Blizzard Entertainment announced this morning that the StarCraft Medic would take her place in the massive online battle arena game Heroes of the Storm.
Creative director Dustin Browder revealed the hero during the company’s livestream from Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. Earlier this week, Blizzard announced a Diablo-based monk character named Kharazim, a new three-lane Diablo-themed battleground named Infernal Shrines, and two additional heroes (Rexxar, a ranged warrior from the Warcraft universe, and Artanis, the first StarCraft-themed warrior.)
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Introducing the Medic
The StarCraft Medic announced this morning acts as an extremely strong single-target healer and offer ranged support, including crowd control and other non-healing utility help. She has grenades and a shield, for example.
“She is a ranged support, and she has very powerful healing to a single ally — very different from Malfurion, who is all about healing multiples, and Li Li, and even Kharazim and Rehgar with his chain heal,” Heroes of the Storm designer Kent-Erik Hagman told GamesBeat in an exclusive interview. “She is much more that single-target healer and offering the team protection through various [crowd control] and other utility features. She is much more like that dedicated healer.”
That doesn’t mean she’ll be easy to play, he said. “She’s actually one of our highest skill-capped healers in the game.”
The Medic character can summon a Medivac, which picks up another friendly hero and carries them to a spot designated by a person playing the Medic.
“A Medivac overlay drops down and it looks really sweet,” Hagman said. “Our team killed it.”
“If you don’t know what you’re doing, this can be a real mess,” Browder said. “But if you have the skills, the mobility this character can bring can be devastating.”
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Changes to bundles, battlegrounds and hero release schedules
Browder and lead game producer Kaeo Milker said on the broadcast said that Heroes of the Storm will soon add dynamic bundles, allowing more flexibility for player purchases. If you want to buy a bundle of heroes that includes characters or items you’ve already purchased, you’ll get a discount, for example. Players who have already paid twice will receive some compensation as well, they said. Those changes are coming “shortly.”
The game’s nine battlegrounds might be too much, they said. With so many maps — especially compared to other MOBAs — HotS is becoming more difficult for players to master. As a result, Blizzard is considering shuffling groups of maps around to help players develop strategies for them.
“We don’t know what our limits are,” Browder said. “We’ve heard feedback from players that the game is becoming too complicated. There may be a point in the future where we go to a smaller set and rotate them.
After testing longer gaps between heroes of five to six weeks and shorter waits, Blizzard wants to release heroes every 3-4 weeks on average, including the new characters described this week, they said.
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The Infernal Shrines map and monk hero Kharazim will be coming “very soon” — they should debut the public test realms Monday, they said.
News about ranking, matchmaking and the new season
Players waiting for the new season to start will have to hang on for a bit longer.
“We’ve gone a little bit longer than anyone would like in the pre-season,” but they’re still testing changes, Browder said, and want a Grand Master league to be in place before they launch the next season.
“We want to improve core matchmaking as well,” Browder said. People at similar skill but more experience will not be grouped with less-experienced players. It adds 15-20 seconds to matchmaking, but adds an improved experience, he said.
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“We’ll [also] be getting rid of the concept of a separate team league in the game. It’s just too hard to get players together on the same team every night,” he said, adding that it was challenging even for Blizzard’s own internal teams.
Two separate queues will now have 1-4 players or 5 players and allow some mixing-and-matching. The 5-man teams will be “firewalled off” in their own pool.
Matches by rank should also improve, the men said, based on some changes in the works. After 20-25 games to put yourself in placement matches, you should be pretty much where your skill would suggest. When you see someone with an actual rank, you should see them playing against opponents of equal skill.
Matchmaking fixes have been a priority, Browder said, and should occur in the next patch.
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For more on matchmaking and ranking changes, see our story specifically on that aspect of the broadcast.