On XP Changes and the Need for Better Play Testing

So, it's no secret I've been less than positive about the upcoming XP changes, and the way Blizzard has gone about planning/releasing them. But I feel like at this point it's time I break down exactly what bothers me, what is missing, and why I have such a pessimistic view towards the development team at this point.



It should be noted that this frustration is born out of a love for the game, and the communities that I'm a part of. I don't want the game I love to be worse. I don't want to stop playing with the people I've met both online and IRL because the gameplay is awful. I want HotS to be great.



So lets take it back a bit. During BlizzCon I was part of organizing a Heroes Lounge meetup in The Netherlands, and the moments I saw the changes I was scratching my head. A few hours later, a couple of us were already talking about ways you could exploit this. Meanwhile the theorycrafting community in Nexus Schoolhouse (CavalierGuest's Discord) and my OD team was figuring out similar things.



After a while the general consensus came to be this:



1. Structures are not inherently valuable, they are valuable because they progress the game state to a point where you can end. This happens by creating XP leads, that lead to moments of talent advantage you can keep using to push your lead.

2. Minions will by and far be the most dominant income of XP.

3. The addition of catapults causing uncontrollable wave imbalance isn't desirable, because it sets up freezing for your opponent.

4. You realistically won't end before 16 on most maps.



So a lot of players were concerned. Spending time on an objective wouldn't only not lead to a good reward (A front wall isn't even more XP than a minute 1 wave, the fort doesn't give XP), it'd be actively detrimental because you would lose wave control and set up a freeze for your opponent. Suddenly you're denying yourselves a large portion of the primary XP income.



The kicker here was, Blizzard specifically stated this change was to prevent things like snowballs of 3+ levels. Quoting @azgaz here:



"Agreed, and that's not realistically changing, we're just trying to better control situations where you get to 3+ level disparity without being able to react because you lost one objective for example and your only option is to soak or wait for the other team to make a mistake."



Now, HotS on the current live version (without XP changes) honestly has a great balance in XP economy. You don't fall behind that much if you're playing properly but lose an objective. You have to make fundamental mistakes to fall behind 3+ levels.



I can only assume this change does come from data internally suggesting this happens regularly, and that's a problem. But then you also need to consider, in proper games, this isn't happening. It's happening either when there's a massive skill differential and people are feeding, or players are just plain dumb.



So now we've got a change clearly geared towards casual players. Instead of trying to educate them on how to play better and give them better tools/resources to get good, they're just trying to make it so that even if you suck, it doesn't matter, because you can't get ahead.



So this is where a lot of my personal debating comes in. I joined in on a thread started by Mopsio, and had a fairly long exchange with Azgaz about my concerns. See: https://twitter.com/epixors/status/1060299952730112001



Here I outline concerns about freezing, and the general misconception of the inherent value of structures. The replies that stood out were this:



"If they freeze it means they are spending resources to keep that lane in one spot, why aren't you taking XP somewhere else on the map? Why are you letting them do that for free? Here is another example: Volskaya. You get Triglav, take 2 towers + kills and maybe a fort, now 1/2"



Blizzard's idea: Freezing cost resources. You can only freeze if people allow you to do so. If people freeze your lane, you can get XP elsewhere.



Reality: Freezing only costs a hero's body, which isn't needed anywhere else because objectives and structures are worthless until the lategame. You can't control freeze when catapults are actively destroying your wave management. You can't get XP elsewhere, because it was just gutted from most parts of the game.



"I think the important thing is what you mentioned, "on paper" is all you have to go on so it's fair to question it. Ultimately though, if there is ever a situation where taking a Fort is not the right choice, we will react to that immediately."



Blizzard's idea: You have to experience the changes to know what it's like, modeling/theorycrafting is too vague/hard to go on.



Reality: Literally everything that came up in the theorycrafting happened. Turns out, you can actually model XP economy. Who would have thought?





And then a general argument that was made outside of this thread, is that "map pressure" from the catapults would make taking of the fort worth it. This again goes against the idea that structures aren't inherently valuable, but are valuable as a tool to progress the game state towards ending. The catapults end up just messing up your wave balance, denying you soak, while never getting any significant threat done unless literally ignored for several minutes.



---



"It isn’t as binary as you present it but we can go in circles forever so make sure to play with the changes when they are on PTR. We’ve been playtesting for months with ex-pros, GMs and Master players and we will continue to make changes wherever needed."



And this is where the really tilting part comes in for me. I have something to point out here that might be hard to understand for a lot of people.



Most players are absolutely trash at macro.



Most of the current pro's are bad at macro. Most of the ex-pro's are bad at macro. Most of GM is bad at macro. Almost the entirety of Master is bad at macro.



I don't mean this in a demeaning way. I don't mean to be cocky. I don't mean to be a dick. It's just a fact. Most players never get taught how to properly macro. Most teams don't do the research or don't know how to learn from replays of top macro teams.



So these changes are being tested, for MONTHS. Let me repeat that: MONTHS. All these players (and I guess I'm supposed to be impressed that it's ex-pros, GMs and Masters?) were supposedly playing with these changes for months, but they couldn't figure out a strategy that a lot of theorycrafters, and a couple of clever macro players came up with in hours, and refined in days.



PTR hits, and we jump in. Several groups from communities, streamers, pros and top ladder players, teams from HGC and OD try out the changes. Playing like normal, playing the degenerate playstyle where you just AFK while freezing, playing Juice Pirates, playing anything at all to make the game feel like it's not utter garbage.



And lo and behold, everything that was predicted by theorycrafters came true. It turns out, you can model XP economy, and if you have a good understanding of the game, how structures and heroes scale, etc. you can very accurate determine the cause of these changes.



So now we've run into the following: a group of playtesters together with the developers couldn't figure out in months what theorycrafters did in hours/days without even touching the game.



This basically demonstrates there is a fundamental issue with play testing. Playtesters aren't thinking about the game. They are playing whatever is fun, or what they're told to do, or actual feedback gets ignored. We can't tell what is actually going wrong, because we don't have any insight into the process. All we can see is: in months time, the approved product was insanely bad, and hated by pretty much the entire competitive community, and in large part by the casual community.



And then, we get the announcement. An announcement that might be the worst thing I have ever read when it comes to HotS.



"We are currently iterating on these changes internally and plan to release an update to the 2019 experience changes in next week’s patch."



Not only was the PTR set for only being one week, they want to make changes to a system they'd worked on for months which turned out to be garbage, in the timespan of a week. And these changes aren't even passing by the community.



Utter incompetence got demonstrated by Blizzard in terms of understanding their own game. Utter incompetence got demonstrated by Blizzard in terms of communicating with their players. Utter incompetence got demonstrated by Blizzard's play testers. Utter incompetence got demonstrated by Blizzard in terms of scheduling their patches.



And I'm feeling utterly defeated by it all.

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