I don’t care about playing against stacks. I have an issue about playing with a 4 stack though. They just want to do their own thing and will flame you on even small mistakes. And you can mute em of course, but then you are limited to only pings as a form of coordination and communication. Typing back will just end in a bigger mess.
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I can’t believe nobody mentioned this fact yet…
They removed the ability to see enemy stack sizes years ago. Precisely to discourage people doing what OP claims to do, but…
The only way to see their stack size is in the score screen after the match.
So how can you immediately leave a game upon seeing their stack?
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You can open a whisper with players and see if they are queued with anyone but yeh thats after a match.
There are probably more than a few occasions where people mistake opponents fot stacking when they are not.
Ya, I know the whisper trick (or if the score screen is still open, in the score screen that shows the victory or defeat after leaving the MVP vote). It shows who the enemy players are grouped up with.
But OP claims he leaves immediately when he sees an opponent is stacked.
Which is impossible unless he is hacking, because Blizzard has hidden enemy stack sizes since at least 2017 or 2018, to stop people from leaving at the start of a game.
You can only see stack sizes of your own team since 5+ years ago. Not the enemys.
Replay files also show enemy stack sizes but that’s after a game has already ended.
My guess is if there intense organization within the match. Stacks tend to be very well coordinated and sometimes it is noticeable, however, it still is a guess or assumption. It can’t be verified until the end of the match via the whisper method.
Not saying a team of 5 solo’s can’t be coordinated, but coordination is probably one of the first things people look at.
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Don’t be silly. I’ve lost count how many times over the years i cued up alone, got put against a 5-stack, and cleaned house.
Just one of the bad changes they did cause they know thier MM is bad and they tried to cover it up to make sure less solo players quitted the game on loading screen.
Solos dont want to play againts groupes and groupes dont want to wait forever for a game. Then they had to do a banaid change to try and repair the dmg but failed.
Also alot of toxic 5 stacks just used 5x same portrait to taunt you on loading screen just to let you know they are a stack and you are free to afk and let them win unless you want to get b-stepped/taunted on my toxic players that hide in stacks all day beating up random qm teams with no team sync.
Oh, solos definitely do have a disadvantage vs. 5 stacks. A huge disadvantage.
But I believe Hoku posted a statistical link on that - those matches happen roughly 4 times out of 10 000.
When they do, the 5 stack has a 60% or higher chance of winning - which is a massive advantage.
So it can happen, but it is rare. The system avoids solo vs 5 stack in QM at all costs. At least it was rare when this game had a decent amount of players.
Now that there are so few players left, I guess any stack composition can play vs any other, just to get a game going in a reasonable amount of time.
Which is bad matchmaking, but above all a failure by the company to attract more players.
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It’s going to be based on assumtions since players like the Op are the sort to think that they’re already right. While some stacks have the same portrait, leavers can get some “false positives” since carbot portaits are popular and it’s possible for unstacked players to just happen to have the same portraits.
The concern is that the Op thinks they’re “right” and tries to rotionalize not-playing the game by still playing the game instad of doing the myriad of other things to make the gamw more enjoyable. That’s why they’re the sort to assume the “forum police” are here to “defend” the game instead of actually reading what people post.
Just another case of someone thinking self-imposed ignorance is empowering, and as long as they can blame anything else, but themselves, they’ll keep doing it
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I think vs a competent 3 stack is more than enough to put solos at a significant disadvantage though.
That’s nothing. I think if at least two of the opposing players are licensed to practice law, it puts solos at a significant disadvantage. So long as we qualify whatever criteria we want with the adjective “competent.”
They already did with stealth reworks so I can see there being somewhat of a case.
“Unfun” seems to go a long way. Many times, it ruins the game but it is what it is.
From what I understand there is no way to see if enemy has a group only after the match has ended in the score screen. But from experience dealing with this sad troll, they refuse to take responsibility for anything. So of course they assume the enemy has a group when the OP seem to be losing.
I used to play with my bro and sometimes with others that would go up to 3-4 players. I was definitely holding the team back because of my skills.
Yes, it’s why no one mentions it. This should be common knowledge. Even to new players which the OP isn’t should always assume everyone is solo just by looking at the enemy team in the loading screen.
There’s also the scenario where you get matched with a 4 stack but theyre all silent, likely in their own team speak, and lose. Yet they all upvote you for doing a good job supporting them, which happened to me today but yeaaah. Very rare to have a good experience in cases like these.
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This boils down to either shared avatars, or noticing a lvl of coordination during the match that the @Op cannot believe unless stacks.
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It’s still rare for me in QM to be matched vs a full 5 stack. I’m not going to deny or diminish that sometimes playing against five stacks as a solo player can sometimes end in the solo team being stomped.
Often that is because the stack is not only more coordinated than the solo players, but they had the benefit of drafting their team comp.
This is where the however, comes in. However, in ranked I have often played as a team of all solo’s vs the 5-man team and my team will draft horribly. So my point is, even when players have more control of a situation, they often still make poor choices that reduce their chances of winning.
The Devs said that in QM when solo’s face a 5 stack, they will (mostly) be given an MMR advantage over the stack. At least in ranked, I can say this has been true. Usually, if I win vs a full 5 stack, I will receive fewer ranked points due to my solo team having overall higher MMR.
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Mate, did you read my post instead of just quoting one sentence then forming your own argument based on what I said which I have covered already in my post?
ARAM is one of the most, if not the most popular mode in the game and it DOES restrict players and FORCES players to play a hero they may or may not know, then filtering if they should play a tank, heals or assassin or support if other people don’t pick it or to have a standard team of tank, heals and damage.
Also unranked and ranked forces people to pick heroes which a player can’t guarantee X hero given the basis of banned or the other team selected the hero already.
your argument of QM having players to guarantee play a hero is fair enough BUT it’s not an excuse that people ARE willing to change and give other heroes a go if they are forced or persuaded to by other team members or role lock.
Meat comes in different forms, such as chicken, beef, pork etc… but a restaurant may also have pasta, fish, salad, desserts.
In saying that, from what you have implied, Meat is a role, lets say tank role but you can choose different types of ‘meat/tanks’ to play.
No one is saying that players are forced just to eat ‘meat’, with my feedback, players can choose whatever they want but the extra layer of conversing with other players BEFORE a QM game starts to build the best team VS a stack is beneficial. Or even 2 x teams with 10 solo players, are forced to converse and choose the best team.
Again, player behaviour and game mechanics forces and persuades players to choose a hero outside their preferred hero. Just because QM has the option to guarantee to play a hero someone likes, doesn’t mean it’s the perfect mode when a solo player is irate about solo vs stacks.
If hots from day 1 forced solo players to group then select heroes with a 1 minute counter, 7 years down the track, if people complained that they can’t guarantee a hero they want to play in QM, I GUARANTEE YOU, YOU, KARABAR, will say “but that’s how QM is, there’s no point picking a hero before QM starts to guarantee a hero because that’s how the game is”
I read your post. Did you mine? Because you mostly miss my point.
*Karabars
Baseless accusation in a pathetic attempt to discredit what I said (and you seemingly didn’t read properly).
I play Pokémon Unite, where I cannot guarantee to play as the Pokémon I want. I hate it. I play Pokémon for specific pokémons and HotS for specific Heroes. I praise any change that helps me play as the way I want.
There could be, and there are modes, that suite a different audience. Yet ppl don’t play it but rather complain mindlessly about how QM doesn’t give them their illusion for a “fair” game.
PS: Aram is popular, but I’m skeptical it’s more popular than QM. At least, it wasn’t more popular for a long time and we cannot know for sure.
Edit: I find a way to estimate a mode’s popularity a bit. I filtered for the last 3 patches, checked QM and Aram separately. The most popular Hero in QM is Nazeebo, 175,235 games played. In Aram, it’s Ming, 60,832. This indicates to me, that QM is still played more often. Checking only the most recent patch, the trend does not change.
No, I did understand your point of QM giving players the guarantee option to play their selected hero no matter what and that’s the appeal of QM in your argument.
And my argument is that, your argument is a very small player behaviour factor. When ARAM has significantly low wait times than QM, that could be an indicator that ARAM is more popular than QM. One game mechanic in ARAM is that players are forced to pick a random hero out of the 3 random heroes given, given your argument, wouldn’t that deter people from playing it? Apart from it’s appeal to be one lane and total mayhem?
You may say players play QM because of guaranteed hero lock, I say given the evidence of the other modes, players are happy to comply and converse to change their role if they have to.
Oh don’t be petty now…
Ok so you play pokemon unite, what is the statistics of people who are irate that they can’t pick the pokemon they want to play? I assume you still play pokemon unite, even though you can’t select the pokemon you want?
People are complaining about solo vs stacks, that’s in a shallow point of view but what is the ROOT CAUSE of the problem? Stacks can team up with anyone and stacks can pre-pick heroes, while solo players are combined with the MM system in place.
That wasn’t my point. My point was, that your experience of “ppl willing to fill” is a flawed argument, because there is an alternative mode for non-filling in the same game, so ofc ppl who go into the modes that kinda require filling will have ppl who don’t mind it that much… in that mode (but might would if they would need to all the time with no alternatives).
It’s an indication of Aram not having an mmr, so doesn’t try to create fair games, while QM does have an MMR, and even some restricting rules (like role mirroring) on top of that. The latter is something I’m personally against, but willing to tolerate because I can still play my chosen Hero and I understand that most ppl want mirrored roles. (Which btw is also just an illusion of fairness.)
Me correcting my name is not petty. It’s fine if ppl write it poorly intentionally, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt.
The same complain is true to UD, Aram and SL. Ppl search for stuff outside of their control to blame instead of the stuff within their control.
The solution against stacks (if they’re truly problematic and not just scapegoats), that they have a handicap to balance their advantage out (they do from day one, they face solos with a higher mmr average). Or you don’t allow parties to be formed, which in a teamgame would be the silliest. Especially since the last official statement was that statistically speaking, stacks are not unfair, and the reason we cannot see them on the loading screen.