14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard has gone in-depth about the shared experience pool mechanic in Heroes of the Storm, its upcoming MOBA title, and how it delights not just casual but also hardcore players, giving more freedom to all of them without imposing limitations on gameplay.
Heroes of the Storm is Blizzard's attempt at capturing the huge MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) market and, after spending several years in development, it's now in a closed alpha test stage on PC.
The game introduces quite a few big changes to the classic MOBA recipe, from varied maps to a shared experience pool for the whole team, instead of allowing each character to level up during a match.
While some veteran players felt that they weren't given a chance to shine during a match, Game Director Dustin Browder is adamant that both casual and hardcore fans can benefit from this major mechanic.
According to an interview with Eurogamer, Browder explained that players weren't willing to explore the map and engage the NPC creatures because they'd lose experience by missing kills and encounters in the three main lanes.
"We had an individual experience point system for many years on this game, and when we started introducing the Battlegrounds we started trying to provide our advance players with a lot more strategy in trying to engage with their opponents."
"One of the things we noticed is that players kind of refused to engage with the map mechanics of the Battlegrounds when they had individual experience, because they didn't want to leave their lane to go do something like drop off coins or collect tribute. They were too scared."
As such, with the shared XP system, players can move around more freely and interchange roles on lanes and in the so-called jungle area.
"Right now, if you're on a three-lane map and you have a player in each lane – if you've got three players dedicated to getting experience points from those battles – you have two players who can do whatever the heck they want," he added.
"They can go support, they can collect map objectives, they can try to cross-lane kill other players, they can try to raid bases and destroy infrastructure in the back field, they can engage with mercenaries... The minute they put this system in, it opened up the map to tons of strategy, which we felt was fundamentally better for the game we were trying to make."
Heroes of the Storm is still in closed alpha and might be released to more players later this year as part of a beta.