14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard has talked a bit more about Heroes of the Storm, its upcoming multiplayer online battle arena title, and emphasized that different strategies need to be used by players depending on the characters and battlegrounds present in a match.
Heroes of the Storm is Blizzard's answer to hugely popular MOBA titles like Dota 2 or League of Legends, incorporating many of the core gameplay mechanics, while adding quite a few major differentiating factors, such as the shared experience system or the different battlegrounds.
According to Game Director Dustin Browder, the different maps, together with the variety of heroes that are pulled from Blizzard's various franchises like Diablo, Warcraft, or Starcraft, will result in a lot of different strategies for players to use.
Even in the current technical alpha stage, Heroes of the Storm is sparking a lot of various recipes from players, according to Browder, who talked with Eurogamer.
"We're only early in the alpha, these strategies are not well understood yet, and I'm not a great player, but even at my level of play, I'm making talent choices based on the map, talent choices based on enemy team composition, and to a lesser extent right now but I think I should be doing more in this area, making talent choices based on my own team composition."
First and foremost, players need to take into consideration the current battleground in the match, as each offers different gameplay opportunities, from non-playable AI characters, to special powers that can be summoned by quick players.
"So you're trying to figure out how to walk the line in talents between all these different variables. That's one of the things that Battlegrounds gives you, and of course it just gives you a ton of variation in gameplay," he said.
"So you sit down in front of the game and think, oh, wow, I haven't played this map in a while, what are we doing here again? How does this work with this map and this team composition against that enemy team composition? What do we need to do differently? We're trying to create enough variation that you've got to think on your feet and be creative while you play."
Heroes of the Storm is getting plenty of different enhancements during this technical alpha and you can bet that more and more details will be revealed in the near future, as Blizzard gets closer to unveiling the beta stage and a possible open release of its multiplayer game.