Browder on Heroes of the Storm: “There’s more work to do towards eliminating toxicity”

In an interview with Eurogamer, Heroes of the Storm lead designer Dustin Browder talks about his team’s pursuit towards making their game an enjoyable experience and taking player hostility out of the equation.

Ever since Heroes of the Storm took shape as the new team game to watch out for, Dustin Browder and co has been very proactive in advocating one important goal of theirs – design a game where getting yelled at is not an everyday routine.

Toxic behavior has been common in games like Dota and League of Legends pretty much since their inception and it couldn’t be otherwise: working together with four other people you don’t know is sometimes impossible, even if all are pursuing the same thing. For Browder, this is something they definitely do not want to see in their upcoming game. In his interview with Eurogamer author Oli Welsh, the former StarCraft 2 lead designer states that Blizzard will “keep attacking this problem until it’s gone”.

Browder’s vision of a utopic 5v5 game is admirable but also tastes a bit quixotic. At least from a bystander’s perspective, solving social situations with game design without reserving to extremes (e.g. Hearthstone’s complete lack of chat between non-friends), borders impossible. Browder seems to disagree.

I don't entirely agree that you can't address this through game design. We've already made several stabs. So for example, there's no way I can last-hit and take the kill away from you and deprive you of your gold and experience, which could be a very frustrating moment for everyone involved: 'I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to kill that person, you're angry with me that I killed the wrong person, I'm just trying to kill people!' We've smoothed that out - the team levelling also smooths out a lot of that.”

The talk naturally transitions to Heroes of the Storm’s most unique feature, the idea of shared XP between all team members. Its implementation is Blizzard’s most palpable way of promoting team work over solo-starring but is also the thing that drew a lot of criticism: if players can’t really face off one-on-one or two-on-two over some period of time, i.e. the laning phase in traditional MOBAs, how do you know who’s better?

According to Browder, however, this mechanic of Heroes’ is beneficial on all levels. Not only will it help new players get acquainted with the game without getting completely destroyed in their lane, but it will also help high-end and hardcore teams who can use this “no more laning phase” freedom to design new tactics. This is especially important for a game where most of the matches are won by securing certain objectives, which in turn require a player to leave his or her lane.

[Shared XP] also has this huge benefit for high-end teams in the sense they can cross-lane support or cross-lane gank with a lot more freedom. 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. 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.”

Still, Browder admits there is more to be done, both team- and individual-wise. Concerning the former, he says that even in alpha where there isn’t anything at stake, hostile players are not unseen so “there’s more work to do”. The latter acknowledges one of the biggest flaws in shared XP games – nobody can truly shine as a hero. Even if such games are supposed to be won by team effort most of the time, it’s still important to give credit where credit is due and give anyone the chance to stand out if he’s doing a fantastic job.

There's a bunch of systems that we want to get into the game as soon as possible to see if they work. We've got some ideas towards that direction. We want to get them in and show players who's the best player in their game, who's a superstar right now, so we can get that feeling.”

The final part of the interview touches community’s concerns about Heroes being too dumbed-down to ever go near hardcore eSports like Dota. With no items, no laning and seemingly simplified mechanics, there’s all the reason for putting Blizzard’s new product in a different, non-eSports basket. This doesn’t seem to worry Browder, however, as he gives World of WarCraft’s recent developments as an example. Author Oli Welsh also points out that WoW, alongside the freshly released Hearthstone, were products designed for casual audience but developed an organic competitive scene nonetheless. And Heroes, Browder says, will have all the infrastructure to allow for something like that. Seeing how Hearthstone is enjoying five digit tournaments every month (some even before its official release) without having no tools to help eSports organizers, one can only be hopeful for Heroes’ future.

 

For us, eSports is something that's going to happen if our community decides that we're ready for it. We're going to provide all the tools, we're going to provide replay, observer mode, reconnect from replay, leagues and ladders and all that stuff which enables the higher end of competitive play and enables the eSports folks if they want to make an eSport out of Heroes of the Storm. But it's really up to them, at the end of the day.”

The full article is available on Eurogamer.net