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ITN - 268
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#268 - Into the Nexus: “AMA-mazing”

• Garrett • Kyle • Jeff or Guest

#Heroes #of #the #Storm #HotS #Blizzard #Entertainment #Warcraft #Diablo #StarCraft #Overwatch #Hearthstone #WoW #Garrett #Kyle #Weinzierl #Fergusson #Video #Games

http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/

It’s AMA day! All devs are on deck to answer questions from the community. The game is in a great spot, making there work easy. Garrett and Kyle are here to give you all the amazing tidbits. Both hosts have been on the climb and full of anecdotal experiences from Platinum and above. We also check in with Anduin and the map rotation change up. Enjoy this hearty helping of MOBA goodness.

Sponsors:

Our Patrons support Into the Nexus at Patreon.com/ITN. If you enjoy the show consider supporting it with 25 cents, a dollar, or however you would like! We thank all our Patrons for their support!

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

Developer AMA should take up most of the show. Will update after stream.

The angels are making a comeback. Tyrael and Auriel ascended to a 52% WR this week. Sgt. Hammer is also on an alarming rise.

ALSO

News

Developer AMA: Design

Starts 10:00 AM May 9th - Should take up most of the show. Will fill out later.

Are there any heroes currently being worked on that were not in development prior to December 14th 2018?

All Devs say YES

With Anduin having been released over 3 months after the previous hero (Imperius), will this be the standard amount of time between new releases going forward, or will this gap increase as the backfill of heroes in the pipeline are all released?

Kaeo Milker: Part of our journey right now is figuring out the balance between what the team wants to do, and what the team can do. That said, I don't want to commit to a standard timeline if such a thing ever existed. I will say that we love making new heroes and will continue to dedicate our time and passion to them. At the same time, we are also enjoying a world where significant balance changes and hero reworks are meaningfully helping close the gap between new heroes while letting each new hero have room to breathe and shine.

Our next new hero is coming along great and is only a few releases away, so please bear with us and keep letting us know how things are feeling along the way.

Biggest Focus

Blizz_KinaBREW: We are focused on Heroes, Reworks, Skins, Skin packs

Will you add new maps?

Blizz_Daybringer: This is a bit tougher to directly answer because we don't really know right now. We love all of our current maps as they add so much diversity and are one of the wonderful things that makes our game so unique. Moving forward, we are asking our team, as a whole, what they feel would be the most passionate and meaningful changes that they can bring to the Nexus. When that answer becomes "a new map", we will definitely look to bring one in! For the time being, we are focused on finding ways to improve our current maps through both balance and small design changes.

There is not HGC at blizzcon. Will there be a stage for HOTS tournament? Will there even be anything HOTS (Announcements, Game Testing, ect) at blizzcon this year?

Kaeo Milker: We're still in the process of planning BlizzCon, but at this point there are no plans for organized Heroes esports. I would love to see some games played - exhibition or otherwise - but no promises there.

And I obviously can't go into any details, but the team and game will be there with new stuff to talk about and play!

We have all the races from SC and Diablo in the game, we are still missing a few from Warcraft (I.e. Nagas, Ethreals, and even gnomes if you consider Chromie a dragon). Should we expect these races to enter the nexus?

Blizz_KinaBREW: Our intent is to eventually have those races represented in the Nexus. It will take time.

Has any existing hero limited your design space more than others?

Jeff B: Zagara definitely has, from an engineering and design perspective.

Implementing a ground changing effect other than Creep alongside Starcraft's Creep implementation is complex... The system wasn't meant to support more than one texture overlay on our geometry, and expanding/rewriting the system would take considerable time/resources. This is in addition to the visual issues this would cause, trying to display multiple terrain types coherently and still have them look good.

Having other characters that create and use Creep is problematic, because they would have super strong synergy with Zagara. Even a hero that can spread creep and do nothing else would massively increase the value of Zagara's abilities, making it much stronger in any game with an allied Zagara, but not necessarily by itself.

Mini Answers:

Links

Patreon Mention: Patreon.com/ITN

Thanks to our Patreon producers Declan H, CheezyBob, and.

Patron Thanks Doc for keeping track

Strategy

Anduin Patch Impact (New Hero and Map Rotation)

This will become strategy if AMA is interesting

Ranked Anduin

Level 1

Heroics

The reign of ETC commences.

Whitemane -  4% to 49%

Sgt. Hammer - Up 3.4% to 51.7%

Top Bans:

Strange Outliers:

Links

Emails MOVE TO NEXT WEEK

B needs our help

I like the Storm League, but I am doing horrible! I have 33.1% WR vs my former 49% and 51% HL and TL games. Man, it really sucks going into every game thinking I am going to lose. I was placed Plat 5, I am now Gold 2, looking to be Gold 3 soon. I wish I wasn't placed that high because losing this much is awful.

I really don't understand how this change can mess me up so bad. I don't understand what I am doing wrong. As I am typing this, I have lost 7 in a row. This is the worst change to game I have seen in the way it affects me. It doesn't seem like you two have had the same experience at all. This has ruined rank play for me, I really hope a change comes so I can enjoy ranked play again.

B’s HotSlogs: https://www.hotslogs.com/Player/Profile?PlayerID=1699969

Outro

Patreon Shout Out

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

Thanks to our Patreon producers Declan H, CheezyBob, and CrusaderDave. ITN shirt at shirts.amove.tv. Coffee mugs and glasses are over at etched.amove.tv.

Catch the live show Thursday at 5pm Eastern / 2pm Pacific on Twitch.tv/Amovetv. Mobile live stream provided by Alpha Geek Radio.

Follow the show on Twitter @ITNcast and ITNpodcast.reddit.com.

Thanks to Gorath for our intro music and briangriffithmusic.com (@briangriffith) for our outro..

Personal Stuff

Garrett

Kyle

For YT Clips

Jeff Cannata joined Garrett and Kyle for Into the Nexus this week and conversation turned to life in the lower leagues. The trio talked about the overabundance of Kael’thas and thoughts toward

For the full unedited podcast episode go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e23zDBi27YA

Into the Nexus is supported by our wonderful patrons via Patreon! If you would like to help support the show go to http://Patreon.com/itn. The ITN Patrons are responsible for many improvements to the podcast including the addition of monthly contributers Jeff Cannata and DunkTrain.

Don't forget to check out the ITN subreddit at ITNcast.reddit.com to submit stories or upvote existing submissions. Follow http://Twitch.tv/amovetv for the live show and game streams. All VODs of the live recording can be found at YouTube.com/amovetv.

Into the Nexus is a Heroes of the Storm podcast. Garrett Weinzierl and Kyle Fergusson will be taking you through the Nexus every week. Segments include news, strategies, and plenty of community interaction.

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Questions for Future Shows [DO NOT DELETE]

Frank via ITNcast@gmail.com - Playing “competitively” makes the game less fun?

Hey Garrett and Kyle,

Historically, I’ve been a “queue up with friends in quick match” player. A few months ago, a few friends and I decided to start a team to play in the various competitive leagues, mainly Heroes Lounge. We have a coach who competed in official Blizzard esports events, we have regularly scheduled practices, scrims, and matches. I’m very proud of the improvement we’ve made. We’ve all become better players, and we synergize pretty well most of the time.

However, this has had an unfortunate side effect for me. Whenever I play without my teammates, either in solo queue, or partied with randos, I tend to get pretty tilted because they don’t play the way my team does. For example, I play dps. When I’m playing with my team, I know my Muradin will jump on that exposed Tyrande, I will follow up as Greymane, and we will get the kill. With a rando Muradin, he jumps too late, or doesn’t jump at all and I go in but he doesn’t follow. Or I’m playing Tracer with the team, and I know my support has my back so I can play aggressive and focus the backline, but if I play with a rando support, he doesn’t have my back, and I can’t put on that pressure, or I go in and die and get flamed for being too aggressive.

This seems to happen more often than not when I play without the team. It makes me want to never play without them, and unfortunately, we can only play together two or three times a week, since all of our schedules are busy. I’d like to practice, on my own time, the heroes, combos, and builds that intend to use in the competitive scene with the team, but if I don’t have my team, it doesn’t feel like a good time investment. Sometimes it even feels like I’m becoming a worse player. It’s definitely more frustrating than fun.

Is there any advice you two can share with me regarding this dilemma?

Sincerely,

Frank

aCreepyBadGuy

Greetings ITN,

I genuinely love the Amove.tv lineup; and listen to EVERY podcast weekly. It’s a delight and you guys are amazing at everything you do.

So I’m playing my favorite MOBA Heroes of the Storm, and as a low tier player I have come accustomed to some things happening in my games. Some are easier to handle than others; but recently over the past few months after HGC Apocalypse, I have seen a rise in the number of trolls and smurf accounts down here in the lower echelons of high level play. Individuals with the sole purpose of ruining games, harassing teammates and losing on purpose. (said individuals are reported by multiple people from both teams)

Now I’m aware this is a ‘thing’ in just about every multiplayer game you choose to play nowadays, but it’s getting to the point were individuals are getting reporting, having their accounts banned and creating new ones to continue the cycle. As a result myself and some of my peers who still LOVE the game in every sense of the word, are just put off by the amount of distasteful content in a community that used to be a sanctuary for off kilter characters from the Blizzard universe.

I find myself playing less, but I still love the content, enjoy the positivity from the ITN Cast, but my question is when will the community decide to change it’s outlook on this ‘so not dead’ game, and begin to love again. Or at the very least stop harassing players who genuinely want to enjoy friendly online competition.

We sincerely just want to have a good time.

Respectfully,

aCreepyBadGuy