However, the competition are quite smart this time. Valve has a very strong fan base who will worship Valve while Valve has been doing almost everything correctly and perfectly with Dota 2. Riot on the other hand, has shit load of money to throw around since they are owned by Tencent as they said, if you have money, you can literally do anything you please.

Blizzard on the other hand, their game's quality are declining sharply while their SC2 esport support has been declining too due to numerous mistakes by Blizzard.

I am not saying that Riot and Valve are invulnerable to Blizzard or Blizzard is bound to fail miserably. It is definitely gonna be interesting to see how it goes now.

Nah, its more like Blizzard screwed up too much with SC2. The custom map community is still more or less dead while it is hard to find custom games. Then, competitively, Blizzard screwed up their World Series Championship pretty badly this year as they thought they can go head to head against The International, which is plain dumb as viewers will not be able to keep up with 2 major tournaments in one weekend. At the end, there were less viewer for SC2 as everyone's watching Dota 2. It feels like you are trying to host Euro Cup quarter finals on the same day where World Cup Finals is held. I wont comment on balance as i havent been playing that much but i think its just not as solid as SC1.

SC2 is still a good RTS, probably the best RTS made in the last 5 years but it had the same problem as COH2 where both games have really big shoes to fill. In my opinion, I think both of them failed to live up to the expectations from its predecessor.

D3 on the other hand, what the fishes are they doing with it? It is literally the worst game ever made by Blizzard to me to the point that ARPG made by small indie developers like Neocore's The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, Grinding Gear Games' Path of Exile and Crate Entertainment's Grim Dawn are far better than D3 in some aspects without having stupid features like auction house or always online.

It doesnt mean that every game has to be the same as Dota and there is no harm to play both for different experience. HoTS is definitely more casual which is a good thing as both Dota and LoL are almost impenetrable for new players.

Why are there so many MOBA and Sim racing fans think that if you can only choose one while hate/belittle the others? There is no legislation saying that you only can play one game or every game has to be designed to be like SC2/Dota/CoD.

It uses the same SC2 engine. I think Dota 2 is probably the best looking MOBA out there, followed by HoN.

LoL is probably the ugliest out there.

It uses the same engine as SC2, just that they made some new models for HS.

The some of the environment textures or doodads seemed recycled from SC2 in the video.

I know and I'm getting really tired of it because these fanboys will make it very hard to have a balanced view on both games.

That's partly why I never really got into MOBAs. The community in general is just toxic.

After Diablo 3, I aint putting much hope in Blizzard especially even after they tried to fix it with RoS.

Well, just look at the post on top of this page, some people find RTS to be too tedious and its a waiting game. I really doubt we'll see a resurgence of RTS in the next few years.

I doubt those hardcore LoL or Dota fans will play HS as they seemed to have an unwritten rule that you only can choose to play one while you must belittle the others. HS seemed to be the sort of game that is designed for more casual players. I do like that each match only last for 20 minutes.

I never really like that 3D style as it felt like the polygons were very rough which made the textures look flat which made it to be the ugliest for me as I never really like games with that sort of 3D style.

HS would be perfect for more casual gamers but I cant deny that Dota 2 is pretty fun.

A developer casted match of HotS.

Looks good to be honest and its very different form other mobas.

A standard game of RTS is by far faster than a standard match of any MOBA.

Doubt so, its just people who are reluctant to change or adapt to new games.

It is definitely simpler than most MOBA but it looked like it will focus more on completing objectives than farming which seemed fun to me.

The problem is, they made it as if you only can choose one legally even if one can choose to play both casually. Then, when both communities saw HotS, they just hate the game outright because it is different from whatever they had played.

No doubt you need time invested in these games which is partly why i rather not play but just because someone doesnt want to play the game you like, it doesnt mean you can make them look silly. At the same time, both games are largely the same at its fundamental level where i had seen people moving from dota to lol or lol to dota and they still can do quite well despite there are a lot of different mechanics between both games.

It is like saying I had play Starcraft and therefore i cant play Company of Heroes 2 because it is different and I have to relearn everything from scratch.That doesnt happen because most of the basics in a genre from dont feed in MOBAs or learn when to retreat in losing engagement still applies to games in mostly the same genre.

MOBA and sim community are probably even more immature and insecure than the CoD/BF fanboys. Its just games at the end of the day and do you need other people to validate what you like?

This post has been edited by Cheesenium: Nov 11 2013, 05:35 PM

it is a fairly different game from most MOBAs, it felt more like DoW2 with one hero than Dota. Considering that they hired Johnny Ebbert who was the lead for DoW2.

The ragdolls are quite annoying where it felt like pillows being tossed around.

Hopefully they will go the Dota 2 route where they monetise via cosmetic items than asking people to pay for heroes and shit.

Considering that they had just released a F2P version of Blur on mobile that is utterly terrible, I am a bit worried that they will go with the LoL model with this which I never like the LoL model where you have to grind for heroes if not pay up.

If they are following the Dota 2 model, then, i'll be very interested with this game. Go nuts on the cosmetics and i'll even pay for some of then.

Agree on Blizzard games' art being ugly. Dota 2 looks so much better in comparison without everything becoming a rainbow in a large fight. HotS still have this problem.

I dont know but looking at Activision's newest F2P on mobile isnt comforting. It is literally pay2win.

I just dont know how they gonna pull a decent business model without resorting to all the shitty monetisation methods like pay2win,gataphon or massive grinding. It will be good if they go with a hybrid model but i doubt that will happen.

I just dont think F2P works in general, unless the game has tonnes of contents.

I think Valve is just brilliant despite they are not perfect. They know they can never have as much man power as the fans so they let them create content then, pay them quite a bit for their effort while making a profit for doing barely anything. At the same time, the tournament tickets are done in a way that its a win-win for everyone. Organizers get some funds for price pool or used to organize the tournament while Valve make a profit from it and fans get to watch the game live through their client.

Tournament Tickets is probably the best thing Valve brought to esports along with every game client can be used to spectate esports.

It is just disappointing that Blizzard havent implement this into SC2 or HS yet.

The problem is, MOBA fans are mostly hostile and angry. If they are not happy with something, they will make a huge fuss out of it while for Valve, they are never good in communicating with fans directly. The whole Diretide thing is a disaster. If this happen to LoL, it will be the same outcome.

As i said, Valve is not perfect but they are very good in making sound and beneficial to everyone sort of decisions. They made numerous mistakes back then but they always tried to compensate gamers in some ways while being innovative on what they do such as those tournament tickets and trading cards. Valve managed to create a platform for PC during the time where no one cares about PC and managed to rally the gamers behind Valve with their good will in general. Thats why people like them because generally, they are a pretty good company who is attentive to their users but they are not flawless.

So, whats wrong with trade marking Dota? They did the same with Counter Strike, Team Fortress and Alien Swarm while no one complained about. At the same time, Blizzard had Dota right under their noses and didnt give a crap about it until Dota is being trademarked by Valve. Blizzard could trademark Dota years ago and hire Icefrog to work on HotS but they didnt for some reasons. At the same time, the basic concept of Dota was stolen from a Starcraft 1 mod called Aeon of Strife while the game had so many change of hands since its inception where it is hard to find who actually made it in the first place.

Blizzard has a problem where they are way too big for their own good now. This made them slow to adapt to changes and afraid to innovate the genre that they are good in. HotS and HS should be released years ago if they arent putting that much effort in WoW and they fairly late to the scene now.

It is just stupid people in a large group. Even CoD fans got angry with some gun got nerfed and started sending death threats to the developers. It is just stupid people in general.

Thats why F2P shouldnt even exist in the first place as this business model is designed by business men who wants to bank with it, not creating games with meaningful experience.

Blizzard is just way too big to be managed efficiently where i think Valve will run into sometime in the future. To be honest, RMAH should not even be in the game to begin with as it adds nothing to the experience other than forcing players to use it to get reasonable progression.

I like what im seeing with Reapers of Souls and i'll get the PS4 version instead of the PC version.

It is optional, they are not taking down the PC version and force pc gamers to get PS4 version.

I actually like the features on PS4 than the ones on PC. Couch coop, offline mode, dodge and that portal thing.

So, looks like they made it worse for the free players then?

Thats quite a waste as I am looking for a less stressful version of MOBA that does not require a lot of grinding for unlocks, other than Dota 2.

This post has been edited by Cheesenium: Jul 30 2014, 03:07 PM