Not just reddit. That’s literally every online game fanboy. To them, the game is perfect and they have no issues with it so automatically everyone elses’ issues aren’t real and they’re just whining.
Never become that desensitized or why not, idiotic.
Still the devs could have come here or even played the game themselves on their own time or blizzard’s and they would see how bad matchmaking and the reporting system is.
I hope they are moved to the mobile projects so they can f that up too since I don’t play games on my phone.
This is exactly right. Chronologically ordered forums have always been a superior form of discourse.
Any system that operates mostly on rewarding people for getting upvoted is always going to degenerate into an echo chamber.
There’s a really good episode of The Orville that demonstrates why voting systems are so dangerous. Season 1 Episode 7 “Majority Rule.”
They should probably disable likes as a whole before I pass 5k…
Likes are mostly harmless. It’s dislikes that carry consequences that are harmful.
So you are telling me that if dislikes exsts too the echo chamber would be slightly bigger to avoid being massively downvoted?
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying and why Discourse and a slew of other systems don’t use them.
But dislikes already exist on Reddit.
Without dislikes I’m more free to offer dissenting controversial opinions without fear of getting buried. Hence why I’m vastly more active now than I was before.
I will always offer my own honest opinion, but on the old forums I would be hesitant to do so.
Yes, plus you can’t even have a good argument or debate at reddit because that thread will get buried on the next day.
At least in this forum, whenever there is an post posted in that thread, that thread will bumped out to the first slot so other posters may read it to learn what is happening in that thread.
It may be an echo chamber, but it’s unreasonable to think that it was the only source of feedback they used. They’ll have player metrics that we don’t see, they have the ingame feedback.
If they behaved as you suggest, ie, implement a reddit idea, watch player base drop, implement another one, watch it drop more, again and again, it wouldn’t take very long to realise it’s not working.
Not only are you suggesting that they only sort advice from the already converted, but they actively ignored the data coming back from those changes.
I find that difficult to accept. Reddit may have been complicit, but it was far from the only reason.
The problem with this sort of complaint is that it might be one, might be the other or it might be both. The fact that GM’s do carry bronze to masters suggests that you can carry in this game. The fact that GM’s are the only ones who show they can do it suggest its either very hard or requires a huge investment in time that most people don’t have.
The discussion then becomes then how much better do you need to be in order to carry, how damaging is one potato on the team, and how these factors influence the overall fun your player base is having. And that’s an interesting and good discussion.
However, you don’t see that discussion. What you see in the age of poor conversationalists is;
“OMG gaem sux cant carry”
“lol noob, carry fine, u sux”
Yeah, I wonder why that considered and nuanced exchange never solved any problems.
That’s not a problem with reddit by the way, that’s a problem with people. Us. Every time we accept absolutism instead of nuance, every time we dismiss an opposing view instead of engaging and teasing out details. That’s how we get echo chambers. Reddit is just another platform.
The root of this problem is the lack of details in determining legitimacy. Troll reports mixed in with legitimate reports. Ideally you tell everyone your metric for bannable offenses, sort through them and uphold or roll back based on the merits of the case. However that takes time, and as we now know, cost cutting would scrap that division even if it ever existed.
So what do you do? Keep the report system casts too wide a net and is too easily abusable? Remove it and let the game become more of a toxic cess pool?
Do more people leave if they are abused or if they get silenced/banned?
I don’t have any answers here, just questions, but it’s not as simple as ‘make a better report system’. That’s what we want, but until we discuss what that looks like it, what are the attributes, what are the punishments, what language is acceptable and unacceptable, how much can be automated. Until we can agree what a better report system is, we’ll never make a good one.
Because it’s hard to distinguish between reasonable feelings of disgruntlement and the tantrum of a spoiled child. Ideally one would be better articulated than the other, but even the phrase “I’m done, all my friends left and I have no reason to play anymore” is a pretty bland sentiment on it’s own.
Why did your friends leave? How long did you play? How often did you play? Were you a positive influence on the community as a whole? What expressions of passion for the game have you shown?
These give any statement you make, power, authority and legitimacy. 1 reddit post saying “I’m done” by itself means nothing.
So no, I don’t think reddit had much influence. Some, maybe, but nothing that wouldn’t have been corrected by the raw data from their own servers
That is all fine but issue is => WAS IT ENOUGH ?
Apparently NOT
The real problem (and sadly critical thinking hits really late on this one) was the fact that MM was used in the very same way like other games did, but HotS had different rules WITHIN the game and therefore should’ve had ADJUSTED MM SYSTEM to make-up/differ as a result… BUT that wasn’t the case, it was the same “Total and average MMR on both teams being equal” pushed down our throats and we “find our way through the maze” possible
That is all fine up UNTIL you realize that Gold had 35% of playerbase TOTAL, and Silver had ALSO 35% of playerbase TOTAL, meaning if you belonged somewhere in Gold or Silver => you’d get ALL THE FLUCTUATION from Silver 4 up to Gold 2 (give or take) throughout, or in other words = somewhere between the worst 20% and best 20% of playerbase AT THE SAME TIME (in total)
“Thursting” the MMR/average rule just made matters worse, regardless of the “fact” you post, it’s still the very case of definition of bad design cause again = “average” people that were trying to climb up to their “personal best spot” were constantly pushed up and down by the “current of MMR” without realizing, without tools to affect it, without any “pregame adjustment” that a person can at least “push” a further climb, and so and so…
No ofense, it’s not like skill doesn’t matter but EFFORT does also, they didn’t put any tools at player’s disposal to partially “skew” the result (such as, I want a team without specialist and with 2 tanks type of tick/checkbox before queuing) or even a “gamble” where if you win you get double the points and lose = lose double also… Meaning you could “reduce bet” (say down to 50%) when at your highest “ever” achievement ? = in order to gain a “few more shots” at making it up further… It’s not MUCH, but would’ve PROBABLY REALLY HELPED people thinking they can DO MORE and ACTUALLY give incentive to try harder… Also things like Map vetoes would’ve been at least the MINIMAL FIX of the issue, for example I personally had a 30% WR on Tomb whilest having 45%+ ON EVERY OTHER MAP, can’t tell you how much rage/disbelief I felt whenever I saw the blue spider on the announcement screen two times in 3 games span or even 3 times in a 5 game span (sometimes when cancelled by some X reason in draft got the same “aw bloody hell, come on” map TWICE IN A ROW) lol… Would I have climbed further if I didn’t get constant “bombardment” onto me with that retard map ?, maybe, maybe not, what matters is = CAN’T KNOW FOR SURE cause we weren’t allowed map vetos (and tools as such)
Basically IF THEY CARED, even more like IF ANYONE CARED for that matter = people would’ve had the better playing experience, ALAS, just as the @OP described = it was the case of “following reddit clowns” that “reassured everyting was fine and every bit of criticism/negation” was simply downvoted, and NOTHING WAS ATTEMPTED OR DONE as a result
That is definitely a detrimental aspect of reddit. Things get buried exceptionally well there.
As for the reporting system, there was an idea to enforce its integrity through appellate reviews when Blizzard GMs would intervene. Every bogus or improper report according to clear standards would carry a serious consequence for the reporter, and the penalty for people initiating appeals would increase if the silence is upheld or if a certain standard isn’t met for reporting offenses. In essence it’s a clever way to incorporate limited people power with accountability for offenders and reporters. But of course neither anyone from Blizzard nor any of the forum posters got it. Even worse, no one understood the very simple idea of doubling the money spent on buying heroes for renting many more heroes too to open up the hero pool to new players. Funny thing is I never understood the role of community managers. Trikslyr was basically a kid. I don’t know what he did in college and how he got that job but he was clearly unfit to be an actual community manager. The forums weren’t used as a resource. I was getting the impression those people were hired to be either cheerleaders, some sort of mods, and for the occasional communication item. Couple that with arrogant developers and you get a clownshow impervious to assistance. Then sprinkle in all the geniuses in these communities. I spent so much time arguing with this one woman that what I was suggesting wasn’t a subscription and that she had no data to indicate it made no sense. Just so much idiocy everywhere. Funnier still, at the same time Blizzard were looking to fill a couple of financial positions, with references to being aware of the current industry “literature”. Some months later HotS 2.0 and lootboxes happened. You cannot make this crap up. The world actually functions this way! People get rewarded, have careers, even get promoted…
Maybe the components of the game is what killed the game. Oh, and the clear unprofitability of it from a business aspect. Which lead to Activision/Blizzard killing the professional player teams. You know. Not reddit.
Seriously, why do dev’s pay attention to alternative forums as opposed to the official forums? At least here you have a read on what people are saying and know they are actual customers as login is tied to your account and email. On reddit I could have 40 separate profiles all saying the same things. Which obviously would make an issue look bigger than it is. And sure, what is to stop someone from making 40 battle.net accounts? Absolutely nothing. But if those profiles have zero or an hour total play time, obviously those opinions are not well balanced and as such are worth less than say one account with 50+ hours.
Hahahahaha
No wonder why reddit is called a place where autists try to look smart. Listening to them is a bad idea, but a company who is rather listen to randoms @reddit than listen to their actual players on their OWN forum deserves to suffer.
Positivity never help on the long run… it only helps hiding the problems, but not solving them.
But that’s not only a issue here, but generally in the whole west. Peoples are hypocrites. They trying to create the image that everything is fine, as speaking about the truth, and the REAL problems isn’t PC… and as a result, noone going to solve those problems that slowly but steadily kills the whole system…
The exact same happened in hots. Many veteran gamer told the key issues with this game right in the beta, but they got ignored…
Just as got everyone who did spoke from those issues for years.
And there are we now… their fruit finally starting to ripen, as the game collapses cause those issues…
How is that cesspool of a forum any different?
“why did blizzard waste time listening to the idiots over there, when they could be listening to the idiots over here?”
Blizzard killed it.
Reddit sheep crowd echoes it.
The issues you bring up were discussed on Reddit and resolved in a logical manner. The study I brought up showed that it was average MMR that made the difference, the team that had a higher average MMR did show a statistically relevant higher win rate than the team with lower average MMR. One of the problems was that the “favored” adjustment did not accurately adjust for the actual probability of winning. You might have experienced this when you’ve faced teams that received either (+30 or -30) favored adjustment. In some cases it should be -180 or +180 because the team is so heavily favored that they’d win 90% of the time, but the favored adjustment doesn’t go that high. This only happens when the matchmaker can’t find enough players to make MMR equal, so during off peak times AND with grandmasters and so forth. So issues are discussed in depth in Reddit, far more than they are here.
Secondly, the map veto was discussed and rejected because of the problems that arise from it. Tomb is one of my best maps, Sky Temple, however is my worst at a horrible 40% or so. So if we were on the same team, I’d want Tomb, but ask for Sky to be banned. Who decides? The banner? Then that would cause conflict on the team even before the match started. If I were the banner, I’d never ban Tomb so you’d be upset even before the game began. Also having different maps is a key feature with HotS. Being ranked means that you are good with all maps, it reflects your overall skill in the game, not just certain maps. For those reasons, the map veto was discussed and rejected by the Reddit community. Very logical and thought out.
Your checkbox suggestion also comes with problems. You’re supposed to draft in order to counter the enemy team and find a comp that works against them. If people were locked into a role and a team comp, then that would defeat the purpose of draft. It would be like QM.
Finally, your “gambling” idea would make the problems with rank even worse. A lot of the complaints on Reddit are about players who do not belong in the rank they are at. These players were able to get Masters/high diamond because Blizzard hugely screwed up the placement process and allowed masters placement by people who only play 10-15 placement games a year. A lot of these players lucked out on placement and were placed too high. Your gambling system wouldn’t do anything but make games count even more. So a good streak and you could place way higher than your skill, or way lower. Both ruin games for the other 9 players who expect to play games with people on their level.
Sounds like you cracked this nut over a box of orange juice. Did you guys do a petition when hero bans were implemented because someone could get upset or did you make the key distinctions? With advanced minds like this it’s no surprise the game was essentially cancelled before reddit smelled the smoke.