Heroes of the Storm Has Really Changed

General Discussion
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Normally I don’t do rants but I really have to for this one after my last game that made me question my sanity and wanting to just want to alt + F4 after the brain explosion I had, also the title is bad, I have nothing on my mind when it comes to a name for a topic, anyways…

Heroes of the Storm has really became something, that I don’t think its even healthy for its own good ever since the death of HGC.

Yes, it wasn’t in a perfect state before it but I feel like its becoming worse with some of the multiple decisions they have taken in the past year which hurts the quality of matches in general. Before HGC, HotS player base wasn’t that poor quality (it was but not THAT type of THAT) in every single match, you had players actually confident enough to do risks even when it comes to Solo Q while players who play so poorly were a very uncommon sight for me in majority of cases, but of course Solo Q was never perfect because randoms were between the chance of “god” or “I stand still and do nothing” (or the “I play [none solo laner hero] and push top fort all day”), so what ends up is if you want the full none tilt induced experience you’d be going grouped to at least don’t get eaten alive by Solo Q.

Other than that, AI & Leavers, a love story, was a constant issue, I would go in details but since they have already opened a topic like yesterday that addressed all my points I was going to put here, I’ll pass.

Anyways to the point that broke the camels back for me was when I wanted to take a break from Storm League after constantly climbing the rankings, so I decided what could go wrong than just playing in a 2 grouped party in QM? The results as follows that would be my worst QM game that I had to experience, and the last was considerably years ago during 2018~, I have never seen such a huge hiccup in the matchmaking that made me just feel bad about everything, both me, my teammates that I don’t even want to see them in my queue again, the enemy team with zero considerable coordination that I would bet they have been seriously depressed out of a match like this for letting a Nova solo lanning against Murky instead of Lunara or Varian.

Game ended up with a murloc hard carrying 99% of the game only to be mowed down by incompetent teammates who couldn’t engage properly to a core push, e.g focus it down as the DPS should be doing, the same probably can be said on the other side, probably the one was struggling out of all the mess this match was probably Garrosh.

I lost that match but I don't care if I even won that either, nobody should go through this nonsense for an average of 25 minutes.

Could I do something better in this regard? Definitely and absolutely, I’m not immune to criticism, I’ve watched the Replay, I could have certainly done better in certain areas but I believe this doesn’t closes the case when it comes how much of a mess this match was to the point I got tilted (off screen) over high level players in the 3 digit department that can’t do basic things to the point I’m just holding 3 players on my back while the 4th actually responding and playing properly.

Replay file: Download Link

Can we actually get some sort of better ways to improve education as a whole when it comes to what is being provided in the game? Of course it won’t solve the problem entirely but it will make it less likely frequent especially in Solo Q or none 5-man groups.

As of now and still is, Solo Q is probably the worst experience possible to play the game, this includes Unranked and maybe Ranked (people have been very responsive to work like an actual team, especially platinum/diamond games as of now), by teaching the complete basics when it comes to mechanics you pretty much improve it on universal level all over the board, as of now, the tutorial doesn’t even provide the required info for the player other than how “Cursed Hollow” works and even the veteran type tutorial barely goes into details when it comes to each role, basics like stutter stepping, engaging, solo laning, etcetera.

Otherwise we can have an option to toggle between Forced QM compositions? Not everyone wants to wait 10 seconds only to change from Search a game to and then find me a game in 3 seconds.

I think there are many ways to do so that both enforce the idea of players actually committing more appropriately to their specific role instead of being so confused to the point they act like “What am I doing here?” type of feeling.

Sorry for this long big rant that feels like I’m rambling, but I just want to throw this out of my chest after the last night game, I ain’t quitting this game now, but I surely am taking a break, probably for a week.

tl;dr

  • Game has really changed post HGC.
  • Quality of matches are all time poor especially in Solo Q while groups only patch this up slowly and painfully.
  • Add actual educational content to improve the player base in general like a tutorial on each role, basic tactics, solo laning, you name it.
  • Tight up the MM rules.
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All of that are pretty much known issues of HotS: low player base, QM clownfiest and the weekend trash level of most players. SL is just a bit better but the best solution is once again group up with friends in order to avoid terribad pugs.

Sadly I don’t have anymore a well populated Friends List because most of it has stopped playing or play just occasionaly, so I’m well aware of how it can be frustrating going solo Q most of the time.

About HGC, well it’s natural: nowdays lots of people don’t play what they find entertaining but just what streamers and pro players play and those just gather around what can bring them the best income. Removing the official competitive ground have istantly driven away all of that.

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I can very much relate to this topic. It is the reason why I never solo queue ranked anymore. I feel cursed by a awfull matchmaker.
I make mistakes but some people are just messed up bad. They die more then there are min in the game

Yee. This is just really annoying. Looks like they want quantity over quality.
If i go tank or bruiser I get 3 bruisers in 1 team
It I go ranged assassin I get 5 ranged assassins.

The queues with both are in eu incredible low (also when I was in na but if you change servers your mmr doesnt follow you)

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This is honestly the biggest issue in the game I believe. When I first started, it was kinda confusing and hard to understand how I should play the game on each hero and online guides are sometimes nonexistant or are some lame build guide that teaches me nothing. Furthermore, I dont believe I should even be required (as a newbie) to go out of my way to look for basic stuff that help me understand the game.

It would likely take a lot of work to add tips and in-game guides and build guides for each individual hero , or adding guides for each individual map and what to do in each and every scenario in them.

I absolutely agree that the tutorials are rather pointless and don’t teach you even the bare basics.

The thing is, because it would likely require a lot of resources I wouldn’t be surprised if the dev team finds it not super worth it to spend time adding tutorials and not other stuff like skins, heroes, balance changes and events as the existing playerbase would likely not see guides and tutorials as actual content.

That is my take on it at least

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To be honest i’m so burned out playing QM, its heavily incompetent players on both sides repeatedly match after match, and any sort of constructive criticism or teaching methods are out right ignored or end up being a toxic spew fest. Like I love this game but damn the community makes me want to uninstall.

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I would be mad too if the tychus in my team can’t surpass murko in hero dmg.

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Look at my exp and siege. I was busy by solo laning and defending lanes.

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QM always has had too much randomness in it. That’s why I quit that mode as soon as I discovered ranked in late 2015, never stepped back in QMs ever after, unless to test a new hero, to play with friends or for the leaver penalty, and very rarely to try out a bunch of stuff. Otherwise I don’t have fun in QM in a sense it’s not very interesting, I had when I was discovering HotS, but after getting into ranked, HotS has always been ranked to me. Still love it as of today, eventhough yeah sometimes there’s this guy doing or picking wtf, but it’s HotS charm too : P And when you make it work it’s so good
Quality games and players are still there at the top of the ladder (dia 2+) and there’s way enough players despite the MM acting weirdly sometimes

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a lot of online and multiplayer games require outside sources to help facilitate the learning process. While the history of games are rife with all sorts of efforts to ‘teach’ players to play the game, esp from a time when people didn’t know how to make good in-game material on teaching the game, but functionally, the more a game experience is based around other people, the greater the need for people to convey people-based experience to other people.

If you look at some of the “blizzard killer” competition games, they are worse on in-game information and disregarding all the extra community information, apps, and guides is pretty much going to lead people to a bad time (eg. try getting into PoE without outside information -,-) But people were soooo determined to have these not-blizzard games shine, they’ll jump through hoops of fire to find and provide that information.

Part of the issue for Hots is that a hefty chunk of people already think themselves an expert that they resist getting any assistance, don’t look for verification of claims, test things themselves, or care to expand their understanding. “[i] grew up with blizzard games, I know what I’m doing”

Yea, some people are genuinely new, and in-game experience can be very lacking, but the same pretty much holds up with other games too; learning a ‘moba’ is pretty much a sadistic trial in self-mutilation.
Someone has to hold a hand through the experience to make it through.
Communities build-up around building each-other up as a way to bolster the community. However, a lot of Hots has been a very insular playerbase that vehemently refuses to utilize more than a select resource to improve their play: they think the world of themselves and will blame any and everything else that shows otherwise. They are offended by information and attack stuff that diverges from their opinion. If it isn’t from “in game” or a stats tracker (that they want in-game anyway) then it may as well not exist for them.

Things may seem worse now because a lot of the community-driven efforts have died off; there were a lot of start-up sites and groups that wanted Hots to be the next big blizzard thing, and nobody bothered to use those. (I tried writing for some of them XD) Interest dies, people stop paying for site hosting, viewership drops on tourneys, then blizz pulls back their own cost sink and the community library that was already struggling falls into further obscurity, esp as in-game builds/functions change, the old library is no longer true.

Sure, there is more that blizz could do, but the context of the game gets people to think they already “know” or “mastered it” – you’ll see a lot of complaint/quit/etc type threads that convey their personal expertise as a leading contrast of their experience and expectations to then explaining the problem they have with the game. “[I’m] a superstar who can’t do anything wrong and all the rest of you are problems. Blizzard fix people that don’t know stuff they don’t know and they don’t know that they don’t know it.”

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it didn’t change at all. it still about who has the most players on their team when the objective is up. zzZZzzzzz…cant contest when down 1 or 2 players.

This game is flawed.

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Murko was killing and you was laning? It was the opposite day or what?

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I love the slime build too. Gratz on your awesome murky game

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Lots of people don’t want to get educated and get offended when they have to deal with the consequences.
Killing HGC means less pros means less very good players who stream means even less ressources to be educated.
QM and its buddy system is the worst putting people with low account level and low winrate with people with higher level and/or who are in parties.
Sure the low level accounts could not be that bad mechanically or could be good with experience , it still ruins games.

One of the games that wanted me to do the same as OP was an hanamura game where i fricking got MVP while playing classic tank garrosh while having to solo lane against zagara for level 1 to 10 (and we had solo laners on our side btw).
I mean how incompetent the 9 other guys have to be for this to happen?

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Eh. I can see why though - With 3 terribads on your team, and the opposite side seems to be full of competent people, any fight you’d commit to as Tychus would just result in you being tossed and slaughtered by Garrosh. Thus, better to let Murky do the fighting (They have no healing, so any damage done by Murky has to be backed) and Tychus do laning with an occaisonal gank setup.

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I agree with you, though I recall when the HGC was cancelled people called me and others on the forums “naysayers” for being critical (in the past) of the exact problems you’ve outlined in your post.

I remember too people throwing some shade my way when I said losing the HGC was a blow, if simply because it was the only real promotion this game received outside of the launcher. I recall people making a thread asserting that the cancellation of the HGC was a good thing for HOTS. Losing the HGC didn’t help, but also going into maintenance mode can’t have helped matters either.

I agree with you when you say match quality has declined and of course adding tutorials and other educational material couldn’t hurt. In fact I see where they have helped players. When they changed the classification system it assisted many of those people who couldn’t differentiate between a Tank or a Bruiser for example. Having said that, we all have atrocious QM games on occasion.

I’ve been here since beta and I have talked to many people in QM and the majority don’t take it seriously. I see particularly with QM how difficult it is to make a consistent matchmaker as some people are learning new heroes, they may have a high MMR, but not for the new or unfamiliar hero they are playing. So many are just not focused because there are no rank points on the line, which to me often explains the silly Zerg like rush of heroes to mid lane you see in QM games.

I have had a few Murky games that look like yours, MVP, most kills assist damage, XP, etc., and I’ve managed to lose. This happened before the HGC was cancelled and after.

I digress, I know the major point of your argument is the match quality is worse now. I agree with you on the whole, I’ve said it a few times in my posts over the past year or so. I think in the EU where the population is healthy they should do as you suggest and not expand QM after 5 seconds it defeats the purpose, tighter MM rules should be in place. On other servers that have declining populations, poor MMR averaging that often results in bad matchmaking has to be the accepted trade off for reasonable queue times.

I understand your frustration all too well (and I don’t have someone as solid and reliable to play with as Dr. Logan), but I think this game will need more than education to fix.

This was one reason a few of my friends who had been here since the start quit, they were master players and didn’t feel like they should also be an in game tutorial for new players. However, without the HGC HOTS needs some kind of promotion outside of the game launcher to attract new players and a better system to deal with the new players, rather than the buddy mentor system we have now.

I am pleased you’re not quitting though Sami, we may not get to game together but I believe I’d be just one of many who would miss your presence here on the forums. :hugs:

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I just want to say part of the issue isn’t just the killing of HGC but the changes to ranked itself starting with the death of Hero League, after they implemented the first change to Team League. Then eventually the slow erosion of Team League into Storm League, and again certain changes in particular the issue queuing up with a master player now restricted in an attempt to curb smurfing. The changes to ranked just added to decreasing the playerbase IMO since it essentially turned off solo queue players while those that team up with friends can now only do so up to a certain rank. While at the same time merging the playerbases have only proliferated more smurfs, as now it is just one league accomodating them all. So it just became an overall unpleasant experience to even attempt ranked.

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To me it seems like having less new players would make the games better. I also doubt hgc being cancelled would have an impact on quickmatch of all places. Idk when i play qm i go in with no expectations for anyone on my team and just use it to work on a hero ive never played before. Unranked i have more expectations. That looks like a crazy good murky game however.

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While I feel your pain, I don’t get something.

You were playing quickmatch right? The game mode meant for QUICK games that are usually clown games for casual players.

Why would u choose the most casual and clownish mode and expect it to be something else?

You want better educated players? Go play ranked or unranked draft.if ranked is as clownish too you’ll hit grandmaster in no time but I doubt it.

Stop suggesting silly changes like enforced team comps in quick match (e.g. Forced tank and healer) when draft modes are available

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Well, a ton of players are plain dumb. Like real life dumb. There is no education for that. Can’t educate a 80 IQ person to become smarter.

It does feel like you’re just smashing your head against a wall many times when playing HotS. I almost don’t even want to play unless it’s a fully premade party. At least you had 1 friend with you and not fully solo queue.

Dealing with random stupidity gets tiresome when it happens for years. Makes you want to play the game less and less (be it QM or Ranked).

For low stress HotS I suggest Brawl. I almost never have a bad time there even in solo Q despite no matchmaking.

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Forced comps made QM way more enjoyable for people wanting more serious games while picking whatever they wanted though.

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