Indeed! This was not intentional and I have a bug in to get it fixed :)
Hi there, /u/gutscheinmensh!
This is a really interesting theory regarding our development process. I go into the details of Orphea’s development from first concepts to final implementation more explicitly in the video (it’s definitely worth a watch if you’re looking for insight into the realities of content creation in game development), but on the chance you don’t have 45 minutes to spare, here are some of the high-level hits:
It took the Orphea dev team (including Story and Franchise Development, publishing/community/QA/BlizzCon planning) nearly an entire calendar year to design, conceptualize, artify, and implement the character of Orphea.
The Orphea team worked together in an environment that was centered around maximum cross-discipline transparency. This means that when problems arose, we were able to address them with efficiency and immediacy, effectively putting a stop to even the possibility of last-minute sweeping changes. Nothing so small as a single talent ended up on the chopping block, let alone the entire visual aesthetic of a hero—yikes!
The fluidity of our teams communication also meant that there was never a point in time where the designers were working in the dark, which makes it impossible for them to have finished a kit without knowing the character that it would be used for. Orphea’s game design and visual design are intrinsically linked. Much like Orphea and her monster, one would not exist as it does without the presence of the other.
The reality is that the time and effort it would take to switch the entire visual presence of a hero from ‘old god’ to ‘random girl’ is an inordinate amount of work. In no world could concepting, modeling, rigging, prototyping, animating, engineering, quality testing, audio enhancing, story writing, trailer building, and website designing that many polished assets for any individual character ever happen as a last-minute swap – particularly not under the context of ‘running out of time and resources’.
Old gods are badass -- I’d love to see one in the game, too! And I promise you, when we inevitably bring one in, it will be just as special and rife with intent as Orphea, herself.
You should check out the video when you get a chance, I think you’ll find a lot of cool information.
GLHF,
--Lana B
Thank you so much! <3
We are still planning on reducing the placement matches needed, and are also actively discussing the work involved with having varied amounts of them per-player (new players to the league could have 10 of them while returning players have 3 or less).
The whole team is passionate and excited to keep improving the game - and working very hard to do so, that I can promise you!
Good morning Gnio,
From all the data we have been collecting - besides the mis-seeding issue in EU (which has been fixed), Storm League is seeding players correctly. That said, this does not mean we are not listening and cannot continue to make improvements.
For example - one thing that has caused a lot of confusion for players with how they are seeded is their game density (interchangeably called 'Uncertainty'). This is a number on a players account that says how much MMR they can gain/lose in a game. This uncertainty is dependent on how often a player has been participating in League play, and grows over time of non-use (while also being adjusted at the beginning of new seasons).
Here is one area that I think we can improve on: Instead of having this uncertainty level starting high and declining each placement game (actively meaning that each placement game you play has had a heavier effect on your MMR than the last) we should determine the value and lock it for each placement game someone plays. This would make each placement game weighted as heavily as the last and the order in which you won or lost games would not matter - just the actual record of wins/losses at the end of them. As with everything though, this takes some engineering work and we are still early in the discussions on how and when we can get it implemented. My hope is that we can get it (along with a bunch of other league improvements) ready for the beginning of the first Storm League season!
Have a wonderful weekend!
In your example it would take the average MMR of the two GMs as the full parties averaged MMR. We look at the highest MMR player on a team as the starting point for the two-league rule.
Hey JHGC666 & Mighty7,
You mentioned deleting Blizzard Temporary files… By that, do you mean you have tried Deleting the Battle.net Cache folder? This has resolved the issue for another player in the past.
~ Fizivix
Good afternoon everyone,
This is actually a very important topic that has been high-priority for us while working on Storm League. We saw the way some players were exploiting Team League and wanted to make sure that the competitive structure of Storm League was not exploitable in the same ways. Integrity and faith in the ladder system is paramount which is why we have put added measures in place for Storm League.
For the suggestion of matching teams according to the highest ranked MMR player on each team, we had talked about this (as well as many other ideas) and eventually decided to something similar. If any member of a full five-man team is outside the two-league rule, their actual MMR is not used and instead they are given the average MMR of the remaining players that are inside the bounds of the rule. We only allow the two-league rule to be broken by full five-man parties so that external players are not pulled into games that they did not sign up for.
While we want friends of differing skills to be able to play and compete with each other, we have been very proactive in trying to remove 'smurfing' and other types of ladder exploitation in Storm League. If players find other ways to 'game the system' we will look to quickly find ways to fix it!
The FX and Model are some of the oldest assets we have in Heroes. There's a lot of things that change over a games development time. Assets created at the beginning of a games life cycle are quite different than assets created 6+ years in. This would also be an opportunity to give more flexibility in changing or modifying FX for future skins as well as optimizing the FX to be more efficient.
Not everything is an aesthetic change.
My family would tell you that I have natural talent. I would say, if by natural talent you mean I had access to a pencil and paper at an early age and did nothing but draw every day up through College. Then sure, I have natural talent by the way of lots of practice.
As for me I went to a small Art College back home. The thing about College for me was it wasn’t so much about what they were teaching me, I had a pretty strong drive to learn. I was already deep into online art communities and trying to learn as much as I could through people in the gaming industry. College for me was more a networking experiment where I was able to find jobs through my instructors and eventually got my foot in the door to making games by sheer luck.
Apply, improve, apply, improve, apply some more. You’re going to get turned down for jobs. This is a highly competitive industry. Don’t let it get you down. Do your best, fail often and learn from your mistakes. The difference between someone who has a job in the industry is they’ve failed more than you.
Hey ForceOfCours,
For account related issues, please contact Customer Support here:
https://us.battle.net/support/en/games/heroes
Additionally, providing some screenshots of your level 1 account profile and existing match history could help us look into it. You can send screenshot attachments to our Bug Attachment Inbox. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Thank you,
~ Fizivix
That said, I think it's important to keep in mind that the computer is just a tool! Most of your art fundamentals can be learned traditionally, and that doing so will ultimately benefit your understanding of what softwares are trying to replicate. <3
So much this.
Hey Mortdres,
Thanks for the report! If you have still not received your rewards, can you please send in a screenshot of your Profile Statistics page for ‘2018, Season 4’ as well as a screenshot of the areas in the collection where the War Turtle mount and 2018 Season 4 Ranked Portrait are missing. You can send these to our Heroes Bug Attachment inbox.
Thank you,
~ Fizivix
Great question az4th - one that we have fought with since the games inception.
The eternal war between artists and designers is not a story the Jedi would tell you. One group pushing the limits and boundaries of insanely cool skins (and their effects) and the other pushing back for visual clarity in the game-space, especially during team fights. While the war will never end, we do work hand-in-hand giving feedback, stressing certain points, and eventually doing our best to compromise.
As for the question of if any really cool effects had to be pulled or toned down? Yes lots of them, and a few that have slipped through and should probably be reevaluated :)