This is a thread where I’ve collected some suggestions.
A way to improve the rating system with minimal work required
The matchmaking system isn’t doing its job right, we’ve all noticed that ever since the beta.
But to fix that would require a massive undertaking by Blizzard, and we all know how much they hate working on these kinds of things. Because there are a lot of hidden mechanisms that’d need to be changed.
But a way to keep the matchmaking system as it is, while also providing rating more consistently to people who win 4+ rounds in shuffles, without causing a massive inflation spree, is to follow this person’s suggestion:
^ That suggestion of his, is BY FAR the best and most realistic suggestion I’ve ever seen on this forum, when it comes to rating systems.
Although reading it again, I noticed I read it wrong. One thing would need to change, to avoid uncontrollable inflation (it’d otherwise become even worse than now), is that the amount won would need to be limited to something like 20 or 25 max per round, no matter what the MMR differences are. (After placement games ofc.)
Anyway, so with that change to max 20 or 25 won per round (after placement games), and max 15 lost per round, it makes it so while the MMR would still change as rapidly as it’s doing now, the CR on the other hand would require a more consistent output to keep climbing, but you wouldn’t lose a ton of your CR just from a couple of shuffles.
Suggestion to reduce the “zug zug”-mentality in shuffle
Because the rounds ends as soon as the first player dies, it means that even if one side played well and was about to land a kill on a target in just a moment, it’d still end if one on their own side died just a second before the opponent did.
This makes it so people pop a ton of CDs to burst fast, rarely worth it to peel since people would become pretty busy bursting rather fast, and makes it so one player really can drag down their entire team by dying at the start.
This is not a good design when combined with the wild MMR differences in shuffles sometimes, where one often performs at a level far below everyone else, and makes the new players getting matched up with those higher rated ones also annoyed since they face people they absolutely shouldn’t be facing.
So I’ve seen some people, before they announced changing it, that they support Blizzard’s decision to not give out ratings when a player abandons. Because they’ve been thinking that it’d be unfair to them for not getting to play against that “weak link” 3 times, who dies at the start every round, when they’ve already suffered through 3 rounds with that “weak link”, if Blizzard would give out rating gains & losses for the rounds played.
While I’d say it’s fundamentally contradictory to a rating system’s purpose to skip matches played in its rating calculations, but w/e, I was just explaining the opposite PoV.
So now that they (finally!) announced giving out rating gains & losses for rounds played, Michieltjuhh (who’s actually one of those who think it’s unfair), suggested a way to mitigate that scenario where one side doesn’t get to play against that “weak link” 3 times when a player abandons.
^ That both places more emphasis on not "zug zug"ing as much as people are doing to such high ratings, while also letting people play those rounds where they’d win even if they had someone on their team die first. It lets players themselves make up for that difference that 1 deadbeat makes in a shuffle.
Suggestion for giving healers a more decisive impact on outcome
This is my own take on it which I’ve repeatedly explained in a couple of threads now, but new people keep making new threads one after another about the same problems, so I figured I’d place it in a thread like this.
So healing in general in a heavy burst gameplay, isn’t really that rewarding for a healer. Especially not when there are oneshots possible in the game. Then add solo shuffle social dynamics into that, and it becomes even worse.
But healing isn’t supposed to be making games last forever either, nobody wants those 90% dampening games back from the past.
So from what I can tell, a heavy sustained gameplay design would fit this much better. Things can spiral into losing at any time, popping a def/healing CD for the opponent’s burst won’t always be the automatic scripted reply, and it places more emphasis on getting heals out more consistently.
But right now, both damage AND healing is doing much better output with the CDs up than without. So both damage and healing overall would need to be redistributed for classes and specs, so that they do better sustained, and lower their bursts.
Anyway, so with a heavy sustained gameplay design instead of a heavy burst gameplay design, it places more emphasis in beating each interrupt, each CC chain, and so on.
For example, imagine as a healer if you can lose like that when you’re the healer who gets interrupted twice in a row, while the one who only gets interrupted once is able to keep people alive.
It places much more value in skill expressions that can have a decisive impact on the outcome in shuffle. It makes healers feel like they’ve got a more decisive role to play, instead of just being a “healer bot” in the background who nobody cares if they do things right, but people sometimes give them hell if they die due to circumstances they can’t control or if they mess up.
