Blizzard/HotS developers should be ashamed of themselves

General Discussion
1

Despite all of the glaring issues with Quick Match matchmaking, solo players being pitted against groups of players (regardless of how many are in that group btw), which remains extremely unfair and has been that way for years, you all at Blizzard persist in this unprofessionalism. I hope the stress of being failures at least pays well enough. I’m being this abrasive b/c It’s very dishonorable to treat your player base like this, and it’s not conducive to fair esports competition, regardless of whether it’s ranked or unranked, serious or unserious.

This has gone on for years now, unacceptably, and I think you all should resign if you all are not willing to fix these issues! At least have some integrity about it. Developers who want to be this indifferent on wasting player’s time with this crap don’t deserve to have a job, especially when it pertains to a game that claims itself to be an esports title.

The only reason I still play at this point is b/c of the art and animation. That specific team created a masterpiece, a masterpiece that deserved a better chance than it got. Unfortunately, the other developers who were responsible for building the match-making system and certain game mechanics have ruined this masterpiece. Also a problem are the network lag which, out of all of the games I own, it only seems to be a problem in this game. Hmm, I wonder why?

Perhaps b/c of how the game allocates system resources when 10 players are in a battle arena, and oddly wasn’t normalized or improved much in all these years? The game remains very hoggish for how large of a game it is. No other game has given me this problem in PVP. So, of course, players who are also familiar with these issues will simply group up and exploit these weaknesses in quick play which exacerbates the stress of these conditions for solo players like myself.

It’s unacceptable as it is.

2 Likes
2

Average win rate of mixed groups vs solos is 51-53%

6 Likes
3

I think you need to address your ignorances instead of perpetuating poor fault-finding and superstition.

I’d be more inclined that you should be ‘ashamed’ of yourself for beating a dead horse and pretending you’re better off for it.

2 Likes
4

while there is advantage to grouped players overall it is not that big of an issue and definitely not as big of an issue as your portraying, I don’t like fighting 5-mans in qm any more then the next guy but I defnitely do not think that having 5 man in qm is a form of

(not sure why you felt the need to italicize that). Additionally I have no idea what in the world your talking about when you say

Because Esports are not held in random quickmatch games.

I personally have not had that much problem with network lag, but given its a derivative of the starcraft 2 engine, yes I’d imagine lag is possible, the toll created by pathfinding alone is likely massive, I’d imagine they’re using something similar to the A* algorithm to map it but even then given minions mercenaries monsters and heroes all are capable of pathing it is likely very resource intensive to do so.

1 Like
5

I’m just going to play devil’s avocado and agree with everything you wrote. I’ll also put aside that this game has one Dev, who somehow manages to do some extensive bug fixes now and then.

With that out of the way, please tell me where, and how Hots will receive enough new (and active) players, so the QM MM can be altered to have separate queues for stacks and solo players?

I’m even hand waving that this is a game that’s supposed to encourage players to stack, I’m just sticking to the practical, and right now, there aren’t enough players for separate queues.

8 Likes
6

Fyi those devs dont even work at Blizzard anymore.

5 Likes
7

The devs should be proud of themselves. They created a game that stands out in unique ways compared to other mobas. It has fun game play, good map design, and interesting heroes/kits/talents.

The majority of the issues come from the player base. Don’t knock the devs. They did great on this game and I personally believe the main reason this game isn’t where other mobas are is due to horrible management from the higher ups.

9 Likes
8

Put yourself into the shoes of the product manager.

First, your #2 tenet on the wall is to encourage social behavior.
So you’ll want to promote groups, notify about online friends.

Do you agree that this is a good thing, or should we stop right here?
Also in WoW, there are endless complaints about organised PvP.

Second, you have a difficult optimisation ahead of you.

  • Strict matchmaking increases waiting time. Sometimes impossible.
  • Long waiting makes people unhappy.

The solution so far is to apply MM(R) adjustment to groups.

I suspect the problem isn’t specifically groups, but heroes.
There are some, often labeled easy, with a solo-friendly kit.
Many more are centered around duo-trio wombo-combo.

At one point Blizzard tried to have more strict team compositions, leading to high wait times, and a community outcry. They learned that for the community,

  • Prio 1: Fast games
  • Prio 2: Play what you want
  • Prio 3: Play with friends
  • Prio 4: Fair games

The solution that the community suggests - play draft. While you will run into rank rainbow, if you control that and cooperate, you can rule out team comps.

Even in group play, if you watch tournaments, you can see that roughly half of the matches are utter snowball. Even within a single series, there is a mix of nail biters and landslides. All variables equal.

Meaning, knowing phaseshifter’s quoted stat of 51-53%, it’s often not a problem with the MMR or groups, but simply happened.

I often check teams after the match and most groups have a fair history.

Except the odd case when the top 5 GMs group up and the game assigns them to beat some random bronzies. The good news is, you don’t see them twice.

3 Likes
9

My quoted stat? :thinking:

10

Oopsie.
The 51-53% in phaseshifter’s post with a Medivh portrait.
Aaaaanyway. :smiley:

2 Likes
11

Hots players (mostly the bad once) are always the first to go to the forum to complain over small things and expect the devs to cater to thier skill issues.

And sadly the devs has listened to the bad players too much.

2 Likes
12

i can’t even get into a match, the menu’s don’t load for me anymore. everything is so buggy i can’t even play the game anymore. No fix for it either to my knowledge.

1 Like
13

Please elaborate. How does resource allocation or lag, if referring to the previous paragraph, benefit from players grouping together?

14

While that’s true, I believe a lot of the complaints are about composition and matchmaking issues. As less and less people play the game (as compared to years ago) matchmaking becomes difficult. In any multiplayer game if numbers decrease then queue times will get longer, you’ll be in games with people who may not be near your skill, and compositions may not be perfect.

I mean what exactly are the devs supposed to do about the matchmaking when numbers dwindle? Are they just supposed to code in more players in the game to make matchmaking perfect?

2 Likes
15

Please, let’s not go there again. This is not a joke (at least it’s not funny) but in a thread from a couple of months ago, someone was claiming Blizzard was putting “illegal bots” into Hots to make it seem like Hots had more of an active player base.

One of the more whacky tin foil hat theories presented on the forums in recent memory.

3 Likes
16

Wait, someone actually thinks instead of working on the game there’s a dev coding in bots? Unreal. I mean even if they were, then shouldn’t the matchmaking be perfect?

Some people just aren’t smart I guess.

1 Like
17

IT DOESN’T MATTER!! PUTTING SOLO PLAYERS VS ANY group of players is extremely unfair. What would player’s individual win rate be if the odds were not stacked against them every time they queued into quick match??

You’re all so friggin’ delusional to support these lazy developer habits. They didn’t improve ANY of this, with the exception of ‘extended quick match search’. How can players be this naive?

2 Likes
18

I just noticed this part in a reply.

The reason it can feel slow is because nothing is happening client side. It’s a choice.
All your actions are submitted to the server and then all you see is the response.
The game sort of handles higher latency, except it’s a bit hard to do things like heal with Reh’gar or click Kael’thas Ignite. But when latency fluctuates, it looks like stuttering.

Not sure I like it but it certainly tries to be fair. No more headshots because my hacked client claims so.

1 Like
19

Where is the superstition about what I typed there? Saying that sounds so out there in space. Kind of like the goofy lore of HotS…

20

While this is funny and all, sometimes I wonder with how easy some enemies are to take down.

However with WoW, it’s actually happening. Of course it’s clear and open, and just a test version first, but I absolutely suspect that classic might get AI groups as well eventually. (Group finder works for a while, but at some point it won’t.)

Mandatory meme: You are all just a simulation anyway.
I mean… these days it’s hard to tell whether it was some good GPT or a human, unlike 20 years ago. And see my above post, just like Westworld Season 2, Blizzard is observing us. I mean, was, before the bots took over. It’s not impossible to have various AI generations, some of which are absolutely capable.

I’m sure I can convince Minky by casually dropping one term: Nazeebo player. :wink:

2 Likes