I will try to make this post as short as I can, but I’ve got a rant for you all, let me know if there’s anything you agree/disagree with.
To begin, I don’t know if it’s a sign of the current times, maybe I’m just getting to be an old grumpy guy, but I have come to the conclusion that HotS is too hard for regular people to play.
I don’t know if it’s the nature of the game design that simply requires that much brain power and cooperation out of players to make correct and impactful decisions in their play and people don’t meet these expectations. Or is it that HotS average playerbase is just that much more incompetent than other game’s populations (At their respective games/skill level)?
After playing on 2-3 accounts since Alpha, in QM, SL, HL/TL, URD, ARAM, every game mode in every league except Masters/GM. The common themes that I keep seeing in every single game is this:
Extremely Slow Thinking (Or no thinking at all, no strategical thoughts to improve your odds of winning, they just “play”)
Reaction time is always too late and they end up dying or not being any help at all. - That’s Where I believe Stomps come from as the average player is not able to think of a new strategy to turn the tides in time, nor do they see the “Big Picture”. So the slow thinking leads to one side who is at disadvantage, to stay at disadvantage.
BIG EGO.
Some people just cannot ever be wrong and will die on every hill they decide to stand on. Some will outright do the exact opposite of what the team is asking of them, or ignore them completely out of spite.
PANIC reaction!
This is the tell-all sign of low competence/intellect/strategical thinking. When chaos happens, they lose track of everything else, they tunnel vision, ignore logic and strategy and get mad when they make a mistake. Once too much is happening, their brain shuts down. They cannot handle the high stress and focus required to perform well in these cases (That end up winning or losing the game). Usually late game on the “final” teamfight/obj.
ZERO Cooperation
My way or the highway. They don’t counterpick, synergize, help other lanes, do mercs, protect against ganks, control vision, etc. They are selfish players and only play for themselves and nobody else. But they will always call out the highest death or lowest damage, etc bad (or worse) when they lose, even though they also didn’t do anything to help their team win. In fact, they probably make it worse by not shutting up and flaming their team.
Over time, this “culture” grows into apathy for the game and leads to Trolling out of spite, smurfing (for easy wins and dopamine release) or quitting the game outright. People get frustrated by the lack of consistence in player skill, cooperation and overall intellect. The wound festers and grows until the entire game is dead.
I fear we are nearing the end of HotS as the game is now so hostile to new players, serious players and people who do not have a constant 5man stack to play with. Including higher skilled players smurfing to even the odds, because every 5 man stack has a Smurf or 2 in it.
Solutions:
I think the only solution to fix this game’s culture and secure it’s potential future is to:
Require a Real ID or unique Phone number to create new accounts.
Reporting for verbal abuse should not lead to account permabans. Only 3-6 month silences.
That way people won’t create new accounts to smurf and might care more about not being abusive to play. If you can make another free account, you will not change your behavior!
Add a block player feature, that lasts until you log out or X hours.
He can still be on the enemy team, but not on yours. Then people who often get blocked by others should get a warning that they are undesirable teammates and get matched with other similar players. After they win X amount of games, they can rejoin regular teams.
Queueing with a friend for game modes only takes the highest ranked player into consideration for matchmaking.
No more having bronze/silver smurfs boosting people into plat/diamond.
Reset Ranked Ladder.
For this game’s culture to change, we would need to start from scratch and get rid of all the extra accounts.
Unban all the people who got banned for verbal abuse as a sign of good will. Then, make them choose 1 account and tie their Real ID/Unique phone number to that account. Delete all the others or merge them somehow. Permabans should only be for serious offenders, cheaters and bots. Because this is a F2P game, permabans don’t work to control toxicity. Specially since the culture is what creates the toxicity in the first place.
That’s how it starts. Nobody is banned at the start.
And reoeated offenders should not be able to play imo.
This would increase queue times and naturally you should only block offenders, which should get removed from everyone’s queue.
This is just smurfing but on the biggest scale. Complete chaos, ton of time for the ladder to stabelise, and why? So some ppl can get lucky and get higher on the ladder than their skill so they can brag about it and blame the mm for putting them back where they’re supposed to be? Which btw a reason to smurf on a new acc.
MOBAs, even the casual ones like HotS and PU are not for legit casuals. The genre requires too much from someone who doesn’t care.
Good points, but I’ll disagree with this one the most:
It would be nice, But people typing “mean” stuff is not what hurts the game overall, only a few special snowflakes with vitriolic intentions of retaliation get their fee-fees hurt. Normal people mute them and move on. It’s the ones who always need to “win the argument” and demonstrate their “moral superiority” that get bothered by words being typed.
Plus, like I said, they can just make another account and do exactly what they were doing before. My method, keeps them accountable and gives them a chance to change their behavior. 3-6 months of silence, that means they are out of ranked and regular queues (Because they get matched with other similar players with high reports/silence) If the queue is too long, too bad, no games for them (Sufficient punishment, in my opinion).
You will not remember them in 3-6 months and if they are still toxic, you will already have them muted, hopefully (everyone has this ability, but nobody uses it somehow, yet they demand punishment… so silly).
It’s not exactly rocket science to point out that most people are ‘bad’ at HotS because a lot of people are ‘bad’ are most games they play.
Dark Souls caught on on a memed reputation for being “hard games” and having actually played some now… they’re not. The defects aren’t hidden – bad controls, poor camera, terrible hit detection, etc etc – people just take that in stride as some sort of ‘joke’ that they’re in on as part of the want for a ‘difficult experience’ due to a prevalence in auto-pilot games that skinner-box players into mundane success for minimal effort.
The whole transference of ‘epic’ from a poetic genre of larger-than-life events to people using the term in casual correspondences – as if to try to bring value to their valueless existence – is symbolic of the shift in effort-to-success that people expect in their recreation.
Idle-games flood the market at a few bucks and minimal interaction for people looking for their fix/thrill/accomplishment in the automation that dominates much of their usual lives. People that expect said automation to function for any activity flock to a variety of other things, and magically expect the same success to work anywhere else they can, or to at least buy a ‘i win’ button akin to Angry Birds or Candy Crush.
And that’s not really a new trend either; a lot of games are known for superstitious player trends that cripple their ability to play the game through without needing ‘cheats’. e.g. RPGS and Srpgs are rife with memes of players not using items so they can ‘save them for when they may need them’ and then end up not using them. (such as vulneraries in Fire Emblem, or mage-like consumables in Final Fantasy to exploit boss weaknesses)
Even in speedrunning communities, its not uncommon for players to ride that bandwagon of ‘pushing the record’ by just imitating what they see other players do, rather than learning to ‘play the game’. A lot of people outright have the expectation that being ‘good’ at a talent/art is something innate, something they have to ‘wish’ to have, rather than the consequence of time and effort. We have been taught to worship ‘skill’ through spectatorship couple with consumerism, so it’s not all that surprising that events that require a hefty bit of ‘knowledge’ aspire that only a select market can bear that, and anything else that doesn’t already exist is then ‘too late’.
I think calling anyone a snowflake is just unempathic and ignorant. The suggested lowest age for this game is 13, now adults should rage on kids, nor adults should tolerate kids lecturing them. Kids also shouldn’t be allowed to swear at each other. Adults should be civilized and mature, while kids should be discouraged to misbehave and desrespect others.
But I might agree on the last chance with the changed system while getting banned once again is still an option.
It’s not our job to mute (and thus hinder teamwork) or allies.
Also a lot of my friends quit LoL due to its toxicity and they’re nowhere near snowflakes, but it’s hard to relax with lowerpart-folks.
Lol.
They had many chances to change.
What truly silly is that ppl think they can act however they want and it’s others who need to change or act differently and tolerate them instead of putting themselves together and use selfcontrol.
I mean HotS players seem worse than other game’s players on average. I think it’s because of the “enforced” teamwork required in HotS that most gamers are simply not cut out for because they have been individuals their whole lives (Talking about Solo queueing in SL here). This translates to an overall lower quality of players FOR HotS in comparison to if that same player was to play a different game. You cannot “learn” Teamwork when every player and every situation is different. Unless you 5 stack with the same people.
I play Dark Souls (FE/FF too ) games more than HotS, I do enjoy the difficult aspect of the game. But when you get down to it. The game is actually not hard. You just need to learn everything about it and then come up with strategies to defeat enemies/sections. That creativity is what is lacking in most players, they need the “thinking” done for them by other, more capable people, so that they can then mimic it. You nail it on the head with this post when you say that
SHOULD is a very important word here. I even agree with it. However. This is a free to Play game, on the internet where everyone is basically anonymous with little to no real life implications for their online behavior.
Yes it IS. Because YOU are the one who has an issue with another player. You are also given the tools to deal with it… Why would you not do it? It’s like NOT calling the police when you are being robbed/having property vandalised, etc. You have the service, use it when you need it? It’s not up to the police to watch your house to make sure it doesn’t get robbed! Or to make sure that bad guys don’t commit crimes. You are the only one responsible for how you react to something said.
Other’s behavior is NOT in your control. All you CAN control is how you react.
So what is it? Someone insulted you. Can you not handle it? Or will seeing them being punished the only way your ego will be satisfied in knowing you are morally superior and that you got the chance to “punch back”?
Sorry for grilling you, I really appreciate your feedback and position, but it really bothers me when people want to see others punished for expressing themselves in a way that you do not approve of. Specially when you have every tool available to you to prevent your feelings from being hurt if that is the case. There is even a Mature language filter for crying out loud!
Which is why my theory about the reporting and banning/punishments is not about getting rid of “toxic players” but rather to feel better that you are able to “hurt” them back somehow, by reporting them and hopefully getting them punished for hurting your feelings.
NOTE: I AM NOT EXCUSING : Death threats (are you actually in danger though? You are anonymous), racism, sexism and/or actual harassments. They should be reported. I just think that the perma ban just makes things worse because of the F2P nature of the game.
If they do this then report system need to get 100 times better then it is now.
My first silence came out of nowhere casue 4 stack feeders report the only one who has a sane brain then I got my secound silence 1 year later again becasue of trolls that just sits and false report everyone who goes againts thier opinions.
So my only solution was to turn off chat casue people gets easily triggered in chat. ¨
I had a Zera right now in a game that told KTZ it was a deserved loss cause him and Zuljin keep going alone into a Valeera gank.
Surprice surprice KTZ only answer was reported and muted lol. Zera actaully tried to win the game while the trigger happy Zuljin/KTZ player keep feeding. This is just one exsample of how bad it is now. People who want a serious match gets false reported by trigger happy feeders/trolls.
I’d say its much harder than LoL and DotA. I can win DotA and LoL by myself if I am skilled enough. Not HotS. I need my team and I need them to be on the same page as me. So not only do I need to be skilled at HotS, I also need to be skilled at other things outside the game to be good at HotS. Things like leadership, communication, cooperation and other social skills. The teamwork aspect is why this game is hard. Too many selfish/individual players in this game make cooperation really difficult.
People are stupid and will remain stupid, nothing related to the game can change that.
We can at least restrict bad people from playing SL - change requirements to participate - no free rotation heroes, at least 5 level hero to play, etc.
And obviously change report system, but that has been mentioned countless times and countless times ignored.
AKA the players who actually love and care about this game are the prime recipients of false reports (For daring to try to win and pointing out mistakes/trying to work as a team).
I got silenced a few times and got a week suspension, all I ever did was try to lead and make calls. I also point out mistakes and ping a lot (sorry but yall never listen if I just ping once ) Yet I am treated the same a trolls yelling the N word, death threats and having a literal mental breakdown in chat (lol) because of the flawed automated system. If I played 4-5 hours every day. I’d eventually get banned just because I play too much and may get reported more than others in concentrations of time.
Playing in a 5-stack with higher ranked smurfs in bronze-gold accounts are the only way to currently enjoy the game unfortunately. This could be ok if they implemented ways for players to connect and play together more. Like Clans/Guilds or In Game Tournaments
There are some good points here, but I just wanted to say that all of the common themes identified except for #2can be addressed by more practice. Ironically, perhaps the biggest barrier to this panacea is a big ego.
In your analogy muting is more like running away, and reports are calling the police. Bans are prison.
Yea, and I report the jerks/call the police.
Just because I can control only myself doesn’t mean I should mute abusers and just move on. I instead report them and move on, the latter has consequencies for them, while the former is them being able to do whatever.
Ppl don’t need to be snowflakes or even feel insulted to be annoyed by those idiots unable to control themselves and behave thus ruining their relaxation.
And since muted ppl cannot be teamworked with, they have no place in teamgames.
So by that logic, someone who never chats is equally guilty of not communicating and has no place in team games. But this is most players in this game, so I doubt anyone would support that position.
This right here proves my point. You are more concerned about putting yourself on a high horse as the arbitor of morality and feeling righteous in imposing your judgement on them.
For example: I personally don’t care if someone on my team is talking trash, that’s their deal. It’s none of my business how others feel about it too, idc. If they are bothering me, I will just mute them. Just like that, they are no longer a problem, I keep playing. Takes 1 second.
So as Opposed to me, you can’t seem to help but get affected by it. So much so, that you are not satisfied until you get to judge them with a report. It’s not about stopping yourself from being upset, you also need to hit them back.
It’s probably just me, but I don’t get this need for punishment for words said on an internet game lol
) games more than HotS, I do enjoy the difficult aspect of the game. But when you get down to it. The game is actually not hard. You just need to learn everything about it and then come up with strategies to defeat enemies/sections. That creativity is what is lacking in most players, they need the “thinking” done for them by other, more capable people, so that they can then mimic it. You nail it on the head with this post when you say that
) Yet I am treated the same a trolls yelling the N word, death threats and having a literal mental breakdown in chat (lol) because of the flawed automated system. If I played 4-5 hours every day. I’d eventually get banned just because I play too much and may get reported more than others in concentrations of time.