Not This Again

So here I am on this Friday still wondering why I am not in the Heroes of the Storm Alpha. Yes, I know there is a limited pool of players and yes I am upset that I am not actually one of those players. Now with that in mind many of you often besides poking fun at how I am currently not in the Alpha send me honest opinions about the game and your feedback on it. This week's Reader Post is one of those and how the environment of Heroes is changing towards some of the other MOBAs out there and how a change can possible take place. So here I give you Tora's take on it all.

It's happening again with Heroes as with all of the other MOBAs out there.

Players are looking at "total kills" and "total damage" and using those as baselines to brag about who is and is not a "good player".

This is a problem, as many players who develop game breaking bad habits will use these scoreboards in ways that justify their bad habits in the game.

This is just as bad as people who used "recount" in WoW to justify being "Good DPS" or "Good Heals" despite the fact those scores only show 1/2 of the picture.

SOME key aspects are as follows:

* Twitch Movement - these players will spam click the map to move back and forth like they are on some sort of illegal narcotic. This interrupts their spell casting and hinders their actual participation. You can literally have 3 twitch movement players around 1 honest player, and those three will do 0 damage, while they are individually picked off by 1 honest player.

Why do some players use Twitch Movement? So they can use a separate counting program to display how many "commands per second" they are performing, making them LOOK like good players for league videos and gameplay.

Solution to stop this: There are HUNDREDS of ways to penalize this behavior, so I have no idea what to suggest at this juncture. The only thing I can think of is something akin to a click counter evaluator for the score board.

* Max Damage Out - this is good half of the time. I have known players who are bottom barrel in damage out, but because they know strategy they win more times than they lose. See, Damage out can be manipulated through a combination of twitch movement and just randomly attacking resetting creeps, structures and doodads. They boost their Damage out to look like they are awesome, when, in fact, all they do is waste their damage on sponge targets which yield very little.

At the same time I know players who top charts and are awesome in every way.

That's why this is such a difficult topic, but this concept of Max Damage Out will plague this game like all others if some sort of evaluation of "effective damage out" isn't being made. 

One of MANY possible Solutions: Effective Damage could be an evaluation of how much damage is done to a singular target (or multiple if aoe is used) in a row until the target is downed or the character dies. I don't know, there are many ways to resolve this.

Finally

* Strategic Playing

PLEASE, GODS, PLEASE, DEVS, PLEASE ANYONE support a function which evaluates EFFECTIVE strategic use of Warning Symbols, Quest Collections, and Destruction to Buildings.

Strategy is always subjective, but there are certain CORE elements of strategy that CAN be evaluated.

There have been games in other MOBAs where I've had a bad time, I've just been killed and killed and killed. Enemy outweighs our own team by 10-12 levels, and so I've been forced to do suicide runs while my teammates defend home base. Because the enemy team was so concerned with DPS and Player Kills, they completely ignored my little level 12 guy as I tore down building after building until I won the day. My entire team lined the bottom of the scoreboard, but our strategy beat the tar out of the enemy.

This game needs to be the first MOBA game out there that measures strategic playing. Yes, it is subjective, but as I said above, SOME elements of strategic gaming can be measured.

Possible Solution: A player receives + Strategic Playing Points for every single building directly attacked while the enemy is down. You gain a bonus % for each enemy dead while you are attacking. So if the enemy team is ACED out, and you do ONE BIG PUSH down a single lane, you gain +25% to your strategic playing point score for each point of damage you deal to a core building (towers, etc...).

Strategic Playing Points can be earned in a gradual gain for every consecutive point dealt to a building before its destroyed. 

Strategic Playing Points can be LOST if an enemy is allowed to attack an entire lane without facing ANY resistance. If your character is alive, then he or she loses strategic points if they aren't engaging a lane that has an enemy presence.

So say if you're alive and you're fighting one lane which has an enemy player in it, ok, you are doing your job, you do not lose points even if another lane is being assaulted by an enemy without resistance.

Expand this to measure the number of characters in each lane. So a group with 5 characters in the top lane fighting 3 enemies, while 2 enemies go unopposed while destroying buildings, unless the 5 characters are making progress themselves, they'd lose points for allowing their base to be taken without any resistance.

There are ways to create these metrics. Some of them would be exceedingly complex, but they could show players how to play by rewarding those who play well, and penalizing those who simply "farm for damage" without caring about their team.

I think it makes sense I know people love to stroke their Epeens but there has to be some way of dealing with it all. Once again thanks to Tora and everyone else who submitted something this week. It would not be possible to do this without any of your submissions. 

Enjoy your weekend everyone!