he is picked. His character fantasy is that he is the master at locking down an area with his turrets, but his current talents don’t really make that happen like they should. They are now toying with ideas to improve that including the turrets charging up an extra attack when the player charges up Gazlowe’s death laser.

Nova has a problem with talent diversity. Most players pick the same talents and the designers want to change that. They want to give her talents that reward people who are skilled at playing her. One example would be a increasing damage if she snipes the same hero repeatedly, but losing that damage buff if she misses a shot. The final hero they are looking at currently is Tychus. He has a low win rate and is too similar to Valla (ranged assassin, short range dash, good ranged damage, good ae damage, can be talented for good single target damage.) They are looking into the idea of giving him more talents similar to Giant Killer (which increases damage against high health characters) which will make him something of a tank-buster, ideal for countering Cho’Gall or an enemy team running a three Warrior composition.

Future improvements to game systems

Game Director Dustin Browder takes the stage last to talk about the hotly debated topic of matchmaking. There has been a lot of uproar in the community about high ranked players being matched into groups with much lower ranked players. The basic problem is that the game is using the old StarCraft matchmaking system which only had to allow for three classes and personal win rates. Heroes has many more variables to take into consideration and sometimes it just couldn’t make a good match and would dump whoever was unmatchable with anyone just to get a game started.

To deal with this, they are building a new matchmaking system from scratch. The new system will place priority for players who have spent too long in the queue by building a team custom built for them to not only get them in a match, but in a match with players of similar level. In the old system, you could be stuck in the queue for up to 10 minutes before getting dumped into a game with just about anyone. Now, if you are waiting for more than 4 or so minutes, you will get priority for getting similar-skilled players into your group and your game started.

The current plan is to roll out the new system in the next few weeks, but Dustin was clear he was not promising this timeline. If problems arise, they will delay its implementation. But if there are delays, they will keep the community informed.

To make the new matchmaking system work better, they have plans to improve your personal matchmaking rating (MMR) in 2016. The new MMR will take into consideration not only player win/loss rate and rank in competitive play, but also how well a player did in a game despite their team losing, how much experience the player has with the hero they are playing and of course their current rank in competitive play. Also Quick Matches will be improved so your team comp is matched up to a similar team comp for a more fair and balanced match. So if your team is heavy on Specialists, you won’t be matched against a team that is running just Warriors, Support, and Assassins.

The ranked play system is also getting looked at. They feel its too harsh in raising or dropping players’ ranks. They also want it to be more clear to players about why their rank was changed. They don’t have answers yet on how they are going to tackle those problems, but they are working on them for the new year. This has to be worked out before a new season can be started for competitive play so we are going to be in pre-season for many months to come instead of just a few weeks.

Quick hits of what else is coming in 2016:

• A new screen is being developed that will show you the last 10 things to hit you when you die. You can now see who damaged you and, just as importantly, who healed you right before you died.
• They will also be introducing bans to Hero and Team league. It’s the same system used in current competitive play.
• They want to introduce a Grandmaster title to the top Rank 1 player.

Quick hits of what else is coming by the end of the year:

• Talent gating (blocking you from being able to chose among all talents until you’ve leveled up a character) will be removed entirely
• Free weekly Hero rotation is being increased from 7 heroes to 10

Q&A

These questions and answers are paraphrased.

• Q: When will there be an in-game clock and a Blizzard e-sports network? A: I can promise you a clock, but not an entire network.
• Q: Does player perception have an impact on game design choices? A: Yes, but it has to be true to our vision. And after implementation we check on player response to see how we did.
• Q: Hero League recently removed 3- and 4-person premade groups. Can we get those back? A: We dropped 3- and 4-player premade groups out of Ranked Play because the matchmaker did a bad job of filling in the empty slots. Now that we are rolling out the improved matchmaking system we’re hoping we can reintroduce them. If not, we will consider an unranked draft play mode for those kinds of groups.
• Q: How are you supporting esports considering your Twitch numbers are relatively low? A: The esports team will be rolling out announcements about their 2016 plans. EDITOR’S NOTE: Kim Phan stated at BlizzCon that there will be three seasons next year instead of one big one.
• Q: Can you consider adding WoW‘s dragon aspects into the game, but in human form so their size isn’t an issue? Particularly, Ysera. A: We like that idea alot.
• Q: Have you considered restricting certain heroes that require a lot of skill to play from Hero League unless the player has a certain number of games played with that character (i.e. Brightwing)? A: We understand the problem, but we don’t think reducing the available hero pool is the answer since the upcoming introduction of bans will shrink it even more.
• Q: Melee assassins like Butcher and Thrall tend to have low pick rates compared to Ranged Assassins, do you know why? A: We’ve seen that Butcher and Thrall have high win rates, but it’s likely because they have team compositions that complement them like an Uther with a Divine Shield. We’re looking into it more.
• Q: Is Tyrael’s trait (AE explosion shortly after dying) going to be looked at? A: We like the idea of it, but it may have to be reworked down the line.