I am a long-time player of HOTS, and getting my ranked score obliterated by trolls, bots, newbies, and more, I must congratulate you. I recently started playing on my secondary account to climb the ranks once again only to find myself surrounded by more trolls, bots, and newbies (this was expected). I am astonished by poor new player experience. Quite literally, every game is a hodge-podge of random heroes that never make an acceptable team. From double tank to all “specialist” new players never have a chance to experience the game for what it is. As a veteran player, I am finding it quite difficult to play this game in its current state and I am sure that new players walk away after their first match. Below are some suggestions that I hope you can implement to improve the experience.
Improve the match making experience across the board, take advantage of the “favorite role” settings to select players and ensure that QM games are equal or force a draft like every other MOBA game.
Improve in-game reporting and post-game reporting. Reporting needs to actually work, there are far to many trolls and toxic players in lower ranks that destroy the fun that this game once was. While their anger may be justified due to the poor match making experience, it just adds another layer of pain to this game.
New players should be required to play X number of games against AI (assuming number 1 is fixed, otherwise showing them what a good team comp is like makes no sense if it is never possible in QM).
We don’t want to play against or with the same people back-to-back for hours. Please stagger the games so this no longer happens. There are a lot of smurfs in this game that take advantage of the lower ranked games and QM.
QM games should look at player skill, it isn’t fun being matched up against a bunch of new players as a veteran, and it isn’t fun being a new player matched up against of team of veterans.
I had a few more but am drawing a blank so I will just leave these here. HOTS has been an amazing game when paired with the right players, however, when queueing solo it is a complete nightmare. You’ve failed to see any growth in this game because you’re pushing the new players away with trolls, toxic players, and bad systems. I know that HOTS has been placed in “legacy” mode like other games, but I ask that you re-consider this change as this game has a TON of potential. There is NO other MOBA game like it, in HOTS you really get to focus on your skill as a player and team rather than playing for yourself and having to worry about which items to buy next.
Lack of players makes this impossible. It’s inevitable to meet the same players over and over especially during off-hours, or at any hours on a smaller server.
For #3, there is already a ‘new player prison’ for people who only started playing HotS recently or have returned from a multi-year break. They are forced to play Cursed Hollow for about 10-20 games until they get a hang of the game again.
Double tank… That’s not a hodgepodge team, that’s a very valid composition
Reports work, but take an immense mass of reports to actually ban someone (for feeding, so many that the player can continue for months of years).
Trolls, feeders, afkers can continue their antisocial behavior practically forever now that the game has so few players (and therefore reporters) left. Even if they do get the banhammer, they have a new account up and running in a few days.
I don’t support #1 personally - I love HoTS the most with a Draft, but it needs to have a casual mode where you can jump in instantly as well. I have no access to any kind of fresh statistics (besides heroesprofile), but I’d assume QM is still by a wide margin the most played mode.
Forcing a draft in QM would (in my opinion) drive away what little remains of the large bulk of the player base.
just saying, valve made algorithms for detecting and banning smurfs in dota 2 by the manner of their gameplay
if they have way too high apm, kd ratio and optimal actions for the mmr they play in → banned after the match on the spot
the smurfs wont appeal, the account is fresh and they know customer support will not lift the ban upon reviewing the game replay and action log proving beyond a doubt they are not a new player
i know hots does not get updates beyond bug fixes or balance changes anymore and does not have resources for such a system, but it can be done
its something that preferably should have been implemented during the first years of the game
QM games are meant to be chaotic, random and filled with people messing around. There is a reason they are not ranked… MMR does still count but due to player choices it is not really possible to match fairly, especially in a reasonable time to be considered “quick”.
If they acted on every report, everyone would be banned for petty reasons.
If a person really is trolling or really is throwing then chances are they will eventually be banned. One person thinking they are doing so is not enough evidence. The number of times I have seen people demanding a player be reported for those things despite not doing them…
Does not matter. New players have new player protection so should not show up in any serious matches. If you do see them that would point towards your account having very low QM MMR. Exception is ARAM which has no match making at all, you can see level 0 players there, but ARAM is ARAM (used to be another casual mode).
Take advantage of them to do what? Get back to being high ranked and face the correct opponents?
Staggering games might increase matching time which defeats the purpose of quick match. As it is the match maker of QM is quite loose to allow for quick searches.
It already does. However QM and even each hero of a player has a different MMR from ranked. These MMRs are all rough estimates and there can be large compromises to allow for fast matching times. If you do want to play seriously play ranked, not QM. QM is literally meant for people to mess around in and learn to play heroes.
Considering the games dwindling population do you have any idea how long queue’s will be with this setting, I assure you if you want to play this game you have no idea what you are asking for with this.
I agree, but again not only is the game in maitnance mode but the manpower this would remove from the queues at this point in the game would only speed up the dying process this game is in.
It is unfortuante but we are in the end days of this game, enjoy what’s left or step away gracefully but you’re better served not getting emotional about it, consolidate your happy memories of this game and send it off happpily
There’s no point in shutting down a game just cause it went into the “Blizzard Pile of Dead Games”. There’s always gonna be people who want to play it. Plus, there’s always the slight chance that someone will buy a few gems and make them a bit of extra cash.
Yea you right. SC2 dont get any updates now but is still played by alot. Same for D2 servers there are still people playing on those servers 20 years later. Hots will just be like those games. It will stay the same and only get a few balance/bug fixed twice a year. Blizzard are not gonna shut down any of thier old games.
Actually i don’t notice any difference compared to months ago. I still enjoy the game and I don’t see the point why people asking the game to be shut down. Just leave the game yourself instead?
