3V3 - Devs, why not try a Hail Mary to Save HOTS?

General Discussion
1

MOBAs are traditionally 5V5, sure. But why? No reason, really. That’s just what DOTA started with and here we are.

As has been noted many times, HOTS is a lot more team centric than DOTA or LoL. This means that ‘Solo Queue’ is orders of magnitude more punishing in HOTS, which creates a very toxic environment in general. The most popular HOTS streamers are often tilted, angry, critical, and otherwise ornery - and while I love HOTS as a game, I have to say I get that way too when playing…far too often.

How easy is it to find a solid team of 5 to Queue with on a consistent basis? Um, lol…unless you’re sponsored/getting paid in some way, basically impossible. So the majority of HOTS players are experiencing a team centric game in a manner in which they are ‘teamed’ with people who they’ve never met before, probably will never see again. That’s not a team.

This is the primary reason HOTS was doomed from the start. Without the ability to solo “carry” among random teammates [like in DOTA], solo queue is punishment. It also makes matchmaking and individual ranking take WAY too long to sort out, due to the fact that even the best pros have a marginal win-rate at the lower ranks (~60%), requiring many, many, many games to be played in order to determine whether someone is actually good or is just having a bad streak.

Try 3V3!

It might seem crazy, but I swear this fixes HOTS’ primary problem. It’s far easier to find 2 other people to play with than 4, an individual has a bunch more affect on the game in a 3V3 match than a 5V5, and while at first thought you might think, “but we made all the maps and mechanics with 5V5 in mind…”, I don’t think it matters. Everything will work just fine, games will take a little longer on average, but not much, and both teams have the same relative handicap.

Even on large maps like Cursed Hollow, a 3V3 could end up being really fun. In fact, I daresay there are even more strategic options open because the amount of things you can accomplish on the map at any one time is diminished (thereby meaning you actually have to choose which to do instead of ‘do it all’)

What’s the downside? Considering you can still keep 5V5 if you want, basically nothing, but I’d bet that 5V5 would die in the fact of 3V3 - and that’s not a bad thing! Here are some advantages off the top of my head:

  • Less burst, chain stunlock, etc. = more skill and fun
  • Many more heroes, if not all, become viable depending on matchup
  • PvE type ‘junglers’ gain lots of value, setting them on par with the others instead of a highly situational afterthought
  • Opens up many more team ‘comps’ such as no support, no tank, and so on
  • Individual play matters more, making solo queue much less toxic
  • Individual play matters more, which means more accurate ranking/matchmaking
  • Far easier to find 2 friends to play with than 4
  • Hero draft synergy matters a lot more, putting more heroes into the mix
  • More relevant choices in-game concerning what to do at a given time, as well as more meaningful talent choices / counter-picks
  • Reduced queue times!

If you’ve read this far, I’m sure you’re already thinking of many other ways 3V3 would be superior for HOTS in particular. Or, can you think of reasons it wouldn’t work? Let me know - I honestly can’t think of any except for general ‘it’s made for 5’ arguments that don’t hold up if I think about how matches might play out on all the different maps.

Let me just say I think HOTS at its core is an awesome, awesome game. One of the best out there, really. It just has this unsustainable factor of basically forcing people to be at the absolute mercy of unknown teammates most of the time they play, which no game could survive no matter how good.

2

Have it as a mode for brawl. Than we’ll talk.

8 Likes
3

Great place to start.

4

This would definitely be by far one of worst ideas I’ve ever read for HoTS. It would shut out 80% of the roster completely. Only heroes you could play would be self sustained ranged heroes, otherwise you’d get stomped on lanes and poked on the way and at objectives. They’d have the re-design all the maps and re-balance and largely re-work the entire roster to make this work.

5 Likes
5

I think improving the current game modes is a better idea than adding an additional one when it comes to saving the game. That being said, I do think a 3v3 mode would be super cool. Even just having a 3v3 brawl would be cool. I do think it might get a little boring on big maps, but on maps such as TotSQ and Hanamura i could see it being great.

6

Hmm, I don’t think so at all Noir. Dive would still be very viable, as would a whole litany of other options. Triple support could even work. I daresay you’re having one of those ‘knee-jerk’ reactions us humans are wired to have (change = bad & scary).

7

Your dive would be facing 1 vs 1 against Raynors, Fenixes, Junkrats, ZJs and whatnot with no chance of ever killing them but always getting poked down the whole game. All they need to do is poke from distance and they win which is same thing that happens at objectives. If you pick a healer you have horrible lack of damage and wave-clear while still not having enough heals to save person through 3 DPS heroes. Pick 3 healers and you have lost 2-3 lanes worth exp and drag from behind 2-3 levels by first objective because all enemy needs to do is treat them like vikings and freeze the lane which forces you to put all supports on single lane. Having 3 player slots would do the exact opposite of what you project.

And just for the record I have played this game in 3vs3 and 2vs2. Go try it in custom games and come back saying it’s as you thought. I promise you won’t think the same after trying it.

2 Likes
8

I think you’d have a lot more options than the traditional ‘soak all three lanes at all times’ gameplay style. If the other team tries to do that, play a roaming gank squad and farm lanes on the go, grab camps to slow them down, take an objective strong team. Seems like the strategies become much more in depth with possibility.

9

If the basis of your presentation comes from lazy misrepresentation, than it mostly undermines your argument, esp when it seems to want to assume your presentation is ‘better’ “just cuz” and that naysay will default to agreeing without much provided for them to so do.

The popular form, 5v5 with 3 lanes, sub-lanes and a mini-boss, work out because of the split dynamics of the roles at hand, which influences the hero balance numbers, resources, power gain acquisition, and the extent certain tactics can be countered or enabled.

Having fewer moving parts (heroes) reduces the overall options a team has for dealing with particular quirks and would likely regulate the game to specific heroes to best ‘carry’ the game through attrition rather than ‘skill’.

Having fewer heroes reduces the extent a fight can be carried over on objectives (to hold, stall or contest the point) and greatly punishes team that don’t take more global-influenced abilities as the lack of additional bodies reduces the amount of xp that can be attained while making it harder to claim some of the objectives – duelist supports and bruisers can stall a point for huge amounts of time while another hero continues to soak the lanes and beat out the other side if they don’t retain a similar gimmick.

Backline squishes stand out for the amount of resources available to enable them that would largely be lost without number changes to offset the formations used and would generally push out a bigger amount of the playable roster in favor of particular combination that offset the loss in allies and enemies available.

Single-lane dominate heroes are typically offset by a mirrored pick or the potential for multiple heroes to rotate in and gank, having collective strength to offset the lane-‘specialist’, that would then be lacking with only 3 heroes. If a two lane map has two lane-dominate hero picks, where’s the other team going to get the numbers to offset that?

If curse or alterac has globals picks, where’s the other team going to have the numbers to offset those and not fall behind on xp?

How many objectives can be stalled out and held by a couple of high-sustain duelists that won’t have the bodies (or debuffs) to offset their sustain and just cheese out of the point while another hero pushes an uncontested lane?

The excitement you associate with the idea generally seems to come from the lack of experience of forethought put into the presentation, so the extent of discovery seems more potentially vast than otherwise – afterall, a key part of games can come from the sense of wonder and discovery to ‘try’ different things.

as a brawl/mode, 3v3 would have some appeal to those unfamiliar with team influences. However, like qm, without specific selections to offset particular heroes/teams, it’d probably lose its appeal when particular cheese-strats become more evident without the options available to offset the picks. While you’re keen to conclude 5v5 picked up cuz “no reason” on prior games, that is generally not the case.

Dota-allstars was initially named as such as it pulled a collective of the “all star” heroes from a variety of other map creators, who also saw to try different amounts of available players in game. as a custom map lobby, the game could be made to have 1-5 heroes and not even have mirrored players on either side – some of dota’s balance influenced initial gold so teams with less heroes would buy more items to then have a stronger early game, or cheese out a 1v5 game via constant ganks ala early dagon, book, or other items.

But despite that, other variations from the 5v5 haven’t stood out long-term and its not from 'no reason" there.

Could a 3v3-type moba/brawler stand out? Sure; the same applies to fighting games where some games are designed around duels, pairs, trios, etc.

However, if the focal of balance isn’t aimed at using a specific amount of heroes-to-players, then the mode’s appeal will fallout into specific meta-ruts and only be as ‘exciting’ as long as it takes to min/max the cheese, or available to enable/counter the cheese.

So your off-hand dismissal for "oh the game was designed that way’ as a counter-argument really doesn’t offset some of the reality of the impact of that at hand because rules/balance of a game are that game. Game board variation from rules works because people can set ‘house rules’ to adjust the balance of play in a ‘new game’, but for electronic video games that don’t allow players to program or make said house rules, then the game would essentially fall apart if the balance isn’t made to match.

“hey guys, use a gimmicked form of play to try to re-ignite the sense of self-discovery of a game as a last ditch-effort to try to ‘save’ it”

… those tend to not work out and for more than just the “no reasons” moba’s settled on the 5v5 formation.

resource allocation, power spikes, team dynamics, etc etc aren’t just “no reason” in game design.

2 Likes
10

Isn’t LoL’s 3v3 mode the least popular of all of them?

11

No. Maybe a brawl on single lane I’d be down with, but there’s no way this would work on 2 or 3 lanes.

People being tilted or toxic has nothing to do with the 5v5, it’s all about themselves.

-“Skill” shows in cooperation. Reducing the size to 3 would reduce this skill, making the game less team centric and more about individual, which is agaisnt the design of the game.
-Many heroes would actually become obsolete instead. If the game revolved around “me skillz, me damage” who would want to play healer or tank? And heroes like Murky, Aba or TLV would be glaring obsolete.
-You can try weird comps now anyways. It’s not like you are forbidden from it or that you can’t win. People are just too obsessed with the meta, form your own party and try those weird comps if you want.
-No idea what you mean by more choices. You can counterpick talents now. Won’t having 5 enemies give more choices?
-That depends on how people receive the mode. You will never find a match if nobody ever plays it.

If you do not want to “be at mercy of unknown teammates”, get some friends and form a party. That’s literally the solution that you can do right now without putting yourself at the mercy of Blizzard.

Let’s take a look at LoL (the only moba I play with a 3v3) with the map twisted treeline (3v3). Nobody cares about it. If I only have 3 people at the time, I will still queue for 5v5 because 3v3 is a cesspool of unbalance. Even Riot gave up balancing it years ago. If the game was made for 5v5, why do they need to bother rebalance everything for a new mode?

12

This is exactly why HOTS playerbase suffers so badly. Whether you ‘take the high road’ or not, if you care about winning, you’re going to get frustrated when you go on lose streaks. And with high variance (a statistical truth about HOTS that the best pros have way less affect on even bronze games than, say, LoL) everyone will have a lot of lose streaks that are unrelated to their own play.

It is a fact that this is frustrating. When people get frustrated, they take breaks or stop playing.

This fact is, and always has been, killing HOTS, and it needs to be resolved. The only way to resolve it is to always have 4 teammates to queue with (thus removing random variance) or make individual play matter more so there’s less variance in solo queue.

Thus, your quote is exactly why HOTS is dying and is the exact problem they need to address.

13

Could be cool, till opposing team gets a twin Varian, and he rekts your team solo. Or just solo’s bosses all game and you lose either way. That, or team invisagank. I truly like the idea of this, however there’s too many characters that would be broken in such a mode. Imagine Li-li as a support, the undying support 1v5, let alone 1v3. Would become frustrating very quickly.

I don’t have much experience in custom games, but are you able to start a match 3v3? Or do you have to fill those roles with A.I.?

14

You make good points, but it’s too hard to tell exactly how it will play out without trying it.

And, unless I’m wrong, none of your points actually disagrees that the frustration of win/loss variance in solo queue in a very team centric game is (and always has been) killing the player base.

Nobody wants to solo queue in this game, and a game can’t survive without solo queue.

Which means, in order to resolve it, Blizzard needs to make individual play matter more somehow. 3V3, or even 4V4 (but I think 4V4 isn’t enough, still will have the same frustrating random queue variance problems too much), address that catastrophic and proven problem with HOTS. Not sure there are any other ways to address it, other than just let the game die or redesign it from the bottom up.

15

If the “pros” had so little effect on the game, please feel free to explain to me how there are some people who achieve high rank every single season. No you can’t use “they get seeded into high rank” anymore. Truth is most of them deserve the spot, and they have massive impact on the game.

Your problem is you think the flashy plays, or “1v5” is skill. Not in this game. I myself is far from pro, but I have been in high elo matches before (blame match making) and let me tell you the pros have massive knowledge of the game on macro that did have huge impact on our victory. Those camps you called “afterthoughts”, the pros knew exactly when to cap them for most benefit, just to name an example.

16

The seed matters a lot, and yes, you’re right, they deserve to be there. You know how they got there? In order to get there statistically in a game with as high variance as this, you have to play like…1,000 games. Even over the course of 200 games a Pro record can look the same as a mediocre player playing in the silver-plat tiers. Only when you get over 1,000 games do things start looking a little clearer.

That is way too many games to have to play to get ranked appropriately, and with rank decay, you basically have to play HOTS all the time to get there. This also means there will be very high variance in true MMR vs the ranks you’re playing in because most people just don’t play that much.

17

Think I’m going to lead with this one, to make a point clear with a TL;DR:

Yeah, plenty. I didn’t detail them much here, but that is because I want to get some actual examples from you.

and a lot of things you brought up as positives… You claimed to be true. You did not explain them, or provide examples. You just said “X would be better” and left it at that. so I see absolutely no reason to put more effort in than that

Because 6v6 was likely deemed to provide a less exciting experience.
Or perhaps it was due to a desire to provide the options for referees/observers in DotA. Which was limited to 12 players total via WC3.

Not my experience…

Streams, the people who want a larger audience. That kind of tilting/anger/etc does tend to bring in more views/subscribers overall. I would guess.

Which means more popular streamers will tend to be angry/etc more often.

Very easy if you try. I’ve a friend who just adds people and chats in voice. They almost always have people to invite and whenever I’m invited it is almost always 5-people.

Yes, that is accurate. But being able to work with 4 other people is a skill in of itself. Communication is a skill.

no. You can indeed still carry.

Except for some of the pros who have done this, and gone like 20 wins straight climbing up pretty quickly? By carrying their teams.

That sounds insane for lots of design reasons.

Kinda. It makes it easier to communicate (or rather easier to find 3 people who communicate). But it has got loads of issues.

Great, your opinion is noted, and declared wrong.

Not only the maps, but the heroes and ability designs were also made around 5v5. You would nerf many things massively and buff other things massively merely by moving to 3v3.

The game isn’t balanced around it and it would take a massive effort to fix it. All for basically no gain.

No, both teams don’t have the same handicap. Some heroes will be hit hard. You would see a large chunk of heroes not get picked ever by tryhards. And people who just want to play heroes they used to enjoy and were viable/good would end up being hurt.

Without massive rebalancing, which would take months, if not over a year.

Sorry, let me rewrite that for you:
Even on large maps like Cursed Hollow, a 3v3 could end up being really terrible. IN fact, I daresay there are even more strategic options open becaue the amount of things you can accomplish on the map at one time is diminished (except people will pick TLV and Abathur and Zagara and other people who can basically cover 2-3 lanes meaning you don’t have to choose what to do. And the teams that don’t will have massive trouble).

You’ll segment the playerbase more.
There will be yet another gamemode that will not be balanced around that people will complain about
As queue times increase across the board fewer people will play overall which has a bit of a spiral effect…

No, no it would not.
And 3v3 would be negatively impacted also, as noted.

oh man, this is going to be agood one.

Not necessarily. What it does mean is people with self-fulfilling combos will have less of a hard time setting it up on you.
KTZ comes to mind.

What. How? Explanations?

No, because as you suggest keeping 3 lane maps… You lose a whole lane of soak on those maps. Which negates a lot of that “advantage”

This is a thing already?

Doubtfully. People who rage will just rage at their 2 teammates instead of their 4 teammates. That is all. Which will create the perception of less toxicity, but the actual amount of toxic people will stay the same.

It might even grow due to balance not being around 3v3 and people complaining that someone picked a hero that “is worse in 3v3”.

Yes, with fewer variables your skill level should be easier to assess. I actually found a point I can agree with!

It also means that (if what you said, 3v3 would kill most of 5v5) that I wouldn’t be able to play with 4 friends unless I wanted to wait a long time in the 5v5 queue.

This “advantage” is a double-edged sword. I mostly play in 3 ways:

  1. solo
  2. with a random person for a couple of games
  3. with 4 friends (or friends of friends).

3v3 gives me absolutely no benefit. And I suspect for many it is true. For others, of course, it may give them benefits. Which is why case-by-case is an issue.

What? How? By limiting larger combos that require 4 and 5 heroes?
By making Cho’gall impossible to pick in 3 lane maps?
Explain give examples.

Uh, I fail to see how. If anything there are less variables on the enemy and my team, which would make it Easier to figure out what talent will provide me more value.

No. Net, it will likely increase the average queue times across all game modes.

I mean, sure. If you ignore any of the drawbacks, it seems pretty good.
It’s like if you just ignore any issues it could bring up it’s a good idea.

Yes, I completely agree. HotS is an awesome awesome 5v5 game.

whatever dude.

2 Likes
18

Basically. You’re just kinda ignoring the fact that HOTS is dying and most people don’t have your experience.

Have to make individual play matter more, because statistically speaking (re: not your personal experience, but factually for the majority of players) there is too much loss variance resulting in frustration / quitting. Many pro players have made the aforementioned claim as well, and if anyone can ‘carry’, they can.

And that’s a fact because, errr, player base is way down and look at the Hero League queues. Nobody wants to solo queue except you.

19

And your evidence is?

Yes. 3v3 does not solve that.

You listed a bunch of “advantages” that I discussed and offered counter points to. If you want to convince me, start addressing those.

Citations?
Seriously, if you’re going to claim something BACK IT UP. Are you right? Very possibly. But making these kind of claims when you’ve made dubious claims earlier does not make me believe you.

You can solo queue in TL?

The last 4 TL games I played, all this morning… there were 6-7 groups of 2. In all 4 of those games. No groups of 3/4/5.

Queue times were approx:
4 minutes
2 minutes
5 minutes
2 minutes

Everyone else was solo queue.

It’s a small sample size, but I’m pretty sure that lots of people are queue in TL as solo. Same goes for QM.

And again, adding 3v3 would make the matchmaking worse in every single mode. Not helpful.

1 Like
20

You can do 3v3 in custom games. I remember people did 3v3 when Lost Cavern was just released. But, it’s super boring and people abandoned it quickly. You can try it yourself and tell us.

With the current trend of battle royale, it may be even more possible than 3v3, though I don’t think it’s great either. Either 10 players bang each other to death, or 4 small teams of 2 or 3 players.

1 Like