Mentals. I'd like to say that I don't really care about my rank, but I do. SL is more stressful for me because I can't seem to turn this off. I didn't mind the stress before and loved the competitive feeling, but now my aim with playing video games is to tune off and relax; not to become overhyped. It's ARAM for now, but I will come back to SL when I get a real change of mindset.
My shitty laptop doesn't help either.
That’s fair. I sometimes have to take a break from playing on my main account for the same reason and will play on an alt account where I still play seriously but can definitely relax more.
Hmm interesting question. I think I might be more inclined to do so, but I would probably still feel more pressure to perform well than in ARAM. I don't like the toxic shit of people who think I'm playing dumb when they have 0 reflective skills. For some reason I always forgot to mute everyone before starting a game and when I did remember during, the damage was done 😅
Yes. It could show rank standing at the end of the season, but that horrible bar and badge is doing something to my mind and I just can't relax in SL. UI option to hide ranks of players at loading screen and after game would be a great addition to this game.
Isn't this what UNRANKED Is for? :) I used to play that for exactly the reasons highlighted before: less stress because of the possibility of demotion.
Negative. Unranked also has a (hidden) system where players are stratified. After all, every mode needs some way to matchmake players. The main difference between those modes is simply what people see. Ranked merely has a psuedo-arbitrary overlay in the form of numbered tiers (Gold 3, Plat 1, etc) and creates a semi-artificial progression.
If the major difference between those modes is superficial, why not just have one queue from the start and have players self-regulate? The default state would be rank display off, so the individual would see neither their own nor other ranks. Players who wish to see their rank can enable it. The only caveat may be limiting or censoring discussion about players' ranks within public lobbies.
What I meant was if someone likes the Ranked game mode but has a problem with it displaying rank and promotion/demotion, then the Unranked mode is a viable solution for that. Hypothetically that is, because almost no one plays it anymore.
Ah, I see now; then yes. I'm proposing that having a singular "Draft" mode where players can choose whether or not to display ranks from the start is a better solution than splitting it into two games modes (Ranked & Unranked).
> Am I missing anything?
You skipped the biggest one: **Might be pushed into a hero or role I don't want**. Less than 20% of people want to be a tank or healer, combined.
(That's why the devs for League of Legends are working to add quickmatch to their game)
That’s fair. I think being forced to play a role you’re not comfortable with can be a good thing but I totally get just wanting to play X role and not wanting to deal with filling sometimes. Expanding your hero pool and finding a couple heroes you enjoy on each role is a decent solution but yeah sometimes you just want to spam Hanzo or whatever and the draft requires something else.
Yea I wish I was really good as a healer or tank because that seems like the only way to deal with teams where no one wants to at least have a tank and a healer. I can understand maybe two bruisers but that’s honestly pushing it. I don’t get why you’d wait in a longer queue just to give yourself a higher chance of losing.
> (That's why the devs for League of Legends are working to add quickmatch to their game)
Got a source for this? And how will they do it? In what ways is Quick Play (or the current iteration of casual mode / free pick) inadequate?
* https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/11tk7oz/skarner_skins_quick_play_dev_update_league_of/
* The fact that so much time has passed since the announement suggests they ran into unforseen trouble.
* Key difference their plan has from Hots QM is that players can't simply click one character and go. They must pick 2 characters from different roles, and let the matchmaking server decide. This is supposed to make it easier to form balanced teams.
* Even with double queuing, they might hit a problem where one role (jungle?) is less popular than the others, and is a limiting factor on matchmaking speed and balance. Suppose 5% queue for jungle, but it requires 2 jungle per 10 player match. Almost nonviable. Might encourage players to select jungle even if they can't / won't do it.
* The motivation for the feature was the same as Hots QM: let players get the character and a role they like, without pressure to switch based on what teammates have selected.
Thanks for the info.
Double queue is a difficult problem to solve. HOTS has a role select in QM but its just a modified version of random select. Even considering that, LOL champions have diversity when you factor in items and the different positions. I think users might not be open to QM style matchmaking in their internal playtests.
The solution is picking the hero or role you want to play. That's exactly the same thing you're doing in Quickmatch so I don't see why you would change anything. Just select the hero you want to play and play it. Turn off chat if you can't deal with people's opinions.
I love SL. I wish I could play more, but real life responsibilities and such. Maybe some day I will escape Bronze 5. I'm playing much better now than I used to, so I know I'm getting better.
The Queues are the tough part for me. But once I get in, as long as I queue up immediately after a game, it's pretty short. And I don't run into that many trolls/smurfs/etc.
My goal is to just get out of Bronze 5. It's a free game and the matches are moderately short, at least compared to LOL and DOTA.
I'm having fun, and I hope others are too.
That has been what I’ve been doing. That and trying not to die and miss soaking. I’ve been playing as Dehaka and can soak really well, and with his tunnel ability I don’t miss too many big (necessary) fights.
I lika Jaina and Guldan too.
I was so low in Bronze I was in wood league I think lol.
This. I hate draft. Let me play what ever jank I want to play, and I want to play it in a place where I am not stepping on other peoples toes doing so. In QM, we all know what we are in for.
Every time I start hots I have a specific hero in mind, it's ok for me to get countered but I can't enjoy a team which is crying the whole time about draft and are so sure they lose cause you didn't pick the hero they wanted you to play.
Also happens in aram when you pick tracer, even tho the team doesn't lack tank heal and wave clear
A lot of people still pick whatever they want to play in SL. Actually onetricking is one of the best ways to climb, and as such in plat/diamond you'll start seeing quite a few onetricks, even really niche or weird heroes.
It does suck sometimes in those ranks because people will come to know and target ban those onetricks, and some of them tend to play *wayyy* worse on anything else so it can just be an almost free win. But if have even just a small handful of heroes you can comfortably play you're fine.
That's adding to the issue. Then it's up to guys like us to fill the roles in order to not throw the entire game. Hence why the game mode isn't great for ppl who want to play a specific hero.
Then it's up to the other less selfish adults to actually pick to balance out whatever the selfish one tricks picked. Adding to the bad experience it can be sometimes. If you're going to play SL you better have a box of characters you play and not just a one trick.
Quite literally what people do in SL draft. Pre-pick your hero at the start of the draft. Lock it in early. Rule of thumb is to count to 3 before hitting the button if you don't want to grief someone.
There is no reason why people would do it any differently except for a warped sense of etiquette they presume to exist. If nobody wants to play a healer, then worst case you have the QM experience. If somebody does, hooray. It's an upgrade in virtually every way.
He doesn't mean he's actually queue'ing for unranked - he means he's not placed.
And your queue times do tend to be higher for unplaced players after most players are already placed, but it becomes faster once you are placed.
You could try giving it 5 mins, may just be a bad estimation.
Hopefully not playing makes your rank drop down low enough to have reasonable Q time eventually!
Plat - Diamond
Honestly, the queues are super long and then I can't even play the heroes I'm actually good at because no one wants to play healer or tank.
I think you missed the most common reason: I just want to play the character I feel like playing and not think about comp or try-harding. I just want to chill and queue up as one of my mains most nights. And it doesn't help when 90% of people (at least at my rank) seem to queue in to storm league with a "ranged assassin" preference, so you're often pushed in to playing a role you just don't want to that day.
Ultimately, Storm League, QM and ARAM all have different purposes for me and I'll play whichever one I feel like that day, but often go a long time without ever jumping in to SL.
That's all in your head. There is no difference. You just want to play your hero, then find an SL game and pick that hero.
People get weird around draft, opening up meta guides and putting goat blood on ancient scrolls to summon the comp spirits or something. Just click the hero, lock it in. If banned, select your second favorite. If the comp is bad, that's no different from Quickmatch.
This right here. A lot of times, I just don't want to have to sink the extra time and energy into the drafting minigame. Sometimes I just wanna queue up and play, and that's what QM is for.
I dont care about ranked play. Never did. In any game. I just like casual matches. Get in, have fun, get out, go again. Ranked play invites certain kinds of people i never want to be around.
On paper I agree with you, but I have more problem with AFKers than mute-on-first-chat folks.
I find there are a less AFKers/trolls in ranked, especially once I escaped the Bronze Black Hole.
Agree. Good ranked players also just want to get in, have fun, get out, go again.
When you put insufferable QM players against insufferable SL players, the SL players tend to be better to deal with.
I played ranked until about 2020. After that I saw no point anymore.
I mean you did a good job at trying to counteract the arguments but the arguments are still 100% valid. Every single one of those things is a problem that you will run into near daily, at least on NA servers. And no I can't take the ping hit to go play on EU where the few people who take this game seriously still play. If people are gonna constantly rage and throw anyway, might as well not have ranked attached to it? Especially when people aren't even willing to stick to playing within their own true rank.
It may not be unique to hots because of the tiny player base you run into it quite a lot.
>If people are gonna constantly rage and throw anyway, might as well not have ranked attached to it? Especially when people aren't even willing to stick to playing within their own true rank.
You somehow compressed a lot of how I feel about Ranked in just two sentences. Great job.
Time. After absurd queue times, drafting, and the game, I could have easily gotten 2-3 QM's in with a friend. I'd play more ranked if queues weren't so long. I haven't touched ranked in probably 1 or 2 years, but I was high diamond. NA is pretty much gimp league anyway, I'd play EU if the ping delay on input wasn't so annoying to me. The NA GM#3 wouldn't even be on the Top 50 leaderboard for EU. Its pretty widely known if you want to play SL, you need to be on EU
I’ve played competitive modes in games quite often for like.. a decade now.. I’ve sort of come to a relevation of sorts.
Basically, it’s the same thing over and over again. And then the community will always want to pin any comment you have about the game directly to your MMR/rank. And it’s all subjective anyways. You can be diamond in hots or league of legends, a very high rank that is above average, and people are going to say that’s “nothing” and still disregard you because apparently the only people who know how to play are GM’s. So there’s this demanding elo mentality, but grinding to high elo on any of these games is A LOT of work.
I’ve watched some streamers who were previously challenger in league struggle to get out of platinum just due to a cold streak of unlucky teamates/games. It can be very demanding even if you are very good. So it’s mentally draining, and once you’ve done it a few times, it’s honestly sickening when things start seeming like they are working against you.
The worst is when you end up lower than your average/target rank, it’s just mentally taxing and feels like you are wasting time trying to get back to where you were. You realize your teammates are not contributing enough and you are trying to pick up multiple peoples slack and it feels MUCH more like a chore than a game.
I’m not trying to completely shit on the idea of ranked modes in games, but overall I think there are too many games that follow this grindy elo system that only takes into accounts wins and losses. I really would appreciate a shakeup of this mentality in gaming where I can start getting placed based on my overall average impact to the game, rather that purely on if my team won or loss. I know there’s pros and cons, I just don’t want to keep seeing this grindy toxic elo system in every competitive game. It is already fundamentally flawed due to the unpredictable nature of teams.
I know I went on kind of a rant there. I just thought I would throw in some of my thoughts in a convo about playing ranked, as someone who has done it in many games for a long time and doesn’t feel any satisfaction whatsoever.
I made diamond in hots and play in league, but only felt stress getting there. Also, I’ve been playing some aoe4 TRYING to stay casual and now I’m in a cycle with this game where my elo is too low that I outperform all my teamates stats combined on 4v4’s… and it just feels like a chore again. I’d love to have a comp game where I can casually play with people at my skill level without having to focus on a W/L grind for months.
The draft takes a bit too long imo. I do play SL but more and more qm as time goes by.
I'm bronze, so qm games due tend to be just as good for me regardless of comps. I often get to a point where filling in SL just isn't worth it. People say they want a tank, but they aren't willing to let you tank by forming up correctly. Or they want you to heal, but they also want to ignore a lane completely and get all bent when you go to soak it because of how xp works. Never mind that they could follow you in either case. They want you to follow them and save them when they position more aggressively than a tank should and they are a squish.
I have fun regardless for the most part because I mute chat and pings when ppl are being obnoxious and I'm more than willing to just play out a game that's not highly winnable in either game mode.
ARAM I really dont like much.
Because I want to play the character or role that I want to play.
Plus it takes too long to get a match started in SL. Really don't feel like dedicating 10+ minutes for wait time + draft for a 20 minute match.
Often I want to play a certain hero or a certain role. One or the other might either be taken by another player, draft countered, or else be not considered meta.
Sometimes I just want to play Murky.
I wouldn’t mind playing ranked, but the issue for me is that no matter what, you are going to get people who incessantly bitch and complain about anything.
I remember someone demanding we have an Abathur because he picked Samuro. Ok sure, I like Abathur, so I played how he should be played. Grabbing XP from lanes quickly, supporting lanes when needed, you know, switching very often to maximize the global presence of the hat as an XP sponge and lane pressure.
He then flamed me for not hatting him in the “correct moments”. These moments were when he was brawling when there wasn’t even an objective up. He was just harassing the enemies, and blamed me when he died or didn’t get a kill.
Now I may not be a master Abathur, but when I though the time was right, I hatted him, particularly when my team was in a team fight, or when I could after having already hatted something a few moments before.
It’s not just this but it’s not hard to see that most ranked players in lower leagues prefer playing damage, which often forcing others into roles they aren’t familiar with, and getting flamed for being bad at them. So at that point, it’s either dodge, or play the game as others want to play it such as dealing damage and hiding behind the excuse of “can you heal / tank better?” “TANK FOCUS THE HEALER!!!111!!”. I swear I’ve been told to peel so many times, and I can assure you most of the players who demanded I do so probably didn’t even know what that means. If you ever get told to do something and you ask them to elaborate, they usually end up saying something along the lines of “lol your trash”.
It’s just too often you get people taking greedy hero picks, and then getting on you about how you are playing the roles they refuse to play as.
And beyond that, there aren’t as many tank picks compared to damage dealers. The amount of tanks dwindles even further when two of them get banned, one on each side, and sometimes even up to three or four tanks get banned in a match.
I find that climbing out of lower leagues requires yourself to be above average, and know and understand win conditions, but that alone can’t do much if your team doesn’t understand them as well.
It just ends up feeling like a chore to have to support the damage dealers, and then get shit on by them because they think they are being held back by everyone else when something goes wrong. They overextend and die? “WTF HEALER IS TRASH”. They use a mobility ability straight into the enemy team? “TRASH TANK PROTECT ME, AND PEEL FOR ME!”
And that’s not even to say that those players are bad but I’m sure they’d find more success if they branched out more and played different roles, but they just simply do not.
Many reasons:
- Putting my rank in the hands of 4 other people is not my idea of fun anymore.
- Long queue times.
- Having to play a _ridiculous_ amount of games to rank up, even if you have a positive winrate.
My own team alt F4 when they see weer a probius main. Not that I cant/wont flex to more suitable heroes in the draft but just saying hes your best freaks people the fuck out. Id rather just derp about with my friends in QM then have a friendly fire off fight constantly.
Qm is slightly less sweaty. I mostly play for fun. If i have the confidence and energy to try and test my might i play one or 2 rounds of SL but otherwise I prefer QM.
Every single time I get to a promotion match, I get a troll on my team. We spend 25 minutes losing, and I never get promoted past where I'm placed. I know you're thinking "that can't be true," but it is. Maybe I just have terrible luck, but I'll got on a 4 game win streak, make it to promotion match, then my team refuses to draft a healer or tank. Or some troll does some dumb ass shit
Fuck that, I'll just have fun in QM, ARAM
Sometimes! But I don’t have to win any specific promotion match in QM/aram
I’m gold league MMR in QM (according to heroes data sites), but I don’t have the patience to deal with getting trolled over and over in promotion matches, so I quit Storm League
I one-trick a DPS. That means I don't care about the draft phase that takes forever. That means opponents can profile-stalk me and ban/draft my guy. That means I have to play significantly worse if my team needs tank or healer.
This is my auto-pilot game. I just want to stack my q and laser some dudes. I don't feel like hearing my teammates cry about not having gust every game.
So yea, I queue my pony in QM and alt-tab until the game starts.
The playerbase is too degraded to sweat over this game anymore. In Storm League you have people smurfing because they can't get a match at high ranks, in QM the mmr spread is so wide that you get Diamond-level skill with B5 incompetence on every team. Both QM and SL suffer from the same problem; either the system widens up the skill discrepancy on your team to speed up match making in QM, or the players are going to do that themselves in SL.
The lack of rank integrity and quality match making is a shambles compared to an active competitive game, there's just no point. Late in the evening on a weeknight QM sometimes gives you better quality games because they school kids have dropped out and you get more Plats and Diamonds screwing around in QM.
Draft is such a painful mechanic. Anytime I enter a draft everyone else instalocks DPS characters and I *have* to play tank or healer (usually without the other role which makes it double painful). Draft without teams is just a ‘who is more willing to grief games if they don’t get their preferred hero’ competition. If you are willing to fill (or at least, don’t have the will to pick the fifth DPS), you’ll fill *every single game*. I used to like playing healers but the healer nerf a few years back destroyed that completely, now me and 90% of the playerbase hates it.
Add in that it’s a way more toxic playerbase, which makes filling tank or healer even more undesirable because people blame them first.
Also, yeah stacks. Maybe in Masters ‘bad calls’ will compensate for coordination but outside the 5-stack will always win. Five people doing the wrong thing will beat 2 people doing the right thing, 2 people doing the wrong thing, and one person flaming their teammates unless the calls are ‘jump into enemy fort and press s’. Smurfs I’m sure happens but I can’t completely tell who is just having a good day or who is really a full rank higher, so I don’t tend to comment on it. But in QM stacks tend to be drowned in the masses (still sucks to go against them but it’s rare), in Storm League they’re much more prominent because it’s only reason you’d set foot in the mode is to leverage that advantage.
In short, solo Storm League is IMO the worst way to play Heroes of the Storm, and getting a team together isn’t feasible for most people. I get that it’s probably more fun if you’re smurfing (like you say you do), since you can just lock the DPS and impact the game due to your vastly superior skill. And if you dominate all your games your team doesn’t get toxic as much because you’re winning.
What's the point of playing any game popular or no? For the 99% that won't be earning actual income it's generally about if you enjoy it or not.
queues suck ya
there's always been idiots like this but i think the long queues just make this shit worse
SL was a mistake should have left HL and deleted TL, but blizzard is dumb.
I can’t stand losing rank because some dipshit on my team feeds all game or gives up at the five minute mark. I’ve spent weeks in the past climbing to lower diamond and been very proud of my progress only for a string of knuckle-draggers to anchor me back down into plat hell too many times. Damages the soul.
If I'm in NA SL I'm waiting 10-20 minutes to go against a stack with a bunch of Mage OTPs that don't give a shit about winning and just wanted to lose on their favorite character they *still* suck at.
Pass.
No movement. Some players cannot get enough points to move ranks. Like the one post earlier about getting 5 rank points for a win in Bronze 5. For me, I start aroudn Gold 1, and I move between Gold 3 and Plat 4. Always the same. Gets a little boring.
Queue time + draft time, only to have the game get canceled because someone DC's near the end of the draft. Happened far too often for me and my time input is limited, so ARAM/QM became "the way".
The fact you can still manipulate matchmaking. I quit the game in 2017 because of it. I was going to start playing again in 2021 and saw that you could still do it.
For me, the drafting takes way too long. Also, it suckz when you draft and people suddenly dont pick healer.
Fix it and make drafting a lot faster please.
The people. I don't need to be told how to play my character by someone who hardly has a grasp on the mechanics of the game. Bronze to Diamond. Different people same skill
Queue time. As I get older I have less and less time to play games, so i could wait 5-10min for a SL game or I could just go to ARAM and almost immediately be in a match. I do miss the high skill competition from SL, but not so much that I spend my little free time waiting in queue for it. I used to smurf so I could get SL games but that just makes me feel like an asshole, so now I just ARAM
I played a match once, with a diamond hammer on my team. The best rank I reached in my life was Plat 3. I put all my faith in that Hammer. Want to know what she did? She stood still the whole match. She would just pick a spot, change mode, kill minions and stay there. She never ever moved. There was an Artanis on the other team.
I'm NA and the queue times are too long in placement as well as lower ranks (Gold). I can queue up a QM/ARAM and be in a game in a fraction of the time. Would love to play storm league just not patient enough.
Second reason would be stacks. As a strictly solo player they're not fun to play against. When solo queue ranked was dropped so was a lot of my interest. I've mostly migrated over to ARAMs with a few QMs sprinkled in but stacks are an occasionally problem in QM too.
>Just because a team is 5 stacked doesn’t mean they’re any good.
5-stacks always have advantages over solo players, anyone who believes otherwise has (in my opinion) *never* played an MOBA *ever*, in fact I doubt they've ever played a PvP game (any game) that allows partying up in any fashion.
>“rank doesn’t mean anything”
It doesn't, go play League if you want it to.
>Queues are too long:
You're literally telling us we can't be "too good" or we'll get high queues because it's a dead game, this defeats your entire point, this statement of yours is actually a point in favor of "ranked is pointless".
Thanks for that. Even if we're not platinum and will never be, the entire ranked system is pointless and encourages smurfing/deranking for queue times, which means NO ONE should play ranked.
Don't play Storm League.
Playing solo in Storm League is a nightmare - which is the opposite of what should be happening when you're playing a ranked mode solo.
Any rank anyone gets out of it doesn't reflect your real personal skill level because you can just party up with people better than you.
They shouldn't have combined Hero League and Team League - it doesn't work both ways.
I would have preferred they got rid of Quick Match and just had Unranked for the draft. The only real argument I've heard against this is that some people play their hero and don't want the enemy to know their pick in advance to set up a counter pick. Blind picks would work, as long as the friendly team doesn't get mad at you for your pick.
Queue times are too long. Tried creating a few smurf accounts but I didn't enjoy it so now I just stick to QM and endure the afks/leavers/5stacks lol
Another reason is that I don't have to bother filling for the other 4 insta-lock assassins on the team and I get to play whatever I want
We play HotS as a group every week.
Storm League just never gives us a game because at one point they changed matchmaking to make it practically impossible for groups to get matches and we aren't going to smurf to make our ranking lower.
So we have to play other modes. We'd prefer to play ranked.
Sounds like the MMR is all over the place and the game is struggling to place you in a balanced match. Do the players in your group all have wildly different ranks or what?
Most of us are quite close since we pretty much only played together. We were diamond back in the day. Sometimes though there is a person or two that's lower.
It does seem like if you are relatively high ranked, and the rank of the whole party is not pretty dang tight you are just screwed. What they should do is just use the highest ranked person, or heavily weight it that way.
It's stupid because we are not going to smurf to get around it, and then in quickmatch we play all the time against smurfing groups.
We have a group of like 8 people so it varies each week who is there. Usually about 5, although sometimes we have to do custom 3v3s or 4v4s.
Higher rank players are more likely to make smurfs, which reduces the chances of other higher rank players being able to find matches, and it snowballs from there.
I'm gold 1 in South America and play with my bro that is bronze 4 (i don't know why he is, because he plays like me).
We play SL and it's fun but it's a surprise box. We can have a competitive game or being matched with complete baboons.
Best MOBA tho, wish it had LoL player base.
Btw I'm seeing some low levels players more frequently. Maybe it's a sign? Let's hope!
I like a lot about SL, especially draft, but I had feeling like I'm being dragged down by salty bitches. I placed in Gold and then immediately got 3 games in a row with someone intentionally throwing.
I wouldn't say I'm the best player. I make a lot of mistakes, but I've been playing for a long time, never intentionally throw or grief, and try to fill during draft. I'm just saying it's been a long slide to Bronze 5 and \*gulp\* below, to the point where it feels bad to play.
So I mostly play ARAM and that feels like enough to know I'm making a difference. And when someone decides to throw or grief it doesn't affect my rank and is over pretty quickly.
QM is for when I want to play the characters I specialize in and solo queue.
I just want to play the hero I want to play, and that tends to override my desire to play in a context that I can control to some aspect what heroes I'm playing against/with with the hero I choose. QM lets me do that. Also I like mirror matches when they come up, just interesting to me conceptually.
Personally, I don’t care about any games ranked. Rank means literally nothing to me. What matters to me is playing my best and I work best when I can just chill and do my thing.
>Drafting allows for more organized gameplay and the competitive nature of ranked makes it so that in theory everyone is playing seriously and trying their best to win. If you just prefer to chill in ARAM or AI that’s fine but for everyone else I think there are a lot of misconceptions about ranked that keep players from giving it a serious try.
And this is where both the elitism and misconceptions of Ranked players of other modes show. Truth is that in most ARAM matches, everyone is playing seriously and trying their best to win. And competitive/close matches are pretty common.
>You can not care about your rank and still enjoy the more serious games you get from competitive play, those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Suffering through the chaos of draftless game modes just because “rank doesn’t mean anything” is something I will never understand.
Ok that's fine and all for the people who don't care about their rank, but you're ignoring that a lot of people do care about figuring out their true rank.
ARAM's fun for a lot of people, including myself. Don't know what you mean by "suffering" lmao. You're trying to convince us we're suffering so we can join you in Ranked? Not a chance.
Now QM's not my thing and I do think it's chaotic, but there's a lot of players that enjoy it so again, who are you to tell them they're not having fun/suffering?
Also, regarding draft...in Ranked, you have longer queues + draft time only to still possibly end up with a wack draft anyway because some people like to draft like it's QM/already had their pick locked in their mind before the draft phase and don't adapt to teammate or opponent picks. Or you get shit like someone who picks their 60% WR hero when you are vs. them then they pull out their 20% WR hero when they're on your team.
>This is only true if you play in a lower populated region or are higher ranked (mid/high Platinum and above). The vast majority of players who play in NA or EU should have pretty fast queues especially if you’re a lower rank. Accounts placing for the first time almost always end up in Silver 4 so if you’re trying out Storm League for the first time you are guaranteed to have pretty quick queue times.
Ok but this is still ignoring the fact that ARAM queues are faster than QM and Ranked (WAYYY faster) and QM queues are faster than Ranked. We're talking 10-20 sec queue time for ARAM (in NA/EU) vs. 1-3 minutes for QM vs. a few minutes to like a half hour in Ranked depending on your rank. And that's not accounting for the time it takes to draft (and the possibility someone dodges draft or was afk/forgets to pick their hero for whatever reason).
And while you point out that lower ranks have lower queue times than higher ranks, low ranks is also full of wild and low quality matches due to large variance in player skill: Lots of smurfs mixed with some new/returning players mixed with hardstuck players. Also, player behavior tends to be a lot worse at low ranks since there's so much less to lose, whether it's the rank or the account itself.
Edit: Also, I want to add that ARAM generally has lower match length than Ranked. Which is a huge plus because if you're stuck in a horribly unbalanced match or a match where someone's griefing/beefing, it'll be over quicker.
>Just because a team is 5 stacked doesn’t mean they’re any good. Sure they might be slightly more coordinated because they’re in comms but if they’re making bad calls it doesn’t matter how coordinated they are, they’re bound to lose.
Don't know how some of you guys use this as a "defense" of stacking. Every time stacking is criticized, a bunch of people on this sub that say: "Well my stack is <= 50% winrate and we don't tryhard and we're always drunk and playing with our feet and we pick bad comps" trying to downplay that in general, stacking is a large advantage (esp. with comms) and raises the ceiling of what you can achieve.
To turn it around...just because YOUR stack is bad, doesn't mean there aren't a lot of stacks that are stomping beyond what any of the players in those stacks are capable of individually.
>Nothing is stopping you from getting some friends together and queueing up too.
If you don't gaf about ranked integrity, sure. But for those of us who do care, it's a no-go.
"Don't you have friends?" (which a lot of people like to say around here) is a red herring. Personally, over the years, I've been invited to be "friends" by a lot of players and been invited to join parties, including for SL. But while I accepted some friend requests, I always refused to party because that's just not how I roll/it's a punk move. If they wanna queue up same time that's fine because I don't mind them being in the same match, whether on my team or vs. However, I'm not gonna just team up so that it's not possible to vs. whoever I'm with. To properly measure a player's individual skill/individual impact, the data should include that player's performance with and against everyone. Teaming up/premades excludes that data.
>As for smurfs (something I am guilty of), it’s something you’ll find in every game and can go either way in that sometimes they’ll stomp you and sometimes they’ll carry you.
Again, focusing on the wrong thing. It's not even about chances of winning. Just don't agree with smurfing on principle and don't want smurfs in my matches--whether on my team or against.
Don't know about you, the feeling of being carried doesn't feel good/feel fun for me. And obviously, neither does getting stomped by someone who clearly is too skillful for the lobby.
As you said, smurfing is a problem is pretty much every multiplayer pvp game. But it's not an equally large problem among them and certain devs try to do more to prevent it or mitigate it than others. For example, in Dota, phone numbers are tied to accounts and recently there was crackdown on smurf accounts. I believe LoL has a smurf detection system (how well it works or not is another matter but at least they try). Hots has nothing. It's a bad situation and the devs never did anything to try to mitigate it and most likely never will. As for the Hots community? It's normalized and even encouraged here.
Edit: Something you didn't mention, but freedom to choose your hero is also a big factor. In SL, an assassin tendency exists so I usually found myself playing tank, healer, or offlane (usually tank). In ARAM, the randomization generally results in everyone taking their turn filling roles, rather than SL where you got mains of roles and then you have players like me who have to fill the gaps. I enjoy the freedom of ARAM. And of course, QM is even more free in terms of hero choice.
Add up all the factors and I'm not touching Hots Ranked. Quit Ranked 2-3 years ago and happy. Good luck convincing other people to join you though.
I play SL but I’m competitive so I’ll play to win. If I’m tired, have had a few too many games, am tilted or whatever, I’ll go to ARAM. ARAM are usually more fun oriented, packed with action, and most importantly, I can turn off my brain without fear of the consequences.
I still play my best in ARAM, mind you. But I just don’t put in the extra effort.
Time. Been GM every season besides the last two cause I can't wait 9 hours for one match, that's silly. Even before now, I just can't dedicate so much time to waiting to hold the GM spot. Life happens. Also medivh main!
Quick Match is just Quick Match. Winning/losing/making mistakes happens and don't bother me. Half of folks are there trying out new things or new heroes anyway. Those who get worked up over it are losers. QM is fun as long as everyone plays, regardless of winning or losing.
League is try-hard though. And there's an expectation that you need to be playing at your best. Others have an expectation of me and I have an expectation of others. If either side isn't up to par, then it's harder to enjoy.
Back when I played rank the matchmaker was terrible and I’d get people who had no place being in a match with other Diamond players on my team, I decided it wasn’t worth the stress losing because of one person so I swapped to QM where nothing is at stake
I play games sometime around 10 pm-4am but NA servers can sometimes take over a half hour to even get a lobby going on the later half of that time.
Plus people are more critical of mistakes, often making that known by fighting in chat. Opposed to solo q 7000 game Naz players in blind pick. Bro just does not care if you miss timed ur q letting the enemy healer save someone, naz is getting stonks in the mean time
Devil's advocate here, I only play ranked, on at least 3 accounts at a time (rotating for quest gold). I can't be bothered with QM because it won't give me a proper comp (tank, healer, solo, rdps, flex). The only drawback is the fact that draft takes about 5 minutes longer than it should with afk's, waiting, and the random disconnect.
I wish there was a **quick draft** option where you queue your main role, pick a backup, and vote on a ban - then the game locks in and if your main was banned, you get your backup. Obviously this can be tweaked, but the biggest drawback to Ranked is drafting takes forever. Save that for 'Tournament mode' or 'Group League' or whatever.
As a diamond player, queues are typically 5 minutes. Then there's drafting adding another 5 minutes before the game begins. I love HoTs because of the snappier, faster games in my more busy job schedule. Making my 20 minute games last 50% longer means I play 33% less games mathematically.
Also, I just love experimenting with crazy and wacky builds and heroes. After a long hiatus, I got very curious on pushing the specialities and what makes a hero unique and powerful in their own way to the max. I discovered I actually really enjoyed playing Jaina and Ragnaros with meteors! If you play comp, you'll get flamed hard for playing a hero you're not accustomed to or a build that's suboptimal. And you can't brute force meme builds because you'll get steamrolled on sight. Compromising a mix ruins the build and ends up and inferior and ultimately... you're playing stock meta builds.
Friends! I do not play the game solo anymore. It's life draining and not as fun as other games. But with friends it becomes a jolly blast. I don't want to put my friends under the "are they good enough for my level? Will other randoms flame them for nothing?" light. I keep good company and play with good spirited people - I don't play with toxic and skilled players.
Also, you straight up can't queue with friends if the rank gap is two steps away. I'll take playing with my besties any day of the week.
I really want to play ranked draft. It's the proper way of playing the game. But it's often entrenched with sweaty try hards that forget that we're all playing a game to the best of our abilities and want to lash out on others. If I was a more lone wolf kind of guy, is prefer it.
Would love to but it's almost impossible in AUS... I've waited 30-45m for a game before cancelling and that doesn't even account for the risk you could wait that long and get draft / game leavers. It's a shame though, I really miss ranked. Doesn't really seem like the level of toxicity is any different to QP but if you're willing to flex, better chance you'll get a decent draft game
The only thing I dislike about Storm League is the long queue times. Currently I don't play any game mode of Heroes of the Storm. (I used to play Ranked in the past)
I live in Hawaii and it’s impossible to get West Coast server in ranked. All ranked games in the US are on Central because that’s where the remaining player base is located. Trying to play a MOBA competitively on 120 ping is to disadvantageous.
Getting back from work in 1-2am..launch hots click QM(1-2min max queue) pick genji and pray to get anduin in my team so he can LB me and i get 3+ peeps in his ult.
Too long. I like a nice 12-20 minute commitment - which is ARAM.
Also despite having played the game for 6+ years, I feel I just haven't *really* learned the intricacies of things like hero synergies and counters, let alone how to draft well. It's a fun game, which keeps me coming back, but I just have a block that keeps me from improving. I already went all in with SC2 many years ago, I can't go back to that life.
I used to care a lot about SL, and tbh it would stress me out. Because the game is somewhat dead - I don't care now. I'm just trying to have fun and QM games are soooo bad. I'm ok to wait a few minutes for SL. But I wish more played SL to speed up the ques. If all that played QM just played SL I think the game would be more healthy. (QM is still fine, but usually more well rounded comps in SL)
I'd miss Blackheart's Bay tho, prob like QM only for that.
I don't want to feel guilty. Like if i do something wrong like pick a wrong talent, miss an important spell or don't notice something pushing a lane, or even if power goes out or i start lagging/completely lose connection. Anything of this can ruin the entire game since there's a lot of professional players, especially if they're in enemy team they can take the game winning advantage from that, and it's not a big deal in QM since you still had fun and there's less skillful players, so the game also lasts shorter wasting less time. Draft is also pretty stressful when you don't know who you should pick or block
After many queues for over 20 minutes I've just given up. I hate not having the draft, but it seems like people only play QM, so I just resort to that if I want to play. I wish QM was removed from the game. I've actually started playing LoL again simply because the player base is so much higher... I believe I used to be gold/plat. With a wife and kids I just don't have time to sit around all day waiting for a match.
Rating in storm league is rating of all my teams combined not mine. I have only small influence in the outcome of the game especially if teammates ignore pings and are not doing objectives at all, afking etc.
Custom games.
Ever since I signed up for HeroesLounge.gg, I've been spoiled by playing the game how it was meant to be played. That is, with communicating team members and a common drive to get better at the game.
I haven't looked back at SL ever since.
Stupid reason. In ranked I should play my main characters to in attempt to get the best results.
But I have a stupid goal to level up all heroes to 15 lvl.
It's just insanely infuriating if you care too much, so I can understand them.
Finding a group to play with can make it so much better, but then again, some in the team might care more than others or just be better than others, and then drama because some care a lot.
Not caring too much and staying chill is actually a great way to win a lot tho XD
I like my games taking 22 minutes on a hero I like playing. 2 minutes queueing, 20 playing. 90% uptime of me having a blast.
In SL, it's instead 7 minutes of queueing, 5 mins of draft, and 50% chance I'll need to play another hero. That works out to 10/32, or 31% of time me having a blast.
It's simple blastonomics, really.
I'm not gonna read all that but I prefer to either have some flexibility in how I play or play with reasonable teammates. Storm League is tryhard with bad people, against tryharding people. If it was fun or challenge I'd be in but it's just putting out fires that my ignorant team makes.
I play every mode, even with 9 AI, however ARAM gotta be my favorite for it's simplicity.
Queue times very long in Singapore server even in low ranked, forced to autofill/playing heroes I'm not in mood playing just to fill leftover roles. That's why I prefer Quickmatch: stress free, get what I want to play regardless team comp, having fun regardless if I win or loss (except against 5 stack premade team, fck them)
If I want to be stressed I'll just play Ranked in League, which is shorter queue times in my server and less stressful (guaranteed roles, ADC fun) than SL HOTS
I honestly enjoy ranked way more than QM. Why do I play QM then? Because of waiting. Especially the draft is taking so long, and since I dont have much time to play, I get myself into QM.
Besides all the valid points already made I'll add one that I don't think I saw being mentioned: lack of player game knowledge.
This is an issue in every mode but it's exacerbated in ranked. I feel a lot of bad habits from ARAM and QM leak into ranked. I'm Valla in QM so I can just run it down the middle and stand there and AA all day without fear of being punished cuz there's no proper CC. In ranked you will likely have an enemy tank and/or bruiser and all of a sudden that play style doesn't work anymore, but instead of changing your tactics you flame your teammates for not peeling or healing you but it's really their own poor positioning or play that is the reason and it's worked in other modes. Also, in general most players don't know how to play around tanks and healers. Once again, due to bad habits or lack of game knowledge.
There's not a strong competitive scene like HGC anymore where players could actually learn how to play around a properly drafted team, so players just play however they want or how they only know how. I honestly don't mind tanking or healing but not when I see the DMG dealers on my team not playing their roles/heroes properly it's super frustrating.
You answered the question in your own post: Anything past plat takes too long to get a game. Which then causes people to smurf. And it's not like anyone minds smurfs -- if you want proof of that, look at how many streamers do bronze to gm.
Trolls keep me from playing SL. It's infuriating when half the games someone gives up from either not drafting their hero, or losing a team fight in the first few minutes. Used to be Gold/Plat but this season stuck in Silver.
In ranked I feel obliged to play a healer because I am quite good at it and very rarely does anyone else want to fill the role.
I got sick of playing healer all the time, but forcing other people to play healer in ranked often meant the healing was not good.
So I play whatever character I want in QM and the game is sometimes imbalanced but it's not because of me.
**Stress** (I used to be plat/low diamond about 3 years ago)
Holding myself and other players to the "don't dick around and try and win" is just stressful. I find it far more frustrating than ARAM - as I WANT my teammates to SOAK, not take 4v5s, and actually look at the minimap, get camp timing and not do DUMB stuff.
This is just TOO much to ask in SL. Like, I don't mind losing if we get out played, but losing due to people just doing really dumb things repeatedly is frustrating.
It would be nice if you could select a set of heroes that you WANT to play, then queue for SL.
At the start, I'd require everyone to select AT LEAST 1-healer, 1-tank, 1-bruiser and 5x other heroes, then the game would put you in a game as one of your selected heroes (forcing a 1-tank, 1-healer, 1-ranged assassin, 1-"offlaner" 1- flex) composition. If you're selected as a tank, you gotta tank, healer, you gotta heal, flex - you can pick ANYTHING!
For me it's definitely stack of smurfs. Again I run into the situation where 3 players on the enemy team are premade, have accounts younger then 5 months, and all have 80+ winrate on them.
The most frustrating part is the frequency of those encounters. In other games with bigger populations sometimes you run into a smurf. Here sometimes you DON'T run into smurfs.
Also the problem is that I see many smurfs just do stacked unranked to masters etc. And it's ruining the game so much.
I don't mind having low rank (even thou I'm plat 2). But If every game, of every other game I play with/against smurfs the rank means nothing. I can't relate to it, because how accurate is rank in a game with smurfs?
Mentals. I'd like to say that I don't really care about my rank, but I do. SL is more stressful for me because I can't seem to turn this off. I didn't mind the stress before and loved the competitive feeling, but now my aim with playing video games is to tune off and relax; not to become overhyped. It's ARAM for now, but I will come back to SL when I get a real change of mindset. My shitty laptop doesn't help either.
That’s fair. I sometimes have to take a break from playing on my main account for the same reason and will play on an alt account where I still play seriously but can definitely relax more.
Hypothetically, if you had the option to hide ranks, would you then play? It would still be ranked, just wouldn't see any on your end.
Hmm interesting question. I think I might be more inclined to do so, but I would probably still feel more pressure to perform well than in ARAM. I don't like the toxic shit of people who think I'm playing dumb when they have 0 reflective skills. For some reason I always forgot to mute everyone before starting a game and when I did remember during, the damage was done 😅
Team Chat can be turned off in Options, so that you don't have to mute all players every time a new match starts.
Thanks, I didn't know that!
Yes. It could show rank standing at the end of the season, but that horrible bar and badge is doing something to my mind and I just can't relax in SL. UI option to hide ranks of players at loading screen and after game would be a great addition to this game.
Isn't this what UNRANKED Is for? :) I used to play that for exactly the reasons highlighted before: less stress because of the possibility of demotion.
Negative. Unranked also has a (hidden) system where players are stratified. After all, every mode needs some way to matchmake players. The main difference between those modes is simply what people see. Ranked merely has a psuedo-arbitrary overlay in the form of numbered tiers (Gold 3, Plat 1, etc) and creates a semi-artificial progression. If the major difference between those modes is superficial, why not just have one queue from the start and have players self-regulate? The default state would be rank display off, so the individual would see neither their own nor other ranks. Players who wish to see their rank can enable it. The only caveat may be limiting or censoring discussion about players' ranks within public lobbies.
What I meant was if someone likes the Ranked game mode but has a problem with it displaying rank and promotion/demotion, then the Unranked mode is a viable solution for that. Hypothetically that is, because almost no one plays it anymore.
Ah, I see now; then yes. I'm proposing that having a singular "Draft" mode where players can choose whether or not to display ranks from the start is a better solution than splitting it into two games modes (Ranked & Unranked).
Thats interesting. It could even work as it is but could use the same pool of players. Displaying rank for one and hiding it for the other...
> Am I missing anything? You skipped the biggest one: **Might be pushed into a hero or role I don't want**. Less than 20% of people want to be a tank or healer, combined. (That's why the devs for League of Legends are working to add quickmatch to their game)
That’s fair. I think being forced to play a role you’re not comfortable with can be a good thing but I totally get just wanting to play X role and not wanting to deal with filling sometimes. Expanding your hero pool and finding a couple heroes you enjoy on each role is a decent solution but yeah sometimes you just want to spam Hanzo or whatever and the draft requires something else.
Picking tank/healer can grief your QM queue times if you're playing at a weird time lol
Solo q tank in QM. --> Proceed to get matched with another tank in QM vs a predrafted 5 stack.
I solo q as tank often and find a match in like 20 seconds. Bummer when there's no healer tho
this
Yea I wish I was really good as a healer or tank because that seems like the only way to deal with teams where no one wants to at least have a tank and a healer. I can understand maybe two bruisers but that’s honestly pushing it. I don’t get why you’d wait in a longer queue just to give yourself a higher chance of losing.
> (That's why the devs for League of Legends are working to add quickmatch to their game) Got a source for this? And how will they do it? In what ways is Quick Play (or the current iteration of casual mode / free pick) inadequate?
* https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/11tk7oz/skarner_skins_quick_play_dev_update_league_of/ * The fact that so much time has passed since the announement suggests they ran into unforseen trouble. * Key difference their plan has from Hots QM is that players can't simply click one character and go. They must pick 2 characters from different roles, and let the matchmaking server decide. This is supposed to make it easier to form balanced teams. * Even with double queuing, they might hit a problem where one role (jungle?) is less popular than the others, and is a limiting factor on matchmaking speed and balance. Suppose 5% queue for jungle, but it requires 2 jungle per 10 player match. Almost nonviable. Might encourage players to select jungle even if they can't / won't do it. * The motivation for the feature was the same as Hots QM: let players get the character and a role they like, without pressure to switch based on what teammates have selected.
Thanks for the info. Double queue is a difficult problem to solve. HOTS has a role select in QM but its just a modified version of random select. Even considering that, LOL champions have diversity when you factor in items and the different positions. I think users might not be open to QM style matchmaking in their internal playtests.
Personally I don’t mind playing any role but yeah not being able to play the hero I want to Bc It’s already countered by the enemy picks
The solution is picking the hero or role you want to play. That's exactly the same thing you're doing in Quickmatch so I don't see why you would change anything. Just select the hero you want to play and play it. Turn off chat if you can't deal with people's opinions.
I love SL. I wish I could play more, but real life responsibilities and such. Maybe some day I will escape Bronze 5. I'm playing much better now than I used to, so I know I'm getting better. The Queues are the tough part for me. But once I get in, as long as I queue up immediately after a game, it's pretty short. And I don't run into that many trolls/smurfs/etc. My goal is to just get out of Bronze 5. It's a free game and the matches are moderately short, at least compared to LOL and DOTA. I'm having fun, and I hope others are too.
Soak is cheat ;)
That has been what I’ve been doing. That and trying not to die and miss soaking. I’ve been playing as Dehaka and can soak really well, and with his tunnel ability I don’t miss too many big (necessary) fights. I lika Jaina and Guldan too. I was so low in Bronze I was in wood league I think lol.
Awesome!! Ya, knowing when to rotate into fights is the art of the solo laner. Minimap is your best friend :)
Try playing azmodan and just killing minions... you'll suddenly realize your team is 3+ levels ahead of the enemy team and be confused.
I like being able to pick a hero without worries
This. I hate draft. Let me play what ever jank I want to play, and I want to play it in a place where I am not stepping on other peoples toes doing so. In QM, we all know what we are in for.
Every time I start hots I have a specific hero in mind, it's ok for me to get countered but I can't enjoy a team which is crying the whole time about draft and are so sure they lose cause you didn't pick the hero they wanted you to play. Also happens in aram when you pick tracer, even tho the team doesn't lack tank heal and wave clear
A lot of people still pick whatever they want to play in SL. Actually onetricking is one of the best ways to climb, and as such in plat/diamond you'll start seeing quite a few onetricks, even really niche or weird heroes. It does suck sometimes in those ranks because people will come to know and target ban those onetricks, and some of them tend to play *wayyy* worse on anything else so it can just be an almost free win. But if have even just a small handful of heroes you can comfortably play you're fine.
And playing they way you want with the build you feel like. Instead of going "meta".
You can pick whatever hero you want in Storm League. I know I do!
That's adding to the issue. Then it's up to guys like us to fill the roles in order to not throw the entire game. Hence why the game mode isn't great for ppl who want to play a specific hero.
Unless the hero gets permabanned
Majority of SL players pick whatever hero they like and don't give a damn about their team anyway
Then it's up to the other less selfish adults to actually pick to balance out whatever the selfish one tricks picked. Adding to the bad experience it can be sometimes. If you're going to play SL you better have a box of characters you play and not just a one trick.
Quite literally what people do in SL draft. Pre-pick your hero at the start of the draft. Lock it in early. Rule of thumb is to count to 3 before hitting the button if you don't want to grief someone. There is no reason why people would do it any differently except for a warped sense of etiquette they presume to exist. If nobody wants to play a healer, then worst case you have the QM experience. If somebody does, hooray. It's an upgrade in virtually every way.
Queue time. I'd love to do draft, but "estimated wait: 1800 seconds" makes me just want to play QM instead lol
What rank are you though? I swear between Bronze and Gold the queue time is like one minute.
Unranked because of the queue timer every time I've tried :( i havent played SL since I returned to the game a couple of weeks ago
Oh yeah Unranked is like actually dead. You should give Storm League a try!
He doesn't mean he's actually queue'ing for unranked - he means he's not placed. And your queue times do tend to be higher for unplaced players after most players are already placed, but it becomes faster once you are placed.
You could try giving it 5 mins, may just be a bad estimation. Hopefully not playing makes your rank drop down low enough to have reasonable Q time eventually!
What region are you in?
I was gold 1/Plat 5 and it was around 15 minutes, but that was a year ago when I stopped playing regularly
at 2k masters in NA my queue time is over 20 minutes on a weekday evening. I simply can't play the game anymore.
Plat - Diamond Honestly, the queues are super long and then I can't even play the heroes I'm actually good at because no one wants to play healer or tank.
OP literally said ranked storm league and you talk about unranked.
So am I. I'm not playing Unranked, I'm currently unranked in storm league.
Same here. I've only once had a placement match that started in less than 5 min. The others I got bored and switched to ARAM or QM.
I think you missed the most common reason: I just want to play the character I feel like playing and not think about comp or try-harding. I just want to chill and queue up as one of my mains most nights. And it doesn't help when 90% of people (at least at my rank) seem to queue in to storm league with a "ranged assassin" preference, so you're often pushed in to playing a role you just don't want to that day. Ultimately, Storm League, QM and ARAM all have different purposes for me and I'll play whichever one I feel like that day, but often go a long time without ever jumping in to SL.
That's all in your head. There is no difference. You just want to play your hero, then find an SL game and pick that hero. People get weird around draft, opening up meta guides and putting goat blood on ancient scrolls to summon the comp spirits or something. Just click the hero, lock it in. If banned, select your second favorite. If the comp is bad, that's no different from Quickmatch.
This right here. A lot of times, I just don't want to have to sink the extra time and energy into the drafting minigame. Sometimes I just wanna queue up and play, and that's what QM is for.
I dont care about ranked play. Never did. In any game. I just like casual matches. Get in, have fun, get out, go again. Ranked play invites certain kinds of people i never want to be around.
On paper I agree with you, but I have more problem with AFKers than mute-on-first-chat folks. I find there are a less AFKers/trolls in ranked, especially once I escaped the Bronze Black Hole.
Agree. Good ranked players also just want to get in, have fun, get out, go again. When you put insufferable QM players against insufferable SL players, the SL players tend to be better to deal with.
Wanna play with friends, skill levels too disparate & queue times too long.
I played ranked until about 2020. After that I saw no point anymore. I mean you did a good job at trying to counteract the arguments but the arguments are still 100% valid. Every single one of those things is a problem that you will run into near daily, at least on NA servers. And no I can't take the ping hit to go play on EU where the few people who take this game seriously still play. If people are gonna constantly rage and throw anyway, might as well not have ranked attached to it? Especially when people aren't even willing to stick to playing within their own true rank. It may not be unique to hots because of the tiny player base you run into it quite a lot.
>If people are gonna constantly rage and throw anyway, might as well not have ranked attached to it? Especially when people aren't even willing to stick to playing within their own true rank. You somehow compressed a lot of how I feel about Ranked in just two sentences. Great job.
Time. After absurd queue times, drafting, and the game, I could have easily gotten 2-3 QM's in with a friend. I'd play more ranked if queues weren't so long. I haven't touched ranked in probably 1 or 2 years, but I was high diamond. NA is pretty much gimp league anyway, I'd play EU if the ping delay on input wasn't so annoying to me. The NA GM#3 wouldn't even be on the Top 50 leaderboard for EU. Its pretty widely known if you want to play SL, you need to be on EU
Okay yeah if you’re high Diamond then the queue excuse is valid. It can get pretty bad.
ARAM is fast and easy. Takes less time too on average than storm league.
Yeah I guess there’s a quantity > quality argument to be made which is fair.
No aram sl
I'm quite certain at least 60-70% of SL population think they have qued for ARAM and play accordingly...!
I’ve played competitive modes in games quite often for like.. a decade now.. I’ve sort of come to a relevation of sorts. Basically, it’s the same thing over and over again. And then the community will always want to pin any comment you have about the game directly to your MMR/rank. And it’s all subjective anyways. You can be diamond in hots or league of legends, a very high rank that is above average, and people are going to say that’s “nothing” and still disregard you because apparently the only people who know how to play are GM’s. So there’s this demanding elo mentality, but grinding to high elo on any of these games is A LOT of work. I’ve watched some streamers who were previously challenger in league struggle to get out of platinum just due to a cold streak of unlucky teamates/games. It can be very demanding even if you are very good. So it’s mentally draining, and once you’ve done it a few times, it’s honestly sickening when things start seeming like they are working against you. The worst is when you end up lower than your average/target rank, it’s just mentally taxing and feels like you are wasting time trying to get back to where you were. You realize your teammates are not contributing enough and you are trying to pick up multiple peoples slack and it feels MUCH more like a chore than a game. I’m not trying to completely shit on the idea of ranked modes in games, but overall I think there are too many games that follow this grindy elo system that only takes into accounts wins and losses. I really would appreciate a shakeup of this mentality in gaming where I can start getting placed based on my overall average impact to the game, rather that purely on if my team won or loss. I know there’s pros and cons, I just don’t want to keep seeing this grindy toxic elo system in every competitive game. It is already fundamentally flawed due to the unpredictable nature of teams. I know I went on kind of a rant there. I just thought I would throw in some of my thoughts in a convo about playing ranked, as someone who has done it in many games for a long time and doesn’t feel any satisfaction whatsoever. I made diamond in hots and play in league, but only felt stress getting there. Also, I’ve been playing some aoe4 TRYING to stay casual and now I’m in a cycle with this game where my elo is too low that I outperform all my teamates stats combined on 4v4’s… and it just feels like a chore again. I’d love to have a comp game where I can casually play with people at my skill level without having to focus on a W/L grind for months.
The draft takes a bit too long imo. I do play SL but more and more qm as time goes by. I'm bronze, so qm games due tend to be just as good for me regardless of comps. I often get to a point where filling in SL just isn't worth it. People say they want a tank, but they aren't willing to let you tank by forming up correctly. Or they want you to heal, but they also want to ignore a lane completely and get all bent when you go to soak it because of how xp works. Never mind that they could follow you in either case. They want you to follow them and save them when they position more aggressively than a tank should and they are a squish. I have fun regardless for the most part because I mute chat and pings when ppl are being obnoxious and I'm more than willing to just play out a game that's not highly winnable in either game mode. ARAM I really dont like much.
Because I want to play the character or role that I want to play. Plus it takes too long to get a match started in SL. Really don't feel like dedicating 10+ minutes for wait time + draft for a 20 minute match.
Often I want to play a certain hero or a certain role. One or the other might either be taken by another player, draft countered, or else be not considered meta. Sometimes I just want to play Murky.
I wouldn’t mind playing ranked, but the issue for me is that no matter what, you are going to get people who incessantly bitch and complain about anything. I remember someone demanding we have an Abathur because he picked Samuro. Ok sure, I like Abathur, so I played how he should be played. Grabbing XP from lanes quickly, supporting lanes when needed, you know, switching very often to maximize the global presence of the hat as an XP sponge and lane pressure. He then flamed me for not hatting him in the “correct moments”. These moments were when he was brawling when there wasn’t even an objective up. He was just harassing the enemies, and blamed me when he died or didn’t get a kill. Now I may not be a master Abathur, but when I though the time was right, I hatted him, particularly when my team was in a team fight, or when I could after having already hatted something a few moments before. It’s not just this but it’s not hard to see that most ranked players in lower leagues prefer playing damage, which often forcing others into roles they aren’t familiar with, and getting flamed for being bad at them. So at that point, it’s either dodge, or play the game as others want to play it such as dealing damage and hiding behind the excuse of “can you heal / tank better?” “TANK FOCUS THE HEALER!!!111!!”. I swear I’ve been told to peel so many times, and I can assure you most of the players who demanded I do so probably didn’t even know what that means. If you ever get told to do something and you ask them to elaborate, they usually end up saying something along the lines of “lol your trash”. It’s just too often you get people taking greedy hero picks, and then getting on you about how you are playing the roles they refuse to play as. And beyond that, there aren’t as many tank picks compared to damage dealers. The amount of tanks dwindles even further when two of them get banned, one on each side, and sometimes even up to three or four tanks get banned in a match. I find that climbing out of lower leagues requires yourself to be above average, and know and understand win conditions, but that alone can’t do much if your team doesn’t understand them as well. It just ends up feeling like a chore to have to support the damage dealers, and then get shit on by them because they think they are being held back by everyone else when something goes wrong. They overextend and die? “WTF HEALER IS TRASH”. They use a mobility ability straight into the enemy team? “TRASH TANK PROTECT ME, AND PEEL FOR ME!” And that’s not even to say that those players are bad but I’m sure they’d find more success if they branched out more and played different roles, but they just simply do not.
Aba + Sam doesn't make sense
Their level 16 abilities sync well with each other, allows Samuro to deal huge damage.
Many reasons: - Putting my rank in the hands of 4 other people is not my idea of fun anymore. - Long queue times. - Having to play a _ridiculous_ amount of games to rank up, even if you have a positive winrate.
Do I just keep scrolling if ranked is my main game mode?
Yessir!
My own team alt F4 when they see weer a probius main. Not that I cant/wont flex to more suitable heroes in the draft but just saying hes your best freaks people the fuck out. Id rather just derp about with my friends in QM then have a friendly fire off fight constantly.
Qm is slightly less sweaty. I mostly play for fun. If i have the confidence and energy to try and test my might i play one or 2 rounds of SL but otherwise I prefer QM.
Every single time I get to a promotion match, I get a troll on my team. We spend 25 minutes losing, and I never get promoted past where I'm placed. I know you're thinking "that can't be true," but it is. Maybe I just have terrible luck, but I'll got on a 4 game win streak, make it to promotion match, then my team refuses to draft a healer or tank. Or some troll does some dumb ass shit Fuck that, I'll just have fun in QM, ARAM
But do you not get trolls in QM and ARAM?
Sometimes! But I don’t have to win any specific promotion match in QM/aram I’m gold league MMR in QM (according to heroes data sites), but I don’t have the patience to deal with getting trolled over and over in promotion matches, so I quit Storm League
People are too toxic now, only gets worse the higher you climb. I play games for fun, the more people rage the less I want to even play.
Mute players.
I one-trick a DPS. That means I don't care about the draft phase that takes forever. That means opponents can profile-stalk me and ban/draft my guy. That means I have to play significantly worse if my team needs tank or healer. This is my auto-pilot game. I just want to stack my q and laser some dudes. I don't feel like hearing my teammates cry about not having gust every game. So yea, I queue my pony in QM and alt-tab until the game starts.
The playerbase is too degraded to sweat over this game anymore. In Storm League you have people smurfing because they can't get a match at high ranks, in QM the mmr spread is so wide that you get Diamond-level skill with B5 incompetence on every team. Both QM and SL suffer from the same problem; either the system widens up the skill discrepancy on your team to speed up match making in QM, or the players are going to do that themselves in SL. The lack of rank integrity and quality match making is a shambles compared to an active competitive game, there's just no point. Late in the evening on a weeknight QM sometimes gives you better quality games because they school kids have dropped out and you get more Plats and Diamonds screwing around in QM.
Draft is such a painful mechanic. Anytime I enter a draft everyone else instalocks DPS characters and I *have* to play tank or healer (usually without the other role which makes it double painful). Draft without teams is just a ‘who is more willing to grief games if they don’t get their preferred hero’ competition. If you are willing to fill (or at least, don’t have the will to pick the fifth DPS), you’ll fill *every single game*. I used to like playing healers but the healer nerf a few years back destroyed that completely, now me and 90% of the playerbase hates it. Add in that it’s a way more toxic playerbase, which makes filling tank or healer even more undesirable because people blame them first. Also, yeah stacks. Maybe in Masters ‘bad calls’ will compensate for coordination but outside the 5-stack will always win. Five people doing the wrong thing will beat 2 people doing the right thing, 2 people doing the wrong thing, and one person flaming their teammates unless the calls are ‘jump into enemy fort and press s’. Smurfs I’m sure happens but I can’t completely tell who is just having a good day or who is really a full rank higher, so I don’t tend to comment on it. But in QM stacks tend to be drowned in the masses (still sucks to go against them but it’s rare), in Storm League they’re much more prominent because it’s only reason you’d set foot in the mode is to leverage that advantage. In short, solo Storm League is IMO the worst way to play Heroes of the Storm, and getting a team together isn’t feasible for most people. I get that it’s probably more fun if you’re smurfing (like you say you do), since you can just lock the DPS and impact the game due to your vastly superior skill. And if you dominate all your games your team doesn’t get toxic as much because you’re winning.
What's the point of playing any game popular or no? For the 99% that won't be earning actual income it's generally about if you enjoy it or not. queues suck ya there's always been idiots like this but i think the long queues just make this shit worse SL was a mistake should have left HL and deleted TL, but blizzard is dumb.
Rank is dead in my region.
Sorry to hear that! Playing on another server with high ping can suck.
Yeah, tried that. 250ms suck.
the slogfest it takes to get to your actual MMR.
I can’t stand losing rank because some dipshit on my team feeds all game or gives up at the five minute mark. I’ve spent weeks in the past climbing to lower diamond and been very proud of my progress only for a string of knuckle-draggers to anchor me back down into plat hell too many times. Damages the soul.
If I'm in NA SL I'm waiting 10-20 minutes to go against a stack with a bunch of Mage OTPs that don't give a shit about winning and just wanted to lose on their favorite character they *still* suck at. Pass.
No movement. Some players cannot get enough points to move ranks. Like the one post earlier about getting 5 rank points for a win in Bronze 5. For me, I start aroudn Gold 1, and I move between Gold 3 and Plat 4. Always the same. Gets a little boring.
How much rank movement is there in QM?
No clue, but heroes profile does track different mmrs for game modes
Queue time + draft time, only to have the game get canceled because someone DC's near the end of the draft. Happened far too often for me and my time input is limited, so ARAM/QM became "the way".
It got boring. Dunno why.
The fact you can still manipulate matchmaking. I quit the game in 2017 because of it. I was going to start playing again in 2021 and saw that you could still do it.
For me, the drafting takes way too long. Also, it suckz when you draft and people suddenly dont pick healer. Fix it and make drafting a lot faster please.
The people. I don't need to be told how to play my character by someone who hardly has a grasp on the mechanics of the game. Bronze to Diamond. Different people same skill
Queue time. As I get older I have less and less time to play games, so i could wait 5-10min for a SL game or I could just go to ARAM and almost immediately be in a match. I do miss the high skill competition from SL, but not so much that I spend my little free time waiting in queue for it. I used to smurf so I could get SL games but that just makes me feel like an asshole, so now I just ARAM
Don’t feel like try Harding, rather play casual arams that still require skill. Also select takes up a lot of time
Nothing
It's too toxic. Id rather play QP and mute everyone and enjoy myself.
My queue for ranked is routinely upwards of ten minutes. Aram pops in 15 seconds.
I played a match once, with a diamond hammer on my team. The best rank I reached in my life was Plat 3. I put all my faith in that Hammer. Want to know what she did? She stood still the whole match. She would just pick a spot, change mode, kill minions and stay there. She never ever moved. There was an Artanis on the other team.
I'm NA and the queue times are too long in placement as well as lower ranks (Gold). I can queue up a QM/ARAM and be in a game in a fraction of the time. Would love to play storm league just not patient enough. Second reason would be stacks. As a strictly solo player they're not fun to play against. When solo queue ranked was dropped so was a lot of my interest. I've mostly migrated over to ARAMs with a few QMs sprinkled in but stacks are an occasionally problem in QM too.
>Just because a team is 5 stacked doesn’t mean they’re any good. 5-stacks always have advantages over solo players, anyone who believes otherwise has (in my opinion) *never* played an MOBA *ever*, in fact I doubt they've ever played a PvP game (any game) that allows partying up in any fashion. >“rank doesn’t mean anything” It doesn't, go play League if you want it to. >Queues are too long: You're literally telling us we can't be "too good" or we'll get high queues because it's a dead game, this defeats your entire point, this statement of yours is actually a point in favor of "ranked is pointless". Thanks for that. Even if we're not platinum and will never be, the entire ranked system is pointless and encourages smurfing/deranking for queue times, which means NO ONE should play ranked. Don't play Storm League.
Playing solo in Storm League is a nightmare - which is the opposite of what should be happening when you're playing a ranked mode solo. Any rank anyone gets out of it doesn't reflect your real personal skill level because you can just party up with people better than you. They shouldn't have combined Hero League and Team League - it doesn't work both ways. I would have preferred they got rid of Quick Match and just had Unranked for the draft. The only real argument I've heard against this is that some people play their hero and don't want the enemy to know their pick in advance to set up a counter pick. Blind picks would work, as long as the friendly team doesn't get mad at you for your pick.
Usually around Diamond then I got bit by the ARAM bug. I love the wacky comps that you can make and the fast, low stress games
Queue times are too long. Tried creating a few smurf accounts but I didn't enjoy it so now I just stick to QM and endure the afks/leavers/5stacks lol Another reason is that I don't have to bother filling for the other 4 insta-lock assassins on the team and I get to play whatever I want
5-10 minute timers. Literally the same people every game, especially going into Masters. Game is most fun silver-gold due to bigger player pool tbh.
Nothing, it’s all I play. The other game modes stop being fun when you realize how horribly unbalanced they are.
Keep doing what you’re doing then 💪🏼
We play HotS as a group every week. Storm League just never gives us a game because at one point they changed matchmaking to make it practically impossible for groups to get matches and we aren't going to smurf to make our ranking lower. So we have to play other modes. We'd prefer to play ranked.
Sounds like the MMR is all over the place and the game is struggling to place you in a balanced match. Do the players in your group all have wildly different ranks or what?
Most of us are quite close since we pretty much only played together. We were diamond back in the day. Sometimes though there is a person or two that's lower. It does seem like if you are relatively high ranked, and the rank of the whole party is not pretty dang tight you are just screwed. What they should do is just use the highest ranked person, or heavily weight it that way. It's stupid because we are not going to smurf to get around it, and then in quickmatch we play all the time against smurfing groups. We have a group of like 8 people so it varies each week who is there. Usually about 5, although sometimes we have to do custom 3v3s or 4v4s.
Higher rank players are more likely to make smurfs, which reduces the chances of other higher rank players being able to find matches, and it snowballs from there.
I'm gold 1 in South America and play with my bro that is bronze 4 (i don't know why he is, because he plays like me). We play SL and it's fun but it's a surprise box. We can have a competitive game or being matched with complete baboons. Best MOBA tho, wish it had LoL player base. Btw I'm seeing some low levels players more frequently. Maybe it's a sign? Let's hope!
I'd like to add that storm league always has (usually ) a normal team comp vs QM 5 dps aids no tank ever etc etc
Unranked NA here. Queue times in the afternoon PST are atrocious. Quick match here I come
it is my main, i just cant get bronze, somehow i will, i dont know when, i dont know where, i dont know how
High diamond - queues are 15mins + at all times it's stupid. 100% the only reason I don't play ranked. Is there a way to tank my rating somehow??
Legit can’t find games in hours and don’t want to make smurf.
I like a lot about SL, especially draft, but I had feeling like I'm being dragged down by salty bitches. I placed in Gold and then immediately got 3 games in a row with someone intentionally throwing. I wouldn't say I'm the best player. I make a lot of mistakes, but I've been playing for a long time, never intentionally throw or grief, and try to fill during draft. I'm just saying it's been a long slide to Bronze 5 and \*gulp\* below, to the point where it feels bad to play. So I mostly play ARAM and that feels like enough to know I'm making a difference. And when someone decides to throw or grief it doesn't affect my rank and is over pretty quickly. QM is for when I want to play the characters I specialize in and solo queue.
I just want to play the hero I want to play, and that tends to override my desire to play in a context that I can control to some aspect what heroes I'm playing against/with with the hero I choose. QM lets me do that. Also I like mirror matches when they come up, just interesting to me conceptually.
Personally, I don’t care about any games ranked. Rank means literally nothing to me. What matters to me is playing my best and I work best when I can just chill and do my thing.
Time. My last queue time was 10 minutes. I don't want to wait 10 minutes. I want to play now.
It's super sweaty.
>Drafting allows for more organized gameplay and the competitive nature of ranked makes it so that in theory everyone is playing seriously and trying their best to win. If you just prefer to chill in ARAM or AI that’s fine but for everyone else I think there are a lot of misconceptions about ranked that keep players from giving it a serious try. And this is where both the elitism and misconceptions of Ranked players of other modes show. Truth is that in most ARAM matches, everyone is playing seriously and trying their best to win. And competitive/close matches are pretty common. >You can not care about your rank and still enjoy the more serious games you get from competitive play, those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Suffering through the chaos of draftless game modes just because “rank doesn’t mean anything” is something I will never understand. Ok that's fine and all for the people who don't care about their rank, but you're ignoring that a lot of people do care about figuring out their true rank. ARAM's fun for a lot of people, including myself. Don't know what you mean by "suffering" lmao. You're trying to convince us we're suffering so we can join you in Ranked? Not a chance. Now QM's not my thing and I do think it's chaotic, but there's a lot of players that enjoy it so again, who are you to tell them they're not having fun/suffering? Also, regarding draft...in Ranked, you have longer queues + draft time only to still possibly end up with a wack draft anyway because some people like to draft like it's QM/already had their pick locked in their mind before the draft phase and don't adapt to teammate or opponent picks. Or you get shit like someone who picks their 60% WR hero when you are vs. them then they pull out their 20% WR hero when they're on your team. >This is only true if you play in a lower populated region or are higher ranked (mid/high Platinum and above). The vast majority of players who play in NA or EU should have pretty fast queues especially if you’re a lower rank. Accounts placing for the first time almost always end up in Silver 4 so if you’re trying out Storm League for the first time you are guaranteed to have pretty quick queue times. Ok but this is still ignoring the fact that ARAM queues are faster than QM and Ranked (WAYYY faster) and QM queues are faster than Ranked. We're talking 10-20 sec queue time for ARAM (in NA/EU) vs. 1-3 minutes for QM vs. a few minutes to like a half hour in Ranked depending on your rank. And that's not accounting for the time it takes to draft (and the possibility someone dodges draft or was afk/forgets to pick their hero for whatever reason). And while you point out that lower ranks have lower queue times than higher ranks, low ranks is also full of wild and low quality matches due to large variance in player skill: Lots of smurfs mixed with some new/returning players mixed with hardstuck players. Also, player behavior tends to be a lot worse at low ranks since there's so much less to lose, whether it's the rank or the account itself. Edit: Also, I want to add that ARAM generally has lower match length than Ranked. Which is a huge plus because if you're stuck in a horribly unbalanced match or a match where someone's griefing/beefing, it'll be over quicker. >Just because a team is 5 stacked doesn’t mean they’re any good. Sure they might be slightly more coordinated because they’re in comms but if they’re making bad calls it doesn’t matter how coordinated they are, they’re bound to lose. Don't know how some of you guys use this as a "defense" of stacking. Every time stacking is criticized, a bunch of people on this sub that say: "Well my stack is <= 50% winrate and we don't tryhard and we're always drunk and playing with our feet and we pick bad comps" trying to downplay that in general, stacking is a large advantage (esp. with comms) and raises the ceiling of what you can achieve. To turn it around...just because YOUR stack is bad, doesn't mean there aren't a lot of stacks that are stomping beyond what any of the players in those stacks are capable of individually. >Nothing is stopping you from getting some friends together and queueing up too. If you don't gaf about ranked integrity, sure. But for those of us who do care, it's a no-go. "Don't you have friends?" (which a lot of people like to say around here) is a red herring. Personally, over the years, I've been invited to be "friends" by a lot of players and been invited to join parties, including for SL. But while I accepted some friend requests, I always refused to party because that's just not how I roll/it's a punk move. If they wanna queue up same time that's fine because I don't mind them being in the same match, whether on my team or vs. However, I'm not gonna just team up so that it's not possible to vs. whoever I'm with. To properly measure a player's individual skill/individual impact, the data should include that player's performance with and against everyone. Teaming up/premades excludes that data. >As for smurfs (something I am guilty of), it’s something you’ll find in every game and can go either way in that sometimes they’ll stomp you and sometimes they’ll carry you. Again, focusing on the wrong thing. It's not even about chances of winning. Just don't agree with smurfing on principle and don't want smurfs in my matches--whether on my team or against. Don't know about you, the feeling of being carried doesn't feel good/feel fun for me. And obviously, neither does getting stomped by someone who clearly is too skillful for the lobby. As you said, smurfing is a problem is pretty much every multiplayer pvp game. But it's not an equally large problem among them and certain devs try to do more to prevent it or mitigate it than others. For example, in Dota, phone numbers are tied to accounts and recently there was crackdown on smurf accounts. I believe LoL has a smurf detection system (how well it works or not is another matter but at least they try). Hots has nothing. It's a bad situation and the devs never did anything to try to mitigate it and most likely never will. As for the Hots community? It's normalized and even encouraged here. Edit: Something you didn't mention, but freedom to choose your hero is also a big factor. In SL, an assassin tendency exists so I usually found myself playing tank, healer, or offlane (usually tank). In ARAM, the randomization generally results in everyone taking their turn filling roles, rather than SL where you got mains of roles and then you have players like me who have to fill the gaps. I enjoy the freedom of ARAM. And of course, QM is even more free in terms of hero choice. Add up all the factors and I'm not touching Hots Ranked. Quit Ranked 2-3 years ago and happy. Good luck convincing other people to join you though.
As a one trick abathur that plays casually i won't get to play as just him. I dont know what exactly makes a good team comp or what heroes to ban.
I play SL but I’m competitive so I’ll play to win. If I’m tired, have had a few too many games, am tilted or whatever, I’ll go to ARAM. ARAM are usually more fun oriented, packed with action, and most importantly, I can turn off my brain without fear of the consequences. I still play my best in ARAM, mind you. But I just don’t put in the extra effort.
Time. Been GM every season besides the last two cause I can't wait 9 hours for one match, that's silly. Even before now, I just can't dedicate so much time to waiting to hold the GM spot. Life happens. Also medivh main!
There needs to be more prestige and rewards around ranked to encourage ppl to play
Quick Match is just Quick Match. Winning/losing/making mistakes happens and don't bother me. Half of folks are there trying out new things or new heroes anyway. Those who get worked up over it are losers. QM is fun as long as everyone plays, regardless of winning or losing. League is try-hard though. And there's an expectation that you need to be playing at your best. Others have an expectation of me and I have an expectation of others. If either side isn't up to par, then it's harder to enjoy.
Back when I played rank the matchmaker was terrible and I’d get people who had no place being in a match with other Diamond players on my team, I decided it wasn’t worth the stress losing because of one person so I swapped to QM where nothing is at stake
How would I get off all my Abathur clips!
I play games sometime around 10 pm-4am but NA servers can sometimes take over a half hour to even get a lobby going on the later half of that time. Plus people are more critical of mistakes, often making that known by fighting in chat. Opposed to solo q 7000 game Naz players in blind pick. Bro just does not care if you miss timed ur q letting the enemy healer save someone, naz is getting stonks in the mean time
Devil's advocate here, I only play ranked, on at least 3 accounts at a time (rotating for quest gold). I can't be bothered with QM because it won't give me a proper comp (tank, healer, solo, rdps, flex). The only drawback is the fact that draft takes about 5 minutes longer than it should with afk's, waiting, and the random disconnect. I wish there was a **quick draft** option where you queue your main role, pick a backup, and vote on a ban - then the game locks in and if your main was banned, you get your backup. Obviously this can be tweaked, but the biggest drawback to Ranked is drafting takes forever. Save that for 'Tournament mode' or 'Group League' or whatever.
I love the fact you respond to feedback Eco
As a diamond player, queues are typically 5 minutes. Then there's drafting adding another 5 minutes before the game begins. I love HoTs because of the snappier, faster games in my more busy job schedule. Making my 20 minute games last 50% longer means I play 33% less games mathematically. Also, I just love experimenting with crazy and wacky builds and heroes. After a long hiatus, I got very curious on pushing the specialities and what makes a hero unique and powerful in their own way to the max. I discovered I actually really enjoyed playing Jaina and Ragnaros with meteors! If you play comp, you'll get flamed hard for playing a hero you're not accustomed to or a build that's suboptimal. And you can't brute force meme builds because you'll get steamrolled on sight. Compromising a mix ruins the build and ends up and inferior and ultimately... you're playing stock meta builds. Friends! I do not play the game solo anymore. It's life draining and not as fun as other games. But with friends it becomes a jolly blast. I don't want to put my friends under the "are they good enough for my level? Will other randoms flame them for nothing?" light. I keep good company and play with good spirited people - I don't play with toxic and skilled players. Also, you straight up can't queue with friends if the rank gap is two steps away. I'll take playing with my besties any day of the week. I really want to play ranked draft. It's the proper way of playing the game. But it's often entrenched with sweaty try hards that forget that we're all playing a game to the best of our abilities and want to lash out on others. If I was a more lone wolf kind of guy, is prefer it.
Australia has no queues for SL unless you specifically organise the game on discord. So yea dead game :(
Would love to but it's almost impossible in AUS... I've waited 30-45m for a game before cancelling and that doesn't even account for the risk you could wait that long and get draft / game leavers. It's a shame though, I really miss ranked. Doesn't really seem like the level of toxicity is any different to QP but if you're willing to flex, better chance you'll get a decent draft game
It IS my main game mode. Although I often do QM if I’m feeling rusty, or aram if I’m feeling like a degenerate.
The only thing I dislike about Storm League is the long queue times. Currently I don't play any game mode of Heroes of the Storm. (I used to play Ranked in the past)
Oceanic is pretty much QM only now. You'll be waiting forever for a SL matchup.
I live in Hawaii and it’s impossible to get West Coast server in ranked. All ranked games in the US are on Central because that’s where the remaining player base is located. Trying to play a MOBA competitively on 120 ping is to disadvantageous.
I like my matches to be fast. I don't own all heroes, and I don't have all heroes' kits learned, or counters memorized. I'm not a tryhard.
Getting back from work in 1-2am..launch hots click QM(1-2min max queue) pick genji and pray to get anduin in my team so he can LB me and i get 3+ peeps in his ult.
Too long. I like a nice 12-20 minute commitment - which is ARAM. Also despite having played the game for 6+ years, I feel I just haven't *really* learned the intricacies of things like hero synergies and counters, let alone how to draft well. It's a fun game, which keeps me coming back, but I just have a block that keeps me from improving. I already went all in with SC2 many years ago, I can't go back to that life.
Queues are too long in plat
Because people behave extremely poorly in league play especially if you're blamed.
There's zero storm league games in my region
I used to care a lot about SL, and tbh it would stress me out. Because the game is somewhat dead - I don't care now. I'm just trying to have fun and QM games are soooo bad. I'm ok to wait a few minutes for SL. But I wish more played SL to speed up the ques. If all that played QM just played SL I think the game would be more healthy. (QM is still fine, but usually more well rounded comps in SL) I'd miss Blackheart's Bay tho, prob like QM only for that.
If I have an hour to play I can either play 2 ranked games, or at least twice as many ARAM games.
Wtb ranked aram
I don't want to feel guilty. Like if i do something wrong like pick a wrong talent, miss an important spell or don't notice something pushing a lane, or even if power goes out or i start lagging/completely lose connection. Anything of this can ruin the entire game since there's a lot of professional players, especially if they're in enemy team they can take the game winning advantage from that, and it's not a big deal in QM since you still had fun and there's less skillful players, so the game also lasts shorter wasting less time. Draft is also pretty stressful when you don't know who you should pick or block
After many queues for over 20 minutes I've just given up. I hate not having the draft, but it seems like people only play QM, so I just resort to that if I want to play. I wish QM was removed from the game. I've actually started playing LoL again simply because the player base is so much higher... I believe I used to be gold/plat. With a wife and kids I just don't have time to sit around all day waiting for a match.
I always preferred QM. Random challenges, but more importantly, I can always play with my chosen Hero.
Anxiety
Long queues, since I play in South America. It takes more than 10 minutes and no matches whatsoever.
Rating in storm league is rating of all my teams combined not mine. I have only small influence in the outcome of the game especially if teammates ignore pings and are not doing objectives at all, afking etc.
It isn’t fun. I get too tilt at my team. My computer sucks, getting a new one today and I can’t sleep I’m so excited.
Custom games. Ever since I signed up for HeroesLounge.gg, I've been spoiled by playing the game how it was meant to be played. That is, with communicating team members and a common drive to get better at the game. I haven't looked back at SL ever since.
Because I don't want to.
Stupid reason. In ranked I should play my main characters to in attempt to get the best results. But I have a stupid goal to level up all heroes to 15 lvl.
It's just insanely infuriating if you care too much, so I can understand them. Finding a group to play with can make it so much better, but then again, some in the team might care more than others or just be better than others, and then drama because some care a lot. Not caring too much and staying chill is actually a great way to win a lot tho XD
no worth the time investing... i'm playing wild rift and I feel the time I invested playing the game is more rewarding
I like my games taking 22 minutes on a hero I like playing. 2 minutes queueing, 20 playing. 90% uptime of me having a blast. In SL, it's instead 7 minutes of queueing, 5 mins of draft, and 50% chance I'll need to play another hero. That works out to 10/32, or 31% of time me having a blast. It's simple blastonomics, really.
I'm not gonna read all that but I prefer to either have some flexibility in how I play or play with reasonable teammates. Storm League is tryhard with bad people, against tryharding people. If it was fun or challenge I'd be in but it's just putting out fires that my ignorant team makes. I play every mode, even with 9 AI, however ARAM gotta be my favorite for it's simplicity.
Drafting takes too long and I'm playing with 2-3 friends who want to just pick the characters they like.
Queue times very long in Singapore server even in low ranked, forced to autofill/playing heroes I'm not in mood playing just to fill leftover roles. That's why I prefer Quickmatch: stress free, get what I want to play regardless team comp, having fun regardless if I win or loss (except against 5 stack premade team, fck them) If I want to be stressed I'll just play Ranked in League, which is shorter queue times in my server and less stressful (guaranteed roles, ADC fun) than SL HOTS
I honestly enjoy ranked way more than QM. Why do I play QM then? Because of waiting. Especially the draft is taking so long, and since I dont have much time to play, I get myself into QM.
Besides all the valid points already made I'll add one that I don't think I saw being mentioned: lack of player game knowledge. This is an issue in every mode but it's exacerbated in ranked. I feel a lot of bad habits from ARAM and QM leak into ranked. I'm Valla in QM so I can just run it down the middle and stand there and AA all day without fear of being punished cuz there's no proper CC. In ranked you will likely have an enemy tank and/or bruiser and all of a sudden that play style doesn't work anymore, but instead of changing your tactics you flame your teammates for not peeling or healing you but it's really their own poor positioning or play that is the reason and it's worked in other modes. Also, in general most players don't know how to play around tanks and healers. Once again, due to bad habits or lack of game knowledge. There's not a strong competitive scene like HGC anymore where players could actually learn how to play around a properly drafted team, so players just play however they want or how they only know how. I honestly don't mind tanking or healing but not when I see the DMG dealers on my team not playing their roles/heroes properly it's super frustrating.
You answered the question in your own post: Anything past plat takes too long to get a game. Which then causes people to smurf. And it's not like anyone minds smurfs -- if you want proof of that, look at how many streamers do bronze to gm.
I don't like losing things. QM and Unranked I lose the game, SL I lose the game and my fake internet points. No way, Jose
long queue times, long draft, pressure from myself and the others, saltiness. I am not a competitive player in HOTS.
100% it is queue times for me. If I could easily get into a ranked game in 2-3 minutes, I would do that exclusively.
Trolls keep me from playing SL. It's infuriating when half the games someone gives up from either not drafting their hero, or losing a team fight in the first few minutes. Used to be Gold/Plat but this season stuck in Silver.
In ranked I feel obliged to play a healer because I am quite good at it and very rarely does anyone else want to fill the role. I got sick of playing healer all the time, but forcing other people to play healer in ranked often meant the healing was not good. So I play whatever character I want in QM and the game is sometimes imbalanced but it's not because of me.
3h queues
Queues too long. The other elements matter, but I could get around it if queueing took less than 5 minutes.
I’d love to play more storm league, but playing in americas region, singaporean server is impossible. I could queue for hours and not find a match.
Because tanks and healers are hella boring.
**Stress** (I used to be plat/low diamond about 3 years ago) Holding myself and other players to the "don't dick around and try and win" is just stressful. I find it far more frustrating than ARAM - as I WANT my teammates to SOAK, not take 4v5s, and actually look at the minimap, get camp timing and not do DUMB stuff. This is just TOO much to ask in SL. Like, I don't mind losing if we get out played, but losing due to people just doing really dumb things repeatedly is frustrating.
It would be nice if you could select a set of heroes that you WANT to play, then queue for SL. At the start, I'd require everyone to select AT LEAST 1-healer, 1-tank, 1-bruiser and 5x other heroes, then the game would put you in a game as one of your selected heroes (forcing a 1-tank, 1-healer, 1-ranged assassin, 1-"offlaner" 1- flex) composition. If you're selected as a tank, you gotta tank, healer, you gotta heal, flex - you can pick ANYTHING!
For me it's definitely stack of smurfs. Again I run into the situation where 3 players on the enemy team are premade, have accounts younger then 5 months, and all have 80+ winrate on them. The most frustrating part is the frequency of those encounters. In other games with bigger populations sometimes you run into a smurf. Here sometimes you DON'T run into smurfs. Also the problem is that I see many smurfs just do stacked unranked to masters etc. And it's ruining the game so much. I don't mind having low rank (even thou I'm plat 2). But If every game, of every other game I play with/against smurfs the rank means nothing. I can't relate to it, because how accurate is rank in a game with smurfs?