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Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Heroes of the Storm AMA - April 30, 2020

Greetings, Heroes!

We’re going to host our next AMA on Thursday, April 30th, 2020, PDT.

The following Heroes developers will join the thread and answer your questions starting around 10:00 a.m. PDT (7:00 p.m. CET) until 12:00 p.m. PDT (9:00 p.m. CET).

· Adam Z. Jackson (/u/BlizzAZJackson)

· Andrew Kinabrew (/u/Blizz_KinaBREW)

· Brett Crawford (/u/Daybringer)

· David P Warner (/u/Blizz_DWarner)

· Dorothy Sheng (/u/BlizzDorothy)

· Jeff Beaudoin (/u/Blizz_JeffB)

· Joshua Kofalt – (/u/BlizzKofalt)

· Kaeo Milker (/u/KaeoMilker)

· Kevin Gu (/u/BlizzKGu)

· Kyle Dates (/u/BlizzKyle)

· Sergey Morozov (/u/Blizz_SMorozov)

· Taylor Hankins (/u/Blizz_Hankins)

When posting multiple AMA questions: Please make an effort to post one question per comment. This will make it easier for others to read through the thread, and will help the developers focus on one question at a time. However, please feel free to comment as many times as you'd like in order to get your questions posted.

You can start posting your questions right now, and we'll see you on Thursday!

  • KinaBREW
    Posted 4 years, 1 month ago (Source)

    Does the elemental lord of fire have any skins in the works?

    Every time new items are added to the collection I look to see what you tease us with. Ragna Robot and Dark Nexus Ragnaros are the ones that come to mind immediately.

    We’re in the process of evaluating what we’re going to do for 2021 and we are well aware that Rag needs another skin. There’s a non-trivial amount of work to get new skins done for him. We have a bunch of cool ideas. It is still a goal.

  • KinaBREW
    Posted 4 years, 1 month ago (Source)

    Maybe keep the old model as a special skin for people who had him above level 15 befoee the new remodel?

    we wouldn't replace the old model. We would keep it as an option for people who still like playing with it.

  • KinaBREW
    Posted 4 years, 1 month ago (Source)

    Hi there from the Tavern of Heroes community! First of all, many thanks to the whole team for the efforts made to make the game shine again. In my opinion, many elements of the game (game balance, match making system, map mechanics and so on) have become much better. You all did a great job!

    I have a question to /u/Daybringer and /u/Blizz_KinaBREW. Heroes community has a lot of talented artists, and there are a lot of amazing skins concepts. Could you tell us more about the implementation of Janitor Leoric into the game? What is the process of interaction with the author of the original concept? And is there any chance we will see some more fan ideas in the game?

    Hunman360 did the art for a competition. There was talks to creating that skin as far back as the moment we were aware of it. Our schedules are written out for us at least a year in advance and there wasn’t good place to put it. By time we decided to do it the concept had been around for quite some time. Community sentiment was the biggest for any community skin we had ever seen. It was a really strong concept as well. We reached out to the artist and asked them if they would like to see it in Heroes. Thankfully the answer was yes and we did it.

    Our community has some really great artists and we definitely want to put more community skins in the game. We like to put skins out with pair well with other skins. Theme the packs. This is mostly why Janitor Leoric took as long as it did. We decided it would be cool to pair it with the RCHS Orphea’s Slacker skin and RCHS cheer leader Kerrigan. Sometimes it takes awhile to figure out where we can schedule something like that in.

  • KinaBREW
    Posted 4 years, 1 month ago (Source)

    Hi HotS team! Wanted to share a Un'Goro Battleground concept and how humbling an experience it is to realize the absurd amount of work that's put into this game.

    1. Do you guys have any art/design bible for consistent direction? If so, could you share some popular rules to follow? (i.e. color schemes, "never allow X type of abilities", "ORB BRUSH EVERYTHING!")
    2. Are there any stories of scrapped battleground/hero ideas you could share?
    3. Hope everyone's doing well during lockdown but assuming you're working at home, particularly /u/blizz_kinabrew and anyone else on the art team, I'm curious how it's affected your workflow. Do you guys all join some giant voice chat server all day? Meetings? Do you typically communicate by walking up to other computers or send assets over a network?

    First of… holy cow you did a lot of work here. Everyone should look at this and understand that this isn’t trivial. u/jiggywatt64 spent a lot of time on this.

    • Yes we have art bibles and design guidelines for direction. The purpose of the seniors and art director of the team is to make sure that everything is directed towards those goals. There are things that we do in the craft of these things that we teach new artists who join the team what we want them to utilize. Art does dictate some direction abilities will go because of noisiness, performance, or it might look too much like another ability. Ultimately our job is to get creative with it and get it done.

    Also, Michael Vicente is a friend and I cannot express what a service he’s done for the art community with his Orb Brushes. * Towers of doom started out as Arathi Basin but we couldn’t figure out how to get it to work quite right. If you look at the towers they’re themed very similar to main areas in Arathi Basin. * Communication over video conference and PMs have been a challenge but it’s been a great learning experience and we’ve been very productive given the circumstances. It’s a tribute to our awesome team. I do miss hanging out with everyone and having those interactions because we feed off each other’s energy.

  • KinaBREW
    Posted 4 years, 1 month ago (Source)

    Here's a question from our EU community:

    In 2019 we’ve seen 4 new heroes: Deathwing, Qhira, Anduin Imperius. Can we expect more new heroes for 2020?

    Yes.

  • KinaBREW
    Posted 4 years, 1 month ago (Source)

    Any updates on kerning?

    Alternatively, can you do something about this one-pixel-off-from-perfect-balance capture bar?

    Also, is that capture bar from Braxis?

  • KinaBREW
    Posted 4 years, 1 month ago (Source)

    No, this was actually from a vision point on Cursed Hollow, but why would that matter? Isn't it the same asset everywhere?

    If you want, I could go through all the maps and document my findings, if that would be helpful to you.

    It should be but I'm not deep into those systems so I don't know for sure. if you can get me a list I can get bug reports in.

  • KinaBREW
    Posted 4 years, 1 month ago (Source)

    I'm asking for a friend of course: Are there any new main tanks in development or at least conceptually planned? I feel like my this role could use some love in particular. Cheers!

    Yes ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)

  • KinaBREW
    Posted 4 years, 1 month ago (Source)

    Can you please describe the next big thing in HOTS with as little words as possible?

    Pretty cool.

  • KinaBREW
    Posted 4 years, 1 month ago (Source)

    Any updates on kerning?

    Alternatively, can you do something about this one-pixel-off-from-perfect-balance capture bar?

    It’s still on our ra dar. We have other things that are ahead of it. It’s not sc heduled at the mom ent but when we evaluate pr iorities it’s something that comes up. Keep figh ting the good fight and keeping us honest u/Kamikaze28!

  • KinaBREW
    Posted 4 years, 1 month ago (Source)

    Pretty please can we get end of season mount rewards again for ranked? Genuinely one of my favorite things about the game that is currently gone. Even new colors for old end of season mounts would be awesome. These hard earned rewards are what keeps me playing those extra games

    We have been exploring season reward options and if things go well should have something to show the next season.

  • KinaBREW
    Posted 4 years, 1 month ago (Source)

    Could you please bring the Death Knight Arthas skin back? By that I mean the one that looks like his default skin, but without the helmet or glowing eyes (and with the same alternate voice-over used by his Crown Prince skin).

    It was available during the Alpha, but removed before Beta because some people felt taking his helmet off wasn't a big enough visual change to warrant being a separate skin. HotS 2.0 introduced skins that made even smaller changes (like Chen wearing his hat on his head rather than his back), so that shouldn't be an issue now.

    For many fans of Warcraft III, Death Knight Arthas is the most iconic version of the character, as that's how he appeared in the majority of missions where he was playable. It would be really nice if we could play as that version of him in Heroes of the Storm.

    I agree that would be cool. There has been some movement towards getting the Arthas remodel going. We are currently in the planning stage for 2021 and there is a strong desire to get the remodel in your hands. When we release the remodel I think it would be good to have a variation without his helmet on to fulfill this wish.

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