Thats actually awful what you said there, as player who wanted to get to HGC and was macro focused i can tell that no one in the team has idea how highest lvl macro worked last year and has no idea that whole player base is so bad because your tutorials dont teach anyone anything about the game and EXP. This is just “lets defend ourselves so we dont need to do anything”. EXP was perfect and you ruined it and you ignore everything that proves it. Remember you guys wanted LITERALLY NO EXP FROM FORTS AND KEEPS which hurts my brain.
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Holy non-response Batman!
This is one of the most tone def responses I’ve seen in a while, from any developer. You guys seem to have completely ignored most of the sentiment and point of the post and focused solely on if you decreased the xp differential in the average game across all levels of play. I’m pretty sure you could have removed XP from the game altogether and achieved similar results.
You completely ignored massive parts of GhostDunk’s article in which he talks about how much impact a high level player has on the game and how much skill is determining wins. In the article it was indicated that a high level player now has a significantly smaller impact on a game now.
This aspect of the article, the part that most people are saying is a problem that Blizzard needs to address ASAP seems to be actively ignored in this response.
I’d like to see an actual response from Blizzard on GhostDunk’s article because I don’t think anyone ever questioned that they achieved their goals with the XP changes. It was merely a question of exactly what was lost a long the way. Most high level players response to this question has been a lot to the game is completely unplayable and Blizzard completely destroyed the game.
I would to see Blizzard finally address these concerns that were brought up before the patch was ever implemented.
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This is totally off topic here* - but I noticed that my own MMR is the same on Hotslogs but I have lost and entire league (G3 to S3) over time.
Part of it might be the limitation of smurf accounts to start in Silver. It means that they have more “free wins” (in addition to before, they now have to get through Silver, Gold and some of Platinum), which in return pushes everyone else down a little. I wouldn’t guess the effect to make a difference of a whole league, but it might make your time a little harder.
(*) actually, this is another recent “gameplay” change, hoping to make Plats happier…
Except the conclusion was opposite in both of this articles. Good try though.
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This is actually great valuable information to take in for me. Thank you.
Well summarized info overall and well done.
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Great stuff.
Even if I play more vs AI nowadays, I did notice way less snowbally games since this update come up in my ranked games. Good job with this battleground update"
Hi Brett! Thank you for posting this! Games are less snowbally and do feel closer! I appreciate it.
Thank you for the wonderful info. The games have been more fun.
Hello,
Admittedly these changes are pretty good for completely uneducated / new players (bronze- silver), but should this really be the goal? Seems as these changes catered to those who played a few games a week rather than those who put in the time to learn the mechanics of the game.
During the initial implementation of these changes it was stated that developers would be listening to feedback and be open to reverting/ altering the xp changes if need, it is now clear this is was an empty statement.
Through these changes I have almost felt the exact opposite of what is stated here. If a team gets ahead early they will most likely still win the game, you just have to sit through an extra 10-20 minutes so they can actually end the game with 16. And if you do comeback it is at level 16+ through a single team-fight thus making every strategic choice made to that point completely useless. the charts provided even reflect this
If nothing else please change or remove the catapult spawn from fort destruction; it is honestly a disadvantage to the team that is ahead as it prevents basic soaking. Such a small change that would (imo) greatly improve game quality.
All this being said I appreciate the follow-up post.
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It’s not just Master, HL is completely dead in NA period.
It was completely supplanted by TL which I feel is a clown fiesta by comparison.
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Hi,
Thanks for the great work. I unfortunately have been in tons of snowball games recently because of my skill.
I played Sonya, and am a Master Player but my main account, I am no longer able to play due to telling someone to “GET GUD” and trash talking my opponents, that they should L2 PLAY and their talent picks are trash and thats why I stomped them.
Anyway, since this isn’t street basketball, where you can’t trash talk anyone and its more like HELLO KITTY Island Adventure where we have to be nice and kind, even to your opponents. I am sorry that, I enjoy a little mocking and jousting, I wont do this on my new acct and am playing in GOLD 3 stomping bad players and snow balling them because I am far more advanced in skill level.
I play alot of solo lane, SO typically in this rank for some reason people think Varian is good, they ban it or First pick it. Maybe because it is easy to play and not much skill is involved.
I don’t think they understand Varian isn’t even a hero before lvl 4. So While I have Sonya and smashing the walls and towers because I have way better clear than a Varian, and the varian thinks parry works on WW or SLAM they are just taking free dmg, because people in this MMR are RATHER ![:potato:](https://d3rakab8gpdsa3.cloudfront.net/en/heroes/images/emoji/twitter/potato.png?v=6" ":potato:")
So This varian not only tapped in the first 30 secs of the game, but also hearthed. Obviously this person could just stand at the tower and afk, and just at least soak for his team, unfortunately this is GOLD. And Blizzard won’t just ban my chat but are forcing me to start over, I am dominating this low MMR world, as I have more EXP, and pushing varian out of the lane without even having to stutter step or wait for C/D’s. Next thing I know since he has his lvl 4 he thinks he is good, but its now lvl 6 vs lvl 4 because he missed so much soak. He yells(ULTs) at me thinking he is going to blow up SONYA, instead he dies, losing more soak, forcing his teammate Chromie to come up and Soak vs Sonya. YAWN, now I have chromie and varian in a lane to face me, while my team runs it down as 4 and we win in 12 mins.
I just want to make sure you know, that while it is great that you stop people for toxic chat, that there are good players, that like to trash talk… because they feed off of confidence and like to get in other players heads, that you decided to have me start over and play on the little boy’s playground where I can just dunk on little kids all day, that have no chance in hell in competing.
I hope those players don’t quit. Just saying.
1 Like
The other team cannot see your chat.
Who in the world are you trash talking???
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Glad I jumped ship back to League of Legends after last years Blizzcon announcements. It’s clear these new devs want to remove all macro and strategy from the game and leave it a husk of what it used to be - just a bunch of brainless chickens running around bashing heads until one of the cores die.
Every change since removing tower ammo (including adding loot chests and removing the ability to directly purchase skins) has killed this game to the point of cancelling HGC.
I started playing HOTS in alpha and am sad to see one of my favorite games be destroyed by 2 years of horrible decisions. All of the devs responsible for this games current state should be fired and forced to change careers.
Hey SIRI - remind me to play HOTS again when it isn’t terrible.
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The ability to purchase skins was added back in.
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I’m somewhat confused here… Since wasn’t this artitcle:
Looking at the changes prior to the ones done 2018? It included data up to 2017, when we still had ammunition and other changes to lane. Which altogether point that the changes of 2018 & 2019 values were not as stable as 2017, and in fact 2017 was a better point of balance as compared to 2018 & 2019.
Whereas this data only looks into 2018 & 2019 while omitting 2017, which is the pre-changes to lane and exp. I would love to see the data include 2017 so we can see a more direct comparison in that regard to what the article written looks into. Namely, how successful are these changes compared to 2017.
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yes please!
Thanks for the communication on such an important issue.
Has there been any sort of statistical analysis of the individual players performance on each team? Games are so lopsided in terms of individual player skill these days even with the adjustments you guys have made to lessen the snowball matches. I was told once by a teacher that there were 3 types of lies…lies, damned lies, and statistics. Seeing what the actual game quality is by playing games still leaves a lot to be desired in the way of games being evenly skilled.
The main complaint a lot of people have with HotS especially lately is that the games dont “feel close”.
“If the enemy team beats you, it’s because they’re actually the better team…” and thats so often the case where a clearly better team is facing a clearly worse team. And of course this is because the matchmaker has placed these teams together on the same side, and against the enemy team.
Are there any plans to have statistical analysis of individual player performance per team and attempt to match players who perform within a certain range to be matched with and against one another, no matter the rank or MMR (using QM/Unranked as a testing ground)?
Counting player deaths against the average team death, looking at soak compared to the average team soak, siege, pvp, camps, etc.
What data you have gathered regarding the lessening of snowball games seems to line up right with the actual games. I remember when games were very snowbally and you guys have done well to adjust that rightly. I just hope there is an awareness of the major problem of teams not being matched properly in the first place. I couldnt even tell you the last game I was in where it was an actual even match. They have all been one sided. Im not exaggerating either. Ive just stopped playing for the past couple of weeks because of it.
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huh. I’ve not noticed this myself, and generally the people I’m playing with (ranging from Masters to mid Silver) (in QM, URD and TL). Far more often than not, one or more of us can point out a very large mistake one of us (or someone who we got randomly paired with) that cost us the game.
Would not have failing that single thing resulted in a win? Who knows.
But there seems to generally be more games where I/we can identify mistakes me we, as opposed to games where we are stomped (or stomp).
Stomps, or the other team being “carried” by 1-2 really good players happens sometimes. But it does not feel like it has been happening more often.
Or, perhaps we’re just stomping in more games resulting in us contributing to the issue.
1 Like
This puts into data the feeling I have had while playing. I feel like the game play has been even more fun than it was before the cuts. That and the player base seems to be more positive.
Thanks for the hard work. I know it can’t be easy with the dev team changes.
I’ll see you in the Nexus
Thank you so much 
Funny Thing is, I just opend a Threath regarding this topic yesterday on the German-Forum, where i asked how the people see the XP and Catapult-changes now ~1/4 year later
Im really happy about this little insight 
Thx again good Sir