To be honest, I agree. I don’t care for guilds, I don’t think there are enough players or enough interest. But it would be neat to see that change.
2: MM redesign. 100%. I would love to see a triple tier method. MMR, role balance, and player level. I’ll frequently get games with someone who is 1000-1500 ranks ahead of me, and that creates nothing but false positives in the mmr because that person has a severe number of hours ahead of me. Maybe that’s only on a select few heroes, meaning they’re even more skilled with those heroes than I will ever be. Than our entire comp will ever be (not literally but practically).
The MMR problem, I find, is that I don’t care about a loss if it’s a game with solid play by both teams. If the game play is good, the win or loss is irrelevant. This happens so rarely now that the punishment for losses, trolls, potatoes, and impossible comps makes it incredibly difficult to get out of a losing streak. The games get progressively worse, which makes each game harder to win based on circumstance not skill level, and thus you’re never advancing your skill set because most games are a loss: you’re almost never actually playing against an equal player-base, only the perceived player base in terms of MMR.
Enforce a stricter MM in terms of hero role (not 100% rigid). For instance, align hero types in the comp. I’ll often get a game with 4 squishy ranged assassins with limited mobility, against a composition of assassins with hyper-mobility. No point. On paper, the role match is 100% balanced, in practice there’s no reason to play that match. So, code the MM to balance mobility vs immobility. If someone goes tracer, the other team should match an Illidan or valla or genji, rather than KT/KT and a Jaina. I have no issue with long wait times, generally, and I tend not to play the same 5 op assassins.
I feel like the reward system could be managed. Someone mentioned there’s nothing you can’t get for free, which is neat. But maybe give the MVP a free chest. Getting an up-vote gives an extra 100 shards. This stuff is mostly cosmetic, takes forever to gather for expensive cosmetic upgrades anyway, and would support a healthier player interaction. And, in the case of chests, the rate at which I get anything meaningful (a legendary skin or mount) is so low that more often than not, when I do get a legendary or epic, it’s one that I already have. Maybe increase the ratio at which you’ll get a new epic or legendary compared to ones you’ve already collected. The base drop rate is rare enough that it will hardly effect a 100% collection, and new stuff is released regularly anyway.
The other most effective change that could be made is to remove AI and QM. The AI is so ineffectual that practice there is pointless: the AI is useless that it will never reflect a real player, hence you learn nothing. QM is so often unbalanced and toxic that most of those games will prove to be a waste of time within the first 2-4 minutes (a worthwhile game is, in my experience, obvious from player interaction: attitude, positive or non-negative chat, attempting to not feed, etc…). In this regard, QM is my go-to run around and try stuff because it doesn’t matter.
This means that the only relevant modes of play where trying is fun and valuable are Brawl and Storm League. Unranked for draft-based play, which should help to enforce a little more comp balance by player direction, rather than an inept MMR-based MM. Brawl cause the random aspect throws the game into a loop, sometimes, and is often less toxic (in my experience). And Storm League if you want to play the real game.
