Change in Hero Release Schedule means a change on old heroes?

[klind]

As you guys eloquently put in this thread (http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?428384-Change-in-Hero-Release-Schedule), you guys are happy with the feedback the community has given, and you guys at S2 have decided to spend more time on heroes.

First off, I wanted to thank you, because that's an awesome change and I can tell my one harpy of a friend to stop complaining about the speed of released heroes. Second, this seems to create a disparity with the rest of your content.

A good number of your past heroes are designed and published in a much smaller time period than the new paradigm would have permitted, and in this post (http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?428384-Change-in-Hero-Release-Schedule&p=15148424&viewfull=1#post15148424) Diva says that the longer time span will allow for "Higher quality heroes; more iteration on design and art". What this implies is that heroes you hav produced and published in the past are not as high quality, and that they lack a level of quality you guys would like to apply to your game.
In addition, the increased time also means you guys are going to be adding "More content and assets to complement new heroes" and that "More work put toward design feature projects (stuff like Mid Wars)".

I like a number of the heroes you guys released over the past few months. Most heroes offer interesting ways to play the game, and I find are well designed; but a number of the heroes are simply forgettable. Seen once or twice, then never again: or they just aren't any fun to play.

When you guys say that the extra time will allow you to work on content to complement new heroes, or more time for design feature projects, would either of those include tooling up old heroes that the community finds lacking? Or do you guys believe that the older heroes don't actually need any work done on them?

Thank you for your time.

[xanderK]

The real key to the change in release schedule for us is, as DivA said, that we have more time for iteration on design and art. That's not to say that our previous efforts were subpar. It means that more iteration is nothing but a good thing. Playing 200 test games with a hero is better than playing 100, even if 100 is enough to get a really good feel for something. Consistent improvement is very important to us and look no further than our forum signatures for what our views are on that subject are.

With that said, the increased time does allow us to consider potential reworks or major tweaks to the game (heroes, items and so on). To give you a bit of an inside peek, the number of "meetings" that the designers have been in has drastically increased since the schedule change. There's been a lot of general discussion about various game topics and spirits are very high. :-D