I hate MOBAs. With an absolute passion. It's not like I was late to the MOBA train either. In fact my exposure to this genre, that wasn't yet a genre, dates way back to the original Warcraft III mod, Defense of the Ancients, or DOTA. It permeated every LAN party I had in the mid 2000s. It was so popular within my circle of friends, that it was nearly impossible to avoid. I didn't love it.
Fast forward to 2009 and a little company called Riot made a standalone title called League of Legends, or LoL. While my circle of friends changed a bit from those years, the fact remained that for the next few years, I would once again be surrounded by friends and colleagues that fell in love with this game, and played it obsessively. Like DOTA before it, it was difficult to ignore, especially when all social gatherings revolved around discussing champions, strategies and item builds. I thought, why the hell not. It didn't take long to find out that while LoL might have been a slightly more manageable game than DOTA, what with creep denying being off the table and only a single item shop, it still had an extremely high learning curve. It also didn't take long to see how toxic the community is toward new or bad players, like myself. Once again, I wasn't having fun.
Sure, you could have the argument that I never gave any of those games a chance long enough to get good. And that's certainly a valid reason. However, I'm not the type of gamer to devote all my playtime to a single game, especially over the course of an extended period of time, like months or even years. It was tough because I so wanted to be included in a game that was so popular with my friends, but didn't have the time to put in to "git gud," as they say.
Dammit League of Legends, if only you were more accessible
So you can imagine, whenever a new MOBA gets announced, of which there are more than plenty, I automatically ignore it. It doesn't process anymore. Which is probably why Heroes of the Storm never made a single blip on my radar. That's a shame, because as it turns out, it's the MOBA I've been waiting for all this time.
LoL players will scoff at that statement, and admittedly, this article isn't for hardcore LoL or Dota 2 players. You see, Heroes of the Storm does everything right to lure in players, like myself, who aren't very good at those other games, or MOBAs in general. By stripping the experience down the basic core of focusing on combat, it makes for an experience that's streamlined, fast, and caters to baddies like myself. That's not to say that HotS doesn't have any complexity or strategy, because it most certainly does, but it makes it more manageable, especially for players who don't plan on dumping all their free hours into mastering various characters.
So what makes Heroes of the Storm a joy to play for players like myself? Let's look at the various systems that make up a single match.
No last hitting
Last hitting is a crucial system in nearly all of MOBAs, since it provides that player an award in Gold. Gold is then used in item shops to further beef up your character in various meaningful ways to adapt to the situation at hand. My next two points highlight why it doesn't matter, however, how it ties to HotS is that no matter who gets the kill, be it minion or Hero, it's beneficial to the entire team, and never just a single player.
No item shops
Since the game doesn't award Gold for last hitting, it makes no sense to have item shops. Often players need to familiarize themselves with item builds prior to actually playing the match, since they can't really sit in the item shop for long, taking themselves out of the battle. All of that is removed in HotS, and instead a bigger focus is placed on talent trees. Every few levels, players have the option to level up one out of four talents. It's never randomized, meaning players can remember when certain talents come up and plan for them. Picking these talents can drastically alter your character build.
Jim Raynor for example can have a large focus on slowing enemies with his Penetrating Round, and can even up his shot count to two. Alternatively, players can build Raynor to regain more health back with every shot, or do more damage to Hero units with specific abilities or even focus on buffing his Inspire skill, which not only grants allied units within his vicinity buffs, but also various buffs to himself.
This larger focus on a bigger talent pool really alters the way a character is leveled, much like item builds, except without the tediousness of having to collect enough gold, and then remember the item combos to get the specific build you want.
No individual levels
Also unlike any MOBA, each character doesn't have a specific level. Everything you or your teammates accomplish goes toward a shared EXP pool. When that reaches its max, everyone on that team goes up a level.
While this sounds strange in theory, it's a great way to ensure that even bad HotS players don't bring the entire team down by "feeding" the other team.
There's a sense of unbridled teamwork that comes from having a cummulative EXP pool that ensures that no matter what you're doing on the battlefield, whether you're just focusing minions, completing objectives, or chasing down Heroes, you're all contributing to the success of your team.
Deaths don't matter… as much
Dying in MOBAs happens. And for players like me, it happens often. I can't tell you the amount of games that I got cursed out in games like LoL because I kept practically giving levels to enemy players by constantly dying to them, giving them an extreme advantage. This isn't really the case in HotS.
Sure, dying still sucks, and it does take you out of the game for a short amount of time, giving the enemy a slight advantage. However, killing enemy players, or dying to them, doesn't really award a significant amount of EXP. Coupled with the fact that a single player doesn't get that EXP award anyway, since there are no individual levels, death is just a minor inconvenience in the overall match.
There isn't a true meta, per se
The meta for MOBAs is super important. It dictates the way matches are played. I can't say I'm familiar with LoL's meta, but these usually revolve around sending a certain amount of players top, mid and bottom, as well as having a player jungle, which revolves around getting stronger from killing neutral mobs.
While this may be more of a subjective opinion, since I'm sure high level or pro players will disagree, a meta doesn't seem to exist, or even be that necessary here. A big chunk of that has to do with my next point, but the size and layout of each map doesn't really call for specialized meta. Players have a much bigger sense of freedom to move around the map to where they're specifically needed instead of sticking to a predetermined role.
Objectives make different maps interesting
The much bigger reason why a meta most likely doesn't exist for HotS is because each map has a different objective, which can drastically change the outcome of the match, assuming you and your team focuses on it.
Objectives are a great way for more than one HotS map to exist. One could argue that you ever really need only one map for a MOBA, and it's the one from the original DOTA game, or the similarly built Summoner's Rift in League of Legends, but HotS makes different maps more meaningful with the inclusion of the objectives.
For example, in one map, special spider minions drop gems that need to be collected and then deposited. The first team to deposit a certain amount of gems will gain help of the Spider Queen and her minions for a certain amount of time. Likewise, in another level, treasure chests spawn at certain times and have to be destroyed in order to collect their coins. Those coins then have to be brought to the ghost pirate in order to get access to the pirate ship that is able to shoot its cannons at the enemy. It's a great dynamic that adds another strategic layer to a match, without making it more complicated.
Players start out with three out of their four skills
In most MOBAs, you start out with a single skill, and you slowly unlock your other skills as you level, meaning you usually have to pick and choose in what order you want to unlock them, and then how to upgrade them. HotS is only similar in the latter part of that, but instead it gives you the three basic skills right from the beginning, allowing you to experiment with them immediately. It allows you to familiarize yourself with the character at a much quicker rate, especially if you're picking a character you never played as, instead of choosing a skill you don't like or one that may not be viable until later.
Games are short
If there's one thing I recall from hearing about my friends and colleagues talk about their LoL matches, aside from how fury inducing they were, is how long they took. I'd often hear that their matches took up to an hour, if not longer. That's a long time to be dedicated to a single game that you can't pause for anything, not even a bathroom break.
Heroes on the other hand moves at a much quick pace. Since your characters come unlocked with three of their four skills, as I mentioned previously, you're already engaging the enemy much quicker than you would with only one. Since the levels are no longer individual, you don't have anyone falling behind, ensuring that you're constantly leveling and improving as a team. Since you have objectives that can turn the match in yours or the enemy's favor, these can also cut down the match time quite a bit. Since there are no item shops, you don't have to worry about running back and buying certain item sets for your character to improve them.
See, this last point is actually an amalgamation of most of my previous points. All of that streamlining results in a quicker match, usually no longer than 20 minutes, that never wears on your nerves or patience. Sure, there can be outliers here and there, but for the most part, you won't be asked to dedicate up to an hour of your time per match, that despite your best efforts, might result in a loss.
Familiar cast of characters
The biggest and arguably best aspect Heroes has going for it, is its large and recognizable cast of characters. Drop me into a Champion select screen in LoL and not only will I be unfamiliar with about 50% of its champions, I won't know instinctively know what each character does. However, being familiar with Blizzard games, I could deduce how nearly 90% of its characters played, just based on who they were.
But even if you don't have the familarity of figuring out a character's role based on playing as them in previous Blizzard games, even if you're slightly familiar with their titles, you're sure to recognize Heroes like Arthas, Tyrael, Kerrigan and Jaina, and that's pretty awesome.
But I hate MOBAs, right?
Despite me loving everything that Heroes of the Storm does, it doesn't really make me feel any different about any of the other games in the genre. I respect them for what they brought to the table, but maybe they're just too hardcore for me. Stripping down the genre to only its basics allows the game to focus more on having a fun experience, rather than a long, drawn out tedious one. A loss in Heroes, while disappointing, isn't devastating, because I didn't have to meticulously worry about last hits and item builds.
So while most hardcore DOTA and LoL players out there are turning a blind eye to Heroes of the Storm for its more noob-friendly approach, I'm encouraging those that were previously burned by the genre and many of its games, to give Heroes a shot.
