The problem is that the I’m being punished for being the victim, and the guldan is actually getting LESS rank points, which will keep him in that rank longer so he can do this even more. Yeah I can learn from it, but the punishment for losing wasn’t justified. This isn’t frustrating, it’s bad competitive design. Punish the victim extra while letting the perpetrator continue his shenanigans even longer than normal.
It was never a matter of “we focused the wrong guy” we just went up against a man who was simply much better than us, by using a player that was worse than us and forcing him to play a low skill to effectiveness character for the rank I’m in. Even if we focused and killed lucio, the amount of impact that would make wouldn’t cancel out the impact of having a simply much better player in a more game changing category against us.
Boosting is a problem, and could be lessened considerably by reducing the massive gap between ranks for parties currently allowed. You can currently play with another person 2 whole leagues below you. A grandmaster can queue with a diamond and crap on low masters. If the max rank difference was for instance 1 rank, (which would effect friends of different ranks playing together in some instances), the effectiveness of the boost would be half a rank at most with the average in a 2 man party like in my instance. The only downside to this is that some people who just want to play with friends much higher or lower than them wouldn’t be able to unless they could get to at least a league apart. Honestly, I’d prefer more secure and fair matches over the downside.
Also, there’s a definite trend here, whenever said boost happens, almost every single time the lower rank party member plays a high impact low skill floor healer, while the higher rank member plays a high skill high impact character, kelthuzad being a common choice for boosters. They do this every time because they know if they give the lower member an easy role, they can get him to perform at a level close to the rest of the matches rank, while the booster uses his massive advantage in skill to wipe everyone with relative ease. If it was simply, “learn from this”, or “focus the healer”, then these boosts simply wouldn’t work. They only work because the solution isn’t that easy or plausible in the match itself. You’re outclassed and can’t do much at all about it. The fact that this pattern happens so often is because it works so often. If it was counterable they’d stop, because the boost isn’t working anymore, and said boosters would be losing rank points. My main issue with this is that when the boosters win, the game recognizes they won over a lower ranked opponent and gives them less rank points, so they stay in a lower rank and can boost longer, therefore giving them MORE matches to ruin before climbing to a rank that they are no longer higher skilled than. As for the victims that lose, the game says “well the enemy team had a guy a league below you” so they add significantly extra rank points to your amount lost for losing the match. If you could simply learn and conquer or “kill the healer” and win then this wouldn’t be a continued problem, yet it is.
Your point about whether or not it’s happening every other game is the kicker though. It is. I think this might be a product of a declining player base, and me liking to play my matches later in the day, roughly 8-10 pm, since I like to play before I head in for the night. The problem is that the game simply can’t find enough players in my rank fast enough, so it takes a boost party that averages to my rank and uses it to fill the team needing more players to start. I’d be completely down for longer queue times, since I look at my phone or find some music while I wait, if it means I get matches without heavily averaged parties. Sometime’s the booster party is even on my team, but that still ruins the match for my opponents. Whether it’s on my team or not, a booster game means someone is being unfairly matched, and the booster always get’s the low reward for winning so he can keep boosting, regardless what team he’s on. 40% of my last 20 games of comp have had a booster party consisting of a much higher and much lower player. 80% of those have resulted in a win for the booster team due to a hard carry. That’s 32% of all my 20 past comp games that have been won or lost unfairly and the game always punishes those who lose against them. Those numbers have all been recorded from my own games I just update them in a notepad I have whenever play a match.
We shouldn’t just look at a badly matched up game and say “well i guess i learned something from this” and continue to let it happen. Something needs to be done about this so we don’t just let these boosters get away with it.
At least, that’s what I feel, and if you could give me some of your ideas about it that’d be greatly appreciated. I’m open to all criticism and ideas.