My impression on ranked HotS and the game in it's current state

[Nerraw]

The draft order would be telling. The Kel, unless he was first pick, sticks out like a sore thumb. He's a terrible pick against two of the three enemy assassins and he's a bad pick on BHB in general. 6 deaths isn't anything to write home about either, but I guess at least he outdamaged the enemy Morales; narrowly.

I was first-pick. Xul got banned by the other team so naturally I went with Zagara (which I would have anyway, I can beat Xul on soaking top and mid any day of the week as Zagara). KT was 4th on my team IIRC.

But what you've noticed there is the overall point I'm trying to get across in this thread. People don't care about picking for the map. They pick as if it was Quick Match. And I, as one person, can only do so much to try and make up for the shortcomings for 80% of a team.

[Archon14]

One thing is that Blizzard's matchmaking is completely whacked up. Another is the attitude of the playerbase. From personal experience, I've found that an alarming number of people really don't give a frak.

Absolute truth.

Matchmaking in this game is terrible. You have the wonders of Quickmatch, where group with one melee (Xul) faces 2 tanks, and if you pick Malthael, the game rewards you with playing against 4 ranged assassins without the support of a healer (or a tank).

You can avoid these shenanigans in ranked, but what you can't avoid is people behaving like morons. I'm a diamond player and I'm used to getting Gazlowe last picks, bans that make no sense, Varian as solo tank going for dps ulti even though we asked him during picking if he's going to tank, people who pick first constantly getting heroes that are easily countered, etc...

And times when you manage to avoid all of the stuff mentioned above, you can always experience something like a Zagara that stays solo in lane entire game, constantly being ganked by Dehaka, and writing stuff like "I'm doing it on purpose" and "It's really awkward that you guys are trying to win this".

Fun times.

[apepi]

One thing is that Blizzard's matchmaking is completely whacked up. Another is the attitude of the playerbase. From personal experience, I've found that an alarming number of people really don't give a frak. I see so many just flat-out wrong builds, wrong playstyles on a daily basis. People don't respect the game, and to be fair I think Blizzard is partly at fault for that for not aggressively dispelling the notion that this is "baby's first MOBA" way sooner. People don't bother drafting a proper team to counter what the other team has already picked, they just seem to play whatever their favorite hero is as if it was Quick Match. Over-extending is the name of the game in mid-Platinum currently. People don't care about themselves dying, only others. I've been stuck around Platinum/low Diamond ever since they revamped the ranked system to be what it currently is, and people are playing just as badly, or even worse, as they did 18 months ago. I have no idea what it will take to get people to actually absorb their experiences and actually learn from the games they play, but as it stands right now, I see a not insignificant amount of players who either think they're fnatic-level players or they just care so little about others that they're willing to waste the time of 9 other people day after day after day.

I'm sure this is the same story in a lot of other games, but unlike certain other MOBAs, this is a game where one player cannot win for his team, but one player can absolutely lose the match for theirs. You can't win if one player has decided that they want to lose you the game. And that is why Blizzard needs to crack down on toxicity harder in this game than developers might have to do in others. This is a team-based game into the extreme, and has been advertised as such from the very beginning. If people don't want to participate in that, then they can go play Skyrim.

Something serious has to be done to Hero League as a whole. I don't know what the solution will end up being, but Blizzard needs to act soon if they want to retain what few players remain who are actually skilled and/or want to learn and progress in a meaningful manner. HL participation has been dropping for a long time, and the current state could very well spell the doom of the gamemode if not addressed soon.

I think that is by simply adding voice comms then making an easy looking for group to make playing the game to be meant how it is supposed to be played(as a team) instead of solo.

This is also pretty telling:



And that was a game that I lost.

I have lost games where I have not died at all and made very few mistakes(I even posted on it here).

[Nerraw]

People don't realize how important it is not to die. With shared team experience, losing out on 2-3 waves of minions in the early game is a disaster. Later in the game with longer death timers, one person being dead means that the enemy team has complete discretion over how and where they want to take the match, simply because they have the superior numbers. I have lost countless games because one person goes out just a bit too far, gets wrecked sideways, and then isn't there for the critical keep/core defense half a minute later.

Learn not to die needlessly. It'll help you win.

[Panetale]

At least I'm glad I'm not the only one with that kind of problem..

This whole matchmaking misery seems to be a Blizz specific problem, I can see the exact same in Overwatch. I'm not playing myself but my GF plays on a very high level (Season high somewhat arround 3.7-3.8) and it looks almost impossible by now to climb up the ladder again because of trolls, leavers and throwers or people in general that play on High Diamond/low Master that just don't seem to hit anything. This way she made it all the way down to low Diamond while being almost not a bit responsible for it.

Guess Blizz has to take a good look at their matchamking systems and how they punish toxic behaviour. Ain't got many hopes tho, this has been a problem in HotS for what feels like an eternity now and they never really improved anything.

[Nerraw]

That's my worry well. They didn't really address anything at last year's Blizzcon, and indeed not much has happened since then. Guess we'll see in a few weeks.

[RH92]

Guess Blizz has to take a good look at their matchamking systems and how they punish toxic behaviour. Ain't got many hopes tho, this has been a problem in HotS for what feels like an eternity now and they never really improved anything.

Well, what is toxis behaviour really?

I lost more games because of people having no understanding of basics and drafting, I still find griefing and AFKing rather rare. I personally rather play with a raging mongrel that knows how to play a game than with a loveable fool who picks a third squishy ranged into a heavy dive composition.

Saddest thing is, these 'loveable fools' get to sit on their high horse because they just play the game and don't really care about winning. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose, but are totally blind to reasons behind the loss. Even if they pick a bad Hero, neglect soaking experience or fight on talent disadvantages they still get a compliment from a game because they did 2% better than 'average' player in random area.

This game absolutely fails to teach anybody anything. In Overwatch you at least have a "Too many Tanks" and "Not enough Healers" when it comes to 'drafting'. In this game you often get Bruisers with no CC to be Tanks for a team full of squishies or your last pick goes with a Sgt. Hammer when you already drafted Tyrael, Illidan, Rehgar and Tassadar/Abathur. I don't really care about meta drafts, but I want teams to at least have a theme.

If you try to be nice and explain in friendly manner they just ignore you, but when you use stronger words you are toxic. This lack of motivation to understand and improve is way more frustrating than any form of "toxic behaviour".

[Panetale]

Well, what is toxis behaviour really?

I lost more games because of people having no understanding of basics and drafting, I still find griefing and AFKing rather rare. I personally rather play with a raging mongrel that knows how to play a game than with a loveable fool who picks a third squishy ranged into a heavy dive composition.

Saddest thing is, these 'loveable fools' get to sit on their high horse because they just play the game and don't really care about winning. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose, but are totally blind to reasons behind the loss. Even if they pick a bad Hero, neglect soaking experience or fight on talent disadvantages they still get a compliment from a game because they did 2% better than 'average' player in random area.

This game absolutely fails to teach anybody anything. In Overwatch you at least have a "Too many Tanks" and "Not enough Healers" when it comes to 'drafting'. In this game you often get Bruisers with no CC to be Tanks for a team full of squishies or your last pick goes with a Sgt. Hammer when you already drafted Tyrael, Illidan, Rehgar and Tassadar/Abathur. I don't really care about meta drafts, but I want teams to at least have a theme.

If you try to be nice and explain in friendly manner they just ignore you, but when you use stronger words you are toxic. This lack of motivation to understand and improve is way more frustrating than any form of "toxic behaviour".

Well I would have described not wanting to pick something accoding to your or the enemy's setup and refusing to accept any advices or generally just playing "whatever you like" as toxic. Pretty much comes down to the definition of the word. For me this is as toxic as constantly flaming guys in my allied chat, just that it is even more likely hat THIS kind of people ruin my game more than the flaming one.

[slime]

I think most people play this game like it's diablo. Clicker. They don't think about roles and strats - just click and kill, break a tower.. move on and click and kill... oww a shiney, let me go over there and see.

[Muis]

This is just about unranked, but it shows how little people understand about the game and their own skill.

I'm like 3rd pick, I'm in a 3man and our map is Cursed. One of our guys goes support, the other of my 3man goes Greymane so I can abathur.
So we have a good copy target, we have a good map, i shotcall for our team on voice (but add pings for the rando's).

So the fun starts in draft... I prepick/pick Abathur and our first pick Anub already goes through the roof about how the game will already suck because 90% abathurs suck.
This is a level 6 anub saying that to a level 52 abathur. While his buddy picks Kel'Thuzad. Then says that levels don't matter cus you can play all you want and still suck.

He then proceeds to dive in offensively ... 1v4.
His buddy doesn't show up to tributes.
Blames our support for not healing enough, while Anub sitting top deaths mostly for not being with the team and always got picked off 1v3, 1v4 even 1v2. Either burrowed out with 1% hp or it was on CD.

But you know, his level 6 anub was probably better than my Abathur :')

[ErothTV]

Getting rekt by Butcher when You have Anub and Stitches in Your team.
Lul.

[RH92]

Well I would have described not wanting to pick something accoding to your or the enemy's setup and refusing to accept any advices or generally just playing "whatever you like" as toxic. Pretty much comes down to the definition of the word. For me this is as toxic as constantly flaming guys in my allied chat, just that it is even more likely hat THIS kind of people ruin my game more than the flaming one.

Problem is they can report you for flaming, but you can't report them for stupidity.

[Panetale]

Problem is they can report you for flaming, but you can't report them for stupidity.

True that.

- - - Updated - - -

And to give even more insight to what happens to me on a dailys basis:

I did a few unraked yesterday evening, my team was fine but the enemy team had 2 Sup, 1 DPS and then the last 2 guys just randomly picked Abathur and Naz. No frontline for them and 2 Specialists. The Abathur then proceeded to just bury on the middle of a lane and just getting killed by either minions or us. He didn't even symbiote someone, which is why he ended with 20k siege, 200 hero DMG (not 200k, just 200..) and virtually no exp. I reported him afterwards cause I actually felt sorry for their team because we obviously rekt them pretty hard because of this.

And about an hour ago I had an unranked match on Mines, we had 1 Sup, Greymane me as Ming and the last 2 guys just picked Chromie and Tyrande. We obviously lost. The Chromie wasn't even bad, it was just the setup that killed us.

This shit happens every day and it continues to be incredibly frustrating.

[Well]

I don't know why you guys bother with solo queue HL in this game. I stopped playing ranked all together when they removed duo queue from it, and i don't intend to go back. My very limited attempts to play in it have just confirmed how bad it is. Nobody can play with strangers.

Not to mention how the metagame mindset has infected the community, making it think that if you don't play the current hot hero on your desired role(s), you're obsviously trolling.

HotS is not the game it used to be: no fights happen, no fighting in general happens, just soak, soak, soak to lose to one random pick that is not salvageable 20 mins later. LoL does this better, anyway, and it's more fun, if you're playing solo.

[Nerraw]

I was third in our draft, they had Jaina and Tyrande at that point. We had Auriel as first pick. The guy I was picking with hovered Arthas, but swapped to Varian at the last moment. Sonya was hovering Dehaka for the longest, but swapped at the last moment. No idea why Greymane thought it'd be a good idea to go Greymane against Jaina combined with Diablo.

An alarmingly tiny percentage of the playerbase seems to even understand that heroes have counters. They just pick whatever the hell they want with no regard for composition or map.

[Panetale]

I was third in our draft, they had Jaina and Tyrande at that point. We had Auriel as first pick. The guy I was picking with hovered Arthas, but swapped to Varian at the last moment. Sonya was hovering Dehaka for the longest, but swapped at the last moment. No idea why Greymane thought it'd be a good idea to go Greymane against Jaina combined with Diablo.

An alarmingly tiny percentage of the playerbase seems to even understand that heroes have counters. They just pick whatever the hell they want with no regard for composition or map.

That. Alone seeing this Screen infuriates me to some extend since it reminds me of my own situation.

[Penguin FTW]

No one, including you, picked a sustained damage dealer with waveclear for Auriel. Your team needed something like Guldan/Valla and probably a second support.

But yes, the general knowledge and skill level of the population in this game is ATROCIOUS and incredibly frustrating. I quit 2 seasons ago because spending most of a season grinding back to a point where games are actually fun isn't worth my time and energy.