2019 exp changes response

Thanks for sending this feedback in.  We’ve received a ton of feedback from various pros and streamers with concerns related to the gameplay updates and wanted to spend some time going through our thoughts and design reasoning.  This is a response we’ve sent to several people and we think it best communicates our intentions.



The main goal behind all of our 2019 Gameplay Updates was to create more competitive matches across all MMR’s and game modes. We were expecting this feedback from the professional side, as you guys have the most knowledge/skill and are the least impacted by lopsided games. We do agree that there is a concern about needing to have strong advantages early to limit consistent late-game Hero choices, but we would prefer to give those advantages as strong strategical, not numerical ones. There is a lot of speculation of this leading to more passive play, which we are not so sure will be the case. Right now if a team is down a talent tier, they are already put into a passive state of soak, rotate, and hope for a pick. If we can limit the amount of time that teams are at a talent discrepancy, those times of passivity should become much less common and teams will feel more empowered to contest objectives instead of just giving it up.  We have tried in multiple playtests to break this system using various degenerate strategies, one example being one team intentionally giving a Fort and freezing that lane to deny the other team soak.  In our experiments, these kinds of strategies never really panned out, as the team that was down forts was not able to gain any significant lead on the team that was ahead.  I want to stress that while we have tried many different strategies and ways to break the system, it isn’t possible to test all unintended strategies, and so we are expecting to have to make tweaks and changes once the changes make it to the Live game.



If the XP changes do indeed cause the kind of gameplay that a lot of players are theory-crafting, we will be very quick to make adjustments. We are not looking to make late game Heroes a necessity, nor cause more passive play. If there ever comes a time where the right decision is to not kill a Fort/Keep or progress the map-state, we will react very quickly.



We are also aware that our previous Gameplay changes impacted the solo-lane, creating more passive play for high level players and are very actively discussing ways to bring back exciting and interactive match-ups in all lanes.  You won’t see this right away once these changes come out, but it is something that is very much on our radar and we will be looking to make improvements to going forward.  We don’t expect the solo-lane experience to be better with these gameplay changes, and realize that the community may point to a lack of improvement in the solo-lane experience as a failure point of the gameplay updates.  We’re willing to accept this for the time being, as this is a more systemic issue that we want to have a stronger solve for rather than nerfing specific heroes or creating larger system-level changes that we are less confident in.



While it is important to theory-craft designs to prevent headaches down the road, it is often the case that any theory-craft that appears to make complete logical sense may or may not come to fruition.  We don’t think it would be prudent of us to hold on making changes that could make the game better for the vast majority of the population because there is a possibility that we could be wrong.  One of the advantages of constantly updating a Live game that is continuously evolving is that we are able to take risks that can dramatically improve the game experience, and if we are incorrect we can re-adjust and course correct.



Our end goal is to allow as many different ways and compositions to be played as possible. If there is ever only ONE correct way to play, then we have definitely failed and will look to make changes ASAP.



Thanks again for taking the time to send this in.  We completely realize that changes like this have the potential to cause quite a few shifts in high-level play.  We will be monitoring and very much hope you will continue sending feedback once you get a chance to play them!