ok Blizz, i get that ARAM isn’t intended to be balanced, but could you atleast try to distribute players more fairly so that the total ranks of each team are as close as possible?
last game on my team was several 100ish players and 2 1000ish players,
the enemy team (which wasn’t premade) was composed of 2 1500+ players and 3 2000-3000 players.
the combined rank of our team was about 2.5k, the combined rank of their team was about 10k.
why not distribute the ranks more fairly?
put the highest level player on team A,
the second highest on team B,
the third highest on team A,
the fourth highest on team B and work down like that,
A, B, A, B, A, B, all the way down.
yes i know that rank isn’t everything and smurfs exist, but it is a good indicator of how much time a person has spent playing HotS.
an actual non-smurf 100 won’t have the same experience that someone pushing rank 3000 has, that is just a fact.
so when the game piles all of the 2000-3000 players on one team it is pretty much doomed before it has began!
can we sort this out plx? thanks!
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That example does seem really bad, but try to be optimistic. I’ve had plenty of games like that, where the enemy team is much higher, and my team still won.
I’ve also had teammates that were 1000s of levels higher than me, but they fed the whole game and contributed very little. Time spent playing matters, but not as much as people think.
I don’t believe there’s any matchmaking around MMR or level in Brawl, and I agree that there should be a little more effort put into it.
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yup i’m not after anything like matchmaking or MMR,
its aram, it should stay as just whoever is queueing at the time 
but when it has its 10 players, it should then just simply split them as evenly as possible 
there should never be a case were it sticks all of the experienced players on one team 
shouldn’t be too complicated for them to do :-3
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Levels are not ranks. I am nearly level 1,500 but currently have no rank.
I had the exact same thing a few weeks ago. I was the highest level on my team, while the entire enemy team was considerably higher than me. No pre-mades on either side. Last week I also had a level 1 (they became 2) player for 2 games in a row on my team.
I think it truly is just random. However I would not mind seeing at least some attempt at MMR be added to it since these matches are sad sometimes. No way to carry a level 2 (player total level) Genji who keeps suiciding and ends up with fewer kill, and less hero damage and 13 more deaths than Auriel.
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Meh, it’s still a lose-lose situation IMO.
So if they do it your way, it looks fair because the visible information is the account level. There could be situations where some of the low level players are familiar with MOBAs or Smurf accounts. Also, high level players that have and always will be Bronze with no intention of improving. Balancing levels may inadvertently place all the good players on one team.
Since MMR is not visible but level is, a truly balanced match may not look like it to players. I don’t believe Blizzard will decide to make MMR public. Maybe they would rather hide account level.
In summary: Would you rather have a match that looks fair but isn’t, or is fair but doesn’t look like it?
Ironically, random team assignments is completely fair and balanced over a large sample size. Not so much for individual games though.
yes they could be a smurf and have skills in other mobas,
but chances are they are simply level 100, and not a smurf.
they know some stuff in the game but not everything, they have yet to learn all of the talents/abilities from every hero etc…
but the level 3000 that they’re up against DOES know everything about this game,
he knows his team mates and enemies abilities, talents, strengths and weaknesses.
his years of playtime have given him knowledge of every inch of this game.
it would be very easy for blizz to simply spread the levels as fairly as possible in a method like i mentioned above, work down from the highest level putting people on alternate teams, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2.
and the end result would be a much fairer game than pure randomness,
we already have randomness from the hero selection, we don’t need the game randomly making one team 4x as experienced as the other.
I have seen some pretty bad level 2000-3000 players. Many of them I have even caught AFK farming Elite AI to get such levels.
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In my opinion, when people use account levels for their argument about unfair teams, then they are just scapegoating. I never cared about account level of other players because it’s pretty close to a meaningless number and so far everything went pretty well for me with this game.
The need of a super good matchmaker is basically overrated. A lot comes down to the players because humans are not like robots and perform on the same level all the time. Humans are easily influenced and can act quite unpredictable. It’s not bad to face better enemies from time to time!
Matchmaking is just the easiest way to digest a loss. No need to analyze mistakes that have been made. No need to think about what should have been done differently/better. It’s almost like people don’t want to learn and get better at the game. They want to play brain afk so all they need is a perfectly working matchmaker. “I want to win by playing brain afk - fix matchmaking, gimmi opponents that i can beat!”
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That is the only reason why I sometimes preferred the Lost Cavern custom brawls, before official brawls became a thing.
The guys organizing them in gen chat would generally shuffle the teams so that they are as balanced as possible (by win rate, rank etc).
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Level is an awkward gauge of players. Sometimes they get a handful of heroes they can’t play-- Lord knows I’ve let down many games with my sloppy ranged play as I just do better as a bruiser, tank or melee 'sin. And goodness knows I’ve seen people in high actual ranks suck very hard. There’s just no way to tell. Some people are good at one or two, maybe three picks, while some are good just sort of across the board. Some may be really good, but only play seldom leading to a low level.
Unfortunately, trying to ‘balance out’ ranks in a non-ranked queue is asking a lot of questions that just don’t really have answers.
I’d rather they focus on balancing the comps a little better. You know, so not every game is decided by who could infinitely stack faster. Maybe even limit infinite stacking?
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Its so accurate its funny
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I think it’s stupid waste of time.
This is just ARAM brawl. Composition is not important. Tactics is not important. The result of this match is not important. It is just brawl.
Is someone really sad when they lose several games like this in a row?
so you don’t think that a lv 2000 knows “just a little bit” more about this game than a lv 100?
it makes a HUGE difference, people who have played the game for a long time will know every skill, every talent, and all of the strengths and weaknesses of their enemies and allies.
a lv100 still won’t know everything,
i’ve had plenty of matches were i’ve had to tell the low ranks on my team how to use their character,
i’ve had low lv ana’s who didn’t even know that they can use their trait to get piercing healing,
do you think a lv2000 account would need help with that?
or lucios picking reverse amp when there is a genji on the other team,
they don’t know about his reflect,
or KTs picking pyro when their is a medivh on the other team.
people who have played for a long time know this stuff, but newer players don’t.
and the game just seems futile when all of the high levels are piled onto one team and you’re left with the low levels on your team, running at you with Living Bomb because they don’t know what it does… 
ARAM is the only mode that i play (besides beginner AI for the speedy 4 min dailies.)
i enjoy the single lane constant teamfight, imho teamfights are the most fun part of this game,
and ARAM is a constant teamfight!
all i’m asking for is that the player experience levels be split as evenly as possible,
instead of utterly randomly as it currently is.
the characters being random is fine, thats why its ARAM!
but the experience level of each team should be balanced better.
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The account level is a single number that does not represent anything.
Just by looking at the account level, you don’t know in which game mode this level was achieved. A player that only plays vs beginner AI could be lvl2000 and would probably still be a lot worse than a lvl100 player. A player that has a lot of experience from other video games (like an ex pro from league of legends) will still be better in HOTS than most other hots players even if he’s pretty new.
You don’t even know how many games a player has played and how many different heroes by just looking at the account level. You don’t know when this player played the last time - he might leveled up to 2000 two years ago and now doesn’t know what has changed in the game since then.
Even if they would put effort in to have the same account level in each team - it would most likely not be worth it. Queue time would probably increase for no benefit.
Now please think a moment about matchmaking… There are 5 players per team. Do they all have to be the same account level or do both teams just need to have the same average account level? Because if only the team average matters, lvl 2000 players could still get matched with lvl100 players against a team full of 1050 players. Theoretically it should be fair because both teams have the same average account level but i guess you would not like it?^^ Now if all players need to have the same account level in a team, then players would not be able to queue up with friends anymore.
Seriously, what you want is unrealistic and pointless…
I think the solution is add MMR to the mode. New players would have a better time since they would be matched with other new players while more skilled players would be matched with more skilled players. The rules could be even loser than QM, and not try to balance MMR perfectly but at least some effort to balance it would be better than none.
It is not fair on anyone when a level 2 not an alt account player gets mixed in with levels 500-2,000s. They have a bad time as they get stomped by considerably more skilled opponents. Their allies do not have a fun time as they are trying to carry someone who is spending a fair amount of the game reading talents and learning basic play skills. Even their enemies do not have a fun time as they are steam rolling their opponents with little resistance.
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I don’t think ARAM needs MMR or any restrictions, this is the one mode it’s not important for. I quite like being matched vs GM’s and being challenged and sometimes beating them.
Yes you can get steamrolled, but this can happen in modes that do try to balance skill level. ARAM is just the fun mode and I like that it’s mixed up, it’s part of the appeal for me at least.
I totally get where you’re coming from and at first pass I thought it was a good idea. I think I even liked one of your comments. But upon thinking about it it probably would have next to 0 effect on the game.
I’m level 849 but my hero pool is pretty small. I think balancing out the numbers in some circumstances MIGHT actually work out to balance player experience I doubt in most cases you would ever really notice much of a difference. You would probably get better luck from group matching. (not sure if ARAM tries to match groups or not).
Sorry about your trash match though.
As far as I’m aware it doesn’t. There is supposed to be no MM rules for ARAM, personally I have no problem with this for this mode only.
If you dont play aram then you should stay out and mind yo business.
There is zero reason why aram cant or shouldnt have balanced teams. One sided games are fun for 5 out of 10. Balanced games fun for 10 out of 10.
If doesnt need to be ultra serious with high rewards in order to benefit from balanced teams. Even pick up bball games at the park try to balance teams cause its more fun for all and makes flippin sense.
We play aram for fun. Balanced teams makes it more fun. Not every mode needs pats on the as and rank points candies i can suck on and feel good about myself for getting out of bronze. We play it for fun so do things to increase it. It aint hard. Stop defending something as stupid as imbalanced teams.
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