It is absolutely true and I know it from first-hand experience. I posted links to 2 of my improvements suggestion threads. Take a read through those and come and tell me how open-minded this forum is.
This thread has a few pockets of agreement but it is 40 comments long not because of the broad agreement, but with disagreement.
You show me 5 threads where a new idea is broadly accepted and I’ll give you 20 where they are shouted down. If you want to include balance change suggestions, I’ll give you 100 threads.
I won’t be drawn into that as aside from a simple argument where it’s easy to measure “broad agreement” such as “Rehgar is OP”, most other topics and suggestions are more complicated and nuanced.
This thread is a good example of that. I have agreed with some of the OP’s suggestions, but not with all. This is also a discussion forum, so I would expect a lot of robust questioning of ideas and proposals for change, or otherwise it really would just be the “echo chamber” so many accuse it of being.
How about simply where the positive comments are more numerous than the negative ones? Happy hunting.
Nothing wrong with discussion and I enjoy a good debate… but if this forum is batting .000 on liking proposed changes (or close to it), then its hard to give the benefit of the doubt. This forum has the identity of someone saying: “I’m not negative… its just that most ideas are terrible.” See the irony there?
I guess the biggest point is that there are aspects of this game that are the worst of all worlds, rock-bottom, literally any change would be an improvement… but someone always points out the niche scenario that the change doesn’t solve… and at rock-bottom is where we stay.
The problem is most of the proposed changes are just the same people chanting the same refrain, “give me a surrender option”. So yes, if you have the same 2 people posting the same complaint every few weeks, the majority of the threads will be negative.
Rather than go by thread count, look at the actual unique suggestions and see how many have a positive response. For example, the times people have asked for things like “unlock all skins” or “use the PTR before releasing broken reworks”, they generally get a positive response.
Isn’t this just indicative that the game experience is not fun when losing? Specially when it’s always a 1 way stomp? They feel like the game is lost and don’t want to play the rest of the game, as it’s just wasting time. You just want to surrender the 100% losses in hopes of getting a good game or a lucky roll of the dice where to bad players are on the enemy team.
With that said, I would not want a surrender because then comebacks would never happen and people would give up easier.
And what about a clan system first. I don’t really understand why you want to enforce a party vs party system in SL. But as you said it, it would need an internal to the game mean to easily find members. A clan system is a first step for that purpose, and possibly more. I don’t know either about your Group Finder from WoW, but the last time I played WoW, the Dungeon Finder would just throw random people at me, so I don’t see the difference with a MatchMaker throwing at me some randoms.
In any case, a clan system would still ease the ability to find like minded people. It is much better than the only social feature we have currently, internal to the game, the friend list. Better than nothing, but still severely limited. Like a simple « Hello » to everyone seems like a core.
And doing things step by step jabs some advantages :
It is easier to understand what produces what;
It is easier for people to accept, especially for the clan system since it doesn’t have any down side I can think of, from the players perspective;
Of the result is good enough, the devs don’t need to take time for this aspect anymore and can focus on other points (well, if the developers have any time at all :p).
Ideas are good to have since from my point of view you can’t really do anything without an idea first. But at the end of the day, the players are going to experience the actual implementation and not only some vague ideas. So, yeah arguments like « it was already done » are going to be important.
But your last remark about loosing being not fun makes me wonder: what is the real purpose of your propositions. Whatever the systems, the skills… there will be one loosing team.
Dungeon Finder would just find 5 people who meet the criteria no matter if they were in a party together or solo. Before Dungeon Finder you had to form your own groupe in trade chat that could take hours to do and then you had to run all the way to the dungeon itself.
Sort of. LFD and LFR are actually slightly weighted to put people from the same server together. There have been a few times I would solo queue as a tank, and ended up with a guildy I wasn’t even aware was in queue. I remember a blue post about it years ago, I think it was during Cata.
What I was saying is that the Dungeon Finder as I know it has the same function as the Match Maker. Proposing a Group Finder (and I did write Group Finder and not Dungeon Finder since I don’t know if they are actually the same thing) without any kind of comparison with the Match Maker makes me think that the proposition was superficial without any thinking behind it, if they indeed serve the same purpose. Now if it does something else, then I would like to know at least what is the purpose of this Group Finder.
They are not the same thing, at least not now. Originally there was only a Dungeon finder, with the Raid finder and Group finder being added later. The main difference being Dungeon and Raid finder just kind of throw people together (with the slight weighting for server) much like the ARAM queue. Group finder is a completely different beast where it is deliberately started by an individual, who may be solo or already in a partial group, and others can choose to apply to that group or not. People can see each others’ item level (gear score). For PvP groups, you can see their MMR and for Mythic+ groups, you can see their current performance ranking.
There are third party add-ons that allow you to see other types of performance metrics when choosing which groups to apply to, or which hopefuls you wish to add to your group. Which is why boosting is so common in WoW.
The dungeon finder puts together a group of 5 people (1 tank, 1 healer, 3 dps) to do a random dungeon, which the group is automatically teleported to. The group finder is a separate system that allows a player to post a “group” that shows which content they are trying to form a group for and other players can apply to join the group, but the creator can ultimately decide if they want to allow anyone who applies to join the group or not.
So basically, improving what we already have because, yeah, the Group Finder in HotS is really basics of basics. You don’t even know if the group is searching for a QM, SL or whatever mode.
It would be a change, but I don’t know about improvement. One of the issues with all of the finders in WoW, which would also apply to HotS, is the whole problem of roles and the fact that no one likes to play tanks and to a lesser extent, healers. If you queue as a DPS, you will have a long wait for Dungeon/Raid finder, and for Group finder, expect to spam apply to groups and get consistently turned down, especially if your gear score or performance ranking isn’t top tier.
Applying to PvP groups as one of the weaker classes is an exercise in learning to cope with rejection.
Of all the people I’ve seen, myself included, ever use the term “Change my Mind” and be serious about having a pleasant conversation and actually rationalize their point in a constructive way with the other person I have only seen one person do it genuinely
and that one person is most assuredly not on the HOTS forums
I can imagine this happening even I never experienced it hopefully XD. At least the 2 features I would want for a Group Finder are the game modes searched and a free text like « I am tired of my workday. I just want to chill » or « I am super competitive. Apply only if you are the same ». That would already be great.
I don’t believe that systems like the group finder, raiderio, or Gearscore have ever improved the overall performance of the WOW playerbase. In fact, I think player performance has declined steadily since I first started competitive raiding. Even with those systems, it’s completely hit or miss every time you invite a player you’ve never played with before, just like with HOTS. All that’s really needed is an avoid system, so you can prevent players you don’t like playing with from being in your games again. It would be a much simpler solution that would achieve better results.
Ye but how long do you want those players to be on your ignore list ? If you say permanent then you will end up getting longer que times. And everything that adds more que times are hated on by the playerbase.
I can’t give you an accurate answer because I don’t have the statistical data for matches and queue times. An avoid system would have to have a decay time or a cap to how many accounts a single account could keep on its avoid list, but that would have to be based on game and queue time data.
They added a feature that lets you start a group and then you can invite friends, or it shows in the list of all groups you can join and people can apply to join your group.
Example:
In the Looking for More Tab, a Group has 2 people in it, Message is LF3M SL Plat2 Need Tank, Solo laner and flex.
You are a Silver player, but you play Tank as your main Role so you apply and set your message as Tank Main Silver2. Then The Group Sees your application as a shiny button that says Invite or Dismiss.
If they are okay with a SIlver 2 Tank, they can invite. But most likely, if this group wants to climb, they know that inviting a SIlver 2 can be a disadvantage, so they choose to WAIT for a higher ranked Tank main and can still invite the silver 2 if they fill the other roles and no other tank or flex player has joined.
There will also be the opposite option: Solo players or duos/trios, etc can put their name in the Looking for Group Tab
Maybe even show the top 3 of your heroes in the role you are applying for?
Losing is fun when you feel you were just beat and it was a close game, but you saw the mistake that cost the game and you know how you could have won that game. It’s not fun when you know from minute 1 that you are probably not going to win, making the inevitable loss feel very frustrating over a long period of time and the only thing you can think of to win this game at 3-4 levels down is nothing short of a miracle. That’s not fun, specially when it’s because of something that could have been avoided altogether if you simply had the ability to not have a particular trolling/incompetent teammate, be it on his role/hero/low overall skill/etc. Forcing 5 mans in the highest competitive mode of the game means that randos cannot ruin the games of serious players and that the quality of all games goes up because people will build teams with players that can handle their role. Flex is also a role if you are someone who plays everything like myself at times.
You see, an option is different from a requirement. If it were an option, meaning it isn’t required, it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. Its the requirement part that I don’t like. An option to find a group with an improved group finder wouldn’t hurt, but requiring yourself to be in a 5 man group in order to play a certain mode is not okay.
Not sure if you were around but SL used to be split into two modes, Solo and Team League, they merged them due to player base size and queue time I believe. Even then, you were given the option if you wanted to play solo or with a premade team.
I understand the whole 5 solo players vs a 5 stack being an issue because not everyone is willing to use voice or even communicate at all, but still, it should be the players choice whether or not they want to queue as a team or solo.