here is the most current blizz response just for clarity
im not saying there ‘isnt’ something else that may be going on. just that forced 50 isnt the reason which is what ppl keep trying to point to.
I have noticed this pattern of the MM since the first season.
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That response is from a person who does not know the internal workings of a matchmaker.
Again, he speaks about the target design philosophy of mmr. But that doesn’t mean that the actual system reflects that design idea perfectly.
And it doesn’t.
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Here’s a little secret. Anytime you see “extending match making” quit immediately because it’s relaxing the MMR bracket to find you a game faster.
That’s how you end up with weird, trash panda teams that make Blizzard look incompetent.
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It’s not incompetence: it’s not enough players across all roles and skill levels. Can’t make bricks without clay.
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they could easily design it differently to prioritize good match making over short queue times, but today’s instant gratification generation has no patience i guess.
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And why did HotS have a lesser player base, despite having enough time to launch with Dota2?
Incompetence (specifically incompetence with the development cycle followed by balance incompetence which resulted in a re-launch a few years back). No matter how you slice it, Blizzard screwed up badly and that’s why match making is bad.
I have only been playing for a year, but – so I understand – previous attempts to do just that met with strenuous protest.
I agree, but focusing on the match maker itself is therefore disingenuous. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with it: no match maker can consistently deliver ideal results without a healthy population. 
There are ways they could make the match making better but it would mean longer wait times.
Essentially all you need is for the team to have a total MMR bracket, for the example, lets say it’s 3200 MMR.
Now that’s 3200 MMR that can be divided up between 5 people, which is equal to 640. Obviously you need an individual MMR flexibility but the issue is where “Extending match making” loosens that bracket, allowing one player to take up a much higher percentage of that 3200 team MMR, resulting in significantly worse allies.
Often times, one good player cannot offset several bad ones, this game isn’t Dota2, it isn’t LoL, there’s no way for 1 really good player so carry the entire team unless the team is so bad you’re better off having bots.
That is the issue.
Remove this dumb “extending match making” crap, put a hard cap on a 5% MMR difference per player, this way, for example if match making takes too long, the game will say “Okay, we can pull 4 players with 608 MMR and a final one with 768 MMR or any combination reaching up to 5% MMR subtracted from other players to add a higher MMR player onto the team”.
This way you still retain a somewhat similar skill level across the entire team instead of having 1 or 2 good players combined with a bunch of players who should probably keep to vsing easy AI.
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It kicks in LITERALLY after 5-10 seconds for me.
I will likely never find a match if I keep resetting.
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Matching up 5 randoms vs a 5-man premade with voice comms IS kinda incompetent though.
It doesn’t really matter how long this premade has to queue. Completely ruining the game for 5 people and making them waste 20 minutes of their time on a pointless game (because 90% time the premade wins) - is an IDIOTIC, incompetent and repugnant decision.
Also I find games in 20-30 seconds on average. But the search gets extended immediately, 5-10 seconds in.
What this tells me is that there are enough players to start a match at least every 30 seconds, and likely more. In other words, every 30 seconds at least 10 people join the queue. And realistically - much more than that, because you still get some sort of matchmaking happening.
If we went back to how MM used to work before - balanced search for 90 seconds and only then it gets extended - we would probably get MUCH better matchmaking results.
But we don’t. Because some executive decided that matching players immediately is more important than matching them fairly or competently.
And WHY that happened? Because instead of making game design decisions themselves, Blizzard nowadays are super-scared of criticism and look at what people are whining about on reddit.
Clueless scrubs whined then queues are too long - now we get an idiotic algorythm that results in 80% games being one-sided.
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Yep, sometimes that’ll just happen and there’s nothing you can do about it.
The have never discussed any changes that involve the root algorithm. Every thing they have changed rests on top of it. They just get more people that never worked on it to talk about things they haven’t even bothered to do the math on. They speak from a podium of ignorance about what the matchmaker actually does, was designed to do, and has been statistically shown by at least 3 different threads showing cases of 100s of games, with reasonable statistical analysis. (And yes, I am actually qualified to discuss it in that way).
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Extending mm after 10 sec is way to fast. Its like it does not even try to find people.
Like i already had extending mm twice today this afternoon at 5 pm.
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It actually starts the extended MM way earlier, which why you can cancel at 25 seconds in (5 seconds before ex MM is “supposed to” kicks in) and be locked into a game that pops at 30.
ALSO
Pretty sure if someone (or some people, individuals, groups etc) waits in que long enough, it will snatch up people still in their 30 (actually 25 or less) second window and slam them into an ex MM match for them, but you’re still in your normal que time. Can’t prove this though without either extensive testing or looking at the code.
I always dread the insta-pop que after hitting the ready button because in all likelyhood it will be just as bad or worse than an ex MM pop
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Let me preface by saying I do not claim to be some sort of professional god tier heroes of the storm player. I am good at video games in general and pick things up very quickly, faster than most. I am a solid player.
Decided to give this game a try, and let me tell you… the matchmaking was so suspicious that i began to google search.
I can 100% confirm that the phenomenon the OP describes is accurate.
First 30 or so matches were just complete stomps, I was rolling over everyone and wondered how these were actual players. It legitimately felt like i was surely the only human being (no offense) in the game. Allies and enemy alike seemingly just wandering around. They must have been both new accounts, and not good at mobas in general.
Then suddenly something happened… I routinely began to see the entire opposing team coordinating plays, they are not the best plays, the players themselves are not even good–they are, however, at least functioning with some base level of skill. Meanwhile my allies… they remain unchanged, or worse! can you believe it.
The only logical explanation is the game has no way to match me in a game with relatively comparable skilled allies and opponents. So I am getting stuck with the 3 or 4 worse players in the room, worse by far, and then playing against 5 people who are leagues better than my allies.
Unfortunately this is not, NOT fun. If I am not playing 100% lights out, AND more importantly, getting lucky with the hero matchups, I literally have no chance to win. To make matters worse, I am continually put on teams with the worst available players from the previous matches which only adds to the furstration. I recall a streak of 5 games where by the 5th game I had collected 4 disparate allies who were clearly among the worst players from at least one of the previous 4 games.
So seeing this post really gave me solace that I did not lose my mind.
I have seen so many things that just leave me scratching my head, and I just wonder if the experience will improve with enough matches.
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See this isn’t game trying to force losses on you. The problem is that our MMR averaging has no limits in QM. Let’s talk this in terms of ranked mode since points equal MMR(ignoring actual ranked MM rules) for how QM works. So let’s say I’m number 1 GM level player with 17k points. Game will never try to make a GM level game still. Instead it will make let’s say low plat game. Now I’m theoretical 5 ranks above from the proposed MMR average in points(almost full plat, diamond, and 3+ ranks worth in master). What will my allies be you ask? They could be say 3 random golds(that’s 3/5 needed ranks worth MMR) and a high bronze(last 2/5 ranks worth MMR roughly). All while we could face dia + 3 plats and a gold.
it’s the wide spread of allowed MMR within game that makes miserable games. When you get top MMR you are straight up punished for it. Game won’t try to find you quality games. Instead it expect your to carry bunch of braindead idiots who are put to anchor you because game does not try to make high level games in QM ever. It’s not game forcing losses, just horribly designed system that won’t try to make games between equal players(instead used the dreaded MMR averaging). Difference to actual ranked is that there is hard coded cap of 2 leagues there. Gold could never be matched to GM for example because difference is too great(without being part of pre-made anyway). So you see it’s not maliciously designed system that forces you to lose. Instead it’s just extremely badly designed system that makes it likely to lose the higher you get and less likely for you to ever want to touch the game mode again.
You can thx all the people who want unfair and unbalanced games over quality for that.
But some people cant wait so they would rather get teams that stomp the other team at the expence of balance and longer wait time.
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The fans and players exploiting this system will tell you it is great.
The game designers(with no software engineering backgrounds) will tell you that you are imagining things and the statistics they conjured prove things are great.
Welcome to snowflake land, where reality isn’t allowed.
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I had one aditional question regarding the matchmaking. I can understand, that during the matchmaking, some characters are balanced (countered) by others. In case I take Cassia I will play against Arthas or mages with far longer range.
What I cannot comprehend is, why if I pick Cassia I am very often facing game without tanks (as well on my and opps side). While if I decide to play Joh I got paired with another tank in my team against just one tank in opponents team?I personally hate playing games without tanks and healers, but what I hate much more is receiving another tank in team when I make the sacrifice to play the tank by myself…
Could perhaps somebody explain this?
Thank you!