Welcome to the Sandbox!
Starting with the Valeera patch, Blizzard has introduced a sandbox mode on a special version of Cured hollow. Like a more robust version of Try Mode, Sandbox Mode lets users make custom games with different adjustments like Teleport, Infinite Mana, Damage tweaks, and our most favorite, SPEED SETTINGS, allowing you to quickly get to the heart of practice or push your skills to the limits.
Our friends over at The Core Podcast were nice enough to test out some games and provide us some footage, showcasing the possibilities! If you are not familiar with The Core Podcast or the Frogpants network, make sure to give them a listen. The Core podcast has to be the most entertaining Heroes of the Storm podcasts out there with great insights and the infamously hilarious Nexueopardy (Nexus-Jeopardy). You can find them on twitter here, and make sure to follow the frogpants crew, John Jagger, Scott Johnson and Beau Schwartz!
While our footage isn’t the height of competitive excellence, Frogpants does a great time showing us how fun the Sandbox can be. Start watching around the 1 hour 28-minute mark and notice how much everyone playing is laughing, but check out the whole session for an interesting look at what's possible!
Have you ever seen a baseball player warm up before stepping up to the plate? They’ll put a weight on their bat called an Iron Doughnut, and practice their swing a few times, helping to stimulate the neural system, increase muscle activation, and improve reaction times. This is just a run of the mill warm-up tool in professional play. So what's the equivelent in esports?
Imagine, before your Heroes of the storm tournament, you have a scrim with your team, only now the match is 3x faster! Do you think your reaction times would be better for that next match?
Just like an Iron Doughnut, the new sandbox mode will give amateurs and pros alike the ability to Improve their muscle memory with this ridiculously fun way to play. The impact of this tool on Heroes of the storm cannot be overstated. Mark my words.
The first time I played at 3x faster speed I never wanted to go back. Who knows, maybe we could see some Speed tournaments in the future.
I recommend this mode as the first thing to try with your friends. If you only change the speed the game can be competitively viable. It’s the same game you’ve been playing, just faster. Just be warned, if you change damage or other settings, the game will become insane and unbalanced REAL quick as our friends at The Core Podcast demonstrate.
Slow Hollow – Master your executions
The same as Speedy Hollow, to play slow hollow you simply adjust the game speed down to slowest.
This game mode is an excellent place to master your wave-clear, your movement, and your team-fighting strategies. Everything moves as if trapped in a slow-motion dream. You will feel your deaths coming and learn from the mistake, you will anticipate kills and watch or your enemies’ life flash before their eyes.
At first you might think, this will be boring. With a little patience what you’ll discover is your mind will wonder with the extra time between activities. You’ll look at the mini-map more, you’ll notice how you should have thrown that attack from a slightly different vantage or timing, and so on.
Slow Hollow is a master class in execution. And while there is plenty to glean from the battlefield, currently the death timers are also 3x longer. Once Blizzard adds a way to adjust death timers this mode will be just as useful and fun as Speedy Hollow.
Setting up a game
Setting up a game with friends is not hard. Simply go under custom games, Choose Sandbox (Cursed Hollow), and create game. Once in the interface, you can Invite friends and use the gear icon by players’ names to swap around team members and set observers.
Under Game settings you can set the Lobby to Standard, which is like quick match, or draft. With that, you’re ready to go like a normal game.
Once in the match begins, the creator can adjust settings for the match, share control with others, or give control over to another player. Once the match settings have been set, hitting the close button on the controls UI will minimize it into a tiny panel.
What we hope so see added.
As amazing as Sandbox mode is in its earliest rendition, we’re already chomping at the bit for some additions to round out its potential. Here’s what we’d like to see right away. There’s a Reddit topic dedicated to ideas for upgrading Sandbox Mode further. Join the discussion and let's let Blizzard know our thoughts.
- Sandbox UI added for ALL battlegrounds!
- The ability to Reduce cooldown timers, allowing for all kinds of crazy tinkering
- The ability to Reduce re-spawn timers.
- The ability to turn on the accommodations screen. This would be great on in brawl as well.
- Fix the observer UI so the controls don’t overlap with the interface.
- The ability to lock vision to a zoomed in or zoomed out state could be a fun game mode.
Wrapping up
Blizzard continues to amaze us with new content and features this year. Sandbox Mode looks to be the one of the major features that could reshape the quality of competitive play, as well as allowing for crazy tournament alternatives. Either way, Sandbox Mode is likely to be a staple of the Heroes of the Storm diet.
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