League could learn something from hots

Towboat421·Oct 6, 2018·61 votes·16,148 views

Heroes of the storm locks characters behind a wall in ranked if you haven't reached a minimum of level 5 on them which is the equivalent of about 10-15 games depending if they are wins or losses. This measure keeps people from first timing heroes they don't know anything about in ranked modes, I know this board is full of people who will advocate for people being able to pick characters whenever and wherever but ranked is supposed to be a competitive environment not your personal practice tool.

Seeing some 2nd time a champ in ranked and then proceed to feed their ass off is never fun it's always dead weight, people should use normal and other game modes for practice not other people ranked experiences. It's not like asking for a competitive environment to be regulated in some way to stay a potential troll or inexperienced player from potentially forcing a loss is a big ask, if you want to try those things out do it in flex as a premade or play norms.

50 Comments

cupcakerOct 6, 201825 votes

league has learned something from HOTS. Blue and orange essence. blue essence gains are better, however orange essence is substantially worse.

unfortunately, people are gonna downvote you just because you mentioned HotS.

HotS does do a lot of things better than league though. like the fact that even if you get clown fiesta'd hard, there is no gold or items to build an oppressive lead. only levels and talents. you still have to be conscious and wary of what youre doing at all times because comebacks are completely 100% possible 100% of the time.

or the fact that one specific role doesn't dominate everything else each particular season.

Towboat421Oct 7, 20185 votes

{quoted}

league has learned something from HOTS. Blue and orange essence. blue essence gains are better, however orange essence is substantially worse.

unfortunately, people are gonna downvote you just because you mentioned HotS.

HotS does do a lot of things better than league though. like the fact that even if you get clown fiesta'd hard, there is no gold or items to build an oppressive lead. only levels and talents. you still have to be conscious and wary of what youre doing at all times because comebacks are completely 100% possible 100% of the time.

or the fact that one specific role doesn't dominate everything else each particular season.

which is the reason I find myself playing it more and more often then I even log into league. Having the ability to come back off a game because you outplayed the enemy is nice something that died a while ago with league. But my main concern is that hots and by extension blizzard just does things smarter than riot in a lot of instances I know some of their games get flak but often its pretty exaggerated, blizz implements stuff in quality and I can't say the same for riot in anything outside the skin and animation departments. The rest is a dumpster fire.

cupcakerOct 7, 20181 votes

honestly, hots queue times are horrible though. unfortunately, league and dota have the market cornered since they came out way before hots.

Towboat421Oct 7, 20183 votes

{quoted}

honestly, hots queue times are horrible though. unfortunately, league and dota have the market cornered since they came out way before hots.

Honestly the que time for qm is fast really fast but ranked is snails paced. Its a shame hots actually has a roster where most of the heroes have somewhere they can perform well. Tlv being the only real exception but they are alright soakers, look at lol most the rosters mediocre at best. Think Ill be done with lol for the rest of the year its not fun at all anymore for me.

flibitydooOct 7, 20181 votes

I really like how they handle the role selection queue system.

In league, if you pick support you get like 5 second queue times and if you pick mid you get 3 minute ones.

In HotS, you get 60-70. 60 if you pick support, 70 if you pick dps.

And I'm pretty certain that balance exists solely because when you go up to actually pick a role in HotS, it will straight up tell you "this role has on average X queue time". Which means people will change their mindset pre-queue and actually pick faster roles to queue into with an eager mindset of playing them instead of being forced onto the role through the autofill system that league has.

HaIlMonitorOct 7, 20181 votes

Supports are actually fun in that game though. This game supports and tanks like do one thing and then either wait for cool downs, or dont have the "effect" that some of the hots do.

I legit just quit playing hots because they nerfed wc heroes a lot and didn't like how the dailies worked. It was a fun game though when champions were competitive though.

The Dragon ManOct 8, 20181 votes

I agree that HotS has an overall better experience as a support or tank - at least 2 years ago when I played HotS. Everyone's base damage mattered a lot and didn't just hit like a wet noddle. Supports and tanks could actually go off-role paths for either damage or utility/control. All of which was due to the talent system, so items and scalings were not really present, it was all a matter of team experience.

What I really dislike about the HotS model though: The talent system... paradoxically enough.

No items means very limited chances of itemization/customization, so little to no changes in meta adaption or build paths in general. If your particular hero didn't fare well in a certain meta, then you couldn't even itemize yourself to a better position as most talent options weren't inherently designed to change the nature of your hero in a large enough way to acclimate metas. [In LoL champions definitely have favorable or less favorable metas but most champions can mitigate a fair bit of their unfavorable metas by playing and building differently. Over the years the amount of especially skill order paths have been reduced with certain abilities being a clear best progression path but it used to be more evened out.]
Team experience meant that once one fool starts doing something bad, you're gonna have a harder time trying to catch up, even if you WERE doing good/better in your lane but without cashing in kills. If the enemy in general reaches levels and powerspikes before you, you were just doomed to always be behind and it was NONE of your lane opponent's doing. You lost YOUR lane because an ally lost HIS. In LoL people generally try to transfer their own lane dominance over to other lanes by roaming, but you can account for it and still have an edge over your lane opponent. That is not possible in HotS with shared team experience.
Map selection: Heroes were in general meant to be balanced across all maps but it's no secret that certain heroes perform considerably better on some maps than others (Abathur being the highest variance 2 years ago). As such it is a lottery whether the hero you selected would be on a favorable map or not. How can that be a part of ranked gameplay?

I stopped playing HotS because I generally found that I, as an individual, had much less say in the outcome of the match compared to LoL. At least that's what it felt like. And with most of my friends moved on to other non-MOBA games or non-gaming activities I cannot rely on my teammates as much. Most talent branches were not worth going for so there was generally one best path and a few branch paths that were okay. In LoL I have build a lot of champions differently depending on what I figure I will need to fulfill my role. ADCs being the role I find the least flexible because their overall gameplan is so linear and choices between high AD items is rather narrow if you want to utilize all benefits to the fullest and avoid dead stats.

SaiannaOct 7, 20182 votes

like the fact that even if you get clown fiesta'd hard, there is no gold or items to build an oppressive lead.

Playing HOTS for 2-3'ish years and that is a false. HOTS is **ALOT ** more 1-sided-stompy game than LOL. Might sound harsh, but solid 80% of games is 1 team getting obliterated without as much as getting 1 kill.

The fact there's no gold sounds great (and is great), but it also has a major flaw. Instead of 1-player gold/item spike, you have full enemy team talent-spike. To someone who doesn't understand, imagine suddenly every enemy gets an IE on level up. Kinda exxagerating, yet it's true on certain levels (7/10/16). That's how it is.

I love the game, but truth be told it has alot of issues and HOTS subredit is cesspool of whiteknights screaming that game is fine (pretty much the same as fortnite or lol sub)

LeetriOct 7, 20181 votes

I stopped playing HotS because certain maps are just garbage. Oh the enemy got a lead on Blackheart's Bay? You literally can't win now because they control the center of the map and their team is so far ahead in XP you can't contest it. Everyone is chained to the same anchor, so it's stomp or be stomped with no in between.

AggressiveWolfOct 7, 20181 votes

I love how HoTS hero videos always include counterplay and ways to play the hero. They put clear 'strenghts' and 'weaknesses' at the start. Really helps people who havent played in a while or are new to the game/worse than others.

woodvsmurphOct 7, 20181 votes

From a carry perspective, that last statement about Hots needs to be retracted, but the rest is correct. Hots has 4 classes basically. The dps or spam burst champs that kill everyone (akin to adc all spring split in lol). The meat shield/cc bots (tanks in lol). The healers/enchanters; same as lol. And everything else that is sub-par... just like lol.

Both games unfortunately seem bent on turning melee's not named something like genji into cc-bot meatshields for their team. Stuff like arthas? You used to be able to go damage-centric and out-duel a ranged opponent... focusing them out even in a teamfight. Now? If you go for that type of thing, first off you'll lose. Second off, you are trolling because you aren't even remotely durable. That's just an example to illustrate my point about melee's who don't fit into that dps or burst "kill everyone" category with genji (somewhat melee), tracer (not melee), gul'dan, etc.

I placed gold 2 in Hots first ranked season I played... without knowing ANYTHING about comps, objective control, hero talent combos to take, etc. Just transfering my basic lol knowledge to that game. Not amazing, but considering most players were several seasons in, knew ideal times to take camps, best talent combos for different goals/roles a hero might play, etc. I'd say not bad. Considering I quit ranked after that season because almost 50% of the games involved me doing more solo laning vs 3 enemies than what my team did 3v1 with a sylvannas to negate enemy defenses... I'd say that's actually pretty good. Anyways, point is that I'm not saying this stuff as some iron 5 first time ranked player to either game.

Captainn GinyuOct 8, 20181 votes

{quoted}

league has learned something from HOTS. Blue and orange essence. blue essence gains are better, however orange essence is substantially worse.

unfortunately, people are gonna downvote you just because you mentioned HotS.

HotS does do a lot of things better than league though. like the fact that even if you get clown fiesta'd hard, there is no gold or items to build an oppressive lead. only levels and talents. you still have to be conscious and wary of what youre doing at all times because comebacks are completely 100% possible 100% of the time.

or the fact that one specific role doesn't dominate everything else each particular season.

i love playing hots my self though i dont understand the game as much as league an often end up losing as far as your comment on pay currency goes iv earned more out of HOTS than i have league with there lootbox system

MogarlOct 7, 20189 votes

It would kinda fuck with trading tho.

MrGerundOct 7, 20184 votes

problem with only being able to pick a champ in ranked if you have a high mastery with em is...

autofill

KrullyOct 7, 20181 votes

first we remove then autofill

SociaI JusticeOct 8, 20184 votes

so when i get autofilled into adc i have to play maokai bot or some shit?

Towboat421Oct 8, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=SociaI Justice,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YJUAskUH,comment-id=0012,timestamp=2018-10-08T00:22:20.695+0000)

so when i get autofilled into adc i have to play maokai bot or some shit?

Going to the nth degree with your counter argument. I don't believe you legitimately have no experience or play time on other characters in your roster, what you are saying is you don't have a single adc that you have any experience with which is a blatant use of hyperbole to inflate your argument.

SociaI JusticeOct 8, 20181 votes

well if you take this account for example on which I am heading into ranked right now, i could only play brand, graves, yi, zed, tryndamere or nunu if i'm not allowed to first time. now if we are talking about 10+ games played i could only play brand or graves no matter my position, which is hilarious for a top lane main.

Need Gold 4 TentOct 7, 20183 votes

Well, my main got banned. Pretty sure (depending on the requirement level) none of my other champs reach that standard. Auto-dodge?

Flawless FetusOct 7, 20183 votes

Posted something similar, a long time ago, and got down voted to hell. Tbf, I didn't mention HoTS - I simply referred to leagues existing mastery system. Glad to see the boards are less opposed to the idea nowadays.

ThefrostyvikingOct 7, 20181 votes

Its still getting downvoted but this system has the added benefit of combating trolls and random picks which is why at least some of us are indeed interested^^

I mean basically all the champs i play i league are lvl 5 at the very least, i have like....20? At mastery 7 and 10-15 at lvl 6 as well, i can easily get around with no problem even with 3 champs banned.

Heck If such a system were to be implemented wouldnt it be a kick in the balls towards smurfs as well?

ZephyrDrakeOct 7, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Its still getting downvoted but this system has the added benefit of combating trolls and random picks which is why at least some of us are indeed interested^^

I mean basically all the champs i play i league are lvl 5 at the very least, i have like....20? At mastery 7 and 10-15 at lvl 6 as well, i can easily get around with no problem even with 3 champs banned.

Heck If such a system were to be implemented wouldnt it be a kick in the balls towards smurfs as well?

so because you won't be affected that means it is a good change? what? it doesn't do anything to combat trolls other than slightly inconveniencing them which just means that they are going to make games in other modes hell before they go to rank and do the exact same thing that they have been doing... how does this combat trolls and random picks again? all this does is make it more obnoxious for trading purposes and more of a needless grind. People will still feed, they will still pick random stuff, they will still choose champions they have no idea what they are doing with since gaining mastery lvls isn't hard (you can lose every single game with the champion and still reach mastery 5)

ThefrostyvikingOct 7, 20182 votes

Dedicated trolls will eventually get through this is always the case and will always be the case, but many of them wont bother if it takes too much effort.

And playing a champ until mastery 5 will at least let you know what the abilities does, ive had multiple people pick random things that they have no idea of how it works, in ranked.

You think its fun to see a first time ivern feed like hell with the excuse that its his first time? I´d rather have him feed his ass off on something he invested effort into so that he doesnt have an excuse.

ZephyrDrakeOct 7, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Dedicated trolls will eventually get through this is always the case and will always be the case, but many of them wont bother if it takes too much effort.

And playing a champ until mastery 5 will at least let you know what the abilities does, ive had multiple people pick random things that they have no idea of how it works, in ranked.

You think its fun to see a first time ivern feed like hell with the excuse that its his first time? I´d rather have him feed his ass off on something he invested effort into so that he doesnt have an excuse.

and they would still feed like hell regardless of mastery. You think that a mastery 5 X champion is suddenly not going to play badly or feed or do anything bad? you do know that the vast majority of people that use the "first time Y" excuse aren't really first timers? it might be their first time in ranked sure but rarely is it ever their first time ever on a champion. People will just go back to the "am drunk" excuse or make up an even dumber excuse.

You making trolls be someone else's problem in the game for a little bit isn't solving anyone's problem. That's like having a bunch of diseased people move to some random part of town and say "hey people who live here, this other group of diseased people is your problem now!" and then pretend that the problem was fixed.

ThefrostyvikingOct 7, 20182 votes

Playing ranked while drunk can easily be reported i think, especially if they feed.

"The guy came in drunk as hell, died once or twice then tilted and intentionally threw the game/Fed".

And there is a limit to how many excuses a guy can cook up before it becomes ridiculous and obvious that something is up, if they really bother to type this out then whoever eventually reads the chatlogs will sort it out.

Now i know this is not a perfect fix however the only way to make anything at all happen is to just make it more difficult to troll, eventually it takes too much effort and many will just not bother at all.

However as long as it remains easy and painfree to do it they will keep going.

ZephyrDrakeOct 7, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Playing ranked while drunk can easily be reported i think, especially if they feed.

"The guy came in drunk as hell, died once or twice then tilted and intentionally threw the game/Fed".

And there is a limit to how many excuses a guy can cook up before it becomes ridiculous and obvious that something is up, if they really bother to type this out then whoever eventually reads the chatlogs will sort it out.

Now i know this is not a perfect fix however the only way to make anything at all happen is to just make it more difficult to troll, eventually it takes too much effort and many will just not bother at all.

However as long as it remains easy and painfree to do it they will keep going.

you mean like how you can report a troll these days? there is literally no difference between someone who feeds while playing a champion "the first time ever" and someone who feeds because they are drunk. You really think that making it more obnoxious to everyone is going to stop people from trolling? please. Trolls don't care and since they can still troll normal games until they start trolling ranked you really aren't making it any harder for them at all. You are just making people in other modes suffer more until the troll gets enough mastery in random champions to troll in ranked.

Unless you do something about trolls themselves you really are doing nothing at all. You aren't fixing anything, you aren't making things better. All you are doing is shoving the issue to another group of players for a little while. Not only this but also making it more difficult for actual normal players to even get into ranked to the point that they themselves might not even bother with it since they might not want to grind. So good job, you literally fixed nothing and are just impacting normal players way more than you would a troll

ThefrostyvikingOct 7, 20181 votes

Except it does have impact.

By eliminating the excuses and making them as bannable you´ll cull the population, by making more difficult to even join it´ll take more effort and be more noticeable when they do troll and it will make it less enjoyable for them too i´d imagine.

Majority of them all switching over to normals? Then at least ranked will be much cleaner than before.

Imperfect solutions are fine as long as it helps to relive the issue , doing nothing however is the true poison.

Flawless FetusOct 8, 20181 votes

Yup. I don't see any downside, really. Except for the fact that people wouldn't be able to play champs in ranked that they have no experience on. That's an upside in my opinion, but I guess it could be negative depending on who you ask.

Sire HippingtonOct 7, 20183 votes

There are lots of things lol could learn from hots,

Objective mechanics
king of the hill style is much better than 'lst hit gets it all', and bosses are actually putting up a good fight rather than rolling over and dieing in secs like dragon and baron
melee vs range balance
the base stat differences are WAY high than in lol, melees have more sustain to put up with constant harras, there for less harsh punishment once they reach the ranged and alot of that comes to the tower/fort design that actually offers solid protection, though also form the fact that you don't have to cs which wouldn't work for lol.
All classes have champs that scale or spike eariler, there is no 'marksmen are lategame gods by default' situation
Choosing between two ults helps massively with pro vs soloQ balance
The merc camps are more valueble 'small' objectives compared to lols buffcamps and worth contesting even later on, creating more interesting points on the map than just the usuall baron/dragon pit
Tanks have a great baseline mechanic that makes them feel alot better and easier to balance: bodyblocking. In HotS, hero vs hero hitboxes are a thing and you have more narrow chokepoints so you can prevent enemie movments just from standing in their way, makeing tank positioning as micro intensive as that of an adc and creating sustained impact with baseline utillity, so they don't need aoe hard cc on 3sec cd to feel usefull after thei initial rotation.

Now, not all of that can easily implemented to lol, and while it sounds like HotS is a way better game, there are still things lol does better, but it really wouldn't hurt if riot took some lessons from blizzard and not just ghostcrawler Right now, i'd say hands down that HotS is the better moba, and that's mostly on Riot. befor S6, i would never have choosen HotS over lol and HotS didn't change all that much since then, it's just that league became that much worse. If i could choose between HotS and S1-5 LoL, i would still go back to lol.

AggressiveWolfOct 7, 20183 votes

THIS. WE. NEED.

I LOST MY DIAMOND FOUR PROMOS BECAUSE SOMEONE FUCKING FIRST TIMED VAYNE. I AM SO PISSED OFF RIGHT NOW.

RewtOct 7, 20182 votes

I actually fucking hate the level 5 thing.

I still dont have ranked unlocked in HOTS after probably somewhere around 250 hours because of that dumb shit.

Simply put. there arent 15 characters i enjoy playing enough to get to rank 5. I got a double XP booster and got 12 characters there and hated it so much that I actually stopped playing the game for 6 months.

The whole "Mastery Lock" is a stupid system that is one of the reasons ranked has such a crazy long que time. Because id be willing to put money on the fact that over 50% of registered users that have played in the last 6 months dont have 15 characters at MR 5.

5050BSOct 7, 20181 votes

...... Its crazy ez to get to lvl 5 in HOTS

My Waifu VanillaOct 7, 20181 votes

It's still a chore nonetheless. Assuming you have a 50% winrate it still takes like 10 games or so to reach level 5. On a character you have absolutely no plan of playing ever.

RewtOct 7, 20181 votes

Sure its easy. doesnt mean it is fun in any way.

Example. Got nazeebo to rank 5. with a double XP booster. After i got him to 5 i had to stop playing the game because i was just so fucking infuriated with that god damn fucking boring piece of shit.

how about Jaina. only got her to 3 before i rage quit playing that boring piece of shit.

dont even get me started on Raynor, Rehgar, Azmodan, and kharazim. I hate playing those characters so much that i couldnt keep playing them long enough to get them to 4.

Grinding characters up to 5 is equivalent to grinding your genitals against a cheese grater while pouring rubbing a rubbing alcohol salt mixture onto it.

Captainn GinyuOct 8, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Sure its easy. doesnt mean it is fun in any way.

Example. Got nazeebo to rank 5. with a double XP booster. After i got him to 5 i had to stop playing the game because i was just so fucking infuriated with that god damn fucking boring piece of shit.

how about Jaina. only got her to 3 before i rage quit playing that boring piece of shit.

dont even get me started on Raynor, Rehgar, Azmodan, and kharazim. I hate playing those characters so much that i couldnt keep playing them long enough to get them to 4.

Grinding characters up to 5 is equivalent to grinding your genitals against a cheese grater while pouring rubbing a rubbing alcohol salt mixture onto it.

Its fun to someone so opinions i suppose Nazeebo is a great character for siegeing an poking down people not great on every map fantastic on others

i cna understand finding raynor boring especially in his current state where he is just an auto attacking machine more than he ever was as far as the other goes i personally love playing kharazim and rocking house with him

but the grinding to level 5 (i assume your speaking of playing them in ranked) is to insure you at least understand how the champion works and how to play it im all in favor of this no one should be buying a character fresh from level 1 and playing them in ranked

ZephyrDrakeOct 7, 20182 votes

yeah, league should learn from the most boring and casual moba in the market. Making you reach a certain rank with a champion isn't going to make you not feed on them. You will literally have the exact same issues regardless of you needing to have champions at mastery lvl 7 or at 1. All a change like this would do is make it even more obnoxious for people who want to actually trade champions and actually use champ select for it's intended purpose which is to coordinate with your team.

Towboat421Oct 7, 20184 votes

{quoted}

yeah, league should learn from the most boring and casual moba in the market. Making you reach a certain rank with a champion isn't going to make you not feed on them. You will literally have the exact same issues regardless of you needing to have champions at mastery lvl 7 or at 1. All a change like this would do is make it even more obnoxious for people who want to actually trade champions and actually use champ select for it's intended purpose which is to coordinate with your team.

Here he is now the prophesied hots hater

T Captain TOct 7, 20182 votes

HOTS is in no way boring at all. If all my friends were down to quit League for it I would drop the game RN. It's actually nice to play a team oriented game that's objective focused and you can actually survive and not get deleted in 0.2 seconds.

ZephyrDrakeOct 7, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=T Captain T,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=YJUAskUH,comment-id=00020001,timestamp=2018-10-07T07:28:47.874+0000)

HOTS is in no way boring at all. If all my friends were down to quit League for it I would drop the game RN. It's actually nice to play a team oriented game that's objective focused and you can actually survive and not get deleted in 0.2 seconds.

you can find HOTS to be as entertaining as possible... it's dumb and boring to me and to many other people. You can quit league anytime you want. Seems to me more of "I don't like league" than a "I enjoy HOTS" thing

FegoneOct 7, 20182 votes

very much agree

Pika FoxOct 7, 20182 votes

No. Why limit peoples options even more in a game you need champions for the situation. Plus it impacts people who only play ranked.

wmbkryboyOct 7, 20181 votes

I think a 5 game minimum would be nice.

saltranOct 7, 20181 votes

I agree with this, I fucking hate ppl that first time a champ on ranked.

ƒrostγOct 7, 20181 votes

this is why you should always check OP.GG before match starts. That way you can avoid this. Better lose 3 LP than 15.

VegetaPrince2266Oct 7, 20181 votes

The one thing i like about HOTS over league is that the champ kits are much more wacky and innovative. Not that lol's champs arent innovative but HOTS is just more.

SukishooOct 7, 20181 votes

Smite: battleground of the gods even does that but theirs is only a mastery 1 lock. It works so well and I'd love it.if league would do something similar

BeersteinOct 7, 20181 votes

If people play ranked like that, then they always play ranked like that and will be at their appropriate skill level for it.

DimirWaterbenderOct 7, 20181 votes

This would also help discourage smurfing. I definitely think this is a good change.

Warlord RhinarkOct 8, 20181 votes

Well it doesn't really matter in Bronze and Silver, seeing as these two are usually practice oriented as well, but we can say once people get to Gold and up, this restriction can start applying from there.

However, there's one problem I see with this.

How would trading in champ select function if you can't pick champions you don't have mastery 5 on?