Quick Match: No More Premades vs. Solo Players! (once again)

General Discussion
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I’m going to say this one last time, b/c I know it’s annoying for people to read it, yet again, But this one thing needs to be fixed in HotS right now:

Allowing Premades to group up against Solo players in Quick Match. It’s unreal how bad and unfun this makes the game.

I don’t give a damn about what the “win rate statistics” are on the matter, this is an objectively unfair thing for developers to be cavalier about. The “it’s all good, it’s supposed to be goofy mayhem” attitude is coping. For matches that last ~25 minutes, on average, I think the “this match is a waste of time” factor could be minimized greatly by removing groups from the equation altogether.

Sometimes I’ll get multiple matches, in a row, with experienced premade groups, even if it wasn’t all 5 players grouped. It’s unreal how much more difficult and stressful it makes a match. If matches were this annoying with 5 solo queue players, then the chance of “a different outcome if I had played better” is more acceptable. I’m not that great of a player by any stretch. But I know for a fact that experienced carry players do not have a fun time with this either, depending on their chosen hero.

I can’t emphasize enough how screwed up and unfair it is to put solo players through this, especially those players trying to learn the game, which is essentially where a player would go after practicing in A.I. And then they’ll hear toxic crap from their more experienced “teammates” b/c they weren’t making good decisions.

Meanwhile… ‘Unranked Draft’ has all of the disadvantages of Quick Match, with the added bonus of a draft session. I have no idea how the queue times are there, but I can’t imagine it’s good since the game isn’t as well populated any longer. Maybe if we still had HGC, but that ship is currently sailing (possibly to infinity).

I’d like to close by pointing out some advantages the premade groups have:

  • Players can build really strong (often completely unfair) hero compositions before a match starts (w/o a draft session).
  • Players can choose from friends who they synergize with and who might be very experienced in playing the game. But, let’s be real, a group of inexperienced players with annoying hero compositions (i.e. multiple siege heroes on a 2-lane map) can be more than ample challenge.

And advantages for solo players:

  • I can choose the hero I want
  • My queue times will be reasonable
  • The rng of having more experienced players in your group to deal with the premade challenge.

Okay, with that, I’m done complaining about it. I won’t mention it again (or in-game either for that matter)…

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LoL, gotta love it when people start getting angry at the facts instead of getting less triggered over something that isn’t really that big a deal.

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This can’t be fixed without a large and active player base, something Hots lacks atm.

I’m not going to dismiss your frustration, I too, as mostly a solo player, dislike the occasional stomp from a 5 stack.

What I have noticed is if I’m playing at early hours of the morning/night, I’m more likely as a solo player to be matched vs a 5 stack. So a rough workaround for that is to only play in peak hours. That won’t mean you will never be matched against a stack, but I’ve found the odds of this occurring are lower.

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I play a ton of solo qm. I frequently get thrown onto a team as a filler to average out the mmr(bring it up), which usually ends in a landslide loss. One of these games this week I got stuck with 4 bronze potatoes in a stack, and wow was that an awful and painful loss. I should have been financially compensated for not just alt+f4ing. Enemy side was all solo and closer to plat/diamond skill range. I had top everything, and I just could not carry these awful players.

My solo qm frequently lets me go against a lot of diamond through gm 5 stacks that I’ve accumulated a lengthy list of. These players know they are getting free auto wins, they enjoy the 70-80%+ wr games. Some of them intentionally avoid queueing when the other stacks are. I usually try to warn my fellow solo players in advance when I see them, but it’s made little difference. The stack wins mostly by either sheer composition or coordination. Wombo combos, cheese, unkillable illidan/tracer/sammy hats, endless siege backdooring, etc. Yes, these can be countered, no you’re likely not going to have the comp for it. No, their team isn’t going to have afk’s. No, their team isn’t going to go mentally challenged and spend all game trolling and dying because someone pinged them.

Some of the forum heroes are going to troll this post and say they don’t have this issue or its rare. Well let me break it to you, if you’re bad at the game, of course you don’t have this issue, the matchmaker isn’t using your mmr to try and carry an awful premade or cannon fodder solo players.

I queued up last night with 4 others and we absolutely stomped everyone. Master skill range players on this team. We even came across one of the infamous no skill premades that I usually encounter in solo queue, and we mopped the floor with them. They were probably startled at not getting their mindless win.

Furthermore I’ve complained about this for years, because it was something good players always saw when we were solo. It’s just we were always asked to just move on to the next game or trolled by the forum heroes.

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On that 5 stack we played a lot of games, and I don’t think we lost a single one. It was taking around 90-120 seconds to find a match and we were usually 3-4 levels ahead before games ended. Absolutely brutal one sided games. The enemies were frequently solos. I think we saw two, maybe three, 5 stacks. And only one of the 5 stacks gave us a little trouble before we finally secured a win with an abby backdoor.

Matchmaking just simply gives up after a certain point and magnifies its awfulness.

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MMR averaging sucks, it’s a compromise for QM (and sometimes SL), what can be done though if there aren’t enough players to support two separate queues?

I completely agree with you that solo players should not be matched vs stacks, how can that be fixed without enough active players? Another wrench is thrown into this process, when you factor in players can group as 2/3/4, do we have separate queues for those people too?

Since they announced merging TL and HL and allowing players to group two ranks apart, I’ve been very vocal about my dissatisfaction with this arrangement. I believe it leads to bad match quality, but I can’t lie and say there are enough players for a solo queue and a separate queue for stacks only.

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So, let me get this straight. You joined a premade that was filled with good players, and you won a lot, and then you face a worse premade and won. Like, do you not even stutter to realize how, no duh these kind of “observations” are. Not only that, you just showed that not all premades win. It’s just like you just want to hear yourself whine only to contradict yourself.

Something some “good” players don’t seem to understand is that there are less of you, so your team almost by default will most likely be worse than you, and yes that sometimes includes MMR averaging, but it’s not inherently malicious. There’s just not enough of you guys to fill out a whole team on both sides in general. That’s just how population bell curves work.

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I’ve reached masters fair and square playing Solo/Duo in competitive scenario and I still think that the whole 5 stack issue is just looked upon in a poorer perspective that its a problem because its 5 groups when its more about what the group has chosen to queue up.

5 Stack is problematic when the group exploits QM parameters by going to unorthodox composition that would make a very unfair game to play against, but a 5 stack of 1 tank/bruiser and 1 healer goes smooth as butter and it depends on the skill rating of the group entirely.

Obviously 5 diamonds should not be queuing up with low ranked players, but that issue back tracks to the player base being smaller and smaller.

There’s group who I won’t name them, go this following comp:

  1. Yrel
  2. Genji
  3. Valeera
  4. Abathur
  5. Ragnaros

What is the problem here? Imbalance of power, Ragnaros as offlaner soaker, Yrel can play as a damage Bruiser with Tank capabilities with Valeera and Genji and Aba, so basically you have a comp where two bruisers can do different jobs at once resulting in unfair advantage because in this comp, no healer will be there to peel off those heroes majority of the time and Yrel is hard to duel.

Very one sided unless they throw, but this is unlikely to happen because most of games it will be picking squishies off the board one by one who’s not paying attention to basic fundamentals, and believe me, not a lot of people in this forum pay attention to basic stuff like the map.

These people also have their own circle of playing in specific times to make it more favored, so all of is coordinated win rate farming.

If you go a full fledged 5 stack of a normal comp, it goes very fine, very slightly 5 man favored but its not to the extreme.

Here’s a game I had this morning against a 5 man who’s been hunting for kills nonestop, we won from soaking and playing reactively to them initiating fights instead of the other way around, result? level 21 to 18.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1155796036116283462/1200013675264737290/2024-01-25_10.52.28_Infernal_Shrines.StormReplay

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I’m glad I read this b/c a lot of these players are just like “it’s no big deal” - as they lose tons of matches - that they put a ton of effort into - that may have been victories if only the opponent were a group of solo players like them. Y’know, an actually fair match?

These players who just mindlessly accept “the way things are” rather than considering what their average win rate might be if these garbage premade matches were not thrown into the mix so often are sad people indeed.

Many HotS streamers and pro players won’t even go near Quick Match unless they’re at least duo queuing, which shows how easily it can be exploited to their advantage. Sorry to say this, but duo queuing is still grouping up. It’s still unfair for solo players to have to play against that sh*t.

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If that uncoordinated team won just as much, I’d have no problem, which is what happens in a fair amount of games. It also depends a LOT on the skill level of the players. If you put a bunch of random professional basketball players against a team that regularly plays together at the local YMCA, it wouldn’t matter, the solo players would still trounce them.

Teams are highly variable, and though groups have the potential to outshine solo players, it is not guaranteed, especially at lower skill levels. As someone who has been masters solo queueing, I’ve been “invited” to play with premades that had low gold players who would try to shot call. The guy “leading” ignored my advice and the others followed him because he “sounded authoritative on voice”. Needless to say, it was embarrassing how bad it went, even against non 5 man teams.

The stats matter more than your fragile victim complex, perceptions of unfairness, and need to scapegoat.

I don’t know where this losing is coming from. I mostly solo queue and have a positive win rate and face 5 mans and win some, and lose some. I also get paired with other groups and both win and lose those too. Though there are some advantages to picking your comp in lager groups, and that’s something I think Blizzard could try to even out those advantages in QM, precluding people from playing together in groups in a group game is beyond selfish.

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It shouldn’t require a complex explanation like this. And the fact that you have to be this descriptive to convince me why it’s not a problem, is the reason why it’s a problem.

The idea of having quick match be ‘Solo Queue Only’ is, very simply, to minimize the likelihood that all of the uncertainties you’re raising here are not the result of being stomped by a group of players (of any number, not just ‘5 stack’).

Because, at the very least, you will have the assurance, as a solo queue player, that you’ve just won (or lost) a match against an opponent who could only have solo queued as well.

With that assurance in mind, it’s a hell of a lot easier to concede and be of the mind that perhaps some different skill choices or strategies could have turned the match around.

I’d also be willing to bet that doing this would greatly reduce the amount of horrible toxic typing that happens as a result of getting steamrolled by ‘a group’ of any particular size. It’s very unfair as it is right now.

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Folks, just because you guys claim something is objective, doesn’t make it so.

Premades are not objectively unfair.
QM has rules to mirror “key” roles (as if HotS would have mandatory roles…).
Premades face a higher mmr average than their own.
And everyone can communicate and organise their teams with Pings, Chat and Voice. All built in.

So nope, not objective. And after a certain amount of mmr, it’s not even a challenge (at least not more than any other match).

Premades are scapegoated. The real issue and the true abusers are: Smurfs.

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It wouldn’t be a problem if they hadn’t so much games played this season.
666 games at 98% WR.
That’s messed up.
I wonder if they only upload their wins.

I know the strat against them, like getting safely hard camps and hard push, but they usually are facing much lower mmr players, so it’s not a problem for them.

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I was also shocked when I saw those stats with Aba having like 95% win rate and he’s like level 600, it’s not wins just “because” there’s very big notice of malicious intent.

But yeah, they queue up against low MMR which makes the game very one sided.

I know that leaving games before “Defeat” appearing would not record the game in your personal statistics (why was this not fixed yet?).

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Thats thier weakness mostly. And you see a hero like Thrall with only half of Abas soak and most deaths you know he was thier weakest link. Premades always got a weakest link you can abuse.

Some of them do. Atleast those I have faced. But you cant really say playing in a full 3k mmr team vs bronze players as this guy does is fair. This guy is mostly ego boosting with his friends vs teams up to 1k mmr lower then his for easy wins.

Revan (EU) Match History | Heroes Profile

This guy and this guy aswell same story. Both playing in 3k mmr teams with 85-96% winrate stack only.

FesS(EU) | Heroes Profile

Jared(EU) | Heroes Profile

Sadly some huge egos enjoy stomping teams way below thier mmr cause its ‘‘fun’’ for them.

Ask them to go play SL and they laugh at you.

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I faced Jared a lot, winnable match ups when I don’t throw at the end. :melting_face:

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Such a simple outtlook.
Game uses SBMM.

Anyone with any knowledge of the workings of SBMM will understand why it kills games. Also why pretty much the only games that are successful either 1) use SBMM but have high player counts like Battle Royale games where the problems can be hidden behind the large player pool or 2) don’t use SBMM.

Minky said it – you can’t fix it without getting a large player base that will camouflage the huge issues with SBMM.

Anyway, here’s a basic explanation because 1) I’m not your mommy and 2) if you haven’t “gotten it” after 8 years, you probably will never get it:

  1. Devs lie, so Blizz the sexual harassment company will probably also lie. 50% winrate between premades and randoms is useless data without seeing the entire data set.

  2. You trust corporations? Nice – I don’t. Go be a consumer – don’t think, just consume product and then get excited for next product.

  3. the way SBMM works, if randoms are beating premades then 1 or 2 of the randoms is going to be wayyyyy above the skill level of the premade. To balance out the team MMR, the other 4 players are gonna be trash. So you’re gonna have 4 trash players carried to a win (artifical winrate inflation, SBMM works that way to keep that sweet sweet 50% winrate) while 1 player sweats their butt off trying to win. You know what’s not fun? Getting stomped by a premade, even if you win. If you got 0 kills and 10 deaths but won cause your homie pushed hard and cleaned up teamfights, that don’t feel good. As the player who carried, it’s not fun having to carry 4 players when you are just trying to relax. That’s the problem with SBMM – it constantly expects good players to perform at their best. Not fun, tiring, leads to game death.

Oh yeah, what’s HotS again? Not alive, is it?

Adapt or get left behind, friend. For 8 years, you have failed to adapt. I will not be replying to any further remarks. The time for foolishness is over. Tough pill to swallow – do it or don’t, I don’t care.

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I’m not the one whining. LoL, you’re telling someone who has no problem with playing against premades to adapt. I both get matched with other premades and fight against them as a solo queue player. Sometimes I win, sometimes I don’t.

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You’re conflating several topics/issues together.

In a game with a ladder system, you seriously think a game shouldn’t have some kind of SBMM system? Get outta here (not literally).

Your focus is on QM, while ignoring issues/dilemma of multiplayer/group aspect of the game, and also, how Blizz set up the QM MM system.

Do you seriously think not having any form of SBMM would improve the player experience? You’re short sighted if you do. It will be a total chaos. It will be less if this is a 1v1 pvp game, but it’s not.

Blizz already uploaded some of their data. And general concensus is that, the numbers do show premades having enough advantage. Blizz knows this. However you feel about Blizz, your opinion is wrong regarding this subject.

Hence, this is unnecessary, inappropriate, wrong, uncalled for accusation against Volun. Whatever someone feels about him, that’s a separate subject as well.

Again, not really about SBMM issue. It’s about how Blizz set up QM MM parameter. Blizz can easily fix this if they want to. But what’s the catch here?

SL MM already has restrictions like ‘players within the match/same team can’t have certain amount of rank difference’. As in, normally, Master player would not get matched with Plat, Gold players. This can easily get implemented in QM MM however they want.

So what’s the catch? Likely, just how low pop. server SL is, higher MMR players won’t find a game. Reminder. This is QM where role restriction also is in place (the usual tank to tank, healer to healer, range to range MM).

Short que time+overall lower match quality vs long que time+overall better match quality. Blizz simply chose the former. Less to do with incompetence.

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Ok, this is actually interesting. I believe HP’s MMR estimate isn’t 100% accurate but this seems pretty busted to me. Indeed the 5-stack is getting 500+ MMR advantage when, according to what the devs have stated, it should be the other way around, right?

Is the matchmaker unable to find 3000+ people and just gives up? Can someone explain?

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