Game balance in general is fine, game modes are fine…but when it comes to match making…the game does not feel fine. To the point where when queue’d with bronze-low gold stack, we are getting smurfs who are stream sniping, etc.
The way I see it is the game is promoting the creation of smurf accounts on several fronts.
Wait times for dia+ is really high, so for those leagues to play the game in a reasonable period of time, they create low level accounts.
What I’d suggest is 2 things to fix this issue.
Your MMR gained is increased exponentially for every consecutive game won (say each consecutive win grants you an additional 50% MMR, stacking infinitely; resetting upon a loss) and
“MMR forgiveness” if your team is beaten by a player(s) with several consecutive wins.
Ideally what this will do is stop smurfs from beating down the general player base into low leagues, deter smurfs as smurfing is just going to result in a high league account relatively quickly (bar win trading, which can and should be a bannable offense) and increase the general population in higher leagues so they don’t have a good reason to smurf.
That would be my fix and I think it would work well.
I have to say good bye to the game as well. Storm league taking 15-20 minutes to find 1 game and stuck with qm here in Asia.
And the match maker is constantly putting ridiculous match ups like 4 mages 1 bruiser vs 2 tanks and 3 mage killers. Not just once but over and over and add leavers and trolls to the mix, it’s just laughable.
Been playing since 2016 and today I uninstalled :(.
I came back after a year of being gone and I’m just as frustrated a few days in as I was when I left.
I was excited to hook my main PC back up so I could play more HOTS again, but now I’m thoroughly reminded how awful matchmaking is.
The fact that I had the desire to play HOTS is a good sign. It means the underlying game is quite good. I have little to no desire to play Diablo 3, a game I hold in contempt because it always leaves me feeling frustrated. It seems with HOTS that feeling isn’t there, it’s just that the game has bad matchmaking. The fact that I have fond memories of the game must mean at one point matchmaking was decent.
I don’t agree with your fix, though. I think that will cause more problems than it would aim to rectify. Instead, I wish Blizzard would go back to their machine learning approach and just let the system run longer than a few days.
They attempted to fix it once, only let it run for a couple of days, then decided to pull the plug. It wasn’t nearly enough time to train the system.
You see, machine learning when boiled down to its essence is simply just a giant matrix. Without being too computer sciency, you basically pick some criteria you want to base your machine learning on, then you train it by giving it a giant amount of raw data. The algorithm then uses a small amount of calculus (Particularly the concept of the gradient) to try and move the values in the matrix to a spot where it will produce the desired result with a high degree of accuracy.
The problem with Blizzard’s approach to this solution was they didn’t feed data back in on itself. Sure, they collected data, but most of that data was corrupted. Matchmaking was already in a bad state, so the metrics they collected weren’t really an accurate portrayal. They ran the system for only a few days, then found out the criteria that they had chosen didn’t accurately reflect what wins matches.
What they should do instead is let the system run and train for several weeks WHILE moving player MMR.
A lot of people on Reddit have suggested your #1 for a long time (and it did work that way during 2015 preseason - during a long win streak you could win as many as 650 per win, but it would reset after 2-3 consecutive losses).
The same system is implemented in Hearthstone, smurfs can skip through multiple ranks on a very long win streak. The bonus is lost after a few losses.
It’s pointless to give an obvious smurf on a 29 win streak the same 200 points as it is to a random 44% win ratio player in that rank. Skip them forward and let them prove their skill in a higher rank.
The current system just keeps those smurfs too long at low ranks destroying those games.
What you posted is partially correct; select roles are far-more-often-than-not mirrored once on each side. (if one side has two tanks, both sides will not have two tanks) There are a few exceptions on heroes deviating from their listed role (ie, some bruisers aren’t matched as bruisers, they’re matched as melee assassins still) but a lot of the outcry for matching complaints are hyberpole.
There are a few key issues with forum replies here:
It’s easier to complain than not, so a lot of activity is going to be complaints and represent a skew of the actual player population. (if things are ‘fine’ people don’t go out of their way to report it on the forums)
US forums have more activity than other regions, so some of the lowpop reginos come here to post their grievances instead where they may be more prone to exceptions that other servers don’t have and they act like it’s the norm for everyone.
People tend to conflate their own experience with everyone having the same experience. For instance, when I’m driving, I tend to think that others can see how I’m gripping the wheel, and I’ll feel guilty if I pass patrol cars and don’t have both hands on the wheel; no one else can actually see how I’m holding the wheel, but since I see it, and know what I could be doing instead, I feel guilt and pressure on the assumption others will notice and fault me for it.
Complaints tend to be based on impulsive negative reactions rather than carefully reviewed and reflected experiences, so circumstances tend to be exaggerated more than they are true.
Complaints are a form of action, and since people have done something, they feel a vested interest in getting something out of it; since they exaggerate their claims on emotional feedback, they eventually believe their own exaggerations and then increase the severity of what they think is happening and so long as they keep doing the same thing, things get “worse” to them even if everything else stays the same.
How people ‘see’ something influences how they think about it, so when people teach themselves to see problems, that’s all they’ve convinced themselves to see. When a person fancies or owns a new car, they’re more prone to noticing that car and conclude “man, everyone is driving it now”. It’s not necessarily true, it’s just a reflection of the understanding of what they see.
(perspective perception influences the respective reception)
If I look at matching samples for people that post these “i quit” matching claims, usually when I see their play history, I don’t see the cases they claim are happening “too often” or “every game” or “constantly” and it just confirms they are exaggerating.
Complaint topics tend to blame the ‘system’ rather than the players. It’s the matchmaking that’s bad, not the playerbase. Even if a player is matched with the right role (tank on each side) if the player doesn’t think said player played like a tank should, they instead claim the system didn’t give them a tank at all.
When a player does well, they fit the role the matching gave them, but when they didn’t play well, players then make up subdivisions on roles the system doesn’t use and they create lies to convince themselves the system is against them.
When players win against all these ‘rules’ they made up, they don’t notice they magically overcame the impossible complaint they had, they just play another game and keep looking for the negative reinforcement that they expect.
Players tend to think they’ve better at stuff than they really are and since it’s easier to point out the mistakes of others, they get the perspective that everyone else is really worse than they are, and so the ‘system’ has to be holding them back instead of a myriad of other options.
Part of the whole stint of these “i’m [going to] quit” thread is they convinced themselves that this sort of topic is supposed to accomplish something, but they haven’t really thought through ‘what’ that is supposed to be cuz if they went through the chain of events to get that far, they probably wouldn’t be posted a misguided ultimatum and evidently expecting something out of it.
That makes a whole lot of assumptions…so unless you can read minds, this is at best a template for determining the motives of simple people with simple motives.
The match making is objectively bad, I know tons of smurfs in this game. A few days ago, in freaking bronze, my stack was getting stream sniped. In bronze! That’s how bad things are with smurfing right now in HotS…
The game just doesn’t have good match making because the higher you place, the more you have to wait for games and the longer wait times+f2p model just encourages the creation of alts so those very people can play the game.
This isn’t some crazy conspiracy theory, this is a well known fact in HotS which is why there need to be systems in place to put smurfs into their proper league while mitigating the damage they cause to the ranked system by smurfing.
That’s easy to do with my 2 steps
more xp per consecutive wins, lose bonus when you lose
losing against players with consecutive wins does not subtract any MMR
Combined, you will have higher leagues with more population, thus giving people less of a reason to smurf, promote those who smurf fairly fast so they can’t essentially ruin the game experience for people who aren’t that good (will help with player retention) and mitigate the damage done by anyone who falls in between the cracks of the system by giving MMR forgiveness when an obvious smurf destroys you.
No, the matchmaking as asserted as being bad by people that supplement what they don’t know about matching with superstition. “Objectively” the matchmaking is ‘fine’. While people may take some of the deve reports with a grain a salt, even when I look at generalized metrics from 3rd party sites, some of the standards conveyed from larger samples than just anecdotal evidence indicate the “objective” values that can appraise matching are functioning as intended.
However, as my list pointed out, people are more prone to negative bias and place a greater recollection and emphasis on select examples of their experience and expropolate them to representative of larger sections of the playerbase.
And it doesn’t’ take a ‘mindreader’ to be able to look at concrete evidence and see the difference it has from the people that claim ‘fact’ of their experience; people aren’t objective or ‘logically’ driven; we’re cycular bags of chemical reactions better driven by emotional impulse than otherwise. However, by curtailing some of my own bias to observe patterns from others, have a lot of interpersonal experience (ie working a lot of customer service) and having a broad set of experience with a variety of similar games, I can see occurrences of similar patterns that reflect what I see from work happening on how people play.
Games like Chess aren’t won by someone “reading a mind” with psychic powers, but being prepared to analyze the patterns demonstrated by their opponent; being able to see patterns and make predictions is the basis of a myriad of disciplines, most notably “Science”.
On the other hand the playerbase is objectively bad and has a low common denominator and frequently come at odds with how to succeed at the game. Since the matching has to use the players (that are bad) it makes matches with what it has to work with to an objective standard that is ‘fine’ – for what it’s working with – that matches players lacking sufficient awareness of their own ability, but rather than improve that aspect and realize the issue of the players at hand, they time and again keep trying to blame the system.
To note: some of my use of words (ie “fine”) is that I think there are better options than elo-based metrics, but for people that don’t know how matching is “objectively” determined, they conclude things aren’t “fine” because it doesn’t suit their objective and don’t know the difference between having one, and being one
As a platinum I find matchmaking just fine. I have almost exactly 50.0% wr, matches are close, a few trolls and throwers here and there, but not very often.
Maybe I’m also content with it, because I don’t expect to be Grand Master #1. I just play Storm League to get decent team comps instead of playing 4 assa and aba in QM.
I lose about every second game on average, and in many cases that loss was my fault too. Like I played my hero sub-optimally, chose to soak at wrong time and so on. Life goes on.
I’m just quoting this so people can read it again. Or so that the people who skimmed over it has a chance to see it again.
Because it sums ups the problems of these threads nicely.
Matchmaking complaints are typically one sided illogical whining that doesn’t take into account how the matchmaker actually works or just the fact that the matchmaker is working with the most flawed variable in history: Humans.
It’s the people who typically throw a wench into the cogs of the matchmaker.
In a weird analogy… let’s imagine that I’m throwing a big party. So I’m the “Matchmaker”
I invite a bunch of people. But I didn’t know that my friend John was devastated as he lost his girlfriend the day before, so shortly into the party, he gets super drunk and ruins the party.
is it my fault as the “Matchmaker” or John’s fault?
The people who already dislikes me would blame me out of convenience.
You saying that it is objectively bad doesn’t make that true. Do you even know what objectively means?
So you’re playing with a group of smurfs, streaming? In bronze ranks?
That is disgusting. How about you tell all your smurfing friends to stop smurfing and ruining the game/matchmaker? Smurfs is the biggest wench in the cogs of the matchmaker. And you’re apparently a big part of that wench, since you’re playing as stacks of smurfs in bronze ranks.
And you want Blizzard to accommodate smurfs instead…
Also how do you even know you’re getting stream sniped? Isn’t that just typical paranoia? “Boohoo, we lost because we got stream sniped”
After 6 games of potato teammates against stacked bruisers and tank team I deleted this game. I won 4 games in a row previously and now I’m forced to lose 5-10 games in a row.
Before you say its luck this pattern happened too many times before its just not fun. But what can you expect from a small indie company.
The fact that after every winning streak I get matched with people who either don’t do objective or chase around the whole map or fight 1v2 and die for several games proves otherwise. The fact that after every losing streak like this I get matched against opponents equally as bad for a few games proves otherwise too. And this cycle repeats every time . There is something wrong with the matchmaking and I don’t know why blizzard defenders try to deny it.
But when someone criticises blizza… I mean activision the best reaction they get is: git gud.
