Exciting potential for HotS? APAM?

General Discussion
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After reviewing the general forum participation and combined with consistency of development through the PTR’s, it’s come to my attention that HotS might receive that one update soon. The update where it really changes the delivery and reception of the game. I am very aware that this could be wishful thinking, but at least ARAM matches are steady >20 second queue times 24 HOURS. That’s pretty amazing. Games feel great and the pace feels very good for the time invested. I can pretty much assume that matches will be >20 minutes and I get to really see what I can apply to 3-character option ARAM. Certainly, we sometimes get that one trio where we might not totally desire to play that roster, but i know there are people that do like those characters. It’s a really well balanced game for the most part with constant PTR development.

Aram is so great, that it proposes the idea: APAM, Ranked APAM. “All Pick All Middle” will cause the game to be far more centralized around its own current theme: team participation. Team participation is already heavily incentivized due to shared XP. Integrating choice will allow players to enjoy their favorite characters and customizations more often.

I would love to see what other people think about this potential? What are your thoughts for the future of Heroes of the Storm?

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Getting another mode, especially a ranked one, is probably off the table.

Online matchmakers want to hit a certain threshold of players to, on average, be able to quickly sort players into games. Typically estimating the players needed to fill a game can be calculated by multiplying a number of variables together.

  • Number of players for one game
  • Estimated game length (for those players to enter matching again)
  • Ping divisions (servers or regions)
  • Required roles to fill
  • Game modes (that split available players in queue)
  • Rank/Skill limitations

10 players, ~ 20 minutes gameplay, arguably 6 regions, 5 roles, 3 modes, and maybe 0 skill limitations (qm and aram can skirt mmr, and ranked has been doing rainbow matches, so that might also be a non-factor)

10 * 20 * 6 * 5 * 3 = 18,000 needed players for matching. I don’t mind that number as is as HP could be mathed to indicate some 10,000 - 20,000 players that fill the games for the replays that get without consideration for AI, custom, and inhouse players that aren’t available in the queue.

Now this is numbers plugged to estimate a needed playerbase, but if blizzard has the numbers of available players, then they can cut features to try to suit the available players instead: reduce playable modes, reduce ‘required’ roles, reduce rank restrictions, etc etc. That’s clearly some of the approach they’ve taken to the game from before, and it’d probably also influence their considerations to add more features that divide the available playerbase.

If we add a mode, and a ‘ranked’ at that, that means there needs to be more players for the mode, and more players to fill the ranks to make that ‘mean’ something.

The ‘3’ factor above (game modes) upgrades to 4, so the ~ 18,000 gets bumped to 24,000. If ‘ranks’ are supposed to mean anything, then that needs 3 filter/factors there for mmr separations (bottom tier, average tier, high tier) so the game would need 72k players to comfortably include a new mode.

Granted, it could be argued that HeroesProfile is on the low-end of player representation, and these models equalize region distribution (which doesn’t happen) but it is still just an estimate one could make for determining server load, queue wait estimation, play duration of the ‘average’ player, and so on.

The game would need a bigger, and better hook to pull in, and retain, a jump in the demand of regular players to support this move, and blizz/microsoft would want to see more profit from the game to justify the demands for making something to pull back in those sort of players, and keep them regular.

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So, unranked draft but on one lane?

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I really like this analysis a lot. I have never thought of this perspective, and it makes good sense. My immediate thought is that there would need to be sufficient advertisement to introduce APAM with no ranked. I think this would be the best route as the number increase wouldn’t have to be that substantial by your math. Retention would then be the concern? Most efficient method of retention with minimal coding for this particular game?

Thank you so much for the depth of your post.

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