#18 - Into the Nexus: “Title”

• Garrett • Kyle 

Sponsors:

• Doghouse Systems.com

Into the Nexus is proudly sponsored by Doghouse Systems.com.  If you use the code ITN at checkout, you will get double memory on your next Doghouse System!

• Tweaked Audio.com

Into the Nexus is also sponsored by TweakedAudio.com.  The same code, ITN, will get you 30% off and free shipping on your entire order of noise-reducing earbuds from Tweaked Audio!

Intro:  Welcome to Into the Nexus! The Heroes of the Storm podcast!

Zeratul Giveaway

Congrats to @BigStemp winner of the SDCC Cloaked Zeratul figure.

News

Icy Veins Kaeo Milker Interview

Same guy from the Gamescom Interviews last week.

How much longer for the tech alpha?

• Technical alpha was really about us setting up our server infrastructure and payment systems. These are things that we had never done before in this scale. It is really about making sure that the game is prepared to support a lot of people, because this is a free to play game, and ultimately our hope is that tons of people are going to come in and try it.
• We are also still setting up core gameplay. There are mechanics that we are still doing; we are actually still missing a lot of features, like ranked play, and especially social features (clans, groups, etc.).

More Heroes?

• The 3 new Heroes shown at GamesCom will be added to the alpha in 2 upcoming patches.

• Chen
• Anub’Arak
• Azmodan

• 5 Battlegrounds and 28 Heroes currently
• “We have been patching alpha every 4 to 6 weeks, adding content and doing a lot of iteration and polish on features. That is going to be an on-going process.”
• Next phase will be moving from the PTR hardware Heroes is currently hosted on to production hardware.

• “When we enter closed beta, we will actually move everyone in their retail accounts, in the real Battle.net environment with WoW, Diablo III, Starcraft II, etc.”

Leavers and AI

• Q.Any chance of having someone join a game in progress, after someone else left?

• Right now, it is not something that we have lined up, but this is definitely something that we are talking about.

• Right now, if you ping objectives and the AI is around you, it will do it. If you ping on an AI, it will follow you and it will do what you do.
• Right now, the difficulty levels of the AI are intentionally tuned way down, so they are not as effective as they will be later on.
• “The difficulty spectrum will be tuned to be much more specific, so in the case of someone leaving, they get replaced with what we are calling the Elite AI, which is one of the high of the higher difficulties, but later on it will be like whatever your MMR was, an AI of equivalent skill will come in.”

• “It will be very distinctly at that guy's level in terms of abilities and the way they are executed, skill shots and stuff. It is really nice. There are times when humans do not listen to you, so having an AI that does listen to you is kind of nice.”

New Content Schedule Post-Launch

• The team wants to do regular updates.
• “Historically, we have been a team that makes box products.”

• “we basically are used to working on a game for a couple of years, releasing it and a couple of years later there is an expansion”

• Milker said they believe Heroes will be in a constant state of evolution.
• The current 4 to 6 week iteration cycle is one they like and want to stick with.
• “Also, right now the Nexus is this transdimensional storm that is basically allowing all those Blizzard universes to collide. We think that we will be bringing in more Blizzard IP. We will go to Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft, but also to Nexus realms, which have nothing to do with Blizzard IP.”

Talents balance: all viable?

• Talents should be situationally viable.
• They do not want one build to be the only “correct” build.

• They do not believe they’re currently executing on that. But that they are constantly iterating on talents to achieve it.

• “When we made talents, we looked at the item systems, because everyone uses that, but item systems were genericized across all the Heroes, so that left really limited options in terms of what we could do with it.”
• Hero-specific talents allow the team to cater to that Hero. It allows individual ability augments.
• Player behavior is watched closely.

• “we get data on everything that is happening in the game.”
• “If there is a dominant talent choice per Hero, we start looking at the talents that chosen less often. We analyze them and see what we can do to make them more viable.”

Links

• http://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/6778-heroes-of-the-storm-interview-with-kaeo-milker/

Developer Insight Kerrigan

Talk with Game Designer Kent-Erik Hagman

Countess Kerrigan : http://i.imgur.com/5mh8GjU.jpg

“With Kerrigan, we really wanted to capture the powerful force she projects. She's a character who isn't afraid to do her own dirty work.”

“The art team also really wanted to stress her wings and spiky nature, so Crushing Grip from Heart of the Swarm became Impaling Blades in Heroes to really play up her spikes.”

In the current state of the game, Kerrigan has become a solid initiator for a lot of teams due to abilities mentioned above. Has the design team been happy with the role she has landed in?

“We think so! It wasn't necessarily a goal from the get go. Instead, we were hoping to strike a fluid playstyle that originated from the tools we provided her. Her abilities lead to a natural combo that simply facilitates the type of play mentioned above.”

Let's take a second to chat about Kerrigan's heroic abilities. Maelstrom works nicely with the playstyle mentioned above, but her second heroic, Summon Ultralisk, seems to be harder to incorporate into her play. Are there any plans to change the heroic or is the design team happy with its current iteration?

“Making two heroics available to a hero allows us to offer various playstyle differences for that hero based on what we hope is a fun decision about halfway through a game. That said, we definitely agree there's more we can do with Ultralisk. Unfortunately, you'll have to stay tuned for that, as we're still working out what exactly that will be.”

Kerrigan has been a playable hero since Heroes of the Storm’s infancy. Have there been any fun design moments with her that you would like to share?

“Kerrigan has come a long, long way since her initial design. There was a time in the distant past, where she was a ranged caster. She used heavy-hitting abilities like Chain Lightning and Psi Shift, but no matter what form she's taken, she's always been one of the scariest heroes to see in battle. During our playtests in the days of yore, there were a fair number of games in which Assimilation was overtuned, making her pretty much invincible. This naturally led to 1v5 situations that were punctuated by loud groans. GG, Kerrigan. GG.”

Links

• http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/15503467/developer-insights-the-heart-of-a-queen-8-27-2014

Mini-News

Battlegrounds Pages

Interactive Maps for each Battleground

• Blackhearts Bay
• Dragonshire
• Haunted Mines
• Cursed Hollow
• Garden of Terror

Links

• http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/battlegrounds/
• http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/15487815/introducing-battleground-pages-8-27-2014

Returned Gold

Spyrian: “We’ve released a hotfix which returned missing Gold to players who made a Gold transaction in the Shop but did not receive the item purchased. We are still investigating a more permanent solution, though we are not seeing additional reports of failed Gold purchases at this time.”

• http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/forum/topic/13840824680

Heroes at PAX East this weekend at booth #352

• Attendees will get the chance to play Chen, Anub’arak, and Azmodan.
• http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/15109891/blizzard-invades-pax-prime-8-27-2014

Patreon Mention: Patreon.com/ITN

If you listened to last week’s show you may have heard that we started a Patreon. Today you may have noticed that our usual sponsor ads were missing. That’s because we have already hit our first milestone and are now supported directly by our patrons.

We also have our first ITN Producer, Declan H. Big thanks to Declan and all of our patrons for helping us reach our first goal!

Strategy

ESV - A Glance at Esports?

We discussed the upcoming ESV tournament on episode 16. It is currently ongoing.

Heroes Picked so far

Not Pick:

Murky

ETC

Illidan

LiLi

Muradin

Nazeebo

Nova

Raynor

Links

• http://www.gosugamers.net/heroesofthestorm/events/231-esv-championship-series
• http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/games/464669-esv-championship-series-season-1-heroes

Emails

Sciath

You guys were talking about how could they add The Butcher into Heroes since he seems so much like Stitches (fat guy that hooks). In LoL there are 4 members of Hook City

1) Hook that grabs the first enemy that it hits (minion or champion) and pulls them to you. Passes through terrain

2) Hook that does damage to all enemy champions it passes through and pulls you to the last enemy it hits (a tanky champion that disrupts the back line). Passes through terrain

3) Hook that stuns the first enemy it hits (minion or champion) for 2 seconds. Hitting the hook button again in that 2 seconds pulls you to that champion. Passes through terrain

4) Hook that hits pulls you and an enemy champion toward each other (misses minions and you meet halfway). If it hits terrain it pulls you to the terrain and has half the cool down

All subtle differences but encourage HUGELY different play styles. Any way, enjoy the show, even when I don't agree with you :P  Keep the good work

Sciath#1330

P.S.

I know you guys said Jocelyn got in. When do we get to hear her point of view on the game?

Stephen

Hey Arthas fan boy and guy who has Arthas's sword (jelly)

I just want to chime in on the hammer talk you guys have been talking about. My first point is that you said that spider mines is a worthless skill, as a person who mains hammer I have to say you are really under evaluating them. They are how you get away from people diving for you, for example you said that Arthas is a hard counter to Hammer, but I find him really easy to deal with. So if i see an Arthas coming for me or sneaks up on me and throws down a howling blast on me, what you do is throw down mines then knock him back, the slow put on him makes it so that by the time he gets back to me I can boost away and even if I am in his Frozen Tempest. Later on in the game if he dives on me and snares me in a team fight I can still knock back. The main thing that will kill me is a hard stun that makes me unable to boost or to knock back.

Hammer isn't a god hero that can get away from everything but as my favorite hero I thought I should chime in and defend him!

-Stephen

Outro

Patreon Thanks

ITN is supported by our badass Patrons. You can become a ITN Patron by going to Patreon.com/itn.

• Jake
• Shakeel J
• Ron H
• Amir G
• Neil J

iTunes Thanks

• iPad Version

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.

Catch the live show Thursday nights at 9pm Eastern on Twitch.tv/Amovetv. Mobile live stream provided by Alpha Geek Radio. Go to mobile.alphageekradio.com.

Follow the show on Twitter @ITNcast

Thanks to Brian Griffith, the musician responsible for our intro music. He can be found at briangriffithmusic.com or @briangriffith on twitter..

Personal Stuff

Garrett

Follow Garrett @GarrettArt

NOMOONart.com for Garrett’s stream designs.

The Angry Chicken: A Hearthstone Podcast

Kyle

A-move Radio

Kylefergusson.com

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Doghouse Systems.com

Our code, ITN, will get you double-memory on your next Doghouse gaming rig.

Tweaked Audio.com

The same code, ITN, will get you 30% off and free shipping on your entire order of noise-reducing earbuds from Tweaked Audio!