But each day, it’s deteriorating and it’s no longer fun anymore.
With players leaving long term, staff members going/merging, updates are less, no Blizzcon updates… it’s getting the point of… what is this game anymore?
QM is the biggest clown fest, MM is the worst because of the player base is barely there, solo players are just at a disadvantage always and games are usually one sided where one team dominates the other.
I still play this game every now and then, but only like 1 or 2 games then I just say to myself “why do I always come back and expect things are changed?”
I want to play ARAM with real players not AI and for the last week wait time estimate is 16 to 70 seconds depending on time of day, yet I wait over 500+ seconds just to be told I may pair up with AI. In-whichI cancel and restart the queue but the message pops up again then I’m just like “whatever… I’m gonna play something else”
Clearly this game is in life support and not sure when Blizzard will pull the plug, while this is a fantastic game, for some reason the game did not get the attention of the masses. Its up to the developers/Blizzard to the build or break this game, they got to start listening to the community, fix issues and what not! Until then these are expected out of this game.
If D1 is still up, it’s doubtful they’ll shut down HOTS, especially when most of the client is decentralized peer to peer anyway.
So this is why this game will likely never be taken offline.
The client uses a design pattern known as deterministic lockstep. At no point, is game state ever transmitted. Instead, each client sends out input, and receives input, then the HOTS client parses that data deterministically. This means that every single time you feed it the same input, you get the same output.
This is why the game is so CPU heavy, it must calculate these interactions from input CONSTANTLY. It’s also the reason scrubbing a replay and reconnecting takes so long, because the game’s state has to be reconstructed entirely from input alone.
Nothing about the way the client determines game state is asynchronous, it cannot be threaded at all for this reason either.
So what does this mean for the server? It doesn’t have to do any heavy lifting at all. The heavy lifting is offloaded to 10 clients, and all the server has to do is relay input, then run quick calculations to determine the winner of the match.
So, unlike say Overwatch which is asynchronous operation, the server really doesn’t have to do a whole lot and you can host thousands of matches with very little server overhead.
It’s also why it’s near impossible to cheat in HOTS because you cannot manipulate game state, you can only manipulate input, and all output is 100% deterministic.
No one wants to play cause blizzard fails to fix any of the problems and gives this game any attention. Its gonna get worse sadly so best find another game. I have pretty much given up on it myself.
I wouldn’t expect it to get better while there are no updates and all heroes are in free rotation. It’s probably best to just take a break if you’re not grouped as five.
The thing is, D1 was probably more popular than HOTS ever was. It also doesn’t require people to play as teams so D1 can function as intended even with a low player population.
I agree with you they may not shut servers down to HOTS, but they may eventually shutdown PVP modes so you only have VS AI.
VS AI can be played 100% offline lol. You just have to launch the right program and kill some processes. If it was restricted to AI only, that would be functionally equivalent to shutting down the servers.
The client is mostly peer to peer, though. Not really much to keep the game running and it’s highly scalable this way. I don’t think this game is going offline any time soon.
I know, but it’s against their rules to do this. They want you to play games like Diablo 3 (which many people play entirely solo) online. People have been asking for an offline mode there for ages, as you would know. Especially the masochistic hard core only players.
I didn’t say, and don’t think HOTS will go offline anytime soon. I’m just saying you can’t really compare HOTS to a game like Diablo as that is a game that can be played entirely solo. PVP modes in HOTS needs players to match, and well, hopefully some semblance of MM applied.
D1, you need two friends together, and you’re good to go to raid some catacombs and skeletons for loot.
HotS, first you need 10 people to make a match. But that match will be horrible if it’s just random 10 people.
So you need thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people to make a working environment where people are classified into various skill levels.
A moba that has only a few hundred people left is as good as dead, the public matchmaking is broken at that point. Then players are left with playing AI games or Custom games for any semblance of balance.
Do some servers only have a few hundred people left in HotS? Sure. Take a look at Australia. It’s as good as dead.
If EU and USA servers ever get to that point: That is the de facto point of death.
I think it’s 30.
Judging by my SL experience, a fair lot of people may have returned for Dec-Jan the majority of whom are now gone, or simply the ranks have settled, decay damage undone, smurfing less necessary, all that.
So it may or may not be the reason. I think I covered every possibility.
Depends which server you play on and on which time of the day. I play on EU and gets a lot of extended que past midnight or early afternoon when people are at work.
I know, I was just exaggerating for effect, which is why I used the winky emoji.
That’s the argument I’ve been putting forth. As you say, you can leave the server open, but with a MOBA if there are too few people playing, what point is there?
You guys are so god damn dramatic. I can easily find games in master, diamond and gold in less than a minute in solo queue. Yes sometimes the matches are one sided but its the nature of a moba, LoL is full of one-sided games too. I have no idea what you’re talking about QM is also extremely fast at finding games, less than 30 seconds. Ofc its a clown fiesta but thats the whole point of QM. Its full of non-competitive players and off meta heroes.
Is the game going to get a lot of updates? Probably not, we know they have a few reworks coming but probably not much after that.
Is the game still playable and enjoyable? Yes, its by far the moba i have the most fun with.
Stop being harbinger of doom and have fun with a video game. Stop blaming the “bad MMR”, you are exactly where you should be and just can’t recognize your own mistakes.
