The original title for this series was "ishb00 schools idiot blizz HotS team in game design" but after the anger faded and I realized how much I want to keep my new job as an HGC player, I decided this might be a better title for this piece (this is 100% a joke, I actually really like what the HotS team has done with the game thus far.) Still, the HotS team likes to take risks to distinguish themselves from other MOBAs and this inevitably leads to mistakes in design.



In this series, I plan to combine my viewpoints as a professional player and an aspiring game designer to weigh in my two cents on issues I see throughout the game, as well as to offer potential solutions to these issues. Anything from map balance to hero reworks are fair game to pick apart, so nothing is safe here.

Before I start thought, a little background is in order. I’m a recent graduate of Cornell University with a degree in Information Science (basically half Computer Science and half Communications) and one of the topics I got to study and write about a lot at school was game design. So what does that mean for my qualifications to be a game designer?





(credit: here)



Memes aside, honestly very little. As much thought as I’ve put into the topic, experience >>> theories every time.



Still, as someone who commits 6+ hours a day to playing this game regularly, I can't help but think about these things. To those of you who are like me, hopefully this will be an engaging read, and I don't make myself out to be TOO much of an idiot. For the rest of you, I hope you'll at least find some enjoyment in the read.

So without further ado, I present, "ishb00 Thinking Out Loud"! WARNING: WALL OF TEXT INCOMING! (I tried to space things out to make it more readable, but sorry, still just a lot of writing coming up. It won’t hurt my feelings if you just skim, I bolded the important parts)



Today’s Topic: What’s Wrong with Volskaya Foundry

Ok, the title is a little harsh. Volskaya has the potential to be a competitive map, but I believe there to be a major flaw in Volskaya’s design that is creating issues its balance (fun fact: the objective being too weak is the RESULT of this problem, not the problem itself.) Before I go into what the problem is, let me do a quick lesson in game theory.

A Dominant Strategy to any game or scenario is a strategy such that regardless of what your opponent’s strategy is, that one strategy still is your best option. In other words, a Dominant Strategy is favored against all other strategies except itself (in which case, obviously the matchup is 50/50.) The transition of this concept is a bit rough to a game as complex as HotS, but hopefully you have some grasp of this concept… as well as a grasp of why no good games have dominant strategies. If a dominant strategy were to ever exist, it would eclipse all other strategies, seeing as the best response to it would be… itself. Needless to say, this would not make for a very fun game.

HotS is a game with (thankfully) very few examples of dominant strategies ever existing across its various maps and metas, but they have popped up from time to time. As a pro player, I consider it part of my job to identify these strategies (and then abuse the $#&% out of them before whining about them on social media until they get fixed.) From what I have observed thus far, Volskaya Foundry has a dominant strategy: split pushing. The objective is weak enough right now that simply ignoring it and pushing other lanes with heroes like Azmodan and Zagara is simply a better use of your time. This is the second map in a row where this has proven true and I think the main culprit here is the common thread linking Hanamura and Volskaya…







(credit: here)

…ok, well not actually Overwatch, but rather, a unique mechanic in both Overwatch maps: Consumable Camps.

To be clear, I actually like the idea of consumable camps (i.e. the turret camp and support camp) and find that, unlike on Hanamura, where they were super out of the way and only really the support camp had any meaningful impact on the game, the consumable camps on Volskaya feel very intentional. They feel like they belong and have significant impacts on fights. Taking the turret camp and support camp before a capture point spawn can be backbreaking for the other team to fight against giving the camps additional timings for when to take them, adding to their strategies. That being said, this intentionality is also their problem as well. The consumable camps’ only impact is in fighting for the Triglav. Unlike other camps where their pressure can cause split focus from the enemy team, or provide a meatshield to push behind, the consumable camps are only relevant in relation to the objective and this creates a big problem: There is literally only one meaningful push objective on the map!!!

Look across other competitive maps and you’ll quickly realize that all of these maps have multiple different objectives to get you ahead in a game. These multiple objectives counter-balance one another and prevent any one of them from single-handedly snowballing the game. You can give an altar on Towers of Doom to trade for the enemy sapper camp. You can trade a tribute on Cursed Hollow for boss. Heck, you can even just trade a top temple for a middle temple on Sky Temple. The diversification of objectives on a map gives different strategies that play to these different goals meaning. Heck, even Battlefield of Eternity, one of the most straightforward, objective-based maps in the game has this. For a while, BoE was all about just drafting better burn and team-fighting until people realized the value of the Fallen Shaman camp and split soaking during the immortal phase. Now it’s gotten to the point where BoE is considered one of Abathur’s best maps! (yes you read that right)

Coming back to Volskaya, this map has no objective outside of the Triglav for pushing (the re-skinned goatmen camp up top does not count as it’s only a minor camp and is easy to clear unless taken during the capture point phase, which is the problem to begin with.) This means one of two things will happen:

1. If the Triglav is weak, people will just draft heroes that push forts well and splitpush

2. If the Triglav is strong, people will just draft deathball and play to win every Triglav.

Number 1 is the current state of the map, but likely at some point during development, number 2 was true and the game was basically decided by who got the first Triglav (getting a big enough advantage off the first Triglav likely would mean a talent tier advantage into the 2nd Triglav fight which would snowball from there.) Since there’s only really one objective, whatever single strategy plays to that objective best would obviously be dominant.

Not only does the lack of outside objectives make the Triglav incredibly hard to balance, but it also makes phases in between Triglavs boring and pointless. Unless you have heroes specifically designed to push down forts and walls like Zarya or Zagara, you’re basically just roaming around, looking for the enemy to overextend. The only point of contention is the support camp, which can frankly just be given by any team not planning on fighting over the Triglav in the first place.



There's an argument to be made that the Triglav could be balanced in such a way to fit with the current map design, but that's putting a band-aid over the hole, not fixing it. Balancing it to begin with would be tenuous since you're not balancing against other objectives on the map, you're balancing against the abilities of certain heroes to push walls and forts. It's a tight-rope act that falls apart if any of those heroes are changed or some new split push hero is added to the game. The effort is simply not worth the result.

To me, the Triglav must be buffed, but it can only be buffed healthily if at least one other objective is added to the map.

… Ok, well there’s my big statement. It is my personal rule to never complain about anything without offering a potential fix, so here goes!

NEW CAMP: Devastator!!!

The issue mentioned above could probably be fixed by altering existing camps, but as I said, I like the current camps and feel like they add something to the map, so to me, the best solution was adding something new. After playing the Overwatch King’s Row PvE event a while back, I found that the devastator bot from the mission might make a great camp in HotS, so this is how I would insert it into the map.







(credit: here)



For those who did not play the mission (or those who simply forgot), the devastator is a large bulky bot with a shield covering its front. It can take a lot of damage from the front (its shield has a separate health bar) but can be killed quickly from behind. In HotS, I view the devastator as something in between a standard camp and a boss camp (a miniboss, so to speak), similar to the support camp found on the map already. When captured, the devastator would go down the nearest lane with its shield facing the enemy structures at all times. The camp would not do very much damage and offer little to no threat to enemy heroes, but the large shield would absorb a large amount of tower shots and offer players protection from skillshots if they stand behind it.

When pushing with the camp, it would absorb shots and give the team that captured it room to move up and attack towers directly, giving heroes that wouldn’t normally be able to siege forts by themselves the ability to siege effectively. Players could defend the punisher’s backside giving it more value than alone, making the punisher work as a miniboss of sorts. It will protect players from towers and skillshots, but offer no support against dive.

When the camp is pushing by itself, it would function similar to the Fallen Shaman camp on Diablo maps in that it absorbs shots for the minions and allows minions to stack up on it, creating massive pushes. The camp may be cleared by any hero that can flank around and hit its back, but at that point, separating the enemy team is already doing its job.

The devastator would initially spawn near bot lane in the center of the map, mirroring the support camp, and would walk down the bot lane. Whenever a Triglav is summoned; however, the support and devastator camps would disappear until the Triglav is destroyed. Once the Triglav is destroyed, the devastator and support camps would swap places. This would slow down the strategy of just stacking devastators down a single lane requiring there to be at least two Triglav captures before a team could send a devastator down the same lane. To me, this would put a nice balance between strategies reliant on the devastator and splitting and strategies reliant on fighting over the Triglav.

Anyways, this is just a theoretical solution so no idea how well this would fair in practice, but it is one possible solution I have brainstormed.

So… uh… yeah, that’s it. That’s most of what I had to say (trust me, there’s a lot more I’d like to say but I won’t make anyone suffer through that.) If you’ve read this far, you’re a trooper and I thank you for the attention. If you just skimmed through and read the bold statements, that’s fine too. I still love you.

In recap, Volskaya’s objective is too weak because it’s the only push objective on the map and it being too strong would make comps based around team fighting for the Triglav too strong instead. In order to balance it in a healthy fashion, another push-based objective needs to be introduced, possibly the devastator camp I brainstormed up above.

Thank you and have a nice night/morning/afternoon!

-ishb00