They have already consolidated servers, SG serves not just SG but China and most of SEA.
What the games needs is some advertising, which they said in the last AMA they are thinking of doing.
A hots movie in the actual theaters/online would be good to get more lore and bring in players
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This game is more fun with friends. I think some of you are looking back with rose goggles. Yes larger population before meant higher ranks were stronger but lets not pretend like plat-bronze have changed at all. My ranks and my friends ranks have been pretty consistent.
Also i really dont see how boosting is a thing. Maybe in a handful of cases but youād have to que as at least 2 higher ranked players with one lower ranked one. I as a plat player am not so much better than gold players that i can reliably carry a silver all the way through to my rank. I also dont see why someone would be willing to do that grind its not that much fun.
So no i dont want a solo que mode. This game was meant to be a team game and solo que has never been fun.
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I think its straight up numbers. when you take soloās out of storm league you make it impossible to make teams. You need soloās to fill out 5 mans.
The only other option would be to go to teams of 6 man team or 4 man teams and ban 5ās an 3ās respectivelyā¦
it was set up before they started letting eveyrone in as 5 and 3+2. both of these configurations do not require solo players.
it has been suggested before, even recently, that they try 6 man teams. the differnece 1 extra person can make in team with how it shapes the meta and what is viable or not is actually pretty crazy.
in regards to just the team matching though. it does give a little more flexibility.
4 man teams have 2 configurations for team only.
4 and 2+2 ā (tank, heal, 2 assassin)
5 man teams have 2 configurations for team only.
5 and 3+2 ā (tank, heal, 2 assassin, flex)
6 man teams have a few ways to put it together in team only.
6, 2+2+2, 3+3, 4+2 ā (tank, bruiser, heal, 2 assassin, flex)
this is without having to dip into solo players. so its pretty obvious that the 5 man and 4 man configuration have a severe limitation in matching. just adding that 1 extra spot opens up a lot more for the matching system to get ppl into a match.
I also donāt want to be queued with a 4 stack in QM either. They are terrible - all he time. They only heal themselves, they ignore pings, they do dumb stuff, they have no clue about what is going on and they pick even worse hero combinations than Blizzard in random QM.
Blizzard just did a bad job in understanding what people want. There are enough players out there that donāt want to be matched with premades and then are the lone wolves that are basically left alone the whole match.
I expect that Hero League will bring back here I will answers for these players here.
The happy middle is making ranks to ranks only. So golds queue with golds, etcetera.
WHY it was EVER ANY DIFFERENT is testament to current hots team being kiiiiinda dense when it comes to actual game design. Iām glad they ālistened to the community,ā but please find me all these silvers who want to toe off with plats.
Please.
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It isnāt so simple. HL was still the more popular mode, even during the last two seasons of TL. The main reason TL in the last 2 seasons gained popularity was the decision to give out a free mount for anyone who completed the placements, from Bronze 5 to GM, you got a free mount. This was simply a way to test their concept for what became SL, with a guaranteed reward to entice people to play.
This is all I want. I donāt think people shouldnāt be grouping, Iām not saying the only reason people group ranks apart is to boost players or smurf. Iām saying allowing this in a competitive mode means games need more MMR averaging which in turn leads to uneven match quality due to the wide skill margin that can exist between those 3 ranks.
Why not allow 5 man stacks group as any rank spread they want, the highest rank decides the overall MMR of that group?
Groups of 2, 3 and 4 should all be limited to playing with the same rank. This I feel would help match quality, stop most boosting, and most of all improve match quality.
Never in the history of this game have people thought it was okay for people to group 3 ranks apart. In the past people wanted matches to be as balanced as possible, so people of the same rank faced people of the same rank. This once wouldnāt have been a controversial or unpopular opinion to make, it seems it is now.
Allowing people to team up in small groups 3 ranks apart stresses this system and means more MMR averaging resulting in games that are more uneven.
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This is the best answer. Itās a team game, itās best played with coordination. The LFG tools are basic, the friends and social tools bare bones. Improving these would give the foundations for teamwork and guilds and clans that they just didnāt understand is what they needed to support an esports scene.
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Just saying other mobas allow generous rank differences in teams sooooo canāt fault only hots too much
Then theyāre in the wrong, too.
None of them being wrong changes any of them being wrong.
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I donāt touch ranked at all since they removed HL. Pug vs premade is annoying enough in QM when thereās nothing on the line.
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Lets be clear the accounts they get are ādonated to themā so their hands are cleanish. However there is a big difference between bronze 5 with 200 player levels getting to bronze via leaver or tanking and having a bronze 5 account with lets say 2000 games in bronze. That MMR change for the 2000 game account is going to be harder to climb than one with almost no history.
The other thing to consider is that GM is playing 10k point below his true MMR. Thats like LeBron James going to the local YMCA and playing guys in their 40ās at the senior rec league and saying Look Le-bron made it from YMCA bush league to the NBA why cant you ???
The word Challenge implies that there is an opportunity of failure. IS THERE ANYBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WHO THINKS A PLAYER PLAYING 10K MMR BELOW HIS ACTUAL MMR IS GOING TO FAIL TO CLIMB ? REALLY. If his for teammates AFKād and he had to control ping the bots maybe, maybe heād fail.
The fact that he is good playing on an account with almost no history gauranteeās his MMR will move faster than someone with 2500 games in bronze. That means fewer opportunities hitting griefers, quitters . Please peopl that do bronze to GM are there for one purpose, punking low MMR players.
If you really want to impress COACH SOMEONE OUT OF BRONZE.
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I would sure love watching someone like Fan grind a negative MMR account out of deep Bronze 5 (where you gain just 1-2 points per win).
Maybe even he wouldnāt have the nerve to grind that many wins to prove a point. Though streamers have financial incentives so I wont bet on that. The challenge suddenly feels less of a chore as people randomly donate you $100.
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I to would like a solo only queue option (Someone here said that itās not possible).
Another idea is that there could be a cap on group rank earned. For example if they are in 5 stack: 100 4: 135 3: 170 2: 185 solo: 200 etc.
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No my point is that the community always thinks things would be better if we had anything but what we have now, but yet we asked for everything weāve gotten.
So we could go to solo queue only, and the next day there would be posts BUT I WANT TO QUEUE WITH FRIEND WHY CANT I QUE WITH FRIENDS,ā¦
and the cycle starts all over. 
We didnāt ask for a slowed hero production
From what I remember, there was a very vocal group that wanted grouped HL, I was always against it because of the exploits that I saw in TL. I knew that those exploits would be used to their maximum effect if we ever had a HL and I was right of course, people in these types of games will use any type of advantage they can get. I think the majority of people did not understand the implications of allowing groups into HL, or did not care. I donāt think the majority wanted a change, and there were a bunch of people like myself that argued against it.
In a competitive mode, the playing ground has to be level for everyone involved. A group has an advantage over solos, even if you think itās not a big advantage, itās still an advantage and that goes against the spirit of what a FAIR match should be. And of course we have players exploiting the system to the very maximum, creating new smurfs just to lower overall MMR of the group so they can face easier opponents and stomp them. Thatās not good for the game and why I largely quit HL/SL, itās not worth the frustration when youāre a solo player.
In the end, I believe Blizzard understands it was a mistake. Wait times are no better now than they were before, actually theyāre worse meaning combining the two modes drove people away. If the playing field is not fair and level for all, then it defeats the purpose of a competitive mode. Itās not a true test of skill, if a person can get boosted to a high rank, then that takes away the achievement for others as well because we canāt be sure if that person was boosted or not. Thatās why Team League ranks were considered a joke, thereās no way to tell if that person used exploits to gain rank. However Hero League ranks were respected when they were solo only, bad placement issues by Blizzard aside. We should return to a solo Hero League and have a Team League like we had before. I think Blizzard underestimates the amount of people who would come back to play HL if it were a fair mode once again.
When you check profils on people you will fast see who got boosted to master and who did not. The boosted people are all bronze/silver in HL and had master in TL while true masters had master rank in both leagues. So that means SL is filled with people that dont deserve his rank at all because of TL rank seeding before TL got removed.
And yes i have seen alot of people now days with silver in HL that suddenly got master in TL right before pre-season to prevent himself getting seeded into silver in SL.