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Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Hopes and Expectations for HGC in 2017

Let me start by saying I’m coming at this from the perspective of a fan that loves Heroes of the Storm and HGC e-sports. I started watching esports with Hearthstone, but it was when Khaldor casted Tempo Storm playing in an EU tournament that I learned the excitement that top level Heroes could bring and I was hooked. I have followed everything I could since that time from Tempest vs MVP Black in Worlds to Gilly and Zoia casting Gold league only to follow it up with an NA qualifier later in the day for the love of the game.

I’m incredibly excited about HGC in 2017 and believe it will be a huge step forward to our enjoyment of Heroes esports. Having said that I have some ideas, hopes, and expectations for the league production and promotion that I want to share:

Create incredible stories and personalities in an online league

• The players should have photos and bios/Q&A on the league website

• Interviews can be conducted during the week and shown during the show with the teams talking about their upcoming matchup

• Interviews should be conducted with the winning team after every match via skype or discord

• Player photo’s should be incorporated into the production

• Team logo’s not just names should be in the cast

• Comparative statistics and graphics should be used to highlight player’s performances and build stars or show weak links on the teams. The league structure is great for this because you can compare Bakery’s KDA’s, time dead, and healing numbers to the 7 other EU support players. Show us he is a star!

• Blizzard should help with design of the unsponsored team’s logos. No team should have the generic nexus symbol as a logo. It’s a professional league and that makes the team and league look unprofessional.

• An MVP should be picked after the match – use a clutch play or overall winning stats to pick and hype the person up and educate us to why.

Top shelf production and promotion

• An intro video should be created for the league – get us pumped prior to the cast. It might not be Hank Williams on Monday Night Football, but it should get our blood pumping for the great matches

• Each cast should have an analyst group in addition to the casters. You could set it up just like THH and transition to that screen after the cast, but different voices to analyze the draft and provide perspective on the key plays are critical to give each gave the element of strategic discussion it needs and will add in depth and entertainment

• Dedicated observers

• Teams should play with their Blizz accounts just like they do in regionals and globals now. That would better show the team names and ensure they have access to each hero and skin – heck you could even give these accounts access to some skins early – that would get me pumped up to buy more skins

• Ability for players to buy in game items that benefit the prize pool – I want team logo portraits so badly!

• Promote the Heroes esports twitter account in chat and in the production. It’s awesome and it needs more followers!

• It goes without saying – short down time between games and matches, in game draft, in game promotion on the home screen during games

I would love to hear your ideas and or critiques of mine to make HGC 2017 the best it can be!

  • Matt MacNeil
    Posted 7 years, 10 months ago (Source)

    • I would kill for a stream sidebar with in game info like riot had at league of legends world's. It would really help make viewing games better and more enjoyable, especially for people who are unfamiliar. I would like to see live talent choices, whst the characters do, map objectives, and quest/objective progress. It would also help when people can't watch the video and just wanna check the progress quickly.

    • I would also really like being able to find games vods individually as well, rather than only by match or by day of the tournament. Right now, when I want to send a friend game 3 of zeropanda vs fanatic, I have to hunt down the video and timestamp the game starts. If I want to do so for other tournaments, I need to go check master league or another third party site to find what day of the tournament it was, then find the stamp in the video. I would also love to see links to a teams other streams if they have any.

    • I want to be able to buy a mount/skin/portrait of any team. Preferably with a percent going to the team. Not just blizzcon winners. Maybe make the blizzcon mount super special and add effects to keep it a thing. Being able to rep fnatic, tbd or astral authority in game would make my day! It would also be a kinda cool event if using a teams mount/etc gave you bonus exp, or some extra cosmetic effect the day after they won something. Maybe change the purple tint in client to the winning teams colours for a day or 2 after a major tournament.

    • Having emoji micro transactions would be an interesting stream model. I know some sites that sell ome time use special emojis/gifs/chat special effects for varying amounts of money. If you use the thing in a streams chat channel, part of the proceeds go to that stream. So you can essentially 'tip' during a match. Get hyped and use the PBA fireworks emoji when they get a kill, and know that some of the money will go to PBA proper. Like buying a team flag and waving it around at an in person sports game. Mind you, this isn't so much a request as something that would be interesting. Same with in client chat colours/emoji, or themes.

    • I want to be able to subscribe to teams/events and get notifications in client. Even if we can't have a video viewer in client, it would be great to get a popup/battle net message that the team I follow is about to play soon.

    • What is the external sponsor situation with HGC. I know riot had a huge thing because people in LCS had massive restrictions on advertising other products. Is that a thing in HGC?

    • I want notifications of nonblizzard Tournaments and up and coming teams. Helps encourage the amateur scene, and creates a narrative before the crucible. I want to know which teams are fighting to gain a spot in the top 8, and be attached instead of seeing 2 teams I know and a bunch I have never heard of.

    • Kinda silly, but I love it when my friend sends me funny/interedting voice comms from a league tournament game. Having the same would be amusing. I wanna see what they said/thought during a game (even if it is edited for prosterity).

    • mostly, I want to not have to use reddit/master league/third party sites to figure out what is going on in the scene.

    (edit, deleted unrelated UI question post)

    Could you add the UI stuff back? UI typically tends to be one of the under-discussed things I find and I'd love to be able to pass it on!

  • Matt MacNeil
    Posted 7 years, 10 months ago (Source)

    We're excited too and there are a lot of great ideas here, keep 'em coming!

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