It’s not the MM’s fault if your mmr is that close to the starting value
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Wait, did a bunch of posts just get deleted?
Could’ve sworn they disappeared just as I was finishing up a post.
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Mods indiscriminately purge entire topics rather than reading through them.
They didn’t purge the topic, though. They just removed a bunch of troll posts and responses to the troll.
If the post has nothing to do with the topic or just scream troll they will likely get deleted by the mods.
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This is true for ranked only. But the game has QM and unranked as well plus the non-existence of any sort of smurf queue is just bad.
It’s overall the worst MM in the market and the only excuse they have is the shrinking number of players. But guess what one of the reasons is?
Hots should have a dedicated New Player only Queue, which not so incidentally is the point of the OP’s post. Hots should have a Smurf only Queue, it should have guilds and clans and AFK loss forgiveness in ranked…
The thing is, if you’re someone who has been paying attention since 2018, you know that Hots is on a shoestring budget. The only content we get over the past two years is hero balance patches with reworks that aren’t even that extensive, with some new skins added here and there. From everything we know about the internal problems in Blizzard, we are probably very lucky we get this much. Blizzard can’t even fix a bug with their own client that has been an issue for 2 months now, this is something that I can never recall happening in all my years playing Blizzard games.
My point is, I can make detailed posts of what I think should be changed in Hots, but it’s most likely wasted time. Something big will have to change before the current Blizz Classic Dev team will be able to make significant changes to Hots.
Hots is already and old game on life support, as much as I hope Microsoft will do something to revive it, as noted, it’s an old game. Nobody is exactly sure when MS will be taking over or how much autonomy they will give to Activision or Blizzard, or if they will simply absorb them.
I hope they will keep Hots alive at this point and my feeling is if MS takes over in say 2023/24, they would be more likely to develop a new version of Hots (or not) than pour more money into what will then be an almost decade old title.
This has pretty much always been the case. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mod team has been reduced along with all other staff. We don’t even have a community manager or QA posters here anymore. I’ve had posts removed and not informed why, I think almost everyone has.
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but how to fix this? only way is more players. How to get more players? better MM amongst more marketing and etc.
It’s like when you’re young you’re applying for a job but the job requires experience. You’re like how do i get experience without a job? lol
Hopefully MS will initiate a Blizzard MOBA 2.0. I don’t call it HOTS 3.0 because I’m not sure if that would be a good idea since it doesn’t sound like something new. The MOBA market is too big to ignore it and MS and Activision don’t compete as well.
Yes I agree. Maintenance Mode is the most contra productive aspect currently, but those issues with MM (see Minkys post above) existed also while they had the normal budget. It was never priority to them and with less and less players and more and more smurfs the technology behind shows how bad it is compared to other games.
When LoL introduced remake (leavers) and smurf queues or other things they were all good in terms of gaming experience for new players or less frequent players for whom every win/lose matters. HOTS sadly doesn’t offer anything. Back in the days the management thought loot boxes and sprays are more important.
HotS had a lot more players when it launched, so why did most people leave?
We lost most of the more “hardcore” types because the game had a “casual” tag used to market it. The most competitive game modes were not easily accessible and manageable. Lack of tools in game made the competitive scene never take off, in favor of faster matches for “casuals”. Lost lots of people from being bored of the game because of that.
- Stuck in an endless cycle of what seems like pre-determined wins and losses because the matchmaker’s match quality is just that poor. Because in HotS, being the best player gives you a much smaller advantage than the worst player gives you a disadvantage. First team to make a mistake late game usually loses and if you have the worst player out of 10 on your team, odds are, that the mistake will be done by the team with that player on it. Statistically. Which leads to the “forced 50” conspiracy, because over long periods of time, the player feels as if his winrate is more based on luck than his own skill (proportionally).
So anyways, what I wanted to say was that more players won’t fix the matchmaker, because more players doesn’t mean an even spread of accurately ranked players. The way the matchmaker works needs to change from the current rules to a role/hero performance. Basically PBMMR, but done correctly, with proper exceptions for very high and low ranks, not just a 1-rule fits all.
What we need is basically a skill based modifier to our rank points wins and losses to allow for faster rank mobility. SO that smurfs can get to their actual skill level faster without ruining too many games and so that the incompetent/competent players a placed with their true equals faster than simply relying on wins and losses which takes hundreds of games to even begin being an accurate representation of you skill compared to the playerbase to be used for matchmaking purposes.
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HotS did lose enough of its hardcore types, but I’d say you got the reason wrong. Your average ‘hardcore type’ didn’t delve into HotS in the first place because it is more team oriented (less solo potential), had more ‘casual’ tag to it. The ‘HotS hardcore type’, left more or less because of one reason, the scrapping of pro scene (can’t believe you left that out).
The real pros (in a literal way, the HGC ones. while Blizz didn’t pay a lot of money as salary, with streaming, could make some money), enough of them, had little reason to stay once HGC money was cut. This made a vacuum in the top scene, which was filled by the lower skilled players, still the upper level players compare to majority of the playerbase, but not in the level of the top of the top pros. This made game quality worse for the tops, making them leave even more. This rippled down all through Rank, dropping overall quality everywhere.
Having bigger playerbase will definitely help. You seemed to expect overall quality improving in a week/a month or something, if there were more players. Doubt that’s how it works. Just like how vacuum in top of the top scene took time to ripple down to lower bracket, this too will take time in rippling through evenly (the even spread of accurately ranked players).
But I don’t see playerbase increasing happening, not unless MS decides to do something, which is more than a 1 year away if the deal indeed goes through.
All good and dandy, but looks more like ideal dream chasing to me. I’m pretty sure every MM system in PvP multiplayer game has been trashed by players as ‘terrible’. If there is a perfect MM system, there would be already. All we can expect is to minimize the bad experience, and having bigger playerbase is the first step to it imo.
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because that’s not what made people quit, that was a reaction by acti/blizzard to their pro scene not making them any money, they even had a game on national TV sports network for crying out loud. People quitting (losing potential $) + Pro scene losing money = Acti/blizz pulls the plug because it’s unsustainable.
After that, game is dead and HotS 2.0 comes out, removing the need to spend a dollar in game (really dumb move blizz…) to get the cool cosmetics you want. Game population spikes up a bit on 2.0 launch and within a year afterwards, it was obvious that there was “SOMETHING” wrong with the matchmaker (It was a problem even before that, but it was now more pronounced). The MM giving too many “bad games” lead to people getting frustrated and leaving, making the MM even harder to sustain that level of game quality within the appropriate time frame. A Viscous cycle. Created by the initial unsustainability of the game’s monetization and miscalculated anticipated revenue vs actual revenue of the pro scene and general playerbase.
That’s just untrue, major fallacy here, never assume that.
This here is true, it’s all we can do with the current way things work.
I don’t disagree that a larger playerbase will greatly increase game quality overall, but to be sustainable and allowed to grow, we cannot have a system that only works with a high game population, that would be ridiculous… The system used needs to work to create a “minimum standard of quality insurance”. So that regardless of the game’s health, it won’t take every player playing hundreds of games to be “placed” in their right rank/skill level. All these bad games created, create these ripples throughout the playerbase and that is enough to drive some players away when most of their games are a 1-way stomp.
Fix the game first, and then the new/returning players that come/come back, might just stay and help build up the HotS community even more! Allowing for an even more diverse and consistent game experience at all levels of play.
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I think your biggest misconception/misunderstanding in all this is (which led you to the wrong conclusion), you seemed to be not considering the time line of the events that occurred.
For instance, HotS 2.0 came out in April, 2017 according to my search. HGC was cancelled at the end of 2018 (not coming back in 2019). The game wasn’t ‘dead’, or started dying until the HGC cancellation (of course the symptom, impact we felt/saw it some months later, but it wasn’t farfetched to claim it was that what caused/started it).
Hence,
, there is no logic in this (as HotS definitely got worse some months later HGC cancellation → pros leaving, and obvious decline in playerbase).
Besides, according to one of the forum member (iirc), LoL didn’t make any money from pro scene as well. So, not making money from pro scene is not something out of the ordinary (Activision-Blizz just didn’t wanted to continue on it).
More pronounced, sure. But again, MM in PvP multiplayer will always be trashed on, so it’s not evidence of anything. Whatever the problem of MM was back then, it was the usual from every other game, and not the reason for suddenly HotS becoming like this.
Just being realistic. Anyone can come and make the perfect MM system there is if they want. Let’s see if there isn’t complaint about the poor MM (as you can guess, I doubt it. basically human nature).
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It’s not about that. It’s using the current game population and actively model a matchmaker around increasing the game quality of the current active playerbase, adjust as needed as more players come back consistently. As I said, there is no 1-size fits all set of matchmaking rules that exist that can accurately represent a non-1v1 contest’s player’s skill. The system needs to use it’s data and identify patterns that lead to a high probability of the match made being “bad” and not make that match. Increasing queue times. Because I’d rather wait and waste 2-3 more minutes in queue for a good game than wait under 1 minute to waste 20+ minutes in a game that is impossible to win/lose.
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It is my opinion that HotS has bigger than usual downside in this compare to other MOBAs. It is more team oriented and thus have less solo carry potential (is there any other MOBA like this?). MMR averaging, rainbow games are not preferable, but still can be bearable/cope-able if not for that. Less skilled players in your team, less skilled players in the other team. you can play so you can take advantage of it. Much less capable in HotS so.
That may not be programmatically possible (in a reasonable sense that fits gaming MM), because in the end, ‘match made being bad’ is subjective and more result-oriented perception/thinking. If you’re not asking for some machine learning that evaluates human psyche, predicting at what situation, at what comp, against/with what type of players (their behavior, hero pick tendency) certain individual may play ‘bad’, and thus avoid that individual being teamed up with other individual, how do you propose a matchmaker solve what you’re asking?
In the end, MMR is still the simplest, and perhaps most cost efficient, method of matching a game. It won’t stop certain players from derping unintentionally at some games.
Continuing on with what I said in other thread, that depends on ‘how long’. What if it can’t find a game that suits your definition of good MM in +2-3 minutes? Will you wait 20 minutes? We just don’t know if MM was reasonable or not because we don’t know how many players around your MMR were que-d up at the same time as you (and believe me, I wish I do. there is some fascination in knowing stuff that fits the puzzle).
Theoretically yes, but to make a good pbmm u’d have to basically teach the ai how to play properly at a certain mmr, so can’t rly count on it. If they did ban who gets boosted for ruining games tho, that could help
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I’ve pointed that out, though I don’t think I’m the only one to do so. LoL loses money on it’s big events, but it is good publicity for the game that is made up elsewhere. (not the mosel HotS should have used and def not the collection to back it as it is)
HotS has the issue of poor monitization at unsustainable costs, even before 2.0 While we don’t have numbers on what was going into the game, the upper-heads too the investor position to cut costs in favor of short-term goals that have been shown now to hurt blizzard collectively.
The backlash was probably worse with how HGC was shut down; even if staff “saw the writing in the wall” and expected things to not continue, the conflicting statements for having that one nore year or end it now has hard convinced many that the game was “dead” esp in conjunction with how the annoucement was phrased.
Regardless of player perception of the game (1 billion or not) a lot of the bad calls were in regards to the investment perspective taking the wrong approach at a poorly planned time table. From what statements have come out in recent months, that wasn’t a one-off concern and that’s part of the issue of having a circle of bosses that don’t care about the product details, they just want to follow a trend for a bottom-line that effectively sabotages a game with their incompetence.
The main flaw for HotS mmr has been a lack of specific metrics for players to track as “skill”. When many players are potatoes, the sorting system doesnt really matter since someone is goingto climb and pervade ranks with the wrong understanding of the game. Without a sinple tl;dr on what makes a play demonstrate “skill” players aren’t impressed by what works, imitate the correct things, and instead develop a series of bad habits and fault-finding.
Having a better intro experience might train starting players better, but many just assume they’ve already “mastered” the game, so faults of “imbalanced matches” has to be a product of the stystem for sorting, and not the collective understanding of a bad playerbase. Progression is assume to come by playing the game enough (like loot from wow/diablo) rather than by some other metric.
Functionally, it probably doesnt matter id the game has the best matching, and it won’t change much if someone completely overhauls the matching and player perception remains the same. People would need to have some “skill” for the system to evaluate that into “fair matches” instead of the race-to-the-bottom that contaiminates the game.
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I doubt blizzard cares about bringing in new players to HOTS. This game is in maintenance mode and if anything will only slowly decline. This game cannot be financially sustainable with skins being able to be purchased with shards. Especially when the devs don’t add new skins people can easily save up shards for skins that they want.
When it comes to match making there are a ton of different factors when it comes to MM in quick match. If people are playing heroes they don’t normally play or have a low win rate with then they will be matched with lower skilled players. Also keep in mind this is HOTS. The MM probably couldn’t find players around your skill level so it threw you in with whatever it could find.
But i have noticed with Blizzard games specifically that i rarely ever get a close match in HOTS or OW. Most of the time it is just a blow out where my team just destroys the enemy or vis versa. I also play Smite regularly and i don’t experience that nearly as often. Most of the time it is a close match.
quoted for truth. We did have alot more players at one time i had several real life friends played but all of them quit also. Mostly it was due to exactly what you’ve said.
I think the matchmaker is some what fair in a sense either team has the chance to receive the “worst player” of the match. So while it is technically balanced, it IS some what of a slot machine and losing this way doesn’t FEEL good.
I’ve only had a few matches where Ive lost and said man that was a good match! It’s usually more frustrating losses like that 1 guy just off doing his own thing.
I think this is the main issue, the losses don’t feel like a good loss. It’s because lack of population and the vast skill level differences between players. It ends up in 1 way stomps and players have gotten used to seeing this so much now they just give up from the beginning.
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Truth?
We need to define our range and values. Like are we talking about the best/worst in general or just in specific matches?
Like let’s say the average player, on a spectrum of -50-50, is 0. The worst is -50, the best is 50. Let’s say Fan, who is accepted as one of our best is 50. Obviously the worst with -50 is from B5. Now he carried himself out of B5 multiple times, given he had potential matches where his allies are all the “worst”. Meaning that his positive (being the “best”) “fought” against 4 negatives (the “worsts”), which should be impossible if the 1 best loses against 1 worst, since it’s 4 times as bad.
But if we say that “the worst” depends on the rank you play on, then there were not 4 but 1 worst, which “lost” against the best, since their team won. The worst got carried.
We can say that it’s harder to counter the worst under 50 (“I’m not Fan, Fan is an unfair standard”), but even +30 is a greater positive than -10 a negative impact, meaning there exists matches, when the “worst” has less negative impact than the “best”.
So that “truth” is just completely made up. Not representing reality, more like a rant.
No one can claim that they’re good, but “the worst” (who is not that bad) holds them back all the time, that “the worst” has a bigger impact than “the best”, since “the best” climb.
Now the MM doesn’t know who’s the best/worst (not talking on how there are always a maximum and a minimum value), just that “these have skills close to each other” (mmr, which has nothing with the ±50 I used). If the MM doesn’t know which team gets who, just that they should perform similarly, it cannot force.
And humans don’t perfirm consistently, so the “best” can sometimes be the “worst”, which is so unpredictable that no algorithm can work with such varience and uncertainty.
So nope, it’s not truth. Just feels we want to justify to avoid reality.
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