ARAM queue time

The game mode gives you an estimated wait time of 12 seconds, but here I am waiting for over 1800 seconds to play the game each time. It’s frustrating how it gives you a very unrealistic time, will this ever update?

What region are you in, and do you have leaver status?

Also what time did you queue it?

If you have leaver status, brawl doesn’t show an accurate queue, and if you’re in a lower player ping region, it won’t find a match until there is a leaver to match against you as I understand the matchmaker for brawl.

1 Like

There is a known bug that can randomly occur when queueing and gets the queue stuck. If it takes significantly longer than it should, quit the queue und queue anew.

5 Likes

Depends on the region. Australia, there’s no “bug” if the que is at 1800. That’s what we call a normal que.
Just a total lack of players.

In a way it’s better than getting AI teammates though which is an even worse way to play aram.

I’m skeptical if high ques on any region are a bug anyway. People tend to think even 500s ques out of peak time are “bug” when it’s just a lack of players. I hate it when party members keep canceling 500s ques thinking it’s “bugged”.

Fastest ques are on US and EU, that much is certain.

Low pop might be, but it’s still best to first exclude other factors, especially when the estimated tim e shown and actual time divert so much.

They can divert because of predictions. There might be just enough players in the queue to get a game started, but the rules for matchmaking cannot get the game together (massively inbalances). The estimate then shows for example 300s, but the actual time is that it never completes, or requires an already active game to finish (with 30 mins, that would be 1800s).

On low pop regions this can be common.

Its worse when the matchmaker does actualy consider those that are in the queue for a longer duration, as resetting that timer means they are put back in the queue, and might not be selected for that next game, so get into the next cycle. which then requires an additional 1800s (or how a game lasts) to finish.

The best solution for those regions is simply removing ranked mode entirely. With such low player counts the rank doesnt matter anymore anyway. For those who want a rank, it might be sad, but sometimes this is just how it goes.

He wasn’t talking about Ranked, he was talking about ARAM, which has no MMR.

1 Like

Its not about removing MMR, its about removing a potential pool of players and merge them. Ranked and ARAM both have the same issue in being a much smaller pool compared to QM.

The figures show, just like in all regions Uranked Draft is the least popular mode of all, so just remove that for those regions instead.

I haven’t played ARAM since I returned, but from looking at it I assume they no longer give a chest reward and have a weekly rotation. If this is the case that would make it worse on lower population servers as at least people would mostly play on the day when the new map/reward was released.

In exchange, you can now complete all daily quests in ARAM, and the gold and XP rewards are on par with QM, which to me makes up for the weekly chest. Prior to the change, a large number of people would grudgingly play ARAM because they felt the need to get an extra chest per week, but many of them would just afk to get the match over with quicker since winning didn’t matter.

Now it feels like the people playing ARAM are doing so because they enjoy the mode, and now there is incentive to do so past a mere three games a week. I do think this was one of the best changes this past year.

3 Likes

Thanks Hoku, sounds like a good change. It probably doesn’t help lower population regions, but a fine change nonetheless.

1 Like

Like with matchmaking, the queue estimation is an automation that simply uses what it has available to display something and people generally don’t know what that means.

The estimation is based on the average wait time of completed matching, so if matching doesn’t complete, then it doesn’t update the estimation. The number is also a bit misleading since the wait one player experiences can be vastly different than all the others.

If one player has a 500 second wait, and the other 9 have a 1 second wait (just got out of a game and queued up again) then the average wait would be 50.9 seconds based on that one match.

Also, as rcw posted, sometimes players end up in a queue Limbo, for whatever reason, and they’re in a wait that isn’t going to find a match. I could speculate what causes it, but it’s not like that fixes that it happens and it’s usually offset by someone just starting the queue over again – though if people do it rapidly enough, that might be contributing to the problem of desynced estimations or “Limbo” queue.

1 Like

There’s just no way there’s not ten players to start the match. I call bs on the matchmaker for that. Whenever gm players are streaming there’s at least 5-6 of them queued at one time so only four other players needed. Those four players may not be on their friends list but I bet they’re invisibly queueing too

Play at night on US/EU and there may not even be more than 1 player (besides you) queuing for ARAM for a long time.

The player population is much smaller than people think.
(The below will happen once the matchmaker gets really desperate and finally finds 1 other human after a longer wait)

Wont generally happen during peak times on the larger servers though (~1PM to around 10 PM).

The chances of this happening on USA and EU are only likely at around 24-06 in the night/early morning.

Yes I’m from Australia and never been never status once. I would be in 3-5 team party with my mates and be waiting a very long time.

Then what you and your friends experienced is normal, the Australian player population is super low.

Knowing the server of the player experiencing the issues is very important.

1 Like

I mean, why even remove the chest? Out of 10 chests, I probably get 38 duplicates and two rare sprays or some such cosmetic crap. The gold (or shard) cost for either cosmetic items or heroes is so expensive compared to the rewards for completing quests that chests were the best method to actively getting new things anyway. But because duplicates are so pervasive, it’s not like there is much functional difference in removing a play three games and get 4 useless trivial things. Might as well have just removed QM and we’d have solved one of the largest issues with the game as it stands.

They need to put the estimated wait time more realistic.