Here is an idea to replace QM to make it fun, less frustrating and fresh.
You queue as a Role (Tank, Healer, M.Assassin/R.Assassin or Bruiser/Support or Flex) - (Flex gets assigned a role and can only pick from that one).
Once a game is found, you have 30 seconds to pick a hero from a Pool of Heroes that match your role selected when looking for a game. (Think Brawl Style)
BLIND PICK (You do not see the enemy picks until game starts).
Every Week, the Pools change to new heroes that can be selected (I’d say 5-6 heroes per role)
Mirror matches are possible
Players can also vote on what map to play on before hero selection. (15 seconds) They get a choice of 3 maps, every player votes on it, if there is a tie, it’s a dice roll between the 2.
If someone doesn’t vote for a map, they vote for a random one (no leaver). Same for Hero selection, if they have not locked in a hero after 30 seconds, they get a random hero from the Pool.
Role Masteries and Rewards (Portraits, banners, Skins?, Borders, Gold, etc)
TL;DR:
-Select Role
-Queue
-Match Found
-Vote on Map
-Select Hero
-Play
People like QM because it allows them to play the EXACT hero they want to play. “Picking from a pool of heroes” doesn’t always allow them that freedom.
The idea is to improve match quality. If you want to play a Specific Hero, vs Ai is still there as are custom games.
I feel that the current game experience from QM is just awful, it’s usually a one sided stomp and most games have terrible team compositions. This would allow for a faster draft that makes sense and gives the team a chance to synergize better.
I get that some people like being able to queue as a specific hero, but overall I think it’s bad for the health of the game. Plus, if your hero is in the pool that week, you can always play it (unless someone else on your team snatches it first). It promotes diversity in games!
Do you think QM is fine as it is? What would you change?
Voting on Map = Unnecessary, and a huge time waster. As long as we would get to know what map we are playing before choosing our hero, it would be fine.
Let players chose from any hero they own that fits the role they queued for, not just a “limited pool”.
Other than that, I think your idea is fine. However, do note that if the game always tries to put together a “perfect team” (1 Tank, 1 Healer, and 3 Others) that queue times will DRASTICALLY increase.
Flinx is right. A lot of people want to play a specific Hero. I think you need to allow for that. However, it would be nice to allow people to switch to one of a few alternate Heroes, if for instance they aren’t interested in playing that squishy Mage without a Tank.
Probably, but it would be a fun idea to dabble with.
The point of this Pool and not all heroes is to make the game more fresh, so that it’s not always the same heroes in every game. I strongly believe that too much player freedom is bad for the game. Structure is needed.
I’m ok with that if it gives me a good game. I’d rather wait 2-3 minutes for a good game rather than 30-60s for a stomp.
This here might be a good idea. You queue up as 3 heroes and then when game starts, you pick one of those 3 (Brawl Style). That might be even better than the Pools.
Edit: But they must be from the same role to make this work
I would love enforced compositions with role queue very much, with some flexibility to evenly mirror supports, tanks or healers up from the count of one.
QM is still the most played game mode and should be used more to educate players on team.
As for queue times, people would eventually be enticed to become more comfortable with roles other than ranged assassins in the end resulting with more players prepared for ranked mode.
If Blizzard is ever going to dabble with Maps being selected, then it needs to be in Draft Mode, and you let the team that picks second choose the Map.
Except making the pool limited does the exact opposite. Lets say you make the pool 3 tanks (of the 12.) That means for an entire week, you will ONLY see those 3 tanks… IN EVERY GAME!
You may be good with a longer wait (and honestly, I am as well) but the community as a whole proved that they were NOT okay with longer waits when Blizzard first tried forcing every match to have 1 Tank, 1 Healer and 1 Ranged Assassin.
For that week, yes, and they are paired with different assassins, making different and more diverse compositions over a long period of time. Plus, I think that 5-6 of each role (maybe 8 for assassins) is diverse enough.
The community is wrong, sometimes, you need to do what is good for the health of the game and not what the community wants. Blizzard should have learned that by now.
Plus, again, what good is a shorter wait if it leads to lower quality? Quality > Quantity
Except people quit playing games when the game doesn’t make them happy.
Can HotS really afford to lose the number of players we would lose for 5 minute or longer QM queue times?
(IIRC, when they forced comps, queue times for QM went up to between 3 and 10 minutes, because no one was playing Tanks. Yes, it could have been solved by people just biting the bullet and playing as a Tank, but no one was willing.)
Nothing I see in here will stop people from AFKing after losing 1 team fight, which IMHO is the biggest issue in QM today.
Honestly, if that is the only thing keeping them playing, they yes. Those players are not going to be a part of the community long anyways, they are just tourists. This will not affect long time, established players. You should always cater to your base, not the tourists. If the game is good, people will come. If you try to please everyone, you piss off everyone. Make something good and let it speak for itself. We should not be catering to the most people possible, target an audience and stick to it.
I’d argue that with better team comps, these seemingly impossible games to win which makes some people wanna call GG after a TF will happen less frequently because players have a bit more control over their team composition.
You do know that 6 Assassins are likely to be in each and every game… So even if you have a pool of 8 Assassins, you are going to have the same Assassins in almost every match. Unless, of course you enforce “1 Tank, 1 Healer, 1 Bruiser and 2 Other” matchmaking… Which will drive the queue times up even more.
I agree, I guess the purpose of the map vote is so Blizzard can see what maps people prefer and it might influence their map making/reworks decisions in the future. Also, some maps, most players simply do not like. For example: I hate Warhead Junction and would rather not vote for that one. 15 sec to vote on a map would lead to Better games in my opinion. And with the pools always changing, the strategies would change too. It would keep the game from stagnating, don’t you think?
Edit: I even think the vote should be invisible to everyone until map is selected to prevent the vote being influenced.
