#429 - Into the Nexus: “Storm the Gate!”
• Garrett • Kyle • NotParadox or Guest
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https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/
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Into the Nexus is hot on the tail of the Stormgate’s announcement. Unveiled at the Summer Game Fest, old Blizzard and even Heroes devs hope to revive the RTS genre (and even take esports with it). Daybringer is on the project, which leaves some big unknowns with Heroes. CCL continues, AZ Jackson shares stories. Your emails and MORE!
Intro: Welcome to Into the Nexus! The Heroes of the Storm podcast!
Brett “Daybringer” Crawford Leaves Heroes for Frost Giant
Left in May 2022
Frost Giant Studios is on a mission to make the next great PC real-time strategy game! Watch our official game announcement at #SummerGameFest!
https://twitter.com/GGemini19/status/1534972365742182400?s=20&t=bNgwiKHYqw_nCHJ035vynA
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Patron Thanks Doc for keeping track
Story Time with AZJackson
This is the story of my favorite game of Heroes of the Storm that i've ever played. Funny enough, the game didn't even have that name at the time. This was in the era of Blizzard All-Stars.
To set the stage, things were much different back in the early days of HoTS. We went through a ton of experimental designs that never saw the light of day, yet were incredibly fun and interesting to play with. One of these was the idea of Yetis.
Back in ye' olden days, HoTS actually had a jungle, with different camps that had enemies of varying difficulty that you could kill. They each had their own level/difficulty that determined how much gold/XP you would get (yes, we had gold and a shop back in the day too), but in addition to that, you got a Yeti token for each camp you defeated. At any time, you could use that token near one of your towers to spawn a Yeti, which was a decently tanky unit that would push down that lane and apply pressure. It was a really cool reward for jungling that eventually evolved into the Mercenary Camps that you know today, but the difference with that design was that you got to choose when and where to apply that map pressure.
So this game took place when I was on the QA User Experience team. We had an internal competition where we got to play against those dastardly know-it-all Devs to see who would reign supreme. While the competition was friendly, we definitely had a rivalry and badly wanted to win.
To prepare for the competition, during and in between our playtests I fine-tuned a strategy that, at the time, thought was fool-proof. It required a very specific team comp which included Tinker (Gazlowe for you young'uns) and Nova as key components. The basic idea was this:
1. As quickly as possible, farm ALL of our team's jungle. I did extensive testing on this, and found that Tinker was the fastest Hero to do this at the time
2. Spawn all of our Yetis in the top and bottom lanes at the same time
3. When the Yetis met the enemy wave/Yetis, have Nova use her global Precision Strike to nuke whichever enemy lane had the most defenses
4. At the same time, all 5 members of our team push mid and engage the enemy. The timing of this worked out that it happened exactly as we hit Level 6, which is when our Ultimates would unlock. If things went particularly well, this could happen seconds before the enemy team got theirs due to our jungle clear being faster, which gave us a huge advantage
This put the enemy in an impossible situation. If they stayed mid and fought us, unless they won dramatically in a very short amount of time, Yetis were strong enough that, if left alone, they would take the equivalent of the enemies Keeps - however, if they gave into their initial impulses and sent even 1 person to help a Yeti push, they had a high chance to quickly lose everything - the teamfight in Mid, and 1 if not both lanes once the person panicks and realizes that they need to come back and help the teamfight in mid.
Our QA team practiced this strategy many times in the week leading up to the big day, and we felt like we had perfected everyone's job at every stage of the game leading up to the push. However, we also knew that the Devs often did unconventional strategies, as they were always trying to break their game as well, so we had no idea what to expect going into the match.
So cue the day of the event, and we start the game. I remember our team being super nervous about whether this whole idea was just in our heads and if they would do some crazy thing that would make our strategy fall apart. I was shot-caller for us and had the Jungle role with Tinker, so everything relied on nothing going wrong as I cleared our jungle to set up the push.
As the game started, it seemed like they had no idea what was coming... I was clearing our jungle with no weird invades or other strategies from the other team. It seemed like they were playing a normal game (THE FOOLS!), and everything was going according to plan.
Once I get the Yeti's I call for our team to group up mid, and I spawn them all in top and bot lane to coincide with our normal creep waves. We hide ourselves behind our wave, and don't show until the waves meet. You could almost feel the panic from the enemy when they first see the Yetis, as they immediately spawn all of their Yeti's top and send one person bot while they try to hold us 4v5 mid. I make the call, and Nova nukes top lane, killing all of their Yetis and letting ours push even harder on their undefended lane. They get pushed back mid while trying to poke us out while sending one top to hold our now free pushing Yetis.
We push hard mid, and their heroes start to get low. They realize that we're going to quickly end the game mid if they don't group up, so they call both of their heroes in the side lanes to come back and hold the fight - sacrificing those lanes to the Yetis.
As they're coming back to help their teammates, we get a kill. Then another kill. At this point we all know that the game is very over - all of their lanes are overrun and we have enough pushing power to end the game before anyone resurrects. We quickly kill the rest of the team, and the game ends with their Core surrounded by Heroes, creeps, and the true starts of the show - the Yetis.
I think the whole QA building heard our victory cries. While we didn't have those competitions too often, and there were other epic plays that happened in our other internal tournament games, there's nothing quite like seeing a well put together, unconventional plan come to fruition in a competitive setting. That's why my favorite Heroes game I've ever watched was the famous Murky strat in C9 vs Team DK - but that's a whole other story.
So yeah... Yetis. We should've kept em.
Links
Emails
Chad
This following statement has plagued me my entire Heroes journey. It just happened to me again today so I thought I'd write. For example, in the past I'd voice concern about the opposing teams comp at the beginning of the game or during draft only for a teammate to respond "Don't worry, we're late game" or just today we were winning quite handily but the game turned around level 18ish and we lost. When I asked what happened I got a "They scaled" response. I know what this means but is there some sort of sliding scale of late game heroes to early game heroes and where the hell is that located online? I'm diamond with over 8,000 games played so I'd expect to know this in detail but I don't. I mean, yeah some heroes have powerful level 20's but who are considered late game heroes and conversely who are considered powerful early game heroes but tail off at the end?
Bonus question that is Arthas related: Either of you planning on playing Wrath? I played the absolute life out of classic, faded out during BC but Wrath might tickle my pickle.
Outro
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Garrett
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