I just played a Ranked game where our Deathwing disconnected at 2:04 minutes into the game and never returned. The AI system proceeded to miss objectives and refused to cancel the Molten Flame cast when it ran in 1v4 or 1v5, allowing the enemy team to nuke the AI Deathwing. Over the course of the 16:37 game, Deathwing died 11 times.
ALL of us know the sorry state of the AI. That is not my intention with this post. We all understand that Blizzard hired that biologist to attempt to fix the priority assignments (good luck!).
Regardless of their attempt to fix the AI, my question is why are Ranked games allowed to continue on with the AI? Blizzard admits there’s an issue with the AI system considering they’re completely re-working it, yet they allow my Rank to rely upon the performance of such a horribly designed AI. My Rank depends upon the other 4 players on my team, regardless of my performance, and still the AI is allowed to die 11 times and miss objectives and get stuck in a loop of deciding which lane to clear vs the camp that’s near by, which in turn is responsible for my loss of Rank points if and when we lose the match.
It’s unacceptable. When I press Play to find a Ranked game, a few minutes pass by as an algorithm attempts to make the best match-up possible. When one player leaves, that algorithm that was used is no longer valid considering the match-up is now different than when it was first chosen.
If I wanted to play Ranked AI, I’d ask for that specific game mode. I want to play Ranked against actual players. I don’t care if the player is horrible, at least I can communicate with them and actually attempt to synergize with their Hero.
To conclude, I would rather play a game and exit safely with no penalty to ranked than play with a Deathwing that dies 11 times and runs in circles between lanes.
This happens more often than not, so clearly something is wrong and needs to be addressed.