One potential issue with a core replacement hero is that if they don't have a lane presence, then you could have a team consisting of that hero, Cho, Gall, Abathur, and someone else (murky!?).
With only two bodies on the field the game could potentially break down pretty heavily, especially on maps with more than 3 lanes.
This isn't necessarily insurmountable, but definitely makes this sort of idea a challenge to design and balance.
One of my favorite combinations is Green Eagle Eye Tyrande with The Primal Dreamsaber and the Emoji Tyrande spray.
coders and qa don't post
Coders and QA definitely post!
not an engineer
Wait, I'm not supposed to be here!?
This actually is just the group that was there for when that picture was taken at Lana's goodbye thing!
Most of those people aren't on the Heroes dev team, and most of the Heroes dev team wasn't there for the picture!
I like this.
I will pass the suggestion along.
I’m not going to give away everything, but I can answer this question.
We get raw data on basically everything that’s happening in the game across all modes based on win/pick rate, as well as things like damage dealt/taken etc.
We are able to parse through this data to look at it through many lenses. This is where raw statistics become less useful and the skill and experience of a designer come into play more so that we can draw meaningful conclusions from the data, and decide what changes we want to make based on the results.
To get a full picture of what’s going on in the game, for example, I can and do look at things like win/loss data that’s filtered by different leagues and game modes. I can also see hero pick and ban popularity with this kind of granularity, which lets me see, for example, what the meta is looking like in the Bronze - Silver range as well as the Diamond - GM range.
While incredibly useful, I want to emphasize that it’s not just the raw data that’s important, but also having the game knowledge and experience to make correct conclusions based on the knowledge. This is something that’s a lot more esoteric, and there are often multiple right and wrong answers, which can and often does lead to a lot of debate within the design team and with the playerbase at large.
As an example, let’s say that you’re the designer and your job is to evaluate Samuro in the next balance patch with these facts (I made these up in my head right now because i’m at home, they are not what’s actually happening though there are truths in these statements):
He’s currently at a 55% win rate
He has a very low pick rate, let’s say he’s the 5th lowest pick hero in the game.
He’s considered a highly skilled but highly rewarding hero by the bulk of the community who argues that he should deserve a relatively high win rate as a reward for being hard to play. They argue that if you nerf or remove what’s unique about him, then why would anyone play a hard hero when they can pick someone like Raynor or Lili every game and just win more often?
Others feel he’s frustrating to play against and a different section of the community thinks he’s obviously way too strong and needs nerfs. They can and do show you videos of crazy things that he does that look and feel unfair.
The people that play him love the unique things he can do, like swapping to clones and tricking his opponents, which is what his entire design is based on. If you decide to change these things, the likelihood of having an extremely vocal and negative and reaction from his community is very high.
Do you make changes? If so, what do you do?
I can guarantee you not everyone will agree with your proposed changes, which is fine and normal. A large part of being a designer is having the courage to make these kinds of calls and dealing with the fallout, even if your ideas are not always perfect. Even so, there are many cases like this and there are many times where changes need to be made. That’s essentially what we spent the bulk of our time figuring out and doing.
Also as a side note, finding out community sentiment doesn’t come from data, and community sentiment is often a large part of the picture as well, so if you only rely on data to make changes, you’ll end up making a lot of weird changes that no one will agree with.
As an example, Probius has always had an extremely high win rate and statistically deserves heavy nerfs. I don’t think that’d go over too well with the community
¯_(ツ)_/¯
There are literally dozens of us!
"Major" might be the key word here. Not every patch is a major patch... :3
I am not confirming or denying anything. There's nothing to see here... move along.
Just wanted to say that these guides are great. There's a lot of simple, logical things in these that anyone can implement into their gameplay to reliably get better results.
Even if you just looked at when to take Merc Camps in each of these guides, I can almost guarantee you'll see an increase in your win rate because it's very powerful, especially in lower level games where opponents often respond to the split pressure that they create incorrectly (which usually results in 5v4 fights for your team).
As far as advice, I think you would benefit from having a TL:DR section that states the most important takeaways from each map in a very short, concise format. While the depth of your analysis is fantastic, a lot of people, particularly the ones who likely need this the most, are less likely to read everything that you have to say. I say this because it's often the case that a player is not as good because they don't have as much free time to play as players who are better, meaning they also are less likely to take the time to read the whole article. I'm not sure if putting it at the top or the bottom of the articles would be best, but my initial gut reaction is that putting it at the top may entice people to then read the rest of the article to see why you came to the conclusions that you did.
Congrats! Super cool. Also, next major patch could have some (looks at notes) things for you.
I like this idea!
Cool as additional communication between Cho and Gall as well!
Hey there,
I get that some of you are still reporting this issue, but I need the information I asked in my post above to help narrow down this issue. So far I’ve tried this hundreds of times internally and have not been able to reproduce this over a variety of different conditions. If you all can help me out by letting me know the answers to these questions, it might help me find out what you are seeing!
Yep, it is definitely possible to swap heroes. We essentially do this with Dragon Knight and Samuro, for instance. There are, unfortunately, some more in-depth technical hurdles that could come up.
There is also the fact that the Gall player might not want to be in control of Cho automatically. Giving the player the option to swap might be a good solution though. I will bring it up with the team!
The current expectation is that Cho will act like an AI, meaning he will try to do objectives and defend lanes (this is what happens in my testing). If your teammates ping him, he will follow them.
We have discussed internally what to do about this situation with the upcoming changes to how disconnected AI functions. We *would* like to get something in place to give Gall a bit more control of his own destiny when Cho disconnects, though I am not sure what form that would take.
T H I C C S T R I K E
I also enjoy daydreaming and talking to others about it!
What if Deathwing's ult could go over the whole map in a line and leave fire behind like in the Cataslycm cinematic?
Or maybe Gul'dan's Rain of Destruction could be map-wide, dealing bonus damage to Structures.
Thrall could get Spirit Wolves as an ult, or even a talent.
Xul could summon like 8-10 skeletons that follow him and get a Blood Golem, and you could cast Iron Maiden on enemy Heroes so that they kill themselves on your army.
We could also add Yogg-Saron to the game, and he'd be the best hero we've ever made.
Blizz Plz.
When someone disconnects from a game, we purposely delay AI talent selection by (if I remember correctly) 5 minutes. This is to avoid the situation where the AI chooses a talent that you didn't want while you were temporarily disconnected. At a certain point, however, we have to assume that the player isn't coming back or they have been gone long enough that it doesn't matter anymore, and we make a choice.
AI choose their talents based on builds selected by our designers. The goal isn't just to win, but to have them make choices that generally make sense and work together correctly. This doesn't always (and isn't intended to) match the meta picks for that hero.
Yep, we will include the relevant info in the patchnotes once these changes are going live!