Proposal: Ban all groups from Quick Match

[Deleted]

Like I said, of course I play with friends when they're on. But when they aren't solo play is so punishing that my decision tree becomes:

Friends on -> play HoTS
Friends not on -> play something else

That kind of sucks.

And I don't want an advantage, I want an even playing field. At least, as much as possible.

You exaggerate beyond reason. I play almost exclusively alone, none of my friends got in the alpha and only recently did they buy their way into beta. I also don't make a habit of friending strangers for the sole purpose of grouping again. With all that I enjoy about 60% win rate - sometimes I get stomped, sometimes I stomp, fun times are had. If you honestly believe that every time you get stomped it's not the skill difference, but a phantom 5-man premade hunting for solo queue random groups... Well, I'm baffled as to what should I say.

[Mormolyce]

Maybe you should look at how you interact with people in this game, OP. I've been in the beta for about a month and have a win rate of 57% (115W vs 86L). Only 2 friends got into the beta and they barely play.

So .. every game I play, I look for the people who're not rude, who play reasonably well, who participate in team fights, who communicate and respond to communication (even if it's just pinging the map with your intentions / helping others when they do the same). At the end of the game, I send a friend request.

I've now got 20+ "friends" I barely know, but I know they make reasonable team-mates. Some of them barely even speak English but that doesn't matter - you don't need to speak to be able to communicate in this game, at least at a basic level.

My f list is literally full. No matter how many friends you make you can't queue with friends ALL the time. Besides, sometimes you WANT to queue solo.

You exaggerate beyond reason. I play almost exclusively alone, none of my friends got in the alpha and only recently did they buy their way into beta. I also don't make a habit of friending strangers for the sole purpose of grouping again. With all that I enjoy about 60% win rate - sometimes I get stomped, sometimes I stomp, fun times are had. If you honestly believe that every time you get stomped it's not the skill difference, but a phantom 5-man premade hunting for solo queue random groups... Well, I'm baffled as to what should I say.

Come on, don't be silly, it's obvious when you're fighting a premade. No I do not imagine that every strong team I fight is a premade.

And I don't know what my winrate is solo but sure, I win some, sometimes my team crushes the other team. Often I fight against other disorganised groups. But some days you get stomped by teams 5 matches in a row and it wears on your patience. A premade vs. 5 random queuers is simply not a fair fight, all I'm saying is create a way to opt out of it.

[MechaMoose]

so essentially I shouldn't be allowed to queue with my 1-2 friends EVER because you have trouble sometimes?

It's hard for me to be sympathetic to your cause when your solution is so harsh and unforgiving

[Tziva]

Matchmaking should change how it sorts people (in fact, I think it is supposed to once the game goes live or at least has a larger population) who queue solo. It should try to make sure each team has a similar proportion of premades/friends/solo/whatever.

I am thoroughly against banning groups from quick match. The entire draw of the game is that it is very team oriented and things like group xp bonuses show how strongly the game is trying to encourage people to play with friends - taking that away except outside of ranked (or against bot) play would be really counter to that purpose and detrimental to the audience.

It's a far superior option to just try to match groups of friends against other groups of friends, and solo players against other solo queuers. As I mentioned, I think this is already the plan for the game, but I think they need a large enough people playing first to implement.

[Acidbaron]

Randoms shouldn't be matched against groups if there are other randoms in the match making available.

[Kagonos]

It does have a built in mechanic for matching solo players vs grouped up players. But, when you're the solo guy who gets thrown into the game with a well organized 4 man, that shit's pretty fun when you're on their team. I've almost exclusively solo queued and I've been in games where my team has just utterly annihilated the other team and none us us were queued together. Literally, not a single keep lost. Aaaaaaaand then I have been on teams where I'm the only one even considering objectives and the rest of my team, god only knows what they are trying to do... At that point, I just try to make the best of it, maybe ninja an objective or two, but mostly just try not to die.

[Tziva]

Kinda why I'm gravitating more and more toward purely single-player games. Kinda tired of games giving bonuses - both tangible and otherwise - to group players above and beyond what you can get just playing solo. :|

First, I want to say that I have queued for hundreds and hundreds of games solo over the last year so solo viability is important to me.

That said - in the context of Heroes' design, I think it's a smart decision to reward groups. One, because the design of the game really functions most optimally with groups. As a very teamwork-oriented game, you want to encourage people to make and group with friends to get the most out of their games. And two, because it will help slow the inevitable community decay/toxicity if people are largely playing with friends or are encouraged to be making them.

Obviously I don't think the game should be punitive towards those playing solo since no one is going to stick around to make friends if it is (and even people with loads of friends aren't always going to be able to always play at the same time), but there are certainly games where it makes sense to reward groups - and this is one of them. And I think how they've done it so far is good - Bonus XP is enough of a reward to make people friend and group with others, but not so much that I feel like it's not worth ever queuing solo.

[Tziva]

Sure, but it feels like that would be the point of Team League. Having a purely solo queue option - maybe even a ranked one - seems like a not-awful idea.

Separating the queues would lengthen them for both groups, and I don't think with much benefit. I think the best solution is still to allow both groups and solo people to queue for QM, but prioritise grouping those in the queue so both red & blue teams are similar composition of solo/premades. There's no reason to make them exclusively play only other solo teams, because what matters is that the teams are evenly matches so solo players don't get in the situation where they are matched against a full group of friends who massacre their team of five strangers.

[Kagonos]

Sure, but it feels like that would be the point of Team League. Having a purely solo queue option - maybe even a ranked one - seems like a not-awful idea.

As it is, HotS will probably just end up in my folder of, "Games I'd otherwise enjoy, but which seem to be telling me not to bother playing them."

Segregating the teams from solo would only serve to lengthen queue times for everyone and how do you propose the team queue fills the missing holes if it's not a 5 man team? DO you then say it's only solo queue and 5 man team queue? Do you say to a 4 man group, there's no place for you? Because if they are 4, where does the 1 person come from?
The logistics of a "team queue" vs "a solo-only queue" seem a bit too complex when compared to a preference based queue like they have now. That just means that the matchmaker will PREFER to put 2 man teams vs other 2 man teams and so on, but in the absence of that in a given time frame, it will PREFER to shorten people's wait times and simply fill with whoever has been waiting the longest. Remember that it's a free to play game, and if everyone who wanted to play it had to wait for an indeterminate period of time before even getting into the game, that will be a bigger deterrent for more people than the occasional game where you get ROFLstomped because of a 5 man group on the other team.

[Kaleredar]

They already try and match up grouped vs ungrouped.


Also, I see people claiming "they must be a premade" far too often. People sticking together does not justify a "it's a premade." It's fairly easy to know where the "right" place to be at any given time is, and people just balling up and traveling around for ganks isn't something that requires an intense amount of coordination.

[Mormolyce]

I don't have a problem with rewarding group play, I think the game already does that because playing with a group of people you like over voice chat is a far better experience by default. I'm just saying, when you do queue solo it'd be great to have a way to ensure you won't get matchmade against a group even if you have to wait longer in the queue.

so essentially I shouldn't be allowed to queue with my 1-2 friends EVER because you have trouble sometimes?

It's hard for me to be sympathetic to your cause when your solution is so harsh and unforgiving

Perhaps it would've been better if I said "make a separate solo only queue".

My suggestion is, if you queue as a group you use the current system as is. If you queue solo you have the option of choosing solo only.

Separating the queues would lengthen them for both groups, and I don't think with much benefit. I think the best solution is still to allow both groups and solo people to queue for QM, but prioritise grouping those in the queue so both red & blue teams are similar composition of solo/premades. There's no reason to make them exclusively play only other solo teams, because what matters is that the teams are evenly matches so solo players don't get in the situation where they are matched against a full group of friends who massacre their team of five strangers.

I believe the queue already tries to do this, it does work sometimes, but often not.

Segregating the teams from solo would only serve to lengthen queue times for everyone and how do you propose the team queue fills the missing holes if it's not a 5 man team?

You make it optional to queue solo in the group queue. High chance of getting a 4m + you so there is actually an incentive for it. So your choices are go solo queue and make sure you don't get your day unnecessarily ruined (with possibly a longer queue) or queue solo in the group queue and get a shorter queue and possibly join a semi-premade that is working together (but maybe just get stomped by a coordinated 5). I think that's a reasonable dilemma.

Also extending the queue times is fine, depending on how much of an impact we're talking about, and the only way to know that is to see how many people are queueing in each queue throughout the day.

[Deleted]

I have no problem waiting up to 10 min for a game. I'd rather take some extra waiting time than to get stomped for 15 min straight.

[Deleted]

I rather ban stitches than facing premades as solo tbh

[Irian]

I think simply allowing 2 or so players wouldn't hurt, but yeah, I completely agree. There's a queue for premade groups (assuming they get rid of that retarded restriction currently placed upon it) and Quick Match is clearly made for a simple, low-stress game. Premades in this game are complete stomps, and it's honestly okay to have OP hero comps as long as people aren't allowed to abuse it in casual play.

[Lesane]

I have no problem waiting up to 10 min for a game. I'd rather take some extra waiting time than to get stomped for 15 min straight.

It's not you who does the waiting, it's the people that group up. Solo players have very fast queues. 5 man groups are going to get matched to other 5 man groups, but if there are none within 6 minutes, it groups them against solo/duo/trio/quatro whatever teams.

[Deleted]

I actually like this, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous that you can queue with more than one person in Hero League, when there's already a Team League as it is.

Gotta agree with this. Groups have no place in hero league. I could get behind duo queue being available, similarly to how ranked works in LoL, but more than that? :/

[Deleted]

Well, without allchat it's hard to say how often you're legitimately up against an organized group who defeated you with the power of friendship and how often it's just "sigh, probably another five-stack" where in reality they're just playing better and you're falsely blaming the matchmaking tool (we've all done it at some point). I can see the issue though, no matchmaking algorithm will ever be 100% perfect and sometimes you'll end up having a game that simply isn't fun if you can't opt out. So for broad categories like "solo or not", you should be allowed to.

Personally I'd like to see the game modes get fleshed out a bit. I don't like blind pick at all, and when playing with friends (as I usually do) it's just frustrating to not know the map. I hit level 30 a while back, but some of my friends haven't, and even then there's the 10 hero requirement. So basically what I wish they'd do is:

* Add a "no stacks" checkbox to all modes where you can solo queue, like DotA 2 had for a while. If you're solo and don't check it, you can get matched with anyone. If you're solo and do check it, you won't end up playing stacks.
* Add draft mode to unranked. I like ranked play, but having no options but "blind map, blind heroes, mirrormatch possible" if for some reason you can't play ladder at the moment is so restricting.
* Instead of preventing you from playing draft with less than 10 heroes, let people buy in with a token like in HoN. That's one of the few things I think they got right: If you have a token, you can join the draft and pick anything. If you pick a hero you wouldn't normally have access to, the token is spent.

This is all from the viewpoint of someone who basically never plays solo queue, and who wouldn't play quick match at all if I didn't have to help my friends unlock ranked. So it's pretty much the other end of the spectrum from where you're standing with this. But, I figured this was an appropriate thread to drop my 2 cents on the subject

[Titebiere83]

This game encourages you so much to play with friends (+50xp), that your suggestion would go against design intent.

[Gnomorepuns]

It's the role of the dice. You can't do anything different. Some will complain they want to play casually with friends and not come up against those good organized groups while some do. You can't have both. There is no way to fix the system, and as of right now, the system is fine. If it is that big of a deal, then try to coordinate the group yourself when getting into the battle. I do that whenever I solo que, hell even with friends in order to guide the 1-2 randos. If they don't listen, then report them.

But there is nothing you can really do here. Otherwise que with friends, or go into hero league so you don't get nearly as many paste lickers.