The new average?

General Discussion
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This will be rather lengthy as i’m currently frustrated and venting about my own personal experience. If you disagree please tell me why but lets keep this civil please.

I have been playing this game for 2 years, and in that time i have been part of what most people consider the silent majority.

I have logged over 1000 games in ranked, and i’m a pretty consistent player. While like many people i know that playing on weekdays during sub prime hours will typically result in the best results i often ask myself why is it this way?

I have flexed between mid gold peeking as high as low plat over the last 3 seasons, with my worst seasons resulting in high silver. I am well aware that i’m what you consider an average player, but recently i’m starting to reevaluate what average is.

Why the fluctuation? I main support, and supports haven’t really been in a good spot for a long time, but its a role i enjoy playing and while i can do other roles 70% of my games are filled by this " Low impact/ Low carry potential" role.

I know some people will say you gained your rank because you got carried by people with higher skill, sure you are entitled to your wrong opinion. I acquired all of my ranks based on my personal successes or personal failures and i’m man enough to admit that.

Lets do some bullet point “personal” observations so this appears as less of a rant.

Beginning of 2018:
1) 8/10 players in my games are similar rank and play similar to my skill level.
2) Games that result in Stomps or high level disparities are rare.
3) Afk, trolls, general toxicity is rather low.
4) Overall experience is enjoyable and while at times frustrating, the good outweighs the bad.

Late 2018:
1) 4/10 players in my games are similar rank and play similar to my skill level.
2) Games that result in Stomps or high level disparities are overwhelmingly common.
3) Afk, trolls, general toxicity are overwhelmingly present.
4) overall experience is terrible and while at times enjoyable, the bad outweighs the good.

Is this the new average?

I’m sure many people will say things like, git gud, or l2p and that kind of feedback does nothing. While i’m aware i’m providing 0 statistical feedback and 0 references to things like hotslogs, i shouldn’t have to.

I’m not criticizing the games design or its mechanics or even its match making, and while I could, those topics seem to be covered elsewhere.

What i am criticizing is the community.
How is it that you ( perpetrators not the reader) can log into a game, which sole purpose is to have fun… and be completely belligerent and ignorant to the point where you are literally ruining the game for 4 of your team mates.

Is this behavior the new average?

Now im aware, of the response, bro this is the internet… grow some balls, or what do you expect your playing with man babies. But seriously why do we as a community have to tolerate this kind of behavior among our peers?

Some might say the report system is broken, While i don’t disagree its useless, Why should we have to rely on a broken system that ultimately does nothing to rectify the behavior?

Here is some context, as to why i’m upset and why i’m finally taking the time to post about this frustration that has been brewing for some time now.

I want to reiterate i am NOT trying to say i’m a good, or even a great player, i’m well aware of my average-ness this isn’t up for debate.

Since the new season has started, I am sitting at a 33% win rate, normally i would say wow i’m playing like garbage, i need to review my replays or brush up on my basic mechanical skills or do something because obviously i’m the one who is facilitating these bad numbers.

But the reality is, and i wish i could say different, this is not Entirely my fault. I wish i could pinpoint the reasons why i’m sub 50%, normally i sit at 63% Win rate, but i understand how things effect those numbers. some days you perform good others you don’t, sometimes you get the trolls sometimes the other team does etc,etc.

Lately ( again observations ) it seems like i’m playing with 5 year olds and the second things don’t go there way, its “tantrum time” and the game effectively is over once these people start throwing said tantrum.

Right now my perception is that, this is has happened 100% of my games this season. i have logged 15 games, and 12 of them resulted in either losses, or games that should have been a loss had someone on the opposing team not obviously thrown a tantrum. Why is it that in Gold the win condition isnt great understanding of mechanical skill, good teamwork, map/hero awareness, or even solid drafting. The win condition is whos team can endure long enough before a tantrum is thrown and exploited?

Is this the new average?

I’m sure this is just a saturation and at some point it will level out and my rank will naturally go back to where its suppose to be, but what if i was a player who only played these 15 games? I can only imagine how much worse it would be if i instigated, threw tantrums, raged etc, and to be honest i’m glad i don’t behave that way, but man… why is this games community devolving at lightning speed?

When i reflect on these questions and make these observations, i wonder what the new average is becoming, and it scares me because average is a bell curve which means the majority of players are either experiencing this kind of behavior or are the sources of said behavior.

I’ve spoken up, in an effort to combat this new average because i don’t want to be a part of this new devolving average and i really don’t want to continue to see games play out this way or with these kinds of behaviors.

If you’ve made it this far i commend you and welcome your feedback.

Thanks for listening.
-Saprophite

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It sounds like you’ve gotten unlucky this season. I would say though that as you go up in rank, you’ll see fewer tantrums and useless insults being thrown around.

You’re right that 2018 did see an uptick in unreliable games thanks to the placement bug several seasons ago and Blizzard seeding players from QM which only changed this past season. A lot of players who are relatively new will get seeded into gold and they’re just not good enough to be there due to lack of drafting knowledge, counters, etc.

If anything though, I’ve noticed there are fewer whiners and fewer people who will take time to type out a negative message as time as gone on. Perhaps it’s because I’m in high plat now instead of silver/gold, but I think that a lot of those people were suspended/banned and that stopped them from playing HL.

I absolutely agree that negative messages blaming others have no benefit except to make the writer feel better. No, it’s not a matter of get a thicker skin, it’s a matter of those who feel the need to type an useless message need to control their emotions better. In a game where seconds matter, taking time to type out “you suck, you’re the worst” is detrimental to the team and provides no benefit. Hopefully more of these toxic people can be weeded out.

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This is the only part of the post I feel like I can firmly disagree with. I personally like where my favorite supports are in terms of impact and power, but I’m lucky in that regard. Lili is still super fun, Whitemane seems a little too strong at times, and Alex and Deckard can make great things happen.

Some supports definitely do need some help. I haven’t seen a Malfurion win in any of my games for months, same goes for Uther. I’m not sure if this is just a result of my rank, or if the characters really do need some help, but either way, I avoid playing them.

I have been pretty lucky to have enough good experiences in ranked to balance out the stomp fests, and I hope that your fortune turns around too!

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@azxcvbnm321

Thanks for the Reply, Its nice to hear that the climb is still worth the effort, and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t expect the “tantrums” to go away but being less prevalent is definitely a welcome sight.

I wasn’t aware that the seeding system had been changed or even more so that it was taking effect, and based on that feedback that does explain why the quality of games as seen such a dramatic impact.

I suppose like many things, time will heal these fresh wounds and will put everyone ultimately where they should be, this new information and expectation will give me a new perspective should i continue to play this season as i work my way up and out of this “problem area”.

@Thelanis

I guess its subjective and like i said i’m a little emotional at the moment and venting, so i’m sure the accuracy of my rant isn’t 100%.

Over the 2 years i’ve been playing i’ve seen a tremendous amount of changes to supports most of which have been on the “perceived” receiving end of a nerf bat.

While i do agree that Whitemane and Deckard are a step in the right direction, There are many supports that need a lot of love.

I don’t feel like the Brightwing rework was a positive step, and maybe she will get some number tweaks and feel good again. Likewise i’m sure the reworks that we are unaware of, will have a positive impact when they do come to fruition.

At any rate, Im glad you are having success, and im sure things will turn around they always do.:grinning:

Thanks for the reply!

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Enjoyed the read OP and I would like to share my own experiences which is kind of interesting because it is quite simillar and then it’s completely mirror opposite one another.

When I had my first ranked season almost 2 years ago I started in gold 5 after terrible placements. However the games that followed I saw no difference than LoL gold players which were kind of simillar. Having had previous experience it was not a big issue for me to blast through, however I didn’t encounter more negativity amongst my teammates than I had in LoL. It was more just mute, forget and play.
During those games it was easy to distinguish if I played well or not, if I was the cause of the win or loss. This was a great learning experience and this season still holds my highest WR for Artanis because of it.

At the start of 2018 Season 2 I started to play ranked a lot more once again as I was playing Legion a lot more previously. What I found was an astonishingly high number of players that had effectively gotten a bye from QM seeding straight into Diamond 3. This caused the D4 to D1 ladder to be incredibly volatile, as it was very difficult to distinguish if I queued for unranked draft or HL. From my experience this was by far way worse than the Gold games I played almost a year prior to this. I believe it took about 150 games or so for me to re-enter Master and by that point I was so exhausted that I just sat on it and patiently waited for the next season as Blizzard had announced a hard seed cap and a soft reset.

Following this I placed in Diamond 1 and I immediately noticed the change. Players were on average (for that rating) more competent to handle the different maps and rotations. It no longer felt like a complete roll of the dice if I played with an adult or a toddler.
No issues at all to climb once more and the following season I was aiming GM. This is my current goal as it’s the last ranking I haven’t achieved.

Reading your story and evaluating my own experiences throughout 2018 my theory is that once Blizzard stepped up the ranking seeding to prevent new accounts skipping 4 tiers it caused all of the existing accounts to not only tank their ranking extremely hard but also the influx of newer accounts being placed in Silver-Goldish ranking.

New accounts should be placed no higher than Silver 1 because players needs to be given the time to learn and watch themselves progress. If Blizzard gives them a high ranking directly there’s no sense of achievement but just an unfound ego.
This also kills the smurfs who believes that their accounts are “done for” because their MMR was bad from the start. Everyone was bad when they picked up a game. I got myself up from 800 Elo in LoL season 2. If you played back then you’ll know that was the rock bottom pretty much and watching myself improve was what made me continue play.

Currently the high silver to low plat range is probably where the greatest difference in skill currently lies. Both because newer accounts are placed there and “former Diamonds” now having tanked their way down there.
The critical issue here is that the players that tanked themsleves from Diamond probably just blames it all on the team. Everyone else is keeping them from climbing to their “rightful” rank.
Then you have the new guys who placed Gold, which is a shiny ranking on the face of it and they can always say that they are better than the Bronze or Silvers while having no idea that they might be just as bad due to lack of experience.
Beside this you have all the players inbetween who either just plays casually for fun or just accepts that this is my skill level and I’m not gonna put 40+ hours a week on HL.

I believe this is the core problem of the toxicity in this rating. Ideally everyone should start from roughly the same rating, prove to themselves they can carry larger weights than they should have to show that they are better. Once you get to high enough ranking it lifts a burdon of “I have to do everything” to “I have to play my role to the fullest because my team knows the fundamentals”.

This became a really long post so I apologize for that but TL;DR - Yes, I think this is the average, especially for this rating in this genre of games. Too many players are locked in the mindset of “everyone around me is trash, I’m the best” and fails to realize when they are the ones who have to get better. This just results in the endless flamewar that is mid level ranked unfortunatly. You have to break away from this to experience better games.

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Until the game rewards both INDIVIDUAL gameplay directly (with an MMR award bump for doing well) and the current team metric, there will be no motivation for many to put forth an effort.

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Yeah, the community has been garbage this season.

Yesterday, I won 3 out of 4 games I played, but I kid you not, I got yelled at in EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. I got flamed in all of them for really, really stupid things that I wasn’t even wrong in doing in the first place. Things like:

“Genji, stop diving, dumbass, you’re a ranged hero. DO AAs!”

??? What about my Swift Strike, though??? What about X-Strike??? More importantly, I’m not even feeding, so wtf is your problem?

That was the standout thing I got told yesterday, but I had every single teammate in all 4 of those games on my ***. For 3 of those, we were winning the entirety of the games, and we even ended up winning, I seriously cannot understand the nonesensical bs that was being spewed at me. Every game I had less than 4 deaths, top kills, in 2 of those top XP, I wasn’t being toxic back…

Seriously, I have never, until yesterday afternoon, been tilted in winning games. I have never quit playing for the day after I’ve been winning. Never. People need to take a good look at their lives and get freaking rid of all the crap in their heads, seriously.

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I appreciate everyone who has taken an opportunity to share there experiences and provide meaningful feedback, seeing that there are like minded individuals with similar experiences and positive resolutions is a huge relief.

Since i originally posted, i’ve been scouring the channels, and it appears that many people seem to be having a similar problem.
The general consensus appears to be just mute chat, use pings as necessary and avoid voice coms.

Like many of you have suggested it does get better as you go up in rank or at least this is a consistent enough report from higher MMR players.

@Laparo
It certainly does appear as if this is the case, i’m sure there are other external factors that we cant account for, like changes from other MOBAs, or new players who legitimately are new to the game, and since i’m giving the ultimate benefit of the doubt here, i’m sure that there are some people who have legitimate disabilities who cant control the anger or out lashes.

yea, azxcvbnm321 had stated something similar.

Everything you said in your post hit the nail on the head for me, but this really stood out. As something i was ignorant of i did some homework.
After personally looking into it, i found the following sources that i maybe should have researched a little more heavily when it was relevant news.

“RANKED PLAY ENHANCEMENTS COMING WITH 2018 SEASON 3 Nate “Spyrian” Valenta 2018-5-11”
https://heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/blog/21771817/

Despite Blizzard stating that they were implementing this system don’t see tangible evidence that this is happening.

“INTRODUCING: PERFORMANCE-BASED MATCHMAKING
Blizzard Entertainment 2017-11-17”
https://heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/blog/21179036/

I do think that maybe there should have been some warning though, as someone who predominately plays ranked, the implementation of this system is critical to its player base, and just speculating as to when someone may come online, or that its being worked on isn’t enough.

I do feel that they owe it to the player base to keep things like this very black and white, and it would be easy to communicate.
For example:
_"As part of our update x.x.xxx We will be implementing the following IMMEDIATE changes to the ranked playing experience. _
Players who previously were seeded to X rank incorrectly based on our faulty MMR system will be having tougher matches and if they belong there they will stay at the current rank."

Or Just do a hard reset on the entire MMR at the begining of each season or 3.0 update whatever so that instead of this overwhelming and frankly surprising influx of players that clearly dont belong at a certain rank, everyone can be where they are supposed to instead of having even further fluctuations.

This is a golden example of my concern is things like this

As someone that i used to actively watch for instruction and entertainment, reading something like this only further validates my concerns,i think the necessity now is that we as a community actively try to do something positive to stem this behavior.

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Individual match-stats in a team-based game are almost irrelevant and not a valid method of evaluating player-performance.

I don’t endorse your stat-padding and your demands to get a system that gets you boosted for exploiting algorithms instead of rewarding you for winning.
The only significant display of skill is a match-victory.

You cant win every match, you are also not the only one participating in every victory.
Your performance is perfectly displayed in your winrate which will be 45% , 50% or 55% after 100+ matches.

@OP
The HotS community has been feasting on negative behaviour for a while now and I don’t know where it stems from.
With the forum-rework a lot of troll-accounts ceased showing up here, which were previously spamming nonsense like calls for “Report everyone you meet for no reason, cause that’s what the cool kids do 2k18.”
Theyre still here, but a lot less of them around now.
That’s not meant as an explanation, but it kind of shows the mentality of the community and how your average “HotS” user behaves.

I did complain about toxicity for the last season, because it was really getting out of hand at that point, imho.
So, I really do feel you and your point of the team-tantrums is why I keep saying that the most important winning-factor for platinum and below is people skills, because the tilting, especially in this game, has been extreme lately.
When the playerpool is basically a coin-toss of who gets the worst human being, then it naturally pushes your climb to a 50% winrate and really wastes a lot of time.

I wish Hots really started to tackle this issue properly like other games do nowadays.

  1. Implement the avoid-player feature from Overwatch, so we don’t get to play with that one really toxic guy from previous match again.
  2. Implement a mechanic that rewards non-toxicity and proper behaviour. Connect this to the loot-mechanic in some way or form. Gamers strive for rewards. Use this to solve the problem.
    Silences, bans, etc. don’t prevent and fix these issues.
    Theyre a last resort, not a proper way of tackling this issue anymore.
    We need something more proactive.
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You are just unlucky. The issue is that the match making is so bad to the point of being RNG. Everybody who plays this game knows that there is not once that you have similar skilled players on your game (even though Blizzard advertises that their match making put players of similar skill together) . Even GM is seen to drop down to Diamond while playing the same way they climbed to GM. Just wade it through. Rank in this game is an insane grind since it was designed this way (MM manipulation). But after you hit Master, the next season you are guaranteed to get Master 1000 even when your placement matches went 0-10. You will also be rewarded with 40 PRA, making your climb to GM much easier.

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HotS is not a competitive game, despite what HGC tries to demonstrate.

It’s a casual brawler that want to be considered a moba like LOL and dota.

Laning phase changes was really bad in 2018, because dev tries to shift from brawler to moba a lot more. And some people didn’t liked/adapted to the changes. The game was snowbally for months and still is today. Strong powerful objective on newer/rework maps to keep the game under 20 minutes for HGC broadcast don’t help.

Regular getting banned for being more “vocal” than others because of not always deserved report probably didn’t help either. It’s kind of rare now that you found a game in HL where people talk and communicate. The risk of getting silence because people disagree with you doesn’t worth it.

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Here is where you are wrong. My purpose is to win, that’s it. I have fun if I win or lose as long as the match was fair and not one sided. But if you go into a ranked game with any other attitude than to WIN. You are playing the wrong game mode my friend.
I’m a very toxic player, but only when I get attitude from people who are not trying to win, people who don;t care and have no clue what they are doing, when I have 2000+ games played in HL. The thing is, we get FRUSTRATED with having POS players every single game, where I feel like I need to teach my team how the game is meant to be played, and get nothing but idiocy from said teammates. I found that the only way people will listen to me is if I get like 2-4 kills right away. If I just calmly explain a strategy, nobody even listens to what I type. If I ever pick a non-meta hero and explain a strategy, I immediately get dismissed and trolled. I get reported almost every game, but I never actually harass anyone, I just try to explain stuff and they become hostile…
This generation of gamers are ruined. It’s like they can never admit they are wrong, or that someone is actually better than them. We have a generation of narcissistic gamers like we’ve never seen before, and it gets worst every year.

In conclusion, serious players like myself are all leaving this game because nobody takes it seriously. People with your attitude of “having fun” as the only purpose is what is causing toxicity and skilled players to leave. If every single player on my team was serious and had victory in mind, you would NEVER see me calling people bad and you would NEVER see me being toxic.

Fact is, when I am allowed to lead the team with all 5 in voice, we win 9/10 games. But because most players don’t care, they never join voice and they don’t listen to what anyone else has to say, they tunnel vision, they don’t play the map, they don’t go to objectives, they don’t take mercs, they stay mid all game and never soak, etc. We get FRUSTRATED. Only reason I still play is because I get a really fun and even game every 10-20 games.

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I will also add that this game’s population seems to be very low in IQ

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Same thing happens on platinum, diamond and low master as well. Silver level players were placed there in s1 and they throw hissy fit in the moment someone tells them to do something ie. stop feeding, soak or deal damage as an assassin. According to you OP as a high gold/low plat player should climb to the verge of master/GM for better game experience.

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This has been argued for years. Nutshell: The top of the tier doesn’t want to play with the bottom and rise again. They just want to maintain the status quo.

But if Blizzard is reading this… you can get my $$ by offering me a PAID MMR reset.

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Don’t have much to add but i agree with the OP that something has happened in late 2018 where games have become VERY lopsided. Its very frustrating as a person with thousands of games to be paired with people who barely know how to play.

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I think you are drastically missing my point, or maybe you are reinforcing it.

I get that Ranked specifically hero league is a “Competitive” game mode, what makes you think that my +1000 games logged in hero league means i want to lose?

You are making an assumption that losing is something i actively seek which couldnt be further than the truth. I enjoy winning, you can look back at my post and see how upset i was at being sub 50% let alone at 33% win rate.

That doesn’t justify anything, and that’s part of the problem not a solution.

Yes i do, and im sure many other people do, kind of the point.

What makes you think you are any more serious than i am? What leads you to believe that you having fun first and winning second isn’t as good a mentality as winning first and fun second? I don’t see them as polarizing as you appear to.

Compared to what? I feel like you are representing the bell curve of the new average i’m talking about, and the very narcissism you seem to be angry at is pretty prevalent in your superiority complex.

The only difference i see between you and me is our reactions. Believe it or not i could have made the same arguments you are, i could react the same way you are because i face the same problems you do. The key difference is, im 32 years old and i recognize that throwing a “Tantrum” is what emotionally immature people do.

It sounds like maybe you need to personally reflect on why you feel this is the only solution.

I just noticed this

Do you think that maybe this has something to do with your negative outlook?

Despite that, i approached this from a civil manner i am not blaming any ones mechanics because as i stated i’m not a Grand master, what i am targeting is the “Tantrums”. Despite your arguments, you appear to be part of this “Tantrums” problem not part of the solution. Thanks for your feedback

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Quick update, its been a long ( 218 games) trying season for sure, but low and behold perseverance and a positive attitude has gone a long way, i’m back at plat 5.

The journey continues and i hope to achieve plat 4 which will be an all time high for me.

It is amazing though how, 20 straight negative games, were toxicity runs rampant and negative attitudes dictate matches, can result in almost 180 games worth of wins and losses to make up that difference.

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You are way too nice to be cool.

Just be yourself.

Don’t worry about what people think.

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Not trying to be cool, i am being myself.

I guess maybe my behavior is a bit of an abnormality.

At any rate, I tend to not worry about what other people think, i just wanted to present an issue i had almost 26 days ago, and give a nice conclusion that in this case resulted in a happy ending. :grinning: