We’re all fans of all things awesome! You can hug all of us. /hug

We have done some updates on ability icons as you mentioned already. We do have plans to do more, but they may not come as soon as you'd like. We will get there though!"

You’re welcome! Our animators love dance animations. Wrath of the Berserker is awesome in D3 and is really cool. We always want to add more cool art but time is always a factor. There’s only so much time and only so many of us. Will discuss.

1. Answered this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/3hq3dl/hello_rhereosofthestorm_were_back_with_a_qa/cu9wlsb
2. It’s his amazing hat. You don’t have one? You should get one.
3. Heroes is done in a more traditional Blizzard style to merge the multiple franchises better. We try to make some things larger and a bit more emphasized on armor. With that said it doesn’t stop us from doing any Diablo sets. You’re right, I think we need more. Will discuss.

That’s a cool idea! Will discuss.

The visual update to Murky was a QOL change for the artists. The old Murky model was created using an older method. This made making new skins a bit more challenging. The visual update was done to bring it up to our current production needs. We love murky <3

I'll take your 2nd question

Cool Idea!

Customization is something we like to do. We have an art directed approach to creating skins. Currently the process may delete the polygons under that helmet for optimization. Those polygons that were deleted could have been used to enhance the detail on a weapon or something more visible. There’s benefits to the approach that you bring up. Bolted on armor can be really cool! The directed approach gives us the ability to modify internal silhouette a bit more and be more creative. Thanks for the question!

I'll take your third bullet point.

There are a few challenges with voice overs with not only the heroes VO but how other heroes refer to said hero. This would change VO for a lot more than just one hero each time we implement one of these skins. When you think about all the changes that would then have to be made to each hero for each language you can see how it becomes challenging. We’re looking into how we can resolve these challenges because we think these skin ideas are cool too!

A skin that shares a similar theme does not guarantee a hero never getting made. We just announced Medic at Gamescom and the Medic Uther skin exists. Never fear! We have a very…. very… very long list of heroes we want in our game. A skin won’t stop us from making a decision to bring a hero to Heroes of the Storm.

1. We start with a brainstorm. We pitch ideas. At this point we get as crazy as we can go. We also take into consideration what we have currently and what we don’t. Our concept artists are phenomenal at what they do. They come up with really great ideas and then it’s just about choosing them. For master skins we have set guidelines. We like to give our player base something to allow them to show off their tenacity with a hero. With that in mind, our goal is to make the skins a bit more interesting than what you would see in the base.

Bonus Question: That would be cool!

I'll take the 3D Portrait one.

...It all comes down to a few matters, we have a ton of awesome ideas that we want in our game right now and there’s only so much an art team can accomplish in such a small window of time. If you don’t see things like this come to the game in a flood it’s because of man power. This kind of addition extends to additional work with skins. What we create for the base creates expectations from our players. This one addition adds more time to the schedule. We want to deliver so much to you and we’re working on getting more cool stuff in your hands. It’s just a matter of what we can get to you and when.

yes!!!

The biggest one that comes to mind was the idea of bringing in Mystic Ally from D3. We tried doing various allies to replace generic talents, such as a Scouting Ally (instead of Scouting Drone) and a Healing Ally (instead of Healing Ward). And then letting your Dash work on these allies!

This turned out to be a bit too powerful, and also a bit out of fantasy for the Monk, so they ended up not making it!

this is something we're actively discussing!

you just maaaaay!!!! ;-)

Hi there!

This is great feedback! It's something we're actively talking about, and are still exploring what to do! Stay tuned, and keep discussing!

When bringing SSS into Heroes, it was definitely a conscious decision to make the Monk invulnerable during its duration. We knew that if we didn't, not only would it be a "Fantasy-Foul" for D3 players, it would also cause us a technical nightmare to have this rapidly moving and teleporting Monk moving around attacking. Missiles would sometimes disjoint, sometimes not, or the Monk might get rooted, but he's still teleporting, etc.

While working on its balance, we definitely were keeping in mind that it provided a brief amount of invulnerability, knowing that highly-skilled players would make the most of those brief moments!

Hi there!!

There are lots of factors!!! We're trying to strike lots of notes when we discuss the next heroes: -Universe representation (Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, et cetera, et cetera) -Ranged vs. Melee representation -Role representation (Warrior, Assassin, Support, Specialist) -tone variation (have we done a lot of 'scary monsters' or 'holy warriors' in a row?

We want to make sure the Heroes roster is one that is wide and varied, representing the host of characters Blizzard has made over it's 20+ years of development.

On top of that, once we narrow down a few things, (for instance, we knew we were going to do a Diablo-themed drop with the Eternal Conflict), we'll see if players have been clamoring for a specific character, or if there's a character that has a super strong fantasy hook or gameplay mechanic we want to get in. (For instance, we did Abathur simply because we wanted to do a Commander-type hero, who never truly team-fought!).

So going forward, you guys should be seeing a more balanced release cycle, in terms of the types of heroes going out, along with the occasional 'wacky' hero that breaks the genre in new ways! We're so excited about all the things coming up!!

Hi there!

This is something we're exploring! We understand the power of positive reinforcement, especially from your peers, but we'd want to make sure we do it right!!

I don't have any details I can share yet, but stay tuned!!

Hi there!!

We think currently it's a little underperforming (yet still potentially incredibly powerful when used to its maximum potential).

We have some ideas we're cooking back here, but we're not quite yet ready to share them with you (sorry!!!), but soon(TM!!) you should see something relating to shadowstalk!

Hi there!! :-)

It is very natural for a player to want to feel like they're the best. These are not easy challenges to tackle, but we are not ones to shy away from a challenge ;-).

We're also exploring non-gameplay ways to help players know they're doing well through UI, so that even if you lose, you can know that you played well. (That too is proving to be a challenge as well, as there are so many intangible reasons why one player made a good or bad play).

As for right now, I think one of the things that will help, (and unfortunately takes a fair amount of time for it to do its magic, Sorry!) is the matchmaking. Yes, one player may make a critical error, and get caught out of position, and die, putting your team at a disadvantage for a critical upcoming map objective, and then causing you to lose the game. Over time, that player's MMR will slowly decline (if they don't improve and keep getting caught out of position) and if you don't do these mistakes, and continue to improve, your MMR will continue to increase, you shouldn't be seeing these players in your game. (Like I said though, that will take a fair amount of time). Our game is relatively young, and players are still learning how to play. (For instance, it's my current opinion that even high up in the MMR brackets, you still see players making silly mispositioning mistakes! :-(). So given more time for people to get sorted by the matchmaker (it needs a handful of games from every player for the sorting to start working very well), and a bit more time (our engineers are still working on the matchmaker to make it even better), hopefully this will help the matter!!

As for your ultimately last question: Yes, we are possibly considering ways a more skilled player can have more influence on the game. In fact, I'd argue they already can, given their role. (A Good initiator will pick good fights for his team; a good Support will make clutch CCs and Heals, and likewise a DPS player in dishing damage but staying safe). But as for "here, have literal power because you've played well this game", it's something we'll continue to explore. It has its own host of challenges it brings with it, but it's something we're still discussing.

One thing that would help us out a lot if you guys, as a community, continue to discuss the issues, and consider the various perspectives. You guys are a really smart bunch, and have insights that help us out! So analyze your replays, see what really threw a game! I know sometimes it's not what you think it is! Growing in knowledge and continuing to debate and discuss will level the entire community up, and help us gain new insight into how the intricacies of this game work!

I will pass this feedback along to the UI team!!!

Hi there! :-)

So believe it or not, we do not take the current meta into account fully into making a new hero. Generally speaking, work begins on a new hero between 6-8 months before a Hero, and as you guys have probably noticed, the meta swings a lot in that time frame! So if we designed for one meta, before we know it, it'd be out of date!

We do however look at the whole game as a sense and are trying more in the future to strike a better balance of Assassins, Warriors, Supports, Specialists, Melee v. Ranged, et cetera, to make sure the Hero roster as a whole has good coverage.

When it comes to making a new hero, we are often looking at the core fantasy of what that Hero represents, and trying to make a "kit" (DQWER1R2 abilities) that reflect that fantasy through Gameplay. For Johanna, the Fantasy was "Big Shield! Unstoppable Force!" so that literally became her trait ;-). For the Butcher, that meant "horror movie villain, preying on the weak", so that meant abilities like Ruthless Onslaught and Lamb to the Slaughter, to make your opponents feel like you were relentless in your chase (as every Diablo 1 player knows!)

As for the game as a whole, ho boy, that's a big question. Our goal was to to push the Team Brawler genre, and see what the Blizzard version of it was (as we've done with the card game genre and Hearthstone). For us, we want this very much to be a team game, like Hockey or Soccer or American Football. We think there's so much fun to be had when the players come together and coordinate a play for an epic multi-kill! As far as I know, that's still our plan! There are definitely things we can do to improve the experience, and as time marches on, and patches continue to come out, we will continue to refine the game to hit this vision more and more.

As for your last question, I think there's a perfect world where every hero is picked regularly, but I understand reality sets in and sometimes one hero is a little stronger or weaker than another, in a similar role. We are, going forward, looking very hard at our Heroes and making sure that each one has their own niche archetype, and that we aren't simply making a better/worse version of an already existing Hero! This will take some time on our end to figure out, but hopefully it will lead to more varied Hero designs that make picking a Hero to play a much more interesting decision!

Hi!

Yes there are plans to! However, they are far off :-(. We have a lot of UI needs at the moment, and our UI team is trying to prioritize appropriately what we can. I don't know when it will be improvements will come to the Draft Screen, but do know we have changes we want to make, it's just a matter of when!