Blizzard are readying the next Heroes of the Storm Tech Alpha update and the new Artifacts addition is now going down well.
Prior to the the next update for Blizzard’s MOBA they’ve been teasing new features but the latest reveal has upset the testers. Blizzard will be adding Artifacts to the game, not dissimilar to League of Legends Runes.
Artifact slots will unlock starting at level 15 and artifacts can be placed in the three categorised slots called Gems, Relics, and Trinkets. The Gem slot will become available at level 15 and then two additional slots, called the Relic and Trinket Artifact slot, can be unlocked for 2000 gold each.
Before a match gets underway a hero can bring in up to three Artefacts in to the match, one of each type. The gold sink also continues with the actual purchase of the different Gems, Relics, and Trinkets for the slots but it doesn’t end there.
Artifacts can also be upgraded from level 1 to 10 with each level costing an additional 100 gold. So a level two Artifact would cost 200 gold and a level 10 will cost 1000 gold.
All sounds straightforward until you actually think about how much harder it will be for new players and you’ll need to play more than you might have wanted to compete. There’s also the thinking that Blizzard needs more gold sinks so players have to spend more on the actually heroes to keep the revenue flowing. There’s also the problem of players not playing a variety of heroes because all the artifacts are only useful to specific heroes. In fact there are a lot of different arguments as to why Artifacts are not a great idea.
Blizzard obviously feel that the talent system is not enough in HOTS and this is their way of trying to inject some diversity. Unfortunately the Artifact system has not gone down well with testers but it’s worth pointing out that nobody has actually tried this new system yet.
The old mantra of “Blizzard knows best” doesn’t wash with the Blizzard community any more so we’ll have to see if they stick with it.
Tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. PDT Blizzard will be demoing the Artifact system, the updated progressions system, a new Hero and a new Battleground on their Twitch stream. Should be interesting.
