I noticed something about Heroes of the Storm the other night. It’s a small detail, but an important one. The game actually tries to lift your spirits when a match isn’t going well.
During any given game of Heroes of the Storm, player characters chatter with one another. The game draws from Blizzard’s historic game series like StarCraft and Warcraft, so there’s some great dialogue referencing the lore in those titles. Characters also thank each other with friendly banter. And when you’re losing a game, allies nearby will start to say things like:
“The tide of battle is turning!” or “press the attack now!”
It took me a while to realise this because Heroes characters only deliver these lines in very specific situations. Like: if you just finished pushing back a wave of enemy assailants from one of your turrets but are still getting stomped in a more general sense.
Losing a match in any of the major MOBAs is a uniquely dispiriting process. It’s tempting to identify League of Legends, or Dota 2, or Heroes of the Storm’s game design as the reason for this. Each of these games has a tendency to be incredibly unforgiving to a team once it starts to lose. Making them more enjoyable would then require a retooling of their core game mechanics.
Heroes of the Storm’s charming and dynamic banter makes me think that the solution to MOBAs approachability problems don’t need to be so complicated. Granting a game a cheery exterior can be a small aesthetic adjustment. Something as simple as giving characters a few extra lines of dialogue. Something like: Don’t give up yet, we can still turn this around.
That’s what players should be saying to one another already. But far too often, they don’t.
Comments
3 responses to “I Like How Heroes Of The Storm Cheers You Up When You’re Losing”
having never really played a Moba before, im surprised at how hard this game has hooked me. been playing as a healer/support class because I don’t want too fuck up too bad and die a lot. So I sprint around and heal while taking potshots at enemies.
It’s actually one of the few moba’s out there where a good support class will make or break a match. I guess Blizz accomplished that by making most of the support classes very weak offensively forcing players to play them as intended as opposed to creating a dps item build when your team needs a tanky support player.
Best thing about HOTS is no items to worry about! Just power selection.
I’m quite enjoying this too, though I still can’t bear to get into actual PvP matches. vs AI is tough enough for me! Every time I’ve tried PvP I just get absolutely destroyed. At least in vs AI matches I can feel like I’m doing sort of okay instead of going 0-15 in a match 🙁