Hello,
I have a suggestion that would significantly improve the quality of the games and help people be more prepared for Storm League. Disable QuickMatch!!! - new people don’t really learn the mechanics of the game properly through Quick Match due to the fact that both team comps are not properly balanced most of the time. This usually ends up in one-sided games, where one team will own the other team - and the losing team will have members that get salty and have players raging at each other, and often quitting/afking/grieving, resulting in an overall horrible experience where they wish they had a surrender button - because the game is just a waste of time.
By Disabling Quick Match, players will have the opportunity to play Unranked Draft instead. Since Unranked draft games don’t pop up because people by default in ANZ just queue QM, Disabling QM will direct the traffic into Unranked-Draft.
In Unranked Draft people will actually have the opportunity to draft better teams, hence game quality will be better since the games are more likely to be “Fair/balanced”. When new players have the opportunity to draft better (i.e. have a proper tank/proper healer) - they will then be able to contest objectives fairly, and learn their true value over making weird/useless decisions, such as having one random dude solo pushing or doing a camp when the objective is up. This also will facilitate the learning process of game mechanics significantly.
This means that when new players start queueing up Storm League, they will actually have an idea of what is expected of them (where to go and when). This also means that Storm League games quality will be better in the ANZ region.
Currently new players that start playing Storm League get placed at lets say “Gold 4” - then by the time they play few Storm league games and actualy learn how to play the game properly/mechanics - they will be demoted to lets say silver 4. When they try to committ to ranking up, they then get games with “new” storm league players that were initially placed at Gold 3-5 due to QM seeding. Which even makes it harder for them to rank up, since the silver player has better experience in winning the game than the newly placed Gold player.
Whats more frustrating is that the newly placed Gold player will then think they are “pro” because they have a gold banner, and will assume the role of a shotcaller/team-leader. Often making them say things such as “i know better” or “shut up u silver noob”. I’ve seen so many gold players that do not belong in gold, and get placed in gold and eventualy end up being demoted to silver5 where they get stuck there - and they would be better players by the time they reach silver/bronze.
The only downside of this change is that players won’t be able to get instant QM queues and will have to wait a few minutes before games pop. But waiting 3-5minutes for an unranked draft game will be much more worth it as the game will actualy be fun, making it worth the wait!! - I am pretty sure everyone would be happy to wait 3minutes to get a game, if it meant that the game will be fair, rather than being in a QM game that is going to be lost because of draft, which is just a big waste of time.
People then also won’t give up after 2minutes into the game as they can’t blame the “random matchmaking” since they picked their draft - and will be more likley to commit/engage/partake in the game.
If a particular player wanted to play a Healer, they should be given the option to choose the role of a healer - where they get to be placed with other members that dont opt to be a healer - i.e. there won’t be like 2 healers or 2 bruisers. Which will make the current “role preference selection” option more meaningful. This approach is kind of similar to that of League of Legends matchmaking. Speaking of which, there should also be an option to “surrender” after a certain amount of time (for example after 10minutes, or at level 16). sometimes players act so salty and negatively, that they keep trolling for the duration of the game, which is a very tilting 20minutes of everyone’s time that ruins their day and puts them in a negative mood for the next few games.
I don’t know how things are for other Servers/Region, but such a change is much needed in the ANZ region due to low player population. This change would benefit new players significantly, if they learn how to play the game early - they are more likely to succeed and enjoy the game fast enough to keep playing it. Eventauly resulting in high rates of player-retention, and making less players quit = i.e. dead region.
Also this would be a bonus, but can you make all players logging in from Australia/NZ ip-addresses automatically join the ANZ chat channel by default? (so we don’t have to keep telling ppl in games to type in /join ANZ when they are in the game-lounge) this will enrich the ANZ community experience for the ANZ players - since this game relies heavily on social-interactions/forming friends.
I wish you seriously take my suggestions into consideration since I have been playing since Alpha. And I’d like to see this game change to the better as it is, in my opinion, the best MoBa out there at the moment. But being let down by the community experience side of things in the ANZ region.
Edit: this is actually how it is in League of Legends atm, they don’t have QM games, where a random comp A vs a random comp B. as you will end up with one comp significantly better than the other that will just snowball - because this is just unfair and a complete waste of time in some games. League of legends has a much higher player pool than HoTS- so maybe we can learn a thing or two from LoL.
#MAKE_ANZ_GREAT_AGAIN!
Thank you 
The one and only,
Subkruller
