#28 - Into the Nexus: "All About BlizzCon 2014"
• Garrett • Kyle
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Intro: Welcome to Into the Nexus! The Heroes of the Storm podcast!
7000g - Diablo
News
BlizzCon 2014 Roundup
HeroesNexus.com has an amazing breakdown of everything that was announced and talked about at BlizzCon 2014. Make sure to go check it out. http://www.heroesnexus.com/
History of Heroes
- Directly after last year’s BlizzCon Blizzard sent their employees home with the BlizzCon build of the game. This meant they had thousands of people testing the game. This is a much larger size than their traditional testing phase for boxed games.
- The Heroes Technical Alpha is the earliest Blizzard has ever let the public test their game.
- Heavy emphasis on constant iteration. There will always be something new for Heroes just around the corner.
New Heroes
- Because of Thrall, the mounts system was conceptualized. They wanted him to ride a Direwolf.
- Back in 2010, Thrall's kit was very different. It didn't feel like him. His original kit was given to Rehgar.
- Thrall has a lot of lightning. He's also a character you want to see in enemy faces, but not necessarily a tank.
- Frostwolf Resilience: Damaging enemies gains charges, with enough charges, he heals himself.
- Synergizes well will with Chain Lightning.
- Feral Spirit: Roots enemies.
- Her development has been about refining the fantasy. She has a lot of history in the Warcraft universe.
- She became a character which didn't really battle over time. They're bringing her back to her Warcraft III self.
- They started with Water Elemental as being a basic ability. It was proven problematic.
- They wanted her to summon it, but only last for a limited time.
- Had an issue in the core gameplay loop. Water Elemental was becoming the core of Jaina.
- What if Jaina was just a frost mage? No fire spells, no fire spells.
- Cone of Cold in WoW makes you feel like you've broken the game based on its visual and audio feedback. Very cool moments. Jaina should feel like this.
- Trait: Frostbite. Spells chill enemies, and spell hits deal 50% bonus damage when they're chilled.
- Frostbolt, Blizzard, Cone of Cold makes her feel perfect.
- Its Happening! It was a challenge for the development team. The characters are over 20 years old, they didn't have much distinction, and its 3 heroes in 1.
- They needed to all be visually unique. In the original game they shared some colors, now they're all very unique.
- They asked themselves before making Chen, if he could be a hero which would have individual spirit control. It felt clunky.
- It didn't work well because the moment you pop Storm, Earth, and Fire, you aren't used to controlling three separate heroes.
- Lost Vikings it works much better players have the expectation of playing three heroes all game long.
- Originally didn't have individual abilities. They decided it wasn't good enough.
- Talent system changes how each viking plays, so players can choose how crazy they want to make their vikings.
- Can move around the field independent of each other. Solo cap Dragon Knight!
- Was not playable at BlizzCon, but is close to release.
- Our first iteration she was able to trap to silence heroes, and could block out enemy screens. Her kit didn't fit the fantasy of the hero, so they went back to Warcraft III.
- Dark Archer. Black magic vibe. Banshees. Possess!
- Needed to make sure not only her look was different than other archers in the game, they needed to have different kits. Sylvanas is a siege archer.
- One of her development abilities was turned into a trait.
- Strangling Shot: 50 Mana, 10 second cooldown. Disables buildings.
- Trait: Black Arrows - Basic Attacks and Abilities stun enemy minions, Mercs, and aggressive structures for 1 second.
Leavers
- In a future update, if you leave a game early. You will be flagged as a leaver. There will be a UI for this.
- if you are flagged, you get put on teams with other leavers.
- They will let you get out of this group. Just stop leaving games.
Draft Mode
- Teams will alternate picking heroes
- No duplicate heroes
- Used by all ranked modes
- Provided as an option in custom games
- Coin flip to see who picks first
- No hero bans initially
- They want to keep the game at 20 mins. They feel bans will make the pre-lobby feel even longer than the game.
- Emphasis on their ability to add bans in later should they feel it’s necessary.
Ranked Play
- Hero League - Any number of players can queue, uses matchmaker to finish team with equal skilled players
- Favor matching against parties of similar size. (So if you queue as group of 3, it will try to find another premade 3 group to fight against)
- Personal ranking and skill rating
- Must reached player level 30 to enter (What are our thoughts on this gate?)
- Team league - Premade 5 man teams
- 5 man teams will have names
- Can have up to 9 members for subs
- can be a member of up to 3 teams
- The team itself has a rank and skill rating
- Must have reached level 40
- Ranking influenced by hearthstone
- Start at 50, you work your way to 1
- Winning games earns points
- Losing games makes you lose points
- Points determine your rank
- A skilled team playing against a lower skill team will not earn as many points. (works the other way too)
- heroes will have seasons. Your rank starts new each season
- Retain points based on last season's rank
- Match quality is important to them
- MMR is still affecting your matchups
- Skill rating persists season to season
Battlegrounds
- Philosophy: Think of them as a WoW raid. You've been through tons of them, and they all have common elements.
- There should be a core, awesome mechanic for each battleground. Changes the flow of gameplay.
- Watch Towers and Health Fountains are all shared.
- Has the same core elements, mercs, towers as other bgs.
- Takes place in a brand new universe, never before seen in another Blizzard game.
- Ancient Egyption vibe. Temples, aquaducts.
- Capture Points: Temple Guardians come out to kill you. If you stand on it longer, and survive, lasers come out to help you.
- Tomb of the Spider Queen (New BG, WIP)
- Takes place in the save universe as sky temple.
- Is an interior battleground, the first one! It's spooky.
- Experimenting with props to make it fun for the players.
- Designing objects starts off with blocky shapes, then give them details.
What's Next
- We're going to the Diablo Universe! Collide Heaven and Hell.
- Everything is in a concept state, nothing is final.
- Diablo Mounts and Skins will be coming out, and heroes.
- Skeleton King! New Hero
- The Butcher! New Hero
- Crusader! New Hero
- Nova Nerf Incoming - Hotshots was nerfed from 330% to 300% on the Blizzcon build. Rewind Removal might follow.
Exhibition Tournament
- Cloaken and Tryxler did an awesome job.
- Low Expectations vs. Team Rocket Jump was a lot of fun and set a great tone.
- Good vibes all throughout thanks to “BlizzCon Glory”
- Snake Picks. All decided behind stage.
- Game 1 : Haunted Mines
Evil Geniuses | Cloud9 |
Tassadar Falstad Tyreal Stitches Raghar | Tychus Lich King Zagara Uther Chen |
- Cloud9 pushes top lane, enters through the bottom.
- Cloud 9 takes gollum, EG goes for knights. 1st Gollums Even.
- Second Golum Cloud 9 65. EG 35
- Third Golum Cloud 9 82, EG 18.
- Cloud 9 Wins
- Cloud 9, priorities objectives.
Evil Geniuses | Cloud 9 |
Tassadar Tyrael Falstad Uther Stitches | Tychus Arthas Abathur Valla Brightwing |
- Cloud 9 Takes Dragon 1 and 2.
- Abathur Clones Arthas Throwing himself in to tank repeatedly
- Game 2 of the finals was nuts! Great Team fight at the Dragonknight in the middle at the 10 minute mark.
- Cloud 9 Dominates Merc Camps
- Abathur Takes Promote. Tassadar takes Twilight Archon.
- Cloud 9’s dive on the core at the end, taking it down to 26% and not finishing it.
Evil Geniuses | Cloud 9 |
Tassadar Falsad Tyrael Brightwing Nova | Tychus Abathur Arthas Uther Chen |
- EG First Tribute
- Cloud 9 Gets first curse
- Cloud 9 Merc Camp Dominance
- As a dota player, seeing all the panda splits die only to repear hurts my heart
- Game 3 on Cursed Hollow was absolutely fantastic. Come 20 minutes in EG was giving it their all to get back into the game. They finally got the curse only to lose two teammates to a bad team fight shortly after.
- Abathur-Tychus starts working on the core.
- Cloud9 Wins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QxaGLZpVm4
Liquipedia Heroes Portal
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/heroes/Main_Page
Patreon Mention: Patreon.com/ITN
Emails
Dirk
The crazy guy who sent us each $50 to spend in the hero store, wants to know what we got :
Hi there Kyle & Garrett,
Looking forward to the Blizzcon episode, I'm sure it'll be epic! I just wanted to share a fun fact regarding franchise representation.
A lot of people seem hung up on Warcraft being over-represented, quoting that other franchises are just as long-standing or have plenty of lore to draw on.
I'd like to weigh in and share the number of Wiki pages on each of these franchises, to hopefully forever silence this debate! (hah, yeah right!)
http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Diablo_Wiki
Diablo Wiki pages: 7,262
http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/StarCraft_Wiki
Starcraft Wiki pages: 5,370
http://www.wowwiki.com/Portal:Main
Warcraft Wiki pages: 101,555
Hope that helps!
Cheerio,
- Dirk
Ps.: I know you're going to have your hands full reporting on Blizzcon, but please let us know which heroes you ended up buying!
Infested Tycus - $15
Turner from the UK
Hi Garrett and Kyle.
Just a quick question. I just experienced a bm Illidan on my team.
Within 5 minutes he called our team noobs and then sat back at home afk. This was upsetting and annoying to the team.
Do you think there should be the option to kick a player if all members of a team agree?
Love the podcast. Keep it up.
Outro
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Into the Nexus is a produced by Amove.tv and Declan H. You can see more about this and all the other A-move shows at Amove.tv. You can also email the show at ITNcast@gmail.com or continue the conversation over at forum.Amove.tv.
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Personal Stuff
Garrett
Follow Garrett @GarrettArt
NOMOONart.com for Garrett’s stream designs.
The Angry Chicken: A Hearthstone Podcast
Kyle
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