Blizzard's MM is bad and is not going to keep new players

General Discussion
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Just got out of a match where Blizzard decided it was a good new player experience to pit a level 8 against a team full of high levels (that felt like a pre-made)

I knew your MM was trash Blizzard but is that seriously your retention strategy?

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But account lvl is pretty meaningless.

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Man, you must be special for Blizzard to personally give you a one-sided match!

You go to the Nexus for Fame and Glory. You think that will come easy?

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What retention strategy? Are there really people in 2022 who haven’t noticed nobody at the company cares about how HotS is doing? The game is maintained with the bare minimum of bug fixes.

The team gets no resources for new heroes, maps, events etc.

It’s a classic like Diablo 2 at this point. They aren’t trying to actively grow the game, it’s just being kept online.

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Sad truth. Sad facts. :sob:

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There is a new player queue in QM (where you only get to play cursed hollow). Gl finding 10 new players at the same time though (and even if you do - 8/10 will be “new” smurfs - game is pretty old by now and there really aren’t that many genuinely new players playing at the same time) :P. If it doesn’t happen in X time, you’ll be put in general queue and be matched just by your mmr.

There’s really nothing more that could or should be done. If you’re really really new and bad, it won’t take long to tank your mmr anyway.

P.S. Hots matchmaker is actually exceptionally good.

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Dont expect any inteligence idea in game where devs are not inteligent.

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There isn’t enough new players to make a full new player game experience. I remember when I started back in 2016-17, I only got matched with levels 10 or less for a while, so definitely not a MM problem.

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I’d almost wish that they either stop making updates entirely or make more minor adjustments rather than huge changes.

It’s really annoying when they blow certain heroes or talents out of proportion but it takes ages for them to fix it cuz they got like 1 or 2 people working on Hots during their lunch breaks or whatever.

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Its simple. Blizz chose ‘lower queue waiting times’ over ‘quality matchups’. This is primarily due to appease high levels players who (because there are fewer of them) would have much higher wait times than the rest of us.

I wait about 1 - 1.5 minutes for a QM match which has a 50/50 chance of either being a close matchup… or absolutely atrocious. Not great, but it aint gonna change either.

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Level really doesn’t mean anything. A lot of high level players have no idea what they’re doing, and likely play mostly vs AI.

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Just got beaten by a lvl 1 smurf account in a 4 stack. Was fun losing to him while my team was all playing like zombies.

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blizzard must ban more players for oponents reports. Then will by more new account and more low lvls…

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Not really true. When matching role comps were introduced in late 2018 to Hots in QM, these forums and Reddit were flooded with people complaining about increased queue times. You didn’t need to have a high QM MMR to be impacted by the changes. So they rolled the changes back, the people spoke and the Devs listened.

You’re right that they combined TL/HL into what became SL in part due to queue times, but it again was more a player population issue at all levels of play. Of course longer queue times were a problem for those Diamond and above, but really it’s a symptom of ranked mode that has always been the least popular PVP mode after URD.

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Yes, there is a vocal minority that consists of mostly high-level players that spend a lot of time on these forums. I would bet the ratio of high level players on this forum far exceeds the ratio of high level players overall.

I wait about a 1 to 1.5 minutes to get into some horribly lopsided games. I’d gladly wait 3-5 minutes for a good game instead of wasting 20 minutes in a one-sided stomp.

I doubt it was the average player that wanted their terrible games back. It was the high level players complaining they spend 10 minutes in the queue waiting for a game. Its just math… the fewer number of players there are at your level, the longer its going to take the matchmaker to put a balanced game together.

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  1. The “terrible” part is debatable.
  2. Actually they did. Ppl from every rank came here to complain about queue times. But mostly those complained who play mostly QM.

Play SL? You’ll get standardized comps more often than in QM, with less mmr gaps within teams. Both of these are the “more quality” you are looking for.

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If I asked: What would you rather waste… 3-5 minutes in queue or 20 minutes in game? And they said “20 minutes in game!” I’d have a hard time taking them seriously.

Yes, I sadly solo-queue in SL. Its painful. In the last 2 weeks I dropped an entire level playing with teammates addicted to fighting short-handed. So many throws. :frowning_face: (Maybe thats why I come off as overly-bitter on this forum)

But that goes to my point. People go to SL and wait 8-10 minutes in a draft to play a quality matchup game. So I believe waiting 3-5 minutes is nothing. Especially when its so easy to multi-task while in queue.

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18

This right here.

I have a theory that there are 2 kinds of players: The kind that just wants to play and the kind that wants to play to win.

  • The First kind of player wants faster queues because his fun is from simply playing (non-competitive). His wasted time is the 3-5 minutes in queue. He doesn’t care about the game quality as that’s not how he has “fun”. So for him: Less time in queue = More time for fun.

  • The second kind (like myself) has fun by doing everything they can to win when they play (competitive). If the game is unwinnable or unlosable, the game is not fun. There has to be a challenge with a somewhat equally reasonable possibility of success or failure (fairness). Or else, they are effectively wasting 20+ minutes in a dreadful game. So for this type of player : More time in queue = Better Matchup = More Fun times.

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It’s actually quite sad how many “high player level” players there are in the 500-1500 range that have a 20% winrate and play like they have never been in a match before. Like its almost embarrassing…I cant even keep track of how many bad Raynors, Jainas and Illidans i have come across…New player or not, listen to the pings and use some common sense lmao. 80% of this game is just watching the mini-map and using common sense/ map awareness.

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This, in my opinion, is completely wrong.

Between your two types, I would fit into this category, yet it doesn’t match at all.
I play in order to win; but unlike you, I can still enjoy the game even if I’m not winning or end up losing.
That’s why we don’t put so much emphasis on “long queues = better matches” as it is a rather weirdly misaligned concept. You can have long queues that are super unbalanced and onesided and short queues that are super balanced and fair.

I would say that the bigger problem in the playerbase is your type. You put so much emphasis on victory in a game where you’re meant to have an approximately 50% winrate, ideally.
That means that your type of player doesn’t enjoy 50% of his matches, no matter what, since you will never enjoy your losses. It doesn’t surprise me that you’re unsatisfied with the game if you by definition don’t enjoy ½ of your time spent in Heroes of the Storm, unlike players like me that can enjoy the game regardless of outcome.

There is also the problem in your type of player in that they often tend to assume things prematurely and stop playing. In other words, at some point in time, you arrive at the conclusion that “this game is no longer winnable” = “This game is no longer fun” = “time to stop playing entirely” which often translates into whining or blaming the time, like typing “gg” 4 minutes into the game or blaming the healer or whatever the deal is.
Meanwhile I will keep playing to 100% of my ability to the very end of the game. And I would often tell my teammates who start saying “gg” or “let them push” that we can still win, and plenty of times so has it caused a turnaround.
This is also the reason that I prefer HotS over the competitor MOBAs that have surrender functions as surrender functions are directly pandering to “No fun if losing” types. Surrendering is both boring and poor sportsmanship. To me so is it boring to surrender just because of strong adversity and it’s annoying when your the one that has had great success and suddenly the name is over before you can enjoy your hard fought advantage cuz the enemy surrendered.

An ideal player is meant to be able to shake the hands of the opponent that won and say “Good match!”

Imagine if surrendering was commonplace in professional sports.
“Alright, this soccer match that was supposed to last 90 minutes only lasted 12 minutes because one team decided to surrender the moment the enemy team were up 2 points.”

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