When comparing Heroes of the Storm vs 0 A.D., the Slant community recommends 0 A.D. for most people. In the question“What are the best LAN party PC games?” 0 A.D. is ranked 40th while Heroes of the Storm is ranked 48th. The most important reason people chose 0 A.D. is:
Still currently in development, 0 A.D. is currently in Alpha stages and completely free. For those willing to wade through the multiple bugs, essentially testing the title, this game will scratch the itch of any RTS fan on a shoestring budget.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Teamwork is encouraged
More teamfighting, less laning. Games are largely decided by how well each team can work as a unit instead of one player carrying.
Pro No last hitting, no gold, no items
The game does away with the shop mechanic entirely. No last hitting means players don't have to focus on a minigame for the first 20 minutes so they can jump into the action much faster. No shop means that supports aren't starved for cash and can remain strong and relevant throughout the game. No items allow for the hero-specific talent system to shine, which provides a much more unique and easily balanced way to enhance your character.
Pro Can get skins for free
And many more cosmetics with the 2.0 version.
Pro It's always possible to make a comeback
Even if you are in trouble because you lost almost all the game, you can still win by killing the enemy team on a stupid move they made at the end of the game. And it's never unfair: it's always because the losing team was overconfident and the winning one was the focus.
Pro Shorter game times
Games on average last approximately 20 minutes. Much more manageable for people who don't have as much time to commit to one match. AI games are even shorter.
Pro Deep but not complex
The game removes a lot of pointless features of other games like last hitting and out-of-game rune/card buffs. It's also much clearer, with natural percentage based increases for characters rather than "armor/intelligence" stat increases. It also has a large map pool with greatly differing objectives in each one forcing you to consider how your playstyle will adapt to the opponent and the map itself. It may appear to be simple, but there is a lot of hidden depth.
Pro Easy to learn
Heroes of the Storm was created to be a streamlined, modern take on a MOBA, something that many others have aimed for but HotS succeeds in. Shared XP keeps teams leveling together; No Last Hits means that everyone gets XP from minions and puts less importance on who gets the kill since there is no Carry-player. Choosing talents instead of having to buy items give the game complexity without forcing players to wade through menus and travel back to base. The game still offers a challenge to master at higher levels but is more accessible to new players.
Pro Hero and playstyle diversity
Blizzard has gone above and beyond to introduce Heroes that break the standard molds for Tanks/Support/Damage characters. The talent system allows for diversity in how a character plays. Some heroes can even talent into multiple roles, like Varian, who can become either an assassin or a tank. Each Hero has 2 Heroic Abilities (Ultimates) to choose between, providing even more diversity in how each character can be played. Also, Blizzard has introduced several highly unconventional heroes, from The Lost Vikings, who are three separate characters controlled by one player, to Cho'Gall, who is two different players controlling one character, to Abathur, who doesn't venture out into the battlefield himself but manipulates the map and assists teammates from afar.
Pro Characters from all Blizzard games
Heroes of the Storm features characters from other Blizzard games. Play as Jim Raynor from Starcraft, Arthas from Warcraft, or even Diablo himself from the Diablo series - and many more.
Pro RNG is almost non existent
Except for some objectives in specific maps, RNG doesn't exist in this game. No luck, pure skills.
Pro Pioneers the MOBA genre
The talent system, innovative mechanics, creative new maps and extremely unique Hero design make this game a real stand out.
Pro In-game quests mean you can still dictate how the game goes
The fact an entire team shares a level had players worried, but with personal Hero Quests, you can now take greater gameplay risks that yield immense power and reward skilled players for good plays sooner rather than later.
Pro You can carry if you are smart
Hots maps are designed so you have a lot to do all game. Doing the right thing at the right time can win a lot of games. If you are a good shot caller, you will carry your team.
Pro You don't have to learn what items do
In other MOBAs you have to learn which items are good for which situations as well as learn the actual classes themselves. Since HOTS does not have items, you don't have to learn what they do.
Pro Fun emotes from heroes upon team work and team kills and more
If you play Nova and Kill Vala, Nova will say "HUNTER!?!? more like Hunted!!"
Or if you play support and heal Raynor he will say "This medic is my new best friend".
These emotes make it very clear what happened, and add a dimension of fun that you don't see in other MOBAs.
Also, you can hear some emotes after other events, like your own hero death/respawn or during starting second of the match.
Pro Community
Has a relatively smaller playerbase than other MOBAs and Blizzard games, but one that comes from fans of every franchise represented in HotS, whether it be WC3 or Starcraft, leading to a wide range of players of all ages familiar with raiding in WoW, or the micromanagement in Starcraft. Regardless, many HotS players will share a common love for at some Blizzard franchises. All chat is disabled outside of Custom games, which arguably leads to less toxicity, as well as the fast paced nature and shorter match time which means less time for trivial flame wars as well as no surrender option and many comeback mechanics, as well as very little last hitting or kill stealing to be had leads to a far more relaxed environment.
Pro Moba with the most polish
The graphics and sound design are amazing and the voice acting is top-notch!
Pro It's just overall a great game
HotS got a great mix: fun heroes, versatile character builds, different meta on different maps, intense teamfights, different map objectives and so on.
Pro Great developer support
Blizzard has a great track record of supporting their game. Starcraft 1 latest patch 1.21.1 is released on December 2017, a game released 20 years ago.
Pro Every hero is playable
The game balance in HoTS is amazing. Even heroes that are ranked by pros as the worst heroes in the game can win MVP. Even the supposedly "broken" heroes are not far above average.
Pro Free to test any characters
You can test and play any characters for free in an in-game test environment with customizable values (levels, enemies, towers, skills).
Pro Easy to get chests
You can get a chest by doing missions or leveling up.
Pro A new hero every few months
The game had only 12 heroes when the beta opened, now there are 88. Blizzard have hundreds and hundreds characters across all their other games, so Blizzard adds one hero per month, so even if you learn every hero, there will be just another one in weeks.
Pro Deep character design
Pro 1st Esport broadcast on live network television
While other esports have aired on ESPN 3, Heroes of the Storm was the first video game broadcast live on Network TV on ESPN 2. Blizzard hosted the Heroes of the Dorm tournament, also one of the first college esports events, in which college teams played for the prize of full college tuition.
Pro Marked difficulty ratings for heroes
Each hero has a marked difficulty rating to make it easier for users to pick the player that best suits them.
Pro Intelligent AI
The AI is responsive, challenging and fun.
Pro Now there are 15 available maps
Different maps with different mechanics and appearance. And they keep adding more.
Pro Making huge progress
The patches come with great effort and positive effects in game.
Pro Free, Real-Time Strategy title actively being developed
Still currently in development, 0 A.D. is currently in Alpha stages and completely free. For those willing to wade through the multiple bugs, essentially testing the title, this game will scratch the itch of any RTS fan on a shoestring budget.
Pro Multi-platform support
The game will run on any Operating System, whether it be Linux, OSX, or Windows, which is great for people who dual-boot or use multiple OS's across their devices. No matter the OS used, one can install and play this game.
Pro Addictive Age of Empires style gameplay
This game can be seen as a spiritual successor to Age of Empires, thus it will provide similar gameplay to those who are familiar with the AoE series.
Pro Straightforward RTS gameplay
0 A.D. brings recognizable, straightforward, Real-Time Strategy gameplay to the players. With a mini-map in the bottom corner, resources shown in a bar at the bottom, and unit selection through double clicking, all of the major elements found in most RTS games is here, making for a very familiar game for those that are used to the genre.
Pro Code is open-source
Even if the current developer team chooses to no longer work on the game, others can keep contributing to the source code and modify it.
Pro Active development
By being in active development the game allows for frequent bug fixes as well as frequent new content. While it is still in alpha, the state of the game playability is pretty good with new features being added all the time.
Cons
Con Reconnect system
It's extraordinarily difficult and frustrating to reconnect to a game in Heroes if you disconnect for any reason. Reconnecting players can't simply "pick up where they left off", they have to simulate everything that has happened in the game between the moment they disconnected and the present time, which causes the reconnecting process to be extra slow and occasionally impossible.
Con Contains loot boxes
Loot boxes are often considered a version of a "Skinner Box" which uses psychological tricks in order to encourage purchases. Loot boxes contain random items such as skins or emotes and can be considered a form of gambling.
Con No surrender option
No surrender option means that you have to waste 30 minutes playing a match you know you're going to lose, if the enemy team has 20 kills more than you and they're 4 levels ahead the game is basically over, if two players disconnect the game is basically over, if someone is deliberately feeding the game is basically over, you cannot win these games but if you leave you get leaver status and then you have to win 4 matches in order to play normal rounds again.
Con Lower playerbase game knowledge
The average Heroes of the Storm player is less informed about the mechanics and basic strategies of the game compared to the average player of other MOBA games. This is due to a variety of reasons, like the popularity of Quick Match and the relative lack of learning resources both in-game and out because the game isn't like other MOBAs so people bring the wrong knowledge and expectations to this game.
Con Dead game
Dying since Blizzard closed Esports.
Con Easy to abuse player report system
Con Can feel difficult to make an impact as a solo player
Since Heroes was designed to be more team-centric rather than individual players carrying games, games can often feel beyond your control. For example, ranked games can often feel like a coin flip of which side gets lucky and avoids players prone to tilting or toxicity.
Con Expensive
Getting new heroes for free takes too long. Buying new heroes can be expensive.
Con Terrible matchmaking
In any of the matchmaking queues, the chance of being put against someone with much higher skill than yourself is very high. The ranking system goes in this order: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, Grandmaster. On multiple occasions, silver players have been placed against an entire team of Grandmasters with bronze allies, leading to very poor experience.
Con Badly designed and unbalanced game mechanics
The whole game mechanics are terrible: the fact there's no in-game currency ironically make the game heavily focused on farming (due to levels being an extremely important factor to win battles), there are no strategies you can use since objectives have a big impact on the game, so basically you end up just repeating cycles of farming/objective. Last but not least, the game balance is horrible, since skills were directly based on Blizzard's universe and without any adjustments to make characters unique or to create synergies with other characters or specific strategies. It's basically an oversimplified version of every MOBA out there.
Con Slow development
Blizzard is taking years to implement obvious features or fixing bugs (Ready-button regularly breaks since 2015).
Con Lack of good talent diversity
Compared to the flexibility of an item system, the talent system limits the number of ways you can build a hero. The talent system is often structured so that there are 1-2 primary builds which usually focus on empowering one of the heroes basic abilities, and then a handful of niche talents. This causes a hero to feel very much the same every time you play it.
Con Designed around team play (per the MOBA genre)
Heroes of the Storm has been designed around team play, as the company calls it a Hero Brawler, that focuses more on team fights and working toward objectives as a team. As with most team-based games, this means that if a player chooses to solo queue, that it may be difficult to play and coordinate with the rest of your team. The game does provide chat and a ping system similar to other MOBAs.
Con Reconnect issues, UI issues
You cannot turn off camera lock on a hero if you accidentally press L to the game restart (on blizzard forums users reported also not being able to turn off this option until the restart of the pc)
Not being able to enable music and sounds if you disabled them with (alt+s for sounds and alt+m for music) till the game restart.
Listed bugs are from the game launch…
Broken matchmaking system, AI fills teams unbalanced.
Overall heroes are not feeling balanced, you most likely will lose against heroes like Gazlowe, Abatur etc
They also deleted interesting map (the name of the map was copi i suppose) with undergrounds with no obvious reason.
No updates at this point or hero/maps adds.
You can’t win solo due to shared exp, you always tied to your team performance no matter what.
Good ideas mixed with bad ideas and poor implementations.
5.3/10
Con Constant hero additions slowly ruins the game
Blizzard keeps adding new heroes that get more and more mobility and defense by default. These new heroes are not fun to play against and the trend only seems to get worse.
Con Not always possible to buy skins with real money
Con Individual skin quality has dipped in exchange for numerous mediocre skins
Gone are the days of high-quality skins with cool spell effects and amazing visuals. What was once a dime-a-dozen, skins of actual "worth buying" quality now come once every 6 months or so, as the game's conversion to "2.0" switched their skin philosophy from QUALITY to QUANTITY.
Con Clunky camera movement
The way the camera moves makes it difficult to follow your hero. Update: there is an option to switch Camera off.
Con The XP sharing system has some flaws
You can get a bad player to your team, and he or she is able to ruin your match with some bad decisions, intentionally or not because XP sharing hurts the whole team in that way.
Con Ranked mismatchmaking
Con Boring and monotonous
Many matches are very similar one to another in the competitive game mode where the meta game has a higher influence.
Con Incoherent setting
Sci-fi characters (Starcraft) and fantasy characters (Warcraft, Diablo, etc) exist in the same time and place for no real reason other than to fight each other.
Con Slow fights
Heroes inflict little damage to each other, which has the potential to make fights seem long. On top of this when one falls behind many of their skills will become useless making for a fight that one is delegated to a support role, which will also add to the slow feeling of a fight.
Con Currently in alpha
0 A.D. is an ongoing open source project that is as of yet feature complete.
Con Slow development
0 A.D. is an ongoing open source project that is as of yet feature incomplete. This game is still in Alpha version 23 Ken Wood as of September 2020.