Do we have any solid proof of this? I have my suspicions that this affects the “AI Teammates” mode across the board, but that there is a large number of people who don’t play vs AI at all, or enough to notice.
The only proof you need is a few dozen players coming to the forum saying they noticed irregularities in first place. Even if a portion of player base is experiencing it should not be less of a priority.
Many people will never touch vs AI and out of those that don’t play it for fun - but to clear quests every three days, will most likely never play more than three games in a row, or even notice something is wrong. Sometimes when doing testing in the dead of a night, I will encounter same players over and over, and they’re getting pulled to my 4 map rotation, even though they might have an “extra random map” somewhere in their recent game history. I could also be playing 10 games with 40 different players and they might never notice anything wrong.
What I’m suggesting is this, do testing on a dead server; Tournament realm, PTR or Private Blizzard QA. Have 5 different accounts queueing (or much more for better sample size) and see if any problems come up. It’s using the same code as live and like this you would be able to track who is matched with who, and on which maps. With a control group you would pinpoint the problem. If Blizzard tech allows, simply copy account data from random users and export to a private realm.
This is not something an average user without multiple PCs can do. Since you need to jump through extra hoops to even run two instances of the game on the same machine.
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Hey GriM!
Just for some extra clarity, we do not need any more information on how to reproduce the bug, as we already know how to reproduce it. However, knowing how to reproduce a bug doesn’t mean we know why it is happening, the total scope of who is affected, or just how complicated the interactions are. The most help everyone can provide for us at this step is helping us learn what it is we don’t know.
If you are experiencing this problem, and do not fit in to any of the categories below, please post on this thread letting me know why you don’t fit in these categories, and that will help us learn even more about this issue. Thank you all for the help!
- People who primarily play VS AI with AI Teammates,
- People who primarily play with the same people in VS AI (with or without AI Teammates)
- People who have been affected but haven’t played X amount of game with other, random, match-made human players.
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Just to be clear, on the third point- do you mean Co-op VS AI? Or quickmatch/other full matchmaking modes?
I play primarily VS AI, except for brawls for the chest/for fun. I play Co-op vs ai solo about 40% of the time. Occasionally we’ll start a party from those randomly matched people, as the games go on, or a friend will come online and join. Call that another 20% Coop vs AI in a party. No apparent limitation or set rotation of the maps there.
I play VS AI Teammates solo if i need the ability to hit escape and pause, or so it won’t upset anyone if I alt-tab for a moment. Majority of these games recently have been to test that this problem still affects me.
As for playing primarily with the same person, my mom plays HOTS too, and when I’m partied with her we only play with AI teammates. She has the same map pool as I do whether we’re playing together or not. She also has had the problem since it first started- pointing it out to me during the toys event i think. When the anduin patch hit, to help disprove we were affecting each others’ map pools, we played AI Teammates separately. We each got the same 4 map rotation. In the past we’ve branched out to playing Co-op, to test the map rotation problem, and we could get maps outside of our pool.
Let me know if I can clarify any of these points further, or if you believe I fall under one of those three categories you listed. Thanks!
edit for future reference: Just knocked through a bunch of Co-op vs AI. BHB > Cursed Hollow > Hanamura > Garden Terror > Braxis > Towers > BHB > BoE > Volskaya > Sky Temple > Warhead > Braxis > Garden > BHB > Volskaya > Sky Temple > Hanamura > Towers > Braxis. Got 10 out of 13? possible maps across 19 games, only ones missing were spiders, dragonshire, and alterac, which could easily be due to sample size.
Day later edit: Switched back to 1v9 with AI teammates. Volskaya > BHB > Sky Temple > Hanamura > Volskaya > BHB > Sky Temple > Hanamura.
GriM- I only meant that I haven’t heard from anyone that they are unaffected. I agree most people won’t notice. People who only play VS ai to knock out their dailies then move on to PVP modes have no reason to check this thread or care that there’s even a problem. I’d like some confirmation that it isn’t a universal problem, that the last category of people you listed does exist. Not sure how we could test that ourselves, shy of making a bunch of alt accounts and testing them on live, which would be a tedious ordeal.
Most people won’t notice and a good deal of those that do won’t bother going to the US forums because they are from a different region, or they probably don’t know they have access to forums of all regions unlike with other games that require a specific local game license.
Notice the absence of useful Blue posts in the EU, outside of community engagement and customer service. There might be a copy-paste from the US here and there but generally no important conversations take place there.
Just to be clear, there is a shared opinion that the non-US forums for all Blizzard games are a waste of space, resources, time and effort when it comes to any kind of feedback - there’s also the unexplained absence of Bug Report sections and other crucial features.
Sorry for going off topic but it’s great news to hear that Blizzard feel like they’re making some progress around this.
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I can say with certainty that I play exclusively with one human player, and 8 AI players and we have been locked into a 4 map rotation now for at least the 2 months since we returned to playing HOTS.
I can also add that we haven’t played for the last 2 weeks due to the mundane nature of the map rotation, which sadly includes Battlefield of Eternity where the AI is broken beyond belief (gathering around their own god doing nothing all match).
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Would appreciate a response please. I’ll repeat my questions more directly.
- Have you found that playing X games solo co-op vs AI has fixed this issue in testing? What’s a ballpark range for X?
Tell me if I’m wrong in reworking these categories -
- People who play VS AI, AI Teammates, solo
- People who play VS AI, AI Teammates, regularly in a group of the same people
- People who play Co-op VS AI, regularly in a group of the same people.
- People who play Co-op VS AI solo.
Am I correct in saying that people in the first three categories generally experience this bug, but people in the fourth do not? My experience described above runs counter to that.
To answer your questions,
- We don’t know what X is. It appears to be random. The faster and more often you get maps outside of your rotation, the fewer games it takes. It’s not a set number, as it depends on luck of the draw (apparently)
- Are you in the fourth “category” Co-op vs AI solo, and over the course of many games in that “category” still falling into the same 4 maps, following the same or similar order?
Thank you for the quick response!
From my long post earlier- I played a series of 19 Co-op VS AI games. Got many maps outside my limited pool of 4. Went back to playing AI Teammates- same 4 map rotation.
edit: To be clearer, I believe the bug has never affected the map pool for me in co-op vs ai. I experience the limited pool in AI Teammates only, grouped or solo.
As of yesterday’s patch, my limited 4 map pool has changed to Cursed Hollow, Garden of Terror, Towers of Doom, Blackheart’s Bay. Was hoping for a fix, but oh well
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Could all maps be in rotation if its solo VS AI?
Cursed Hollow, Garden of Terror, Towers of Doom, Blackheart’s Bay.
So tired of BHB…
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Blockquoteedit: To be clearer, I believe the bug has never affected the map pool for me in co-op vs ai. I experience the limited pool in AI Teammates only, grouped or solo.
I never had the map rotation issues in co-op vs AI until this week. Previously only experienced with ai teammates in vs ai. However, this week I had been running vs AI and picked up a group of randoms, we played about 5-8 games and there were only about 4 maps. So this bug has spread into co-op vs AI it seems.
My new map rotation in co-opvs ai is also now “4 map pool has changed to Cursed Hollow, Garden of Terror, Towers of Doom, Blackheart’s Bay. Was hoping for a fix, but oh well”
I wonder- if you had a 5-stack playing vs AI, that it bypassed whatever layer is involved in matchmaking that pulls from the larger pool of maps. If you’re solo queued for Co-op VS AI, do you get different maps? We shouldn’t have to choose between playing with friends and map variety…
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Just checking in to report here, I as well only receive Cursed Hollow, Garden of Terror, Towers of Doom, and Blackheart’s Bay when playing Versus A.I.
To note, last night my Battlenet client began to pre-download a patch, so I’m wondering if these maps may change with the next patch? I’ve recruited a few players to join me in the Nexus, but they’re already getting sick of the same 4 maps over and over and boy am I sick of Towers of Doom ![:frowning:](https://d3rakab8gpdsa3.cloudfront.net/en/heroes/images/emoji/twitter/frowning.png?v=6" ":frowning:")
To clarify, lately I have either been playing solo in Versus A.I. or with a 1-2 other players (couch multiplayer) in Versus A.I.
It really stinks trying to help them learn and improve strategies in the game when we can’t even get into more than 4 maps.
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Actually yes, incidentally it was a full 5man group. I think you postulate a good hypothesis regarding the overlay being overlooked with a full group. Perhaps it just pulls the leads maps at that case instead of integrating choices from all other PUGed players.
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Not sure this helps, but I just reinstalled the game three days ago to play some vs. AI with AI teammates. I’m not particularly good at the game and generally dislike multiplayer anything anyway, so I don’t ever play any other way. I’m stuck in the exact same rotation as Buttclench.
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For what it’s worth the rotation on the PTR is Infernal Shrines > BHB > Braxis > Sky Temple. Curious if that becomes our rotation when the new patch hits.
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Spoutinwyze, I don’t know that it much matters who the leader is. I’m still unconvinced that per patch, per server, that people have differing pools of 4.
But it does seem like having 5 people in a party bypasses whatever “system upon system” is involved in matchmaking random people to fill a team- that /also/ affects the map?
For now we’ve got to just be happy with a new 4 map pool every patch I guess.
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This is so infuriating. I honestly don’t understand how this bug can still be a thing. I haven’t seen Battlefield, Infernal Shrines, Alterac, Haunted Mines in literally hundreds of games. Playing with randoms against bots don’t seem to fix it for me.
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