From a guy with 5800 matches behind his back (according to my saved replays) of which over 98% are Brawl/ARAM (I don’t play any other modes at all), please, PLEASE add some kind of match making to ARAM!
Huge portion of the games I have teammates that pick heroes they’ve never played before or started playing the game literally today! Not to mention that people don’t feel like they would get punished if they leave, afk, feed or flat out troll during the game, because “it’s only ARAM” and “reports don’t work in ARAM”, etc.
Ask anybody who invested as much time in this mode as me, they’ll tell you that we don’t mind waiting another 10-30 seconds to match teams with similar skills than to have instant queue and regret it for the next 15 mins.
People always think adding more matchmaking criteria means waiting 10 seconds longer. In reality ARAM already has extremely low population especially during night, leading the system to potentially even add AI bots on both sides (up to 8 if necessary).
If you add MMR to ARAM and force the system to only create a match with teams equal to each other in MMR, that wouldn’t be an extra 10 seconds in que. That could easily be 10 minutes, 20 minutes or more.
Another issue… Why should a single lane mode with no objectives, which pits 3 Chromies against 4 Butchers, have matchmaking? (Or previously: 5 Murkies vs. 5 Murkies, these matches are unfortunately no longer possible)
I play the mode almost daily, so I’m not against ARAM improvements. I just feel weird when people demand it to become a deadly serious mode like Storm League.
Which region are you playing on? In Europe the wait times are a couple of seconds up to 20 seconds late, late at night (from 3AM to 7AM). I’ve never had bots in my games. So it would seem ARAM is more popular on certain regions then?
Also I see no problem if the game is fun, which for me personally the normal objective base maps are not. If it wasn’t for ARAM I wouldn’t play the game at all. In my opinion it’s one of the better ideas they had for this game.
No thanks, it’s already the main mode of choice for leaver penalty clearers and that adds a huge (negative) random element to the mode. Plus I had a full AI game twice after christmas which was unfun to say the least. Thoug it was my fault for playing at like 8 in the morning.
I do hope I could switch my roll of 3 heroes with a teammate. So many times only 1 person gets heal choices and they say they suck at healing, whereas I’d be glad to do so.
And even if you can win with no heal vs heal I think it’s a big handicap, it sucks when people skip healer/tank because they don’t know or want to play it.
Just to keep things factual, while I don’t remember which region the screen was from (it’s from reddit, I didn’t capture it), it wasn’t EU. It was either US or the oceanian server.
So the population issues of Aram are also region specific. I’ve played Aram on both EU and US and I’ve never had a bot game on EU far as I remember (but a couple on US).
I’ve never seen bots in ARAM, not even in the middle of night or super early in the morning so there is definitely no population problem. Still I wouldn’t want there to be MM or MMR for it. Blizz has proven time and time again that their MM is trash. You get high MMR and game will reward you with worst potatoes in history of gaming because it won’t try to make high MMR game ever. The potato is there to counteract the high MMR so MMR average will be closer to middle. They would just dump the same awful system there from other game modes. So no thanks
Adding a matchmaker with a decently small MMR range is going to probably make that 10x longer or more in total.
Probably 4-5x longer initially from trying to keep MMR in a certain range, increased to that ~10x by people not wanting to wait in queue that long. And I think that 10x is generous.
People couldn’t stand 2 minutes queues in QM. You think ARAM would somehow fare better?
The most one could expect is try to get 10 players onto teams where each MMR is as close together as possible… which isn’t going to solve the problem you’re asking for.
Also, as someone who spends money on the game, I don’t really like the idea of wasting development time on a game mode that has absolutely zero monetization. It’s a money hole for people who only play the mode, and I don’t think giving it matchmaking would cause more people to spend money on HotS.
But, just because I spend money doesn’t make my opinion worth more. Although I think most everyone would agree that I’d something that doesn’t have potential to generate revenue is working, there isn’t a need to spend resources on it.
If it didn’t happen to you personally, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen to others. I had a few bot games in ARAM though not many. Maybe one every 3 months.
It can also depend on the servers, someone in EU is much less likely to experience it than someone in Asia or Australia which have so little players left.
Though what you said about the MM with the potato counteracting a high MMR, is 100% right, and I can’t see what good will become from dumping that same system into ARAM. When you got 2900 MMR and you must carry a 1400 MMR potato in a 2000 MMR game… Are you really having fun?
Never did I like “buddy mentoring”. It’s awful as a system.
Okay, if you all don’t see MM as a viable option, what about some kind of requirement in order to even be able to start a game? Like having played/unlocked X amount of heroes or having an account of level X and higher? That would eliminate the possibility of matching with people who haven’t played a certain hero or the game as a whole. Also, I still believe there has to be some kind of punishment for people who ruin games, even if it’s “just ARAM”, because currently there is none (at least I’m not seeing anything improve).
Blizzard obviously have or had some plans for ARAM since they change it from Brawl recently, but I feel it needs just a bit more attention.
@HammerTime, I see your point about the monetization aspect of ARAM and as it stands you’re 100% right. I have spent money on the game as well, but it just isn’t worth it anymore (I have 130K gold, 6k shards, 2k gems and 200+ unopened loot boxes since I’ve already unlocked everything I care about and there’s just no point in using them), which on itself is not a bad thing. After all, I highly doubt any of us want a PTW model here.
Wait, and if they add in AI’s its even veteran AI’s? I can totaly understand ARAM being a torture then.
Anyway, the day night cycle doesnt give the full situation aswel. Lets consider this:
Average players in ARAM during day: 100
Average players in ARAM during night: 5
In the night, there simply arent enough people. So AI’s will happen, no need for any MM systems then. But during the day. If instead of a 1min queue, it becomes a 2min queue. There are very likely more people waiting in the queue to allow some MM to take place.
If now its generaly 8 people waiting between 10sec and 1 minute, if it delays starting the match by 1 minute that might be 16 in queue. This should enable the system to either take the 10 strongest or 10 weakest players, the 6 others then wait 1 more minute for the system to again find 8 others, and then take the 10 strongest (or weakest, if the previous one was the strongest) there.
It then iterates the matches between strongest and weakest and should be able to start a lot more games. (and when exceeding 20 people in queue, it can just start 2 matches at once again, sorted in alternating order between the strongest and weakest).
Sure, it still allows a variety of gold to GM, or bronze to dia, but thats an improvement from bronze to GM.
The playground to test new heroes is with bots or in Try mode, not against other players where the chance to ruin 9 other people’s experience is almost guaranteed.
I prefer ARAM because it’s as simple. Ready, pick, go. Moreover, games are usually ~15 mins long and it’s action from get go. On the other hard, on normal maps, I hate the objectives themselves. To me those are gimmicky mechanics placed to provoke team fights that just feel artificial. There should be one objective - destroy the enemy core, other mechanics should be optional, not mandatory (which most of the maps are). But that’s just my humble opinion and make no mistake, I’m fully aware that it’s not shared with the majority of people who still play HOTS.
I’ve played my fair share of mobas over the past 15 years, I don’t play hardcore anymore, just want to have fun and ARAM is that for me.
I wouldn’t mind a lock requiring level 0 accounts to need to complete tutorial, or play 3-5 games in AI before going into PvP modes.
I also do think that a “matchmaker” that tries to balance each teams MMR would be viable (I.e. find 10 random players, make teams of 5 with as close to same average MMR as possible, start game).
It doesn’t solve the “never played the hero” or “never played a match of HotS” issue, but if in theory would make games more evenly balanced without increasing queue times.
I’m pretty sure you meant me, not HammerTime, but yeah. I certainly don’t want a P2W/PTW model.
I would (personally) like the ability to equip announcer/spray, and mount (if you get a hero with normal mount options) in the mode. Because personally I like 2-3 announcers over all, and same for spray/mounts.
And it would also give more reason to potential invest in ARAM with improvements thanks to it having reason to make ARAM players potentially spend money!
Yeah, never got why this AI is veteran. As the Elite AI is what replaces players (last time I asked).
That sounds awful. I use ARAM to level my smurfs as I think most smurfs do. It gives on average more exp than QM due to 10 billion deaths and you get to use almost whole roster vs dozen free rotation heroes in QM.
Are you sure it’s elite? It was adept AI for years that replaced players and I never heard it getting changed. I even suggested many times over the years to replace the AI based on rank but devs responded that AI should never be as good as the player it replaces basically. Not that it’s relevant anymore ever since they made the AI replacement blind and braindead idiot with the biology dude taking over AI development
When the game mode offers you to pick heroes from a small selection including heroes you have never played before then it becomes a playground by design.
In an online game with 10 players per match you can’t avoid having someones experience ruined sometimes. It even happens in ranked mode where we already have requirements and matchmaking.
